I am. I think you’re missing quite a bit of nuance.
My preference would be for owners to have the minimum level of control and return consistent with making an investment and putting in effort. Maybe that’s 20% of the board, maybe it’s 70%. 50% sounds good. I think most high returns are due to factors outside the knowledge or control or effort of most owners, at least above the level of small business.
Tsarist Russia was not capitalist. USSR wasn’t either. Lots of other examples.
I’m with you.
Ontario has actually had a fascinating evolution in the electric power sector which is probably its own topic for a standalone thread, lol. Like we had a crown corp, broke it up into many crown corps, and eventually privatized one of them. But even the privatized entity still has the Province of Ontario as the biggest shareholder and is regulated.
I think the one thing that the history of the electricity sector tells us conclusively is that a lightly regulated or unregulated power generation and distribution system is an absolute disaster. Until people can generate self sustaining power in their own properties this is clearly a collective problem demanding collective solutions.
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Counterpoint
Btw, Trolly, that’s a description of what is, not advocacy. LADWP also sucks and us anarchists and solar installers think people should make their own power if possible.
I agree and that makes us both crazy radical socialist extremists in the United States.
Johnny I thought I made it crystal clear in my post we have to ask the same questions of the existing system and the proposed alternate.
Counterpoint 2
One of these things is improving life expectancy and one is hurting it. Which one is more capitalist?
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Again, everything is a mix. That is what everyone here thinks I think. In Tsarist Russia there was investment in things like farms and factories and people profited from that. That the class of people was called “Aristocrats” instead of “Capitalists” doesn’t mean labor was expropriated by a class of people controlling investment. Same thing goes for the USSR, but the investor (and confiscator of the wealth generated by workers) was the Party.
This seems like a pretty radical change from the current system, no? Not that you aren’t right, of course. It’s just that it’s a tougher sell, esp when deregulating public utilities hasn’t always worked out well for CA.
Not everything is done all at once. I’ve put about 10000 solar panels on people’s houses. That’s a start. Batteries are starting to get popular.
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Only if we are sure we are not steering into a 1,000 foot cliff.
I don’t know if you guys are shitty drivers or bad at analogies.
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That’s fair. It’s an example of “here’s a working model of an alternative” rather than just “we gotta do something.”
As fun as it sounds to have you stubbornly refuse to admit the plain meaning of what you said was wrong and going over exactly what “much” means, I’ll pass thanks
I’m not arguing against anything here other than the best ways to convince people. As I’ve said recently I am leaning more and more towards the anti-capitalist stance.
Perhaps my use of the word sure was too much. I should have better said, you would at least want to look and see if by swerving you are not driving over a 1,000 foot cliff.
As per my original post, in my humble opinion too much anti-capitalist rhetoric simples assumes driving into the wall is always the worst possible outcome.
If we want to advance anti-capitalist ideas we should use the rhetoric most likely to succeed. No?
Since I like derails and you’re here and you have a connection to Vietnam and Vietnam is “socialist” and we’re talking about solar, man Vietnam is going nuts with solar.
(it’s doing this because of a change in the feed-in-tariff, which is weird because I didn’t think socialists used money)
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Of course, I don’t think anyone is suggesting there aren’t critical structural problems with the way things are currently going. The rub is showing that your alternative is going to work out better than a system that --as you say!— is working for (some of us) at the moment.
I mean, it wasn’t that long ago this forum was full of anarcho-capitalist guys who wanted mega-corporations to control society. “We gotta do something!” was also their argument.
#TeamSocialism has a couple of advantages in that one has working models of more socialist societies that seem to be doing well. You can point to Germany or Scandinavia and say “Hey these guys have a more equitable and sustainable society than we do, let’s try some of that.” I think that’s a lot more persuasive.
It’s not only about money. It’s about people having control over their lives and not being exploited for profit.