Mohammad

Karma: 6

Mohammad 30 Oct 2019 2:23 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: X-risk dollars → Andrew Yang?
So Sorry for replying so late—I’ve been caught up with life/ exams.
Yes, sorry I did misrepresent you by thinking you relied heavily on r/neoliberal.
From digging around I totally understand and sympathise with why you chose to rely on partly on r/neoliberal—There are surprisingly few places where ecomonic discussion is occuring on the primary election where it is accessible to non-economists. But nonetheless they are a subreddit.
In a lot of your analysis though, you do seem to caricature Keynesian economics as non-mainstream. Is that … true? I don’t think this is at all correct. Isn’t Keynesian economics the backbone of mainstream economics alongside neoclassical economics?
I have some other points, I will try run them by you later.
Can I say one thing, Thank You for championing Onedrive. MY God, I am so sick to death of Google Drive. It is a blight upon our species. HAHA

Mohammad 12 Oct 2019 8:19 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: X-risk dollars → Andrew Yang?
Hey Kbog,
Your analysis seems to rely heavily on the judgement of r/neoliberal.
Can you explain to a dummy like me, isn’t this a serious weakpoint in your analysis.
I’m sure this is overly simplifying things, but I would have thought that actually it’s the social democracies which follow very technocratic keynesian economics that produce better economic outcomes (idk, greater growth, less unemployment, more entrepreneurship, haha I have no idea how true any of this is tbh—I just presume). Espescially now considering that the US/globe is facing possible recession, I would think fiscal stimulus would be even more ideal.
I can’t seem to find anywhere that neoliberalism holds some kind of academic consensus.

Mohammad 8 Jun 2019 3:35 UTC
2 points
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Overview of Capitalism and Socialism for Effective Altruism
Thanks again for the reply.
On socialism and internationalism:
Maybe in their theoretical goals or mantras, but in practice they generally oppose trade. At least towards poorer countries.
I’m not knowledgeable how true/false this is historically… but I don’t suspect it is very true for modern socialist parties/ govt’s. Something like Yanis Varoufakis’s Diem25 project for example. I was very impressed by its effort to try and stop European left wing parties acting in their individual national interests and instead act in harmony.
And also impressed by their solution to Europe’s woes with a call for more Europe as opposed to less (brexit/frexit/grexit/ Euroscepticism etc..)

I will also point out that restricting trade to poor nations is not unique to socialists. Under Trump, the US has reinstated sanctions on Cuba on pretty dubious grounds. It does also preferentially trades with countries with govt’s in line with US’s broader national ambitions (for e.g. Saudi Arabia because they listed aramco)

On whether a socialist world economic system is more adept at working internationally:
Would it? Why? Capitalist states can make agreements too.
Yes, they can and do. But (I suspect) it’s harder for them to do this—simply for the reason that they are states in the first place and that places enormous incentive to act in national interests. I guess, I’m not really interested in “socialist states” as an EA (an you’ll notice avoided saying socialist state or country) - but rather a socialist movement? of some sort, that is not confined to individual states. To me that is what is worthy of investigation.

As an aside
This sort of socialism with international aims was abandoned quite early on in the Russian Revolution with Stalin in favour of socialism in one country, marking a significant break with orthodox socialist thought. I say that as a sort of defence against comparisons of international socialist movement to individual socialist states past and present. But it is also a scathing criticism of the international socialist movement that one section of it in Russia (the most successful section) did go the way of nationalism—and inspired a whole swathe of countries like China and Cuba to adopt its nationalistic model.

Got any thoughts? Let me know, please. Would appreciate it very much. You don’t need to do a item by item breakdown—I know it is very time-consuming (for me also). A short retort is just fine.
On your other points:
Well let’s say a global worker collective can get different tax treatment by headquartering in a different state. Are the socialist countries going to do a better job of setting their policies in unison?
I just don’t see the mechanism by which coordination would be made easier.
Meanwhile, if international trade shrinks, that might increase conflicts.
In practice, socialist states (20th century) didn’t do a particularly good job of coordinating with each other.
I don’t really have good answers for these. As I said socialist countries to me are not even worth entertaining, but how a socialist world economy would respond to tax havens - not sure, perhaps overhaul the current international tax system from facilitating this?? somehow?? I really don’t know. In any case, it will be interesting to see if our current liberal laissez-faire capitalist system will come up with a solution to this problem of tax havens. I think if it does—it would signal a move away from a liberal laissez-faire system to a more planned regulated capitalistic system by definition.
Co-ordination within a socialist system will be difficult in having to accommodate different perspectives and interests in much the way it is difficult under the current system. But… by definition an international socialist movement is about minimising and compromising on conflicting national/ individual/religious interests/perspectives to a act in the international interest, so I think it would be better at co-ordination. But the point I make is semantics.

Mohammad 28 May 2019 10:11 UTC
3 points
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in reply to: kbog’s comment on: Overview of Capitalism and Socialism for Effective Altruism
Thanks for the reply Kbog.
Of course withdrawing from international markets would be a economically backwards thing to do. But, I don’t think that is what socialists are generally for. From what I’ve read socialism is all about greater economic cooperation, internationalism, abolishing the state and opposing nationalism & economic protectionism etc. These are some wikis that I think support this view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalism_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletarian_internationalism
I am absolutely against countries disengaging from the global market. What I was trying to say is that it might be easier under a socialist world economic system for economies to unite together to lift standards in unison, than compared to a liberal capitalist world economy. And by acting in unison, this would avoid a reduction in economic growth.
For example in our current capitalist economic system, we have a handful of countries like Ireland that have turned themselves into tax havens. Ireland benefits greatly economically by doing this when corporations like Apple headquarter there for tax purposes, but it does so to the detriment of other countries—and the overall effect is probably slightly negative due to overall lower tax collection and less money being spent overall in the public interest.
I think you could also make similar arguments for the Bangladesh and Vietnam economies with respect to labour laws in the garment industry.
Do you think I make a valid argument that there should be EA interest in socialism as international co-ordination might be easier in a post-capitalist world economy?

Also, I noticed Singer made a remark on this I thought I’d share just in case you did not know.
″ Capitalism is very far from a perfect system, but so far we have yet to find anything that clearly does a better job of meeting human needs than a regulated capitalist economy coupled with a welfare and health care system that meets the basic needs of those who do not thrive in the capitalist economy. If we ever do find a better system, I’ll be happy to call myself an anti-capitalist.” https://web.archive.org/web/20181028225703/http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/ethics_and_the_left/

Mohammad 25 May 2019 3:20 UTC
4 points
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on: Overview of Capitalism and Socialism for Effective Altruism
Great post by the OP. But one thing I wished it touched more upon was the need for internationalism.
Under our current liberal capitalist world economy, countries are incentivised to weaken labour laws, safety conditions, environmental standards, taxes etc to remain competitive.
Both socialism and capitalism do have remedies to prevent/ temper this “race to the bottom” phenomenon. But I think socialists have a good argument to make that a socialist system might be better able to do this by lifting international standards. And this would be of great consequence to Effective Altruists.
Does the OP have any thoughts on this?