The slow decay of Venezuela

[cosmicalstorm]

A decade ago when I was far further to the political left I was impressed by Hugos survival of the coup and so on. My opinion of Venezuela has slowly morphed, now it's looking awfully bad.
The inevitable result of poorly managed socialism? The result of being the only socialist state in a world of capitalists who use every trick in the book to crush you?

It's not looking good either way. At this rate I wonder if outright famine is not around the corner, maybe a crushing civil war and famine on top of that?

Food line for milk powder
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4c2_1438394699

BBC News: Venezuela - How long does it take to buy 8 basic goods?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CMEmKe5mS0

Venezuela Seizes Nestle, Polar Warehouse to Build Housing
Venezuelan soldiers seized a food distribution center rented by companies including Nestle SA, PepsiCo. Inc and Empresas Polar SA in Caracas as the government looks to boost support ahead of elections.

The companies were given two months to remove equipment and stock at the La Yaguara industrial park, which will be converted to social housing, workers said. Several dozen workers of Polar, the largest Venezuelan food company, remain on the premises in protest against the expropriation.

“I’m scared not just for my job but for the entire country,” Beatrice Pellicer, a 24-year-old Polar corporate relations worker, said outside the warehouse sealed by armed police and National Guards. “We all just found out this morning that we have 60 days to leave.”

President Nicolas Maduro in recent months has stepped up attacks on the private sector, which he accuses of profiteering and sabotage, as his popularity wanes ahead of the Dec. 6 congressional elections. He has blamed Polar and other private food companies for the chronic shortages of basic products and spiraling inflation, while maintaining currency and price controls that have made most of national production unprofitable.
Government ‘Terms’

“This is a scare tactic to get private companies to cooperate with the government ahead of the elections: helping them keep the right stores supplied and work on their terms,” Risa Grais-Targow, Latin America political analyst at consultancy Eurasia Group, said by telephone from Washington. “I think the government understands that taking over a company like Polar will create dangerous social dynamics.”

Carmen Arreaza, a 51-year-old elementary school teacher, and a few dozen other government supporters gathered in front of the warehouse to demonstrate support for the expropriation.

“This measure is just and it needs to happen as soon as possible,” Arreaza said. “There is an economic war here and this company, Polar, is at the heart of it. They hide products from the population, and inflate their prices!”

The government had first notified the landlord of plans to expropriate the industrial park in 2013, Nestle spokesman Andres Alegrett said by telephone from Caracas on Thursday. Nestle used the facility to dispatch about 10 percent of its products in the country, supplying sweets and drinks to the western side of Greater Caracas, he said.

“We are working to redirect the products to other facilities across the country,” Alegrett said.

It remains unclear whether the companies will keep the merchandise in the affected warehouses, Polar’s planning manager Douglas Vielma said Thursday afternoon.

The La Yaguara industrial park is also being used by U.S. grain trader Cargill Inc., Mexican bottler Coca-Cola Femsa SAB and industrial gases supplier Praxair Inc.

Spokesmen for PepsiCo., Praxair and Cargill, as well as the Information Ministry, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Coca-Cola Femsa spokesman declined to comment.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... ages-mount

[K. A. Pital]

The result of being the only socialist state in a world of capitalists who use every trick in the book to crush you?

The result of being a petrostate. 95% of exports and 50% of all production is crude. When crude was expensive, the people enjoyed the money flowing from the state, but now crude prices have collapsed. Look no further than 1996 - Chavez was nowhere to be seen, and that crisis was probably one of the worst in Venezuela's history - with GDP collapsing to the 1960s levels, inflation at 100% like today and the population devastated by poverty.

Had Venezuela anything resembling a diversified economy, it could have avoided this, but Chavez was more of a populist than a socialist, at least in my understanding. He couldn't really force the country to transition from oil to other industries.

No idea how to fix it, either. One thing is certain, very unlikely that Maduro is up to the task. Not to speak of Venezuelan oligarchs who are pretty much worthless scum who are enriching themselves in one of the most problematic nations in LA.

[Simon_Jester]

Corruption also tends to lead to what we in saner countries would call 'stupid' policies. Things that don't make a lot of sense, things that are blatantly an example of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, or things that are equivalent to "eating the seed corn" necessary for future economic success.

Because by and large, a dictator or oligarchy is going to be more interested in securing their own wealth and their opportunities to keep making more wealth, than they are in the long term prosperity of the country. It doesn't matter whether they're a left-wing or right-wing junta, the effects can be very similar.

The leadership class will predictably strip the rest of the population of their assets, centralize control over everything of value, handing out that control to cronies or relatives. Foreign investment drops off because nobody wants to do business in a place where your assets can randomly be seized and handed over to The Leader's nephew as a birthday present. The general climate of fear, lack of social trust, and unstable government policies prevents the domestic economy from growing. The country stagnates.

Right-wing dictators and oligarchs do this to their countries too; they just use different excuses for doing it. There's a reason we have the word "kleptocracy" to refer to "rule by thieves," and why it is applied to a host of autocratic leaders on the right, as well as on the left.
______________

I would argue that socialist countries run by people who actually think of themselves as having a responsibility to act in the national interests tend to do better than either right or left-wing dictatorships run by people that don't feel responsible. Because they generally at least TRY to set up organized systems to properly manage the stuff they take from private owners, rather than handing it over to an idiot nephew.

[K. A. Pital]

Haven't seen a socialist government with a long-term plan in ages. Then again, the right doesn't even have a plan other than "privatize" and "do what you have been doing before" outside some very specific cases, so...

[Guardsman Bass]

If you want to see how this can be done right, compare Venezuela with Evo Morales' Bolivia. That's what happens when a populist President in a resource-for-export country also happens to be reasonably competent at governance, unlike Chavez (who was a populist with piss-poor governance, especially in the last 2-3 years before his death) and Maduro (who is just incompetent in general, just trying to fend off crisises day-by-day while making things worse in the long run).

[K. A. Pital]

I think that both Bolivia and Uruguay have had more or less competent administrations in the recent years. They aren't following a vision, but they do make their countries work.

Finally, this guy (a former socialist guerilla and the recently retired president of Uruguay) is on the top of my "humans of 2000s" list - very very high.

He is the answer to all of the jackasses who say "uh elite politicians cannot feasibly live with a low income no they must be rich!"

[Ziggy Stardust]

He is the answer to all of the jackasses who say "uh elite politicians cannot feasibly live with a low income no they must be rich!"

Not to derail the thread, but I think the usual argument isn't that politicians absolutely cannot live on a low income; I think everyone accepts that is a possibility. But rather that mandating a low income for politicians will make it more difficult to attract high quality candidates to become politicians, which is a somewhat different argument, and one that the existence of the great Jose Mujica does not necessarily refute in and of itself.

[Thanas]

Besides, he doesn't have any children, his pension is secure and his wife owns a farm.

[K. A. Pital]

Wow, a farm! Grasping at straws, I see.

Ziggy, what I meant to say is that this man is the model for politicians, and if more were like him, they would be more respected by the population. Not to mention that they would be decent human beings.

Do we want just raw "professionalism" of technocrats or do we want human qualities in our politicians too?

I will not even mention that during his rule Uruguay managed to sucessfully mitigate the consequences of a global economic crisis that exerted a disastrous effect on developed and developing economies alike, while all these highly paid professionals led the world to a massive global depression.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Wow, a farm! Grasping at straws, I see.

Ziggy, what I meant to say is that this man is the model for politicians, and if more were like him, they would be more respected by the population. Not to mention that they would be decent human beings.

Do we want just raw "professionalism" of technocrats or do we want human qualities in our politicians too?

I will not even mention that during his rule Uruguay managed to sucessfully mitigate the consequences of a global economic crisis that exerted a disastrous effect on developed and developing economies alike, while all these highly paid professionals led the world to a massive global depression.

I wasn't trying to disagree with you, really. I do think the world would be a better place if more politicians and powerful people were like Mujica. Besides his humility and charity, he was (as you say) also a very competent leader. I was just commenting that I don't think "uh elite politicians cannot feasibly live with a low income no they must be rich!" is a fair representation of the opposing viewpoint. I'm not even saying I necessarily agree with that opposing viewpoint (I honestly don't know whether it is true or not, I have never seen the numbers one way or the other), but rather that it is a bit more nuanced and less ridiculous than you are making it out to be.

[Simon_Jester]

The core of the opposing viewpoint, at least for me, is that all societies stratify on some level between:

-Unskilled workers
-Semi-skilled workers
-Skilled workers and professionals
-Elite professionals.

Even in countries that are not explicitly capitalist and that avow to hold to the ideal of all people being equal, doctors and scientists and so on still tend to get the equivalent of better pay. It's not that you cannot in theory be a highly trained professional who works for the same salary, or lives in the same kind of housing, or drives the same car, as a janitor or a retail clerk in a store. It's not that it's "impossible" to live that way. But no one has ever, ever managed to accomplish it in an effective manner, so far as I know.

We've done a great deal of good in making sure that the poorest people in a developed nation suffer less and are much better off than the poorest people in those nations were a few centuries ago.

But we have not eliminated the inequality of income between people doing a job anyone can do, and those that only people with years of post-graduate education can do.

Realistically, politicians are going to have to be paid something in line with the upper categories of 'highly skilled' labor, for a host of reasons. But almost by definition such people are getting paid more than the median level of income.

This is not because the powerful deserve more, or because of elitism, and it is certainly not a reason to make politicians millionaires- politicians should NOT be millionaires in my opinion, should not have income that is, say, an order of magnitude greater than that of the median member of society.

[Patroklos]

I think the key distinction is that Mujica chose to be that way, he was not forced to. Plenty of highly skilled people turn that route and a few start that way from the beginning, but its one thing to voluntarily forgo what most would consider the rightful rewards of skill and dedication than to be forced to. If you want to be pessimistic the fact that you can forgo something may in fact be the motivation to do so. What is the more interesting and/or compelling human decision; a poor person choosing to remain poor when there is little or no chance of wealth in the first place or the millionaire giving it all up to become poor/giving up riches already in his grasp to remain that way for what some would say is a noble cause?

[Channel72]

But we have not eliminated the inequality of income between people doing a job anyone can do, and those that only people with years of post-graduate education can do.

But really, should we even try to eliminate that gap? It seems inherently absurd that scientists and doctors should be treated as equal to unskilled workers - and, as you point out, this has never happened in practice either, not at the height of the USSR, (actually especially not in the USSR), not ever...

My innate feeling about this may be an unfair sense of elitism, but I'd like to think it's more to do with the fact that highly skilled, highly educated professionals, like scientists with years of post-graduate studies or years of professional experience, are worth a lot more to society than unskilled workers. If that sounds callous or ominous, I don't mean that they're worth more as individuals, or should be treated unequally before the law, or anything sinister like that - I mean the output of their professional work is much more likely to result in larger scale economic, technological and societal improvements over time, and therefore it would seem there needs to be some larger incentive for these people to do what they do. You could argue that incentivization is unnecessary (and indeed studies show that our intuitive notions of incentivization may be off), but the general intuition that higher pay has at least some significant effect on career choices is probably too strong to ignore.

Of course, the current situation in the US where so many Congressmen and Senators are millionaires is also absurd, but I think that's a different discussion from the general stratification of society based on skilled vs. unskilled workers. The other dimension of this conversation is whether politicians are really as valuable in society as people like scientists, doctors and engineers... my personal opinion is that they're really not - and I think the fact that so many politicians in the US come from a background in law or business (rather than STEM fields, as is the case in China), is much to our long-term detriment. However, politicians still provide a valuable public service, and it's definitely to our benefit to try to maximize the experience and education of anyone running for office, which again would seem to require some kind of incentivization. This doesn't mean politicians should be millionaires, but I guess in practice, the problem is that the "social capital" one gets as a successful politician inevitably leads to amazing financial opportunities - and the reverse is obviously true as well - that financially successful people have way better chances of becoming successful politicians.

[Starglider]

But really, should we even try to eliminate that gap? It seems inherently absurd that scientists and doctors should be treated as equal to unskilled workers

The notion that exactly equal living conditions are desireable even in theory comes from a naive and frankly fanatical application of expected utility with dimminishing marginal utility. Aside from the fact that measured on an absolute scale (from stone age to supertechnology) the typical variation within a country is not that great, the very premise of the argument is at odds with basic human psychology in its dismissial of consequentialism and any kind of individual responsibility (save for perhaps some crimes). Plus of course when realised as political theory it is the utterly megalomanical, presumptous and ultimately tryanical and genocidal philosophy that you should dictate and control each and every human interaction (with a police state) for the sake of trying to reduce variance in living situations.

but I'd like to think it's more to do with the fact that highly skilled, highly educated professionals, like scientists with years of post-graduate studies or years of professional experience, are worth a lot more to society than unskilled workers. If that sounds callous or ominous, I don't mean that they're worth more as individuals, or should be treated unequally before the law, or anything sinister like that - I mean the output of their professional work is much more likely to result in larger scale economic, technological and societal improvements over time, and therefore it would seem there needs to be some larger incentive for these people to do what they do.

Starting from a tabula rasa of everyone holding exactly the same amount of wealth, income is determined exactly by how useful you are to society, as measured in the perfectly democratic fashion of people chosing to buy things from you. In practice there are market inefficiencies and then wealth accumulation feedback loops that make it an increasingly weighed democracy; the basic argument for wealth redistribution is to constrains this from getting so unbalanced that the mean living standards no longer rise.

[K. A. Pital]

The notion that exactly equal living conditions are desireable even in theory comes from a naive and frankly fanatical application of expected utility with dimminishing marginal utility.

It comes from not being a self-centered pompous ass.

At no point is appropriation of the entire collective product of mankind by a few rich asshats is related to people bying "from them". Because nobody buys from Gates; they buy from Microsoft, a collective. So another lie.

The rest is just the development of the same lie.

[Zaune]

Can we at least agree that there is a happy medium whereby anyone who cares that much about material wealth has an incentive to inspire higher, but nobody gets such a disproportionate chunk of the available pool of resources that other people's quality of life suffers for it?

[K. A. Pital]

It seems inherently absurd that scientists and doctors should be treated as equal to unskilled workers

The question is, however, not whether scientists and doctors should be given a pay equal to that of unskilled workers (there are good arguments against it). The question I put back then and recalled now is whether politicians could live modestly - like the average citizen - instead of living a life of luxury.

I gave an example of such a politician, which means it is indeed possible for people to live that way. It is something to aspire to - if one day all members of the elite would be ready to live no better than their average subject, the actual standard of life of this abstract "subject" would mean so much more to them. But so as long as the peons are crawling in the dirt and it matters not because the Wise Masters live on Elysium or something like that - they will not care or will care much less, because really, why care?

The politicians have to understand they are not belonging to some sort of elite. They are the servants of the people, not its masters. That was the key point. I used to believe more in things divergence and technocracy: a rule by the "conscious", the enlightened and wise myself. Now I believe in equality stronger than ever. Intelligence is not a synonim for being a decent humans. Being wise, but malevolent or callous is not a great achievement.

No gods... and no masters.

[Channel72]

The politicians have to understand they are not belonging to some sort of elite. They are the servants of the people, not its masters. That was the key point.

Yes, I think most people agree with that sentiment, at least ... even in the USA.

The problem is that, in practice, it's just... so... so... hard to desegregate the plebes from the patricians. US politicians pay lip service to the idea of being a "public servant", but they really are hardly public "servants" in any meaningful sense. They are only in servitude to an abstract "voting bloc", and the various corporate donors who finance their campaigns. Which means they are usually upper middle class to very rich, highly educated, Ivy-League grads - products of a social feedback loop that is deeply ingrained in every aspect of society: Rich families give birth to privileged children, who then go to Ivy League schools, who then establish the social capital (connections) they need to become future Congressmen/women... who then establish further social capital by attending social functions and mingling with other elites, and on and on. Most of us are not invited to Whitehouse dinners, after all. Every now and then someone from the lower working class breaks through in less than a generation, but it's not normal.

Although, it helps to have some perspective: social mobility is much better now than it was a century ago. Also, most of this applies only to very elite politicians, like Congressman and Senators. Lower-level politicians like small city mayors, city councilmen, comptrollers, even State Senators sometimes, are usually not millionaires, or even in the same income bracket as many doctors or lawyers.

[K. A. Pital]

The problem is that, in practice, it's just... so... so... hard to desegregate the plebes from the patricians.

I never said or suggested it was easy. And it's certainly not made easier by meekly accepting the status quo in the fear of going overboard with challenging the privileges of politicians.

Most of us are not invited to Whitehouse dinners, after all.

"Most of us"? Who is? I don't know a single person who is. I walked in front of the White House once in the evening, pondering.

There's a massive fence in front and it looks like desolate, like an empty memorial building. Not even sure the President or whoever is there with him actually looks outside the window to see all these hippie protesters standing with signs. Not sure he listened to Pink's Dear Mr. President - if only for a good drunk laugh, maybe.

See the problem?

Every now and then someone from the lower working class breaks through in less than a generation, but it's not normal.

Yeah, I saw this guy running on the White House lawn... wait - that's not what you meant, right?

Although, it helps to have some perspective: social mobility is much better now than it was a century ago.

Is it or is this an illusion conocted by the elite? They make use of the fact that even the lower class life in developed countries is so much better than being a Middle Ages farmer, but is there greater mobility in practice? Or is it that living at the bottom is no longer unbearable, but getting from there to the top is not in any way easier than it was before?

Lower-level politicians like small city mayors, city councilmen, comptrollers, even State Senators sometimes, are usually not millionaires, or even in the same income bracket as many doctors or lawyers.

Note that the local politicians, being paid less than at the national level, sometimes achieve more - while the super-well-paid give people things like the Iraq War. Not being too detached helps.

[Simon_Jester]

But we have not eliminated the inequality of income between people doing a job anyone can do, and those that only people with years of post-graduate education can do.

But really, should we even try to eliminate that gap?

I have not asserted that we should do so. I do not think it is practical or desirable to do so.

The notion that exactly equal living conditions are desireable even in theory comes from a naive and frankly fanatical application of expected utility with dimminishing marginal utility.

It comes from not being a self-centered pompous ass.

No, it does not. You are mistaken.

I know many people who are not self-centered pompous asses. Few, if any, of them think that physicians and retail clerks should receive the same salary and benefits from society at large.

Therefore, thinking physicians and retail clerks should receive the same salary and benefits from society is NOT a consequence of "not being a self-centered pompous ass."

At no point is appropriation of the entire collective product of mankind by a few rich asshats is related to people bying "from them". Because nobody buys from Gates; they buy from Microsoft, a collective. So another lie.

See, your problem here is that you think inequality means "Bill Gates versus Rwandan beggars," which is a huge disparity that enrages you.

And, based on how you are representing your words today, you then start to think of ALL inequalities of any kind in the same terms- they become the targets of this bitter, hostile rage.

And you start ignoring literally any argument anyone makes about sociology, ignoring all evidence from history, ignoring all of psychology- because it contradicts your rage. Because you see these arguments as enemy soldiers, as though they are weapons in the hands of someone who wants to cause evil and harm. And not as though they are, well, statements about the world, that basically sane people sincerely believe to be true, and which might lead to this or that conclusion.

And this results in you charging around like a bull surrounded by clotheslines covered in red flags.

Because no one is defending the idea that a handful of people should own everything. Even Starglider is not, if you pay close attention to what he's saying. But at the same time, people are making a wide variety of arguments based on a wide variety of different kinds of evidence for the idea that it is not realistic, that it contradicts all of human history, sociology, and psychology, to create a situation in which every person's living conditions are just exactly those of the median person.

It might be that this absolute equality of living conditions would be possible, or even desirable, on some other planet, or for some other species, or even for some hypothetical future state of humanity living under very different conditions than the ones we see in our world.

But that does not translate into claiming that it is, in an objective sense, possible or desirable in general. Or that it is possible or desirable in the world today.

It seems inherently absurd that scientists and doctors should be treated as equal to unskilled workers

The question is, however, not whether scientists and doctors should be given a pay equal to that of unskilled workers (there are good arguments against it). The question I put back then and recalled now is whether politicians could live modestly - like the average citizen - instead of living a life of luxury.

The question you asked is based on, I honestly think, a willful misunderstanding of the questions and claims spoken by others.

The position actually adopted by most of those you've been debating is that it is undesirable that politicians live either too meanly or too well. Because while it might be desirable, for ideological reasons, that politicians live an austere lifestyle... the reality is that you cannot make your own law-makers into slaves who labor on your behalf under terms of your choosing. This is not a stable condition, and it fails very un-gracefully, because there are few things uglier than a law-making body which has rebelled against the restraints on its power.

[K. A. Pital]

I could challenge these assumptions on several levels, starting with history, but clearly I am in a minority here and I will be defending an idea of equality of living conditions at the very least, not the typical idea of "equal opportunity" that is very easy to argue about. So if I would be challenging them, would this even matter? Very likely to fall on deaf ears, all of that.

And I am not thinking about Bill Gates vs. Rwandan beggars, I am thinking Bill Gates vs. working class First World person, sorry. Bill is on Elysium, the rest of us on the ground. The Third World, to borrow from maestro Yefremov, is Inferno.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Aside from the fact that measured on an absolute scale (from stone age to supertechnology) the typical variation within a country is not that great,

Just out of curiosity, what is the measurement and scale you are referring to, here? For example, I know that income inequality in the U.S. is currently massive relative to what it was in the 1970s, but I don't know how that translates into whatever "absolute" terms you mean.

I could challenge these assumptions on several levels, starting with history, but clearly I am in a minority here and I will be defending an idea of equality of living conditions at the very least, not the typical idea of "equal opportunity" that is very easy to argue about. So if I would be challenging them, would this even matter? Very likely to fall on deaf ears, all of that.

Why don't you challenge them, instead of acting like a self-centered pompous ass, yourself?

Look, you're a smart guy, I've seen you make intelligent and articulate points on this board in the past. But on this issue Simon seems to be right that you are just getting so worked up that you can't seem to bring yourself to just discuss the whole issue with us. In this thread all you've done is misrepresent the opposing argument, and then as soon as people try to clarify you throw a tantrum and decide that everyone else is just being willfully obtuse ('deaf ears,' and all that).

Just make your argument. Considering how often this subject has come up, lately, I think most people ARE interested in hearing where you are coming from on this. I mean, I am fairly certain that every single person in this thread thinks that equality IS a noble and worthwhile goal. The disagreements are on exactly what equality entails (economically, socially, legally, politically, etc.) in a (mostly) PRACTICAL sense, not an (purely) ideological one.

[Channel72]

I don't think Stas actually argued, at least in this thread, that all people of all stripes should be paid exactly the same, or be provided exactly identical living conditions. He seemed to sort of actually acknowledge the validity of arguments against this, at least in regard to highly educated professionals, like doctors, scientists and engineers versus unskilled laborers. Whether or not he actually believes that all people, of all stripes, should be paid exactly the same and provided exactly identical living conditions, is pretty much irrelevant to the topic of this thread, which is pretty much specifically about politicians - specifically elite politicians like Jose Mujica. So insisting he defend the position that all people, of all stripes, should be paid exactly the same, is sort of off topic.

I don't agree that all people, of all stripes, should be paid exactly the same. But I don't see where Stas actually put forth the argument that they should. He basically just said that elite politicians should be paid the same as everyone else - which is a simplified way of saying that politicians should be paid something equal to the median income. I don't think that's a particularly outlandish position to take - it's simply very difficult in practice to actually implement, unfortunately.

Part of the problem is basic human behavioral science. I'm what you would consider an educated professional. I mostly associated with other educated professionals. Likewise, most doctors, scientists, engineers, etc., tend to associate with other doctors, scientists and engineers, or at least other people of similar education levels - because (A) most of the people they know and associate with at work are other educated professionals, and (B) really... people like to associate with other people who they have things in common with. Frankly, I don't have much in common with say, an immigrant from Mexico who works as a day laborer doing landscaping work. I just don't. That's not to say I stick my nose up at such people... their children or grandchildren may very well one day be the employers of my children or grandchildren. It's just, in the present, I just probably wouldn't choose, during my free time, to willingly seek out someone like that in order to have a conversation or a beer with. There just wouldn't be much to say other than lowest common denominator small-talk. That's just the way it is.

So, not only do politicians, or people seeking the highest levels of public office, tend to come from rich, highly-educated backgrounds, they also mostly associate with other highly educated, rich people, and specifically in the US, other lawyers, businessmen, or politicians - which then causes political opportunities to propagate mostly within this small social sub-network. The end result is a "caste system" that remains inexorably cemented within the very fabric of society.

[K. A. Pital]

Why don't you challenge them, instead of acting like a self-centered pompous ass, yourself?

Indeed, why not.

And you start ignoring literally any argument anyone makes about sociology, ignoring all evidence from history, ignoring all of psychology- because it contradicts your rage.

Let me start with history. What evidence from the history of mankind there is that equality of outcome for individuals is unnatural? Most of the history is hunter-gatherer societies; there is little doubt in their deep egalitarianism - most attempts to challenge the egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer society have failed. The society accumulates barely any surplus, and so individual appropriation of said surplus is impossible. One can easily argue that capitalism and class society in general, for a wider view, are the unnatural state of things, the abberation, to which we are neither historically nor biologically predisposed.

But let's say hunter-gatherers are a bad example and say that a society with equal living conditions cannot be (1) large (2) advanced for its time. This would again contradict the facts about one of the largest Neolithic settlements, Çatalhöyük. It had no structures indicating a divergent lifestyle for any sort of "upper class": no palaces, no forts, no temples. Generally, researchers agree on it being a society of almost full equality - something hard for us to imagine now. Yet the population reached from 5 to 10 000. This is a large settlement even by the standard of much later ages.

I could also note that the very division of labour itself is a hideous thing (and I won't be the first to note that). The wealth and well-being of some is bought by the suffering and painful excruciating death of others. The mine owner does not die from black lung as soon as there is division of labour; his workers do. There is nothing that can compensate this: capitalism, and class society more generally, is cannibalism. With the division of labour we have invented a way to transform the lives of others: their health, their lifetime - into our own wealth, our own time. One person is consumed by another.

There were some experiments in the late USSR in the Far North which were applied to close, but large communities with a functional division of labour: mining settlements. In some, goods were offered without a price, distributed to the community directly. This means the workers directly consumed as much as each needed. In essence, this is also a fully egalitarian system. It did not lead to a collapse of labour productivity, even though a brigade leader or pump or railcar engineer clearly was more educated than the ordinary miner. One can argue that these are closed societies which are not impacted by the greater socium; in essence, people there know that they are isolated and thus behave differently. They shun misappropriation and work as they did before, regardless of the reward.

I can also challenge the sociology: if we are talking about incentives, how do you decouple pay from status? It is human's status perception that is impacting the productivity. If a human feels his status is remaining the same, productivity also remains the same; with a rise productivity (all other things equal) can rise, and it can fall if the person feels his status is lowered. This is also a class society phenomena, which is relevant in a deeply stratified world of today. However, if the perception of a person does not include pay as the sole status definition, but maybe something else (respect of other people, relationships, good communication with others, time), then the productivity may react to these factors and not to pay. It is only through the deep transformation of the entire society by capitalism that money is seen as the only motivator.

And if you admit that it was a social process that deformed human perceptions, creating the class hierarchy and everything connected to it, then why through a reverse process can these perceptions not be altered? Why can they not be altered in politicians?

Because no one is defending the idea that a handful of people should own everything.

I am quite sure that this is basically that:

Starting from a tabula rasa of everyone holding exactly the same amount of wealth, income is determined exactly by how useful you are to society, as measured in the perfectly democratic fashion of people chosing to buy things from you.

Not to mention that this is false on several levels, this directly argues that inequality (even perfect inequality) is determined in a perfectly democratic fashion (what the hell does this even mean in this context), and the underlying argument is that income is determined by your individual usefulness. How is that possible? There's an upper limit of income for self-employment. In an economy where no massive surplus is generated by corporations with wage workers, this limit is even harder than people may think. Hence, the passage directly argues for private property on capital. Which is basically what we have now, where a handful of people own everything, and the vast majority of people own pretty much nothing.

Because while it might be desirable, for ideological reasons, that politicians live an austere lifestyle... the reality is that you cannot make your own law-makers into slaves who labor on your behalf under terms of your choosing. This is not a stable condition, and it fails very un-gracefully, because there are few things uglier than a law-making body which has rebelled against the restraints on its power.

It might be desireable for other reasons that politicians live an austere (the hell is the word "austere" doing here, the life of an average worker is now "austere", eh?) life, which I explained already but you were too busy attacking my goal of complete equality (which I didn't even set at the time).

The reason is that if the politician lives only as good as the people around him (and there's plenty of variation in income even around the average or median), he would have a greater incentive to improve the lives of others.

We have, in many ways, achieved this in long-range transportation (except for the ultra-capitalist elite who are using private means of transport). If the politician flies the same plane as the ordinary citizens, it is less likely they will ignore the fact planes are turning into death traps due to a bad safety culture. If the politicians eat the same food as the ordinary people, they would care more about the food quality. If they drive the same cars, would they not care about their quality as opposed to not being bothered?

This is not slavery. And if you insist on calling this "law-makers into slaves", if I live the life of a slave, I expect the man who I elect to advance my interests to be the motherfucking Spartacus.

And yes, there is nothing uglier than a corrupt government. Which is why let's just keep their privilege and pay the costs upfront, and not argue about it? Not even try to dimish that cost? Change the management culture? Why not? Because humans are irreversibly spoiled by stratified society?

I am not sure if that's true - I wanted to pick an here example that would be closer to you than to me, but:

It seems Minnesota legislators get around the average wage or something. And it's not the worst state, or the worst-governed state, in the US... at least from first impressions.

Another example I wanted to mention is Malta, where the average wage to legislator wage ratio is 1,38. Not perfect equality, but not too bad either. Certainly a 1:1 ratio is attainable even without forcing the MPs to "austere" life, as you said - if the living standard of the whole nation is high enough. I would assume that in Switzerland the legislator pay should not be too different from the average pay... and yes, the ratio is 1,22, apparently.

[Purple]

K.A. I only have one question for you. Ignoring the part about politicians and just focusing on your thesis about division of labor how well do your arguments work together with our modern living standards? That is to say, if we were to implement everything you say and get rid of wage workers and the division of labor could we still maintain our modern standards of living? And if not, how can you claim that state to be desirable?