Socialist professor explains how to get a PS5 under socialism.
Yeah, no thanks. pic.twitter.com/jpramvLIiI
— Dylan Allman (@DylanMAllman) April 6, 2024
“Final question to you, Professor Wolff. Under your system of worker cooperatives, would I still get my PlayStation 5?”
“Absolutely. You’d have to struggle a little bit for it, you’d have to talk to your fellow workers, you’d have to talk about the distribution of income. You’d have to compare your desire for a Playstation against all the other interests of all the other people. It wouldn’t be something you worked out on your own with your particular boss, ah, in any way. It would have to be a democratic decision. You’d have to come to terms with that, the way you do with democratic decisions now in our society, to the extent that we have them.”
The professor shown speaking in the clip is Professor Richard D. Wolff, but I do not know the name of the interviewer, nor when the interview took place. I know it was more than eleven months ago from this Reddit post, but for some reason several tweets about it popped up in my feed over the last few days, including this one from Dylan Allman. The transcription is by me. I often transcribe what was said on videos into writing in order to make it easier for people to search for and cite the relevant words later.
“Gee professor, this sounds like a signalling problem – you have to have a way to signal to society at large what priorities are. What if we had some sort of token that could aggregate all those desires and resource constraints into one simple signal. We could call it ‘money’?’
The irony is that the more woke socialists would see losing their video games as one of the worst possible things that could happen to them. 😆😄
That sounds like working your way down a phone tree. If (when) you finally get a human, they’re not the one you need. Twenty minutes of elevator music (interspersed with statements that we’re very important, but the workers are already answering somebody else’s question). More elevator music. Buzz, brp brp, brp, they’ve hung up.
Would you want to try again? Would you want that to be your entire society? It’s not even red tape, but Office Stores think they’ll get some red tape in next month.
You won’t be worrying about a PS5 when your next meal has yet to be found.
I’d imagine that obtaining a PS5 under communism would be about as easy as shopping for Champagne under the Communism in Soviet Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.
Unless you’re one of the Nomenklatura (and probably not even then) or a foreign resident like a member of the embassy staff with hard currency, it ain’t happening.
Under World Communism the PS5 ain’t being planned at all as it’s nothing but a capitalist indulgence or some such Sov-bollocks.
Agammamon
We could call it ‘money’?’
Ha, I was going to say exactly the same thing. Spot on Agammanon.
It’s pretty funny to think about getting a PS5 that way.
It’s a lot less funny to think about getting an appendectomy that way. Especially if you are not one of the right-thinking ones.
Can’t they just steal one from a Kulak?
Thanks for this, BTW. I read faster than most speak, and I usually have to turn up the volume to make out what they’re saying.
Migawd, he’s Ivy Starnes. (From Atlas Shrugged.)
The real humor of the situation this “intellectual” giant lays out as a means to get a PS-5 is this:
At no point does he enumerate what value, what contribution to the system our pleading client has made to justify either their very existence or their reward of the PS-5.
In a traditional market system, our protagonist seeking a PS-5 will either barter for the system, or they’ll perform actual valuable labor for it. They’ve contributed to the commons, in order to take out of them…
Ain’t nowhere in our “intellectual” lecturer’s mindset is there a consideration for this exchange of equivalent value: It’s all about allocating things on the basis of… What, precisely? How well you can argue for them? Where is the work being done that pays for it all?
The unreality of these creatures is exquisite, and it shows every time they get into power and try to enact their ideas. It’s very much like the “Underpants Gnomes”, only the line with the question-marks on the business plan is stage one, where they derive everything from. No source, you get starvation.
Thus ends every socialist system, because it is more based on allocating things by need, than on ensuring that everyone contributes. Hasn’t worked once, never will. Not until they figure out re-engineering human beings, and I don’t think they’ll like that very much, because in such an ant-like society, they’ll have no place at all, useless mouths that they are.
Well that’s reminiscent of the Twentieth Century Motor Company.
The Soviet Russians had champagne, made in southern USSR. But because there was no signal to the producers of the champagne from the consumers, it was terrible quality sweet stuff. Why would a producer strive to make better wine when the only thing that they were measured on was quantity?
The Nomenklatura preferred Tokay wine (also very sweet, but actually decent quality) which had been developed in the capitalist system before Hungary was taken over.
Our modern Socialists would have PS5s. They wouldn’t work very well, so there would be a whole home industry of fixing them, and they would never be updated. Again, once you are making them, why improve them? No market, no signal.
“Good news Comrade, you can have your PS5. The bad news is that we’re turning the electricity grid off because we haven’t mined enough coal this month. на здоровье!”
Chester Draws,
Yep. I was in Russia for the new year in the early eighties and we tourists were given “shampanski” to celebrate.
Won’t work. Once you have the money in your pocket, you have the power. This system requires that you only have supplications, wishes, that can be denied right up to the point of request. Always remember that you are a beggar no matter how much of the wealth you yourself produced.
As if there would even be such a thing as a PS5 in that system. Idiot.
Sincere fools like these are the first ones lined up against the wall.
“communal discussion of priorities” – really!
A “democratic decision” on whether you would be allowed to buy a particular good or service – “you would have to talk to your fellow workers and convince them”.
This man is a Professor – this is the sort of absurd, and incredibly destructive, nonsense that the education system, the schools and universities teach.
This is why the Biden/Harris regime wants to throw another 400 Billion (400 Billion) Dollars down this rat hole – via “student debt forgiveness”.
DEFUND these indoctrination centres, these spreaders of poison, and let the “Professor” become a worker himself – let him go out and clean the streets.
Paul Marks
This is why the Biden/Harris regime wants to throw another 400 Billion (400 Billion) Dollars down this rat hole – via “student debt forgiveness”.
Something not talked about enough on this is that that money goes disproportionally to the people with the stupidest degrees. It isn’t going to lawyers or doctors or engineers or computer programmers. It is going to political science, and history and gender studies and literature studies majors. The sort of people who can’t pay their student loans are the sorts of people whose skill set isn’t of enough value that other people will pay them for it, except to say “A venti latte with oat milk and a biscotti please”.
I don’t think they line you up against the wall. They have you kneel so they can shoot you in the back of the head. It’s more efficient. Wouldn’t want to run out of bullets you know.
Twentieth Century Motors comes to mind.
A better question would be Under your system of worker cooperatives, would I get a PlayStation 6?
“Well that’s reminiscent of the Twentieth Century Motor Company.”
We have been living in Ayn Rand’s dystopia for some time now, its just that the parallels are getting more and more obvious, such that even the dimmest observer can’t fail to notice.
Obviously under socialism there is no freedom, the Totalitarian State tells you what you can do and what you can get. This evil person call it “democratic decision”.