this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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Top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is self actualization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
Maybe some other reader can chime in? I still believe people seek power, (*if only as a tool for self actualization.)
How should they settle wages?
UBI in a democracy could be possible.
That's a definition thing. They still have to trade and network.
Which means the worker could be paid their full value while the profit comes from the buyer.
The following parts are essentially all the same:
If it does, the owners can still remain in power and continue the processes without external valorization.
Give some people a nice distinctive hat and there is one.
Why is the context important if one owns everything?
Do the owners care if their control is not called capitalism anymore? Whatever it is, it doesn't have to collapse.
Unless it is reset by war. Capitalists know how to keep workers occupied. There will never be so much pressure that the workers organize. To change things, workers must want it without suffering.
Per wikipedia the link you gave: Although widely used and researched, the hierarchy of needs has been criticized for its lack of conclusive supporting evidence and its validity remains contested. There is no innate human desire for power, just improving our lives. Power doesn't foster a thirst for power.
In a socialist economy, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy. Wages are more strongly controlled via the administration, but until we get to a point where we can distribute according to need, we will distribute according to work, including variance for skill, danger, and intensity. See how socialist countries already settle wages.
Democracy and capitalism are incompatible. Any social reforms gained by the working classes in the context of an economy dominated by capitalists will inevitably be limited in factor to how the capitalists wish. Democracy is only compatible with socialism and communism, for the most part.
They don't even need to do that, they pay people to do this. No value is created via ownership.
Workers are the buyers, except for luxury goods which are targeting capitalists, as well as industrial equipment, etc. Workers cannot be paid the full value of their labor and still have the capitalists profit. Your argument is that you can pay people more and charge more, but this is self-defeating again. Value isn't created by ownership, nor by charging monopoly prices.
This doesn't follow from capitalism being contradictory and unsustainable in the long run.
Administration is not a distinct class, you're trying to conjure an economy with no circulation of capital yet where everyone will accept the ruler. This is just anarcho-capitalism with extra steps, in that it would collapse immediately.
Because capitalists over company towns essentially had semi-slave labor while selling their commodities abroad, to better paid workers and other capitalists, as well as purchasing goods from outside of the company town. Company towns weren't selling purely to their own workers.
It has to collapse if it is to remain capitalism, because the idea of a system where a single mega-capitalist owns everything in a closed system is one that has no opportunity for profit or gain, and so would immediately collapse into a socialist revolution.
Workers have already successfully established socialism for billions of people, and as capitalism decays the suffering comes with it. Imperialism is collapsing and the rate of profit is falling.
So socialism is only stable if the people, and especially those in power are happy.
Isn't that the same concentration of power?
Only in global communism. The charged workers don't have to be the same as the producing workers.
I know. It could be futile to wait for the collapse.
There can be circulation. People earn wages and buy commodities. It's like socialism, just people get less because the capitalist get's more than everybody else.
If all resources are available there is no need to sell abroad, or to buy fron there.
Why is that inevitable?
Why rely on it instead of building a 'we' on its own?
That's true of any society, for the most part. Socialist countries do end up doing this much better than peer countries though. Also, in socialism, the working class is in power. Administrative positions exist, but they aren't unaccountable or anything.
Not at all. Collectivization of production and distribution into one democratically run system does naturally follow from the groundwork paved by late stage capitalism, yes, but this collectivization also brings with it democratization of power.
I don't see how this relates to communism, moreover the working class as a whole is the class that produces and consumes. The company towns only worked somewhat because the commodities they produced were sold outside, making everything a company town wouldn't work.
Still don't see your point.
Not at all. Buying goods with money earned isn't the same as circulation of capital. Capital transmogrifies from money to productive commodities to produced commodities back into money in a grand expanding circuit, but without such a system you no longer have capitalism, and prices collapse. This "mega-capitalist" would be overthrown instantly and socialism or barbarism would take its place.
There is for profit. You're trying to create a weird utopian mega-capitalism that would, the instant it existed, collapse into socialism or barbarism.
A single person can't actually own the entire economy. They would be ousted instantly. This is the same kind of utopian thinking that powers anarcho-capitalists.
We don't, we rely on organizing. Capitalism's decay speeds up that process.