Reading the conference CfP, I’m struck by the contrast between the word “conviviality” and the strikingly individualist tone of the Illich quotes. Can anyone who’s read Illich comment?

Wrong channel? 🙂 (Back-link: https://futureofcoding.slack.com/archives/CLYCGTCPL/p1571077405026300?thread_ts=1571077405.026300)

I guess? I did glance around for a conference channel first 🙂

Ok cool. It seemed like others may not know which conf you were referring to. We haven't talked about this much at the top-level (though I keep linking to it).

Oh I didn’t realize, thanks.

Here is Ivan Illich's book "Tools for Conviviality". Read chapter 2, beginning at page 12. It defines the word "conviviality" and lays out the basic thesis. https://www.co-munity.net/system/files/ILLICH%201973_tools_for_convivality_1.pdf

Thanks, this looks compellingly relevant. As to my original question, he really does seem to have married socialism and some kind of libertarianism, and I’m looking forward to reading more about it.

At what point did socialism become a net negative?

Pre 1917: https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/10/leninthink. And that's even after excluding National Socialism as being no true socialism.

@Steve Dekorte In my country, we have socialized medicine, a socialized police force, a socialized fire department, a socialized road network, and the list goes on. Socialism has won; it is now just a part of the fabric of modern life, certainly in western countries. I don't see a connection between my experience of modern socialism and the murderous dictatorships that you mention.

I worry that summing up for a net measure simplifies too much. 5 - 6 = 50,000 - 50,001 yet something kind of different is going on — especially since the pluses and minuses that an individual feels may differ from the mean to a point where some people get mostly pluses while others get mostly minuses.

More to the point, Ivan Illich is opposed to state coercion, and to other power imbalances that enslave individuals. It doesn't make sense to call this view "socialism", and then to define socialism as state terror. How does Illich become a nazi for being opposed to state coercion of individuals?

@Doug Moen The system you describe is a free market that produces the wealth used to fund those services of the state. Socialism attempts to invert this and collectivize production by removing the organizational ecosystem of markets, some more so and some less. When services are limited to those that cannot be more efficiently produced otherwise, this can be net positive. Beyond that point, it becomes net negative, though this can be hidden for some time by debt spending and eventually money printing until economic collapse. To test if your country is an example of this, ask what would happen if central banks stopped printing money to buy your government’s bonds or reducing reserve ratios to allow banks to effectively do the same.

I'm not following your comment, @Steve Dekorte. It sounds like you're saying there's a difference between what the USSR had and what many Western European countries have today. In which case I think we're all in agreement, and just disagreeing about what names to give the categories? Let's not do that, let's all read Illich instead: http://akkartik.name/illich.pdf