Would be sort of logical, although perhaps it only applies to the upper classes (again, as Plato apparently suggested).
As Michael Harrington said (of the OTL USA)--"Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor!"

Here it is lifestyle, not economic socialism for the rich--although there is little reason to doubt Combine "free enterprises" on the industrial scale are massive, well, combines, cartels, that are "too big to fail" and automatically enjoy public bailouts as needed, without controversy.

Recall the alternate approach to solving the grievances of labor in capitalism Sanchez's follower (whose name I have forgotten, Caribias?) recommended. The OTL radical left denounced the State as the agent of a closed set of privileged classes carrying over medieval style privilege in a new form by closing rank against the masses, and assumed any corporate management would of course be part of this ruling class, and therefore sought takeover of private enterprise by the workers collectively. But Caribias, if that was his name, instead said to workers "Don't like your job, your low pay, long hours, hard and dangerous working conditions? Quit your job then! Form a new Societist company and run it yourself if you can, or anyway hire on to such a company run by your comrade Societists. Work for a company that caries about you, that will promote you if you deserve it and anyway pay you what you do deserve for your honest work! Leave the inbred exploiters with their pretensions to run their shops by themselves and work with brothers!" And apparently did it too, founding IIRC not one but several firms to be run on Societist lines.

Now given that the Societists, perhaps undergoing terrible transformations (for except for the anti-feminism, which we don't know is a particularly Societist thing at all, though I grant it looks likely they will carry it over, I still don't see anything repulsive about the movement as yet) do in time prevail in the Hermanidad sphere, it seems likely that in fact all companies, the biggest anyway, will indeed become Caribasite Societist companies, on paper anyway, professing in word if not deed to follow Sanchez and Caribas's vision. As such, they are "good" companies, relied upon to do right not just by the notion that market competition compels optimal behavior but also because their corporate "vision statement" is moral and presumed to guide their decisions. Merit is presumed to be rewarded objectively; labor and pricing policies take into account the good of the workers and the world they operate in. Therefore if various processes tend to merge them and centralize them, or coordinate them in cartels, this is all good; it means they become more cooperative and less selfish. While nevertheless remaining private.

The idea that the rich and successful are under some pressure to submit to social norms that require them to hand their children over to boarding schools where the brats are sorted out for their individual abilities not regarding just who their parents were does not seem so strange, since the Combine Society is underwriting privileges and therefore has leverage to enforce demands in return. A fuller extension of the idea to encompass all classes would of course lower the resources available per child and thus leave the children of the rich worse off, unless the ruling classes are hit up to spend far more of the wealth that otherwise they'd control to cover hundreds of times more children than their own numbers.

Working people in capitalist conditions might objectively benefit more from their children being taken off their hands, but one way or another they must pay economically anyway, unless they can stick their betters with the entire bill, which seems particularly unlikely in a society where privilege is supposed to be based on merit. If they are responsible for their children individually their wages have to cover those expenses whereas if they are supposed to hand the kids over to creches, they cannot claim that (unless they have to pay for the creches) and wages would be reduced accordingly. In a society that does not acknowledge gender equality and proposes to enforce a separate homemaking sphere for women, it seems unlikely a general demand women give up custody of their children would be made.

So yes, one might guess the Combine is like that, but again we haven't been told nearly enough to confirm it.
 
As Michael Harrington said (of the OTL USA)--"Socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor!"

Here it is lifestyle, not economic socialism for the rich--although there is little reason to doubt Combine "free enterprises" on the industrial scale are massive, well, combines, cartels, that are "too big to fail" and automatically enjoy public bailouts as needed, without controversy.
I've suspected for a while that if the Combine does have an economic component to it's ideology (after all, the USSR weighed in on nationalism despite being based on economics) it's probably laissez-faire capitalism. Now, I don't think there's much evidence either for or against this, so it's essentially a hunch based on the writing style of our author. Namely that -
1) @Thande enjoys playing with and inverting OTL features of countries, which is why Switzerland is ultra-centralised and America has a multi-party system. Having the scary enemies in the Cold War be aristocratic Capitalists would be a neat inversion of OTL.
2) Societism is said to be based upon an amalgamation of various political beliefs that Thande hates and he's expressed an antipathy towards Libertarian/Lassez-faire attitudes on numerous occasions in the past.
Of course, I suspect that the Societists won't feel obligated to follow the rules of their chosen economic system, any more than the Soviets had more than a theoretical commitment to internationalism.
 
Note that there is no powerful nation on Earth that is more pompous about Libertarian/Laissez faire capitalism than the USA. And this was as true in 1960 when Michael Harrington wrote those words as it is today. And today as then, in dozens of generally unnoticed ways, of which bailouts of "too big to fail" firms are just the more noticeable extreme, the State in the USA is very solicitous of the welfare of its pampered super-corporations and does them all sorts of favors that, if it were proposed be applied to the general population, would be roundly denounced as "socialism" and castigated as "redistribution" and even"class warfare!"

In 2012 a number of Republican candidates stirred up a media frenzy about millions of Americans who were not paying income taxes--because they were too poor, their incomes fell below the threshold. (They paid plenty sales taxes and other such regressive measures of course, so to say they weren't paying taxes was false). But at that same time--quite a few major corporations pay no corporate income taxes in many years, sometimes years in a row. It didn't get the same attention and criticism though!

So in suggesting that the Combine has "socialism for the rich" I certainly don't mean to suggest it proclaims a socialist doctrine on any principle. It just so happens that the public good often seems to require various boons, incentives and aids to the valuable and highly important captains of our vital industry!

Just like in my own ostensibly anti-socialist country.

And honestly, I'd be first to agree this not actually socialism at all. Only that all the arguments against socialism, if applied here, would prevent what are in fact common an normal practices in America. I would suggest the non-application of the alleged arguments against the evils of socialism shows they are neither well thought through nor honestly believed. Or believed only by act of cognitive dissonance, which is of course pretty common and normal.
 
What does tradition say?
I guess that nations are going to be CELEBRATED for their DIVERSITY of approaches to the matter (yeah, this would mean that both places where gays have full marriage equality and places where they are stoned to death are fine). Of course, the idea that Diversity means gays are accepted as a Diverse group is likely to have some steam. But so would be regarded as acceptable in some contexts the idea that IN OUR CULTURE GAYS DO NOT EVEN EXIST, I guess. They can always carve Heritage Points of Controversy out of this if needed.
This world seems to have very little room for anything like OTL's notions about universal human rights, on either side of the Societist/Diversitarian divide.
 
In 2012 a number of Republican candidates stirred up a media frenzy about millions of Americans who were not paying income taxes--because they were too poor, their incomes fell below the threshold. (They paid plenty sales taxes and other such regressive measures of course, so to say they weren't paying taxes was false).

This is sort of funny because the political groups who favored the business interest (often represented in the US by the GOP, although this is of course neither exclusive not universal) historically opposed the very idea on an income tax for a long time (in the US more so than everywhere else in the Western World, AFAIK) as if it was the Devil's Own Hellfire.
 
Note that there is no powerful nation on Earth that is more pompous about Libertarian/Laissez faire capitalism than the USA. And this was as true in 1960 when Michael Harrington wrote those words as it is today. And today as then, in dozens of generally unnoticed ways, of which bailouts of "too big to fail" firms are just the more noticeable extreme, the State in the USA is very solicitous of the welfare of its pampered super-corporations and does them all sorts of favors that, if it were proposed be applied to the general population, would be roundly denounced as "socialism" and castigated as "redistribution" and even"class warfare!"

In 2012 a number of Republican candidates stirred up a media frenzy about millions of Americans who were not paying income taxes--because they were too poor, their incomes fell below the threshold. (They paid plenty sales taxes and other such regressive measures of course, so to say they weren't paying taxes was false). But at that same time--quite a few major corporations pay no corporate income taxes in many years, sometimes years in a row. It didn't get the same attention and criticism though!

So in suggesting that the Combine has "socialism for the rich" I certainly don't mean to suggest it proclaims a socialist doctrine on any principle. It just so happens that the public good often seems to require various boons, incentives and aids to the valuable and highly important captains of our vital industry!

Just like in my own ostensibly anti-socialist country.

And honestly, I'd be first to agree this not actually socialism at all. Only that all the arguments against socialism, if applied here, would prevent what are in fact common an normal practices in America. I would suggest the non-application of the alleged arguments against the evils of socialism shows they are neither well thought through nor honestly believed. Or believed only by act of cognitive dissonance, which is of course pretty common and normal.
I do agree with your general point here. The right in America does have a very big tendency towards double standards when it comes to the rich and the poor and a tendency to act in ways that are rather contrary to their supposed beliefs. For instance I remember a number of jokes on this site a few years ago, mocking Republicans for simultaneously supporting "small government " while having rather intrusive policies. "Government small enough to fit in your uterus", "government small enough to fit in your bedroom" etc. But perhaps this is really more of a topic for Chat.
Thinking on your talk about Societism and its relation to America, I've had an idea on the nature of Societism. What if, Societism is intended to be similar to the darker aspects of American society? Which is to say, dominated by a de facto aristocracy, full of exploitative and unfair business practices and intent on spreading its influence abroad through whatever means are necessary. So far as I can tell, there's nothing contradicting this interpretation. But of course, there's no textual evidence supporting it either ( I think). That's the thing about Thande's future snippets : they are all intentionally vague. We know quite a lot about how Societism operates in theory but what its like in practice is still largely open to interpretation. What we know of their practices is still lacking in detail and we'll have to wait until the end of the war for it to be filled in.
 
I do agree with your general point here. The right in America does have a very big tendency towards double standards when it comes to the rich and the poor and a tendency to act in ways that are rather contrary to their supposed beliefs. For instance I remember a number of jokes on this site a few years ago, mocking Republicans for simultaneously supporting "small government " while having rather intrusive policies. "Government small enough to fit in your uterus", "government small enough to fit in your bedroom" etc. But perhaps this is really more of a topic for Chat.
Thinking on your talk about Societism and its relation to America, I've had an idea on the nature of Societism. What if, Societism is intended to be similar to the darker aspects of American society? Which is to say, dominated by a de facto aristocracy, full of exploitative and unfair business practices and intent on spreading its influence abroad through whatever means are necessary. So far as I can tell, there's nothing contradicting this interpretation. But of course, there's no textual evidence supporting it either ( I think). That's the thing about Thande's future snippets : they are all intentionally vague. We know quite a lot about how Societism operates in theory but what its like in practice is still largely open to interpretation. What we know of their practices is still lacking in detail and we'll have to wait until the end of the war for it to be filled in.

In support to you interpretation, two points:
1) the UPSA is clearly a vague analogue of the US in the nineteenth century (ESP Gilded Age US but not only). And Thande explicitly said that the transition to Societism is less of a clean break with the past than Societists like to admit.
2) The US prides itself of being somewhat of a meritocracy, as the Societist ideal clearly strives to be (in principle at least); in my understanding (American posters may correct me) a central element of the American Dream is that talent and hard work will be or at least should be rewarded with success.
 
This is what I have been saying. Perhaps Thande's notion of what is worst about the USA writ large is what the Combine is.

But I suppose it will differ in certain ways that might not be of much deep substance but will be striking anyway.
 
I guess that nations are going to be CELEBRATED for their DIVERSITY of approaches to the matter (yeah, this would mean that both places where gays have full marriage equality and places where they are stoned to death are fine). Of course, the idea that Diversity means gays are accepted as a Diverse group is likely to have some steam. But so would be regarded as acceptable in some contexts the idea that IN OUR CULTURE GAYS DO NOT EVEN EXIST, I guess. They can always carve Heritage Points of Controversy out of this if needed.
This world seems to have very little room for anything like OTL's notions about universal human rights, on either side of the Societist/Diversitarian divide.

I can imagine that 'was historical figure x actually gay' could be strong grounds for a nice HPoC.
 
Also, wow, teaching Societism to kids. That is insane

In OTL, we teach (and taught even more so in the Cold War) capitalist democracy to kids, and the Soviet bloc definitely tried to pound Marxism into every kid's head. And the Diversitarians start their ideological programming young too ITTL.
 
In OTL, we teach (and taught even more so in the Cold War) capitalist democracy to kids, and the Soviet bloc definitely tried to pound Marxism into every kid's head. And the Diversitarians start their ideological programming young too ITTL.
Indeed! I had to wonder what planet all the people who were shocked, shocked shocked at an adult giving children a lesson came from, since doing that by all sorts of means is just so very common. Is it shocking because it is a different ideology? Or do many posters here really come from some parallel universe where all presentation of political or moral ideas waits somehow until a person is of some older age than say 12 (the kids in the scene may have included some even older than that, but that age seems about right) and then--how should they be presented, exactly?

By the time I was 12 I was reading LeGuin's The Dispossessed, having been reading Heinlein juveniles for some years before--indeed some of the Heinlein I read wasn't written for juvenile audiences. Quite aside from the political polemics of science fiction novels, I had seen plenty of cartoons. Have the shocked people here ever seen a Warner Brothers cartoon? How about those Disney shorts about economics? There was also this claymation thing called David And Goliath you could see on the TV in Los Angeles in the mid-70s, made back in the 50s or early 60s, by some council of churches, where a boy and his dog learn and/or teach basic lessons in Christian ideology.

It is true that I never ran into some guy on the street who rounded up a half dozen other kids to a bar to give them a lesson like this.

I'm pretty sure that if something like this happened in the situations and settings I grew up in, and any of us kids had mentioned the encounter to any adults, some action would be taken--but not because of the political lesson! Rather it would be the simple fact of an adult rounding up strange children and taking them anyplace which would be strange and alarming. But I'm not sure that would be so odd in other settings than the later 20th century USA suburban places I lived. I can imagine that in say a medieval town, or even say a New England town of the 19th century, such encounters were less unusual.

Obviously if a particular ideology is on the outs with a regime then gathering together kids to teach the forbidden lessons is criminal--but it isn't creepy. Just dangerous and defiant.
 
What does tradition say?

I find your monoculturally singular answer deeply offensive. Nations are entitled to their diversity, including diversity in how they weight social change against tradition. You know who's always talking about structures common to past societies as being inherently natural or right? Societists.
 
I find your monoculturally singular answer deeply offensive. Nations are entitled to their diversity, including diversity in how they weight social change against tradition. You know who's always talking about structures common to past societies as being inherently natural or right? Societists.

But he is entitled to his differing viewpoint, surely. Even though he is obviously wrong, it is entirely proper to have another opinion on the matter.

For Great Diversity!





:p
 
If Societist state that sky is blue, do Diversitarians feel compelled to argue that it is not actually blue all time, and other points of view exist on the matter?
 
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