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[DFNewb]

People are playing Liberal Crime Squad IRL nowadays
A game like LCS would be banned nowadays if it was released with graphics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8mizoXyhY8

[Reelya]

That's pre-communism by like 300 years or so, heh. Though it sounds like something that could end up being a lession in the so called 'tragedy of the commons'.

The 'tragedy of the commons' happens because there's a shared resource, but each person is exploiting it for personal gain. It's a type prisoner's dilemma situation, since adding another cow (privatized resource extractor) to the common resource always increased personal profit, but it makes the resource less productive as a whole. So you can put together a game-theory matrix that explains it.

The conflict comes because you have the intersection of public resources (the commons) and private resource (ownership of the cows). Muntzer's proposal wouldn't succumb to that situation, because in Muntzer's formulation, the cows themselves are a shared resource, so everyone has aligned interests in that the optimal number of cows are in the field.

In fact 'tragedy of the commons' is nothing to do with communal-ownership and everything to do with privatization. There are always going to be common resources / sinks, and as long as there's a personal benefit from exploiting the shared resource, you get tragedy of the commons situations. Examples include usage and pollution of air and water supplies.

[smjjames]

Thus cow communism?

More seriously though, you'd have to have some sort of protection against people trying to exploit the resource to their own ends.

People are playing Liberal Crime Squad IRL nowadays
A game like LCS would be banned nowadays if it was released with graphics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8mizoXyhY8

I'd read that some were pounding on the door and cops had to be called. Sounds to me like the only thing missing were the torches and pitchforks because going so far as pounding on the door and worrying them enough for police to be called is definetly 'angry mob' behavior and not peaceful protesting.

[wierd]

There are many potential points of failure, at least as regards the cows.

Reelya has neatly summed up the "Owns cow" angle, but if we throw in things like "Milking/butchering the cow", and then "Distribution of meat/milk", we get more opportunities to extract personal gain from the communal resource.

EG--  "OK, the cows are community property. Do not take all the milk for yourself/do not butcher the cow yourself."

What stops somebody from doing exactly those things?  Sure, the cow belongs to everyone, but when you milk it, all the milk ends up in one bucket. Who's bucket is it, and who ensures the distribution?

Likewise, when you butcher the cow, all the meat ends up in somebody's butcher shop.  Who's shop, and who oversees distribution?

"Assigned persons!" somebody may exclaim--

"The assigned milker milks the cow, and puts the milk into the public dispensary."
and
"The assigned butcher kills the cow and cuts it up, then presents the meat to the public."

What stops the milker from holding back some of the milk themselves for personal enrichment, away from public hands?
What stops the butcher from holding back some of the more choice cuts of meat in a similar fashion?


Then--- there is the distribution angle--

"Well, we assign monitors to watch the milker and the butcher, so they dont cheat the public!"

OK, now we have soviet russia.  Who watches the watchers? Who ensures that the distribution is fair, and that it is not being imbalanced in favor of the ones doing the distribution?

This is always a losing game.  There really is no solution to tragedy of the commons, aside from universal condemnation of greed in the community.  The consequences (and fear of consequences) imposed by the rest of the community are really the only thing that can keep the tragedy of the commons at bay. Once the community is shorn of the power to impose direct penalties to the parties engaged in exploitation, there is no stopping the plunder of the commons.

[WealthyRadish]

Müntzer's supposed views on property, from what I remember reading, are not mentioned any of his writings, only in his final confessions. It's more likely that this is what the nobility and clergy feared he believed and tortured him into stating that it was what he wanted. Müntzer was still incredibly radical for the time, as from what I understand, he wanted to abolish the nobility and allow peasants and laborers to govern themselves.

I wavered on including those quotes of Müntzer, but what I think is interesting about it is that he or his torturers would even be able to formulate the issue in those terms in 1525 (although I suspect that the specific phrasing might be a bit of a wishful translation to use precisely those words). I had previously learned about the Twelve Articles before stumbling upon Müntzer, and Müntzer's confession looks anachronistic by comparison. That part of Müntzer's confession (if its seeming modernity isn't just random coincidence) makes me curious how widespread the ideas stated actually were, if they were at least known enough to be sought for a caricature.

[smjjames]

Yeah, you're basically fighting against human psychology here and it's easier to maintain that sort of community resource in a small community (like say, your typical nomadic tribe or village) because everybody pretty much knows everybody else and can be a check on them. Once it gets past a certain size (don't know what the tipping point is), it starts breaking down.

That said, the sort of penultimate utopia that communists dream of would never happen with humans as you'd have to somehow excise greed. It'd sorta look a bit like Dwarf Fortress where everybody shares almost all resources equally.

[Reelya]

What stops the milker from holding back some of the milk themselves for personal enrichment, away from public hands?
What stops the butcher from holding back some of the more choice cuts of meat in a similar fashion?

This isn't the "communism problem" it's the "employee problem". And we've already got solutions for that. What's to stop employees stealing all the stuff in a privatized hierarchy either? It's easy to attack "collectivism" in this way when it's contrasted with some hypothetical system where everyone is a small businessman who owns their own entire cow and can thus ensure that they get the results of their own cow, but that's not what reality is like. The vast majority of people work for other people who are owners of the means of production and are paid according to the labor they contributed.

If a community is defined as the owners of some means of production, then that just means they assign employees to do the tasks needed, those employees are paid a salary because the labor they contributed can be measured in exactly the same way you would in a private enterprise. The community members elect board members, the board members assign executives to running the community enterprise, and the executives assign paid employees to fulfill the tasks needed to run the operation. It's not really as complicated as the doomsayers claim. All these tasks are already solved problems in the private sector and there's no reason community-ownership would preclude them.

[wierd]

Except with an employer, there is the potential to be fired, which removes the employee from all sources of benefits.  In collective ownership, there is no such entity who decides, and if there is-- there is your point of failure. (Specifically, that entity may decide that they can get more value for themselves by eliminating members of the community, and since THEY are the arbitrator, they can do this without consequence.)

With an employer, the employee can seek new employment.  With a life, it is much more difficult to pack up, move elsewhere, start a new life, and not die of starvation in the process.

Apples and oranges.

[Reelya]

Except with an employer, there is the potential to be fired, which removes the employee from all sources of benefits.  In collective ownership, there is no such entity who decides, and if there is-- there is your point of failure. (Specifically, that entity may decide that they can get more value for themselves by eliminating members of the community, and since THEY are the arbitrator, they can do this without consequence.)

With an employer, the employee can seek new employment.  With a life, it is much more difficult to pack up, move elsewhere, start a new life, and not die of starvation in the process.

Apples and oranges.

You're just making shit up now. Communal ownership doesn't mean "mob rule" that's just being obtuse.

(Specifically, that entity may decide that they can get more value for themselves by eliminating members of the community, and since THEY are the arbitrator, they can do this without consequence.)

Bullshit.

[wierd]

Property ownership implies a measure of control, as well as responsibility.  This can be a vote, or it can be more direct. Ultimately, ownership implies control, and thus the ability to impose a consequence.

How exactly are YOU defining "ownership" ?

[smjjames]

Isn't the electrical grid inherently communist? Just a wild random off-the-top-of-my-head thought. Also works for the 'tragedy of the commons' puzzle, use more electricity, you pay more.

Course though, one person or group still controls the supply... so, maybe not?

[Reelya]

Property ownership implies a measure of control, as well as responsibility.  This can be a vote, or it can be more direct. Ultimately, ownership implies control, and thus the ability to impose a consequence.

How exactly are YOU defining "ownership" ?

Typically, the idea is of direct democracy. That is, a board is elected to manage the resource. That board then employs people to operate the enterprise, and the employees are paid per hour for the labor they contribute. The same sorts of management tools are available to the board that are available to any other type of corporation.

but that board aren't the "rulers" of the community, hence your idea that they can get rid of community members "without consequence" isn't valid. Town councils can already manage public enterprises, and they don't necessarily turn into the sort of super-dictators you're imagining. Each town or region can just appoint different boards to run each community-owned commercial venture. They'd be subject to the same rule of law and legal obligations as any other company management or board.

[wierd]

Direct democracy breaks down, and does result in that kind of thing.  See for instance, what happened to Socrates.

The solution is elective democracy, which then breaks down in other ways. See for instance, all the many sundry ways in which the GOP is actively trying to prevent minorities from voting.

In terms of employment settings-- see all the "Totally not ageism, totally not racism, totally not sexism (honest!)-- they were just 'not a good fit!'" rationalizations in at-will states.

[smjjames]

Then we replace them with rule by an omnipotent invisible entity!

(by which I mean an omnipotent AI..... OBVIOUSLY)

[Reelya]

But you haven't really shown any particular way that having a corporation under democratic ownership must break down in any way that it wouldn't already under private ownership. The point is that the examples you've given are all strawmen, like saying that a communal ownership corporation wouldn't be able to fire any poorly-performing (or stealing) employee. But that is a complete red herring. No matter how ownership was considered, it would be easy to separate the concept of labor value of an employee from the concept of who owns of the surplus. The employee may or may not also be part of the community who owns the surplus, but you just pay them separately for the hours they worked vs their share of the surplus.