ckaihatsu wrote:
Bullshit
Truth To Power wrote:
I tell the truth, and I will thank you to remember it.
More bullshit -- you care more about your own equity-capital capitalist faction than anything else, including the larger truth of the class divide.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
-- alienation is an *economic* dynamic, one which separates the products of labor from the workers who created them, just like the Wikipedia article covers.
Truth To Power wrote:
Garbage. That's just division of labor. Same under socialism.
Strange -- you're dismissive of the Marxian / economic / material term 'alienation', even though you agree with its definition, semantically. Do you *like* arguing with dictionaries -- ??
Here are the two terms, side-by-side, for comparison:
Division of labour, instead, refers to the allocation of tasks to individuals or organizations according to the skills and/or equipment those people or organizations possess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_labour
tacos_4_all
7 points
·
4 years ago
It dehumanizes workers, turns us into cogs in a machine. It de-skills us too since it doesn't take much skill to repeat one small task all day. Capitalist class structure is a historical result of the division of labor process, or at least partially so. Industrial division of labor is what created the proletariat though right?
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. link
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the estrangement (Entfremdung) of people from aspects of their Gattungswesen ("species-essence") as a consequence of living in a society of stratified social classes. The alienation from the self is a consequence of being a mechanistic part of a social class, the condition of which estranges a person from their humanity.
The theoretical basis of alienation within the capitalist mode of production is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine life and destiny when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of themselves as the director of their own actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own those items of value from goods and services, produced by their own labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realized human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the means of production—in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value in the course of business competition among industrialists.
And, socialism would *have no* division of labor because there would be no elitist capitalist-like *state* to 'govern', or 'administrate' over all of it, contrary to your Stalinistic imaginings.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
First off, you're *not* a socialist, so you have no *credentials* to speak on behalf of socialism, or on historical Stalinism.
Truth To Power wrote:
Unlike you, I have never presumed to speak on behalf of socialism, only about socialism. As for "historical Stalinism," maybe you should go read a little history yourself, which will show you that socialists all over the world were rejoicing in Stalin's socialist "successes" for decades starting in the 1920s, and claiming them for socialism. Somehow, it was socialism until the horror and utter failure of it became undeniable. Then, magically, it had never been socialism at all, but "Stalinism" all along....
Well, at the time a degenerated workers state in Russia / USSR was *preferable* to Western imperialist hegemony (in geopolitics), despite Stalin's insufferability and deal-making with the West. A parallel could be made with Assad today, in Syria.
Of course revisionism is a bad thing, as you're pointing out.
Unfortunately you're unable to make the distinction between Communist-Manifesto socialism, and the historical accident of Stalinism as it happened, a kind of emergent political-material 'compromise' between the nascent soviet control of industrial production, and the Western imperialist invasions of the same, that hampered the soviets' long-term success.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
It's funny that you're deliberately avoiding *economic* issues here on an *economics* thread --
Truth To Power wrote:
Stop makin' $#!+ up. I'm just identifying the fact that alienation isn't one of them.
I'm *not* making anything up -- you *just* acknowledged the validity of Marx's 'alienation', as expressed in the term 'division of labor':
Truth To Power wrote:
['Alienation'] [is] just division of labor.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
you're blaming 'modern life and work' for people being alienated from the work that they do, when in fact the problem is the *social hierarchy* of classes, in which the ruling class preys on the labor efforts of the working class.
Truth To Power wrote:
Garbage. It's high technology and the division of labor.
The 'division of labor' means that people who need a wage are made to do very circumscribed, repetitive tasks as a small part of an overall assembly line of production. The class hierarchy means that *others* benefit by *not* having to do those menial, repetitive work roles for the sake of their own life and living -- the privileged ownership elite.
Maybe you don't want to use the term 'preying', but that's what it *is*, empirically, regardless -- privileged elites are favored under capitalism with social *control* over what gets produced, according to the political commands of elitist wealth ownership.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
The *timeline* of class society doesn't matter -- it could be feudal lords over serfs, slavemasters over slaves, the aristocracy over governments, or Silicon Valley over our present-day use of computer technologies. What all of these scenarios have in common is that technology is *incidental* to the social relations of dominance by ownership over labor.
Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong again. You still refuse to know the difference between dominance enforced by legally taking away others' rights and mere status achieved by being more productive.
Okay, so now you're relenting and recognizing the class privilege and political hegemony of the (legalistic) social *superstructure*.
But you're -- ironically -- *ignoring* the privilege of production-goods / technological *ownership*, as measured by the yardstick of 'productivity'.
*Of course* I know the difference between the power of the state and the benefits of technological ownership, particularly that of the means of mass industrial production. What *you're* overlooking is that these two material positions in society are actually *interdependent*, symbiotic, and mutually self-reinforcing. Who controls the state under capitalism? The bourgeoisie. And *why* is this? Because of the bourgeoisie's ownership of the means of mass industrial production, which confers the legal right to expropriate surplus labor value from the workers employed by that wealth ownership, through the production process.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
So again you're *wrong* -- social relations *are* economic / material, leading to alienation, and are *not* due to century or decade, technology, or social psychology.
Truth To Power wrote:
According to your fallacious Marxist definitions.
You're too hung-up on *terms*, to the point that you're ignoring the underlying *meanings*. You can adopt or dismiss whatever *terminology* you like, but you're still showing that you do understand the actual *content* involved, as with 'alienation = division-of-labor', or 'social relations [of production] = economics / control of the material world'.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Sure, no one can disagree with you *empirically* here, but you're only using an abstraction, off on a tangent, as usual -- the *issue* at-hand is whether Marxist definitions aim to confuse and obscure instead of clarifying and illuminating.
Truth To Power wrote:
They definitely do, because they do not refer to empirically observable facts.
Incorrect, as you yourself have shown previously, with your understanding of Marxist meanings. (The robbery of workers' surplus labor value through the expropriation of their / our product, while being paid a lesser-value wage, than what the commodities themselves are sold for on the market.)
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Since Marxist definitions are from the perspective of the *working class*,
Truth To Power wrote:
Look, sonny, I don't presume to speak on behalf of socialism, and I will thank YOU -- and your lying idol Marx -- not to presume to speak on behalf of the working class, of which neither of you are members, clear?
You don't get to instruct on the content of what socialism is or is-not, and you don't get to instruct *me*, either.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
*you* deride such as being 'confusing' and 'obscuring', since you're politically partisan to the interests of the *merchant class*
Truth To Power wrote:
More blatant nonsense. There is no "merchant class."
The *ruling* class of merchants -- the bourgeoisie.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
and its quantitative economic scheme of 'pricing' (exchange values), while ignoring the actual human labor that *produced* such exchange values.
Truth To Power wrote:
You are makin' $#!+ up again. I have never ignored labor and you know it. I am merely willing to know the fact that labor is more productive when the owner of producer goods contributes them to the production process.
Again, there's no 'contribution' of anything on the part of capital ownership because the capitalist production process benefits ownership by adding expropriated labor-value to the initial assemblage of materials (production goods and raw materials).
The term that's appropriate here is capitalist *exploitation* of workers and their surplus labor value.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Recall that you once *admitted* this -- that the price of the product sold *has* to be greater than the wage paid to the worker for *producing* it, otherwise there's no point in private ownership of the productive process under capitalism:
Truth To Power wrote:
No. As the quote makes clear, I stated that there was no point in production if the value produced was no greater than the value of labor consumed in the process.
Correct -- that's what I just said.
This *discrepancy* between what labor's products are worth on the market when sold, and the value of the *wage* paid for those products, equals *exploitation* of labor because workers are not getting the full value of what the products of their labor are actually *worth* on the market.
---
Truth To Power wrote:
That is one reason socialism is stupid garbage: it has no way to determine if production is worthwhile or wasteful.
This is an incorrect characterization -- under socialism determinations would be made *consciously* and *qualitatively*, instead of being bound to capitalist commodity values that take-place *unconsciously* and *quantitatively* (according to the realm of exchange-values). Some call this 'economic democracy', meaning that *material* matters could be collectively determined, as well as any socio-political matters, without relying on any kind of specialist substitutionist bureaucratic administration.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
So here you acknowledge that labor inputs *value* into the final commodity, and that that labor is not paid the full market value ('pricing') from the sale of the product produced by that labor.
Truth To Power wrote:
Right, because that labor is not the only input. There are also natural resources, which must be paid for out of production if they are to be allocated efficiently, and the fruits of PREVIOUS labor, which the owner of producer goods contributes to the production process.
Natural resources are *free* to the capitalist, through the production process, as enabled by bourgeois governments, and 'dead labor' has already been claimed as private property by the capitalist -- so these two categories that you've mentioned are not really *significant* costs to the capitalist, mostly due to the stealing of surplus labor value from all workers employed. And again, 'contribution' is an inaccurate term to use because the benefits of production go right back to the capitalist owner -- nothing is 'contributed' to anyone.
[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
This discrepancy can be called -- in Marxist terms -- 'exploitation'. The worker is ripped-off, in material terms, for every hour of labor, which is a type of *alienation* in economic / material terms.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just an outright fabrication on your part. Providing workers with opportunity they would not otherwise have does not and cannot rip them off.
You're being *presumptuous*, though -- employment at this-or-that workplace isn't an 'opportunity' to the worker, it's a *necessity* for the biological and social needs of life and living, for the individual.
You've already acknowledged that there's a discrepancy between what a labor-product is sold for on the market, and the lesser value of the wage paid-for to *produce* that commodity -- this discrepancy *equals* exploitation of labor-value.
[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends
---
Truth To Power wrote:
What stops them from just declining the offer?
What stops workers from declining this-or-that job offer is the reality that the worker has to have money to *purchase* the means of life and living, like food and housing, etc. This, then, is social *coercion* because the worker has no options outside of the capitalist system of buying and selling with which to procure material necessities.
Truth To Power wrote:
Oh, wait a minute, that's right: LANDOWNERS stripped them of their liberty to support themselves any other way.
The problem with this line of yours, that *separates* (rentier-type) land ownership, from (equity-type) capital investments into the production of commodities, is that you're failing to see that these both are all *commodities*, whether land or factory / equity ownership.
Yes, capitalists *have* stripped workers of their 'liberty' -- if you like -- to support themselves / ourselves in any self-sufficient manner. Commodities for biological and social life *must* be procured by the workers through selling the only thing one has: the ability to work, or 'labor power'.
Truth To Power wrote:
Socialism consists in blaming factory owners for what landowners do to workers; capitalism consists in blaming the workers for it.
There's not even any private property (ownership) under socialism, so you're just blatantly *misrepresenting* socialism, as usual.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
*You're* the one making assertions without any underlying evidence, and without providing any reasoning, like 'why' or 'how'.
Truth To Power wrote:
Everyone reading this knows that is false, including you. I have identified the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality. You just refuse to know them, because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.
You're not addressing what I've said. I don't agree with what you're saying because you're just side-stepping the issues I've raised, and you're continuing to mischaracterize my politics.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
This is *yet another* baseless contention from you -- here you are, on a *discussion* board, but you're preferring to favor sounding like some kind of authoritative 'expert', while unable to make the sale because you're not providing any objective basis for your facile claims.
Truth To Power wrote:
I have identified the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality. And you know it.
No, I don't agree. You *suck* at describing objective physical reality because all you do is make baseless opinions. Such isn't welcome or accepted by me because I fundamentally don't agree with your propertarian political views.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Bullshit -- you've repeatedly touted equity values and profit-making, which is all solidly proof of your ideological agreement with capitalism.
Truth To Power wrote:
False. Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production -- land and producer goods -- and I have stated that land cannot rightly be private property. While there are many other sources of privilege and injustice in modern finance capitalism, it is private ownership of land that is the indelible injustice inherent in all capitalism.
Nope -- you can't arbitrarily *separate* rentier-type capital (assets) ownership from equity-type capital (investments) ownership, because capitalism is all about creating a *surplus* in capital / exchange-value valuations, through the expropriation of workers' surplus labor value.
Not all profits can always be continuously perfectly re-invested into new equity vehicles -- at some point some capital is going to need to be dormant, at which point it becomes *rentier*-type capital, like real estate values, for example.
Land itself is *not* economically productive, because it's not treated as equity values -- it's a real-estate, rentier-type *asset* that can command interest and rent payments, which is *not* productive activity. It's *parasitic*, the way the ruling class was during feudalism.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
This is more ideological propaganda on your part -- you situate 'productivity' as being the machinations of elitist capitalist ownership over mass-industrially-productive private property (factories), while it's the *workers* who actually have to work on the machines, to produce finished products, while being materially *exploited*.
Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong. They don't "have to" work on the machines, and if they are being exploited by factory owners, it is only because landowners have forcibly deprived them of their bargaining power. There is nothing inherently exploitative in a consensual agreement to mutual benefit such as selling one's labor for wages.
But you're missing the fact that the 'playing field' isn't level -- workers and employers do *not* have equal power at the bargaining table, as you're implying. The owner of capital can *live off* of capital, but the worker, *without* capital, cannot. Workers only have their own potential to work -- labor power -- which they are obliged to sell to the employer for the sake of a wage, for the sake of procuring the necessary commodities for consumption (food, housing, etc.), for the sake of life and living.
And I've already explained how capitalist exploitation of labor power operates, which you yourself have already acknowledged.
---
Truth To Power wrote:
Again, consider buying a loaf of bread from a bakery. No one is being exploited. Both parties gain from the trade. But if the local mafia stop customers from dealing with a rival bakery that didn't pay them protection money, then the first baker will raise his prices to balance supply and demand. To a socialist fool who doesn't know any economics, this looks like the baker is exploiting his customers by overcharging them; but he is actually just responding to market conditions. It's the mafia that is causing people to pay too much for bread, by removing their access to alternatives.
This is your own strawman-type construction because I haven't been discussing any purported "exploitation" of the *consumer*, but rather the implicit exploitation of the *laborer* within the capitalist productive process. This is 'apples-and-oranges' on your part.
---
Truth To Power wrote:
That's also what the landowner, but not the factory owner, has done to the worker. Socialist fools who don't understand any economics think the baker is exploiting his customers when all he is doing is providing them with bread on mutually agreeable terms.
Strawman.
And you think that the markets automatically provide a perfectly level playing-ground, which is *not* the case.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
'Success' to you is this ruling class dominance over the social-productive process,
Truth To Power wrote:
Nonsense and gibberish. Success is earning the just reward of superior productive contribution, which has nothing to do with class or dominance, and the productive process is immutably private.
You're ignoring / side-stepping the role of the *state*, which *favors* ruling-class interests over the interests of the *working* class. You're also unable to address the emergence of *monopolies* / oligopolies, which confer special advantages due to the lionizing of market-share.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
through the ownership of private property, including the capitalist state's use of violence to *enforce* these class relations.
Truth To Power wrote:
There is no violence involved in the producer having property in his product. The violence is introduced by socialists taking it from him.
Nope -- you're *projecting* again, onto your strawman *Stalinistic* conception of 'socialism'.
Just look at Venezuela today, which is beset by U.S. imperialism's *sanctions* on Venezuela's trade relations. This is the power of the bourgeois imperialist *state*, which overwhelmingly affects economic matters and dynamics, while you seem to think that the state is somehow neutral and almost inert.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
There's no 'merit' to private property,
Truth To Power wrote:
False. Private property -- i.e., rightful private property in the fruits of one's labor -- inherently requires the merit of productive contribution.
That's not a quality of moral-type 'merit' -- it's the objective material interest of capital towards *profit-making*, as established by the social relations of capitalism itself. And there's no 'contribution' involved on the part of private-property, since its own private interests are for self-aggrandizement.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
and 'material success' only comes from this productive monopolization over the heads of the working class.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, it comes from earning more by contributing more.
Bullshit. We've been over this subject matter already. You still haven't provided any proof or reasoning for your reckless opinionating.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Since you *do* acknowledge privileged parasitism, you'd do well to *emphasize* this empirical reality,
Truth To Power wrote:
I do. Very much.
No, you don't. You seem to think that *equity* capital is angelic, while rentier-type capital is to be disdained in particular, but then at other times you *validate* rentier-type capital anyway, showing the inconsistency and unseriousness of your politics.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
and the objective interests of the working class for the collective *seizing* and *controlling* of all socially productive machinery.
Truth To Power wrote:
That is a blatant and absurd non sequitur such as one expects from socialists. Why would I advocate worker seizure and control of producer goods when their current ownership has no relation to privilege or parasitism?
It's *not* a non-sequitur, and you *don't* have to advocate worker seizure and control of producer goods. It's clear which side you're on.
Also, you *just said* that capitalist-type privileged ownership is parasitic:
ckaihatsu wrote:
Since you *do* acknowledge privileged parasitism, you'd do well to *emphasize* this empirical reality,
Truth To Power wrote:
I do. Very much.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
'Opportunity' is an overstatement since *all* working-class people are empirically *under duress* to sell their labor power as a commodity to this-or-that private property owner, for a necessarily exploitative wage.
Truth To Power wrote:
<sigh> Simple question: is the baker who inadvertently benefits from the mafia's removal of a rival offering customers an opportunity to buy bread that they would otherwise have to do without, or not?
You're talking about the *protection racket*, which the United States has mastered internationally -- the protection racket is at the core of the international acceptance of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Competition within the ownership class, as depicted in this scenario of yours, is just a knock-on effect of capitalism and its inherent carving-up of the material world into balkanized national private-property interests. The greatest examples are World War I and World War II.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
There's no 'contribution' when all financial investments into the productive process are done *strategically* for the sake of making private profits.
Truth To Power wrote:
That's just obviously and indisputably false. When the baker buys a new oven to increase production, relieving the mafia-imposed scarcity that has raised prices, with the result that PRICES ARE LOWER for his customers, but PRODUCTION AND HIS PROFITS are HIGHER, he is making a contribution to production. Because socialists have to refuse to know all facts of economics to preserve their false and evil belief system, they refuse to know the fact that the baker's higher profit is EARNED by providing unambiguous benefits for his customers.
Now you're erroneously conflating socialists with being members of a mafia -- socialists do not participate in the furtherance of capitalist social relations except under duress since there's no other system outside of commodities to turn to.
You sound like fucking Ronald Reagan with your 'evil empire' rhetoric, even though no Stalinist nation-states even *exist* anymore. It's 2019, not the redbaiting 1950s.
And private ownership doesn't earn *shit* -- it expropriates the labor-power of workers in the furtherance of its own private aims.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
You somehow think that you're *refuting* Marxism with your groundless claims when all you're really doing is pinning medals on yourself and buying trophies for yourself.
Truth To Power wrote:
The above example of the baker just outright refutes all of Marxism, sorry.
No, it doesn't, ideologue.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
Nope -- I've provided many points, including reasoning, that you're unable or unwilling to respond to.
Truth To Power wrote:
I have to earn a living, so I don't have time to respond to all your repetitive nonsense, which consists almost exclusively of strawman fallacies, nonsensical Marxist boilerplate, and refusals to know indisputable facts.
But you can't even *address* my points -- you twist-and-turn to *avoid* responding in kind.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
This reveals *much* about your own viewpoint and worldview -- you're a *biological determinist*, and now you've projected this worldview into *cultural* human development.
Truth To Power wrote:
I'm a biological realist because unlike you, I am willing to know facts of objective physical reality. Free will vs determinism is a pseudo-issue.
Nope -- by thinking that we create human culture according to our genetics, you're implicitly positing a kind of genetic / biological *predestination*, since you're not including *cognitive functioning* within the individual's process of everyday decision-making.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
By this premise you're stuck in a kind of 'genetic predestination' -- since society is allegedly 'based on our genes', and, according to you, based on the process of natural selection, there's no space left for the exercise of one's own *free will*, since all of our personhood and decision-making is already pre-determined *genetically*.
Truth To Power wrote:
Thank you for regurgitating the pseudo-issue.
It's *not* a pseudo-issue -- it's one or the other, genetic-predestination vs. non-genetic-predestination individual *free will*.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
You're again imputing your own opinions onto socialism, which is *inappropriate* since you ideologically defend capitalist exchange-relations, or 'commodity production'.
Truth To Power wrote:
Try to remember the definition of capitalism. It is ONLY about OWNERSHIP, not markets, exchange, production, or anything else.
Bullshit.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
You're missing that social values like 'power', are a function of the society's *productive relations* -- class --
Truth To Power wrote:
Class is based on ownership, not productive relations.
Ownership *is* a productive relation, since under capitalism only private-property ownership is legitimized with the right to exploit the labor power of the working class.
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
and with the mass-conscious *overthrow* of the class divide there will be an opening for *other* productive relations and values to emerge, ones based on a new reality of *material abundance* instead of capitalism's artificial scarcity, and of full social *cooperation* instead of class-based hierarchical *rule*.
Truth To Power wrote:
See? Nonsensical Marxist boilerplate. Sorry, but I'm not a fan of replacing capitalism's artificial scarcity of natural resources -- which are all still there -- with socialism's much more harmful artificial scarcity of producer and thus consumer goods, which are NOT still there.
You don't understand what capitalism's 'artificial scarcity' even *is* -- and, you're just *presuming* to know how a potential future 'socialism' would operate, without providing any reasoning. It's just baseless opinionating on your part, sorry.
Artificial scarcity is the scarcity of items that exists even though either the technology for production or the sharing capacity exists to create a theoretically limitless abundance or at least a greater quantity of production than currently exists. The most common causes are monopoly pricing structures, such as those enabled by laws that restrict competition or by high fixed costs in a particular marketplace. The inefficiency associated with artificial scarcity is formally known as a deadweight loss.
Background
In a capitalist system, an enterprise is judged to be successful and efficient if it is profitable. To obtain maximum profits, producers may be restricting production rather than ensuring the maximum utilisation of resources. This strategy of restricting production by firms in order to obtain profits in a capitalist system or mixed economy is known as creating artificial scarcity.[1]
Artificial scarcity essentially describes situations where the producers or owners of a good restrict its availability to others beyond what is strictly necessary. Ideas and information are prime examples of unnecessarily scarce products given artificial scarcity [...]
Economic actions that create artificial scarcity
Cartels, monopolies and/or rentier capitalism
Copyright, when used to disallow copying or disallow access to sources. Proprietary software is an example. Copyleft software is a counterexample (where Copyright is used to guarantee the right to copy the object and access source code).
Patent
The Agricultural Adjustment Act
Hoarding, including cornering the market
Deliberate destruction
Paywalls[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_scarcity
[KS mod edit: Rule 2]