taxizen wrote:Someone5 - There are a couple of things you say there that I don't think is right. You say that capitalist production leads to scarcity, but where is the scarcity in cars, electronic goods, food and so on?
You would accept the idea that these goods are priced according to markets, correct? If so, they are scarce goods--markets only make sense in the context of scarcity. Scarcity in the economic sense doesn't mean "uncommon" or "rare". Post-scarcity is a notion that once supply reaches a point where even under continual utilization the supply would not run out, then a good is no longer an economic good. A post-scarcity society is one where the basic, reasonable lifestyle of its members does not rest upon economic goods (meaning that the goods that people need to live are no longer
scarce).
Note; this does not actually require infinite supplies, merely supplies produced in a quantity that everyone could use as much as they could and we still wouldn't run out. In practice, it doesn't even require nearly that much, since for most things people do actually have limits. For example, with food, people do not actually have an infinite demand--eventually a person gets full and does not want to eat more for quite awhile.
Year on year there are more not less of those things available (in general). In 1920 an automobile was rare luxury few could afford, in 1960 an automobile was something very many people could afford, by 2013 there are some people complaining that there are too many cars... That is not a trend towards scarcity, just the opposite. There are artificial costs imposed by government in the form of taxes and regulations but mostly they just slow the trend towards increasing abundance rather than stop or reverse it.
You are misunderstanding the use of the word scarcity in this context; we're discussing economic scarcity. And yes, particularly as it relates to food, it is quite possible that there is enough of a supply of some goods that post-scarcity could be achieved for basic food staples for citizens of first world nations. It would require a very radical restructuring of how we go about producing and distributing food, however, since under capitalism production of food staples declines once supply exceeds demand. In theory, there are quite possibly some categories of goods that could be produced and distributed outside of markets as non-economic goods for the people living in the wealthiest nations. They are not currently being produced and distributed in such a way, but it might well be possible to do so if societies were so inclined.
If Capitalists constrain production when it exceeds demand then they are doing their job right.
And preventing post-scarcity. They are "doing their job correctly" in the capitalist sense, meaning that they are making the profitable choice, not the optimally productive choice. Like I said, capitalists don't actually seek post-scarcity, and will in fact act to prevent it from actually occurring.
It is wasteful to produce something nobody wants,
Except, of course, that is not actually the case here. There are plenty of people going hungry in the United States; the demand is there, but those people don't have the money to pay the price that is being charged. There's lots of people who would be quite willing to eat more food than they do, but they cannot afford to do so. Post-scarcity only occurs when so much food is being made that everyone could eat as much as they want and we still wouldn't run out. That's not a scenario that could or would ever happen under capitalism--because, if nothing else, capitalists will cut production once supply exceeds demand at a profitable price point.
any resources deployed making something that no one wants could have been deployed making something that some one does want. Making unwanted things then is increasing a relative scarcity in wanted things.
And as a consequence decreasing the availability of
needed things, and increasing the availability of things that only a relative few can afford. There are advantages in both cases; a pursuit of post-scarcity would alleviate an immense amount of human suffering, even if it may well come at the cost of making luxuries harder to acquire. There is
always an opportunity cost. You are simply claiming that your economic preference is more correct than another person's economic preference.
The distinction that socialists make between "means of production" and personal property is just an arbitrary line in the sand,
It's not arbitrary at all. If you're using your personal possessions to control production, you've converted them into a part of the means of production. If you own a hammer and use it to repair your own house, that's a personal possession. If you own a hammer and you hire someone else to use it to repair other people's houses, that's a part of the means of production. It's not arbitrary at all; if something is used as part of business activities, it's a part of the means of production. If a personal possession is used for something other than personal utility, it is a part of the means of production.
It's quite clear, actually. The only people blurring that line are the people insisting that it's somehow not obvious what's used in business and what's used personally. That sort of division is made all the time among people who operate their own businesses; most taxing authorities offer certain benefits for goods owned for business purposes--business operators never seem to have a whole lot of trouble figuring out what's personal and what's business when there's money danged in front of them.
as has been shown many times in many threads here on pofo and the sand looks much nicer without that line.
Funny, you've never managed to make any such case before that I can tell. Neither have the other resident right-wing nuts.
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