State-owned banks of state-owned anything have nothing to do with socialism. Enforcing the opposite, i.e., not allowing state owned companies at all is right-wing extremism.
Many free market countries do perfectly fine with a mixture of independent and state owned companies, even within the same sector (banking, public transport, medical care). Socialism has fuck all to do with it. It's called pragmatism.
Socialism has been redefined in the United States to mean state interference with any industry. But ownership of a corporation by the state is better labeled as Social Democracy.
The traditional definition:
1.
a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
2.
procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
3.
(in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.
Depends if the state is democratic... The US government interferes all the time with private-owned industries by putting in place laws (e.g. anti-trust) and monetary policy. So this is socialism by the US definition...
There's neither free market today in any country, nor there has been one ever.
Socialists of the latter definition would argue the same stating there has never been a `pure` socialist society without interference from an authoritarian government.
It's utopian to expect either ideology to be implemented in `pure` form.
Not quite, socialism has been redefined to mean state involvement in the general public's consumers' economic lives at economy at all.
(Shoveling money to small private organizatons is the "non-socialist" economic function of government. This is paid for by debt (which is paid for by "some future sucker", since taxes are socialist.)
First of all, this has nothing to do with socialism. It does not matter which banks hold the money or issue loans - Federal or private. Issuing a loan to a private company (using tax dollars or otherwise) is the opposite of socialism, which tends towards de-privatization.
Secondly the author seems to push for socialism based on bank-bailouts. There is nothing wrong with private banks, but there IS something wrong with bailing them out using government money. Private enterprise must be able to fail, regardless of how "big" it is, in order to represent a properly capitalistic economy.
In shorter words, real capitalism = no government bailouts. Government bailouts = crony capitalism.
Through its Partnership in Assisting Community Expansion, for example, it provides loans at below-market interest rates to businesses if and only if those businesses create at least one job for every $100,000 loaned. If the $1 trillion that now flows to Wall Street instead were deposited in public state banks in all 50 states using this same approach, up to 10 million new jobs could be created. That would effectively end our destructive unemployment crisis.
He lost me here. Something that works at a small/sample scale, doesn't necessarily (and almost certainly) work at a large scale. There is a finite number of jobs in a certain economy (depending on its capacity and size). Providing more or less money doesn't help create jobs.
I'm sure it doesn't scale perfectly. However, it is not unreasonable to think that lending small businesses money can spur job growth. If you need that 100k to expand your shop and pay for a new hire to help, it totally can work. This is how capitalism and economics work in general. Someone borrows money to start/expand a business. They hire someone to work, that person makes money that they then spend at other businesses, which then gives those businesses more money to expand and hire. If lending money didn't create jobs, we'd be back with horses and wagons.
Great article, but totally misleading title. It's about a secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement which Wall Street may use to kill one very sound state bank.
Please. Enough with the essayists who don't understand something feeling free to wave their hands around as if they had something interesting to say.
As another commentator pointed out, the role of banking and the state has fuck-all to do with socialism. This is click-bait intellectual junk food. It's the third article in as many days on the front page of HN where the author has no idea what he's talking about. (There were probably more. I only clicked on a couple each day.)
Yes, I understand if you squint your eyes the right way "socialism" can be damned near anything. But I fail to see why yet another argument on the definition of socialism interest me as a hacker. Or a discussion about state-run banks that's framed in idiotic terms.
If there was something redeemable here, I'd let it go. Hell I'm extremely liberal about topics on HN. I think we can take on just about anything as long as we're civil. But I feel that this kind of stuff, where the subject and title are spun in such a way purposely drive out criticism about things we will never agree on? It just tears communities apart. It does not help build them.
"Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. "
The article says that the bank creates jobs by offering below market rate loans if and only if the debtor creates a job for every 100K borrowed. And then the author concludes that if 1T of states money were deposited in the state banks under the same conditions then 10M jobs were created.
How can this possibly make sense to anybody? What if I offered a loan bellow market rates if and only if the debtor cures a case of cancer for every penny borrowed? 10 grand under the same condition would cure a million people of cancer... not.
The article makes the plausible claim (but perhaps incorrect) that Dakota is tapping less than 1% of the addressable market, and has shown a sustainable MVP.
No, the article makes a fantasy claim that an intent is as the same as the reality. This is the same magical thinking I observe on the Left routinely.
An intent to give a loan under certain conditions does not mean these conditions will ever be satisfied even less so that these conditions will be satisfied for any amount of the loan.
Heh, I always find it amusing how Americans go berserk at the word "socialism". Marx would be proud :)
Yet at any rate, socialist policies are virtually non-existent in the U.S (well, except the oldies like 8-hour workday or paid vacations). The fear of it is so strong that people prefer to slave themselves out to the Wall Street overlords rather than allow a hint of social in the sacred capitalism.
And as soon as a bunch of other states follow suit so will the Wall Street-ers and then we'll all be in trouble again. The bank works not because it's state owned, but because it's small enough that none of the rape-and-pillage bankers work there. If California did something like that it'd be big enough to get on their radar and it'd blow up just like LTCM or the 2008 bubble pop.
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Socialism going on on Europe? What socialism? Americans... You mean Welfare State (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state), which is NOT socialism. If you exclusively mean the economy of Scandinavian countries, some people call it socialism, this can be discussed. AFAIK there's no such state-owned banks in Europe. Most state banks do a similar role than US Federal Reserve.
The difference between Europe and USA comes from WW2. Europe was devastated by the war, impoverished. To avoid revolutions (like Russia), (US-imposed... we can argue about this too) governments on West Europe had to find a mixture between private property and state-owned economy (with the help of US money through the Marshall Plan). This was called Welfare State. The USA did not have war on its home land, so it needed no welfare state, and anyway, McCarthy was there to deter any left-wing thinking/movement into the country, which continues until today.
The UK government currently owns the majority of the shareholding of one very big bank, and a large minority holding of another; RBS https://www.google.com/finance?q=RBS (£2.5B assets), and Lloyd's Banking Group https://www.google.com/finance?q=LON%3ALLOY (£1.2B assets). Now admittedly the Government was basically forced into buying that stock to prop up those banks, but still own them they do.
I’m always annoyed when Norway is called socialist. It’s social democracy (which I think could be called socialst-capialist democracy). I think the same applies to many european countries.
In Belgium, if you have studied engineering at university for 5 years, you get a pay not that much higher than those who immediately start working without university, at least in technical/programming jobs. It's, after taxes are removed, not that much higher than the minimum wage in fact. Except that you have had 5 years less of pay due to the studying. You also pay 60% income taxes, when taking everything into account. And where does it go to? Definitely nothing that benefits the people who actually work. Definitely not roads and other public infrastructure, because when driving from another country into Belgium you immediately notice the difference in road quality and trains are unreliable. If those who want to work, those who study to work more complex jobs, do not get appreciated, while not working gives you benefits, and in some cities they have a "tolerance policy" for criminals, then tell me how that isn't socialist. Quality of schools is dropping, because there is more equality if the curriculum is lowered. They still call Flanders a "knowledge economy". I think they're not seeing something.
"In Belgium, if you have studied engineering at university for 5 years, you get a pay not that much higher than those who immediately start working without university, at least in technical/programming jobs."
And in the US, whatever extra pay you get by virtue of having a degree gets eaten up by the loan debts...
"Social democracy" is a capitalist invention to make look "socialism" as tyranny. Socialism is democratic by its very own definition. What people did in the name of socialism is up to those people, not to socialism.
I disagree that socialism is democratic by its very definition. The definition usually includes ownership and operation of the means of production by the 'community' or by the 'state.' But both the community and state have leaders (except in extremely small communities like some instances of Occupy Wall Street where members engaged in group voting on everything - direct democracy), and those leaders are selected somehow.
Even if the representatives resulting from the selection process (which, in pure socialism, is usually a non-democratic process conducted by political elites) were to truly represent the entire population, there may be conflict and a variety of opinions on how to proceed on any given issue. Those who win these conflicts might be called leaders, and they are not engaging in direct democracy.
Sorry, I think you're wrong. Socialism, as a means to obtain equality, must be intrinsically democratic. All socialist parties I know about are democratic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism
As I said, "socialism" is well defined. If some people like to attribute this "adjective" to their policies/country/whatever that's up to them, not to real socialism meaning.
To be fair - half the political parties in Norway like to spit out the word socialist in debates with the social democrats and let the image of Stalinist oppression and Gulags hang in the air. When even the conservatives here in Norway are that immature, you can't expect more nuance from American conservatives.
Khruschev introduced no capitalism. He simply stopped Stalin's terror policies. And there's no such thing as communism in the whole history of humanity. All that has been "attempted" was socialism. Communism means NO STATE whatsoever.
Many free market countries do perfectly fine with a mixture of independent and state owned companies, even within the same sector (banking, public transport, medical care). Socialism has fuck all to do with it. It's called pragmatism.