"Heh. I think your theory finds itself in contradiction with empirical reality. Sorry, the reality always wins."
It only "wins" if the sole concern of a political economy is economic growth. I've said pretty clearly that no one can deny that, in that sense, it's winning. However, it's doing so by sacrificing human welfare in a way that other systems don't require--pollution, oppression of free expression, miserable working conditions...the list goes on. You're continually looking at the economy as if the only figure that matters is income per capita. I don't think I've denied that that's part of it, but we have quality of life indices for a reason.
"It is not obvious to me at all that the Chinese political system will collapse without that."
Numerous people--economists and politicians both within and outside of China--have said that, not the specific number I used for example, but that the legitimacy of the CCP government is entirely dependent upon increasing economic growth, as we already have ample evidence to suggest that it, as a planned economy, will not be able to improve quality of living independent of that. I'll see if I can't pull up a few quotes to that effect.
"No, this happened in post-Soviet times. The factories were privatized by giving (for free) the ownership shares to the workers. After that process was complete, the factories weren't state-owned any more, they were owned by the newly-minted shareholders".
If someone handed you the keys to a car which could barely run, would you go through the expense of getting it back in working condition, or just sell it for parts?
"Ah. So it's not ownership at all -- it's just a work permit. Or an internal passport. I see no reason to call this "ownership" -- why do you think this word fits?"
Tell me, why do you think it doesn't? Because again, I'm having trouble understanding.
"Again, I think you're badly misusing the word "ownership". It doesn't mean what you think it means :-)"
"You seem to think that there is something wrong voluntary consensual exchanges of things of value. Or do you reject the whole idea of property?"
Well, as you seem to totally reject my idea of ownership, care to give me yours?
"Sure I can, that's what slavery is. Or if you're talking about labor potential I can easily take it away by locking you in a cell."
Yes, but is slavery generally considered a just and viable way to procure labor in a fully democratic society? No; again we can fall back to the Rawlsian veil of ignorance: if I can't apply the rule of "all people must agree with slavery" to myself (which it seems, by the definition of slavery, that I can't), then it's not something people in an egalitarian democratic society will support. And locking me in a cell does nothing to remove my labor from me. You can force me to use it to produce goods for you, but again, that's slavery, which won't happen in an egalitarian democratic society. Or even if you don't force me to work for you, I can still labor to find a way to escape. I fail to see an important distinction between labor and labor potential; they both refer to the ability to do work.
It only "wins" if the sole concern of a political economy is economic growth.
Nope, the concerns of a political economy are irrelevant here.
The contest is between a map and a territory and the territory always wins.
Numerous people ... have said that
Yes, I know. But the argument to popularity is not a good way to evaluate forecasts :-/
Well, as you seem to totally reject my idea of ownership, care to give me yours?
Sure. Ownership is a bundle of rights (and each right, of course, has a corresponding obligation on the part of others). What'...
Note: Originally posted in Discussion, edited to take comments there into account.
Yes, politics, boo hiss. In my defense, the topic of this post cuts across usual tribal affiliations (I write it as a liberal criticizing other liberals), and has a couple strong tie-ins with main LessWrong topics:
The issue is this: recently, I've seen a meme going around to the effect that companies like Walmart that have a large number of employees on government benefits are the "real welfare queens" or somesuch, and with the implied message that all companies have a moral obligation to pay their employees enough that they don't need government benefits. (I say mention Walmart because it's the most frequently mentioned villain in this meme, but others, like McDonalds, get mentioned.)
My initial awareness of this meme came from it being all over my Facebook feed, but when I went to Google to track down examples, I found it coming out of the mouths of some fairly prominent congresscritters. For example Alan Grayson:
Or Bernie Sanders:
Now here's why this is weird: consider Grayson's claim that each Walmart employee costs the taxpayers on average $1,000. In what sense is that true? If Walmart fired those employees, it wouldn't save the taxpayers money: if anything, it would increase the strain on public services. Conversely, it's unlikely that cutting benefits would force Walmart to pay higher wages: if anything, it would make people more desperate and willing to work for low wages. (Cf. this this excellent critique of the anti-Walmart meme).
Or consider Sanders' claim that it would be better to raise the minimum wage and spend less on government benefits. He emphasizes that Walmart could take a hit in profits to pay its employees more. It's unclear to what degree that's true (see again previous link), and unclear if there's a practical way for the government to force Walmart to do that, but ignore those issues, it's worth pointing out that you could also just raise taxes on rich people generally to increase benefits for low-wage workers. The idea seems to be that morally, Walmart employees should be primarily Walmart's moral responsibility, and not so much the moral responsibility of the (the more well-off segment of) the population in general.
But the idea that employing someone gives you a general responsibility for their welfare (beyond, say, not tricking them into working for less pay or under worse conditions than you initially promised) is also very odd. It suggests that if you want to be virtuous, you should avoid hiring people, so as to keep your hands clean and avoid the moral contagion that comes with employing low wage workers. Yet such a policy doesn't actually help the people who might want jobs from you. This is not to deny that, plausibly, wealthy onwers of Walmart stock have a moral responsibility to the poor. What's implausible is that non-Walmart stock owners have significantly less responsibility to the poor.
This meme also worries me because I lean towards thinking that the minimum wage isn't a terrible policy but we'd be better off replacing it with guaranteed basic income (or an otherwise more lavish welfare state). And guaranteed basic income could be a really important policy to have as more and more jobs are replaced by automation (again see gwern if that seems crazy to you). I worry that this anti-Walmart meme could lead to an odd left-wing resistance to GBI/more lavish welfare state, since the policy would be branded as a subsidy to Walmart.