Workers wage not in proportion to productivity - Page 8 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15102844
ckaihatsu wrote:The working class won't *get* to experience any kind of wage / consumption equality while *capitalism* still exists, because the market mechanism ensures economic *hierarchy* based on private ownership of capital, and low wages for workers -- the working class *interest* is to *overthrow* private ownership, everywhere, so that workers can collectively control productivity themselves, and to distribute the goods as they see fit.

Then tax the wealthy more to redistribute wealth and increase economic equality. Scandinavian countries do this and it has worked out well.
#15102851
Unthinking Majority wrote:
Then tax the wealthy more to redistribute wealth and increase economic equality. Scandinavian countries do this and it has worked out well.



I wouldn't turn this down, but it still sidesteps the fact that a whole shift in *ethos* is required -- why leave the market mechanism in place *at all* when the world would be better off these days *without* it -- ?

We *have* the communications technology for everyone to simply *specify* particulars, such as what they need for their household (organic demand), what they'd be willing to support (policies), and do (gift-economy voluntarism).

We could *eliminate* all income inequality by eliminating *capital* and *private property* altogether, so why *not* do it this way? No more competitive nation-states, no more imperialism, no more ruling-class elitism, no more rat-race competition among workers, etc.

The *biggest* benefit, though, I think, would be collective *control* over where society is heading. Look at where things are *now* -- no one knows what's going to happen through the rest of this pandemic, or after -- the global situation just *begs* for workers collective planning, whereas the way things are now there's no democratic mass-intention or mass-decision-making.
#15102873
ckaihatsu wrote:I wouldn't turn this down, but it still sidesteps the fact that a whole shift in *ethos* is required -- why leave the market mechanism in place *at all* when the world would be better off these days *without* it -- ?


There's no proof that it would be. They tried centrally planned economies and they suck.

We could *eliminate* all income inequality by eliminating *capital* and *private property* altogether, so why *not* do it this way? No more competitive nation-states, no more imperialism, no more ruling-class elitism, no more rat-race competition among workers, etc.


Keep dreaming.

The *biggest* benefit, though, I think, would be collective *control* over where society is heading. Look at where things are *now* -- no one knows what's going to happen through the rest of this pandemic, or after -- the global situation just *begs* for workers collective planning, whereas the way things are now there's no democratic mass-intention or mass-decision-making.


Sounds like you want direct-democracy.

With capitalism, people vote with their dollars. Every company is controlled by its customers. If you don't like Wal-Mart because it has ugly floors, don't shop at Wal-Mart. If enough people don't like Wal-Mart's floors and don't shop at Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart either changes the colour of its floors or closes down, and they'll usually choose the former. The CEO of Wal-Mart may love the floors, but his opinion is irrelevant, his job is to make the people who shop at Wal-Mart happy.

Capitalism is direct democracy of the economy. Most people (consumers) care most about having the best products at the cheapest prices. They don't care as much about saving the world. They're self-interested most of the time. There's a reason why fair-trade chocolate bars and coffee doesn't sell as well as Hershey and Starbucks: most people would rather buy the same quality goods at cheaper prices rather than give money to the poor in developing countries. Some people prefer the latter sometimes in modest quantities, so fair-trade sells enough to survive.

You probably don't like automated checkouts at Wal-Mart because it takes away jobs, but it may also keep prices low at Wal-Mart. If automated checkouts replace all cashiers at Wal-Mart and customers don't like them they'll leave for another store that has human cashiers. Or they may prefer the cheaper prices at Wal-Mart over the real cashiers but more expensive goods at the other store.

Everyone says they prefer the local mom & pop stores, but their goods and services are often more expensive so many people stop shopping there and so the Mom & Pop stores go out of business. What people say and what people do are different. See, people vote with their dollars. Most people want the best value for their dollar: quality goods for the cheapest prices. If you don't want the farmer pouring milk down the drain but giving it to the homeless the cost of milk is going to go up. The unfortunate reality is that most people will put up with the exploitation of poor countries if it means cheaper goods for them. People are self-serving jerks.
#15102875
Unthinking Majority wrote:
There's no proof that it would be. They tried centrally planned economies and they suck.



'They' -- ?

You mean *Stalinists*, like Stalin. No thanks -- I'll pass. Workers-of-the-world socialism has to be by the *workers*, and it has to be *worldwide*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
We could *eliminate* all income inequality by eliminating *capital* and *private property* altogether, so why *not* do it this way? No more competitive nation-states, no more imperialism, no more ruling-class elitism, no more rat-race competition among workers, etc.



Unthinking Majority wrote:
Keep dreaming.



You don't get how this works -- look at the Black Lives Matter movement, for example. I happen to think that they're mostly black nationalists / *separatists*, but that doesn't detract from the frustration and calls for an end to killer cops.

Take a look at the economy (GDP) for the past 20 years. Take a look at wages. Housing. And so on. Then tell me that capitalism's doing a great job. Tell the public and see what they tell you *back*. Are you getting it now?


Unthinking Majority wrote:
Sounds like you want direct-democracy.

With capitalism, people vote with their dollars. Every company is controlled by its customers. If you don't like Wal-Mart because it has ugly floors, don't shop at Wal-Mart. If enough people don't like Wal-Mart's floors and don't shop at Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart either changes the colour of its floors or closes down, and they'll usually choose the former. The CEO of Wal-Mart may love the floors, but his opinion is irrelevant, his job is to make the people who shop at Wal-Mart happy.

Capitalism is direct democracy of the economy. Most people (consumers) care most about having the best products at the cheapest prices. They don't care as much about saving the world. They're self-interested most of the time. There's a reason why fair-trade chocolate bars and coffee doesn't sell as well as Hershey and Starbucks: most people would rather buy the same quality goods at cheaper prices rather than give money to the poor in developing countries. Some people prefer the latter sometimes in modest quantities, so fair-trade sells enough to survive.



Yeah, *still* not a liberal, so you just wasted a bunch of keystrokes right there.

What you're *missing* is that your precious currency isn't so angel-blessed as you make it out to be -- look at *Lebanon* right now and the currency problems *they're* having. Look at the state of civilization / society the world over. Still feeling smug?


Unthinking Majority wrote:
You probably don't like automated checkouts at Wal-Mart because it takes away jobs, but it may also keep prices low at Wal-Mart. If automated checkouts replace all cashiers at Wal-Mart and customers don't like them they'll leave for another store that has human cashiers. Or they may prefer the cheaper prices at Wal-Mart over the real cashiers but more expensive goods at the other store.

Everyone says they prefer the local mom & pop stores, but their goods and services are often more expensive so many people stop shopping there and so the Mom & Pop stores go out of business. What people say and what people do are different. See, people vote with their dollars. Most people want the best value for their dollar: quality goods for the cheapest prices. If you don't want the farmer pouring milk down the drain but giving it to the homeless the cost of milk is going to go up. The unfortunate reality is that most people will put up with the exploitation of poor countries if it means cheaper goods for them. People are self-serving jerks.



No, I wouldn't blame individuals for the economic *straitjacket* that capitalism puts all of us in.

If someone's dollars run *out*, though, does that mean that they're not *worthy* of food, or housing, or the Internet, or whatever else it is that people do in the 21st century? Why do *dollars* get to decide, instead of people themselves?

Your paean to capitalism is *misplaced*, as evidenced by all who aren't readily fulfilling their wishes and dreams for life due to a lack of funds, for whatever reason. Gonna get all Panglossian and tell me that this is the best of all possible worlds -- ? That there's no alternative to the monolithic judgment of the almighty dollar and the Trumpian nation-state -- ?

I remember you as the one who prefers your own moralism, extended to market parameters and nationalist policy, over who gets what, and you'd rather see food rot than let someone who's hungry get surplus food (from capitalism's 'overproduction' dynamic) for free.

Pretty *monstrous*, really.
#15102895
ckaihatsu wrote:'They' -- ?

You mean *Stalinists*, like Stalin. No thanks -- I'll pass. Workers-of-the-world socialism has to be by the *workers*, and it has to be *worldwide*.

Like I said, good luck with that. Socialists have been trying to get workers of the world to unite for 150+ years, using all sorts of horrifying ideas and governments. Socialists have lost their street cred.

You don't get how this works -- look at the Black Lives Matter movement, for example. I happen to think that they're mostly black nationalists / *separatists*, but that doesn't detract from the frustration and calls for an end to killer cops.

Take a look at the economy (GDP) for the past 20 years. Take a look at wages. Housing. And so on. Then tell me that capitalism's doing a great job. Tell the public and see what they tell you *back*. Are you getting it now?

People should be rightly frustrated with how the gains have mainly gone to the 1%, especially in the USA, and it should be rectified by as I said by taxing the wealthy and corporations and redistributing the wealth.[/quote]

Looking at the last 20 years, capitalism has been doing a wonderful job. Besides the COVID crisis, which has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism, US markets had been on the greatest bull market run in history with economic production and profits soaring to massive new all-time highs. Capitalism is extremely productive and efficient, the problem is that these profits have overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy. Governments should take a lot of this money and give it to workers.

Capitalists are so good in fact that they've done a remarkable job keeping wages stagnant, cutting benefits etc. They're doing everything to increase their profits. This is where the government has to step in with regulations and taxes. This is how you keep the efficiency and productivity of capitalism while also benefiting the masses of workers. Socialism is not as productive and not as efficient.

What you're *missing* is that your precious currency isn't so angel-blessed as you make it out to be -- look at *Lebanon* right now and the currency problems *they're* having. Look at the state of civilization / society the world over. Still feeling smug?

Go look at China's economy before Mao's death and after his death. Look at every successful rising economy in the developing world of the last 40 years and the answer has always been capitalism with strong state control and regulation. This is called a 'developmental state', typical of the Asian Tigers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_state

Go find me one communist country with a thriving economy. It doesn't exist.

If someone's dollars run *out*, though, does that mean that they're not *worthy* of food, or housing, or the Internet, or whatever else it is that people do in the 21st century? Why do *dollars* get to decide, instead of people themselves?

If you work you eat, if you don't work you don't eat. I think people who work should get more money from the big companies they work for. I also think people with disabilities who can't work should be fully supported by the government so they can eat and have the necessities. I also think if you don't work but you can work you shouldn't get society's support and if you starve that's your own choice.

Also, people *do* get to decide. If you want to support people who are homeless or out of work you are free to donate money to them or to charities. We can also vote in politicians that support government programs to help people. I live in Canada, we have several different parties, 2 of which are quite left-wing that support nationwide universal pharmacare, dental care, and daycare, but people don't want that and they don't vote these parties into power.

Your paean to capitalism is *misplaced*, as evidenced by all who aren't readily fulfilling their wishes and dreams for life due to a lack of funds, for whatever reason. Gonna get all Panglossian and tell me that this is the best of all possible worlds -- ? That there's no alternative to the monolithic judgment of the almighty dollar and the Trumpian nation-state -- ?

The best countries in the world, in fact human history, statistically are the Scandinavian countries, in terms of economy, health outcomes, crime, income equality etc. If a country like the USA wants to be more like them they should vote for Bernie Sanders, whom I support for POTUS. But they don't vote for him, and that's their democratic choice. The USA is not the rest of the world. Some countries have actually figured it out.

I remember you as the one who prefers your own moralism, extended to market parameters and nationalist policy, over who gets what, and you'd rather see food rot than let someone who's hungry get surplus food (from capitalism's 'overproduction' dynamic) for free. Pretty *monstrous*, really.

And who pays the farmer for this free milk? If he has to pay extra to give away the free milk he has to compete with farmers who don't pay extra to provide the free milk, so they go out of business. If the government wants to pay the farmer to provide this free milk they can do this, then the gov can tax the rich to pay for it. Don't cry over spilled milk LOL.

There's more than enough money in the economy to ensure everyone has food and a place to sleep. I think taxes and regulations are much better and much easier than a worldwide socialist revolution.
#15102941
Unthinking Majority wrote:
Like I said, good luck with that. Socialists have been trying to get workers of the world to unite for 150+ years, using all sorts of horrifying ideas and governments. Socialists have lost their street cred.



You're still looking at it as though it's some kind of qualifying heat for a spot in a race -- *many* people get caught-up in the 'personages' side of politics, though, which is unfortunate.

Once you understand *class* you may realize that it's not about this-or-that *person*, or 'qualifications' -- it's about being 'on-the-same-page', particularly for those who are anti-capitalist revolutionaries.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
People should be rightly frustrated with how the gains have mainly gone to the 1%, especially in the USA, and it should be rectified by as I said by taxing the wealthy and corporations and redistributing the wealth.

Looking at the last 20 years, capitalism has been doing a wonderful job. Besides the COVID crisis, which has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism, US markets had been on the greatest bull market run in history with economic production and profits soaring to massive new all-time highs. Capitalism is extremely productive and efficient, the problem is that these profits have overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy. Governments should take a lot of this money and give it to workers.



The more we look at the *results*, the more we see that capitalism, paradoxically, can't handle it's own 'success', so-to-speak -- yes, it's effective in conditions of *scarcity*, but once that scarcity has been superseded, capitalism *still* requires conditions of scarcity, and the capitalist states have *enforced* this scarcity with *world wars* and the economically-needed *destruction* from warfare. *These* days the enforced-scarcity takes the form of government policies of *austerity*, meaning a redistribution of wealth *upwards*, to the 1%, mostly to artificially keep it out of the economy, out of circulation.

So how can a redistribution of wealth ('downwards') occur when it's currently flowing *the other way*?

Also, look at the U.S. government *deficit spending* that's spent on *tax cuts* for the wealthy, and to provide liquidity to the financial markets when they start flagging. You can't call them 'free markets' when the market mechanism itself has an external *benefactor*, namely the U.S. government, using public monies.

I also want to note that the GDP growth rate over the past couple decades has been in the range of 0 to 4%, which is *just barely* adequate for its population growth (plus immigration). Really it should be about 2.5%-3%, and China should be at least 7%, but now the numbers are dipping *below* these respective thresholds.

Image


Unthinking Majority wrote:
Capitalists are so good in fact that they've done a remarkable job keeping wages stagnant, cutting benefits etc. They're doing everything to increase their profits. This is where the government has to step in with regulations and taxes. This is how you keep the efficiency and productivity of capitalism while also benefiting the masses of workers. Socialism is not as productive and not as efficient.



You're conflating *Stalinism*, for workers-of-the-world socialism. We haven't yet *seen* workers-of-the-world socialism, so we don't have any empirical data on *how* it would look material-economically. Theoretically, though, workers would have a *collective* interest in *automating* as many productive processes as possible, so as to reduce the collective (liberated-)labor load, especially for the *basics* of life and living.

Since the current capitalist government is enforcing *austerity* measures on the general population, I really don't *trust* it to carry out the liberal-type reforms that you're touting, because it would have to 'reverse its engines' -- *you're* the one with the fantasy because the capitalist dynamic can't just be *reformed* away.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What you're *missing* is that your precious currency isn't so angel-blessed as you make it out to be -- look at *Lebanon* right now and the currency problems *they're* having. Look at the state of civilization / society the world over. Still feeling smug?



Unthinking Majority wrote:
Go look at China's economy before Mao's death and after his death. Look at every successful rising economy in the developing world of the last 40 years and the answer has always been capitalism with strong state control and regulation. This is called a 'developmental state', typical of the Asian Tigers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_state

Go find me one communist country with a thriving economy. It doesn't exist.



There's *no such thing* as a 'communist country' -- you're just falling for Stalinist-type elitist *marketing* that *pretends* they have socialism, when in fact it's *state capitalism*, just like the former USSR. If the workers aren't actually in control of society's production then it isn't socialism, by definition.

What *you* pretend is that a country's economy is due to the market mechanism itself, and you're ignoring *government policy* altogether, such as tax breaks for the rich, legal offshore accounts of *trillions* of dollars (money out of circulation), military spending, austerity measures on the people, physical *destruction* / dumping of surplus goods from capitalism's overproduction, and productivity gains from mechanization / industrialization / computerization / automation. All of these factors are separate from the market mechanism itself, and could readily happen under worldwide *workers* co-administration just as well as under any bourgeois capitalist government administration.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
If someone's dollars run *out*, though, does that mean that they're not *worthy* of food, or housing, or the Internet, or whatever else it is that people do in the 21st century? Why do *dollars* get to decide, instead of people themselves?



Unthinking Majority wrote:
If you work you eat, if you don't work you don't eat. I think people who work should get more money from the big companies they work for. I also think people with disabilities who can't work should be fully supported by the government so they can eat and have the necessities. I also think if you don't work but you can work you shouldn't get society's support and if you starve that's your own choice.



Then how do you characterize *wealth ownership* -- ?

If someone has millions in a bank account, and they get 1% (or whatever) on it, then that's tens of thousands of dollars a year in interest, with no work done on their part.

Hypocritical much?


Unthinking Majority wrote:
Also, people *do* get to decide. If you want to support people who are homeless or out of work you are free to donate money to them or to charities. We can also vote in politicians that support government programs to help people. I live in Canada, we have several different parties, 2 of which are quite left-wing that support nationwide universal pharmacare, dental care, and daycare, but people don't want that and they don't vote these parties into power.



What you're describing is *bureaucratic elitism* (Stalinist-like governance), because the electorate has no way to hold these politicians *accountable* while they're in elected office. Many do about-faces after they're elected and the betrayal of the electorate is now an expected routine, as we saw with Obama.

The politicians don't respond to public pressure anymore -- not like during the Vietnam War protests, arguably -- and so we *still* don't have any kind of universal healthcare in the U.S., or Medicare-for-All, despite *tons* of popular support and decades of campaign promises.

You're making the non-enactment of these reforms sound like some *shortcoming* on the part of the people, like they're somehow insufficiently political, when those reforms *should* just be a *no-brainer*, and should have been implemented under FDR, at the latest.

You're obviously more concerned with *apologetics* for the way the bourgeois system currently functions, than for what's good for the people.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
The best countries in the world, in fact human history, statistically are the Scandinavian countries, in terms of economy, health outcomes, crime, income equality etc. If a country like the USA wants to be more like them they should vote for Bernie Sanders, whom I support for POTUS. But they don't vote for him, and that's their democratic choice. The USA is not the rest of the world. Some countries have actually figured it out.



Well, the U.S. is an *empire*, and so half of its discretionary spending goes to the *military* -- if that can be rechanneled to *social services* spending then we can talk about Scandinavian-type reforms, but otherwise it's apples-and-oranges because of current U.S. spending priorities.

Bernie Sanders' priority is as an employee to the Democratic Party, first and foremost, as we've historically seen *twice* now.


Unthinking Majority wrote:
And who pays the farmer for this free milk? If he has to pay extra to give away the free milk he has to compete with farmers who don't pay extra to provide the free milk, so they go out of business. If the government wants to pay the farmer to provide this free milk they can do this, then the gov can tax the rich to pay for it. Don't cry over spilled milk LOL.

There's more than enough money in the economy to ensure everyone has food and a place to sleep. I think taxes and regulations are much better and much easier than a worldwide socialist revolution.



Okay, keep talking, and let's see what *actually* happens. Your political line has *zero* credibility at this point because it all should have been enacted by now.
#15102948

Counter-revolutionary liberals

In addition to the collaboration between explicitly reactionary forces in the US and Israel, the continued oppression of marginalised communities hinges on the liberal bourgeois class, a group of people Martin Luther King Jr referred to as "white moderates" in his letter from Birmingham Jail. Preaching the necessity of reforms, yet serving to undermine leftist revolutionary agendas under the guise of "practicality", these complicit moderates afford valuable time and support for further entrenchment of oppression.

The ongoing racism, inequality and injustice in the US leading to the current uprisings demonstrate the inadequacy of liberal reformist approaches in improving the material conditions of marginalised people. Further, present strife highlights the dire need for a revolutionary socialist agenda to replace intrinsically white supremacist capitalist tyranny, to achieve permanent equality and justice.



https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opini ... 30884.html
#15105637
ckaihatsu wrote:I discussed *at length* with TTP, and his position is basically that of a government-administrated *franchising* of all / government land, to leasees, on a sliding scale,

What sliding scale? I said no such thing. Secure, exclusive tenure would be provided in return for the market rent, with a uniform exemption for each resident citizen analogous to the individual income tax exemption.
with all *improvements* to the land either having to be removed, or else *forfeited*, at the end of the lease.

No. Tenure would simply be renewed at will as long as the lessee paid the market rent, and improvements would be owned by the lessee and presumably sold to the next lessee in the event that the first lessee did not want to continue paying the market rent. It would basically work much like the current property tax system in form, but with three crucial differences:

1. The location subsidy repayment (LSR) amount would be calculated based on the unimproved rental value of the land alone, ignoring improvements;
2. It would on average be much higher than current property taxes, and aim to recover the full publicly created rental value of the location, with the result that the exchange value of land would be near zero;
3. The LSR liability on each parcel would be reduced by a universal individual exemption (UIE) amount for each citizen resident there.
Everything else -- meaning equity capital --

Ckaihatsu is a Marxist, and therefore refuses to call things by their correct names. He refuses to recognize the concept that classical economics called, "capital" -- products of labor devoted to production -- so whenever that concept is identified, he changes it to "equity" capital, meaning, AFAICT, almost anything that is owned by an employer.
would be conventionally capitalist, and would be ruling-class and *hegemonic* over the working class.

No, that's false. Private bank money issuance, IP monopolies, and other privileges that deprive working people of their options and thus their bargaining power would also be abolished, and non-location privileges like oil and mineral rights, broadcast spectrum allocations, etc. would be allocated on the basis of open market bidding to ensure full rent recovery. Hegemonic rule by the capitalist class is only made possible by privilege, which makes its owners richer by making everyone else poorer. Ckaihatsu merely refuses to know the difference between private ownership of a factory, which only enables the owner to offer workers access to economic opportunity they would not otherwise have, and private ownership of LAND, which only enables the owner to DEPRIVE workers of access to economic opportunity they WOULD otherwise have. To the Marxist, who has suffered the brain damage of Marxist teachings, these are the same thing, and there is no difference between getting rich by making others richer than they would otherwise be and getting rich by making others poorer than they would otherwise be -- i.e., no difference between production and theft.
This is basically a radical-reformist *nationalization* of land, but TTP won't use that term.

Nationalization has an unfortunate Stalinist connotation that does not describe market leasing of public land to for-profit private users on the Hong Kong -- and now also China -- model. I prefer to advocate repayment of the subsidy to landowning rather than nationalization of land, as nationalization does not imply market allocation of land to for-profit private users.
#15105639
Average Voter wrote:I have noticed that workers who produce ten times the product of their peers only make three to four times as much as their peers. Is this expected in capitalism? Why does this happen?


If a worker makes 4 times more then his peers, than he is getting overpaid. Can you bring an example of this ever happening in real life?
#15105662
Truth To Power wrote:
What sliding scale? I said no such thing. Secure, exclusive tenure would be provided in return for the market rent, with a uniform exemption for each resident citizen analogous to the individual income tax exemption.



Okay, when we were discussing this at the 'mingy little beasts' thread, this is what you said, then I followed-up, and you never clarified.


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Truth To Power wrote:
In the geoist system land is held under secure, exclusive tenure in return for voluntary payment of the market rent to the community, not bought, and everyone has a right to free, secure, exclusive tenure on enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Let me ask you these:

- If the payment of rent / fees to the local collective administration ('community') is voluntary, wouldn't there be some who would *not* do so, and yet still insist on leasing certain land(s) for free while others would be *paying* for the same benefit?



viewtopic.php?p=15083911#p15083911



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Truth To Power wrote:
No. Tenure would simply be renewed at will as long as the lessee paid the market rent, and improvements would be owned by the lessee and presumably sold to the next lessee in the event that the first lessee did not want to continue paying the market rent.



Okay, this is now sounding like the market rent is *not* 'voluntary', and that it's *mandatory* for the temporary use / leasing of the land.

I'll repeat that there would be no economic incentive for any leasee to *improve* the land, as with landscaping, when that service cannot be *compensated* once the lease is up and the leasee leaves the land.


Truth To Power wrote:
It would basically work much like the current property tax system in form, but with three crucial differences:

1. The location subsidy repayment (LSR) amount would be calculated based on the unimproved rental value of the land alone, ignoring improvements;



And here's the proof -- improvements would be 'ignored', meaning not-economically-compensated.


Truth To Power wrote:
2. It would on average be much higher than current property taxes, and aim to recover the full publicly created rental value of the location, with the result that the exchange value of land would be near zero;



This part contradicts your *premise* that the government is the sole *administrator* of all land, meaning that the land itself could *not* have any commodity-type *exchange value*, because the land / all land would *not* be bought-and-sold, as we're accustomed to seeing under present-day capitalism.

The government administration *would not need* to 'recover the full publicly created rental value of the location', because governments acquire assets, like land, through *eminent domain*. It would be *impractical* for your government administration to *buy* all land that it acquires from the previous owners at market prices, because the public treasury could not conceivably *afford* to do so.

So, for clarification, does your government administration *seize* all land to acquire it, or does it pay *market prices* to all current owners, to acquire it?


Truth To Power wrote:
3. The LSR liability on each parcel would be reduced by a universal individual exemption (UIE) amount for each citizen resident there.



How would this UIE function, exactly, on an individual basis?


Truth To Power wrote:
Ckaihatsu is a Marxist, and therefore refuses to call things by their correct names. He refuses to recognize the concept that classical economics called, "capital" -- products of labor devoted to production --



I *am* a Marxist, yes, but, no, I'm not a postmodernist, or solipsistic in any way.

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

Spoiler: show
Image



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Truth To Power wrote:
so whenever that concept is identified, he changes it to "equity" capital, meaning, AFAICT, almost anything that is owned by an employer.



'Constant capital' in the diagram is also 'equity capital', meaning the means of mass industrial production.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
Everything else -- meaning equity capital -- would be conventionally capitalist, and would be ruling-class and *hegemonic* over the working class.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's false. Private bank money issuance, IP monopolies, and other privileges that deprive working people of their options and thus their bargaining power would also be abolished, and non-location privileges like oil and mineral rights, broadcast spectrum allocations, etc. would be allocated on the basis of open market bidding to ensure full rent recovery.



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:
Hegemonic rule by the capitalist class is only made possible by privilege, which makes its owners richer by making everyone else poorer. Ckaihatsu merely refuses to know the difference between private ownership of a factory, which only enables the owner to offer workers access to economic opportunity they would not otherwise have, and private ownership of LAND, which only enables the owner to DEPRIVE workers of access to economic opportunity they WOULD otherwise have. To the Marxist, who has suffered the brain damage of Marxist teachings, these are the same thing, and there is no difference between getting rich by making others richer than they would otherwise be and getting rich by making others poorer than they would otherwise be -- i.e., no difference between production and theft.



Your insults aside, ownership of *either* rentier capital (land, natural-monopoly-type assets), *and/or* equity capital (means of mass industrial commodity production) is *class* privilege, while all those who do *not* own capital of any kind are thus relegated to *working class* status, for the sake of working for a wage, so as to afford the material necessities of modern life and living.

You glorify *equity* capital ownership and make resulting factory jobs sound like *charity* to the workers employed, when that's merely *incidental* to the owner, who *exploits* the labor hired, so as to make *private profits*. This is capitalism, and the process goes on as long as capitalism is the current mode of production.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Truth To Power wrote:
Nationalization has an unfortunate Stalinist connotation that does not describe market leasing of public land to for-profit private users on the Hong Kong -- and now also China -- model. I prefer to advocate repayment of the subsidy to landowning rather than nationalization of land, as nationalization does not imply market allocation of land to for-profit private users.



'Nationalization' is *accurate*, though, because you have a single point of (government) administration, even if it only nationalizes and administrates over land and other natural-monopoly-type assets.

I'll readily admit that your model is *not* Stalinism because your model retains the function of market *leasing*, or nationalist *franchising*, which I find problematic, of course, because there's no inherent incentive for any service-type *improvements* to be made to any given parcel of leased land, either from the government bureaucratic administration, or from any leasees, who will be *uncompensated* for such service to the land once their lease expires.

I'd like to hear you address the key issue of how any given government administration would *acquire* its land in the first place -- would it be by *seizure* / eminent-domain, or would it somehow find the funding to *purchase* all the land it acquires from current owners, at market prices?

Are you limiting your 'geoist' politics to just Hong Kong, or do you think it would be suitable for *everyone*, *worldwide*?
#15106441
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, when we were discussing this at the 'mingy little beasts' thread, this is what you said, then I followed-up, and you never clarified.

No; I clarified, and you just changed what I wrote to Marxist terminology again to make everything obscure again.
Okay, this is now sounding like the market rent is *not* 'voluntary', and that it's *mandatory* for the temporary use / leasing of the land.

I have explained this many times, and you always refuse to know the facts I identify. It is voluntary in the same sense that buying a loaf of bread is voluntary: no one forces you to take the bread; and it is mandatory in the same sense that paying for a loaf of bread that you take from the bakery is mandatory: if you choose to take it, it is mandatory to pay for it.

I'm not sure how you prevent yourself from understanding this simple, market-based, voluntary, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction, but I know that you are able to do it somehow.
I'll repeat that there would be no economic incentive for any leasee to *improve* the land, as with landscaping, when that service cannot be *compensated* once the lease is up and the leasee leaves the land.

I'll repeat that your claims are false: the economic incentive is to improve the land so that you can use it productively enough to pay the rent. Indeed, NOT improving the land enough to use it to its optimum productivity would merely guarantee a loss. There is no point when "the lease is up." The landholder simply pays the monthly rent as long as he wants to keep using the land; and when he doesn't, he sells the improvements to the next user, who assumes responsibility for the rent payments.
And here's the proof -- improvements would be 'ignored', meaning not-economically-compensated.

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.
This part contradicts your *premise* that the government is the sole *administrator* of all land, meaning that the land itself could *not* have any commodity-type *exchange value*, because the land / all land would *not* be bought-and-sold, as we're accustomed to seeing under present-day capitalism.

It doesn't contradict it. That's what it means. Government is also the administrator of possession and use of land under capitalism and socialism as well as geoism, remember, because that is what government IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land. The only difference in government's role wrt land under those three systems is whether it will carry out that function to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor as in the geoist system; to abrogate people's rights without just compensation for the unearned profit of a greedy, privileged, parasitic private landowning elite as in the capitalist system; or to abrogate people's rights without just compensation in the name of the collective but actually for the benefit of the politically powerful as in the socialist system.
The government administration *would not need* to 'recover the full publicly created rental value of the location',

Not sure what you think you are saying, here. True, it wouldn't need to -- and in practice doesn't in places like Hong Kong and China -- but full repayment is the ideal geoism aims for.
because governments acquire assets, like land, through *eminent domain*.

That -- i.e., nationalization -- is not the proposal, just repayment of the subsidy to landowning.
It would be *impractical* for your government administration to *buy* all land that it acquires from the previous owners at market prices, because the public treasury could not conceivably *afford* to do so.

It could by just printing the money, but that is not the proposal. There is no need to expropriate or nationalize land, or to vacate existing land titles or dispossess current landholders unless they choose not to pay for what they are taking, and don't make arrangements to transfer possession to another user.
So, for clarification, does your government administration *seize* all land to acquire it, or does it pay *market prices* to all current owners, to acquire it?

Neither. 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.
How would this UIE function, exactly, on an individual basis?

Each land parcel's location subsidy repayment (LSR) liability would be reduced by a uniform amount -- probably around 5% of per capita GDP -- for each citizen residing there.
The following diagram of mine, from years ago, depicts both 'constant capital', and 'variable capital'.

Constant and variable are not the relevant categories, and your diagram appears to bear no relationship to economic reality.
'Constant capital' in the diagram is also 'equity capital', meaning the means of mass industrial production.

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.
So all your fancy talk boils down to a *nationalization*

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.
of these natural-monopoly-type assets, including land, to be leased out by the government administration.

No. Natural resources are not the same thing as natural monopolies, and different methods of rent recovery have to be used for natural resources other than locations. Economically, it would work much like at-will leasing, but with the rent going to the government and community that create it, rather than to private landowners for doing and contributing nothing.
Would this be limited to just *one* country, or do you advocate a single government administration for all, *worldwide* natural-monopoly-type assets?

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.
Your insults aside, ownership of *either* rentier capital (land, natural-monopoly-type assets), *and/or* equity capital (means of mass industrial commodity production) is *class* privilege,

No it's not. You are again just refusing to understand the informative and illuminating concepts I have identified and defined, by substituting your obfuscatory, confusing, and misleading Marxist anti-concepts. Ownership of the fruits of one's labor, whether a pointed stick or a factory, is a right, not a privilege, and does not divide people into classes because it does not enable any group to take from any other.
while all those who do *not* own capital of any kind are thus relegated to *working class* status, for the sake of working for a wage, so as to afford the material necessities of modern life and living.

What's wrong with working for a living?
You glorify *equity* capital ownership

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.
and make resulting factory jobs sound like *charity* to the workers employed,

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.
when that's merely *incidental* to the owner, who *exploits* the labor hired, so as to make *private profits*.

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?
This is capitalism, and the process goes on as long as capitalism is the current mode of production.

No. Geoism is NOT capitalism. Capitalism has one additional "feature" that you have deliberately left out, because it refutes your false Marxist narrative: 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; he must pay a landowner full market value just for permission to work for an employer; he must then pay taxes out of his wages to fund desirable public services and infrastructure; and he must then pay a landowner again just for permission to access the desirable public services and infrastructure his taxes just paid for. That's just under industrial capitalism. Under modern finance capitalism, the worker will also be paying interest to private banks for permission to use money in order to participate in the economy, and paying IP monopolists rent/royalties for permission to use knowledge and ideas that would otherwise have been in the public domain, and to access products based thereon.
[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Your diagrams are garbage unrelated to economic reality, sorry.
'Nationalization' is *accurate*, though, because you have a single point of (government) administration, even if it only nationalizes and administrates over land and other natural-monopoly-type assets.

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.
I'll readily admit that your model is *not* Stalinism because your model retains the function of market *leasing*, or nationalist *franchising*, which I find problematic, of course, because there's no inherent incentive for any service-type *improvements* to be made to any given parcel of leased land, either from the government bureaucratic administration, or from any leasees, who will be *uncompensated* for such service to the land once their lease expires.

Refuted above.
I'd like to hear you address the key issue of how any given government administration would *acquire* its land in the first place -- would it be by *seizure* / eminent-domain, or would it somehow find the funding to *purchase* all the land it acquires from current owners, at market prices?

It would not acquire the land, just start charging landowners the market price for the benefits it currently provides to them as a subsidy.
Are you limiting your 'geoist' politics to just Hong Kong, or do you think it would be suitable for *everyone*, *worldwide*?

It would be best for everyone, and almost any government, from local to national, can implement it to one degree or another; but no government or authority can implement it for everyone worldwide.
#15106553
ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, when we were discussing this at the 'mingy little beasts' thread, this is what you said, then I followed-up, and you never clarified.



Truth To Power wrote:
No; I clarified, and you just changed what I wrote to Marxist terminology again to make everything obscure again.



No, that's not the case, and you're *not* clarifying now, either.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, this is now sounding like the market rent is *not* 'voluntary', and that it's *mandatory* for the temporary use / leasing of the land.



Truth To Power wrote:
I have explained this many times, and you always refuse to know the facts I identify.



You keep using this phrase, as if I'm somehow *obligated* to see things your way, and that's *not* going to happen.


Truth To Power wrote:
It is voluntary in the same sense that buying a loaf of bread is voluntary: no one forces you to take the bread; and it is mandatory in the same sense that paying for a loaf of bread that you take from the bakery is mandatory: if you choose to take it, it is mandatory to pay for it.



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, yet you're fine with such being *commodified* under capitalism instead of being done by government administration, as it does with military spending.

All statists on PoFo are implicitly backing *military* spending -- which is non-productive -- over the providing of *food* to everyone (and healthcare, etc.) as a *civil right*.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
I'm not sure how you prevent yourself from understanding this simple, market-based, voluntary, beneficiary-pay, value-for-value transaction, but I know that you are able to do it somehow.



You're assuming that *everything* is in the private sector, and it's *not* -- things like roads and rails, for example, are administered by the *public* / state sector, with no profits involved. Ditto for libraries, government operations, utilities, schooling, etc.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll repeat that there would be no economic incentive for any leasee to *improve* the land, as with landscaping, when that service cannot be *compensated* once the lease is up and the leasee leaves the land.



Truth To Power wrote:
I'll repeat that your claims are false: the economic incentive is to improve the land so that you can use it productively enough to pay the rent. Indeed, NOT improving the land enough to use it to its optimum productivity would merely guarantee a loss. There is no point when "the lease is up." The landholder simply pays the monthly rent as long as he wants to keep using the land; and when he doesn't, he sells the improvements to the next user, who assumes responsibility for the rent payments.



No, my point stands, because if certain improvements are made by the leasee, such as landscaping, *where's the return* for that? 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. 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?

What would happen when the second leasee decides to stop leasing? Would they require the *third* leasee to pay for the upgrade costs, and so on for each successive leasee?

Why shouldn't the state *landlord* pay for any upgrades, as is the current practice in the *private* sector? That way this additional expense is *centralized*, along with the administration of the land itself, per this overall 'state land franchising' model of yours.

You haven't even *thought this through*, have you?


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ckaihatsu wrote:
And here's the proof -- improvements would be 'ignored', meaning not-economically-compensated.



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.



So then where's the *choice*? 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. Would the state landlord lease the parcel to the incoming tenant *without* requiring payment for the upgrades to the previous leasee? 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?

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? 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? 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.


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Truth To Power wrote:
2. It would on average be much higher than current property taxes, and aim to recover the full publicly created rental value of the location, with the result that the exchange value of land would be near zero;



ckaihatsu wrote:
This part contradicts your *premise* that the government is the sole *administrator* of all land, meaning that the land itself could *not* have any commodity-type *exchange value*, because the land / all land would *not* be bought-and-sold, as we're accustomed to seeing under present-day capitalism.



Truth To Power wrote:
It doesn't contradict it. That's what it means. Government is also the administrator of possession and use of land under capitalism and socialism as well as geoism, remember, because that is what government IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land. The only difference in government's role wrt land under those three systems is whether it will carry out that function to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor as in the geoist system; to abrogate people's rights without just compensation for the unearned profit of a greedy, privileged, parasitic private landowning elite as in the capitalist system; or to abrogate people's rights without just compensation in the name of the collective but actually for the benefit of the politically powerful as in the socialist system.



My point stands that the land could *have* no exchange value, not even 'near-zero', or 'zero', because it's simply *not being exchanged*. Your geoist model has the *state* as the sole owner and administrator of all land, leasing it out at 'market rent'. '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.

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.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The government administration *would not need* to 'recover the full publicly created rental value of the location', because governments acquire assets, like land, through *eminent domain*. It would be *impractical* for your government administration to *buy* all land that it acquires from the previous owners at market prices, because the public treasury could not conceivably *afford* to do so.



Truth To Power wrote:
Not sure what you think you are saying, here. True, it wouldn't need to -- and in practice doesn't in places like Hong Kong and China -- but full repayment is the ideal geoism aims for.



That's *hilarious* -- you're going to bring the geoist system into operation by *buying* everyone's existing real estate at *market* prices? What if people *don't want* to sell, or they say that they want 500% of the market price?

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



But it gets even *funnier* -- with *your* plan, the seized land (etc.) 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.


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Truth To Power wrote:
That -- i.e., nationalization -- is not the proposal, just repayment of the subsidy to landowning.



So, to sum up, what you want is a *fancy club*. 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.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It would be *impractical* for your government administration to *buy* all land that it acquires from the previous owners at market prices, because the public treasury could not conceivably *afford* to do so.

So, for clarification, does your government administration *seize* all land to acquire it, or does it pay *market prices* to all current owners, to acquire it?



Truth To Power wrote:
It could by just printing the money, but that is not the proposal. There is no need to expropriate or nationalize land, or to vacate existing land titles or dispossess current landholders unless they choose not to pay for what they are taking, and don't make arrangements to transfer possession to another user.



So you *don't even know* what your *own* model would do to acquire the land in the first place?

Who's *funding* this plan, and what would the *funders* get from their investments?


Truth To Power wrote:
Neither. 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.



Again you're conflating / confusing *real estate* values, with *rental* market pricing -- the two are *not* the same. And why would any current owner of real estate want to *pay rent* to use the property if they already *own* it, outright?

What exactly *are* 'the benefits [the state] has until now been providing to [the real estate owners] at derisory prices as a subsidy' -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
How would this UIE function, exactly, on an individual basis?



Truth To Power wrote:
Each land parcel's location subsidy repayment (LSR) liability would be reduced by a uniform amount -- probably around 5% of per capita GDP -- for each citizen residing there.



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. Yeah, good luck with that.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
I *am* a Marxist, yes, but, no, I'm not a postmodernist, or solipsistic in any way.

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

Spoiler: show
Image



Truth To Power wrote:
Constant and variable are not the relevant categories, and your diagram appears to bear no relationship to economic reality.



Oh, okay -- because you *say* so. Maybe you really *are* a dictator wannabe.


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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.



*You're* the one who used the term 'equity capital', and I'm informing you that 'constant capital' = 'equity capital'.


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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.



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:
No. Natural resources are not the same thing as natural monopolies, and different methods of rent recovery have to be used for natural resources other than locations. Economically, it would work much like at-will leasing, but with the rent going to the government and community that create it, rather than to private landowners for doing and contributing nothing.



Natural resources *are* natural monopolies, because of geographic *location*.



Across the world Public utilities are widely used to provide state-run water, electricity, gas, telecommunications, mass-transportation and postal services.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_m ... Regulation



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.



Okay, name *one* 'sovereign land administration authority'.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Your insults aside, ownership of *either* rentier capital (land, natural-monopoly-type assets), *and/or* equity capital (means of mass industrial commodity production) is *class* privilege, while all those who do *not* own capital of any kind are thus relegated to *working class* status, for the sake of working for a wage, so as to afford the material necessities of modern life and living.

You glorify *equity* capital ownership and make resulting factory jobs sound like *charity* to the workers employed, when that's merely *incidental* to the owner, who *exploits* the labor hired, so as to make *private profits*. This is capitalism, and the process goes on as long as capitalism is the current mode of production.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



Truth To Power wrote:
No it's not. You are again just refusing to understand the informative and illuminating concepts I have identified and defined, by substituting your obfuscatory, confusing, and misleading Marxist anti-concepts. Ownership of the fruits of one's labor, whether a pointed stick or a factory, is a right, not a privilege, and does not divide people into classes because it does not enable any group to take from any other.



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. No one can 'escape' material necessities, so the *procurement* of these necessities, for anyone, requires participation in the capitalist market economy.

Those who already have capital have an *immense* advantage over those who *do not* have capital. 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. Those who *do not* have capital *do* necessarily have to sell their labor power ('work') in order to live in modern society.

'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:
What's wrong with working for a living?



It's a *class* issue -- you should ask this question of anyone who is wealthy enough to not *have* to work for a living.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
'Nationalization' is *accurate*, though, because you have a single point of (government) administration, even if it only nationalizes and administrates over land and other natural-monopoly-type assets.

I'll readily admit that your model is *not* Stalinism because your model retains the function of market *leasing*, or nationalist *franchising*, which I find problematic, of course, because there's no inherent incentive for any service-type *improvements* to be made to any given parcel of leased land, either from the government bureaucratic administration, or from any leasees, who will be *uncompensated* for such service to the land once their lease expires.

I'd like to hear you address the key issue of how any given government administration would *acquire* its land in the first place -- would it be by *seizure* / eminent-domain, or would it somehow find the funding to *purchase* all the land it acquires from current owners, at market prices?

Are you limiting your 'geoist' politics to just Hong Kong, or do you think it would be suitable for *everyone*, *worldwide*?



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.



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. 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:
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.



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.

By 'community' you mean 'existing owners of private property / land', or, within geoism, 'the fascist state landlord'. 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:
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?



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.

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. Geoism is NOT capitalism. Capitalism has one additional "feature" that you have deliberately left out, because it refutes your false Marxist narrative: 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;



So the worker has the expenses of *rent* (housing), to rentier capitalists, and of *household expenses* (food, etc.), to *equity* capitalists.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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:
he must pay a landowner full market value just for permission to work for an employer;



No, this is incorrect. While payments to employers for employment *happen*, it's typically not the norm.


Truth To Power wrote:
he must then pay taxes out of his wages to fund desirable public services and infrastructure;


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.



Incorrect.


Truth To Power wrote:
That's just under industrial capitalism. Under modern finance capitalism, the worker will also be paying interest to private banks for permission to use money in order to participate in the economy, and paying IP monopolists rent/royalties for permission to use knowledge and ideas that would otherwise have been in the public domain, and to access products based thereon.



Okay, but using debt isn't an automatic *necessity*. People *can* get by on wages, if they happen to have employment.

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.

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:
Your diagrams are garbage unrelated to economic reality, sorry.



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:
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.



Now you're being *ambiguous* -- who would the *owner* of land be, exactly? 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.

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:
Refuted above.

It would not acquire the land, just start charging landowners the market price for the benefits it currently provides to them as a subsidy.



As I already mentioned, those who already own land are not going to want to *pay rent* for what they already own -- if you *insist* on this measure then you're a *fascist*.


Truth To Power wrote:
It would be best for everyone, and almost any government, from local to national, can implement it to one degree or another; but no government or authority can implement it for everyone worldwide.



Okay, so, again, how would any given 'government' procure the *funding* to buy-out existing owners, to get their land?
#15106571
Truth To Power wrote:
Government is also the administrator of possession and use of land under capitalism and socialism as well as geoism, remember, because that is what government IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land.



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.
#15107243
ckaihatsu wrote:No, that's not the case, and you're *not* clarifying now, either.

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.
You keep using this phrase, as if I'm somehow *obligated* to see things your way, and that's *not* going to happen.

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. 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.
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,

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?
yet you're fine with such being *commodified* under capitalism

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.
instead of being done by government administration, as it does with military spending.

The military is there to protect our rights against foreign aggression, which is government's job. Baking bread isn't.
All statists on PoFo are implicitly backing *military* spending -- which is non-productive --

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.
over the providing of *food* to everyone (and healthcare, etc.) as a *civil right*.

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.
You're assuming that *everything* is in the private sector,

No, you made that up. You make up a lot of stuff. It's the Marxist way.
and it's *not* -- things like roads and rails, for example, are administered by the *public* / state sector, with no profits involved.

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?
Ditto for libraries, government operations, utilities, schooling, etc.

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.
No, my point stands, because if certain improvements are made by the leasee, such as landscaping, *where's the return* for that?

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.
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.

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. 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.
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?

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.
What would happen when the second leasee decides to stop leasing? Would they require the *third* leasee to pay for the upgrade costs, and so on for each successive leasee?

Each lessee just pays the market value for whatever improvements are there, given the ongoing cost of the location.
Why shouldn't the state *landlord* pay for any upgrades, as is the current practice in the *private* sector?

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.
That way this additional expense is *centralized*, along with the administration of the land itself, per this overall 'state land franchising' model of yours.

Land would be there anyway. Someone has to choose to make improvements.
You haven't even *thought this through*, have you?

I have thought it through incomparably more and better than you, as every exchange between us proves.
So then where's the *choice*?

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.
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.

Of course it is. If the market says the improvements are inappropriate and have no value, they have no value.
Would the state landlord lease the parcel to the incoming tenant *without* requiring payment for the upgrades to the previous leasee?

Of course. The state is not responsible for guaranteeing that every dollar privately spent on improvements was spent wisely.
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?

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.
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?

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.
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?

No. It's his choice, and his responsibility.
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.

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.
My point stands that the land could *have* no exchange value, not even 'near-zero', or 'zero', because it's simply *not being exchanged*.

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?
Your geoist model has the *state* as the sole owner and administrator of all land, leasing it out at 'market rent'.

Land cannot rightly be owned. The state would just charge the market price for the benefits it provides to the landholder.
'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.

Market allocation to private, for-profit users is not Stalinism, don't be so ridiculous. Everything you say is just reliably false.
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.

What is my motive for continuing to respond to someone who makes such absurd and disingenuous claims?
That's *hilarious* -- you're going to bring the geoist system into operation by *buying* everyone's existing real estate at *market* prices?

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.
What if people *don't want* to sell, or they say that they want 500% of the market price?

If they want secure, exclusive tenure they will pay for it, or yield the land to someone who will.
Here's some history:

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 it gets even *funnier* -- with *your* plan, the seized land (etc.)

It's not seized. You made that up.
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.

No, that's just more absurd, disingenuous nonsense from you. Market allocation is the opposite of dictatorship.
So, to sum up, what you want is a *fancy club*.

Is that what it would take to drive a fact into your cranium?
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.)

All land is under its authority anyway. Who secures the landowner's exclusive tenure for him?
So you *don't even know* what your *own* model would do to acquire the land in the first place?

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.
Who's *funding* this plan, and what would the *funders* get from their investments?

It's not a private business.
Again you're conflating / confusing *real estate* values, with *rental* market pricing

No I'm not, don't be ridiculous.
-- the two are *not* the same.

And you don't seem to know what either of them is.
And why would any current owner of real estate want to *pay rent* to use the property if they already *own* it, outright?

Because their ownership of it is already conditional on keeping the taxes current, and always has been.
What exactly *are* 'the benefits [the state] has until now been providing to [the real estate owners] at derisory prices as a subsidy' -- ?

Secure, exclusive tenure, and all the desirable public services and infrastructure accessible from that location.
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.

No, they would simply learn that their "ownership" of the land has never been anything but a convenient legal fiction.
Oh, okay -- because you *say* so.

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.
Maybe you really *are* a dictator wannabe.

This, from you?
*You're* the one who used the term 'equity capital',

No I'm not. You introduced it in order to avoid using the concept of "products of labor devoted to production."
and I'm informing you that 'constant capital' = 'equity capital'.

Which are both irrelevant anti-concepts that do not correspond to any actual economic quantity.
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.

I'm sure slave owners said similar things to the abolitionists. 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.
Natural resources *are* natural monopolies, because of geographic *location*.

No, that's not what a natural monopoly is.
Okay, name *one* 'sovereign land administration authority'.

https://www.worldometers.info/geography ... countries/
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.

No, you are just makin' $#!+ up again.
No one can 'escape' material necessities, so the *procurement* of these necessities, for anyone, requires participation in the capitalist market economy.

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.
Those who already have capital have an *immense* advantage over those who *do not* have capital.

Of course, because they can contribute so much more to production. Same as people who have more education, more intelligence, more beauty, more industry.
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.

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.
Those who *do not* have capital *do* necessarily have to sell their labor power ('work') in order to live in modern society.

So they have to give value for value, like the capital owner, and cannot take value in return for nothing, like the privilege owner.
'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.

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.
It's a *class* issue -- you should ask this question of anyone who is wealthy enough to not *have* to work for a living.

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.
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.

Correct. You said something that is true. Congratulations!
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.

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.
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.

Working for your food, clothing and shelter, as our ancestors did for millions of years, 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. 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.
By 'community' you mean 'existing owners of private property / land', or, within geoism, 'the fascist state landlord'.

No, I mean the community. I'm not a Marxist, so I actually use words to mean what they mean.
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.

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 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.

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.
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.

No, that's just more ridiculous, absurd and disingenuous Marxist garbage contrary to fact. 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 the worker has the expenses of *rent* (housing), to rentier capitalists, and of *household expenses* (food, etc.), to *equity* capitalists.

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.
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.

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.
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.

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.
You just acknowledged that the wage-worker is *compelled* into disadvantageous terms with the employer.

BY THE LANDOWNER, NOT THE EMPLOYER.
This is the point that *I've* been making,

No it isn't. Your claim is that only the worker contributes to production and thus earns a share of production.
so this labor-for-wages transaction is *not* an even-handed market exchange, as you usually tout.

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.
You're *flip-flopping* on your position regarding this dynamic of labor-for-wages.

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.
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.

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.
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.

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.
No, this is incorrect.

No, of course it isn't. Don't be ridiculous.
While payments to employers for employment *happen*, it's typically not the norm.

The payment in question is to a LANDOWNER for permission to access employment opportunities, not to the EMPLOYER. Pay attention.
Incorrect.

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.
Okay, but using debt isn't an automatic *necessity*. People *can* get by on wages, if they happen to have employment.

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.
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.

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.
Products are *commodities* under capitalism and can be 'accessed' / purchased outright with *money*, per product, without regard to the underlying intellectual property.

False. Almost everything we buy is more expensive because of IP monopolies. Even food is made more expensive by patent monopolies on seeds.
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.

I don't have the time or energy to hold your hand while I show you why your diagrams are wrong.
Now you're being *ambiguous*

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.
-- who would the *owner* of land be, exactly?

In effect, no one. As a matter of legal form, the one paying the rent. The title just wouldn't be worth anything.
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.

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.
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.

I have never suggested a buy-out.
As I already mentioned, those who already own land are not going to want to *pay rent* for what they already own

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.
-- if you *insist* on this measure then you're a *fascist*.

No, that's just more absurd nonsense from you. Fascists are ALWAYS in bed with landowners. ALWAYS. Everything you say is just reliably false.
Okay, so, again, how would any given 'government' procure the *funding* to buy-out existing owners, to get their land?

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.
#15107245
ckaihatsu wrote: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.

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.
#15108408
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'.


---


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

Spoiler: show
Image



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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:


Spoiler: show
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 -- ?



viewtopic.php?p=15095654#p15095654



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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.


---


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.


---


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?


---


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.


---


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*.


---


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.


---


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.


---


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?


---


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.


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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

Spoiler: show
Image



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

Spoiler: show
Image



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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

Spoiler: show
Image



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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

Spoiler: show
Image
[/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.


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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

Spoiler: show
Image



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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



---


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



---


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.


---


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.


---


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?


---


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.


---


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.


---


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.


---


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.


---


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?


---


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.


---


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.


---


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.


---


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.


---


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 -- ?


---


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 -- ?


---


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?


---


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.


---


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).


---


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.


---


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?


---


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'

Spoiler: show
Image


https://www.revleft.space/vb/threads/20 ... ost2889338


And:


Emergent Central Planning

Spoiler: show
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