Funny. I took that little quiz, and they put me in the centrist zone, but I leaned more libertarian than anything. I was in the center, but close to the top. I guess that explains why I can’t make any friends here.
Autarky (with a “k” for some reason) is the idea that the economy of a country, or county, or whatever should be self-sufficient enough to get along without any outside trade at all. It has proved to be bad craziness whenever applied as a policy – the most egregious modern example is North Korea.
I don’t think “Corporatist” means what you think it means.
That’s what I was trying to do, although I was in a hurry, so perhaps my explanation was a bit muddy. I was trying to distinguish between the government acting as merely a consumer of service vs. the government engaging in a “business” that theoretically could be handled by the market.
So, for example, I would not consider the court system (in general) to be a socialist endeavor, because it is acting as a regulator of the market, not participating in it (other than to purchase goods/services). But I would characterize the military (at least as it exists in most countries) as a socialist endeavor, because you could theoretically have a completely privatized military. I don’t think it would work very well, and most people apparently don’t think so either, since most governments don’t have a completely privatized military (although some governments have a private/public mix).
If you don’t want to call that socialism, that’s fine with me. But there’s some category of government action where the government directly acts as a provider of goods/services rather than a mere consumer, and that’s what I was trying to capture.
Oh, I think it does. But feel free to spout nonsense.
EDIT: Would you rather I use the term “corporatocracy”? That’s being pretty pedantic, if you ask me.
Corporatism. The Nazis were corporatists kindasorta, but it was the Italian Fascists who really based their system on it.
I think they were corporatists, it’s just the corporatism was organized around their crony capitalism. Something that Schiller mentions in Third Reich is that after the unions were crushed, workers were tied to corporations through the use of passbooks. Basically, you couldn’t switch jobs until your current company approved, and if they didn’t approve it, you were stuck. He calls this “Industrial Serfdom.” Essentially, it organizes you based on a common interest. To be sure, that common interest was defined by the state and various companies, but it’s a fair characterization.
Crap. I was specifically asked not to continue this in this thread. I forgot. I’ll cease and desist.
Well, that was one aspect of Gleischaltung – “coordination” – the Nazi policy of bringing all elements of society under state/party control. One result was that all trade/labor unions were either suppressed or merged into the new state-sponsored German Labour Front, which, in practice, didn’t do much to raise wages, but did fiercely guard members’ job security. Which is kinda like industrial serfdom, I guess.
Given that it’s a completely different word, yes, I would. “Corporatism” and “corporatocracy” are totally different concepts.
I am glad to be your friend, as long as we can respect any differing views we may have.
With some people here it is almost like you aren’t welcome if you’re not extremely liberal.
I score near the top in the libertarian zone. There are a couple traditional libertarian ideas I disagree with.
Someone pointed out that the quiz would increase accuracy if it had more questions. It’s not perfect, so keep in mind that changing a few questions might change your score a bit, particularly if it hits on the same ideas you have when the previous issues weren’t relevant to any ppet issues you mnay have.
Thank you for your concern and respect for the thread.
I’m not trying in anyway to be an iron fisted dictator, and sometimes the digressions get more interesting than the OP.
My main concern was that it seemed to be going nowhere before, just a bunch of Was too! Was not! Was too!
I don’t mind the corporatism discussion even though it is technically against what I said before, and everyone is being civil (and not paying attention to me asking for off-topic discussion to end) so as far as I am concerned have at it.
Perhaps I could ask how corporatism would fit into a conceivable model.
BTW I did not mean that to apply to you and only you, even if it looked like it. You had just replied last is why I clicked quote on your comment.
Please, carry on.
One definition anyway.
I’d prefer all local economies have the capacity to provide their own basic needs. But in no way do I prefer the strict sense of any and all goods must be produced in each local economy.
The biggest example of what I really hate not being localized is food. I’m not much into processed food, and would love to see all the big food companies bite the dust. That crap is practically poison. On the other hand, some things are just not practical. I can’t see each local area having its own pharmaceutical company producing every drug needed in that local area. Too impractical. But I hate big pharma too.
LOL I am part of the movement, not in a big way, though. HAdn’t seen the article, however, thanks.
OTOH some people in places like Las Vegas might not agree with a “local food only” idea. But then again maybe they shouldn’t be living there to begin with.
Food could certainly be localized more than it is now, and it would probably be a good thing to do so. But food is also an excellent example of something that can’t be localized completely. Take someplace like Montana, for instance: Sure, we can raise cattle, but our growing season is far too short to be practical for most vegetables. And there’d be no way you could feed even the small population of the state just on beef and the few vegetables we can grow. So, like much of the country, we import grain from Kansas and Nebraska, and vegetables from California.
On the other hand, of course, California can’t produce nearly as much energy as they consume, so Montanans sell Californians coal (or more often, the electricity produced from the coal). Cut back the population of Montana enough that it can be supported entirely on Montana-grown food, and there won’t be enough folks working in the coal mines to support California’s electric needs.
California has resources, like a lot of warm, sunny days every year. This is a good thing. Montana has resources, like a lot of coal in the ground. This is also a good thing. But you can take better advantage of both resources by trading between California and Montana.
good points. I’d qualify your assertion before completely agreeing that in some places food can’t be localized.
I was thinking about this some more after making the Las Vegas comment, and it occured to me that growing food indoors with artificial lighting has become highly feasible with the advent of LED bulbs which consume very little energy compared to older lighting systems. So as an alternative to trading with california, montana could take its coal and grow indoors fairly reasonably. If I foresee correctly, dependence on fossil fuels is on the way out–or at least the degree of dependence we have relied on it is going to be seriously reduced–so if and when solar electricity likewise becomes feasible enough, california might take its sunshine and solve its energy problems.
When these become feasible enough to overcome the costs of shipping food and coal back and forth, then it will be wiser for both to localize. That is in the narrow view of this analysis; other factors may come in to play too that I’m not looking at.