[Crantag]

Your thought experiment sounds like communism.

More like state capitalism.

You set the perimeters with the spears.

Also, that's just the economy.

You can rearrange it how you like. There is a tribal aristocracy. One group has a monopoly on the spearheads, another on spear shafts, etc., And there's a ruling council appointed by the priests, and the priesthood is supported by contributions from the council, which distributes the taxes from it's cut from the hunters, and spear manufacturers.

Point is the owners of the spears likely don't hunt, and if they have a sufficient pyramid, they probably get rich off of doing nothing at all. Therefore, their status of being rich is attributable to their ownership of capital, I.e. the spears which are necessary for the hunters, which are necessary for feeding the society. Because of inheritance, a given guy probably was born into ownership of his spear shaft manufacturing operation.

He is also in a position to manipulate supply, in order to affect prices to his benefit, transferring wealth from the hard working hunters to himself through monopoly control (monopoly and oligopoly exerts itself frequently in contemporary capitalism).

This is all really basic stuff. Your initial notion truly didn't meet the laugh test.

[SolarCross]

@Crantag

Real monopolies are unusual in most economies and where they occur they tend to exist only in a very narrow sector of the economy and the usual purpose of them is as a means of supporting a professional military because professional militaries can't be self-sustaining.

Monopolies aren't private property and in some sense could be considered to be antithetical, indeed only communists desire a monopoly over EVERYTHING which goes hand in claw with abolishing private property. But that's the real world which of course is not what you are referencing, just your imaginary fantasy world that is supposed to deceive us all into becoming the destitute slaves of a communist overclass as if that were some sort of natural state of affairs.

Ask yourself this in the REAL world for a hair dresser what is the means of production and who owns it?

[Crantag]

It's unlikely a primitive tribal capitalist spear economy could have other than monopolies.

But if you like, there can even be different brands of spears. But they are licensed and patented, intellectual property, you know.

It doesn't change anything in the narrative, except prices aren't directly manipulated, say to take advantage of an opportune heard migration.

However, if you don't think the Walton's wealth is attributable to monopolistic market power, you live in a fantasy world. I guess that's something we already knew about though.

[SolarCross]

It's unlikely a primitive tribal capitalist spear economy could have other than monopolies.

But if you like, there can even be different brands of spears. But they are licensed and patented, intellectual property, you know.

It doesn't change anything in the narrative, except prices aren't directly manipulated, say to take advantage of an opportune heard migration.

However, if you don't think the Walton's wealth is attributable to monopolistic market power, you live in a fantasy world. I guess that's something we already knew about though.

I see so you don't know what the word monopoly means. It means single seller and it was first used to describe those that had a legal exclusive right to some particular trade. Later the qualifier "natural" was added to create the concept of a monopoly that somehow happens without government patronage. Later still and the "natural" gets elided by most common users and so "monopoly" gets used imprecisely for both legal and natural monopolies.

Wal-mart isn't a real monopoly, they aren't even a natural monopoly, they are just really big. Wal-mart's prices are notable for being very low so even if they were it hardly seems to hurt anyone does it?

So even if we pretend that hairdressers, shopkeepers, mechanics, hoteliers, bicycle manufacturers, taxi drivers, piano tuners, pop stars and Wal-Mart of course are all secretly engaged in a massive conspiracy to create a monopoly over everything they still would'nt be as monopolistic as the communists.

It is just the most perverse slander a communist could make of capitalism to accuse it of being prone to monopoly. Really if you want to sell communism as better than brand x (capitalism) you will have to talk up the virtues of monopoly rather than criticise it.

BTW I am reading more books when do you intend to return the trade by using your brain? Do you need Stalin's permission to do that or something?

[Crantag]

I see so you don't know what the word monopoly means. It means single seller and it was first used to describe those that had a legal exclusive right to some particular trade. Later the qualifier "natural" was added to create the concept of a monopoly that somehow happens without government patronage. Later still and the "natural" gets elided by most common users and so "monopoly" gets used imprecisely for both legal and natural monopolies.

Wal-mart isn't a real monopoly, they aren't even a natural monopoly, they are just really big. Wal-mart's prices are notable for being very low so even if they were it hardly seems to hurt anyone does it?

So even if we pretend that hairdressers, shopkeepers, mechanics, hoteliers, bicycle manufacturers, taxi drivers, piano tuners, pop stars and Wal-Mart of course are all secretly engaged in a massive conspiracy to create a monopoly over everything they still would'nt be as monopolistic as the communists.

It is just the most perverse slander a communist could make of capitalism to accuse it of being prone to monopoly. Really if you want to sell communism as better than brand x (capitalism) you will have to talk up the virtues of monopoly rather than criticise it.

BTW I am reading more books when do you intend to return the trade by using your brain? Do you need Stalin's permission to do that or something?

I do know what monopoly means, thank you very much.

Let me you clue you in on a key economics concept, which I used in my post: 'monopoly power'.

In practical purposes, there are few pure monopolies, and 'monopoly power' in practice denotes the market power to manipulate prices owing to conditions of monopoly/oligopoly, which contrast to the theoretical norm of 'perfect competition'.

So, in short you lose. I used the term correctly, and your interpretations of the technical position of Walmart, with respect to their market position, is flat out erroneous.

However, if you don't think the Walton's wealth is attributable to monopolistic market power, you live in a fantasy world. I guess that's something we already knew about though.

Wal-mart isn't a real monopoly, they aren't even a natural monopoly, they are just really big. Wal-mart's prices are notable for being very low so even if they were it hardly seems to hurt anyone does it?

You are completely full of it, and I am completely right.

BTW I am reading more books when do you intend to return the trade by using your brain? Do you need Stalin's permission to do that or something?

I was really just telling you to bug off before, but all I do on here is use my brain.

You are absolutely ignorant of economics. Like they say in economics, "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing", like they say.

I just hope that the 'more books' you are reading is other than Ayn Rand, and the like (though you are probably just talking nonsense, anyway).

Now, let us just pause and remember one thing: you are the one who utterly laughably think that capitalism existed in the stone age. This is you stretching your ideological angenda to the utter limit, while you simultaneously accuse everyone else of being an ideologue.

It is incredibly typical on the internets, as well as incredibly annoying.

[Truth To Power]

You are totally missing the point.

Because I proved your equivocation fallacy was disingenuous.

The proto-communist Gerrard Winstanley revised history to claim "private property" was invented by the Norman conquerors of England centuries ago,

That was not his claim. His claim was that private property in LAND was a concept imported from continental Europe by the Normans. Europe learned it from the Romans, who invented it. Before the Normans, land in Britain was held either communally, in the Celtic tradition, or feudally. In both cases, the landholder had responsibilities as a steward, and could not just treat the land as property in the same way as chattels.

the implication he wanted to inculcate with this self-serving narrative was that his kooky communistic ideas were not just the ravings of a lone nut and religious fanatic but the "true nature" from which real people were estranged.

Contrary to your self-serving and inaccurate narrative, for all of human prehistory, land was not property, so we indisputably evolved as a species that did not hold land as property, and were in fact not individually territorial. It was held communally, and all in the community were at liberty to use all of it non-exclusively. Exclusive tenure was an innovation that arose with settled agriculture and fixed improvements; but even then, tenure arrangements did not treat land as private property but as a trust from the community. This is clear for example in the land jubilee tradition of the ancient Hebrews described in the Book of Leviticus. It was not until the Romans that land could be bought and sold like other property.

Latter Marxian communists and other kooky spin offs like the Geoists have copied and expanded upon this trick.

Calling those who respect facts "kooky" and logical argument a "trick" does not help your position.

So it is that Marxists revise history to make a narrative where "capitalism" is a narrow aberration contingent on the Industrial Revolution or alternatively on the land reforms of England in the 1600s (as Crantag has done above)

It is simply a fact that capitalism requires the forcible removal of people's rights to liberty by landowners (or more accurately, by government acting at the behest of landowners), which forces landless workers to offer their labor to land or capital owners on disadvantageous terms or starve.

to imply like Winstanley did that their fictitious communism is some true nature from which normal people are estranged or alienated.

It is an indisputable fact of objective physical reality that for almost all of our existence as a species, all were at liberty to use all land non-exclusively. It is only appropriation of land as private property that has removed the liberty rights of all who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land.

The truth is property and the trade of it is the essence of civilisation,

The same was said of chattel slavery -- property in other human beings' rights to liberty -- for millennia. It turned out that owning others' rights to liberty wasn't actually the essence of civilization, was in fact preventing the progress of civilization.

It is clear that private property and trade in the fruits of one's private labor is the essence of civilization. You just have to pretend that there is no difference between owning property in the fruits of one's labor and owning property in others' rights to liberty, whether as slave deeds or land deeds, because you want to own other people's rights to liberty.

there is nothing aberrant in the industrial revolution, no more than the Norman's law and custom, it is all just the normal operation of civilised people interacting for survival and success, the variations are technological and circumstantial.

The exact same "logic" was used to justify chattel slavery. But slaves, no more than the landless, were not forcibly deprived of their rights to liberty through any sort of consensual "interaction for survival and success." Like all of us, they were robbed of their rights to liberty by force. The only difference was that a slave's rights to liberty were owned by one man, while our rights to liberty are owned by all the privileged, especially landowners.

The real aberrants are the levellers, the communists and the geoists with their impractical fantasy alternative realities.

You are terrified by the fact that the geoist system is not only entirely practical, but far more practical than the system of landowner privilege.

[Truth To Power]

More like state capitalism.

"State capitalism" is what socialists call socialism after it fails.

There is a tribal aristocracy. One group has a monopoly on the spearheads, another on spear shafts, etc.
...
Point is the owners of the spears likely don't hunt, and if they have a sufficient pyramid, they probably get rich off of doing nothing at all. Therefore, their status of being rich is attributable to their ownership of capital, I.e. the spears which are necessary for the hunters, which are necessary for feeding the society.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!!

GET THAT FALSE AND STUPID "RICH BY OWNING CAPITAL" $#!+ OUT OF YOUR HEAD!

THEY ARE NOT RICH BECAUSE THEY OWN CAPITAL, BUT BECAUSE OTHERS' LIBERTY RIGHTS TO MAKE AND OWN CAPITAL HAVE BEEN REMOVED.

GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD!!!

If others were at liberty to make and own and use spears, the aristocrats' ownership of the capital would get them exactly nothing beyond what they contribute by providing spears. That is the indisputable fact of objective physical reality that socialists have to find some way to prevent themselves from knowing.

Because of inheritance, a given guy probably was born into ownership of his spear shaft manufacturing operation.

But ownership of the capital GETS HIM NOTHING he has not earned, as long as others have their rights to liberty. It is only by forcibly removing people's liberty to provide themselves with capital that the LANDOWNER or other privileged monopolist can force people to pay them for PERMISSION to produce their own sustenance.

OWNERSHIP OF CAPITAL GETS THEM NOTHING but a portion of what THEY CONTRIBUTE to the production process by making available capital that would not otherwise have been available.

Why is this simple, obvious, indisputable fact of objective physical reality so hard for socialists to understand?

He is also in a position to manipulate supply, in order to affect prices to his benefit, transferring wealth from the hard working hunters to himself through monopoly control (monopoly and oligopoly exerts itself frequently in contemporary capitalism).

Only because he owns a MONOPOLY PRIVILEGE like a patent, NOT because he owns CAPITAL.

This is all really basic stuff. Your initial notion truly didn't meet the laugh test.

What's really basic is that unlike the landowner or monopoly privilege owner, the capital owner can't get more than he contributes to production, and will almost always get far less.

[Crantag]

My interest is in economic theory and analysis.

I don't even regard myself as a socialist (although I do support universal government run health insurance and adequate funding of education, including college).

If anything, I consider myself an anarchist. And not a nihilist either, instead I tend to favor local governance.

The contrived jungle dwelling capitalist economy required capitalist institutions like intellectual property rights, to exist, for the purpose of the thought experiment that guy chalked up.

Notice, at first there was a monopoly on spear production. Surely the guy didn't realize why, but the reason was most likely there will not be enough spear hunters present to satisfy the preconditions for variation on the market place. This here is Adam Smith, 101.

And so in fact we agree.

And it is the factor you, @Truth To Power, raise, which would preclude the development of capitalism, except in the most extraordinary of space alien situations, in such a jungle dwelling spear-hunting society.

These limitations do not attain in modern capitalism. Ownership of capital is a means to economic power and wealth, which those belonging to the Lucky Sperm Club are born into.

Just read Thomas Pickety, who was a favorite of the Mainstream when his work (Capital in the 21st Century) was released. He displays very clearly, through advanced statistical analysis (for which his work was roundly rated very highly) the stratification of wealth across modern societies (in particular, modern day US and France of around the turn of the 20th century). It is therefore an article of scientific fact: the determinant of this stratification is the extent to which one is born into ownership of capital.

I find these truths to be self evident to anyone who can look upon it rationally, but it is thoroughly backed up by economic analysis, as well. Pickety finds that a small proportion of the super wealthy achieve the status in their lifetime in any given time, but that these are relatively very few.

Pickety's book is devoted to the study of capital, and his book shows conclusively the obvious fact, which is the extent to which one is born owning capital has a decisive effect on wealth stratification. Moreover, if you can understand the very simple nature of interest, you can thereby understand that such capital wealth accumulates with compound interest. Therefore, over time, the capital holdings increases at an exponential rate.

Born without capital? In that case, you don't get to enjoy exponential growth of your capital holdings, while you do nothing at all.

Born into a household with debt?

Well, now you still get to experience compound interest, but in this case it goes the other way, i.e. as time goes on your debt increases at an exponential rate (all else being equal), while, on the other side of the coin, the owners of your debt, well, you guessed, they get to enjoy compound interest on their capital (which includes their contract on your loan).

Now, I guess I was naive in hoping that when people would come at me on issues of economic theory, they would actually have some basis for understanding economic theory in their own right. Silly me, silly me.

NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!

GET THAT FALSE AND STUPID "RICH BY OWNING CAPITAL" $#!+ OUT OF YOUR HEAD!

THEY ARE NOT RICH BECAUSE THEY OWN CAPITAL, BUT BECAUSE OTHERS' LIBERTY RIGHTS TO MAKE AND OWN CAPITAL HAVE BEEN REMOVED.

GET THAT THROUGH YOUR HEAD!!!

Absolutely false.

If your business is tied to enforceable intellectual property rights, then yes.

If you are born owning an interest in a steel smelter (steel being theoretically a highly competitive industry), then what you say is absolutely wrong, and this is in accordance with 'objective physical reality'.

[skinster]

Crying rightwingers.

Millennials: Communism sounds pretty chill

REVEALED: Nearly half of millennials in America would prefer to live in a socialist rather than capitalist society, according to new survey

[SolarCross]

@skinster
I wouldn't get too excited the millenials (mostly) don't even know what communism or capitalism is.

They think communism is: landing job at apple or starbucks, buying nice things, not paying too much tax, getting a mortgage on a house and saving up and investing for a comfortable retirement.

They think capitalism is: cops shooting up semi-innocent black people, women not getting paid as much as men despite not choosing the same careers or putting in the same hours and a mysterious ghost called the patriarchy swooping down on the cool people to make shit suck.

Come the revolution they will be very disappointed.

[Truth To Power]

Crying rightwingers.

Notice the central lie of capitalism, which he tells at 1:15:

"You combine your labor with the land, and that's why you have a right to land..."

In fact, it is physically impossible to combine labor with land. All you can do is apply labor to land to produce a product. But that only gets you rightful ownership of the product, not the land. All the evil of capitalism proceeds from the lie that what the landowner did not produce -- the land -- is rightly his property, as well as what he did produce.

[skinster]

@skinster
I wouldn't get too excited the millenials (mostly) don't even know what communism or capitalism is.

They think communism is: landing job at apple or starbucks, buying nice things, not paying too much tax, getting a mortgage on a house and saving up and investing for a comfortable retirement.

They think capitalism is: cops shooting up semi-innocent black people, women not getting paid as much as men despite not choosing the same careers or putting in the same hours and a mysterious ghost called the patriarchy swooping down on the cool people to make shit suck.

Come the revolution they will be very disappointed.

The reasons why socialism is attractive to young people nowadays is because they see there is no future for them under capitalism. No homes. No healthcare. No education without massive debts for the rest of your life. No work benefits even if they have a job. Nada!

As the current system continues to make things worse for the working classes all over, socialism will become even more attractive.

[Crantag]

Notice the central lie of capitalism, which he tells at 1:15:

"You combine your labor with the land, and that's why you have a right to land..."

In fact, it is physically impossible to combine labor with land. All you can do is apply labor to land to produce a product. But that only gets you rightful ownership of the product, not the land. All the evil of capitalism proceeds from the lie that what the landowner did not produce -- the land -- is rightly his property, as well as what he did produce.

For Karl Polayni, there exist three principal 'fictitious commodities', land, labor and money.

Land is the 'commodification' of nature. Labor is the 'commodification' of human beings, and 'money' is the commodification of the institutions of social exchange.

Polayni's treatment of these includes discussion of the flawed nature of this logical construct (born of 'market society'), including the observations that you can't very well commodify or human being (or nature), without destroying the human element attached. The calculating economic logic therefore runs into conflict with the human element, attached to the meat sacks on who's reduction to the status of a commodity relies.

The same applies to land.

With respect to money, Polayni mostly directed his attention to the Gold Standard, which he saw as the first major institution of international settlement, and which had collapsed about a decade prior to the publication of his book 'The Great Transformation'. He pointed out how goings on in the international currency system, based on the movement of gold to effect currency exchange rates, had the effect of subverting the pricing mechanisms for local goods, by subjecting these prices to the influences of such international flows.

This is an incomplete treatment of Polanyi's 'fictitious commodities', but I personally find Polayni insightful.

[SolarCross]

The reasons why socialism is attractive to young people nowadays is because they see there is no future for them under capitalism. No homes. No healthcare. No education without massive debts for the rest of your life. No work benefits even if they have a job. Nada!

As the current system continues to make things worse for the working classes all over, socialism will become even more attractive.

Yeah there is an element of truth in that except the culprit isn't "capitalism" but is collective intergenerational debt. The boomers had the votes, lack of integrity (so square) and sheer numbers to run up enormous debts for enormous benefits for themselves and left the debts for their children and grandchildren to pay. It's like an entire generation getting royally drunk and then leaving the hangover, trash and vomitas for their children to suffer and clean up. I don't blame any millennial or gen x being mad at the previous generation and it is a problem that needs a solution. I suppose the millennials might eventually get the political influence to ditch the debt, like Argentina style. The odious Boomers won't live forever.

[Crantag]

Yeah there is an element of truth in that except the culprit isn't "capitalism" but is collective intergenerational debt. The boomers had the votes, lack of integrity (so square) and sheer numbers to run up enormous debts for enormous benefits for themselves and left the debts for their children and grandchildren to pay. It's like an entire generation getting royally drunk and then leaving the hangover, trash and vomitas for their children to suffer and clean up. I don't blame any millennial or gen x being mad at the previous generation and it is a problem that needs a solution. I suppose the millennials might eventually get the political influence to ditch the debt, like Argentina style. The odious Boomers won't live forever.

American debt only took off in the 1970s, after Nixon abandoned the Bretton Woods system of international settlement.

There was probably little choice in the matter, but this is some food for thought.

One of the strengths of Marxist analysis is that it frequently seeks to find answers through analyzing the relevant systems.

This is a big topic, with no real consensus and a lot of ink bled. And I'm not pretending to know anything unique here.

[QatzelOk]

The proto-communist Gerrard Winstanley revised history to claim "private property" was invented by the Norman conquerors of England centuries ago,...

Perhaps his intention was to get us to think about what private property really is. It seems obvious that the level of privacy is dependent on the ability to keep others out. And castles - especially those with moats - predate the Norman creators of English civilization by many years. Castles and walled cities were a by-product of agriculture and large-scale, economic hinterlands. Capitalism created hatred for certain classes so they needed private property to stay safe from the mob (us).

The reasons why socialism is attractive to young people nowadays is because they see there is no future for them under capitalism. No homes. No healthcare. No education without massive debts for the rest of your life. No work benefits even if they have a job. Nada!

As the current system continues to make things worse for the working classes all over, socialism will become even more attractive.

Centralized socialism is just as scary as our current capitalist system. If gangs control power like they did in the Soviet Union, the earth might last one second longer than it will under unbridled capitalism. Central control by private cliques might just be the main problem with all systems.

Millennials don't have enough time between cellphone swipes to work this out, so cellphone socialism might be similar to what we already have.

[SolarCross]

Perhaps his intention was to get us to think about what private property really is. It seems obvious that the level of privacy is dependent on the ability to keep others out. And castles - especially those with moats - predate the Norman creators of English civilization by many years. Castles and walled cities were a by-product of agriculture and large-scale, economic hinterlands. Capitalism created hatred for certain classes so they needed private property to stay safe from the mob (us).

No he was just a nut trying to build a cult.

Anyone who hates private property can easily abolish it for himself if no one else, go live in a park. I wonder if anyone living in a house, rented or owned, would welcome a burglar, rapist or murderer trespassing in the middle of the night? Mustn't be a hypocrite now.

[Crantag]

The more I look at @Truth To Power, 's posts, the more he sounds to me like a Maoist.

Yes the owners of capital and property may be freely deprived of their ownership rights. All it requires is a 'peasant' uprising!

[QatzelOk]

Anyone who hates private property can easily abolish it for himself if no one else, go live in a park. ....

Yes, and that person can abolish car-based transportation by... walking on the highway.

This is yet another example of the stupidity that capitalist media has created - the heroic individual who can do it all himself, like a pioneer killing bison and living in a cabin by a river. It's so John Wayne and it's so Clint Eastwood. But it's not reality.

Both car culture and private property are the result of social decisions, or of a profound lack of social decisions. Mass media zombies have neglected to participate in their own societies for the last few generations, and this is the result: rule by mentally-ill rich people.

[SolarCross]

Yes, and that person can abolish car-based transportation by... walking on the highway.

This is yet another example of the stupidity that capitalist media has created - the heroic individual who can do it all himself, like a pioneer killing bison and living in a cabin by a river. It's so John Wayne and it's so Clint Eastwood. But it's not reality.

Both car culture and private property are the result of social decisions, or of a profound lack of social decisions. Mass media zombies have neglected to participate in their own societies for the last few generations, and this is the result: rule by mentally-ill rich people.

What does it even mean to abolish private property? Everyone must live on a government owned slave plantation? Or we can all just shack up where we like, effectively the legalisation of burglary and trespassing? Maybe fitting locks to doors will be a capital offence? What does it even mean? What would be the benefit for anyone other than petty criminals? It will be a great boon to the nation's rapists, what could be more irritating to a rapist than a locked door between you and your prey?

----------

I like the old Nordic mythology, it is has some quite deep philosophy to it that is all but forgotten now. In the Nordic myth, there isn't really good or evil, it is morally ambiguous that way, what there is instead is chaos vs order, wildness vs law. The world of men is called Midgard and world of the gods of order is called Asgard. The "gard" is significant and it means wall. In the Nordic myth walls make civilisation, both literal physical walls and figurative walls which is to say laws (perhaps it is just a spooky coincidence but law backwards is wal..). Private property is the mortar of these walls of order, of civilisation. Innangard means civilisation, where law rules, and it literally means inside the wall. Outside the walls is the utangard, and this where there is no law but the law of the jungle it is the wilderness and consequently no property, private or otherwise, except what the mighty can hold and only while they are mighty.

If you are a creature of the wild, then civilisation with its laws, contracts and properties, may be subjectively evil and the wilderness is good. Of course to a creature of civilisation the reverse is true. Perhaps these rare people who object to the very mortar of civilisation, private property, should just leave for the wilderness, where it yet exists? Somalia may not even be wild enough for them, Antartica? Deep in the Amazonian rainforest? In fairness civilisation has been expanding strongly for centuries and there are now few parts of the world over which it does not hold sway. What chance for the wild animals, like Qatz, to roam free, raping and robbing as he pleases?

Perhaps in the future civilisation will take some mortal blow, another world war, nuclear this time, and all the walls will come down? Or a revolution? And at last the wild men may live as they will.