ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so then it's a *mix* (of genes and 'nurture' and individual free will).
Truth To Power wrote:
The individual's will is the result of genes and environment. There is no other "will."
Then how do you explain the existence of culture-referencing creativity, as in a journalism article, or a work of art or music -- ?
How did the individual's particular *selection*, and decision-making 'sub-selections' (of 'this', over 'that') take place, exactly, for the final product to be finished? Are you really going to say that biology and nurture together definitively steer the individual to a particular *domain* of interest and work, like sports-over-music, or engineering-over-fiction -- ?
If so, please provide some *backing* for this claim.
Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0
Worldview Diagram
And:
Most twins have two identities: The one they share with their twin brother or sister as part of a pair, and the one that they enjoy all on their own.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... mmon-bonds
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ckaihatsu wrote:
You're saying that genes 'largely' determine who you are, but based on various cultures and religions over the millennia, all over the world, we can see that people tend to reflect the culture that they're *born into*, myself included.
Truth To Power wrote:
Of course. The point is that there isn't anything other than the individual produced by genes and environment. So each individual's decisions being "determined" by genes and environment is what it means for them to have free will.
Pass. (See the previous segment.)
ckaihatsu wrote:
That's just it, though -- *yeah*, on the whole, individuals *are* determined 'largely' by the environments that they grow up in -- meaning 'nurture'. (Another good example is with *pets*, whose 'personalities' are largely determined by how they're raised by their owners, and by their owners' personalities.)
Truth To Power wrote:
The University of Minnesota Twins Study demonstrated decades ago that identical twins reared in different families are more alike in their behavior, personality and even beliefs than fraternal twins reared together. That is effectively proof that genes are more important than environment -- which was already implied by evolution anyway.
This, though, isn't the same thing as your thesis that 'The individual is determined entirely by genetics and environment.'
You're a *behaviorist*, 'black-box' type -- *you* think that examining all of the inputs and outputs around a person would be enough to define the person, because you effectively deny *cognition*.
philosophical abstractions
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ckaihatsu wrote:
The 'superstructure' is what results from what the society is able to *materially produce*.
Truth To Power wrote:
That's physical infrastructure, not culture or beliefs.
The physical infrastructure / what-society-produces / the 'base', is distinct from culture-or-beliefs / the superstructure:
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
And I simply said that they sounded *similar*. You need to chill.
Truth To Power wrote:
They aren't.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Name-calling aside, look at what you stated -- the [material-] economic problem of relief-of-scarcity requires [1] labor, and [2] assets (which I take to be the means of mass industrial production, or 'producer goods').
Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong again. Land is only an asset when it has been appropriated as private property.
I'll add that complementarily, land is only an asset *economically* once *labor* (the labor commodity) has been applied, to transform the raw land into a *commodity* / private property.
My previous point stands that relief of scarcity requires *commodity production*, which capitalism does by socially organizing workers based on accumulations of equity capital.
Truth To Power wrote:
People used land to relive scarcity for millions of years before it was an asset.
Let's say 100,000 years. (And, it could be said that there *was* no scarcity in pre-class society because people simply lived off the land.)
Since we're in *capitalism* now land *is* officially distinguished as an 'asset'.
Truth To Power wrote:
Producer goods have to be contributed by labor; land is already there, ready to use, with no help from its owner or any previous owner.
That's not entirely true. You're not recognizing that *labor* is required to convert raw land into something *usable*, and *saleable* -- a commodity.
Are you saying that producer goods (physical infrastructure like factories and equipment, and/or capital) are *produced* by labor?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
I have *no contention* with that statement itself, but what's more-to-the-point is *how* labor and productive assets are to be *organized*, and of course who gets to *enjoy* / own that social production, and by what rationale.
Truth To Power wrote:
Production is inherently private, not social, and its result is therefore rightly owned by its private producers: i.e., the people whose decisions, initiative and labor result in the product existing rather than not existing.
You're describing *capitalism*, of course -- your politics *glorifies* the owner / executive role, and *any* capital-organizational role, while such social organization for commodity production does *not* itself produce any commodities. The *wage laborers* are the ones who produce the actual commodities for sale by the company, for revenue, for profits.
Social Production Worldview
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Truth To Power wrote:
<ridiculous Marxist tripe snipped>
ckaihatsu wrote:
I just saw the following video, where Wolff suggests that any given left-leaning municipality could use eminent domain to readily *seize* any productive assets that capital ownership doesn't actually *use* -- so that the workers at that workplace could get it running again, under their own collective control, a workers co-op.
Truth To Power wrote:
As I already explained, when socialists steal factories, there are fewer factories available for production. Do you think any entrepreneur is going to build a factory in a jurisdiction where the local authorities just steal factories?? Why is it so hard for socialists to understand such facts?
What's the *alternative* -- for the factories to just *sit around* doing nothing? How would there be 'fewer factories', really, when the ones that *exist* are not even being used to *produce* anything? It may as well *not* be a factory, because the ownership can't get the figures to work out properly, so then everything grinds to a halt. What's the difference? Let the workers do their thing, in the place that they've *been doing* their thing, so that actual production of needed commodities can *resume*.
'Steal' is really inappropriate and unkind -- a worker's co-op at any given site would be for the sake of the *productive entity* first and foremost, which is certainly more / better than layoffs and scrapping the whole thing for salvage.
Commodity production itself isn't *dependent* on entrepreneurship, as you're making it out to be -- any given factory *could* potentially be run collectively by its workers, as you're objecting to, so we both *know* that's it's logistically / realistically *possible* (without entrepreneurship).
ckaihatsu wrote:
There's something of a fairly recent historical example to point to for this, as well:
Truth To Power wrote:
There's nothing wrong with workers' cooperatives buying or building factories as private interests in competition with other producers. It's when socialists seek to steal private owners' factories and forcibly prohibit competition from entrepreneurs other than workers' collectives that they abrogate rights and aggravate scarcity.
It's not stealing if the municipality uses eminent domain to *reclaim* any unused facility, so that its *workers* can continue to run it. That said, this is merely a *tactic* and not a whole politics itself.
Anatomy of a Platform
---
ckaihatsu wrote:
What *you* mean is 'Those who do the paperwork and who are at the Board of Trustees meetings' when you say 'producers'.
Truth To Power wrote:
No I don't. I mean those who contribute to relief of scarcity.
ckaihatsu wrote:
You mean *capital ownership*,
Truth To Power wrote:
No I don't. I mean those who contribute the production factors -- producer goods and labor -- that would not otherwise have been available for production. They are in contrast to the landowner, who is merely legally entitled to demand a payment from the producer just for permission to use what would otherwise have been available.
For the sake of *each* of our own time and sanities let's nail-down some terminology here:
- 'Producer goods' means the-means-of-mass-industrial-production, or physical *workplaces*, basically, and/or the same as represented in ownership of proportionate *capital*.
- 'Labor' means 'wage labor', or those who are paid an hourly wage or salary, for their forfeiting of their work product to the employer.
ckaihatsu wrote:
and capital itself doesn't produce any commodities for the company to sell.
Truth To Power wrote:
Neither does labor itself. So what?
Incorrect. Any laborer hired to produce widgets will be producing *widgets* during their time at work, correct?
ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, okay, then do you think that *managers* are actually 'producers' -- ?
Truth To Power wrote:
Of course. If you had ever actually witnessed any production, let alone participated in it, you would know that.
'I would know that' -- ?
*That's* your argument for how you think that managers are producers -- ?
Again, I'll just note the thought-experiment scenario of a company that only has a managerial office, and nothing else. If this company *only* ran its managerial office it would have *zero revenue*, because running an office is an *expense* only and does not itself produce any commodities that the company can sell for revenue, for profits.
Truth To Power wrote:
All labor (human effort devoted to relief of scarcity), from flipping burgers to running a multinational corporation, consists of three steps: obtaining information, making a decision, and implementing the decision. Managers do all three.
You're conflating *wage* labor -- that inherently produces commodities for the company -- with *internal* 'labor', or *management*, really, which does *not* produce any commodities for the company. It's an important distinction.
ckaihatsu wrote:
They're *not*.
Truth To Power wrote:
They most certainly are.
(See the previous segment.)
ckaihatsu wrote:
Managers *also* do not produce any commodities for the company to sell.
Truth To Power wrote:
Garbage. Their labor enables and enhances production of "commodities."
'Enhances' isn't the same as 'producing'. You're having to make a distinction here, between 'enhancing' / 'value-added', in terms of *exchange values* / valuation / pricing, and the production *itself* -- of the company's commodity that it sells, the widgets themselves.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Sure, managers do 'white-collar' kinds of labor, but it's *non-productive* labor
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just silly nonsense from someone who has not the slightest idea how production happens because he has never even witnessed any, let alone participated in it.
(See the previous segments.)
ckaihatsu wrote:
-- it's a *cost* to capital, the same as janitorial services for the office are.
Truth To Power wrote:
Yes, and labor on the production line is also a cost. So what?
So the distinction to be made here is 'Does the labor in question actually produce saleable commodities, or not'.
Managerial / executive / ownership / upkeep / maintenance / janitorial / internal work is all some kind of *work*, certainly, if you ask any person doing those things, but what's at-issue is whether the work is 'internal' to the business organization (company) itself, or if the work in question actually *produces saleable commodities*, as *wage* labor does, certainly.
This is the *class* distinction.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Doing nothing but running an office would *not* produce anything that the company could sell, for revenue, for profits.
Truth To Power wrote:
And doing nothing but physical labor would not produce anything for the company to sell either, because without managers and investors there would be no raw materials for workers to perform labor on, no customers to pay for the products, no power to run the machines in the factory, and indeed, for that matter, no machines or factory. See how that works?
Your *empirical* description is empirically true because of the prevailing societal practice / institution of *private property*, which could be termed as part of society's 'superstructure' -- its culture or beliefs.
Without the private-propertization of *land* there is no private 'real estate', as for locating factories, and, likewise, without the private-propertization of *producer goods* / factories -- requiring companies, managers, and investors -- there is no *commodity production*, for the things that people / customers need and want.
I can perfectly *analogize* these relations formally:
land : producer goods :: producer goods : commodity production
You're making my argument *for* me, that without control of *private property* (producer goods), workers are *dispossessed* from the means of *commodity production*, just as the aspiring factory owner has no avenue to controlling a factory if they're dispossessed from control of the *land* needed to *locate* that factory.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
This isn't about *me* -- you can set the insults aside because they're not helping your case at all.
Truth To Power wrote:
It's not an insult. It's a reasoned and informed surmise about why you make such false and absurd claims that anyone who has ever witnessed productive labor, let alone performed any, knows are false.
Whatever. Maybe just keep your opinions to yourself.
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Truth To Power wrote:
The ultimate purpose of all economic activity is to enable consumption. Learn it, or continue to talk nonsense on the subject permanently.
ckaihatsu wrote:
-- many would *disagree* with your 'theory' there,
Truth To Power wrote:
It's not a theory. It's a plain fact.
ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll just mention the simple touted objective of 'Maximizing shareholder value', which some would say is the *real* reason for capitalist economic activity.
Truth To Power wrote:
And why do you imagine shareholders would want that, hhhmmmmm?
You're *not contending* that 'maximizing shareholder value' is the *objective* of capitalist economic activity.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
That fork-in-the-road of 'whose consumption' means that it's *not* a false dichotomy, it's a *real* dichotomy, because if interest rates are *raised*, then *pre-existing* capital (rentier capital / 'savers') is favored, while *lowered* interest rates means that *future* / *speculative* capital gains are favored, which are the interests of *equity* capital, or investors -- antithetical to the interests of 'savers' / rentier capitalists.
Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong. You obviously don't know anything about it, any more than you know anything about production.
If I'm wrong, then simply tell me if interest rates should be *raised*, or if they should be *lowered*, in general -- what does (any given) economic *theory* say about interest rates?
*More* face-values / more liquidity / larger money supply / lower interest rates / more government subsidies means more financial instruments available that can be used to leverage production of commodities, for sales, for revenue, for profits, while *fewer* face-values / less liquidity / smaller money supply / higher interest rates / no government subsidies means that 'savers', or those with pre-existing wealth, benefit.
ckaihatsu wrote:
*Your* idiosyncratic definition of 'justice' is really 'strong currency values for equity capital', which *most* people wouldn't describe as 'justice'.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just another bald fabrication on your part.
In the past you used the word 'community' to refer to the system of centralized banking, or central banks -- *that's* why I say that you're fronting social-justice / civil-society terms, when what you *really* mean is the greater monetization of face-values, or strong-currency / 'monetarist' politics.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Bad banks, zombie banks, and zombie companies are *all* the result of runaway government subsidization of capital (cutting of interest rates / 'printing-money'), as has been the prevailing U.S. monetary policy for the last two decades.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, you obviously don't know anything about it.
Note that you're not *contending* anything that I'm saying here, so you're *forfeiting* any counter-claims.
My point stands:
A bad bank is a corporate structure which isolates illiquid and high risk assets (typically non-performing loans) held by a bank or a financial organisation, or perhaps a group of banks or financial organisations.[1] A bank may accumulate a large portfolio of debts or other financial instruments which unexpectedly become at risk of partial or full default. A large volume of non-performing assets usually make it difficult for the bank to raise capital, for example through sales of bonds. In these circumstances, the bank may wish to segregate its "good" assets from its "bad" assets through the creation of a bad bank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_bank
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Maybe kick the question over to Monti, since he at least *purports* to be a 'market socialist', whatever the hell *that* is.
Truth To Power wrote:
I'm asking you.
ckaihatsu wrote:
I included *my own* model for a post-capitalist political economy, above, so the metric *I* advocate is the liberated-labor-internal 'labor credit' which only gets 'paid-forward' from laborer to laborer, with *zero* exchangeability for any goods / resources / materials.
Truth To Power wrote:
So, nothing but an absurd Marxist fantasy divorced from all economic reality. Check.
No, it's actually a *model* for a post-capitalist political economy, since you asked.
ckaihatsu wrote:
On the '[organic] demand' side of things people could simply *prioritize* their needs / demands, #1, #2, #3, through infinity, for any and all days that they like, which would obviate the empirical societal need for *market* values / valuations.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, because utilities are not commensurable and ordinal numbers are not cardinal numbers.
Think of it in terms of 'marginal utility' -- from *all* of the consumer / consumption choices available, one has to empirically prioritize those options that will provide the *most utility*, or use-values.
My model simply indicates the same thing, but *explicitly*, as the consumer's own formally numbered 'shopping list', listing all needed and desired items, from #1 -- most-needed -- to # *whatever*, which would be *least*-needed and *least*-desired, both.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Horseshit.
Truth To Power wrote:
Fact.
ckaihatsu wrote:
I certainly don't agree
Truth To Power wrote:
Because you are objectively wrong.
ckaihatsu wrote:
-- and you're showing your *statist* colors here, since your touted system *requires* the nation-state / government / bureaucracy.
Truth To Power wrote:
Any economy above the hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding level requires secure, exclusive land tenure. There is no way to implement that but by force. The state makes that force controllable, predictable, and thus less destructive.
So you're *admitting* that the institution of capitalist private property *requires* a statist monopoly on the use of force, in order to uphold the institution of private property. Thanks. Now the reader can fully see what 'private property' is based on.
ckaihatsu wrote:
*You* subscribe to the 'Purge Day' conception of society, which is Hobbesian, basically.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, anthropologists have determined that stateless societies are more violent.
Bullshit. Here's from previously:
Before class
The world as we enter the 21st century is one of greed, of gross inequalities between rich and poor, of racist and national chauvinist prejudice, of barbarous practices and horrific wars. It is very easy to believe that this is what things have always been like and that, therefore, they can be no different. Such a message is put across by innumerable writers and philosophers, politicians and sociologists, journalists and psychologists. They portray hierarchy, deference, greed and brutality as ‘natural’ features of human behaviour. Indeed, there are some who would see these as a feature throughout the animal kingdom, a ‘sociobiological’ imperative imposed by the alleged ‘laws’ of genetics.1 There are innumerable popular, supposedly ‘scientific’ paperbacks which propagate such a view—with talk of humans as ‘the naked ape’ (Desmond Morris),2 the ‘killer imperative’ (Robert Ardrey),3 and, in a more sophisticated form, as programmed by the ‘selfish gene’ (Richard Dawkins).4
Yet such Flintstones caricatures of human behaviour are simply not borne out by what we now know about the lives our ancestors lived in the innumerable generations before recorded history. A cumulation of scientific evidence shows that their societies were not characterised by competition, inequality and oppression. These things are, rather, the product of history, and of rather recent history. The evidence comes from archaeological findings about patterns of human behaviour worldwide until only about 5,000 years ago, and from anthropological studies of societies in different parts of the world which remained organised along similar lines until the 19th and earlier part of the 20th century. The anthropologist Richard Lee has summarised the findings:
Before the rise of the state and the entrenchment of social inequality, people lived for millennia in small-scale kin-based social groups, in which the core institutions of economic life included collective or common ownership of land and resources, generalised reciprocity in the distribution of food, and relatively egalitarian political relations.5
In other words, people shared with and helped each other, with no rulers and no ruled, no rich and no poor. Lee echoes the phrase used by Frederick Engels in the 1880s to describe this state of affairs, ‘primitive communism’. The point is of enormous importance. Our species (modern humans, or Homo sapiens sapiens) is over 100,000 years old. For 95 percent of this time it has not been characterised at all by many of the forms of behaviour ascribed to ‘human nature’ today. There is nothing built into our biology that makes present day societies the way they are. Our predicament as we face a new millennium cannot be blamed on it.
Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 3-4
viewtopic.php?p=15241394#p15241394
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ckaihatsu wrote:
What metric then would determine people's *access* to the fruits of AI (by extension) if there are 'no workers', getting *no wages*.
Truth To Power wrote:
Previous contributions to production and just compensation for the abrogation of people's rights by exclusive tenure.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, that's a *problem*, because you're *admitting* that all you have to go by (for a future-type 'post-work' social scenario) is *market valuations* and real-estate valuations.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, you made that up.
Well then where are prospective consumers supposed to get the *money* with which to make *purchases* for the things they need, if it's a 'post-work' AI world with no work and no wages -- ?
ckaihatsu wrote:
Recall that the private sector has been bailed-out *repeatedly* by the U.S. government, most recently in 2020, so that's a *non-starter*.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's a non sequitur.
I'm saying that the private sector has *proven* itself to be incapable of *self-sustainability*, having almost gone-under in 2008-2009, and then again in 2020. Government bailouts to the private sector means that private-equity-type valuations *alone* aren't enough, because if they *were* then there wouldn't have had to be *bailouts* -- and the same applies to any possible future 'post-work' world, as well.
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Truth To Power wrote:
Collective control of producer goods will ensure that production is negative.
ckaihatsu wrote:
That's just *naysaying*.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, it's a plain fact, confirmed by historical experience.
ckaihatsu wrote:
No, neither you or *anyone else* can point to any sustained history of proletarian collective control of producer goods.
Truth To Power wrote:
Of course: it's invariably so catastrophic that it can't be sustained.
Cute. Yeah, again, just keep your opinions to yourself.
You're not contending my statement, so my point stands that you're just *naysaying*.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Yelling through text doesn't change the fact that *you* think all social values are derived from *real estate* valuations,
Truth To Power wrote:
That is just another fabrication from you with no basis in fact.
Your *entire* 'geoist' politics is situated on the argument that lessened real estate availability is an empirical *hindrance* to the interests of equity capital -- my point *stands* that you think all social values are derived from *real estate* valuations. (Also because *you* think of the 'community' as being the system of *central banks*.)
ckaihatsu wrote:
while at the same time you think that *equity* capital values are somehow 'unimpeachable'.
Truth To Power wrote:
It is simply a fact that private property in the fruits of one's labor does not abrogate anyone else's rights.
Equity and rentier capital values are not all obtained through one's own personal efforts, though -- *inheritance* is a huge factor in how the well-off became well-off from birth. This means that the realm of private property is *detached*, and *abstracted* from personages themselves, and capital valuations are *not* a meritocratic mirror-image of their owners, as you'd *like* it to be, according to your 'equity-heaven' utopian idealism.
If, instead, you mean to indicate *wages*, from *wage labor*, then you should use the term 'wages' for that.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Equity capital would still continue to exploit / extract / expropriate *surplus labor value* from the working class, even in your geoist utopia.
Truth To Power wrote:
Because "surplus labor value" is a Marxist anti-concept that actually means, "the additional production that the owner of producer goods enables by contributing them to the production process":
No, you're thinking of 'value-added', which has to do with capital valuations outside of the production process itself, according to the post-production dynamics of overall supply-and-demand. (An example would be sending a shipment to the customer in *4* days instead of in 7 days, which has nothing to do with the *production* of the commodity / shipment itself.)
I'm going to recommend that you not-concern yourself with 'surplus labor value' at this point, and instead just concentrate on 'labor value' itself -- that which the labor commodity provides through the commodity-production process itself.
I happened to see it in a recent video -- it's at 3:53:
The Stagnating Economy of Canada _ Economics Explained
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material-economic exploitation
Truth To Power wrote:
See?
ckaihatsu wrote:
Naysaying.
Truth To Power wrote:
Reason and history.
You're being too vague to make any point here. You may want to explain what you mean.
ckaihatsu wrote:
'Social production' means 'That which is produced by society, in one way or another'.
Truth To Power wrote:
Society does not produce anything.
A synonym for 'society' is 'the total human population on the face of the earth' -- and, yes, production *does* happen.
ckaihatsu wrote:
The only reason why production is currently private is because of *capitalism*.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, it has been private since time immemorial.
No, it hasn't, because 'private [property]' implies land / real-estate as a *commodity*, and social production has *not* always taken place for the sake of producing commodities. Commodity production is a function of *capitalism* only, and is basically *synonymous* with it.
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Truth To Power wrote:
No, I identify its contribution accurately: the value it would produce in the absence of the producer goods the entrepreneur, investor and factory owner contribute to the production process.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Those parties you just listed are all *non-productive* of commodities for their companies.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, their contributions enable and initiate production.
Again you're having to make a *distinction* here -- ownership and management 'enable' and 'initiate' production, which is *not* the same thing as actually producing commodities, which is what only *wage labor* does.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Capital itself cannot beget more capital -- there *has* to be a production process, to produce new commodities, to sell, for revenue, for profits, or else it's all just *finance*, which is fictitious-capital.
Truth To Power wrote:
So what?
Allow me to rephrase: If capital does not enable and initiate the production of new commodities, for new commodity values -- for whatever reason -- then it's functionally *inert* and is as good as a lump of clay in the ground that hasn't been sourced by human labor yet.
(Thanks for honestly tacitly acknowledging that debt / finance isn't the same thing as equity or rentier values.)
Truth To Power wrote:
Labor itself cannot beget more labor, either.
Actually, it *can* -- it's better-known by the term 'biological human reproduction', and 'socialization', as in getting younger people ready for the workplace, through education, training, and experience.
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BlutoSays wrote:
ckaihatsu wrote:
Military-industrial complex.
Truth To Power wrote:
Irrelevant.
No, the present-day U.S. military-industrial complex is an *excellent* example of 'big government', or the bloated non-commodity-producing bureaucracy / state that capitalism unavoidably relies on. It's also called 'military Keynesianism', or 'military syndicalism'.