Do you think that was the lifestyle in Yugoslavia? And their heyday was half a century ago at this point. You're presenting a false dichotomy. Nobody's gonna live in a mud hut using a spinning wheel just because workers run companies.
>Nobody's gonna live in a mud hut using a spinning wheel just because workers run companies.
That exactly what will happen. In the best case, if you lacky enough, you will be live in a mud hut. The rest will envy those who can afford to live in a mud hut.
Workers can start running companies at any time, no one restricts them from running their companies. The only reason they don't do this is that this will be worse for workers.
So you are being hypocritical. You don't want workers to run companies (they can do that now), you want workers to have no alternative.
What are you even talking about? Nobody lived in mud huts in Yugoslavia, that is verifiable fact.
And no, workers can't start running companies because they lack the capital and thus the means of production. That's the problem with a capitalist system, the power is with the entrenched capitalists.
When a "problem" has no solution then it's not actually a problem, just a fact to be accepted. Like gravity. There's nothing wrong with worker owned cooperatives, but for anything that requires significant capital you have to run things the way that capital owners want. And large-scale economic central planning where governments allocate capital has been an abject failure everywhere it has been tried, so don't insult our intelligence by suggesting that we give it another shot.
This is absolutely not true. In absolute numbers, the cost of starting a business is quite low, and workers have a lot of money, much more than their employers. And if workers collectively stop spending their salaries on unnecessary things, and instead organize a fund - on average, in 2 years they will have enough money to buy out the entire company they work for, or organize a comparable one.
There are no problems with capitalism, capitalism just allows you not to do all of this, not to suffer 2 years of poverty for the sake of living in a mud hut (if you're lucky enough).
You’re roughly describing the whole point of Yugoslavia’s workers’ self-management. This is in contrast to what the Eastern Bloc had with the government establishing and running the factories directly. Also in contrast to the capitalist system where someone with enough capital establishes and runs the factory themselves while employing the workers.
And no, you didn’t have to live in a mud hut for it. In fact, it was more affordable for the regular worker to build a house than it is now. Those houses were/are comparable to what you see in Germany today. Go check out the real estate market in Slovenia if you don’t believe me, look for houses built 1950-1990.
Ah yes, taking the last 4 years post pandemic, in the midst of massive climate change, and in a near world war and then comparing it to 60+ years ago in the height of the Cold War and US global dominance.
Usually the sign of the fairest and most humane systems of government and economy is when people get shot in the back by border guards if they try to escape.
Generally yes. Unlike Soviet occupied Eastern Europe, most regular people in Yugoslavia were able to obtain passports and travel internationally. There were some people barred from leaving or held as political prisoners.
