Maryland abolishes death penalty.

[kandrathe]

Oh and Kandrathe, one other thing...

Are there any examples of a complicated industrial process jointly owned and managed by workers? Not ESOP, not a co-op, but truly "orthodox" Marxist style, run only the proletariat without a board of directors? Not the local hippie cafe, or grocery store, or bike shop. I mean, a company that actually builds a complicated industrial product, like a car, or a computer.

It is conceivable but unlikely that people can overcome their humanness enough to perservere in such an endeavor for very long. As, we discussed earlier, once you commit (invest) everything into a commune, or communal endeavor, it is nay impossible to move out of it later unless you are willing to walk away empty handed.

This is why according to how you narrowly define it, it seems impossible. Or, magic. History has shown that when things are collectively owned, they are not well maintained and often fail and fall to ruins. For anyone interested in how communism fails, the history of Plymouth Bay Colony, is an exemplary study. They were a people who had formerly been known for their virtue, and hard work who became lazy and unproductive. Their resources were squandered, the vegetables were allowed to rot on the ground, and mass starvation was the result. And where there is starvation, there is plague. After two and one half years, the leaders of the colony decided to abandon their socialist mandate and create a system which honored private property. The colony survived and thrived, and the resultant abundance is celebrated as our prototypical Thanksgiving feast.

The tragedy of the Commons is the ultimate selfish corruption that dooms collectivism. I think competition and the profit motive help to drive efficiency in production and promote future long term value. It also introduces the ability to commit fraud in false "marketing". Again, we have the government to the rescue with law and regulation. It is one area of law I agree with as long as it remains within reason.

The free market system uses price as a means to rationally distribute available resources. It may not be equal and fair from a Marxist perspective, but as goods become rare, the price mechanism drives down demand and substitutes are eventually found. Without price, communism relies on a command economy where without proper signalling on the demand for a commodity, shortages and surpluses result.

The main beef of the 99% movement is that profits and therefore access to rare things is relegated to the wealthy (1%). It is this unequal distribution of economic success that motivates anti-capitalists, rather than (as Galbraith would advocate) seeking to use government regulation to make things more fair. This is not my view, and why I'm a fan of Galbraith's intellect, but not his positions. There is an interesting proposal floating around Washington that I recently heard about; remove all entitlements -- welfare, food stamps, social security, etc. and just pay every citizen a base "salary" of like $10K per year.

With regulations to protect the "rights" of workers, Capitalism has proven to be a reliable system for growth. The bigger question would be if "growth" is the goal of humanity. Have we abandoned the American Dream?

"The American dream, that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of merely material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been much more than that. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class." -- James Truslow Adams

I believe that complicated endeavors are conceived and built by insightful (visionary) entrepreneurs (Pg 242). They raise the needed capital to invest in the endeavor, and then the visionary builds the means of production. The investors are rewarded for their risk with profits.

We can agree that something is wrong with our corporatist oligarchical government which is drifting if not fully becoming fascist. We disagree on the path which liberates us from this yoke.

I still think according to how you've described your views in the past you are more anarchist. Maybe you are still somewhat defining/refining your view and have shed some of your former anarchist views.