

Venture Communism - tricknik
http://clicky.me/ventcom

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tricknik
This is a pretty old text, but comments are very welcome. I'm currently
working on the Telekommunist Manifesto to be published by the Institute of
Netwoked Cultures in time for the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin this
December. The Manifesto will contain an updated version of some of this
material, so comments and feedback are very welcome.

~~~
anamax
Instead of working your pitch, why aren't you working on your product?

Don't tell us how wonderful Venture Communism will be, show us by example.

If you won't do it, why should anyone else? (You don't get to argue "I'm not
good at real organizations when you're telling people how to build
organizations.")

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viggity
Communism is a great idea on paper, but completely ignores the realities of
human behavior. It will never work, because people are not mindless drones.

I read your entire manifesto, I highly recommend you read about the Twentieth
Century Motor Company, so you can see what will eventually happen to your
commune (link to the story is below)

[http://conservablogs.com/bluecollarmuse/2008/10/06/socialism...](http://conservablogs.com/bluecollarmuse/2008/10/06/socialisms-
lying-promise/)

~~~
Robin_Message
Capitalism is a great idea on paper, but completely ignores the realities of
human behavior. It will never work, because people are not mindless drones.
Why would anyone chose to receive "money" in exchange for their hard work? Why
would anyone accept that people who prepare food and care for children should
receive far less of what society creates (by being paid less "money") than
people who organise other people into meeting other people who then build a
rival to twitter?

Worker's cooperatives are a sensible system for organising labour. Notable in
the UK are John Lewis (not quite a co-operative I think, but owned by its
workers) which is doing surprisingly well ATM and the co-operative bank which
survived the credit crunch with nary a whimper.

The pressure to sell out will always be there though, and given the essential
fact that capital is winning, it seems unlikely labour can ever overtake. It
is also hindered by the totally discredited communist movement and the fact it
is deeply counter-cultural, e.g. against the protestant work ethic.

Also, the article you linked makes a fairly typical mistake of equating
regulation, provision of public goods, and provision of merit goods with
socialism, when really governments can do all of the above and still be deeply
capitalist.

Also, in reply to "Only one system of government and economic theory has come
close to delivering on the promise Socialism makes: the Republic and Free
Market Capitalism found in the USA." Hey from Europe!

~~~
viggity
Why would child care takers make less money than people who build companies?

It is called the laws of supply and demand. Child care workers are in abundant
supply, require few skills to do properly. However, people who build extremely
large businesses are far fewer in number and require a lot more specialized
skills. Plus, there are plenty of people who try to build a company and fail
and don't make anything. If your services/products aren't good enough for
people to voluntarily exchange money for them, then the business fails.

------
iterationx
There are two steps to any collectivist system 1) Collect all the resources 2)
Stop

