[Crantag]

I have repeatedly stated that TruthtoPower was ignorant on the subject of economics.

He has just personally confirmed this obvious detail.

[Igor Antunov]

To be fair economists are largely ignorant in regards to the subject of economics. They can't even semi-accurately forecast anything significant - and that's a key trait that points to the validity of your discipline; the ability to utilize it in the real world for real world results.

[Crantag]

To be fair economists are largely ignorant in regards to the subject of economics. They can't even semi-accurately forecast anything significant - and that's a key trait that points to the validity of your discipline; the ability to utilize it in the real world for real world results.

To be fair, all people everywhere are largely ignorant.

It matters what is in the individual.

Studying economics for years in college and graduate school is not consistent though with being ignorant of economics.

[Hindsite]

To be fair, all people everywhere are largely ignorant.

It matters what is in the individual.

Studying economics for years in college and graduate school is not consistent though with being ignorant of economics.

Many Milliennials have grown up getting everything paid for them. Capitalism teaches responsibility and that you must work for what you want. Socialism puts the responsibility on the government to provide everyone's needs for free. That is why they push for free college education with job placement and free medical care. They don't realize that Capitalism is needed to fund and control the rise in runaway social programs, so it does not bankrupt the country. Few Millennials are taught Christian Capitalistic economics today. Therefore, they just don't understand how important Capitalism is to the future survival of a nation, which also effects their own survival.

[Crantag]

The question of rejecting capitalism is a bit broad, as has been said in here. It begs the question what one is rejecting, and that essentially depends on the individual.

I'm guessing though that many perceive a deterioration of the condition of the workers, which has been in part driven by identifiable changes to corporate governance practices.

This has included the abandonment of fringe benefits (the reasons here are myriad, but include triggers to strong perception of antagonism by corporate leaders against workers, at least from the perspective of a significant number of people). Most significant among these are healthcare and pensions. There are no adequate alternative to these provisions in the US, and this is all borne of the reality of the post-WW2 American economic system.

So if one adopts the standpoint of the worker, and one compares the relative condition of workers under the present American economic system to the realities of the system for the first few decades after the Second World War, you can identify some of the source of angst.

There are also consequences of the domination of the financial system by speculators, which directly affect workers (these affect everyone, but owners of capital are probably less likely to notice the effects). The inability to open a savings account which pays interest anymore, or a checking account which doesn't cost (minimum deposit=cost) are directly related to this.

Lest anyone want to get nitpicky on me again, 'the above is not an exhaustive treatise on all of the ins and outs on the topic; it is musings on surface-level issues presented on an internet forum'.

[Hindsite]

The question of rejecting capitalism is a bit broad, as has been said in here. It begs the question what one is rejecting, and that essentially depends on the individual.

I'm guessing though that many perceive a deterioration of the condition of the workers, which has been in part driven by identifiable changes to corporate governance practices.

Don't forget the impact of illegal immigrants and chain migration and lottery immigration on the condition of the American workers. It is not all the fault of the employer. Look at all these Sanctuary cities that are protecting the illegals for left-wing political reasons. Why are they not part of the problem for the American workers?

[Crantag]

Don't forget the impact of illegal immigrants and chain migration and lottery immigration on the condition of the American workers. It is not all the fault of the employer. Look at all these Sanctuary cities that are protecting the illegals for left-wing political reasons. Why are they not part of the problem for the American workers?

I largely agree with this.

The liberal bourgeoisie in part like immigrants due to their effect on labor markets.

Part of any coherent global labor movement though also has to take into account the conditions of workers everywhere, and that includes the potential conditions in Mexico or elsewhere which workers flee. (Using the case of the US, here.)

The economic results of immigration in the aforementioned ways though can't be ignored by an honest observer.

There's no doubt, liberal elites admire the ability of immigrants to cram 8 into a condemned home, and live on rice and beans. They surely wish most American workers weren't too proud to live in such a way.

[Rich]

I advocate the liquidation of the middle class.

No Communism is and always has been a middle and upper class movement. Lenin and most of the Bolshevik leadership never did a day of lower class employment in their lives. Stalin's conventional working life was brief. Marx, Engels, or modern far left leaders its the same.

[The Immortal Goon]

No Communism is and always has been a middle and upper class movement. Lenin and most of the Bolshevik leadership never did a day of lower class employment in their lives. Stalin's conventional working life was brief. Marx, Engels, or modern far left leaders its the same.

You seem to not know what vanguardism is...And you seem to be obsessed with forum-stalking me. Which is, of course, flattering as I am awesome.

But for the first, try reading this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism

It might be a good idea to start your own topic with all of the things that you have trouble with

[RhetoricThug]

What people are rejecting is Communism not Capitalism. The fact most people can't see they are living in a Communist world is a whole another story.

Communists reinventing themselves as "Cultural Marxism" (see School of Frankfurt) made them win the war over Capitalism.

Yep, but remember... Mass production and miniaturization revolutionized the distribution of goods and services. Technology and cultural incrementalism operate as the driving forces behind social change. The motor vehicle created public (proletariat) service environments, radio created public listeners, television created non-local political theatre. The computer created the mass information age. Technology has been, and will continue to be, the opiate of the masses. The internet is a publicly generated information processor and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. The incremental transition from a tangible currency to a digital/energy based currency, is designed to make sure more and more people live through a technotronic control grid (in an information age, human intelligence is a resource). Everything else is a side-show or circuit-circus, designed to capture mass attention and intention. As long as smart-phones, microchips, and search engines, continue to integrate human knowledge, global government 'engineers' will continue to construct a commune like hive-mind around the soon to be obsolete peoples of planet Earth, so they can continue to extract and exploit human intelligence. We're amusing ourselves to death, as the brave neuron world slowly rewires our psycho-social living conditions. Gene-washed and brainwashed through techno-sensation.

Economics = the flow of numerous systems, the construction and management of Herd (H)earth and Home. As an autonomous unit of the economy, money is our instructor. Money can remind us, warn us, etc. We must earn our keep through instruction, because we're instrumental in the building of THE temple.

millennials now reject capitalism, People fear what they don't understand. Today, Capitalism Technocracy is a highly modified and centralized banking system (with continental trade blocks), constructed around a global communications system. The 1% will continue to build a break-away civilization on the shoulders of a global work-force. They're interested in life extension, transhumanism, space colonies... Not the quality of life on Earth. They need to build a 'spaceship' before Earth experiences an extinction level event.

Left vs Right... Doesn't matter, Technocracy is apolitical

[Rich]

You seem to not know what vanguardism is...And you seem to be obsessed with forum-stalking me. Which is, of course, flattering as I am awesome.

You are the main exponent of Marxism / Leninism on PoFo. There are other Communists of course but they don't seek to present the communist view point in a systematic manner as you do. As an anti Communist you are a natural point of attack for me. I have no problem with you receiving that as a complement. I'm not particularly into personalising things on Pofo. I am prone to making statements that start with "I'm deeply proud", however these sort of statements are not as personal they might appear and are generally a response to what i perceive as defensiveness or lack of confidence by those sharing my view on a particular subject. "The personal is political" is often used as a cover for taking the political personally, but sometimes people are genuinely using the personal for political effect.

In some ways I find it easier on Pofo when people are rude to me. I remember Far Right Sage was often complimentary, and always courteous and polite towards me. However we were diametrically opposed on some issues particularly Gadaffi, which made it difficult for me to really rip into his posts as I would have, if he hadn't always been so nice to me.

[QatzelOk]

Socialists don't have a monopoly on that (collective good), in fact they tend to be below average at "collective-good" despite their preening and posturing.

Source? My experience says you're wrong and grasping at (someone else's) straws.

So you are just saying that in your ideal society ordinary people will be demoted to tenants (if they are lucky) and the communists will own everything.

You can't seem to comprehend non-ownership. The state simply distributes and organizes. It doesn't 'own' anything.

In Canada, the Royal Family technically owns everything, and this is supposed to make superstitious peasants happy. This means Queen Elizabeth owns all our wildfires, tar sand tailing ponds, and dead fishing zones. Why doesn't she take better care of her things? (hint: she's a slumlord, like all capitalists)

[Politiks]

I have to wonder how well teaching the working class how much power they have will go. So many people are willing to give up the tiny little bit of power they already have from the political system and just not vote.

I know it's not really the same thing but when you aren't even willing to pick up a pencil and claim the easy little sliver of power that is voting, much less the power you can have in local politics just by showing up to meetings and local candidates, how convincing can you really be to get people to claim the organizing power to rise up against the entire system?

I'm a bit of a cynic though so maybe they will, in the end. Probably things will have to get a lot worse to motivate them though.

The difficult part is making people give up privileges they consider a right such as welfare. Making people raise against a system is easy compared to make them raise against welfare or quotas. That's why the system created welfare and quotas. Good luck trying to make people rebel against that

[RhetoricThug]

Psychopathy of the crowd?

Anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists, should investigate if all social systems become psychopathic overtime. Corpse iterations (corporations) or egregores, form around profit-motive, and the entity or incorporation itself forms a nonliving identity which thrives off misanthropic policy. Economic policy enacted through group psychopathy, in the form of obsessive socioeconomic activity, in which nonentities become living operations through legal fiction (pen is mightier than the sword, and sword is an anagram for words ) which had espoused the ruling bureaucracy. The superficial fiscal continuity of hierarchical structuralism designed around nature, produces and enforces a kind of malignant dissociation between people and their environment. The budgetary nature of our environment (resources and life-cycles vs products and supply/demand) is ignored by vampiric entities that parasitically drain life-force from living things. The cyclical expression of empire, along with its subsidiaries (nation, state, tribe, family, etc), could be explained by our tendency to organize things around abstract social systems that become psychopathic overtime. Like computer code, the execution of the script, the legal fiction and bureaucratic policies, become corrupt and unsustainable. The data corruption expresses itself (as signs and symptoms) in the living information or programs (people and culture) that make-up the social operating system. Of course, communication (be it psycho, spiritual, social, etc) is a feedback loop- humans write the code of conduct and the code conducts our human activities. If all social systems become psychopathic overtime, would it be indicative of systemic consciousness? In other words, are we functionally flawed, or is the externalization of our abstract social systems unsustainable? After-all, a corporation is a collective thought-form.

The difficult part is making people give up privileges they consider a right such as welfare. Making people raise against a system is easy compared to make them raise against welfare or quotas. That's why the system created welfare and quotas. Good luck trying to make people rebel against that

Yep, again, more dissociation, it's a feedback loop. How do you break the cycle?

[Truth To Power]

To be fair, all people everywhere are largely ignorant.

But economists are actually MORE ignorant than laymen, because they have constructed a delusional worldview which they treat as true. Modern mainstream neoclassical economics, in particular, is epistemologically equivalent to homeopathy: based on assumptions wildly at variance with indisputable physical fact; having no discernible predictive power; replete with elaborate and abstruse technical theories; and conferring no ability to solve real-world problems.

Studying economics for years in college and graduate school is not consistent though with being ignorant of economics.

That's only true if you define "economics" as "the discipline one studies in economics courses at colleges and universities." If you define it as the study of how scarcity is relieved through production, allocation and exchange, then typical college and university economics courses have very little of merit to say on the subject. As university textbook authors are some of the world's most inveterate, unprincipled, and brutal rent seekers, it is not surprising that the authors of university economics textbooks devote a great deal of fallacious argument to constructing plausible sounding rationalizations and justifications for rent seeking. But as rent seeking is usually the OPPOSITE of relieving scarcity, those textbooks are a source only of misinformation on the actual subject of economics.

So it is indeed quite possible to spend years studying "economics" at university and still remain ignorant of how scarcity is relieved by production, allocation and exchange, just as spending years studying phlogiston theory in college and graduate school was consistent with being ignorant of combustion chemistry, and spending years in college and graduate school studying Chinese traditional medicine is consistent with being ignorant of medicine.

[Crantag]

But economists are actually MORE ignorant than laymen, because they have constructed a delusional worldview which they treat as true. Modern mainstream neoclassical economics, in particular, is epistemologically equivalent to homeopathy: based on assumptions wildly at variance with indisputable physical fact; having no discernible predictive power; replete with elaborate and abstruse technical theories; and conferring no ability to solve real-world problems.

That's only true if you define "economics" as "the discipline one studies in economics courses at colleges and universities." If you define it as the study of how scarcity is relieved through production, allocation and exchange, then typical college and university economics courses have very little of merit to say on the subject. As university textbook authors are some of the world's most inveterate, unprincipled, and brutal rent seekers, it is not surprising that the authors of university economics textbooks devote a great deal of fallacious argument to constructing plausible sounding rationalizations and justifications for rent seeking. But as rent seeking is usually the OPPOSITE of relieving scarcity, those textbooks are a source only of misinformation on the actual subject of economics.

So it is indeed quite possible to spend years studying "economics" at university and still remain ignorant of how scarcity is relieved by production, allocation and exchange, just as spending years studying phlogiston theory in college and graduate school was consistent with being ignorant of combustion chemistry, and spending years in college and graduate school studying Chinese traditional medicine is consistent with being ignorant of medicine.

Just out of curiosity.

Have you ever personally read an economics textbook?

Which one(s)?

It's mostly rhetorical, but if you choose to, you could always try to provide a convincing affirmative answer (if applicable), by providing some details of the contents of the book(s) you choose to cite!

It is however mostly rhetorical, because I feel as though you--once more--most likely essentially just made up everything you wrote.

No matter though. In whatever case: I have absolutely no issue with detailed critiques of economics. However, you are very obviously no kind of expert who might be capable of supplying such critiques. Thus, you are really just a guy with lips flapping in the wind.

[Truth To Power]

Don't forget the impact of illegal immigrants and chain migration and lottery immigration on the condition of the American workers. It is not all the fault of the employer. Look at all these Sanctuary cities that are protecting the illegals for left-wing political reasons. Why are they not part of the problem for the American workers?

Any increase in the workforce, whether immigration, population growth, higher workforce participation rate or whatever, can be expected to reduce wages and increase land rents. So it's good for landowners, bad for workers. This relationship was proved conclusively by the Black Death, which suddenly deleted 1/4-1/3 of the population of Europe in the 14th century, leaving everything else intact. Rents crashed and wages soared.

[Truth To Power]

The difficult part is making people give up privileges they consider a right such as welfare.

No, it's actually much harder to make people give up privileges they consider rights such as landowning, IP monopolies, and bank debt money issuance. History shows beyond any doubt that the privileged rich would prefer to perish in blood and flame, and watch their children slaughtered before their eyes, rather than relinquish even the smallest portion of their unjust advantages.

Making people raise against a system is easy compared to make them raise against welfare or quotas.

Wrong. Lots of people don't like welfare or quotas. What's really hard is making people rise up against injustice when they think they benefit from it.

That's why the system created welfare and quotas. Good luck trying to make people rebel against that

The system created welfare and quotas to prevent the victims of privilege from understanding what is being done to them, and how, in order to persuade them that rising up against it would jeopardize their interests.

[Crantag]

Any increase in the workforce, whether immigration, population growth, higher workforce participation rate or whatever, can be expected to reduce wages and increase land rents. So it's good for landowners, bad for workers. This relationship was proved conclusively by the Black Death, which suddenly deleted 1/4-1/3 of the population of Europe in the 14th century, leaving everything else intact. Rents crashed and wages soared.

The Black Death is not a typical event in economic history, nor is the change to population an isolatable variable with which to measure the effect of land prices. There was in all likelihood present a multitude of variables underlying the phenomenon you raise, which were related to the pandemic.

There is no iron law that higher workforce participation must lead to lower wages. Such an outlook is a zero-sum approach to wage analysis.

An example which illustrates this is in the movement of early retirement, in Japan for example. The ostensible aim is to make way for younger workers. But the reality is the effects are often not as expected, either with respect to number of jobs, or wages, for younger workers. One explanation for this is in the exponential nature of the contribution of work. By contributing to the success of operations, older workers who are displaced by such policies, are contributing more than merely their flesh and blood to a business, and it is through growth that businesses create new jobs.

Simplistic notions of economic functions thus often miss crucial factors.

[Truth To Power]

I have repeatedly stated that TruthtoPower was ignorant on the subject of economics.

You've stated it, but somehow never been able to demonstrate it.

He has just personally confirmed this obvious detail.

No, I just questioned the orthodoxy of a quasi-theological discipline that is ever more obviously not based on any sort of scientific foundation.