Dear Holla Forums, I've been itching to ask something in regards to goods in a communist society. In a free market, businesses compete to make the most efficent, most technologically advanced products. How can we further innovate better goods without some form of economic competition. If there is a form of competition in a collective/communist society, how would that work and be implemented as opposed to a free market?
Innovation under Communism
Logan Morris
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Jace Williams
Innovation under capitalism only serves to increase profits and reducing socially necessary labor time comes as a by-product. Under communism, with all economic activity directed by worker's councils, it's in the interest of people to develop productive forces in such a way that it reduces necessary labor time.
It's a pretty simple principle that will apply beyond capitalism: spend some time making a machine so you can spend less time working.
Lincoln Howard
==wrong== businesses compete to make the most money, which isn't synonymous with either efficiency or technological development. Consider for example the inefficiency caused by the public relations industry and its need to further irrational consumption, and the burden on development caused by copyright and the like
Ayden Scott
You're contradicting yourself. "Efficiency" in capitalism only means cheaper costs. So it's more "efficient" for some companies to fire most of their western workforce and move all production to China where they'll produce shoddy junk that breaks within a month. Efficiency under capitalism does not create a better or more technologically advanced product.
Zachary Jenkins
It's the opposite. Free market only produces garbage that will become obsolete very easily in order to keep the meme of infinite economic growth alive.
Why the fuck do we need 20 corporations producing the exact same product with shitty quality, when we could have one single factory producing the same product with higher quality?
There's no need for competition. There's this thing called "curiosity" that capitalism has killed in the minds fo people because we live in a world filled with "entertainment".
Is this inovation? youtube.com
Andrew Richardson
These anons summed up half of what I wanted to say, and better than I could've said it. However, I believe OP was also asking how we'd incentivize automation under socialism and/or communism.
@OP It's simple, really: Rather than being done to turn a profit, innovation is chiefly performed to make peoples' lives easier. By producing the same amount of product in less time, we may reduce the length of the workday; by creating new weapons, we may better defend our borders; and so on, and so forth.
Taking that thought a step further, let's say a socialist government has a particular technology they'd like to research; for example, a new type of jet engine. It's not entirely unlikely that university teams throughout the country could apply for grants, and compete against each other for the recognition and material rewards.
To be honest, this is all very back-of-the-envelope theory, and I'm not very well-read on the matter. Would anyone more knowledgeable mind correcting me?
Cameron Foster
No they compete to make the most profitable products.
Alexander Price
What everyone seems to be saying is that under capitalism things are encouraged to be invented, designed, and produced for exchange rather than for use. This cripples certain branches of research and development, no matter how necessary and useful they might be, with a chronic lack of funds.
What I've heard, but unfortunately without source, is that some business-folks oppose the idea of acquiring near-infinite resources trough asteroid mining. According to their sensibilities it's a high risk operation with astronomical investments (both literally and figuratively) and the massive amount of raw-materials that would return from it would crash the market-value for said material, potentially ruining the entire market, making the entire endeavor unprofitable and pointless.
It would seem so typical of capitalism to step in between man and his unlimited frontier of scarcity-free life: to ignore investing, to delay the development, in what could and probably will be be the future.
Eli Howard
Nikola Tesla, Niels Bohr, Gary Kildall, Edwin H. Armstrong, Albert Einstein, Antonio Meucci, Charles Goodyear and many others without whom the modern world would never had existed all died basically penniless in comparison to how much their discoveries aided society.
So no, capitalism is infamously poor at rewarding innovation and creativity.
Joseph Torres
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Eli Walker
The innovation we'll see under communism will at first as points out, to decrease SNLT, but the real innovative shit we'll see will be coming from the people who are now free from dreadful work and have access to workshops/labs etc to build and create what they want.
Samuel Taylor
Innovation under socialism/communism will be pushed by people's passion. Also small change things will be pushed by people wanting to make their immediate lives a little better just like it always has.
Henry Jones
meme meme meme meme meme
All important technologies (cell phones, satellites, GPS, touch screens, LEDs to name a few) were developed in the public sector without the profit motive.
We live in a world where we use coal energy instead of nuclear because the coal industry bribes politicians and makes anti-nuclear propaganda.
Jaxon Sullivan
By stealing it. Of course, there's no such thing as stealing under socialism.
Adam Cooper
read a book.
Sebastian Gomez
Where did this stupid meme come from? Necessity drives innovation, not some ideological system. Innovation under capitalism consists of people finding newer and yet more pointless ways of making money, states having dick-measuring contests, and a few sheltered academics actually thinking of ways to improve peoples' lives and advance our society (which the capitalists then appropriate once they figure out a way to make money from it). Technological innovation only arises when you invest resources into it, which in capitalism is done only when you can make money from it or stuff it into a bomb. In communism we might actually spend our resources on something useful, like finding out a way to not destroy ourselves within the next few decades.
Cooper Nguyen
Pull your head out of your self righteous ass for fuck sakes…
Dominic Rodriguez
Daily reminder that capitalists always love too take credit for other people's work
Robert Torres
Luis Cruz
Say there are two things we may "invest" labour time (or some other scarce resource like a thorium mine) in, different things that need some kind of prioritization to distribute the resources between them well. How could such a prioritization be best decided?
How do you determine the relative difference in importance (or necessity) between a hepatitis medicine, a different type of thorium reactor or a new vibrator?
Nathan Adams
That's a poorly defined question if you're asking for anything other than generalized ideas of how to prioritize a project.
Leo Diaz
We're just saying it's extremely inefficient to innovate in the current climate for most, because taking risks is a bitch when most companies go bankrupt.