that’s what money flow should look like.

community (town, city) donates money to people, who then use it to buy goods and services from companies (which make a profit that way) that are then taxed by the community.

share your opinion

  • NotEasyBeingGreen@slrpnk.netEnglish
    112·
    10 days ago

    For profit companies are by definition inefficient. Profit is the difference between income and expenses, so by definition any profit means they are spending more than they have to or charging more than they need to.

    • BigDiction@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      8 days ago

      Ah yes, in the imaginary lazy river of money that never leaks.

      But what if it does leak? What if the river requires expansion? What if there’s a drought, and you need a backup source of water to keep the river flowing?

      • idealism_nearby@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        8 days ago

        Surpluses for the purposes of maintenance and expansion need to exist

        They do not need to be controlled by capitalists for the purposes of enriching themselves.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    10 days ago

    The obvious question you have to ask here is why that’s not happening. And the answer there is that the government serves the interest of the ruling class which is the capital owning class. People with significant amounts of capital pay for political campaigns, buy up media, do lobbying, and thus have far greater say within the system than regular working class stiffs. Also, note how the working class has practically no representation within any western political parties. So, even individual interests of the politicians are aligned with their wealth patrons rather than the working majority.

    The other problem here is that UBI can be easily gamed where companies simply adjust their prices to account for basic income they know people have. A better approach would be to provide universal basic services where people have guaranteed access to basic needs. Of course, that would require state run industry to provide those services. At which point we need to ask the next question which how this system would be better than a combination of state owned economy and worker run cooperatives. In the latter case, state run industry would be responsible for providing these basic services, building infrastructure, and managing other cross cutting concerns like energy production, and food security. Meanwhile, worker cooperatives would fill the same niche as private enterprise does under capitalism, except they wouldn’t suffer from a problem of the wealth being concentrated in the hands of people who own the companies. It would go directly to the workers and circulate back into the economy.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      9 days ago

      How does the state-run alternative system avoid being captured by an elite class?

      I see bits and pieces of the argument you’ve presented here, but this is the first time I’ve seen the whole thing. It’s illogical. It does not follow whatsoever. If elites can capture the system we have now, they can also capture a state-run system of services.

      If you can’t trust the government right now, the thought of giving it even more power should make you trust it less, not more.

    • Aniki@feddit.orgOPEnglish
      1·
      9 days ago

      thanks. i asked you to comment because i wanted to hear your opinion.

      now, i don’t fully understand your response.

      about the worker cooperatives: the thing that keeps bothering me is: what if the company makes no profit? i.e. it is a common and very wrong assumption that big companies are mostly profitable. many very big companies have huge fluctuations in their income, some never turn profitable at all. now, if worker’s pay is dependent on company profitability, i worry that they’re in for a rocky ride.

      government serves the interest of the ruling class which is the capital owning class

      and this is just plainly wrong. i guess you’re talking about the democrats from the USA. yeah those suck but to generalize it to “all government” seems just flatly off to me. i’ve seen many government institutions do great good around the world, such as in europe.

      • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlEnglish
        11·
        9 days ago

        I mean if a company isn’t making profit then it doesn’t have a viable business model to begin with. VCs throwing money at sketchy business ventures is precisely how we get bubbles and crashes. Meanwhile, for the bootstrapping case, the central bank could play a role of the VC where people can apply for a loan for their business idea and the bank floats them the money to get it started requiring that it’s operated as a cooperative. If something is unprofitable to do, but is socially necessary then it should be operated as a state owned enterprise and the cost of operation is justified by the social value it produces.

        i guess you’re talking about the democrats from the USA here.

        No, I’m talking about any government in a capitalist state. While this is simply more obvious in the US, the exact same dynamic is present in European capitalist states. The government doesn’t exist in a vacuum it’s a product of the way a social system is structured. If you have a capitalist system, then it will create selection pressures for a particular type of government. Notice how you completely failed to address the specific mechanics I listed and simply dismissed what I said based on vibes. Try actually thinking about what I wrote and addressing that.

          • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlEnglish
            21·
            9 days ago

            The context for the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is having a capitalist system of economic relations. Profit doesn’t need to be a driver of economy, that’s simply a mechanic within a specific economic system that’s currently failing. The point of an economy is to allocate labour and resources in a way that improves lives for the people living in a particular society. Using the profit motive to allocate resources is how markets do this allocation, but that’s certainly not the only way to do things. A lot of economists (and you) should take a look at how alternative economic systems in Vietnam, China, and DPRK work. In case of China and Vietnam, you have a hybrid system where you have state planning and the state holds the commanding heights of the economy, while markets and private enterprise are used as allocators within that context. Meanwhile, DPRK has a full state planned economy combined with cooperative ownership. All three are outperforming western economic system by a wide margin right now, and they don’t suffer from constant economic crashes we see in the west.

            • Aniki@feddit.orgOPEnglish
              1·
              9 days ago

              admittedly i’ve never really looked into eastern contemporary economic models, largely because of how inaccessible they are to me as somebody who does not speak the native language; an important contentious point to me are the following two: what is the role of workers in cosmology, and how to deal with non-workers?

              • the first important question to ask is “what is the role of workers in cosmology”? in other words, what is the reason that humans are regarded special; why do we grant special rights and protection to humans, but not to other animals and plants. Where does this special role come from, and what conditions must be fulfilled to upkeep this role?

              the way i see it, humans are a kind of driving force of history in an universal market that is tended towards growth. i’m a huge fan of outer-space human settlements (such as mars settlement), and realistically, only humans can do it. other species cannot; so we have to do it and obviously get a reward for it, since we’re doing it for all of nature, not just ourselves. plants profit from larger access to land as well. this justifies putting humans on a pedestal.

              • however, what happens to the humans that stay behind? i.e. those not willing to endure hardships to go on a space trip? as i see it, maintaining an equilibrium does not require humans; nature has existed billions of years just fine without us. then, what justifies that we continue to put ourselves on a pedestal? what is the deeper philosophical reason for this?
              • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlEnglish
                21·
                9 days ago

                I mean there are plenty of books on the subject in English. For example, China’s Great Road is a great primer on how Chinese economy works and its historical context http://rdcy.ruc.edu.cn/yw/PUBLICATIONS/Books/f87f6b3cda0d45bfb22c2d3da5b3db3d.htm

                And regarding the second point, I don’t really believe in any sort of historical determinism. I don’t think there’s a purpose for humanity or that we need to spread life throughout the cosmos. It is something I’d personally would find interesting, but I don’t think it’s predetermined in any way or even more likely than us going extinct. The growth trajectory we’re following right now isn’t really different that from a bacteria culture in a petri dish where it exponentially expands to use up all available resources and then dies off.

                Also, I think it could be likely that humans are a transitional species bridging the gap between organic life and some other substrate that we create. It could be that future post biological life will bootstrap on silicon or some other engineered substrate. And that’s what’s going to colonize space because it will be able to engineer itself to adapt to the conditions of space and thrive there naturally. I don’t see anything fundamental about biology that is necessary for intelligence, I expect that algorithms in our brains are transferable to other substrates, and that eventually we will build machines that can think in the same way we do and have similar type of conscious experience to us. These kinds of beings would be far better suited to space travel, and could thrive naturally in that environment.

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    8 days ago

    Trickle up economy. The richer people are, the more they can buy, the more companies can profit, the more they pay in taxes.

  • ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.comEnglish
    42·
    10 days ago

    Missing a couple flows in there, immediately coming to mind would be community to public services/infra, and company to employee, aka people.

    UBI of some sort will likely become a requirement for society to survive if we continue the path to infinite consolidation of wealth and power.

    • evenglow@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      community to public services/infra

      That’s policy flow.

      and company to employee, aka people.

      Not needed with UBI. UBI will be a requirement. The only question is if a country gets there before China does.

      • ShellMonkey@piefed.socdojo.comEnglish
        31·
        10 days ago

        If the company makes a profit, and doesn’t pay employees, then you end up with a perpetual extraction to the benefit of the company owners. As to services/infra, it’s a policy choice where what those are, but still require funds to provide them.

        UBI works conceptually as a baseline income and with the continual squeezing of workers out by automation and new technologies may well be needed, but if there are no employees paid to runa company or government workers to enact these policies then things come to a halt.

        • Aniki@feddit.orgOPEnglish
          1·
          10 days ago

          yeah you’re right, wages would still exist, UBI is just extra, i just forgot to write it in the diagram

          there i fixed it

  • PotatoPie@lemmy.zipEnglish
    21·
    8 days ago

    I already shared this opinion on a different community, reposting here o/

    Each node benefits from taking share of other node’s flow, the people want more donations to buy goods, companies want more payments to increase profits, community wants more taxation to donate more to people, none are willing to get the lowest flow and in turn none are willing to increase flow to the rest, this dynamic of relying on other parties doesn’t benefit their goal

    If money flow should look like this it has to be beneficial to everyone, somewhat like animal kingdom predation flow, you can argue it’s natural although it’s really just forced on all the animals they had no say in being part of this, but you can’t really claim that being eaten and fighting for your piece of the flow is ideal to anyone, so there can’t be a flow to aim for unless it’s biased

    To get an ideal system all nodes have to benefit from other nodes getting flow instead of hoarding it themselves -remove private ownership from people so personal goods are worthless and community locks donations behind spending/working(you get money from building/spending on your local community) -remove competition between companies through nationalizing or globalizing and people lock spending behind taxation/benefits generated -remove violence and enforcement from community and companies lock taxation behind donation quantity/management quality

    You’ll need a 4th divine body that can see everything while not being part of the flow to monitor and track these nodes, more importantly, removing violence and enforcement has lead to incursions and invasions, but at least the Ideal flow was achieved, mission successfully failed