Truth To Power wrote:
Yes, it is, and yes, I am. You just have to contrive some way of not understanding, so that you can preserve your false and evil beliefs.
All you're doing is *contradicting* me, but you're not providing any content that *clarifies*.
Truth To Power wrote:
That is why it is pointless to try to debate Marxists. In actual intellectual exchange, such as science, it is assumed that there is an objective reality that is the same for both sides, so each side can point to objective facts that the other side can also verify for themselves, and share their reasoning about what those facts imply.
But in Marxism, there are no objective facts, no objective reality or logical implications, just special pleading for class interests. [/quote]
'Pleading' -- ? You obviously don't understand how this works -- the working class and the ruling class have *antagonistic interests*. The two respective interests are *mutually contradictory*, and they both cannot be satisfied at the same time, with the same dollar.
Truth To Power wrote:
So when I identify the fact that land is already there, ready to use, while a factory has to be designed and built by the initiative of someone who arranges for the necessary inputs to be supplied and takes responsibility for it, that's not a fact to you. It's just my "way of seeing things," which you just reject and substitute your "way of seeing things," which is that the factory emerged spontaneously from the exploitation of the proletariat by capitalists, or some such incomprehensible Marxist gibberish.
This *hasn't been* your position, though -- yes, you do glorify equity capital, while ignoring its exploitation of labor power, but your politics has been almost entirely about nationalizing the administration of all land, to be franchised out for market rent *only* by the government administration -- which is close to being Stalinism, but is closer to being *fascism* considering that you would dispossess current land owners of their land in favor of this monolithic government franchising of it.
Regarding the *source* of the physical factory building itself, that's *incontrovertibly* due to the labor power of *workers*, while the capitalist disproportionately benefits from controlling the *social organization* of the project, including the economics of it. So, yes, the factory building (and anything else) *did* 'emerge from the exploitation of the proletariat by capitalists'.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
The fact that *you're* ignoring is that people need food, like bread -- eating food is not *optional*, it's a mandatory *necessity* for everyone,
Truth To Power wrote:
I'm not ignoring it. Using land is also mandatory. I'm pointing out that when you voluntarily choose to take something, paying for what you take is mandatory because you are depriving someone else of it. See how that works?
Has *this* been the point that you've been attempting to make all this time? You *suck* at communicating, and it's only now that you're expressing this idea a bit more clearly.
This is *barely* saying anything, though -- *of course* a commodity can't be consumed by more than one person at a time, because if it is, then there's only *half* of it for each consumer.
I happened to have *just* made this point, above -- that both the ruling class and the working class cannot receive the same dollar, from revenue. So how *should* the split go, between capital's social organization of production, and the actual *doing* of production by the workers?
Why don't workers get to handle the revenue, in concert with capital? Pretty shady, the way things are *currently* done.
Since you're *not* ignoring that use of land is mandatory, as for agriculture, and that the use of food, for consumption, is also mandatory, then my point stands that the worker's selling of labor power, for a wage, for the necessities of modern life and living, is *also* mandatory, if one doesn't have money / capital, to procure food / necessities, or to procure the means of *producing* those things.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
yet you're fine with such being *commodified* under capitalism
Truth To Power wrote:
That is meaningless Marxist gibberish. Bread is a commodity -- a product without barriers to entry, whose price is consequently close to its production cost -- under any system. And I have stated many times that I oppose capitalism. Just not as much as I oppose socialism.
Yes, that's what I just said, and you're *repeating* it -- bread is a commodity under capitalism, meaning that it doesn't grow on trees on public land, available to anyone for free.
*Of course* there are 'barriers to entry', because it has a *price*, like any commodity. Price is a *barrier to entry*. Price is *never* going to be close to its production cost because the business owner takes a cut, known as 'profit', which is effectively a *markup* above costs, which is a cost to the purchaser.
You *don't* oppose capitalism because you're *lying* to defend its functioning. That shows commitment to it.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
instead of being done by government administration, as it does with military spending.
Truth To Power wrote:
The military is there to protect our rights against foreign aggression, which is government's job. Baking bread isn't.
You're missing the point on *two* different levels here -- first off, the *U.S.* military in particular is *imperialist*, meaning that it has claims to control of territory *outside of* its own U.S. boundaries. It's difficult for others to recognize such claims as being necessary for 'safety', domestically, when such outposts have typically been *offensive*, as in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Those countries never threatened the people of the U.S., so there's no point for the U.S. military to *be* in those places.
Secondly, if we take some *far lesser* portion of military spending to be 'necessary for safety', then that could be called a non-commodified *service* that the government provides. Other services that the government provides in similar fashion are weights & measures, finance, roads, rails, justice (arguably), civil society, education, sewers and sanitation, etc.
All I'm saying is that such government services should be *expanded* to cover all of the basics that everyone must consume on a *mandatory* basis, like food, housing, utilities, etc., in our current modern society.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
All statists on PoFo are implicitly backing *military* spending -- which is non-productive --
Truth To Power wrote:
No. There is a difference between military spending which is PROTECTIVE, and military spending that is AGGRESSIVE. The protective function of the military is productive because it secures our rights against foreign aggression.
Then why aren't statists on PoFo *speaking out* against the aggressive military predations of the U.S., as against Iraq, Libya, and Syria? Why aren't *you* speaking out against these admittedly *aggressive* imperialist actions? (This is the first I've heard you even *reference* it.)
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ckaihatsu wrote:
over the providing of *food* to everyone (and healthcare, etc.) as a *civil right*.
Truth To Power wrote:
Because we only have rights to the things we would have if others did not deprive us of them, mainly life, liberty, and property in the fruits of our labor. Food and health care are not things we would otherwise have. Someone has to provide them. So they can't be rights. A society might choose to provide them as a matter of prudent public policy, but that is not the same thing as a right.
Your oft-repeated 'principle' is nonsensical -- you're saying that because supply-and-demand material dynamics exist around some things, *commodities*, basically, someone is "depriving" us of them, due to *market pricing*, presumably. In other words you're trying to *personalize*, or 'conspiracy-ize' a dynamic that's common to *all commodities*, that of *scarcity* due to market dynamics.
I'm going to *parse* your 'principle' here, from:
Truth To Power wrote:
Because we only have rights to the things we would have if others did not deprive us of them, mainly life, liberty, and property in the fruits of our labor.
To:
Because we only have [material access] to the things we would have [if there was a non-commodified 'commons' of availability for them] if others did not deprive us of them [through commodification and market pricing], mainly [the necessities for] life, liberty, and property in the fruits of our labor.
So, to clarify, you're situating 'life, liberty, and property' in terms of 18th-century *bourgeois rights*, while ignoring the far more important aspect of *material availability*.
How is someone to be able to afford 'property', as for housing and living, for example, if they're paid a substandard wage (less than a 'living wage') -- ?
It's *capitalism* and commodification / market-pricing of these *mandatory* necessities of life and living that's at-issue, because we live in an *industrial* age, with *mass production* techniques that have the physical capacity to provide *everyone* with the basics of life and living, but, because of the retention of capitalist economics over such, there continues to be *scarcity* for many, for many essential items, because of private ownership over such means of mass industrial production.
Components of Social Production
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ckaihatsu wrote:
You're assuming that *everything* is in the private sector,
Truth To Power wrote:
No, you made that up. You make up a lot of stuff. It's the Marxist way.
No, you're overgeneralizing and *stereotyping*, based on this one comment of mine. Considering that you just addressed government spending, I'll back off of this previous characterization of mine.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
and it's *not* -- things like roads and rails, for example, are administered by the *public* / state sector, with no profits involved.
Truth To Power wrote:
Profits are often involved, and there is no reason it should not make a profit on them. If government can spend $1M on a public road that increases local land value by $2M, who else should get the extra $1M?
Annnnnnd we're *back* -- you have the same statist prejudice / double-standard as UM, where any kind of government spending for 'national security' interests is seen as okay, and glossed-over, while anything for the *people* is put under intense scrutiny, for the sake of denying it, as with food and housing.
Why aren't you scrutinizing *military spending* in the same way here, and asking about its 'valuation' under government auspices?
Double standard / favoritism / elitism.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Ditto for libraries, government operations, utilities, schooling, etc.
Truth To Power wrote:
There may be a case for public provision of such services and amenities, but that's doesn't mean they can't be profitable. Indeed, I would argue that if you account for all the publicly provided benefits that show up in land value, government should aim to make a profit on them, to help defray the costs of public benefits that are inherently unprofitable, like services for the indigent, criminal trials, etc.
*Or*, just *tax* those private-sector business operations that have *excess* valuations, for the sake of all government services that are non-elitist / populist. You seem to think that private-sector profit-making is more operationally efficient, and it's *not*, because of having to navigate the markets for each and every thing, and for the cost of profit (profit is a cost to funding).
That's why government exists *at all*, because of the typical, systematic 'market failures' dynamic that you're referring to. Government, and corporations, have a more-efficient internal *operations* structure, by using a hierarchy of authority positions, over all material usage internally. This bypasses the need to have to interface with the markets. I have a fuller treatment of this at another thread:
State capitalism / Stalinism *constantly* ran into exchange-valuation problems, and still does, as with Venezuela, because it attempts to *carve out* a mainly locally-*circumscribed* economy, out of the larger global sea of capitalism. By doing so it becomes *difficult* to establish politically-*commanded* currency exchange rates with other / major capitalist currencies, and also suffers from lack of global popular acceptance of its *own* domestic currency because the country is certainly not king-of-the-hill in the global geopolitical context, and is probably also anti-imperialist, or at least geopolitically *independent*. So its currency suffers from inflation, with high black-market exchange rates with major capitalist currencies.
The political *point* of all of this iconoclasm, though, is that the domestic / internal economy for that country *could* be much smoother, internally, similarly to the way any private *corporation* is structured internally, with a *bureaucratization* ('politicization') of internal material movements, so as to generally avoid interfacing with external market exchanges as much as possible.
As long as a political-type pyramid-shaped *hierarchy* can be maintained, all internal economic transfers are tacitly accepted by all, internally (and even externally), and thus no longer require (two-way) *exchanges* for any given transfer. (A manager could readily requisition *materials* for an approved project, from any other division, without necessarily having to 'pay', in cash, in a market-type *exchange*, since the approved project is under an *authority*, the manager's boss.)
This is also the structure and functioning of any kind of *syndicalism*, btw, as in the military, or with a locally collectivized enterprise like a workers co-op. By internally eliminating *exchange values* that entire 'middle layer' of valuated exchanges can be bypassed altogether, in favor of enterprise-defined *use values*, as *qualitatively* defined by managerial *authorities*, with *internal politics* providing flexibility and fluidity, going-forward.
This is the way that *abundance*, particularly, can be handled, so as to get around capitalism's inherent dynamic of 'enforced scarcity', usually through the destructive function of *warfare*, over anything that becomes *overproduced*. (The present-day is notably *different*, with popularly disallowed warfare, so *that* conventionally economically destructive function is now *forestalled*, which is an interesting development in and of itself.)
True workers-of-the-world socialism would just be an *expansion* of this basic corporate-like / Stalinist-state-like bureaucratic functioning, but it would better correspond to actual realities / facts, because the overall 'pyramid' (of relative individual social prestige, or reputation) would be much *flatter* than we're used to seeing, historically, due to historical *caste*-like bureaucratic *elitism*, or *top-down* administration of the workers themselves.
In the absence of caste / class / careerism / heredity / elitism, the 'base' of the 'pyramid' would be much, much *broader*, to enable a broad-based *bottom-up* dynamic of dynamic social planning, with far less institutional *rigidity*, if at all.
However, this is all *prelude* to address SSDR's statement that 'in socialism, no matter how rare a material or a natural/artificial resource is, it would not be valued more or less because in socialism, the concept of value doesn't need to exist.'
I'll actually *beg to differ* on this point, because certainly *use values* (per individual) would continue to exist under any conceivable post-capitalist socialism -- maybe some artist produces a new, novel, ultimately popular *song*, and most people in the world want to *hear* it over and over again. How would this balance of *use value* supply-and-demand be handled, exactly, when there's *mass organic demand* for this very particular material 'supply' -- ?
Should the hit artist be satisfied with *notoreity* alone, since there would, by definition, be no money or commodity-production, or 'sales' -- ? Should everyone else in the world be entitled to get the song for 'free' with absolutely *zero* material compensation to the artist who produced this wildly popular work of art?
Also, relatedly, who mines the gold and who grows and picks the flowers, if such tasks were no one's *first choice* for liberated-labor in such a society? (No *coercion* could be used to force any kind of labor, since there would be *no state*, by definition.)
Or, conversely, what if *lots* of people inherently *liked* to mine gold and grow and pick flowers, to the point where gold and flowers started *accumulating* (hypothetically speaking), because there was not enough *organic demand* to consume such -- ?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
No, my point stands, because if certain improvements are made by the leasee, such as landscaping, *where's the return* for that?
Truth To Power wrote:
Presumably, the lessee made the improvement in order to enjoy it. So it's a form of consumption, and they should not expect it to be profitable. If the landscaping is such that the next lessee thinks it is valuable, they'll be willing to pay for it. There is a lively market in such amenities.
See -- your model is beginning to *break down*, because it *can't* balance all of the respective parties' material interests that are involved.
The only way you can explain the automatic *lack of return* for improvements made to a parcel of land leased by a lessee under your 'geoist' model, is to say that *all* improvements are necessarily for *consumption* and that such capital improvements will be *forfeited* to the state-landlord, as I've already described.
Keep in mind that the leasee (who may make capital improvements to the land, at the cost of investments) does *not* benefit from the 'market rent' rate, because the rent is paid to the *state* landlord, and not to the leasee.
Also the state landlord may *arbitrarily* decide *not* to make any capital improvements to any and all parcels under its administration, because it may be satisfied with *not* engaging in such bother, since it has a *monopoly* on all land leasing, and has no inherent incentive to *speculate* through investments in any capital improvements, as with landscaping. So the *leasee* / user *and* the monopolist state landlord *both* have no inherent / empirical interests in making any improvements to any parcel of land, meaning that your model contains *no incentives* for the improvement of the land.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
It does *not necessarily* benefit the land-based business after it's done, and there's no way, under your system, to *recoup* the capital expense of the improvements made, because the next user / leasee has no *obligation* to the leasee who made the improvements.
Truth To Power wrote:
It's true that it will not necessarily benefit the lessee who makes such improvements. That's the risk one takes with any productive venture: the market might have different tastes. Under my proposed system, the lessee would own the improvements, and would get back their market value.
No, you're *assuming* that the next leasee would *automatically* want, and pay-for, the improvements made by the previous leasee, while such is *not* a given.
Truth To Power wrote:
There is never a guarantee that the market will value an investment at more than its cost, at its cost, or even at a significant fraction of its cost.
For example, say a lessee decides to invest in an improvement that he believes is worthwhile: gilding all the external door and window frames. He thinks it makes the house look fantastic, and is well worth the $100K he spent to have it done. Later, the location value increases, and he finds he can't justify the cost of paying for it, so he sells the house. There is no guarantee the market will give him $100K more for the house because of the gilded door and window frames. It's quite possible that everyone who is interested in paying for the location thinks he wasted his money. That is not the community's responsibility. It is his responsibility.
Correct, and you're making my point *for* me -- this is an excellent example of what I'm arguing, that there's no inherent incentive for *any* leasee to make *any* improvements, nor on the part of the monopolist state landlord, because any leasee can just pay rent to lease the land itself, and any possible improvements would just be *externalities* to the incoming leasee, with no guaranteed benefit to the investor, *for* those improvements.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
The landlord is the state, which leases out the land as-is. Would the state *require* the next tenant to pay for the cost of any upgrades?
Truth To Power wrote:
No, for the reason explained above. If you decide to spend money on something, that's your responsibility. If you want to get your money back when you sell it, make sure the market will value it at least at its cost.
So my point stands that your 'geoist' system has *no inherent incentives* for anyone to make any improvements to any parcel of land.
Truth To Power wrote:
Each lessee just pays the market value for whatever improvements are there, given the ongoing cost of the location.
Okay, so this means that your monopolist / monolithic / fascistic state landlord automatically *appropriates* any and all improvements made to any parcel of land if the investor can't sell those improvements off before the expiration date of their lease. Since the investor could only *beg* the next, incoming leasee to cover the costs of any improvements made to the land itself, as with landscaping, there would *especially* be no incentive for a leasee to make improvements to the land itself, since such cannot be *removed* and sold-off separately, like a house could.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Why shouldn't the state *landlord* pay for any upgrades, as is the current practice in the *private* sector?
Truth To Power wrote:
That isn't the current practice in the private sector. You are misinformed. Certain kinds of improvements can be charged to a private landlord -- like a new roof if the old one is leaking -- when they are deemed necessary to make the place habitable, but tenants can't just undertake any sort of improvement they want and send the bill to the landlord.
Okay, so if your monopolist / monolithic / fascistic state landlord decides *not* to pay a leasee investor for any capital improvements to a leased parcel, then the state gets to automatically *expropriate* any and all such improvements, like a new roof for an existing house on the land. Again the leasee would have *no incentive* to make improvements that couldn't feasibly be physically separated and sold-off as a separate commodity.
The state landlord would have an inherent incentive to *not-pay* for any possible improvements made to the land, anywhere, because it would wind up getting those improvements *for free* when the lease expires if the investor couldn't feasibly sell-off such improvements as separate commodities.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
That way this additional expense is *centralized*, along with the administration of the land itself, per this overall 'state land franchising' model of yours.
Truth To Power wrote:
Land would be there anyway. Someone has to choose to make improvements.
So, to recap, a parcel's land valuation would only go up, for increased market rent rates, if the leasee investor made capital improvements to the parcel and then *forfeited* them once the lease expired.
It's obvious that *no party* would have any incentive to make improvements to the land itself, since such would default to the state landlord, without any *compensation* made by the state landlord to the leasee who made those improvements. Improvements to the land itself would be an add-on, unrecoverable *expense* for any given leasee.
And you actually *tout* this geoist model of yours as being a *good* thing?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
You haven't even *thought this through*, have you?
Truth To Power wrote:
I have thought it through incomparably more and better than you, as every exchange between us proves.
Yeah, funny -- as if bad-assery *bravado* could change your touted flawed model *for the better*, by commentary alone.
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Truth To Power wrote:
See? You just flat-out REFUSE to understand what I have explained multiple times in clear, simple, grammatical English. Improvements would be ignored when calculating the LOCATION RENT due each month, but when a landholder no longer wanted to use a particular location, they would just sell the improvements to the next user for the market price.
ckaihatsu wrote:
So then where's the *choice*?
Truth To Power wrote:
It's all choice. You just can't choose to have the market value your improvements at the price you think they should go for.
Okay, I'll rephrase -- where's the *choice* regarding making improvements to the land itself, as with landscaping? There would be *no incentive* for such, unless it could be factored-in as an unrecoverable *cost* to a given leasee, for the duration of the lease.
All the land under your model would go *un-landscaped*, due to lack of empirical incentive for such. Congrats.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
It's not a market anymore if the incoming leasee wants to lease the parcel, but *without* the improvements, which are apparently *not underwritten* by the state landlord.
Truth To Power wrote:
Of course it is. If the market says the improvements are inappropriate and have no value, they have no value.
So then who pays the cost to *remove* any such 'improvements' that are unwanted by the market-pricing, and by the incoming leasee? What if the 'improvements' of one is a 'detriment' to another, like a dilapidated house left on the parcel by the outgoing leasee? Shouldn't the *state landlord* be the one to 'manage' such liabilities, or would you just say that the market values the parcel 'as-is'?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Would the state landlord lease the parcel to the incoming tenant *without* requiring payment for the upgrades to the previous leasee?
Truth To Power wrote:
Of course. The state is not responsible for guaranteeing that every dollar privately spent on improvements was spent wisely.
Since the monopolist / monolithic / fascistic state landlord would expropriate any improvements / investments made to a parcel, and left there, why would the population politically *support* this form of government? This state landlord government of yours would benefit *privately* as an entity, collecting market rents for *all* land, with no *return* of value to the public, or public interest, which is why I term it 'monopolist' and 'fascistic'.
What would prevent the people from immediately *overturning* this governmental imposition of monopolist management over all land on the earth? How many personnel do you think this monopolist government would require, and how would they defend themselves from a populist uprising / revolution against their continued class rule?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Why doesn't the *state* assume ownership and administration over any and all improvements made by leasees, so that all improvements formally become part of the land itself, instead of being treated as a perpetual add-on from leasee to leasee, endlessly?
Truth To Power wrote:
Because that is the private users' business, not the state's. The private user made the improvements and is therefore responsible for them, not the state. I'm not sure there is any way to state such facts so clearly and simply that you would consent to know them.
But, again, I have to return to the matter of *choice* -- who pays for the removal of any *unwanted* add-ons to the parcel of land, like a dilapidated building? If an incoming leasee doesn't want it there, shouldn't the monopolist state landlord be the one to *remove* it, so that the land can exist as it did *initially*, as plain land itself? Why should the incoming leasee have to pay for the expense of removing something that shouldn't be there to begin with? (We might call this 'negigence' on the part of the monopolist state landlord.)
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ckaihatsu wrote:
And here's the kicker: If the state landlord *does* assume ownership and administration of the improvements into the land parcel itself, who exactly would decide which improvements should be made?
Truth To Power wrote:
The user decides, and pays for them, and takes responsibility for their decisions. I understand that being responsible for one's own decisions is a concept that is incomprehensible to Marxists, but I don't know of any other way to express it.
You didn't *have* to include a slight, so I'll just point out: Who takes responsibility for imperialist *warfare*? What did the people of Iraq, Libya, and Syria ever do to 'deserve' the damage that the U.S. military inflicted on them and their country? Were they 'irresponsible' somehow and 'deserving' of destruction, for their 'decisions'?
You yourself can *decide* not to be a snide asshole -- it's a choice.
Back to the issue, this monopolist state landlord has no way to offer *choice* to the prospective leasee, because you're saying that add-ons are necessarily *combined* with the land parcel itself, so there's no *landlordship* / land management apparent on the part of the landlord. If a prospective leasee wants the *plain* land without the cost of *removing* any unwanted add-ons from the property, that's *not an option* according to you, so such removal would be an additional, unrecoverable *cost* to the leasee, regardless.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
What if the leasee wants to make $1 million in improvements -- will the state pay the leasee $1 million, automatically, in order to assume ownership and administration of that parcel of land, *with* the improvements, for after the leasee ends the lease?
Truth To Power wrote:
No. It's his choice, and his responsibility.
So *are* you a fascist, because *effectively* you are -- you advocate for a monopolist, monolithic ruling-class state landlord that privately benefits from the use of *all* land, without any *responsibility* for such.
This shows you where the logic of your 'individual responsibility' principle takes you -- you want to *socialize* the costs of land usage to individuals, while *privatizing* the benefits of all land usage to a monopolist ruling-class bureaucracy. This is *far worse* than the historical Stalinist bureaucratic-elitism that you rail against, by the way.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
If not, then *no* leasee is going to want to make even *one dollar* in improvements, because there's *no guarantee* that either the state landlord, or the next incoming leasee (if there even *is* one immediately after) will *reimburse* the leasee who made the improvements.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just more absurd garbage from you with no basis in fact. People make improvements because they either want to use and enjoythem, like the gilded door frames, or believe the market will value them, not because they have some sort of guarantee of reimbursement.
But you're forgetting about the *land itself* -- no one would have any incentive to make any improvements to the land itself, since such improvements would *not* be portable, and resellable, consumption aside.
How would *basic landscaping* get done in the first place, on untouched land, when any such efforts would only economically benefit the monopolist state landlord?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
My point stands that the land could *have* no exchange value, not even 'near-zero', or 'zero', because it's simply *not being exchanged*.
Truth To Power wrote:
Your point doesn't stand, like all your other points, because a thing does not have to be exchanged to have exchange value. Value is what a thing WOULD exchange for, not what it DID exchange for. CLEAR?
Yes, a commodity does have to be *exchanged*, for it to have *exchange value*, otherwise it's a deflated asset, at best. (Without exchanges there's no *pricing*, so then the asset can't be accurately *valuated*. There's no longer supply-and-demand, as with your monopolist state ownership of *all* land, which is equivalent to *fascism*, since there's no longer any markets for the land itself. It's like corporate control over all land.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Your geoist model has the *state* as the sole owner and administrator of all land, leasing it out at 'market rent'.
Truth To Power wrote:
Land cannot rightly be owned. The state would just charge the market price for the benefits it provides to the landholder.
You mean 'leasee' instead of 'landholder' -- the monopolist state would be the *permanent* landholder, or owner, of all land, which it would then rent out.
If you're saying that 'land cannot rightly be owned', then why are you advocating this fascist 'geoist' model? You're advocating a political economy that *features* land ownership, by a monopolist fascist state, while you *say* that such cannot rightly / morally be done.
You're a *hypocrite*.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
'Market rent' is *not* the same thing as the *real estate* value of the land itself, which there would necessarily be *none of* within your model, because it's no longer a *commodity* -- it's an asset administered by the state -- Stalinism for all land and all natural monopolies, basically.
Truth To Power wrote:
Market allocation to private, for-profit users is not Stalinism, don't be so ridiculous. Everything you say is just reliably false.
You're *correct* here -- it would be closer to *corporate control*, so would be *fascism*, not Stalinism.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
For the future just tell people upfront that you want Stalinism for all land and all natural monopolies. It'll save a *lot* of time for everyone involved.
Truth To Power wrote:
What is my motive for continuing to respond to someone who makes such absurd and disingenuous claims?
You're correct, so I'll rephrase: For the future just tell people upfront that you want *fascism* for all land and all natural monopolies. It'll save a *lot* of time for everyone involved.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
That's *hilarious* -- you're going to bring the geoist system into operation by *buying* everyone's existing real estate at *market* prices?
Truth To Power wrote:
No. You made that up. I'm talking about full repayment of the location's publicly created rental value FROM the landholder TO the community that creates it.
You're being *ambiguous* about how the political economy would go from existing private-property capitalism, to your monopolist fascist state landlordship over all land. Rental pricing is *not* the same as existing *real estate* pricing for the land itself -- they're two different things. You would not get *any* existing real estate owner to sell their private property to you merely for the value of one month's rent payment, for your fascist vision.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
What if people *don't want* to sell, or they say that they want 500% of the market price?
Truth To Power wrote:
If they want secure, exclusive tenure they will pay for it, or yield the land to someone who will.
What if existing private property owners *don't support* your fascist vision, and they say they *won't* sell to you for a mere one month's rent payment? And they won't *give away* their land to someone who will cooperate with your fascist vision?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Here's some history:
The U.S. Interstate Highway System, developed during the Eisenhower administration in the early 1950s, required the purchase—through eminent domain—of enough land to construct more than 42,000 miles of freeway.
The framers of the Constitution envisioned such eventualities and provided for them in what is commonly called the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment: “. . . nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” The wording acknowledges the ownership of private property and anticipates the need for the taking of private land for public use only when just compensation is offered.
https://www.vision.org/the-bible-on-emi ... abuse-1376
Truth To Power wrote:
Irrelevant garbage, you mean. I'm not proposing to take land for public use, just charge the market price for the benefits landowners have been accustomed to get as a subsidy
But how do you get that land for your fascist vision in the *first place*? You don't currently own it, private owners do, and they may not give it to you or sell it to you because they may not agree with your vision for monopolist fascist control of their land.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
But it gets even *funnier* -- with *your* plan, the seized land (etc.)
Truth To Power wrote:
It's not seized. You made that up.
You still haven't addressed how your fascist monopolist state would *procure* all of its land in the first place -- existing legal private owners will *not* automatically want to turn their land over to your fascist control of it.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
wouldn't even be for *public use* -- you'd have the state *franchise* it out, at *market rent*, meaning that it would be more like a *dictatorship*, than Stalinism, proper.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just more absurd, disingenuous nonsense from you. Market allocation is the opposite of dictatorship.
But you're not addressing the *ownership*, and *control* of the land. You *don't* currently own or control *a lot* of the land that your fascist monopolist state would need to procure for its fascist monopolist *landlordship* over.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
So, to sum up, what you want is a *fancy club*.
Truth To Power wrote:
Is that what it would take to drive a fact into your cranium?
No, again, I've updated my understanding and I need to rephrase here:
What you want is a *fascist* monopolist state control of all land.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
It will only get as much land under its authority as it can *afford*, assuming that it has state authority to do so in the first place, or else is some kind of coup-based dictatorship. (Or its a comedy routine, because it's making me laugh so hard.)
Truth To Power wrote:
All land is under its authority anyway. Who secures the landowner's exclusive tenure for him?
All land is under *what* authority, exactly?
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
So you *don't even know* what your *own* model would do to acquire the land in the first place?
Truth To Power wrote:
I have stated many times that the land would not be acquired. It is not a nationalization proposal. I'm not sure there is any way to state that so clearly and simply that you would find a willingness to know it.
Okay, you can at least *try* to state it clearly and simply. How would your fascist control of all land *acquire* that land in the first place, from today's status quo?
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Who's *funding* this plan, and what would the *funders* get from their investments?
Truth To Power wrote:
It's not a private business.
Then it's fascism.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Again you're conflating / confusing *real estate* values, with *rental* market pricing
Truth To Power wrote:
No I'm not, don't be ridiculous.
No existing owner of private property is going to hand over their ownership of their land to you for only one month's rental payment in return.
---
Truth To Power wrote:
And you don't seem to know what either of them is.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
And why would any current owner of real estate want to *pay rent* to use the property if they already *own* it, outright?
Truth To Power wrote:
Because their ownership of it is already conditional on keeping the taxes current, and always has been.
But you don't *control* the government of which you're referring to, the one that existing private owners of land pay taxes to. How is your fascist vision of monopolist state landlordship going to *get* government power when you don't *have* government power?
---
Truth To Power wrote:
[It] just starts charging landholders the market price for the benefits it has until now been providing to them at derisory prices as a subsidy.
ckaihatsu wrote:
What exactly *are* 'the benefits [the state] has until now been providing to [the real estate owners] at derisory prices as a subsidy' -- ?
Truth To Power wrote:
Secure, exclusive tenure, and all the desirable public services and infrastructure accessible from that location.
That *doesn't benefit* existing landowners because, as landowners, they *already have* these benefits, due to their private-property ownership of their land, and the taxes they pay for 'secure exclusive tenure'.
If they *give up* that private ownership then they will no longer control their private property as an asset that they could later sell for its real estate value.
You're *not offering* any benefit, here, because once private property owners turn over their land to you and your fascist monopolist state control, they will no longer own the land as real estate. Your fascist vision will turn them into *renters* of their own, prior-possessed land.
What if an owner doesn't agree, and doesn't turn over their land? What if your fascist vision *fails* and can't acquire sufficient amounts of land to force your monopolist vision over everyone?
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
So current real estate owners would receive a small tax break in return for their giving up ownership of their real estate to your club.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, they would simply learn that their "ownership" of the land has never been anything but a convenient legal fiction.
Are current real estate owners able to *sell* the ownership of their land to someone else as a commodity *asset*? If so, then that's something *more* than a 'legal fiction' -- it's private property ownership, with a certain exchange-value *valuation*, or worth / wealth.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
The following diagram of mine, from years ago, depicts both 'constant capital', and 'variable capital'.
[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit
Truth To Power wrote:
Constant and variable are not the relevant categories, and your diagram appears to bear no relationship to economic reality.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, okay -- because you *say* so.
Truth To Power wrote:
No. It is not true because I say so. I say so because it is true. As a Marxist, you just cannot understand the difference between those two conditions.
Again, all you're doing is *positing*, but you're not dealing with the *subject matter* at all.
My point stands that 'constant capital' and 'variable capital', combined, is equivalent to 'equity capital'.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Maybe you really *are* a dictator wannabe.
Truth To Power wrote:
This, from you?
Yes, I'm the one saying it.
(I'm *not* the same, because I'm for workers-of-the-world socialism, which is the 'dictatorship of the proletariat', which is a *collective* control of social production, by the working class.)
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
'Constant capital' in the diagram is also 'equity capital', meaning the means of mass industrial production.
Truth To Power wrote:
But that's not what I am talking about. Whenever I identify the relevant facts, you just change the subject to some sort of absurd Marxist BS.
ckaihatsu wrote:
*You're* the one who used the term 'equity capital',
Truth To Power wrote:
No I'm not. You introduced it in order to avoid using the concept of "products of labor devoted to production."
Equity capital *is* 'the products of labor devoted to production'.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
and I'm informing you that 'constant capital' = 'equity capital'.
Truth To Power wrote:
Which are both irrelevant anti-concepts that do not correspond to any actual economic quantity.
Yet you just defined 'equity capital' as 'the products of labor devoted to production'. Fortunately we don't exist in a vacuum here -- here's a definition from Wikipedia, indicating its general usage:
In finance, equity is ownership of assets that may have debts or other liabilities attached to them. Equity is measured for accounting purposes by subtracting liabilities from the value of an asset. For example, if someone owns a car worth $9,000 and owes $3,000 on the loan used to buy the car, then the difference of $6,000 is equity. Equity can apply to a single asset, such as a car or house, or to an entire business. A business that needs to start up or expand its operations can sell its equity in order to raise cash that does not have to be repaid on a set schedule.
When liabilities attached to an asset exceed its value, the difference is called a deficit and the asset is informally said to be "underwater" or "upside-down". In government finance or other non-profit settings, equity is known as "net position" or "net assets".
Investing
Equity investing is the business of purchasing stock in companies, either directly or from another investor, on the expectation that the stock will earn dividends or can be resold with a capital gain. Equity holders typically receive voting rights, meaning that they can vote on candidates for the board of directors and, if their holding is large enough, influence management decisions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_(finance)
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
So all your fancy talk boils down to a *nationalization* of these natural-monopoly-type assets, including land, to be leased out by the government administration. Would this be limited to just *one* country, or do you advocate a single government administration for all, *worldwide* natural-monopoly-type assets?
Truth To Power wrote:
No, it is not nationalization. It is simply charging the market price for what has up to now been given to landowners as a subsidy.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Current landowners would *disagree* with you -- they would say that they *own* their land, as private property, and that they have *no interest* in leasing what is already theirs, fascist.
Truth To Power wrote:
I'm sure slave owners said similar things to the abolitionists.
This is *not* an apt comparison, because you're comparing *people* (slaves / workers), to *land*.
Truth To Power wrote:
But landonwers are already paying property taxes, they have known all along that they have to keep the taxes current to retain the title, and they have always known that the tax could be increased, or the method of its calculation reformed, by legitimate democratic processes, without their consent.
You're still ignoring the fact that existing property owners *own* their land, and that it has exchange-value, or *wealth*, as the real-estate asset commodity that it is.
Your fascist vision does not provide any benefit or value to existing property owners, so they would *not* have an objective interest in cooperating with you, by turning over their land to you according to the terms you've described.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Natural resources *are* natural monopolies, because of geographic *location*.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's not what a natural monopoly is.
Okay, go ahead and proffer what *you* think a 'natural monopoly' is.
---
Truth To Power wrote:
Any country could do it for locations, and in many cases junior governments could do it, depending on the limits to their jurisdiction, and it is actually better suited to junior governments because land can't move to a more favorable tax jurisdiction. There is no sovereign land administration authority that could do it worldwide.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, name *one* 'sovereign land administration authority'.
Truth To Power wrote:
https://www.worldometers.info/geography ... countries/
And how will any given country *cooperate* with your fascist vision, exactly? You're not showing how your 'geoist' government would *acquire* either parcels of land, or state power from any given 'sovereign land administration authority'.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
You're still ignoring that *all* people, in modern society, have certain 'must-haves', including food, housing, etc. -- you're pretending that all that people *need* is the air that they breathe.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, you are just makin' $#!+ up again.
Yet, near the *beginning* of this exchange, you *acknowledged* that certain consumption by individuals is 'mandatory':
ckaihatsu wrote:
The fact that *you're* ignoring is that people need food, like bread -- eating food is not *optional*, it's a mandatory *necessity* for everyone,
Truth To Power wrote:
I'm not ignoring it. Using land is also mandatory.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
No one can 'escape' material necessities, so the *procurement* of these necessities, for anyone, requires participation in the capitalist market economy.
Truth To Power wrote:
Only if they live in a capitalist society. The point is that our remote ancestors lived for millions of years without needing the capitalist economy because they had their liberty rights to use land.
Oh, so you've simply been *mixing timeframes* this whole time -- reminder: We don't currently live in, nor were we *born into*, the time of our remote ancestors. We were born-into, and live-in, a present-day *modern* capitalist society, virtually everywhere in the world, and capitalism has transformed virtually all usable land into *real estate* commodities.
My point stands that no one can 'escape' material necessities, and the *procurement* of these necessities, for anyone, requires participation in the capitalist market economy, since we never got to *vote* for what kind of economic system to use, worldwide.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Those who already have capital have an *immense* advantage over those who *do not* have capital.
Truth To Power wrote:
Of course, because they can contribute so much more to production. Same as people who have more education, more intelligence, more beauty, more industry.
To clarify, not everyone owns capital from birth, nor have most people typically been able to *gain* capital throughout their adult lifetimes, otherwise there wouldn't be such vast inequalities in wealth ownership as we have today.
One can only make *profits* -- gains in capital -- by *owning* capital in the first place, which not everyone does.
Your argumentation is *petty* and tangential, so my point stands that those who already have capital have an *immense* advantage over those who *do not* have capital.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Thus, there's a *class division*, and those who own capital do not necessarily have to sell their labor power ('work') in order to live in modern society.
Truth To Power wrote:
No. What causes the class division is not ownership of capital but of privilege. The owner of capital has no power to take from others, only the power to give value for value in return. The owner of privilege, by contrast, is in a different class because he is legally entitled to DEPRIVE others of what they would otherwise have. The capital owner gets richer by making others richer, while the privilege owner gets richer by making others poorer. The Marxist has simply decided never to distinguish between these two entirely different situations, and to pretend that they are the same.
No, the ownership of rentier capital (land, etc.) and equity capital are *not* the same, because rentier capital itself is *non-productive* of commodities.
But both rentier capital and equity capital *exploit* the working class, in particular, and rentier capital is a *cost* / expense for anyone who wants to *use* that commodity, like land and housing for one's life and living.
[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Those who *do not* have capital *do* necessarily have to sell their labor power ('work') in order to live in modern society.
Truth To Power wrote:
So they have to give value for value, like the capital owner, and cannot take value in return for nothing, like the privilege owner.
You're basically criticizing the *aristocracy* ('privilege owner'), which no longer exists in the present-day, unless you mean the typical owner of *wealth*.
The *equity* capital owner gives *nothing* -- the investment of equity capital is a *business decision*, anticipating a return of value on capital, for profit-making. *You* happen to make it sound like a *charity*, somehow, which is an *incorrect* characterization of equity capital.
In the process of capitalism's production of commodities the wage worker is *exploited* for every hour of work:
[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends
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ckaihatsu wrote:
'Freedom', 'liberty', and 'choice' in market transactions is *meaningless* if one doesn't have the prerequisite *cash* on hand to use to *participate* in market exchanges.
Truth To Power wrote:
False. One can participate as a seller. If one has one's right to liberty, one can produce something to sell in the market. It is only when their rights to liberty have been forcibly stripped from them and given to the privileged as their private property that they must throw themselves on the mercy of whoever can offer them wage employment.
You make it sound as though every person is issued private property of their own, at *birth*, which is certainly *not* the case, so you're using yet-another incorrect characterization of the political economy.
Today's *industrial* production leaves *all* individual producers at a drastic loss, since such craft-artisan types do *not* own the means of mass industrial production, and have no conceivable way of being price-competitive with those who *do* own the means of mass industrial production, for mass-production.
Sure, there still may be some *niche* markets, but most of us, as consumers, give our money to those corporate stores (Walmart, etc.) that dominate the market for a wide array of goods, exploiting labor in China for the least-expensive mass-market goods to consumers.
Your sense of political economy is *antiquated* because we don't live in the 18th century -- you haven't come to terms with mass industrial production, which is the *norm* today.
My point stands that people today require *cash* to participate in the modern capitalist economy, and cash can only be obtained by workers for their *labor*, for a wage. (Owning some land of one's own is no longer sufficient in and of itself, to succeed in business endeavors.)
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
It's a *class* issue -- you should ask this question of anyone who is wealthy enough to not *have* to work for a living.
Truth To Power wrote:
If someone can contribute so much value that they do not have to work for a living, why would you care? They are not taking anything away from you or anyone else thereby. The class issue only arises because of the privileged, who are legally entitled to TAKE value WITHOUT contributing commensurate -- or any -- value in return. You have merely decided never to know the difference between those two situations.
The wealthy don't even have to 'contribute value', whatever that may mean. If someone is *born wealthy* then they've never had to work a day in their lives, for example.
I'm not a moralist, so I really *don't care* who works and who doesn't, but on the whole, those who *do* have to use their lives for the sake of living have a certain political interest in *overturning* this system of elitist capitalism, and its institution of private property.
The aristocracy no longer exists, so today, privilege = wealth.
---
Truth To Power wrote:
Whereas you refuse to know the indisputable fact that the builder and therefore owner of a factory is making a contribution to production, not taking anything from anyone else as the landowner does.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Any given construction worker who adds to the construction of a factory building is *not* its owner, because the market transaction is not *structured* that way -- the worker receives a *wage* in exchange for the work-product, to the employer.
Truth To Power wrote:
Correct. You said something that is true. Congratulations!
You previously made it sound as though anyone who physically *builds* a factory is automatically also the *owner*, which you've confirmed as being false.
Since the worker is paid a wage, and is *not* the owner of what he or she makes, for *any* commodity, this means that the owner of the equity capital, for the production of the factory (or whatever), has *different interests* from that of the worker, and is *not* the worker's friend, as a result.
The equity capital owner expropriates *surplus labor value* from the worker, since such surplus labor value is *additional* to that 'necessary labor value' *required* and used by the worker for self-maintenance, and for the propagation of that labor-power going-forward, meaning raising children, including all of society's contributions (education, etc.) to that end.
[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit
[/quote]
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Truth To Power wrote:
Whereas you refuse to know the indisputable fact that the builder and therefore owner of a factory is making a contribution to production, not taking anything from anyone else as the landowner does.
ckaihatsu wrote:
The landowner (of the factory site) would argue with you because of the money they spent to *acquire* that land in the first place -- that's capitalism, not that I *agree* with such practices.
Truth To Power wrote:
But the land was already there, ready to use, with no help from the owner. The factory was not. The landowner merely paid for a license to steal fromthe factory builder. The fact that he paid for it does not alter the fact that what he is doing is in fact stealing.
Those who purchase parcels of land, as commodities under capitalism, may or *may not* decide to build factories on that land -- regardless, the land itself is a *commodity* in the present-day, and must be purchased as a commodity.
Yes, equity capital *does* produce commodities, while rentier capital (land, etc.) does *not*. But equity capital is not a 'contribution' in any sense of the term -- rather it is *self-interested*, and is invested only with the expectation of making a financial *gain*.
By 'builder' you actually mean 'investor' (of equity capital), because the physical *building* of whatever physical structure, like that of a factory, is done by *wage workers*, exploited by equity capital for their labor power, and is *not* done by the people who own equity capital.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Work, though, is *mandatory* for anyone -- meaning the working-class -- who doesn't already have money to pay for the expenses of living in modern society. Work / employment is *not* voluntary under capitalism unless one already has money / capital. Bread / food is *required*, biologically, for life and living, but requires *market participation* to procure, which requires either cash or employment.
Truth To Power wrote:
Working for your food, clothing and shelter, as our ancestors did for millions of years,
This is incorrect -- the bulk of humanity's existence was as foragers and hunters, meaning that they lived off the land, before domestication and the use of farming.
Truth To Power wrote:
is a fact of life: the means of subsistence must be produced by our labor, and if it is not our labor, it has to be someone else's.
Or, these days, it's done by machinery, and/or fully-automated processes, as with robotics, with *zero* human labor needed.
Truth To Power wrote:
The market just means you can exchange with others for the things you want or need. The relevant difference is not the existence of the market but of PRIVILEGE, which legally entitles the privileged to demand that others pay them not for any contribution of value , but just for their PERMISSION to earn a living.
Your convoluted politics is *still* 18th-century, and you're ignoring the impact of industrial mass-production on current economics.
You have a *land* fetish.
---
Truth To Power wrote:
No, they are not charity, and I have never said or implied they were, any more than a baker's offer to sell you a loaf of bread is charity. Factory jobs are a voluntary, market-based, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction, like buying a loaf of bread from a bakery or paying the community for secure, exclusive land tenure in the geoist system.
ckaihatsu wrote:
By 'community' you mean 'existing owners of private property / land', or, within geoism, 'the fascist state landlord'.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, I mean the community. I'm not a Marxist, so I actually use words to mean what they mean.
Land has *already* been commodified and *privatized* under capitalism, so there's no 'community' controlling land anymore. Land itself does not produce commodities -- it's *financial* in the present-day.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Under *your* politics people wouldn't even be able to *stand still*, and exist, because all land would be franchised-out from the fascist state authority / landlord.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, you made that up. Under my proposal, everyone would have free, secure, exclusive tenure on enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity. That's more freedom and opportunity than they get by right under either capitalism or socialism.
No, under your fascist 'geoism' people would have to *rent* land usage, from the monopolist fascist state, so you *can't* guarantee 'free, secure, exclusive tenure'. As soon as someone is no longer *able* to pay the market rent they can no longer use the land, according to your fascist geoism.
---
Truth To Power wrote:
Doesn't the baker equally "exploit" his customers to make private profits? And for that matter, doesn't the worker equally "exploit" the factory owner to make private profits: his wages?
ckaihatsu wrote:
No to the first scenario because the exchange of exchange-value (bread), for exchange-value (cash) is a *market transaction* of exchange values, while the exchange of *labor power* (work-effort), for exchange-value (wages) *is* exploitation because the cashless worker *cannot* go without cash, and food, and housing, etc., in a modern society, which is what we all live in.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just more of your made-up Marxist nonsense directly contrary to fact. People have to work for their food, etc. in nature anyway, and whether they choose to engage in exchange or not, voluntary exchange is not exploitation even though people need food because either way, they would have to work or starve. The employer just offers them a better return on their labor than they could get by going out and hunting rabbits, or fishing, or digging up tubers, or gathering nuts and berries. The exploitation only arises because the LANDOWNER STOPS THEM from going out and hunting and gathering unless they pay him for PERMISSION to do so. Our ancestors did not have or need cash. They engaged in exchange for goods and/or labor or they didn't, and it was voluntary either way, not exploitation. Why couldn't people do the same now, given the availability of far superior hunting and gathering technology? One reason and one reason only: unlike our remote ancestors, modern people have to pay a landowner for permission, and their hunting and gathering is unlikely to be productive enough to pay the market rent.
Recall that you've already *acknowledged* that the necessities of life and living are *mandatory*:
ckaihatsu wrote:
[Eating] food is not *optional*, it's a mandatory *necessity* for everyone,
Truth To Power wrote:
I'm not ignoring it. Using land is also mandatory.
---
The selling of one's labor-power under capitalist commodity-exchange *is* exploitation because one is compelled to work for *longer hours* than what one requires to maintain and *reproduce* one's own labor-power -- this is called *surplus labor value*, which is *expropriated* by the employer.
You seem to think that people should *continue* to live off the land, but that's ridiculous because of modernity, both in production and consumption. Modern production is based on *industrial*, mass-production processes, so then the question for political economy is 'Who gets to benefit from that mass production?', and for consumption the question for political economy is 'Who gets to consume modern lifestyles?'
This is far from your antiquated concern over only the land and its rudimentary, basic, 'natural' production.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
What matters to the *worker*, interest-wise, is the *reproduction of labor* -- any work-product that *exceeds* this basic maintenance and reproduction of worker-existence going-forward is actually *appropriated* by the employer as 'surplus labor value' -- hence, *exploitation* by the employer.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just more ridiculous, absurd and disingenuous Marxist garbage contrary to fact.
Just because you *say-so* doesn't mean it's *true*. You've provided no evidence for your dismissiveness here.
Perhaps what you're unused-to is the definition of labor-power *not* in terms of capitalist exchange-values (wages), but rather in terms of the interests of the worker -- for *maintenance* and reproduction of that labor-power going-forward (necessities of life and living, child-raising), instead of as a function / proportion of the equity capital invested by the employer.
Your dismissive attitude isn't addressing any of the subject matter of what I've posted.
Truth To Power wrote:
As Ricardo proved, the value of labor is what it would produce on marginal land. All production in excess of what the worker could produce on his own on marginal land has self-evidently and indisputably been contributed to production BY the employer, and is therefore rightly his property, except the portion accounted for by the rent of his advantageous location. But in fact, most of it goes to the landowner in return for nothing (thanks to landowner privilege and the Law of Rent), or to the worker because government has intervened massively on his behalf to rescue him from enslavement by landowners.
So you're trying to figure out how to appropriately *divvy up* the gains from the production of commodities, under capitalism.
So the employer invests *equity capital* (machinery for production), which *amplifies* the laborer's labor power. The landowner is needed by capitalism for relative *apportionment* of this-or-that land parcel, under private ownership -- 'social organization'.
So the parties involved are the landowner, the worker, the factory owner, and the government -- the machinery is just 'dead labor', meaning the results of past labor done, the land was already there, and government just *administrates* a little, like a 'meta-owner', so-to-speak, for the sake of standards and consistency (in bourgeois interests, of course).
So all of the 'added value' comes from the *workers* and their labor, which alters the physical world.
Ricardo's theories of wages and profits
In his Theory of Profit, Ricardo stated that as real wages increase, real profits decrease because the revenue from the sale of manufactured goods is split between profits and wages. He said in his Essay on Profits, "Profits depend on high or low wages, wages on the price of necessaries, and the price of necessaries chiefly on the price of food."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ric ... nd_profits
This, by the way, corresponds to the *Marxist*-type diagram of *class*-based interests:
[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends
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Neo-Ricardians
After the rise of the 'neoclassical' school, Ricardo's influence declined temporarily. It was Piero Sraffa, the editor of the Collected Works of David Ricardo[36] and the author of seminal Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities,[37] who resurrected Ricardo as the originator of another strand of economics thought, which was effaced with the arrival of the neoclassical school. The new interpretation of Ricardo and Sraffa's criticism against the marginal theory of value gave rise to a new school, now named neo-Ricardian or Sraffian school. Major contributors to this school includes Luigi Pasinetti (1930–), Pierangelo Garegnani (1930–2011), Ian Steedman (1941–), Geoffrey Harcourt (1931–), Heinz Kurz (1946–), Neri Salvadori (1951–), Pier Paolo Saviotti (–) among others. See also Neo-Ricardianism. The Neo-Ricardian school is sometimes seen to be a component of Post-Keynesian economics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ric ... Ricardians
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And:
Smith’s assertion that labour is the source of all value led him to the conclusion that rent and profit are labour taken from the immediate producer by the landlord or factory owner.
As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land… The produce of almost all other labour is subject to the like deduction of profit. In almost all arts and manufactures the greater part of the workmen stand in need of a master to advance them the materials of their work, and their wages and maintenance until it be completed. He shares in the produce of their labour…and this share consists his profit.67
There is not harmony of interest, but a clash between the interests of the masters and the interests of the workers:
The interests of the two parties are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much as possible, the masters to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour. It is not difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute and force the other into compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorises or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen… In all disputes, the master can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer or merchant…could normally live a year or two on the stocks they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week.68
The logic of Smith’s argument was to move beyond a critique of the unproductive hangovers from ‘feudalism’, made from the point of view of the industrial capitalists, to a critique of the capitalists themselves—to see them as unproductive parasites, living off profits which come from the labour of workers. It was a logic transmitted, via the writings of Ricardo (who attacked the landowners from the point of view of industrial capitalism), to the first socialist economists of the 1820s and 1830s and to Karl Marx. The weapons which the greatest political economist of the Enlightenment used to fight the old order were then used to fight the new one.
Smith shied away from drawing such conclusions. He was able to do so by mixing his notion that value came from labour with another contrary notion. In this, he said the value of a commodity depended on the combined ‘revenues’ from it of landlord, capitalist and worker. Despite the circularity of the argument (revenues depend on value, but value is the sum of the revenues), this was the idea which was to be taken up by Malthus and the great populariser Jean Baptiste Say and to become the orthodoxy in mainstream economics after the death of Ricardo.
Nevertheless, Smith was the first to portray the central outlines of the new economic system which was emerging. It was a picture which gave British capitalists some idea of where they were going, and the would-be capitalists of other countries some notion of what to copy. It was published just as a century and a quarter of relative social peace was giving way to a new era of revolutionary upheaval. Its ideas were to shape the attitudes of many of the key actors in the new era.
Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 259-262
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Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just more of your false, disingenuous, and absurd Marxist filth. The worker pays a parasitic landowner for use of a location that affords him access to publicly created economic opportunity -- to work, to shop, etc. -- and pays PRODUCERS for their PRODUCTS like food, clothing and shelter, etc.
At the beginning of this post I showed your discipline / ideology to be *arbitrary*, because of where you happen to draw-the-line between the public and private sectors -- you support government for *right-wing* concerns like militarism, but you eschew government for matters of public good, like for food, housing, etc.
The owners of *equity capital* are *exploitative* of labor power, because they expropriate surplus labor value:
Surplus-value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost of the materials, plant and labour power.
Imagine a worker who is hired for an hour and paid $10 per hour. Once in the capitalist's employ, the capitalist can have him operate a boot-making machine with which the worker produces $10 worth of work every 15 minutes. Every hour, the capitalist receives $40 worth of work and only pays the worker $10, capturing the remaining $30 as gross revenue. Once the capitalist has deducted fixed and variable operating costs of (say) $20 (leather, depreciation of the machine, etc.), he is left with $10. Thus, for an outlay of capital of $30, the capitalist obtains a surplus value of $10; his capital has not only been replaced by the operation, but also has increased by $10.
The worker cannot capture this benefit directly because he has no claim to the means of production (e.g. the boot-making machine) or to its products, and his capacity to bargain over wages is restricted by laws and the supply/demand for wage labour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value
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ckaihatsu wrote:
If someone *had* sufficient capital, they could *purchase* land, so as to not have to pay rent every month, for a *leasing* of the land. That would displace the need for a transaction with the *rentier* capitalist.
Truth To Power wrote:
Utter nonsense. That just substitutes a one-time payment of capitalized future rents for the rents themselves. Instead of monthly rent, the landowner just gets all the future rent up-front. The transaction with the landowner is of the same something-for-nothing type, just aggregated into one transaction.
Nothing of what you've said *contradicts* anything that I've said in this segment, so my point stands.
You're simply looking at it financially, from the standpoint of the *landowner*, and *not* of the purchaser.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
If someone had sufficient (equity) capital to *own* businesses, perhaps for food, then they would not have to *purchase* food as a commodity from an equity capitalist, and would not have to work for wages in order to afford food.
Truth To Power wrote:
They would not have to work because they would be contributing to production by providing the producer goods like buildings, equipment, etc. that would not otherwise have been available, thereby aiding production by far more than the worker.
I don't agree that equity capital is more important than wage labor. Labor can exist without equity capital, but equity capital cannot exist without labor.
By *extension*, though, your argument can be used in the interests of *any* wealth ownership, since such has the *potential* to invest in production, whether it actually does so, or not.
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Truth To Power wrote:
[Under] capitalism, the worker has previously been stripped of his right to liberty, and thus his options, by private ownership of land, and must thus sell his labor to employers on disadvantageous terms in order to survive. So under capitalism, unlike under geoism, the worker has no right to access economic opportunity on his own instead of seeking wage employment;
ckaihatsu wrote:
You just acknowledged that the wage-worker is *compelled* into disadvantageous terms with the employer.
Truth To Power wrote:
BY THE LANDOWNER, NOT THE EMPLOYER.
No, that's not true, because the landowner doesn't pay a wage. Any work done for a landowner is in the interests of those private *assets*, like rental units, for a cut of the *rent*, but *no commodities* are being produced.
Workers who don't have savings are *compelled* to sell their labor power as a commodity to an employer, for wages, for the necessities of life and living.
You keep making it sound as though people should *settle* for an 18th-century lifestyle, according to mere subsistence farming, and your entire *politics* revolves around this anarchronism. It's unfortunate that many people's lives *do* settle for subsistence farming, but in doing so they're forfeiting their class struggle for present-day *industrial* means of mass production.
Are you a Third Worldist?
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Truth To Power wrote:
[The] worker has previously been stripped of his right to liberty, and thus his options, by private ownership of land, and must thus sell his labor to employers on disadvantageous terms in order to survive.
ckaihatsu wrote:
You just acknowledged that the wage-worker is *compelled* into disadvantageous terms with the employer. This is the point that *I've* been making, so this labor-for-wages transaction is *not* an even-handed market exchange, as you usually tout. You're *flip-flopping* on your position regarding this dynamic of labor-for-wages.
Truth To Power wrote:
No it isn't. Your claim is that only the worker contributes to production and thus earns a share of production.
No, you've been *flip-flopping* on whether the biological necessities of life and living are 'voluntary' or 'mandatory'. You don't seem to think that food and housing are *mandatory* for all, most of the time.
Since industrial production needs workers, workers need employment, for a wage, from industrial capitalism. Turning back the clock to mere subsistence farming for everyone isn't an option in today's modern, industrialized world. The world uses *industrial* production and modern, industrial wage workers.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
so this labor-for-wages transaction is *not* an even-handed market exchange, as you usually tout.
Truth To Power wrote:
It's not even-handed UNDER CAPITALISM because of landowner privilege, but IS even-handed when the worker's right to liberty is secured in the geoist system.
All you're doing with your politics is letting industrialist equity capital owners off-the-hook, by advocating that everyone turn-back-the-clock and become subsistence farmers.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
You're *flip-flopping* on your position regarding this dynamic of labor-for-wages.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, you just refuse to know the facts that the employer -- the provider, contributor, and owner of the producer goods the worker uses -- is a contributor to production, and geoism is not capitalism.
Since 'producer goods' (factories, equipment, etc.) were originally made by workers, anyway, I say that the workers of the world should be the collective owners of all producer goods, which will benefit them *even more* than if they settled for mere subsistence farming on their own plots of land.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Under your geoism the worker would *not* enjoy any benefit above the existing capitalist system, because the regular rentier-capitalist landlord would be replaced with your geoist Stalinist or fascist *state* landlord authority / administration, and would have to pay market rates to the state in order to lease land.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, I have already refuted that claim many times, and you always just ignore the fact that it has been proved false, and repeat it again. Every resident citizen would have free, secure, exclusive tenure on enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity. They would only pay rent if they wanted to exclude others from more than that. Moreover, government would be able to hire more workers to provide desirable public services and infrastructure on a cost-recovery basis, increasing labor demand and wages, and workers would get free access to those benefits with their individual exemptions. Finally, the productive would be relieved of the burden of taxation, as they would only have to pay for government once instead of twice, with no something-for-nothing payment to landowners. Workers would thus on average have triple, quadruple, or more real disposable after-tax-and-rent income.
Since land parcels would be allocated according to *market* dynamics, that means that those who could *afford* better, choicier plots of land would *pay more* for them, yielding the same elitism of capitalism that we all know all-too-well today.
Your politics is too *dependent*, and *trusting* of the market mechanism, even if you promise land reforms of some kind. At most you're advocating / promising FDR-type reforms, but that's about it.
I call for the ending of such charades, for the workers to control all means of mass industrial production, worldwide. I don't think that such should be in the hands of equity-capital capitalists.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Capital-less workers would be in the *same* economic position in your geoism, as in capitalism, because they would be compelled to sell their labor to an employer, in return for an exploitative wage, in order to afford rent payments to the state landlord for leasing land, presumably for life-necessary housing.
Truth To Power wrote:
Garbage refuted above. Wages would no longer be exploitative because the workers' rights to liberty and thus their bargaining power would be restored, and would have FREE use of enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity.
All your claims are just factually false.
Equity capital would continue to control society's production, so *they* would be the ruling class, according to your model. Why don't you recommend subsistence farming to the equity capitalists?
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Truth To Power wrote:
he must pay a landowner full market value just for permission to work for an employer;
ckaihatsu wrote:
No, this is incorrect.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, of course it isn't. Don't be ridiculous.
Are you *still* fetishizing over *land*? Just stop.
ckaihatsu wrote:
While payments to employers for employment *happen*, it's typically not the norm.
Truth To Power wrote:
The payment in question is to a LANDOWNER for permission to access employment opportunities, not to the EMPLOYER. Pay attention.
I *don't agree* with your land fetishism, or your politics of subsistence farming for non-equity-owners.
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Truth To Power wrote:
and he must then pay a landowner again just for permission to access the desirable public services and infrastructure his taxes just paid for.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Incorrect.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, of course it isn't. I stated a fact. Google "Henry George Theorem" and start reading. And stop being so ridiculous with your claims that I have said anything that is incorrect. Of course I haven't.
You need to extend your critique of rentier capital ownership, to *equity* capital ownership as well, since we live in an *industrial* era of mass-production.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, but using debt isn't an automatic *necessity*. People *can* get by on wages, if they happen to have employment.
Truth To Power wrote:
They have to use money, which is almost all issued as interest-bearing debt. Part of that cost is passed on to them, like a tax.
Again you're focusing on the *wrong party* -- you're talking about *government* monetary policy, which is not of any concern to anyone who is of the *working class*. The working class has *no* interests in common with the bourgeois class.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Ditto for intellectual property. Much is *in* the public domain, as on the Internet, so I don't think that the average person / worker necessarily *needs* access to private intellectual property.
Truth To Power wrote:
Obviously you are just objectively wrong, as usual. Something as obvious as a computer or smartphone, which almost everyone has and many need to use for work, is made immensely more costly by IP monopolies.
Almost everything you say is just objectively false.
Again, all you care about is *market pricing*, at most -- you're an *economic reformist*, at best.
Workers should *control* all factories and workplaces so that they can *benefit directly* from all such assets (IP, etc.) within.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Products are *commodities* under capitalism and can be 'accessed' / purchased outright with *money*, per product, without regard to the underlying intellectual property.
Truth To Power wrote:
False. Almost everything we buy is more expensive because of IP monopolies. Even food is made more expensive by patent monopolies on seeds.
The working class does *not need* market pricing, because the working class does not need markets, nor exchange values. Collectivizing all land, and all productive goods (means of mass industrial production) would yield workers control over social production, instead of taking baby steps, as with *your* proposal for a return to subsistence farming for those who don't have equity capital.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
You're not even *addressing* any aspect of them, so you're just being summarily *dismissive*. I'll stick to text, which you seem more capable of addressing.
Truth To Power wrote:
I don't have the time or energy to hold your hand while I show you why your diagrams are wrong.
You're not even bothering to address any of the *content* within, so don't bother with anything else, either.
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Truth To Power wrote:
No. Nationalization implies forcible dispossession of current holders. That's not the proposal. Almost all landholders would continue to hold the land they currently hold. They would just no longer get to pocket the subsidy.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Now you're being *ambiguous*
Truth To Power wrote:
No, I am merely identifying facts that you have to contrive some way of not knowing, because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.
I don't have 'beliefs', and you're being blithely dismissive, without addressing any content, by using the terms 'false and evil'. It's really low-quality.
You still haven't addressed how your fascist vision would get state power, in order to take over control of land. You make it sound like a mere 'reform', but where's your *constituency* for this cultish return to subsistence farming for the masses, instead of forward to *seizing* all factories / productive equipment for workers-of-the-world control of mass production -- ?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
-- who would the *owner* of land be, exactly?
Truth To Power wrote:
In effect, no one. As a matter of legal form, the one paying the rent. The title just wouldn't be worth anything.
Then why have you mentioned a 'government' for your geoism, at all?
I *already* told you that there couldn't be any real-estate valuations for any of the land, under your model, and now at least you're *confirming* that instead of being petty-argumentative, as before.
If there happened to be a *dispute* between two prospective leasees over the leasing of the same plot of land, how would your fascist monopolist government administration *decide* between the two claimants, if there's no 'owner' of the land, not even your fascist monopolist non-owner of the non-real-estate -- ?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Ownership is *per parcel* of land, and is discrete -- either your nationalizing state *administration* is the owner, leasing it out at market rates, or else the *existing* private-property ownership ('landholders') would be the ownership, which is the status-quo.
Truth To Power wrote:
No. Land rent would just go to the community that creates it instead of to the landowner in return for nothing. Ownership without privilege is far from the status quo. Everything you say is just reliably false.
Okay, I'll fucking bite -- how would 'the community' 'create land' -- ?
And why don't you extend your 'communalism' over land to all *equity* capital as well?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
You seem to think that you'd be able to *buy-out* all the land parcels that you hope your geoist state will administer, but you haven't addressed the *funding* for this purported buy-out.
Truth To Power wrote:
I have never suggested a buy-out.
Okay, then address how you conceive of getting state power for your fascist monopolist vision.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
As I already mentioned, those who already own land are not going to want to *pay rent* for what they already own
Truth To Power wrote:
Too bad. Those who expect to profit from injustice are always going to oppose justice. They have bet on injustice, so if justice wins, they lose. They therefore deserve to lose. So that is not an argument. They knew when they bought the land that they would have to pay tax on it to keep it, and they knew the tax could be increased or the basis of its calculation reformed without their consent.
You call your vision 'justice' -- ?
I'm not in the habit of defending private property owners, but in this case, I am, because your proposal is *inadequate*. Either you should stick with the status-quo capitalism, which would be more honest and consistent, or else you should just let the workers of the world control their own labor, collectively, *plus* all the past results of their labor, meaning the material world as a whole (both present-day rentier *and* equity types of capital).
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ckaihatsu wrote:
-- if you *insist* on this measure then you're a *fascist*.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just more absurd nonsense from you. Fascists are ALWAYS in bed with landowners. ALWAYS. Everything you say is just reliably false.
So you're a regular duplicitous *reformist*, then, by recommending substandard subsistence farming to those without capital, while recommending *equity* capital to those who want to control industrial mass production, and be *ruling class*.
At best this is just a *land reform*, the kind that was promised to Africa centuries ago.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so, again, how would any given 'government' procure the *funding* to buy-out existing owners, to get their land?
Truth To Power wrote:
Again, there is no need to buy them out or "get" "their" land. Just require them to pay for what they are taking by excluding others from it, or yield it to someone who will.
So how would 'the community', whoever that is, get *state power* so as to do this land reform?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
I'd like to revisit and address this line of yours, to make the distinction between 'state capitalism' / Stalinism, and 'workers-of-the-world' socialism.
Under *Stalinism*, yes, the government would be the administrator of land, etc., because Stalinism *implies* constraint of the polity to the boundaries of a given nation-state.
But with workers-of-the-world socialism, no bourgeois state would be required, or needed, to any extent, and it would be the *workers themselves* who would be the administration of the world's society, particularly over their own social production, which would be society's total social production.
Truth To Power wrote:
What you are describing is the economic organization typical of a hunter-gatherer economy. The closer you get to implementing such an absurd idea in the modern world, the more comprehensively catastrophic the result you will obtain.
No, you're assuming that there would be *no organizational structure* for such a collective, non-hierarchical workers-of-the-world socialism. Workers-of-the-world socialism could make use of a state-like *workers state*, for mass workers interests in common, and especially to defeat the bourgeois class foe. Once complete this vanguardist workers state would no longer be relevant because the world's workers would then *have* both land and factories to control, for social production, for human need.
My 'labor credits' model deals exactly with this issue of potential *logistics* for such a collective workers social organizing, for collective production.
labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'
https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338And:
Emergent Central Planning