this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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Work Reform

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[โ€“] Wogi@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

That's really just a company store but worse somehow.

You're going to have a market. If you make markets illegal you'll just have black markets. You need to contend with that, failing to realize that literally killed the Soviet Union. It got so bad, and was such a core part of daily life that they just kinda made it legal, and the union collapsed shortly after.

You can't fix homelessness by making it illegal, you can destroy markets by making them illegal. These things have been tried and failed in practice.

[โ€“] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

There's a difference between saying we should work towards getting rid of the necessity for Markets, and saying we need to do that instantly, today, by outlawing them. Black Markets didn't kill the Soviet Union, but they did highlight flaws in how it was run and where it was lacking. That's a separate conversation that we can have, if you want, but is largely unimportant.

The thing is, over time, markets centralize through firms outcompeting and absorbing or eliminating smaller firms. This increases barrier to entry as it is more expensive to compete on even footing. Marxists don't want to abolish markets simply by decree, but developing to the point that they no longer make sense. Competition can't last forever, and neither can markets.