ckaihatsu wrote:
You're correctly acknowledging that natural monopolies occur with *assets* and resources (rentier capital), and *also* with equity capital domains, like transportation (a service), or [electricity] (a good).
My point, then, is why are you only addressing *land* this way, as being a natural monopoly (which it is) -- ? Why not all of F.I.R.E. (finance, insurance, real estate), and all *utilities* as well -- ?
Truth To Power wrote:
Because they are not all natural monopolies. Insurance is not a natural monopoly, and neither is banking. Banks' privilege is based on the barrier to entry, not monopoly.
Maybe we need a *referee* on this one, if anyone's actually *out* there (grin), 'cause this is going nowhere.
I've been *repeating* F.I.R.E. only because, *like* natural monopolies, they're *non-productive costs / overhead to equity capital*.
Society / civilization *has* to deal with material-economic realities like consumption, cities, cashflow, economics, land / real estate, *and* the possibility of natural and/or social disasters like hurricanes, flooding, needless deaths, hazards, and so on.
In this way, the *demand* side of things sees nothing *but* natural monopolies -- 'I have to get funding', 'I have to cover risks', 'I have to get a place', and everything else.
From the *supply* side of things utilities are *all* natural monopolies, and society / government may very well go *beyond* that benchmark, to provide a single-payer-type administration for not *just* utilities, but also for healthcare (Medicare, NHS, Canada), financing (social policy), insurance (homeowners), real estate (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) -- effectively *nationalizing* such, along with your precious land reforms.
examples include public utilities such as water services, electricity, telecommunications, mail, etc.[1]
Natural monopolies were recognized as potential sources of market failure as early as the 19th century; John Stuart Mill advocated government regulation to make them serve the public good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
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ckaihatsu wrote:
So then where's the *politics* for all of this -- how do you propose to address this particular 'market failure' (of utilities, transportation, etc.), if not by *nationalization*, as you tout for *land*.
Truth To Power wrote:
I don't tout nationalization of land, merely taxing it; although where land is already nationalized, as in China, I certainly do not advocate privatizing it, as the XSSR did with such disastrous results. As for privately owned utilities and transport infrastructure, nationalization should be on the table, though sometimes junior governments should do it.
So are we *good* here -- would nationalization apply to *all* of F.I.R.E. -- ?
ckaihatsu wrote:
So you're saying that society / public-opinion will go in the direction of *de-privatizing* *all* land holdings, with the monolithic government *nationalizing* all land parcels.
Truth To Power wrote:
I don't think nationalization is necessary. Just send each landholder a bill for what they are taking from the community. If they won't pay for it, they don't get to keep it, and must yield the land to someone who will.
*That's* nationalization / 'single-payer' -- the *nation* sends-the-bill, the *nation* uses force, or doesn't, regarding land, etc. The rest is accounting.
As with all 'upheaval'-type politics, though, you have to provide *some* kind of Point-A-to-Point-B, because otherwise it's mere idealism / wishful thinking.
In your scenario the government would have to be *monolithic* -- sorry for using that word over and over, but you haven't provided any illustration other than that of the CCP, implicitly.
The CCP itself is *problematic*, hopefully for obvious reasons -- though many here at PoFo would gladly go over *details* with you on that. (grin)
ckaihatsu wrote:
Again, how will it *pay* for such a transfer of ownership?
Truth To Power wrote:
It's the landowners who would have to start paying instead of just taking without paying.
Big talk for a big politics. (grin)
ckaihatsu wrote:
The U.S. went to *civil war* over the issue of the private property of chattel slaves. It took a *wartime victory*, and a presidential proclamation / executive order, to do it.
Truth To Power wrote:
Other countries managed to abolish slavery without civil war. There's no need for violence unless those who currently use violence to inflict injustice on others resort to violence to resist justice.
What you're *sidestepping*, though, is the historical, present-day *legacy* of that -- slaveowners *were* compensated by the U.S. government for their slaves 'property', and the South was allowed to continue to participate in the Union:
Reconstruction and betrayal
There was, nevertheless, a contradiction in the established bourgeois society of the North, with its own deep class antagonisms, imposing revolutionary change on the South. This was shown in the immediate aftermath of the Northern victory, and Lincoln’s assassination, in the spring of 1865. A split opened up within the political establishment. Lincoln’s vice-president and successor, Andrew Johnson, followed a policy of conciliating the defeated states. He pushed for them to be allowed back into the Union—and given a position of great influence in Congress—with no change in their social structure apart from the formal abolition of slavery. Given that the plantation owners retained great wealth and most of the former slaves had no land, the result was bound to be a virtual return to the situation before the war.
Johnson immediately ran into opposition from northern blacks and abolitionists, from radical Republican congressmen influenced by the wave of revolutionary democratic feeling generated by the war, and from some of the army officers occupying the South. The opposition soon also included mainstream Republican politicians who did not want the near 100 percent Democratic states back in Congress, industrial capitalists still determined to hegemonise the western territories, and ‘get rich quick’ businessmen who had descended on the South in the wake of the northern armies (the so-called carpetbaggers). This coalition was strong enough to defeat Johnson’s schemes (it came only one vote short of impeaching him in Congress), win the presidential election for the Republican candidate Grant in 1868, and enforce ‘reconstruction’ on the South for the best part of a decade.
In these years, Northern arms kept the old planters from controlling state or local governments. Southern Republicans took their place, black as well as white. Freed slaves were given the vote and used it. Blacks held positions as judges and in state governments. There were 20 black Federal congressmen and two black senators. For the first time, Southern legislatures took education seriously, opening networks of schools for poor white and black children alike. The plantocracy fought back, encouraging the Ku Klux Klan to terrorise blacks who took advantage of their new rights and whites who aided them. There were killings, like the massacre of 46 blacks and two white sympathisers in Memphis, Tennessee, in May 1866. But so long as the Northern army occupied the South, the terror could not destroy gains which blacks were determined to hold on to. After all, 200,000 blacks had been in the Union army, and they knew how to fight.
However, precisely because it was a bourgeois army of occupation, there was one thing the army could not do—confiscate land to provide the freed slaves with a way of making a living independent of the old masters. Sherman had briefly carried through such a measure, giving land to 40,000 ex-slaves, only to see it overturned by Johnson. From then on, the only land available to former slaves was government-owned land, which was often of inferior quality. Most were forced to rely on the former slave-owners, working as sharecroppers or labourers for them. What had been an oppressed slave class became, for the most part, an oppressed peasant and labouring class.
Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 352-353
Fast-forward to today, and we could readily *extend* the politics, to include *all equity capital* -- can it, and along with it, *workers*, be *liberated*, so that all of everyone's life concerns are no longer *subservient* to it, and/or its statist backing.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Are you proposing the same for all land parcels, and then also for all *other* natural-monopolies / market failures -- ?
Truth To Power wrote:
I don't conflate natural monopolies with market failures. Education and health care, for example, are market failures, but they are not natural monopolies as there is no monotonically increasing economy of scale.
Right on the knife-edge of politics, huh -- ? (If you were any more centrist you'd be at the earth's *core*.) (grin)
Are you open to considering the *demand* side of things more regularly -- in the case of *education* it could be said that paying the cost of *profits* to private sector management of such 'enterprises' / charter schools, only adds to the *expense* of education 'provisioning' (for lack of a better word).
Society would get more bang for its buck by *not* outsourcing education (etc.) to the private sector, because of the cost of providing profits ('bribes' to private ownership, in lieu of societal-collective (proletarian) administration over the same, according to some).
Ultimately, though, there's no actual 'fine-tuning' possible, of the 'balance' between the state / government / public sector, and the private sector. (In the Western world it's the *bourgeoisie* / merchant class that has prevailed, while in China it's the government bureaucracy that's prevailed.) (Each is either *private*-proprietary or 'state-proprietary' property, regardless, and is *not* made available to the working class.)
[2] G.U.T.S.U.C., Simplified
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Yeah, take it up with Mr. Webster:
Truth To Power wrote:
Webster proves me right:
"A system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state."
Yeah, fun, so how about when we get around to talking about *that* kind of "socialism", b.k.a. *Stalinism*, you can bring that up.
Political Spectrum, Simplified
Political Spectrum, Simplified UPDATE
Generalizations-Characterizations
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ckaihatsu wrote:
And where does the *funding* for that 'repayment' (by government) come from, exactly -- ?
Truth To Power wrote:
The repayment is by the landowners who receive the subsidy.
If the landowners have to *repay*, then it's *not* a subsidy, since 'subsidy' implies *free*, like a *grant*, and not a loan.
So is it to be loans from an a-priori monolithic beneficient government, or *grants* -- ? What if someone says 'no'?
ckaihatsu wrote:
So then how is this 'administration' (government) composed? How are individuals deemed to be 'competent', then hired and trained?
Truth To Power wrote:
The usual ways.
Enlighten me.
How would, say, *attempted coups* be prevented, exactly -- ?
ckaihatsu wrote:
You're begging-the-question -- how would your geoism address natural monopolies *in general*, like that of IP -- and for *insurance*, too, for that matter?
Truth To Power wrote:
IP is self-evidently an artificial monopoly, and insurance is not a natural monopoly.
I'm going to have to point out that, for any given economic-type transaction / exchange, there are *two parties* involved, the current owner, and the prospective or actual buyer. We can shorten the names to be that of 'seller' and 'buyer'. More generically, broadly, we can speak of potential, *unexpressed* 'supply', and 'demand' (until the actual exchange takes place).
So, if 'demand' is agreeable, then it's apparent to anyone that 'demand' has certain objective *interests* in procurement that the seller does *not*, for the same transaction. We could discuss the aspects of *supply*, as in 'supply-side', and, likewise, we could discuss aspects of *demand*, as in 'demand-side' (a term not usually used).
Demand has interests in greater market *competition*, so that the scales tip in the balance of business-chasing-dollars (lower prices), rather than dollars-chasing-products (higher prices).
From the *supply* side of things government intervention, as through oversight of IP, *is* an artificial monopoly -- in the sense of statist-culture / 'mainstream' culture being the final decider / arbiter of what technology is to be officially accepted as 'valid', and what is not.
*Any* competitor who doesn't win-out could lodge any number of 'sour-grapes'-type plaintive pleas on behalf of their own *proprietary* interests to get 'Product X' to market, and the system itself certainly isn't perfect, so there's always some ground for particular case argumentation, whatever that may be.
*But*, especially from the 'demand' side of things, the consumer-type role in technological determination is *always* going to be one of relative *passivity*, only being able to vote-with-dollars *after* the official decision has been made regarding patents, and after the business landscape has put certain products into production, to bring to market. Does the consumer need the product from patent #12345678, or does the consumer need *a* computer, for x-y-and-z. So the buyer / consumer obviously has their own, *unique* interests in the transaction, quite independent from the status quo statist and business systems for making goods and services available to whatever market.
My point here is that, to the consumer / buyer, the particular segment of consumption they're participating in as buyers, *is* more like a 'natural monopoly', because, these days, one *can't* do without a smartphone or computer, or whatever other staples of the current standard of social living happen to be.
Yes, the consumer has some relative choice over brand options, and the market is probably far more responsive and real-time than ever before in history -- but that still doesn't change the role-interests of the *buyer*, versus the seller. To the buyer, it's *an appropriate smartphone*, or a *less-than-appropriate smartphone* -- in *that* sense the buyer is facing a *single hilltop* of optimization potentials, meaning a 'natural monopoly' of consumer 'appropriateness' for any given needed staple item in today's society. Either an item *fits*, or it doesn't-really, and the consumer has no interest or obligation to deal with any of the 'externalities' of any supplier's side of things, such as the story of how their product got to market (no offense).
So, *insurance*, too, could be thought-of in the same way, from the perspective of the buyer, since 'everyone' needs to have insurance these days, for whatever, including the basics of life and living, just like *food*, arguably -- though *certainly* in terms of commerce.
Your continued inability to address *all* of F.I.R.E. means that you're unable to address (obligatory) 'need', especially in business, for *insurance*, for *finance*, and for *technology* (all 'fixed capital', from Marx). Aren't these actually 'natural monopolies', in terms of *need*, since they're *unavoidable*, like existing on land -- ?
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Even if government doesn't run a deficit, to print money, there's still the scenario of *private equity*, which is still finance, and is *not* your cherished equity capital itself.
Truth To Power wrote:
Private equity is just a layer of ownership. The key issue is not how things are privately owned, but WHAT is privately owned. It doesn't matter if slaves are owned by individuals, corporations, private equity firms, churches, charities, or the government. How many times do I have to explain it?
You're being disingenuous and evasive by using a 'way-out-there' example for your illustration -- it's *obscurantism*, basically.
But, for the sake of *clarity*, I'll rephrase -- the point here is 'Not all capital is going to be *active* (as equity capital, in ongoing investments), at all times, so whenever capital *isn't* being actively used in the process of commodity production, it's just *sitting around*, and is *rentier* capital, which only *draws* from the pre-existing economy of valuations, and does not *add* any new values to it.
So my *question* / issue is: 'How do-you / would you *differentiate* between active equity capital, and *non*-active capital, which could readily be used as *finance* -- ?
*Your* only concern to-date has been with the overly narrow example of *land* / real estate, and you've been content to *ignore* the full spectrum of *all* rentier capital types, namely F.I.R.E.
Because of this blind-spot you're unable to address how to *treat* rentier capital differently, as for your 'equity heaven' monolithic administration politics.
The hazard here is that as soon as you let private-equity / *finance* into the picture -- which I would argue is *unavoidable* in *any* flavor of capitalism -- then you're no longer dealing with *equity capital itself* -- since it isn't -- and instead you're dealing with valuation-sucking *rentier* capital, or *finance*.
ckaihatsu wrote:
But it's always a trade-off, as for any individual or household -- economically you can have 'stability', but only at the cost of foregoing 'risk' and 'opportunities' altogether, by just letting the value just *sit* there.
Truth To Power wrote:
Anti-economic nonsense. The value of money doesn't just sit there, it is used for exchange.
Sorry, but this just isn't true -- if it *was*, we'd already be *in* your idealistic equity-heaven (where all exchange values are actively-invested equity capital, only, all the time).
In *reality*, capital goods, like a factory building, *can* be idle, *and* they can also be *in decline*, ready to be picked-off and sold for scrap -- also *non-productive* economic activity, a *reshuffling* of ownership, at best, which then has its *own* overhead of existing-values-procurement for the process of doing so, hence the 'vulture capitalist' or barbarians-at-the-gate moniker.
ckaihatsu wrote:
You're expressing more of a *fiscal* position, rather than a (political) *policy* one.
Truth To Power wrote:
It's both.
ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll again remind that if you're so pro-exchange-values, that means that you have to accept F.I.R.E. as well -- you should be railing against the 'privileges' of insurance and finance, as well as that of real estate.
Truth To Power wrote:
Non sequitur.
Aren't insurance and finance actually *overhead*, non-productive claims ('rent-seeking', if you like), against pre-existing equity capital -- ?
I don't see how real estate / land is any different economically from finance or insurance, from the standpoint of equity capital -- they're all different forms of *rentier* capital, and are all *non-productive* of commodities (and commodity-production is what equity capital is *all about*, for some serious potential profit-making, unlike what simpler rentier capital can provide).
ckaihatsu wrote:
In other words, any given dollar can't go to both *recipient persons*, as for transportation or electricity, *and* also go to underwriting the *dollar basis* of those transportation or electricity entities, going by the yardstick of *exchange values* -- 'stable currency values' requires *government underwriting* of such, as we've clearly seen in 2008-2009, and again in 2020, with U.S. government bailouts of the stock market.
Truth To Power wrote:
Gibberish. The bailouts were to rescue the debt money system.
I'm going to call it supply-side-versus-demand-side, since the *capitalist* debt money system (if you like) was the 'supply-side' that required sudden public *underwriting* / bailouts.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Your perceived societal need / requirement for *stable currency values* is a social *liability*, because you're buying-into the social institutions of the *private sector* -- and becoming *dependent* on them -- meaning financiers and the whole capitalist system of exchange values.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, you simply made that up. It's better to be dependent on the competitive private sector to produce goods and services than a monopolistic state, as the 20th century proved so very conclusively.
No, it *isn't* -- one could even say that 'free markets' and Stalinism are somewhat *comparable*, because of all of the 'market failures' under capitalism that then require *government bailouts*, which means that the private sector is *not* self-sustaining, as things are, and have-been.
ckaihatsu wrote:
What about F.I.R.E.?
Truth To Power wrote:
Already addressed.
(See above.)
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Truth To Power wrote:
Finance without private commercial banks' money issuance privilege would be a small and economically insignificant part of the economy.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Do you have a crystal ball for that?
Truth To Power wrote:
I don't need one.
Okay, spell-it-out, then -- what role would finance conceivably have, if government intervention in the money supply no longer happened, per your politics -- ?
ckaihatsu wrote:
More to the point, though, is that nothing would prevent the re-emergence of *other* conglomerated interests, possibly with *their own*, cryptocurrency-like issuances, *and* they could very well wind up using *force* to *enforce* whatever system of theirs grew up around them, like historical *company towns*.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, because competition and the absence of privilege would afford them no means to do so.
'Competition' could be all-out *warfare*, as has happened historically, which would be *unacceptable* by the axioms of your 'equity-heaven' politics, since warfare is *economically destructive*.
Please address this inconsistency in your monetarist line.
Notable people
Paul Kelly, Italian American mobster and founder of the Five Points Gang, whose members included future crime bosses like Johnny Torrio, Al Capone and Lucky Luciano
John Morrissey, Irish American bare-knuckle boxer, Dead Rabbits gang criminal leader in New York City, Democratic Party New York State Senator, and Tammany Hall-backed U.S. Congressman from New York
Films
Gangs of New York (2002) is a historical film set in the mid-19th century, in the Five Points district of New York City. The film, directed by Martin Scorsese and written by Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian, and Kenneth Lonergan, was inspired by Herbert Asbury's nonfiction book, The Gangs of New York (1928).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Points,_Manhattan
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Truth To Power wrote:
Insurance is problematic and complex as explained above. Land and money are by comparison easy to understand -- but you refuse to understand them, either, even when I have explained them to you, very patiently, multiple times, in clear, simple, grammatical English. So I won't even try to get into the problem of insurance.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so just to *confirm*, you're *forfeiting* any claims to politically address the areas of *insurance*, and *balkanization*. (Several different currencies may wind up being in *competition*, in circulation with each other, like the various cryptocurrencies of today.)
Truth To Power wrote:
All you have confirmed is that you have no alternative but to just make $#!+ up and falsely attribute it to me.
No, I just *asked* for *confirmation* -- I did *not* just interject something of my choosing.
If insurance is a 'problem', then how would insurance *detract* from your equity-heaven scenario?
ckaihatsu wrote:
I understand your politics to be that of 'geoism', a single-issue reformist politics that uses *exchange values* for its economics.
Truth To Power wrote:
Liberty, justice and truth are three issues, not one.
Liberty, justice and truth are not *economics*, though -- there's still the *material world* that any proposed political economy would have to deal-with.
*Your* equity-heaven economics relies on *exchange values*, and also must maintain a stable *pricing regime* on-paper, regardless of what volatilities may be taking place in the real-world.
ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm saying that your own approach *dichotomizes* the political and the economic too much
Truth To Power wrote:
No, I am merely, unlike you, willing to know the difference.
ckaihatsu wrote:
-- you don't have a *political economy* as much as you have a single-issue reformist politics, and an economic fetishization / dependence on *stable currency valuations*,
Truth To Power wrote:
No, I merely observe that a stable exchange medium is advantageous for production.
*Of course* it is -- that's why your position *requires* it, based as it is in capitalistic *exchange values*.
And look at what lengths the U.S. government has had to go to, to prevent a liquidity crunch from unsold U.S. Treasury bonds (March 2020).
ckaihatsu wrote:
meaning that it *has* to work-out on paper, at all costs, regardless of social and material *realities* on-the-ground. (Like bank runs, stock market crashes / failures, funding for government nationalization, and all of the other built-in ills of the market mechanism of capitalism / private property.)
Truth To Power wrote:
I don't advocate capitalism, as I have told you many times and you always ignore, and I have explained why all those "material realities" are merely artefacts of privilege, which I propose to abolish.
You *do* advocate capitalism because you advocate an economic system based on *exchange values* -- as soon as there's a single transaction / exchange, there's *exchange values*, either explicit or *implicit* (barter).
ckaihatsu wrote:
If you're going to rail against *finance capitalism*, then you have to object to *private equity* as well.
Truth To Power wrote:
Non sequitur fallacy.
(See above.)
ckaihatsu wrote:
All *you've* done
Truth To Power wrote:
That's the signal that you are about to spew more silly garbage you have made up:
ckaihatsu wrote:
is to *blithely dismiss* the real-world impact / magnitude of its existence, which is often 'vulture investment', or 'financialization':
Truth To Power wrote:
See? As a Marxist, you have to refuse to know the fact that the existence and nature of privilege are more important than who exercises it.
Equity capital isn't *hostage* to land, as you're making it out to be -- real estate, like the rest of F.I.R.E., finance and insurance, is a *cost* to capital. So is keeping the lights on at the office. Your politics *fetishizes* the overhead of *land*, to the point of making it sound like the sole *burden* in business practice.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Producer goods *do* enjoy monopolies (like tech companies today),
Truth To Power wrote:
Only by dint of government-issued and -enforced IP monopolies, which I propose to abolish.
Noted, but I'll argue that it's still something of a red-herring, since the material *reality* of necessary 'tech' acquisition will continue to exist, for anyone and for any commercial entity. (See the earlier segment on this.)
ckaihatsu wrote:
and they *do* enjoy unearned profits, as from every hour of every worker's workday, due to economic exploitation of the labor commodity.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, it's due to privilege that enables them to exploit both workers and consumers, as I have already proved.
While, concurrently, *equity* capital, and rentier capital both extract value from the labor commodity.
material-economic exploitation
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Name-calling isn't the same thing as actually *disproving* the material-economic flows that it depicts / outlines.
Truth To Power wrote:
It's just absurd Marxist garbage with no basis in fact. I don't have to disprove it, because it is just nonsense you have made up with no basis in fact.
Still name-calling. Stick to the *points*, maybe.