Socialism Point of Guaranteed Return

Extracted Attributes

• First Law

  Socialism always fails

• Third Law

  Before crossing that threshold, the public and leadership believe more socialism is the answer

• Originator

  David Friedberg

• Second Law

  A system must cross a critical threshold before participants realize it has failed

• Concept Type

  Macroeconomic critique / Political economy concept

• Core Premise

  Inevitability of system collapse when economic structures remove market discipline through progressive subsidies and intervention

• Etymology / Wordplay

  A play on the phrase 'point of no return'

• Primary Sectors Cited

  Housing, higher education, healthcare, and retirement

Socialism

Socialism is an economic ideology and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms, including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum, socialism is the standard left-wing ideology in most countries. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, and the structure of management in organizations. Socialist systems are divided into non-market and market forms. A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system. Market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and sometimes the profit motive. As a political force, socialist parties and ideas exercise varying degrees of power and influence, heading national governments in several countries. Socialist politics have been internationalist and nationalist; organised through political parties and opposed to party politics; at times overlapping with trade unions and other times independent and critical of them, and present in industrialised and developing nations. Social democracy originated within the socialist movement, supporting economic and social interventions to promote social justice. While retaining socialism as a long-term goal, in the post-war period social democracy embraced a mixed economy based on Keynesianism within a predominantly developed capitalist market economy and liberal democratic polity that expands state intervention to include income redistribution, regulation, and a welfare state. The socialist political movement includes political philosophies that originated in the revolutionary movements of the mid-to-late 18th century and out of concern for the social problems that socialists associated with capitalism. By the late 19th century, after the work of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, socialism had come to signify anti-capitalism and advocacy for a post-capitalist system based on some form of social ownership of the means of production. By the early 1920s, communism and social democracy had become the two dominant political tendencies within the international socialist movement, with socialism itself becoming the most influential secular movement of the 20th century. Many socialists also adopted the causes of other social movements, such as feminism, environmentalism, and progressivism. Although the emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally socialist state led to the widespread association of socialism with the Soviet economic model, the term has since shifted to be associated with democratic socialism. Academics sometimes recognised the mixed economies of several Western European and Nordic countries as "democratic socialist", although the system of these countries, with only limited social ownership (generally in the form of state ownership), is more usually described as social democracy. Following the revolutions of 1989, many of these countries moved away from socialism as a neoliberal consensus replaced the social democratic consensus in the advanced capitalist world. In parallel, many former socialist politicians and political parties embraced "Third Way" politics, remaining committed to equality and welfare while abandoning public ownership and class-based politics. Socialist politics experienced a revival in parts of the Western world during the 2010s, amid growing economic inequality, dissatisfaction with the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and perceptions that political institutions favored economic elites.

Web Search Results

• David Sacks Says Anthropic Is Programming the AI Escape It Claims to Fear — BigGo Finance

  Friedberg introduced what he calls the "socialism point of guaranteed return" — a play on point of no return. His three laws: socialism always fails; you must cross a threshold before realizing it failed; and before crossing that threshold, you believe more socialism is the answer. He argued the US has not yet crossed it and will go deeper first, citing housing, education, healthcare, and retirement as the four sectors where subsidy removes market pressure and prices outrun inflation.

• Socialism - Wikipedia

  114. ↑ Draper, Hal (1970) . Two Souls of Socialism (revised ed.). Highland Park, Michigan: International Socialists. Archived from the original on 20 January 2016. Retrieved 20 January 2016. We have mentioned several cases of this conviction that socialism is the business of a new ruling minority, non-capitalist in nature and therefore guaranteed pure, imposing its own domination either temporarily (for a mere historical era) or even permanently. In either case, this new ruling class is likely to see its goal as an Education Dictatorship over the masses—to Do Them Good, of course—the dictatorship being exercised by an elite party which suppresses all control from below, or by benevolent despots or Savior-Leaders of some kind, or by Shaw's "Supermen," by eugenic manipulators, by Proudhon's [...] Socialists argue that the accumulation of capital generates waste through externalities that require costly corrective regulatory measures. They also point out that this process generates wasteful industries and practices that exist only to generate sufficient demand for products such as high-pressure advertisement to be sold at a profit, thereby creating rather than satisfying economic demand. Socialists argue that capitalism consists of irrational activity, such as the purchasing of commodities only to sell at a later time when their price appreciates, rather than for consumption, even if the commodity cannot be sold at a profit to individuals in need and therefore a crucial criticism often made by socialists is that "making money", or accumulation of capital, does not correspond to the [...] The current economic system in China is formally referred to as a socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. It combines a large state sector that comprises the commanding heights of the economy, which are guaranteed their public ownership status by law, with a private sector mainly engaged in commodity production and light industry responsible from anywhere between 33% to over 70% of GDP generated in 2005. The current Chinese economy consists of 150 corporatised state-owned enterprises that report directly to China's central government. By 2008, these state-owned corporations had become increasingly dynamic and generated large increases in revenue for the state, resulting in a state-sector led recovery during the 2009 financial crises while accounting for most of China's

• (PDF) Socialism & Universal Basic Income

  “A Guaranteed Income for All Americans,” are worthy of the dignity of the means to support themselves, society has a powerful opportunity to

• Socialism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

  from the socialist point of view, this is no great tragedy. Past a certain point, more stuff contributes very little to human flourishing. Once a decent standard of living has been secured, self-realization hinges mainly on access to meaningful work and adequate free time. If the price of securing these things is less stuff, so be it. Fewer iPhones in exchange for more meaningful jobs and no rat race: this is a tradeoff that socialists heartily recommend. [...] As Adam Smith observed, under capitalism “it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (Book 1, Ch 2). The baker hands over a loaf only because you pay him. Remove the payment, and he removes the bread. So it goes in a market society, for as G.A. Cohen argues, in such a society productive activity is motivated “not on the basis of commitment to one’s fellow human beings and a desire to serve them while being served by them, but on the basis of cash reward” (Why Not Socialism? 39). Market participants operate on the maxim “serve-to-be-served”; they serve only in order to receive service in return. They strive to give as little as possible while getting as much as they can—“buy low and sell [...] Against this argument, critics might reply that the kind of ‘compensation’ for surplus labor promised by socialism is wholly inadequate. Under capitalism, the worker’s surplus is appropriated by the capitalist; under socialism, the worker’s surplus is appropriated by society. From the worker’s point of view, this may seem a distinction without a difference. Both appropriations rob the worker of effective control over the fruits of her labor. True, under socialism the worker is a member of the group doing the appropriating, but, as merely one of millions of such members, her individual influence over that group is infinitesimal. Is it plausible to regard her tiny sliver of decision-making power over the surplus as ‘compensation’ for her surplus labor? Arguably not, in which case socialism

• Socialism and Universal Basic Income : r/Socialism_101

  In a socialist system, the concept of a UBI would be replaced by things like food, housing, and clothing guarantees, to ensure you had what you