[ckaihatsu]

scariest Halloween costume

Here's the *real* scary thing -- *my* politics are so *demand*-oriented (not 'supply-side' / 'trickle-down'), that I don't even *try* to establish any kind of 'peg', or ratio, of work-input, to rewards-output, as we're used to, with wages. I mean, *none at all*.

I start from the societal / civilizational goal of *human need* -- which, to me, anyway, implies *consumption* without regard to the *production* of it, whatsoever. And this *is* the standard for humane, life-critical services these days, like an ambulance -- the patient doesn't have to own stock or be employed at the hospital itself, for a hospital stay.

So, again, yeah -- totally *decoupled*, work from rewards, according to me.

Here's portions of my material, to save me from having to do redundant efforts:

A proletarian revolution would mean taking the world's material economy *off* of the market system -- but then, what should *replace* it? Once the paradigm of exchange-values is imploded, how would an egalitarian society properly value goods, resources, and materials, *and* various different liberated-labor efforts (work roles), without regressing back to the use of market exchanges and exchange values?

One major problem with the 'communal' approach, even if implemented worldwide, is that we can't just pretend that all work roles are the same -- the unstated assumption with the 'communal' approach is that as long as one is *contributing* to the material commons, one should be able to *partake* from that resulting complex social production, for one's own needs. This is *not* an entirely bad premise, actually, because one implication of it is that people should be consuming from social production according to their *needs*, and not according to what they've *contributed* to society, because that would mean rewards-for-labor, or the implicit *commodification* of labor based on what goods can be exchanged for it.

This may sound *strange* at first, but one could think of it as a new Enlightenment of social norms -- all social production should be for satisfying *human need*, and for no other reason. It's only with the relatively recent advent of *industrial* mass production techniques that humanity is able to realize far more output / productivity for labor inputs, and this dynamic is what modern communism is premised on, since surplus labor value is currently *seized* by private ownership for its own self-aggrandizement. Under communism all labor value, however measured, would benefit those who need to take and consume from it, regardless of their contributions to the creation of it.

Of course the common logical argument at this point, then, is to ask 'Who would have any material *motivation* to do the work if it wasn't societally required, and also wasn't directly rewarded?'

This is a *valid* argument, and usually *isn't* addressed by communist proponents, except perhaps to vaguely say that everyone would have a shared communal social responsibility, etc.

One part of a good, *systematic* answer to it is first to compare a rough estimate of what common, basic, modern human needs *are* on the whole, versus the capacities of what our society is *technologically* able to do to produce for those needs. Present-day technology for agriculture and for industry is *more* than quantitatively capable of producing to satisfy unmet humane needs since so much is currently *wasted* due to market speculation and subsequent unsaleability of excess commodities (as 'judged' so by the hands-off market mechanism).

Under capitalism there's never full utilization, much less full automation, due to the threshold of market pricing. Unprofitable avenues of production, as for many medicines, for example, or housing, will not be undertaken if the owners of that material capacity are unable to fetch a sufficient return on their investments through those productive processes. This effectively discriminates against the poor since the impoverished are such lightweight participants in the capitalist economy. Much genuine human need goes unfulfilled under the market-commodified system of material economics.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338

[Unthinking Majority]

Do you also go around to nursing homes in your scariest Halloween costume, to frighten pensioners -- ?.

Yes. Pensions should exist, but they only exist because a large % of the working population is stupid and doesn't know how to save or plan for retirement. So we force them to save and invest it for them too. How embarrassing.

[ckaihatsu]

Yes. Pensions should exist, but they only exist because a large % of the working population is stupid and doesn't know how to save or plan for retirement. So we force them to save and invest it for them too. How embarrassing.

Yeah, it's *still* thin gruel / weak sauce -- you, like TTP, are *so* enamored with your pseudo-meritocratic rituals, like 'investing', or 'market economics', that you'd rather modern social life be some kind of rat-maze for everyone, all in the name of 'market choice', or the *private sector*, basically.


[2] G.U.T.S.U.C., Simplified

Spoiler: show

You'd rather release the *employer* from humane-welfare-type responsibilities / liabilities, all for the sake of *liquidity*, to keep the economic adrenaline flowing, even past its efficacy, like right-now.

Sunny-day-rainy-day, what about *executive stock options*, or *golden parachutes*, alongside your whining about now-mostly-offloaded, working-man-type *pension obligations* -- ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_option

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_parachute


And:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_company

[Unthinking Majority]

Yeah, it's *still* thin gruel / weak sauce -- you, like TTP, are *so* enamored with your pseudo-meritocratic rituals, like 'investing', or 'market economics', that you'd rather modern social life be some kind of rat-maze for everyone, all in the name of 'market choice', or the *private sector*, basically.


[2] G.U.T.S.U.C., Simplified

Spoiler: show

You'd rather release the *employer* from humane-welfare-type responsibilities / liabilities, all for the sake of *liquidity*, to keep the economic adrenaline flowing, even past its efficacy, like right-now.

Sunny-day-rainy-day, what about *executive stock options*, or *golden parachutes*, alongside your whining about now-mostly-offloaded, working-man-type *pension obligations* -- ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_stock_option

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_parachute


And:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_company

I have no idea where you got any of this. This is all projection on your part. I never said anything about any of this. I support taxing the very wealthy and large corporations.

[ckaihatsu]

I have no idea where you got any of this. This is all projection on your part. I never said anything about any of this. I support taxing the very wealthy and large corporations.

Maybe I'm just venting -- it's *TTP* who bends in every possible direction to avoid acknowledgement of *equity* capital privileges in society.

Since we're here, where do you stand on the interest rate these days -- *both* of them.

[ckaihatsu]

The factory owner doesnt produce anything per se by themselves at all.

It doesn't matter if the original owner builds the factory with his own hands or pays others to do it. He is still the one whose decisions, initiative and labor caused the factory to exist rather than not exist. And any subsequent owner paid him for it.

It is the workers who do the work.

No, they only do some of it. They DO NOT do the work of bringing all the production factors together to create the factory. There merely perform some labor that the owner pays them to perform, thus relinquishing their claims to the product. But like ckaihatsu, you seem think doing only some of the work somehow entitles them to all of the product.

---

Organization is also necessary, though.

And it is the original owner of the factory that does that work, not the workers.

---


Back *here* in 2022, there's something called 'financialization' that's been seeping into everything, especially your hallowed equity values:

Since the 1980s, the financial industry has chased short-term financial returns over long-term goals, which would require investment in technology and product development. One of the biggest reasons for this was simply a matter of Wall Street following its capitalistic instincts, which told them there was more profit in making money from money rather than in engineered products.

Financial instruments provided quick returns with little fuss, so they invested in software that facilitated this approach rather than investing in costly brick and mortar needed to build factories. They were also supportive of products that could be sold at Wal-Mart and manufactured overseas. As a result, the financial industry has played a major role in the decline of manufacturing in the U.S.

For example, MIT Professor Suzanne Berger wrote about the case of Timken, an Ohio-based manufacturer of power transmission, gears, and specialty steel that was forced to break up its vertically integrated business due to shareholders' intent on maximizing profits. Management, which was against the breakup, argued that it would affect overall product quality. Controlling the attributes of each component used in the final assembly helped the manufacturer provide a superior product to consumers.

Others claim that financialization has led to "unproductive" capitalism. According to economist Michael Roberts, "financialization is now mainly used as a term to categorize a completely new stage in capitalism, in which profits mainly come not from exploitation in production, but from financial expropriation (resembling usury) in circulation."6

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fi ... zation.asp

[Truth To Power]

Maybe I'm just venting -- it's *TTP* who bends in every possible direction to avoid acknowledgement of *equity* capital privileges in society.

Owning what you produce by your decisions, initiative and labor is not a privilege. It is a right: the right to property in the fruits of one's labor.

[ckaihatsu]

Owning what you produce by your decisions, initiative and labor is not a privilege. It is a right: the right to property in the fruits of one's labor.

Yeah, well, people said the same thing about the use of *slavery*, so the plain 'legalist' approach doesn't always cut it, does it -- ?

[Truth To Power]

Back *here* in 2022, there's something called 'financialization' that's been seeping into everything, especially your hallowed equity values:

As usual, the only "argument" the Marxist can offer is blank refusal to make the relevant distinctions. The fact that bankster privilege is used to gain unearned ownership of production systems does not mean those systems were not originally rightfully owned by the entrepreneurs who created them, any more than a school-yard bully stealing a kid's lunch money means the victim's parents didn't earn the money. You just have to always refuse to know such facts, because that is the only way you can preserve your false and evil beliefs.

[Truth To Power]

Yeah, well, people said the same thing about the use of *slavery*, so the plain 'legalist' approach doesn't always cut it, does it -- ?

I did not offer a legalist approach, I identified the relevant physical facts -- the most pertinent of which is that slavery forcibly deprives others of what they would otherwise have, while property in the fruits of one's labor does not.

[Truth To Power]

Yeah, it's *still* thin gruel / weak sauce -- you, like TTP, are *so* enamored with your pseudo-meritocratic rituals,

Production is not a ritual. You just have the usual Marxist cargo-cult-level understanding of it.

like 'investing', or 'market economics', that you'd rather modern social life be some kind of rat-maze for everyone,

Nonsense. I have consistently advocated the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. It is uncompensated abrogation of those rights that forces people onto the treadmill that powers the escalator of the privileged.

all in the name of 'market choice', or the *private sector*, basically.

No, in the name of liberty, justice and truth.

[ckaihatsu]

As usual, the only "argument" the Marxist can offer is blank refusal to make the relevant distinctions. The fact that bankster privilege is used to gain unearned ownership of production systems does not mean those systems were not originally rightfully owned by the entrepreneurs who created them, any more than a school-yard bully stealing a kid's lunch money means the victim's parents didn't earn the money. You just have to always refuse to know such facts, because that is the only way you can preserve your false and evil beliefs.

Here's the thing, though -- how would you / your position conceivably *prevent* financialization -- ?

These days there's a tech arms-race of sorts, to get the least amount of *lag* from the markets, in milliseconds, so as to get the data *first*, before your rivals, for that algorithmic edge.

So, thanks to computers, those with the fastest access to market info can 'skim off the cream' from the top, strictly with data, without formally participating in the 'entrepreneurial' -- presumably *constructive* -- aspect of the capitalist social organization of social commodity-production.

Financialization, to whatever extent, means that *capital* effectively wins-out in social importance over everything else -- here's an unsettling real-world implication of that:


More than 10% of Chinese people consume sewer oil every day_Hotel workers recycle sewer oil

[Tainari88]

I did not offer a legalist approach, I identified the relevant physical facts -- the most pertinent of which is that slavery forcibly deprives others of what they would otherwise have, while property in the fruits of one's labor does not.

TTP the issue is about who has control of the credit system, who allows the acquisition of property, and how and why property becomes a relationship between owners and nonowners.

The worker gets a salary. Mostly because they trade their time, expertise, and labor to the capitalist or the investor or the owner of a said industry or endeavor. Is the cost of that employee not cost-effective to the OWNER of that company, organization or bank, or investment group? They have no incentive to hire the employee. They can be easily sent to the unemployment line. The owner is paying that employee precisely because they are making a profit off of that person's labor, time, or expertise (skill), and as such? It is a relationship based on the owner's ability to control the source of wealth. That is how it works.

The actual property, bank account, etc are regulated and it is about who is ALLOWED to become the owner. That is the core of what capitalism is about. If everyone had access to being owners of vast amounts of wealth and investment? Then it would be a different system. Not capitalistic at all. Precisely because it is about exclusivity and access to wealth that is restricted to a select few? That the system hums along all over the world. The vast majority of even middle-class people nowadays don't really have the ability to buy a home outright, without debt involved for 20+ of paying a bank off first....and or enough in savings and investments to be able to retire around age 55 after about 30 years of steady years paying taxes and working for others.

In reality, very little actual investment and profit that favors an owner over a nonowner are really generated by that individual with incredible power over that wealth. They live 24-hour days with about 8-14 working waking hours of actual labor the same as the worker. But they reap a lot more of the passive income and surplus-value. Why? Because they are a minority of people who the system does back and does favor. Period. Who are they?

That is the question one should ask. But the myth that they are smarter, better, and more hard-working than the worker that is paid a lot less per hour or who depends on a job to survive and not on a privately owned property is not really in dispute. Not even by pro-capitalist TTP.

[ckaihatsu]

I did not offer a legalist approach, I identified the relevant physical facts -- the most pertinent of which is that slavery forcibly deprives others of what they would otherwise have, while property in the fruits of one's labor does not.

Even your dear *equity capital* isn't a level-playing-field, even *given* that everyone starts out with a designated plot of land, or whatever you think the capitalist-arena baseline should be.

More realistically it's *not* this way, anyway, *and* you can't provide a roadmap to how to 'reset' society so that everyone *does* get a standard designated plot of land -- sounds more like 'Hunger Games' now.

Really, you would have to 'reset' for *each new individual* who comes-of-age, so that the influence of *past family generations* doesn't play into the *individual's* stewardship of their own assigned piece of land, versus all others in your chosen off-world scenario here.

And what about *older existing generations* -- could a 60-year-old who's amassed *thousands of acres* over the decades somehow be 'proportionalized' in their holdings, so as to fairly equate to a 20-year-old who's just starting-out with their standard 1-acre-or-less parcel, as their birthright?

In other words, what would prevent huge inequalities from appearing all over again, non-intentionally, just because that's how the system *works* -- ? Probably then as now, all of the *good* land would get bought-up and aggregated into wealthier hands, displacing all others onto *lesser* land, creating a *feedback loop* of dispossession-from-quality *after the fact* of initial 'equitability', by government administration, in young adulthood.


---

Yeah, it's *still* thin gruel / weak sauce -- you, like TTP, are *so* enamored with your pseudo-meritocratic rituals,

Production is not a ritual. You just have the usual Marxist cargo-cult-level understanding of it.

The way production *is* done today, with finance capital, is nothing to be proud of -- just look at the endemic phenomenon of *market failures*, as in 2008-2009, or May of 2020.

Remember, anything *not* directly productive of commodities-for-sale (M-C-M'), is, by default, then *not productive*, meaning all non-equity-invested capital, and also all of government / administration.

like 'investing', or 'market economics', that you'd rather modern social life be some kind of rat-maze for everyone,

Nonsense. I have consistently advocated the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. It is uncompensated abrogation of those rights that forces people onto the treadmill that powers the escalator of the privileged.

Again, you're presuming that a magic switch exists somewhere that could be flicked to put the whole world instantly into an 'ideal land administration' situation. Nope. Go fish.

all in the name of 'market choice', or the *private sector*, basically.

No, in the name of liberty, justice and truth.

'Global land reform' wouldn't be *enough*, because you're still relying on *non-human-intentional* mechanisms -- the market -- instead of just handling things *societally*, roughly analogously to what we're doing here, now.

Seriously, all that's empirically required is a *shopping list* from everyone, and not even that, since quantities could always be handled in the *aggregate*, over *mass* quantities, for known populations. Not-rocket-science.

The 'ritual' part is what we're *still* doing societally, today, in 2022, in a world with such advanced logsitical-type computational machinery. The Russia-Ukraine thing is showing that there's no one left who wants to willingly be cannon-fodder in such a technologically well-equipped world.

[ckaihatsu]

Civilization - Humanity Framework

Spoiler: show

[Truth To Power]

Here's the thing, though -- how would you / your position conceivably *prevent* financialization -- ?

By not legally privileging private commercial banks to increase the money supply. If banks were confined to financial intermediation and risk management (which they pretend is their business), and could not issue additional money, they would not be able to finance financialization.

These days there's a tech arms-race of sorts, to get the least amount of *lag* from the markets, in milliseconds, so as to get the data *first*, before your rivals, for that algorithmic edge.

So, thanks to computers, those with the fastest access to market info can 'skim off the cream' from the top, strictly with data, without formally participating in the 'entrepreneurial' -- presumably *constructive* -- aspect of the capitalist social organization of social commodity-production.

If they did not have access to vast quantities of bank-issued money, they would not be able to extract much with such maneuvers. It is their access to the massive additional purchasing power created by private banks that enables the super-duper uber-rich to take so much in return for no contribution by dint of the sort of trickery you describe.

Financialization, to whatever extent, means that *capital* effectively wins-out in social importance over everything else

In a privilege-based capitalist economy. Again, your "argument" consists of blankly refusing to know the fact that there are crucial differences between money, purchasing power, producer goods, privileges, assets and financial wealth, all of which you conflate as "capital."

[ckaihatsu]

By not legally privileging private commercial banks to increase the money supply. If banks were confined to financial intermediation and risk management (which they pretend is their business), and could not issue additional money, they would not be able to finance financialization.

What about *corporate debt*, though? (How would *that* be prevented?)

If they did not have access to vast quantities of bank-issued money, they would not be able to extract much with such maneuvers. It is their access to the massive additional purchasing power created by private banks that enables the super-duper uber-rich to take so much in return for no contribution by dint of the sort of trickery you describe.

Okay, thanks for the limited-hangout, but what exactly could prevent this *kind of dynamic*, financialization, from occurring spontaneously, given 'x' scenario and 'y' starting factors -- ?

Where *else* would all of that built-up capital *go*? Of *course* at least *some* people with such capital will look to making it perform in the private sector, as with private equity, for example. How would you prevent *that*?

In a privilege-based capitalist economy. Again, your "argument" consists of blankly refusing to know the fact that there are crucial differences between money, purchasing power, producer goods, privileges, assets and financial wealth, all of which you conflate as "capital."

Now you're fetishizing the *terminology* -- the meaning is going to be entirely dependent on the *specifics* anyway, so there's no point here with whatever you're doing.


Generalizations-Characterizations

Spoiler: show

[BlutoSays]

They understand socialism very well.

[wat0n]

So, looking at many threads in this forum, people clearly dont understand what socialism is.

Thats puzzling, because socialism is very easy to understand.

The bible states:

Mark 12, New King James

29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment.

31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

The second law demands altruism. A society which is based on altruism is called socialism.

Atheists have come up with more worldly definitions. Like socialism is when nobody is held dependent and nobody is exploited.

Still this concept is important enough even for atheists that more secular definitions became necessary.

I dont get why any of this is hard to understand.

Because we've seen many governments that were once agreed on to be socialist and, after failing, suddenly those who used to support them claim they were not truly socialist.

[ckaihatsu]

They understand socialism very well.

Whew! *Somebody* had to break that awkward silence, huh -- ? (grin)

So do you *really* feel that threatened by historical-social-democracy (along with historical-Stalinism), or is this just more of your calendar-scheduled *sensationalism* -- ? Haunted by the past much? Sleeping okay?


x D