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#15252918
Potemkin wrote:Anyone who disagrees with @Truth To Power’s geoist beliefs is either evil socialist scum or evil capitalist scum, depending on his mood that day.

No, depending on whether they are socialists or capitalists (there are also some anti-geoists -- the "libertarians" and an-caps -- who are actually feudalists).
Angela Merkel grew up in East Germany, so clearly she must be evil socialist scum.

No, it just explains why she is.
After all, her opposition to geoism - the only non-evil political philosophy to have ever existed - can only have been motivated by the malicious spirit of Satan himself.

Oh, no, there are plenty of motivating reasons to be anti-geoist: dishonesty, greed, ignorance, dishonesty, stupidity, cowardice, laziness and dishonesty, just for starters.
There’s really no other possible explanation, since geoism is so self-evidently and obviously true.

It certainly seems to be, given that no one has ever been able to contrive a consistently defensible critique of it, and no one ever will.
#15252920
Pants-of-dog wrote:@Truth To Power

Your anti-science hysteria

That is a fabrication on your part.
is not relevant. Nor is your anti-socialist hysteria.

Hatred of evil is not hysteria, it is the appropriate emotional response.
House prices today are due to capitalism.

True: capitalism subsidizes idle landowning so exorbitantly that the market inevitably prices landowner privilege accordingly. Socialism, by contrast, would make the locations so much less desirable that few would willingly pay much even to use them, with or without owning them.
#15252925
Potemkin wrote:
libertarians



They've been soooooo into that cryptocurrency stuff, which isn't even *economically productive* -- it's just a financial asset like any *other* kind of rentier capital, that just sits there, hoping to retain value while *all* valuations are falling across-the-board.

I think it was Roubini who said that even *cash* isn't safe right now, so that leaves the libertarians with nothing but their *marketing*.


Nouriel Roubini on Economic Threats, Dollar and Fed

#15253011
ckaihatsu wrote:They've been soooooo into that cryptocurrency stuff, which isn't even *economically productive* -- it's just a financial asset like any *other* kind of rentier capital, that just sits there, hoping to retain value while *all* valuations are falling across-the-board.

No. I am no fan of crypto, but that sort of nonsense demonstrates why accurate, valid definitions are so crucial. $#!+coins do not yield rent, which is a return obtained by legally depriving others of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise be accessible, especially natural resources. With crypto, the opportunity (to use it for exchange) only exists because the blockchain means others are deprived of it. A $#!+coin is just a very large number (mathematicians might not call it very large, but 10^334,000 seems pretty large to me) that has been discovered to have a certain property. Normally, of course, numbers cannot be owned as private property. But the blockchain essentially means the discoverer of each coin owns it. It's a little bit like in-game gold, which only has value because it can be exchanged for things one wants. People have agreed that $#!+coins are owned by their initial discoverers. The fact that 90% of $#!+coins are owned by 1% of the owners tells you that it is a scam. But no one is thus legally deprived of anything they would otherwise have, which is the defining characteristic of rent.
#15253016
Truth To Power wrote:
No. I am no fan of crypto, but that sort of nonsense demonstrates why accurate, valid definitions are so crucial. $#!+coins do not yield rent, which is a return obtained by legally depriving others of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise be accessible, especially natural resources. With crypto, the opportunity (to use it for exchange) only exists because the blockchain means others are deprived of it. A $#!+coin is just a very large number (mathematicians might not call it very large, but 10^334,000 seems pretty large to me) that has been discovered to have a certain property. Normally, of course, numbers cannot be owned as private property. But the blockchain essentially means the discoverer of each coin owns it. It's a little bit like in-game gold, which only has value because it can be exchanged for things one wants. People have agreed that $#!+coins are owned by their initial discoverers. The fact that 90% of $#!+coins are owned by 1% of the owners tells you that it is a scam. But no one is thus legally deprived of anything they would otherwise have, which is the defining characteristic of rent.



Okay, good catch. Thanks -- there are exposes, too, on just how much *electricity* all that math takes, and the resulting air pollution.
#15253101
ckaihatsu wrote:
Could you include *all* natural monopolies, *and* all rent-extraction, as being that of *rentier* capital -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
I don't consider "rentier capital" a meaningful term. In classical economics, "capital" referred to producer goods, which have no rentier element. It's more informative to talk of assets based on privilege rather than production. An asset like a factory adds to total wealth; it relieves scarcity. An asset like a land title, taxi medallion, bank license, IP monopoly, etc. does not add to total wealth or relieve scarcity (often it aggravates scarcity), it just legally entitles the owner to take wealth from others.


Truth To Power wrote:
based on privilege rather than production



*You* mean *government-sanctioned* (administration) 'privilege' more-specificially, correct -- ?


Social Production Worldview

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---


(Again.)


Truth To Power wrote:
I don't consider "rentier capital" a meaningful term. In classical economics, "capital" referred to producer goods, which have no rentier element. It's more informative to talk of assets based on privilege rather than production. An asset like a factory adds to total wealth; it relieves scarcity. An asset like a land title, taxi medallion, bank license, IP monopoly, etc. does not add to total wealth or relieve scarcity (often it aggravates scarcity), it just legally entitles the owner to take wealth from others.



Government administrative ('public-sector') interests *aside* for the moment, I'll address the *private sector* aspect -- the aforementioned investment capital used for infrastructure / the-means-of-mass-industrial-production, and also for hiring wage labor.


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

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What does the outlay of capital *do*, regarding *labor* -- ? Capital designates *where* (etc.) the commodity-productive process is going to be, but capital *itself* doesn't do commodity-production, correct -- ?

If capital itself *could* do commodity production and make sales and collect revenue and extract profits, then the employer wouldn't even *need* to bother with hiring any wage labor.

But does money beget money -- ? No, money will *not* spontaneously grow greater and increase in size if left on its own -- there *has* to be a process involved that *increases* overall value, using more than just money itself.



M-C-M' (money is used to buy a commodity which is resold to obtain a larger sum of money)[19]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_(Marxism)#Forms_of_commodity_trade



Labor-power / the labor commodity *impels* the commodity productive process, based on the outlay of equity capital. Wage labor, then, confers *value* / labor-power, into the commodity production process, which *could* be thought of as 'labor value'. Labor power is *productive* of commodities, while assets like land and natural monopolies are *non-productive* -- maybe we can make up a *name* for that kind of thing, if not 'rentier capital'.

And the factory building *itself* -- is that economically 'productive', or not -- is the factory building *indispensible* to the production process, or is it strictly the productive machinery, *inside* of the factory building, that is the active productive component -- ?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm not talking about commercial paper or corporate bonds



Truth To Power wrote:
Neither am I. I'm talking about demand deposit money, which is mostly outstanding bank loan principal.



Yeah, no prob -- you can *have* that reformism, to 'mitigate' fractional reserve lending or whatever, but do you really think that that would be *sufficient* to overcome the *systemic* problems that you rail on about, like '[land] privilege' -- ?

In past threads you've been *unable* to address the 'transitional' issue -- which is necessary for *any* posited political 'vision' -- of how exactly society and its conceivable geoist government could *obtain* all of the land parcels that are currently under private ownership.


Consciousness, A Material Definition

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[10] Supply prioritization in a socialist transitional economy

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Truth To Power wrote:
Fiat currency is a very minor part of the money supply. Most money is debt money issued by private commercial banks when they lend. The entire outstanding principal is part of the money supply, mostly in the form of demand deposits.



If fiat currency is 'a very minor part of the money supply', then why does your 'geoist' / libertarian politics make such a claptrap out of it -- ?

I'll also note that the *political* concern here is -- as ever -- with the government's *discretion* / power over such matters of money-supply policy. (Note El Salvador and cryptocurrency here.)


World Business Watch | El Salvador's bitcoin experiment: $60 million lost | Bitcoin | English News




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ckaihatsu wrote:
so that any random given currency note *may* represent real labor-derived value, or it may be a government *debt* issuance.



Truth To Power wrote:
Notes are a small part of the money supply.



This is *tangential*, though.

You're sidestepping the point that capital for investment partially goes to the 'constant costs' for capital -- private infrastructure basically.

This 'infrastructure' capital, *plus* the remaining investment capital for hiring *wage labor*, for commodity production, has a certain chance of generating revenue, for *profits*.

Given that this sample pool of investment capital *does* make a profit, *that* development would *increase* the pool of total capital, *beyond* the initial sum of pooled capital.

This resulting increase in total equity value, over the initial investment amount, means that the *economy's* total equity value (not necessarily face-values) has increased as well, correct -- ?

The owner could readily cash-out right after the first production run of the factory, and would have more cash / value *after*, than when s/he *started*, correct -- ?

Now -- where did that *additional increment in value* come from -- ?


material-economic exploitation

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Spoiler: show
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ckaihatsu wrote:
What is one dollar *worth*, or equivalent-to -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Whatever it will buy.



ckaihatsu wrote:
So then since labor is a 'production factor', what problem do you have with the *labor theory of value* -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
It's just wrong. First, there are other production factors, and second, value also applies to things that labor never produced at all, like land.



Okay, then how did any given parcel of land receive its *initial* valuation? (How *should* any given parcel of land receive its initial *geoist* valuation -- ?)


Truth To Power wrote:
Jevons proved the Labor Theory of Value is false more than 150 years ago. Socialists who cling to it are as objectively wrong as creationists, and have been for almost as long.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're *describing* the labor theory of value in the next segment:



ckaihatsu wrote:
Are employees the spoils of corporate warfare? Just for decoration? Bragging rights? How does wage labor fit into the business' business plan, exactly -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Like any other production factor, the producer thinks he can get it for less than the value it contributes to his product. If he buys equipment, raw materials, fuel, buildings, vehicles, etc., it's all because he thinks it will contribute more to the value of his product than he has to pay for it.



---


Truth To Power wrote:
Nope. Value is what a thing would trade for. That's all. I am describing the fact that producers apply labor to producing a product until the marginal value that the labor contributes is equal (or at least close) to its marginal cost. The product's value doesn't come from the fact that labor is applied to it. Rather, labor is applied to producing it as long as that labor contributes more value to the product than it costs. The Labor Theory of Value gets cause and effect reversed. See Jevons.



You're saying 'supply-and-demand', but you haven't addressed the point about this that I've raised previously, about money having to do a physically-impossible *triple-duty* of valuating these three *different* economic components: [1] manufacture, [2] supply-and-demand, and [3] the consumer's own subjective use-value, or 'utility'.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, you're saying that the market measures the day-by-day *fluctuations* in the value of a commodity, due to the balance between the forces of supply and demand.

Now -- what about the *costs of production*. If I use available funds to manufacture something, I'm going to be looking for pricing -- irrespective of subsequent supply-and-demand pricing fluctuations -- that gives me a *return* on my money.

This is my standing critique of capitalist 'money' / exchange-values, that it's having to do *triple duty*, which is impossible -- here's recently from another thread:



ckaihatsu wrote:
[T]he radial gradient of metropolitan upscale land values, outward, means that the real estate pricings / values are out-of-whack with the *utility* provided to renters / owners / users of land. In other words we're all led to believe by default that market real estate prices are 'valid', and that they somehow reflect the *use*, or utility, that people get out of each unit or parcel.

But this obviously can't be the case, because these market prices *fluctuate*, according to supply-and-demand, as you've covered. So if more people are economically 'demanding' pricier areas with their money, then the price goes *up*, as we're currently seeing. This pricing / valuation then has *little* to do with the cost of *creating* that unit or parcel, nor does it accurately reflect the sense of 'use value' to the purchaser / renter, in the sense of proportion-of-income (spent on rent).

Yet we're expected to believe that the one 'price' value can somehow represent *all three* variables / qualities at once, 'use', 'supply and demand', and 'construction', all at once.



viewtopic.php?p=15249613#p15249613



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ckaihatsu wrote:
You *need* Stalinism to be called 'socialism', don't you -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Stalinism was socialism. Nothing to do with me.



Okay, cool then -- I'm just going to leave these here, if that's okay with you.



Socialism is a left-wing[1] economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership[2] of the means of production[3][4] as opposed to private ownership.[5][6][4]



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




[Stalinism]

Proletarian state

Traditional communist thought holds that the state will gradually "wither away" as the implementation of socialism reduces class distinction. However, Stalin argued that the proletarian state (as opposed to the bourgeois state) must become stronger before it can wither away. In Stalin's view, counter-revolutionary elements will attempt to derail the transition to full communism, and the state must be powerful enough to defeat them. For this reason, communist regimes influenced by Stalin have been widely described as totalitarian.[21] Other leftists, such as anarcho-communists, have criticized the party-state of the Stalin-era Soviet Union, accusing it of being bureaucratic and calling it a reformist social democracy rather than a form of revolutionary communism.[22]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalinism ... rian_state



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ckaihatsu wrote:
You said 'Big Lie' -- that's specifically fascism.



Truth To Power wrote:
The term was coined to apply to fascism, but the concept applies in lots of other cases. It's a kind of gaslighting.



---


Truth To Power wrote:
Religion uses the Big Lie all the time. It might even be the original case.




The new and reinvigorated civilisations shared certain common features as well as the use of iron. They saw a proliferation of new crafts; a growth of long distance trade; a rise in the importance of merchants as a social class; the use of coins to make it easy even for lowly cultivators and artisans to trade with each other; the adoption (except in China) of new, more or less phonetically based, alphabets which made literacy possible for much wider numbers of people; and the rise of ‘universalistic’ religions based on adherence to a dominant god, principle of life or code of conduct.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 47
#15253208
late wrote:
There isn't a snowflakes chance in the heart of a nuclear explosion.

Hmm, when I say that, I mean it won't just melt, it will reduced to the subatomic level.



It's actually been fairly productive -- I got to *this* point, due to exchanges with TTP:


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're saying 'supply-and-demand', but you haven't addressed the point about this that I've raised previously, about money having to do a physically-impossible *triple-duty* of valuating these three *different* economic components: [1] manufacture, [2] supply-and-demand, and [3] the consumer's own subjective use-value, or 'utility'.



viewtopic.php?p=15253101#p15253101
#15253905
[EDIT -- 'material' instead of 'materialist']


Y'know how in *politics* / society there can be times when it's *difficult* to relate the past to the present, and yet that's where historical events have left us.

"Fortunately" capitalism takes-care of this everyday structural problem / dynamic, by saying that the material / tangible products of labor become *immortalized* in value (minus depreciation) ('dead labor'), while the labor commodity is only valued per-moment, while actively in motion and being productive.

TLDR: *Live* labor / people's-lives are being valued per-hour according to the historical record of *past* labor expended, that built-up the present-day private (and/or governmental) infrastructure. Live labor is being squeezed of its labor value by 'dead labor' (capital invested).

The past is resolved with the present continuously, economically, this way, and no one need be the wiser. Those *with* equity capital are implicitly *negotiating* their own new standards of relating the past ('dead labor'), to the future (planned production through new wage labor economic exploitation).

There's *no hint of economic democracy here*, as has been noted before -- the overall capitalist political economy is one of 'fixed' material-world 'policy' norms, inherently split along timeless socio-material social *roles* / relations, whether lifelong or shifting -- what I call 'inherent material factionalism'.


labor and capital, side-by-side

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Social Production Worldview

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Currently, look at everything that sloshes around inside of a dollar:

• 'dead labor'

• F.I.R.E. costs / value (non-productive -- all three are 'risk mitigation' of some form or another)

• 'natural monopolies' valuations (necessarily set by policy)

• debt / finance values (not real money)
Last edited by ckaihatsu on 05 Nov 2022 15:10, edited 1 time in total.
#15253998
ckaihatsu wrote:*You* mean *government-sanctioned* (administration) 'privilege' more-specificially, correct -- ?

Privilege is legal, and can therefore only be created by government.
What does the outlay of capital *do*, regarding *labor* -- ?

Pays for it to be applied to the producer's production system.
Capital designates *where* (etc.) the commodity-productive process is going to be, but capital *itself* doesn't do commodity-production, correct -- ?

Capital is one of the factors the producer uses to effect production. It is the producer whose decisions and initiative cause the product to exist, which originates the property right in it.
If capital itself *could* do commodity production and make sales and collect revenue and extract profits, then the employer wouldn't even *need* to bother with hiring any wage labor.

Of course. Or if the producer can do everything necessary himself.
But does money beget money -- ? No, money will *not* spontaneously grow greater and increase in size if left on its own -- there *has* to be a process involved that *increases* overall value, using more than just money itself.

Of course: production. The producer -- whose role is contractual, and need not involve owning any capital at all -- does his best to allocate purchasing power -- "money" -- to the various production factors so as to create products whose value is greater than the value of what he uses up to produce them. That is his necessary labor contribution, which originates his property right in the product.
Labor-power / the labor commodity *impels* the commodity productive process,

The producer's labor. Right. Not the employees'. Employees just implement the producer's decisions.
based on the outlay of equity capital.

No, it's based on the contractual role of the producer in bringing all the production factors to bear on the production process. He need not provide any of the equity capital. It could all be borrowed or provided by passive investors.
Wage labor, then, confers *value* / labor-power, into the commodity production process, which *could* be thought of as 'labor value'.

Sure. And the value they contribute is measured by the market: their wages.
Labor power is *productive* of commodities, while assets like land and natural monopolies are *non-productive* -- maybe we can make up a *name* for that kind of thing, if not 'rentier capital'.

You are very confused (i.e., Marxist). Land is a production factor. A natural monopoly -- let alone an artificial one -- is not.
And the factory building *itself* -- is that economically 'productive', or not -- is the factory building *indispensible* to the production process, or is it strictly the productive machinery, *inside* of the factory building, that is the active productive component -- ?

It doesn't matter if it is "indispensable," and it is absurd to try to second-guess that. The producer thinks the production process will be more efficient/profitable with the building than without, and his financial incentive is not to waste money on factors that are not needed.
Yeah, no prob -- you can *have* that reformism, to 'mitigate' fractional reserve lending or whatever, but do you really think that that would be *sufficient* to overcome the *systemic* problems that you rail on about, like '[land] privilege' -- ?

Bankster privilege and landowner privilege are certainly related, but they are not at all the same thing. Bankster privilege is key to modern finance capitalism, but it is not required for industrial capitalism.
In past threads you've been *unable* to address the 'transitional' issue -- which is necessary for *any* posited political 'vision' --

That's false.
of how exactly society and its conceivable geoist government could *obtain* all of the land parcels that are currently under private ownership.

There's no need to "obtain" them. Just require those who enjoy exclusive tenure secured by the community to pay the community for what they are taking from the community.

<false and absurd Marxist claptrap snipped>
If fiat currency is 'a very minor part of the money supply', then why does your 'geoist' / libertarian politics make such a claptrap out of it -- ?

It doesn't. You simply made that up. The problem is with debt money issued by private commercial banks, not fiat currency issued by government or a central bank.
I'll also note that the *political* concern here is -- as ever -- with the government's *discretion* / power over such matters of money-supply policy. (Note El Salvador and cryptocurrency here.)

I advocate direct control of the money supply by an independent Mint whose sole mandate is price stability as measured by a commodity price index weighted by value of final deliveries.
You're sidestepping the point

I never sidestep. Some things are just less relevant to the issues I concern myself with.
that capital for investment partially goes to the 'constant costs' for capital -- private infrastructure basically.

Private infrastructure is not the problem because its private provider charges the market price for access to it. The problem is public infrastructure, because it is provided at taxpayer expense, but private landowners are privileged to charge everyone else for permission to access it.
This 'infrastructure' capital, *plus* the remaining investment capital for hiring *wage labor*, for commodity production, has a certain chance of generating revenue, for *profits*.

What do you mean, a "certain chance"? Whether it yields profits or not depends on the producer's skill in arranging to create a product that is worth more than the cost of the production factors he uses up.
Given that this sample pool of investment capital *does* make a profit, *that* development would *increase* the pool of total capital, *beyond* the initial sum of pooled capital.

The producer certainly hopes and intends that his product will be worth more than the production factors consumed, thus yielding a profit.
This resulting increase in total equity value, over the initial investment amount, means that the *economy's* total equity value (not necessarily face-values) has increased as well, correct -- ?

Sure: scarcity has been relieved, enabling greater consumption. That is the only ultimate purpose of all economic activity.
The owner could readily cash-out right after the first production run of the factory, and would have more cash / value *after*, than when s/he *started*, correct -- ?

Sure, although such people generally want to produce even more.
Now -- where did that *additional increment in value* come from -- ?

From the producer's productive contribution in his contractual role of bringing all the production factors together to create greater value than the value of what his productive efforts consumed.

<false and absurd Marxist claptrap snipped>
Okay, then how did any given parcel of land receive its *initial* valuation? (How *should* any given parcel of land receive its initial *geoist* valuation -- ?)

There is no "initial" valuation. Land is valued continuously by the market, and what it was worth before is not very relevant to what it is worth now.
You're saying 'supply-and-demand', but you haven't addressed the point about this that I've raised previously, about money having to do a physically-impossible *triple-duty* of valuating these three *different* economic components: [1] manufacture, [2] supply-and-demand, and [3] the consumer's own subjective use-value, or 'utility'.

Money is the measure of market value, not subjective utility.
#15254071
It's nothing short of theft that hedge funds and other financial institutions get given government-printed money, then spend it to compete with ordinary citizens for the ownership of homes and farmland.

Literally no one supports this outside of those getting paid and yet, one party supports those who enable this kind of thing to happen.
#15256753
Wulfschilde wrote:It's nothing short of theft that hedge funds and other financial institutions get given government-printed money, then spend it to compete with ordinary citizens for the ownership of homes and farmland.

Totally agree.

So why does it seem like those on the Left are in favor of government Central Banks lowering interest rates?

Maybe a lot of them are unable to see the equivalence in their head?
#15256798
Wulfschilde wrote:It's nothing short of theft that hedge funds and other financial institutions get given government-printed money,

That money is mostly created by private commercial banks by lending, not governments. The US Federal Reserve Bank has also created quite a lot of money and used it to pay the rich peak bubble prices for their assets, but most central banks have not been that evil.
then spend it to compete with ordinary citizens for the ownership of homes and farmland.

The Cantillon Effect means that those (mostly rich) who get newly created debt money by borrowing from private commercial banks get the advantage of spending it when prices are lower.
Literally no one supports this outside of those getting paid and yet, one party supports those who enable this kind of thing to happen.

If you are talking about the USA, both parties support them.
#15256802
Puffer Fish wrote:So why does it seem like those on the Left are in favor of government Central Banks lowering interest rates?

Maybe a lot of them are unable to see the equivalence in their head?

Maybe they don't understand how under the debt money system of finance capitalism, lower interest rates create inflation that favors those who are rich enough to be able to borrow billions to finance asset acquisitions.
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