What economic approach would actually work?

[Montmorency]

That's like what my cat does, except she says "for food" at the end.

Concerning the question, I don't believe an entire new system is needed. Capitalism can work with strong government oversight. We need separation of corporations and state.

How can you maintain this oversight, if it's always been inadequate? Where does it come from? Do we continue to live just as we have for the past generation? How, and is it desirable?

state capitalism that succeeds in not falling into corporatism?

Like contemporary Russia and China. But it also applies to mid-century social democracies - which is our genealogy. Where are we now? It's the norm for the modern state, charged with managing at least the contours of production and enterprise, including the investment of public funds toward private (or personal) profit. State capitalism may just be inextricable from oligarchy, whether the ruler is a corporate board, a dictator, or a vetted bureaucrat.


One point: It's off the mark to consider socialism as straightforwardly a state ownership and control of, or intervention in, economic functions or institutions. If this were a proper definition, we would have to consider history as evincing an overwhelmingly socialist model for millenia, up to the modern era. But Louis XIV was no socialist. I now realize that state ownership is always merely a means to an end, democratic communal determination. (I would have known this had I done the assigned reading in the Communist Manifesto way back when.) It has been hard to swallow for someone whose instincts run towards top-down paternalistic statism, but it looks like for socialism to truly ever succeed you can't have any trace of capitalism remaining in either the culture or the economy. Capitalism will always beat socialism where given a chance, like rock beats scissors.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a sci-fi story from the 1970s that follows a prosperous Galactic Socialist Federation where, oh no! Some of the backwater colonies have degenerated into late-stage capitalism and are ruthlessly sweeping across systems in a tide of military and economic imperialism.

At least I'm never wrong to be pessimistic.

[edyzmedieval]

Most of the criticism for state oversight comes from the fact that it is very susceptible to corruption, and strong state oversight always ends up in considerable cronyism, siphoning of budgets from public projects and other issues.

[Sarmatian]

How can you maintain this oversight, if it's always been inadequate? Where does it come from? Do we continue to live just as we have for the past generation? How, and is it desirable?

Finding a perfect system is impossible, because it doesn't exist. Human error and human nature will always be a factor, in any system.

I don't know how to achieve strong government oversight, but then again, I'm pretty sure our ancestors a several centuries ago couldn't have imagined separation of church and state.

One of the problem in the west is that media can be used to redirect people's anger, and that media is ultimately only responsible to its owners. It should be their job to point out toxic influence of corporations in most western countries, but as media is owned by corporations , that's not going to work.

Lobbying should be made illegal. Politicians should come under more scrutiny about the source of their money, not just whether they payed taxes or not. Funding political campaigns should be illegal. The state should provide all possible candidates with a fixed amount of funds that they are able to spend on campaigns. Trying to influence a politician should be akin to trying to bribe officials and should come with heavy fines and possible jail time.

[rory_20_uk]

Making lobbying illegal merely means that other forms of non-lobbying are used. And funding political campaigns the USA as Super-PACs effortlessly got around that road block and now have almost no oversight. But yes, having a bigger audit office with more powers is probably always good.

In every job trying to influence people is what we do. And generally we all know when it is "good" influence or "bad" influence but codifying for all situations is nigh on impossible: presenting data to Politicians is good - who knows, they might learn something about the Sciences - but of course this also influences them given their normal ground state of universal ignorance. Hence an effective Audit Office with sufficient powers and autonomy is required.

The problem is - who does it report to? In the UK I'd say the Monarch to keep it out of the hands of Politicians, but elsewhere would reporting into the President really be a good idea? Just when it would need to be strongest is when such a system would be weakest. Perhaps a direct report into the most senior Law court in the land is the best approach.