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#15226610
ckaihatsu wrote:Yeah, this kind of thing takes a little more effort than that, but thanks for showing up! (grin)

I'm disappointed that your tome was removed; I was going to answer it, isolating and correcting the dozen or so most fundamental errors, and ignoring the vast swathes of SMG.
#15226614
Truth To Power wrote:
I'm disappointed that your tome was removed; I was going to answer it, isolating and correcting the dozen or so most fundamental errors, and ignoring the vast swathes of SMG.



Gotta put on your *wading* boots, huh -- ? (grin)

Maybe boil it down to rentier-capital-value, versus equity-capital-value, and what's the source of value for each.
#15226670
ckaihatsu wrote:Gotta put on your *wading* boots, huh -- ? (grin)

Maybe boil it down to rentier-capital-value, versus equity-capital-value, and what's the source of value for each.

Calling the rentier and the entrepreneur both "capitalists" is like calling a lumberjack and an axe-murderer both "axists."
#15226672
Truth To Power wrote:
Calling the rentier and the entrepreneur both "capitalists" is like calling a lumberjack and an axe-murderer both "axists."



Okay, noted, and understandable.

Now, economics-wise, what role does the *worker* have in the enterprise? Why *bother* in even hiring?
#15226732
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, noted, and understandable.

Now, economics-wise, what role does the *worker* have in the enterprise? Why *bother* in even hiring?

The worker provides the production system's owner/operator with labor in return for wages. Labor and capital are in some measure substitutable in the production process, with diminishing returns in both directions.
#15226742
Truth To Power wrote:
The worker provides the production system's owner/operator with labor in return for wages. Labor and capital are in some measure substitutable in the production process, with diminishing returns in both directions.



So then the 'labor [power] in return for wages' is what the production system's owner/operator is *receiving* in the transaction.

How can the laborer be sure that they're getting a good bargain / deal in employment with one employer, versus another / any-other employer -- ? Sure, we could just look for relatively *higher* wage rates at *one* place, relative to all others, but is the pay rate really *enough* information, in term of doing 'market research' -- ?

I'll posit / contend that the worker, due to empirical power relations, does not have access to enough *information* about what the product of their labor is *worth* -- no other kind of seller would expect to sell something without having some rough knowledge / sense of what price-range is realistic, *for* that item.

Yet the worker is socially expected to just *accept* the employer's offer, on the employer's terms.

As with *all* kinds of business / market activity, there has to be a 'referee' of sorts -- government -- to oversee certain 'rules' of whatever arrangement. Yet in *reality* the world's (bourgeois) governments are all ruling-class-sided, so there's no inherent material-economic interest in government enforcement of *fairness* in the employer-worker relation:



The political environment has included the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Department of Labor failing to enforce the law against companies that repeatedly violate labor law.[41]

Labor relations consulting firms began providing seminars on union avoidance strategies in the 1970s.[42] Agencies moved from subverting unions to screening out union sympathizers during hiring, indoctrinating workforces, and propagandizing against unions.[43]

By the mid-1980s, Congress had investigated, but failed to regulate, abuses by labor relations consulting firms. Meanwhile, while some anti-union employers continued to rely upon the tactics of persuasion and manipulation, other besieged firms launched blatantly aggressive anti-union campaigns. At the dawn of the 21st Century, methods of union busting have recalled similar tactics from the dawn of the 20th Century.[44] The political environment has included the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Department of Labor failing to enforce the labor law against companies that repeatedly violate it.[45] [46]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o ... Post-1960s
#15226771
ckaihatsu wrote:So then the 'labor [power] in return for wages' is what the production system's owner/operator is *receiving* in the transaction.

Labor ("labor power" is just SMG) in return for wages. Exactly.
How can the laborer be sure that they're getting a good bargain / deal in employment with one employer, versus another / any-other employer -- ? Sure, we could just look for relatively *higher* wage rates at *one* place, relative to all others, but is the pay rate really *enough* information, in term of doing 'market research' -- ?

Same way anyone decides to engage in a consensual transaction or not: look at the alternatives. Problem is, landowners have forcibly removed workers' alternatives to wage employment.
I'll posit / contend that the worker, due to empirical power relations, does not have access to enough *information* about what the product of their labor is *worth* -- no other kind of seller would expect to sell something without having some rough knowledge / sense of what price-range is realistic, *for* that item.

I think most workers know pretty well what their labor is worth, and how much the product they work on sells for -- which are by no means the same amount, and may not even be very close.
Yet the worker is socially expected to just *accept* the employer's offer, on the employer's terms.

It has nothing to do with social expectation: he has to sell his labor to an employer to survive because landowners have removed his other options. I don't know about you, but I have certainly never felt any particular obligation to accept an employer's offer on their terms. If I don't like the terms offered -- which I usually don't -- I just go and look for a better offer elsewhere. And I have generally been able to find one.
As with *all* kinds of business / market activity, there has to be a 'referee' of sorts -- government -- to oversee certain 'rules' of whatever arrangement. Yet in *reality* the world's (bourgeois) governments are all ruling-class-sided, so there's no inherent material-economic interest in government enforcement of *fairness* in the employer-worker relation:

I agree governments (especially of capitalist countries) are not impartial arbiters, and tend to favor the privileged -- after all, privilege is itself government intervention on behalf (and at the behest) of the privileged. In a democratically accountable polity it is ultimately up to voters to secure their own best interests, but thanks to the relentless deceitfulness of evil socialist and capitalist liars, they almost never have the slightest idea of what their best interests are.
#15226842
Truth To Power wrote:
Labor ("labor power" is just SMG) in return for wages. Exactly.



So labor / labor-power *is* a commodity (bought-and-sold) under capitalism, correct? No argument?


Truth To Power wrote:
Same way anyone decides to engage in a consensual transaction or not: look at the alternatives. Problem is, landowners have forcibly removed workers' alternatives to wage employment.



Sorry, TTP, but I think that ultimately this is a *dodge*, because, in modern times, land itself really isn't enough.

You make self-sufficient / subsistence farming sound like the *dream*, but for anyone who wants modern / urban culture and lifestyles, owning land just won't cut it, and a small farm isn't going to realistically compete with corporate agribusiness, either.


Truth To Power wrote:
I think most workers know pretty well what their labor is worth, and how much the product they work on sells for -- which are by no means the same amount, and may not even be very close.



Well, this is what I was getting-at -- yeah, workers *know* they're being exploited, from being in the workplace culture.

Can the both of us, you and I, now use the term 'exploited' -- ? *They* know it, you know it, I know it, etc.


Truth To Power wrote:
It has nothing to do with social expectation: he has to sell his labor to an employer to survive because landowners have removed his other options. I don't know about you, but I have certainly never felt any particular obligation to accept an employer's offer on their terms. If I don't like the terms offered -- which I usually don't -- I just go and look for a better offer elsewhere. And I have generally been able to find one.



Okay, no argument, but *on the whole*, and particularly in many localized industries, the culture and logistics is more 'company town' than stock-market-realtime-data.

Unless there's real rank-and-file organizing, *all* workers lose out to the employer and the employer's terms.

Again, for the *wage worker*, 'land' is an unavoidable *expense* (rent), paid out of wages, and is *not* an inherited family farm.


Truth To Power wrote:
I agree governments (especially of capitalist countries) are not impartial arbiters, and tend to favor the privileged -- after all, privilege is itself government intervention on behalf (and at the behest) of the privileged. In a democratically accountable polity it is ultimately up to voters to secure their own best interests, but thanks to the relentless deceitfulness of evil socialist and capitalist liars, they almost never have the slightest idea of what their best interests are.



Okay, so you're explicitly acknowledging *privilege* / [elitism] / [class], including in the corporate media.

So do you think that some kind of *land reform* is really going to be *sufficient* in this day and age, or can we update our understandings to that of *industrial* modern life -- the wage worker has a clear, distinct interest in the *means of mass industrial production*, and not just retro-country norms of (petty bourgeois / aristocratic) farming self-sufficiency.
#15226954
ckaihatsu wrote:I'll add that this attitude really smacks of 'Let them eat cake', or 'Let them run their own factory' -- a kind of dissociated pontification.

It's just a fact. The notion that factory workers can run the factories is absurd. However, management CAN run the factories without the workers, as the strike at US Borax proved: productivity and efficiency actually improved when supervisors and managers took over doing the jobs unionized labor had been doing before the strike.
#15226971
ckaihatsu wrote:So labor / labor-power *is* a commodity (bought-and-sold) under capitalism, correct? No argument?

Labor is a service whose suppliers are all unique. A commodity is a product with no brand value.
Sorry, TTP, but I think that ultimately this is a *dodge*, because, in modern times, land itself really isn't enough.

Not sufficient, but necessary. Labor is also needed, and producer goods that can generally be obtained at nominal cost.
You make self-sufficient / subsistence farming sound like the *dream*, but for anyone who wants modern / urban culture and lifestyles, owning land just won't cut it, and a small farm isn't going to realistically compete with corporate agribusiness, either.

How many times do I have to tell you? Farming has nothing to do with it. Location confers access to economic opportunity, and as most economic opportunity in the modern world centers around urban markets, most land value is also urban, and most people would want to use an urban location, not a rural one. The point is that whatever kind of production one wants to engage in, one must pay a landowner full market value just for permission to use a suitable location from which to access that opportunity, even if it's just a tiny fraction of the footprint of a high-rise apartment building.
Well, this is what I was getting-at -- yeah, workers *know* they're being exploited, from being in the workplace culture.

Can the both of us, you and I, now use the term 'exploited' -- ? *They* know it, you know it, I know it, etc.

Of course they are being exploited, as I have stipulated. The source of the exploitation just isn't the employer-employee relationship.
Okay, no argument, but *on the whole*, and particularly in many localized industries, the culture and logistics is more 'company town' than stock-market-realtime-data.

It's not an employer's responsibility to make local labor markets more efficient. Local factors can also disadvantage employers.
Unless there's real rank-and-file organizing, *all* workers lose out to the employer and the employer's terms.

No, "organizing" is irrelevant to the underlying relationship. All it does is privilege less productive workers at the expense of more productive ones, and union workers at the expense of non-union ones, leaving privilege undisturbed.
Again, for the *wage worker*, 'land' is an unavoidable *expense* (rent), paid out of wages, and is *not* an inherited family farm.

It's only unavoidable if you ignore the real problem and dismiss the real solution. And I repeat: farming -- let alone an inherited family farm -- has nothing to do with it.
Okay, so you're explicitly acknowledging *privilege* / [elitism] / [class], including in the corporate media.

Class is created by privilege, not by employment relationships. That is my whole point, which you apparently still don't understand.
So do you think that some kind of *land reform* is really going to be *sufficient* in this day and age,

It's not sufficient, but it is necessary, and far more important than any other economic reform.
or can we update our understandings to that of *industrial* modern life --

The astronomically greater aggregate value of urban over rural locations proves all your silly yapping about farms is a red herring.
the wage worker has a clear, distinct interest in the *means of mass industrial production*,

The wage worker has an interest in his own right to liberty, not in producer goods provided and rightly owned by others.
and not just retro-country norms of (petty bourgeois / aristocratic) farming self-sufficiency.

More of the same silly red herrings. Farming has nothing to do with it. What workers need is their liberty right to access economic opportunity, whether the opportunities they are interested in involve farming, manufacturing, retail, transportation, services, or any other sector.
#15226980
Truth To Power wrote:
It's just a fact. The notion that factory workers can run the factories is absurd.




Can such a form of organization be realized? What must be its structure? It is not necessary to construct it or think it out. History has already produced it. It sprang into life out of the practice of the class struggle. Its prototype, its first trace, is found in the strike committees. In a big strike, all the workers cannot assemble in one meeting. They choose delegates to act as a committee. Such a committee is only the executive organ of the strikers; it is continually in touch with them and has to carry out the decisions of the strikers. Each delegate at every moment can be replaced by others; such a committee never becomes an independent power. In such a way, common action as one body can be secured, and yet the workers have all decisions in their own hands. Usually in strikes, the uppermost lead is taken out of the hands of these committees by the trade unions and their leaders.



https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannek ... uncils.htm



---


Truth To Power wrote:
However, management CAN run the factories without the workers, as the strike at US Borax proved: productivity and efficiency actually improved when supervisors and managers took over doing the jobs unionized labor had been doing before the strike.



Any links?
#15226990
ckaihatsu wrote:
So labor / labor-power *is* a commodity (bought-and-sold) under capitalism, correct? No argument?



Truth To Power wrote:
Labor is a service whose suppliers are all unique.



Okay, because *people* are all unique.


Truth To Power wrote:
A commodity is a product with no brand value.



*Of course* a product / commodity has brand value.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Sorry, TTP, but I think that ultimately this is a *dodge*, because, in modern times, land itself really isn't enough.



Truth To Power wrote:
Not sufficient, but necessary. Labor is also needed, and producer goods that can generally be obtained at nominal cost.



I'm hearing 'Land + labor + producer goods'.

Why the regular over-emphasis on *land* -- ?

I'm not trying to *fetishize* the factory / 'producer goods' aspect, but *functionally* the factory (and equipment) *is* more active and important -- being *equity* capital -- than the land, which is *rentier* capital, which you loathe.

To the capitalist these are three different kinds of *costs*, though each on its own functions differently than the others, of course.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You make self-sufficient / subsistence farming sound like the *dream*, but for anyone who wants modern / urban culture and lifestyles, owning land just won't cut it, and a small farm isn't going to realistically compete with corporate agribusiness, either.



Truth To Power wrote:
How many times do I have to tell you? Farming has nothing to do with it. Location confers access to economic opportunity, and as most economic opportunity in the modern world centers around urban markets, most land value is also urban, and most people would want to use an urban location, not a rural one. The point is that whatever kind of production one wants to engage in, one must pay a landowner full market value just for permission to use a suitable location from which to access that opportunity, even if it's just a tiny fraction of the footprint of a high-rise apartment building.



Okay, got it -- it's not rural-vs.-urban.

You think that equity costs are typically 'nominal', compared to that of land / rentier capital, but isn't that just a matter of the particulars, small project versus large project -- ?

You're trying to indicate 'nominal' equity outlays *in relation to* rent / rentier / land costs, and I don't know if that can be said to be a real *dynamic* -- I think it's case-by-case, and indexed to *scale* / size.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, this is what I was getting-at -- yeah, workers *know* they're being exploited, from being in the workplace culture.

Can the both of us, you and I, now use the term 'exploited' -- ? *They* know it, you know it, I know it, etc.



Truth To Power wrote:
Of course they are being exploited, as I have stipulated. The source of the exploitation just isn't the employer-employee relationship.



Sorry, no, no bait-and-switch please (grin).

Here's what you said:


Truth To Power wrote:
I think most workers know pretty well what their labor is worth, and how much the product they work on sells for -- which are by no means the same amount, and may not even be very close.



You're saying that rentier-based values / rent is what 'distorts' the valuation of all *equity* values -- got it.

But, yes, economic exploitation of the worker (Marx's 'alienation') *does* take place, in parallel, simply because the product of the worker's labor is sold for more than they're paid, in wages.

The capitalist's input of *capital* is 100% recovered by revenue (plus the profit), whereas the worker's input of *time and work* is *not* recovered by the worker, in an appropriate proportion, given the inputs, from the sales revenue. In other words the worker doesn't get a 'cut' -- they get a *wage*, and the employer controls the revenue throughout.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



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ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, no argument, but *on the whole*, and particularly in many localized industries, the culture and logistics is more 'company town' than stock-market-realtime-data.



Truth To Power wrote:
It's not an employer's responsibility to make local labor markets more efficient. Local factors can also disadvantage employers.



Then it's an admission / acknowledgement that *cuts against* your cheerleading for capitalism -- if 'local [market] factors' are *disadvantageous* at the local level, then that indicates / implies a local interest of a *fiefdom* (my terming), feudal-like, turf-based, and eschewing the fluidity and dynamism of continuous market fluctuations.

So what good is capitalism's mythic dynamism if it happens to be *counter-monopolistic*, and *undesirable*, for the individual investor / entity -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
Unless there's real rank-and-file organizing, *all* workers lose out to the employer and the employer's terms.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, "organizing" is irrelevant to the underlying relationship. All it does is privilege less productive workers at the expense of more productive ones, and union workers at the expense of non-union ones, leaving privilege undisturbed.



Think of it, maybe, as a 'labor cartel' -- similar to any other on the business landscape -- and from the ground-up, preferably.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Again, for the *wage worker*, 'land' is an unavoidable *expense* (rent), paid out of wages, and is *not* an inherited family farm.



Truth To Power wrote:
It's only unavoidable if you ignore the real problem and dismiss the real solution. And I repeat: farming -- let alone an inherited family farm -- has nothing to do with it.



You *could* address how your touted Geoist monolithic-or-not administration is supposed to *administer* over all parcels of land, equitably, and what its social basis for existence would be.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so you're explicitly acknowledging *privilege* / [elitism] / [class], including in the corporate media.



Truth To Power wrote:
Class is created by privilege, not by employment relationships. That is my whole point, which you apparently still don't understand.



No, it's not just *rentier* capital values, like land, it's *also* about *equity* capital / 'producer goods', or the means of mass industrial production, since that's what produces *commodities* / commodity valuations, in society.


Social Production Worldview

Spoiler: show
Image



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ckaihatsu wrote:
So do you think that some kind of *land reform* is really going to be *sufficient* in this day and age,



Truth To Power wrote:
It's not sufficient, but it is necessary, and far more important than any other economic reform.



Yay or nay:



On 7 July 1953, Guevara set out again, this time to Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador. On 10 December 1953, before leaving for Guatemala, Guevara sent an update to his Aunt Beatriz from San José, Costa Rica. In the letter Guevara speaks of traversing the dominion of the United Fruit Company, a journey which convinced him that the Company's capitalist system was a terrible one.[53] This affirmed indignation carried the more aggressive tone he adopted in order to frighten his more conservative relatives, and ends with Guevara swearing on an image of the then recently deceased Joseph Stalin, not to rest until these "octopuses have been vanquished".[54] Later that month, Guevara arrived in Guatemala where President Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán headed a democratically elected government that, through land reform and other initiatives, was attempting to end the latifundia system. To accomplish this, President Árbenz had enacted a major land reform program, where all uncultivated portions of large land holdings were to be expropriated and redistributed to landless peasants. The biggest land owner, and one most affected by the reforms, was the United Fruit Company, from which the Árbenz government had already taken more than 225,000 acres (91,000 ha) of uncultivated land.[55] Pleased with the road the nation was heading down, Guevara decided to settle down in Guatemala so as to "perfect himself and accomplish whatever may be necessary in order to become a true revolutionary."[56]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Gueva ... ited_Fruit



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ckaihatsu wrote:
or can we update our understandings to that of *industrial* modern life --



Truth To Power wrote:
The astronomically greater aggregate value of urban over rural locations proves all your silly yapping about farms is a red herring.



Okay, no prob -- withdrawn.


ckaihatsu wrote:
the wage worker has a clear, distinct interest in the *means of mass industrial production*,



Truth To Power wrote:
The wage worker has an interest in his own right to liberty, not in producer goods provided and rightly owned by others.



Sorry, but you're using the umbrella of 'equity capital', and 'private property', to *defend* the (multi-)exploitation of the wage worker, even though they *physically* built the factories and equipment (etc.), *themselves*.

Even entertaining the hypothetical that workers are compensated equitably, it doesn't follow that the function of (equity) capital should be so hallowed and aggrandized. 'Salarization of ownership' is what *I* say, because society / the world doesn't need this continuous no-off-switch dynamic of the *primitive accumulation of capital*:



Ongoing primitive accumulation

"Orthodox" Marxists see primitive accumulation as something that happened in the late Middle Ages and finished long ago, when capitalist industry started. They see primitive accumulation as a process happening in the transition from the feudal "stage" to the capitalist "stage".[citation needed]

However, this can be seen as a misrepresentation of both Marx's ideas and historical reality, since feudal-type economies exist in various parts of the world, even in the 21st century.

Marx's story of primitive accumulation is best seen as a special case of the general principle of capitalist market expansion. In part, trade grows incrementally, but usually the establishment of capitalist relations of production involves force and violence; transforming property relations means that assets previously owned by some people are no longer owned by them, but by other people, and making people part with their assets in this way involves coercion. This is an ongoing process of expropriation, Proletarianization and Urbanization.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive ... cumulation



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ckaihatsu wrote:
and not just retro-country norms of (petty bourgeois / aristocratic) farming self-sufficiency.



Truth To Power wrote:
More of the same silly red herrings. Farming has nothing to do with it. What workers need is their liberty right to access economic opportunity, whether the opportunities they are interested in involve farming, manufacturing, retail, transportation, services, or any other sector.
#15227449
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, because *people* are all unique.

Bingo. So the Marxist assumption that labor is uniform and workers are all interchangeable is tripe.
*Of course* a product / commodity has brand value.

Wrong. When people buy commodities -- oil, wheat, gold, pork bellies, etc. -- they don't care who the supplier is.
I'm hearing 'Land + labor + producer goods'.

That's what the entrepreneur's labor brings together into a production system.
Why the regular over-emphasis on *land* -- ?

The astronomical unimproved value of land proves, repeat, proves that I am not over-emphasizing it in the least. There are also three very good and independently conclusive reasons why land should be emphasized a lot more than it is in both socialist and modern mainstream neoclassical economics:
1. The basic injustices, poverty, unemployment, inequality, etc. of capitalism are primarily caused not -- as capitalists claim -- by the character flaws of workers and the poor themselves, nor -- as socialists claim -- by the employer-employee ("worker-capitalist") relationship, but by privilege, especially landowner privilege (which is inherent in the definition of capitalism, while other important forms of privilege such as IP monopolies and the debt-money system have been added on to create modern finance capitalism).
2. The Law of Rent implies that as technology improves and investment in producer goods increases, the additional production thus enabled goes not to the worker or the factory owner, but to the landowner. Marx himself eventually -- belatedly -- understood this, but he would not admit it until halfway through Vol 3 of "Capital," where no one would ever read it.
3. The Henry George Theorem implies that anything government -- or even private charities -- provide in the way of benefits, services and infrastructure to try to undo the harm to the community caused by capitalism, the Law of Rent and landowner privilege only ends up increasing it.
I'm not trying to *fetishize* the factory / 'producer goods' aspect, but *functionally* the factory (and equipment) *is* more active and important -- being *equity* capital -- than the land, which is *rentier* capital, which you loathe.

Natural resources are self-evidently more fundamental to production than producer goods, as they exist prior to, and are necessary to the production of, the latter. It's not land I loathe, it's the privilege of owning others' liberty rights to use it.
To the capitalist these are three different kinds of *costs*, though each on its own functions differently than the others, of course.

They don't function "on their own." And the fact that they are different kinds of costs should tell you something. The extortion demands of a protection racketeer are also a different kind of cost to the "capitalist" -- the difference from the cost of meeting the rentier's extortion demands being that the rentier has government on his side.
Okay, got it -- it's not rural-vs.-urban.

Right. Whether people pay landowners for urban or rural locations, they are paying for permission to access economic opportunity that the owner did not create and that would otherwise have been available.
You think that equity costs are typically 'nominal', compared to that of land / rentier capital, but isn't that just a matter of the particulars, small project versus large project -- ?

As labor, producer goods and natural resources are in some measure substitutable for each other, the relative costs of labor, producer goods, and rentier permissions depend on the nature of the production system the entrepreneur creates.
You're trying to indicate 'nominal' equity outlays *in relation to* rent / rentier / land costs, and I don't know if that can be said to be a real *dynamic* -- I think it's case-by-case, and indexed to *scale* / size.

Of course it is case by case, and the sector is more important than the scale.
You're saying that rentier-based values / rent is what 'distorts' the valuation of all *equity* values -- got it.

I would say it differently: as the return to investment in producer goods tends to be competed away, while rent can't be competed away, the main reason the worker gets so much less than the value of the product is just flat-out rentier thieving, not any fancied inherently exploitative character of the worker-owner relationship.
But, yes, economic exploitation of the worker (Marx's 'alienation') *does* take place, in parallel, simply because the product of the worker's labor is sold for more than they're paid, in wages.

No, that's just SMG that ignores the contributions of the entrepreneur and investor. This is what passes for "economic analysis" among Marxists:

Using land obtainable for free and his own resources, a worker can produce $5 worth of products, and his wage is thus $5.
The Law of Rent says that if he uses better land, he might produce $10 worth, but must first pay the landowner $5 for permission to do so, leaving him a wage, again, of $5.
Now along comes the entrepreneur ("capitalist") who invests $100 to create a production system on the same better land. He hires the worker for $10, and his production system produces $30 worth, of which he has to pay the landowner $10, leaving him with $10 to be divided between his own labor and the return to the $100 investment (which might be his own funds, a loan that must be repaid with interest, or shareholder funds obtained in return for a share of the profits).
Thanks to the entrepreneur's investment in the production system, the worker is making twice the wages for putting in the exact same amount of time and effort, and the landowner is getting twice the rent for doing the exact same nothing.
The stupid Marxist then screams that the "capitalist" is "exploiting" the worker because the latter has produced, and should rightly be paid, all $30, ignoring the fact that the production system would not have existed without the entrepreneur, and that the landowner is taking twice as much as before while doing the exact same nothing.
If another entrepreneur comes along with a better idea, invests $200 in a more powerful production system, hires the worker for $15, produces $50 worth of products and pays the landowner $20, leaving the owner with $15 to be divided between his own labor and the capital yield, the stupid Marxist then screams (even louder) that the worker has produced, and should thus rightly be paid, $50 for the exact same amount of time and effort that, in the entrepreneur's absence, would have earned him $5. The stupid Marxist ignores the fact that the more powerful production system the entrepreneur created cost more to create, and the landowner is now getting $20 for doing nothing instead of $5.
Does another entrepreneur then come along, invest $1000 to create an even more powerful production system that can produce $100 worth of products, pay the worker $20, and the landowner $50, keeping $30 for his own labor and the return to the $1000 investment? Of course!
And the stupid Marxist then screams that the worker, unaided, has produced and should thus be paid the full $100.
The capitalist's input of *capital* is 100% recovered by revenue (plus the profit),

No, that's just SMG. A lender gets paid his principal plus interest IF the entrepreneur recovers his costs. An equity investor gets a share of any profits, but might not, in the end, even get back his investment. Nor is the entrepreneur who puts his own funds into the production system guaranteed to get his money back, let alone a profit.
whereas the worker's input of *time and work* is *not* recovered by the worker, in an appropriate proportion, given the inputs, from the sales revenue.

GARBAGE. The worker is not paid out of sales revenue, he is paid first, before there are any sales -- which might not, in the end, even pay his wages.
In other words the worker doesn't get a 'cut' -- they get a *wage*,

Even if the employer takes a loss.
and the employer controls the revenue throughout.

Because he is the one whose decisions, initiative and labor create and operate the production system, and thus produce the product.
< SMG snipped >
Then it's an admission / acknowledgement that *cuts against* your cheerleading for capitalism --

I haven't done any cheerleading for capitalism. That's just an outright fabrication on your part. I have merely observed that socialism is even worse than capitalism, and I have explained exactly why.
if 'local [market] factors' are *disadvantageous* at the local level, then that indicates / implies a local interest of a *fiefdom* (my terming), feudal-like, turf-based, and eschewing the fluidity and dynamism of continuous market fluctuations.

Anti-economic SMG.
So what good is capitalism's mythic dynamism if it happens to be *counter-monopolistic*, and *undesirable*, for the individual investor / entity -- ?

It produces more. And I have explained exactly why.
Think of it, maybe, as a 'labor cartel' -- similar to any other on the business landscape -- and from the ground-up, preferably.

I know what it is.
You *could* address how your touted Geoist monolithic-or-not administration is supposed to *administer* over all parcels of land, equitably,

I have: it allocates secure, exclusive tenure to each parcel, in effect, to the high bidder.
and what its social basis for existence would be.

The people's desire for liberty, justice and prosperity.
No, it's not just *rentier* capital values, like land, it's *also* about *equity* capital / 'producer goods', or the means of mass industrial production, since that's what produces *commodities* / commodity valuations, in society.

No, because investment in producer goods doesn't produce persistent -- class -- inequities: unlike the rents of privilege, the return to productive investment tends to be competed away.
< SMG snipped >
Yay or nay:

Yeah, and how did that work out for the people of Guatemala, in the end?

YOU CAN'T SOLVE THE PROBLEM UNLESS YOU FIRST UNDERSTAND IT.

Marxism prevents understanding of the problem of capitalism:
Sorry, but you're using the umbrella of 'equity capital', and 'private property', to *defend* the (multi-)exploitation of the wage worker, even though they *physically* built the factories and equipment (etc.), *themselves*.

See? They self-evidently and indisputably didn't do it themselves, or they wouldn't have needed the entrepreneur to make it happen. Your claims are nothing but SMG.
Even entertaining the hypothetical that workers are compensated equitably, it doesn't follow that the function of (equity) capital should be so hallowed and aggrandized.

No "hallowing" or "aggrandizing" here; just the fact that the production system only exists because of the entrepreneur's decision, initiative and labor.

You are simply makin' $#!+ up again.
'Salarization of ownership' is what *I* say, because society / the world doesn't need this continuous no-off-switch dynamic of the *primitive accumulation of capital*:

The world DOES need JUSTICE, which requires rewards commensurate with contributions.
#15227509
ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, because *people* are all unique.



Truth To Power wrote:
Bingo. So the Marxist assumption that labor is uniform and workers are all interchangeable is tripe.



Horseshit. You're invoking Stalinistic *ghosts* here -- it's *capital* that makes the rules these days, so if labor becomes 'uniform' and 'interchangeable' as a *commodity* these days you can thank a *corporation* / capitalist for that.


ckaihatsu wrote:
*Of course* a product / commodity has brand value.



Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong. When people buy commodities -- oil, wheat, gold, pork bellies, etc. -- they don't care who the supplier is.



And *other* consumers *do* pay the premium for 'name brand' products -- hence the success of Nike, Apple, etc.

Here's the definition of 'commodity' again, in the *economic* -- not 'business' lingo -- sense:



1. Anything movable (a good) that is bought and sold. [from 15th c.]

2. Something useful or valuable. [from 15th c.]



5. (Marxism) Anything which has both a use-value and an exchange-value.



https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/commodity



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm hearing 'Land + labor + producer goods'.



Truth To Power wrote:
That's what the entrepreneur's labor brings together into a production system.



(Blah, blah, blah.) And let's *glorify* that executive-type role, etc., to disproportionate extents -- the *fetishization* of capital ownership and its material / functional role in capitalist economics.

*Another* way of looking at it is that it's the pre-existing *corporate bureaucracy* that provides the vaunted 'production system [of social coordination]', while actual capital ownership just makes bets and *doesn't* do any of the actual physically-productive (blue-, pink-, white-collar) *work*, that produces *commodities*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Why the regular over-emphasis on *land* -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
The astronomical unimproved value of land proves, repeat, proves that I am not over-emphasizing it in the least. There are also three very good and independently conclusive reasons why land should be emphasized a lot more than it is in both socialist and modern mainstream neoclassical economics:



You keep using strongman-type *Stalinism* as a *strawman* for your dismissiveness of (proletarian) socialism, so you can let the Cold War rest there, back in the 20th century.

Socialism means 'workers control', nothing less.


Truth To Power wrote:
1. The basic injustices, poverty, unemployment, inequality, etc. of capitalism are primarily caused not -- as capitalists claim -- by the character flaws of workers and the poor themselves, nor -- as socialists claim -- by the employer-employee ("worker-capitalist") relationship, but by privilege, especially landowner privilege (which is inherent in the definition of capitalism, while other important forms of privilege such as IP monopolies and the debt-money system have been added on to create modern finance capitalism).



What about the relative privilege of finance / equity capital ownership -- ?

You keep trying to make capital itself sound like God's blood plasma, or something -- are financial bettors to be so *lauded*?

Fanboy much?


Truth To Power wrote:
2. The Law of Rent implies that as technology improves and investment in producer goods increases, the additional production thus enabled goes not to the worker or the factory owner, but to the landowner. Marx himself eventually -- belatedly -- understood this, but he would not admit it until halfway through Vol 3 of "Capital," where no one would ever read it.



Hey, *keep going* with your diatribes against rentier capital -- I'll hand-wave. But just keep in mind that it's only *half* of the story, since *equity* capital is *also* from the blood, sweat, and tears of the workers, for thousands of years.


Truth To Power wrote:
3. The Henry George Theorem implies that anything government -- or even private charities -- provide in the way of benefits, services and infrastructure to try to undo the harm to the community caused by capitalism, the Law of Rent and landowner privilege only ends up increasing it.



Well, I'm reminded of the following from Wilde, but I'm admittedly more *ambivalent* about the sentiment, myself.



The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.

They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.

But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And the altruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worst slave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who do most harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had the spectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life – educated men who live in the East End – coming forward and imploring the community to restrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on the ground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charity creates a multitude of sins.

There is also this to be said. It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.

Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered. There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings. The security of society will not depend, as it does now, on the state of the weather. If a frost comes we shall not have a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms, or crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch of bread and a night’s unclean lodging. Each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse.



https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... /soul-man/



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm not trying to *fetishize* the factory / 'producer goods' aspect, but *functionally* the factory (and equipment) *is* more active and important -- being *equity* capital -- than the land, which is *rentier* capital, which you loathe.



Truth To Power wrote:
Natural resources are self-evidently more fundamental to production than producer goods, as they exist prior to, and are necessary to the production of, the latter. It's not land I loathe, it's the privilege of owning others' liberty rights to use it.



'Bring-back-the-commons'. Got any t-shirts / merch for that -- ? (grin)


ckaihatsu wrote:
To the capitalist these are three different kinds of *costs*, though each on its own functions differently than the others, of course.



Truth To Power wrote:
They don't function "on their own." And the fact that they are different kinds of costs should tell you something. The extortion demands of a protection racketeer are also a different kind of cost to the "capitalist" -- the difference from the cost of meeting the rentier's extortion demands being that the rentier has government on his side.



Big fish eat smaller fish. Got it. No tears from *you*, please.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, got it -- it's not rural-vs.-urban.



Truth To Power wrote:
Right. Whether people pay landowners for urban or rural locations, they are paying for permission to access economic opportunity that the owner did not create and that would otherwise have been available.



Any comment on *this*:

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


ckaihatsu wrote:
You think that equity costs are typically 'nominal', compared to that of land / rentier capital, but isn't that just a matter of the particulars, small project versus large project -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
As labor, producer goods and natural resources are in some measure substitutable for each other,



Bullshit. Natural resources are *rentier*-type assets, typically from a government *concession*, or diktat / edict / law.

Here's actual *history*, again:



usually the establishment of capitalist relations of production involves force and violence; transforming property relations means that assets previously owned by some people are no longer owned by them, but by other people, and making people part with their assets in this way involves coercion. This is an ongoing process of expropriation, Proletarianization and Urbanization.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive ... cumulation



---


Truth To Power wrote:
the relative costs of labor, producer goods, and rentier permissions depend on the nature of the production system the entrepreneur creates.



*Pie* charts. Yawn.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're trying to indicate 'nominal' equity outlays *in relation to* rent / rentier / land costs, and I don't know if that can be said to be a real *dynamic* -- I think it's case-by-case, and indexed to *scale* / size.



Truth To Power wrote:
Of course it is case by case, and the sector is more important than the scale.



You were trying to *downplay* the role and impact of *equity* capital, just so you could go back to whipping your favorite ragdoll, *rentier* capital valuations.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're saying that rentier-based values / rent is what 'distorts' the valuation of all *equity* values -- got it.



Truth To Power wrote:
I would say it differently: as the return to investment in producer goods tends to be competed away, while rent can't be competed away, the main reason the worker gets so much less than the value of the product is just flat-out rentier thieving, not any fancied inherently exploitative character of the worker-owner relationship.



Competition exists among providers of *rentier* capital, too, like different banks, or various geographic locations to choose from -- you're trying to *dichotomize* the parasitic and exploitative roles of rentier and equity capital, respectively, over the labor-power commodity.

You're playing good-cop-bad-cop with the roles of rentier capital, versus equity capital.

You're using *showmanship* and *opinionating*, rather than any kind of objective *analysis*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
But, yes, economic exploitation of the worker (Marx's 'alienation') *does* take place, in parallel, simply because the product of the worker's labor is sold for more than they're paid, in wages.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just SMG that ignores the contributions of the entrepreneur and investor. This is what passes for "economic analysis" among Marxists:



No, neither I nor any other Marxist would 'ignore [equity capital]' -- I've been *addressing* it. *You're* the one who keeps deifying non-rentier-capital, meaning *equity* capital.


Truth To Power wrote:
Using land obtainable for free and his own resources, a worker can produce $5 worth of products, and his wage is thus $5.

The Law of Rent says that if he uses better land, he might produce $10 worth, but must first pay the landowner $5 for permission to do so, leaving him a wage, again, of $5.

Now along comes the entrepreneur ("capitalist") who invests $100 to create a production system on the same better land. He hires the worker for $10, and his production system produces $30 worth, of which he has to pay the landowner $10, leaving him with $10 to be divided between his own labor and the return to the $100 investment (which might be his own funds, a loan that must be repaid with interest, or shareholder funds obtained in return for a share of the profits).

Thanks to the entrepreneur's investment in the production system, the worker is making twice the wages for putting in the exact same amount of time and effort, and the landowner is getting twice the rent for doing the exact same nothing.

The stupid Marxist then screams that the "capitalist" is "exploiting" the worker because the latter has produced, and should rightly be paid, all $30, ignoring the fact that the production system would not have existed without the entrepreneur, and that the landowner is taking twice as much as before while doing the exact same nothing.

If another entrepreneur comes along with a better idea, invests $200 in a more powerful production system, hires the worker for $15, produces $50 worth of products and pays the landowner $20, leaving the owner with $15 to be divided between his own labor and the capital yield, the stupid Marxist then screams (even louder) that the worker has produced, and should thus rightly be paid, $50 for the exact same amount of time and effort that, in the entrepreneur's absence, would have earned him $5. The stupid Marxist ignores the fact that the more powerful production system the entrepreneur created cost more to create, and the landowner is now getting $20 for doing nothing instead of $5.

Does another entrepreneur then come along, invest $1000 to create an even more powerful production system that can produce $100 worth of products, pay the worker $20, and the landowner $50, keeping $30 for his own labor and the return to the $1000 investment? Of course!

And the stupid Marxist then screams that the worker, unaided, has produced and should thus be paid the full $100.



I'm nowhere saying that capitalism isn't dynamic, but ultimately it's about the *cut*, labor vs. capital -- capital's role in the commodity-productive process is simply *over-valued* in society, and especially by *you*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
The capitalist's input of *capital* is 100% recovered by revenue (plus the profit),



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just SMG. A lender gets paid his principal plus interest IF the entrepreneur recovers his costs. An equity investor gets a share of any profits, but might not, in the end, even get back his investment. Nor is the entrepreneur who puts his own funds into the production system guaranteed to get his money back, let alone a profit.



It's not a 'guarantee', but it's a *fuck* of a lot better odds than someone with *zero* capital, so anything further is really *hair-splitting*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
whereas the worker's input of *time and work* is *not* recovered by the worker, in an appropriate proportion, given the inputs, from the sales revenue.



Truth To Power wrote:
GARBAGE. The worker is not paid out of sales revenue, he is paid first, before there are any sales -- which might not, in the end, even pay his wages.



And the worker has to risk life and livelihood for the sake of being present for employment, plus relevant costs out-of-pocket, *plus* the downward-pressure of job-market competition, and now consumer price inflation. Got any praise for any of *this* -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
In other words the worker doesn't get a 'cut' -- they get a *wage*,



Truth To Power wrote:
Even if the employer takes a loss.



Because they showed up for work.


ckaihatsu wrote:
and the employer controls the revenue throughout.



Truth To Power wrote:
Because he is the one whose decisions, initiative and labor create and operate the production system, and thus produce the product.



Nope. You *still* haven't responded to *your own* past scenario of the freshly-laid *eggs* -- who does the work to *gather* those eggs? It's not the capitalist investor, that's for sure.


ckaihatsu wrote:
< SMG snipped >



ckaihatsu wrote:
Then it's an admission / acknowledgement that *cuts against* your cheerleading for capitalism --



Truth To Power wrote:
I haven't done any cheerleading for capitalism. That's just an outright fabrication on your part. I have merely observed that socialism is even worse than capitalism, and I have explained exactly why.



Taking *another* swipe at unintended, imperialist-imploded nationalist *Stalinism*.

Instead of absentee landlordism and absentee investing (think 'securitization' here), why not let the *workers* do what they know the best, at *their* workplaces, without outside interference -- ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_ ... ritization


ckaihatsu wrote:
if 'local [market] factors' are *disadvantageous* at the local level, then that indicates / implies a local interest of a *fiefdom* (my terming), feudal-like, turf-based, and eschewing the fluidity and dynamism of continuous market fluctuations.



Truth To Power wrote:
Anti-economic SMG.



You're just *name-calling* here, without actually *addressing* anything -- how do you reconcile inherent private interests in market 'turf', versus your hallowed mythologized 'dynamic markets' rhetoric, exactly -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
So what good is capitalism's mythic dynamism if it happens to be *counter-monopolistic*, and *undesirable*, for the individual investor / entity -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
It produces more. And I have explained exactly why.



It *also* produces more 'externalities', that *society* has to pay-for, like environmental and financial *clean ups*, so where's the 'return' to the *public*, from that public underwriting of private corporate *fuck ups*, and cover-ups -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
Think of it, maybe, as a 'labor cartel' -- similar to any other on the business landscape -- and from the ground-up, preferably.



Truth To Power wrote:
I know what it is.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You *could* address how your touted Geoist monolithic-or-not administration is supposed to *administer* over all parcels of land, equitably,



Truth To Power wrote:
I have: it allocates secure, exclusive tenure to each parcel, in effect, to the high bidder.



And how do you prevent the typical rentier-capital-versus-equity-capital *friction*, and *rivalry*, over such 'administration' -- and who *pays* for it, since 'administrators' are 'administrating', and are definitely *not* producing humanely-needed *commodities* for society, as *wage workers* do, for people's necessary consumption.


ckaihatsu wrote:
and what its social basis for existence would be.



Truth To Power wrote:
The people's desire for liberty, justice and prosperity.



Sounds closer to 'corporate personhood'.


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, it's not just *rentier* capital values, like land, it's *also* about *equity* capital / 'producer goods', or the means of mass industrial production, since that's what produces *commodities* / commodity valuations, in society.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, because investment in producer goods doesn't produce persistent -- class -- inequities: unlike the rents of privilege, the return to productive investment tends to be competed away.



You're really claiming that, due to capitalism's *overproduction*, that profit-making is '[negligible]' -- ?

That equity capital in a capitalist's hands is like beer money, and is inevitably *frittered away* -- ?

What you're trying to ignore-away is that *privilege* also exists from *equity wealth*, meaning that those *with* equity wealth in-hand are more-privileged than those *without* equity wealth.


ckaihatsu wrote:
< SMG snipped >



ckaihatsu wrote:
Yay or nay:



Truth To Power wrote:
Yeah, and how did that work out for the people of Guatemala, in the end?



You're *sidestepping* the point -- if you're so *anti-landlord*, then wouldn't you be for *land reform*, such as making more land *available*, by government policy?

You're sounding more *pro-monopoly*, than 'anti-rentier-privilege', right now.


Truth To Power wrote:
YOU CAN'T SOLVE THE PROBLEM UNLESS YOU FIRST UNDERSTAND IT.



Truth To Power wrote:
Marxism prevents understanding of the problem of capitalism:



(See the previous segment.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
Sorry, but you're using the umbrella of 'equity capital', and 'private property', to *defend* the (multi-)exploitation of the wage worker, even though they *physically* built the factories and equipment (etc.), *themselves*.



Truth To Power wrote:
See? They self-evidently and indisputably didn't do it themselves, or they wouldn't have needed the entrepreneur to make it happen. Your claims are nothing but SMG.



No, you're ignoring the tangible real-world results of the work of a *bricklayer*, for example.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Even entertaining the hypothetical that workers are compensated equitably, it doesn't follow that the function of (equity) capital should be so hallowed and aggrandized.



Truth To Power wrote:
No "hallowing" or "aggrandizing" here; just the fact that the production system only exists because of the entrepreneur's decision, initiative and labor.



You're conveniently forgetting *government's* role in genocide, for appropriating land and decreeing it to be 'commodified' -- even in *your* Geoist politics there would have to necessarily be a monolithic-type *administration* to referee over all competing land-related claims.

But monolithic government administration *costs money*, and you haven't begun to describe how this idealized government administration of yours would be *paid for*, or anything else, for that matter.

What if all of these 'holy' equity capital owners / investors *didn't want to* pay 'x' amount in taxes to the monolithic government for its operating expenses, and those of the monolithic government bureaucracy didn't want to grant all of the *land concessions* that the equity capital owners *wanted* -- ? How would *that* kind of a dispute be handled, exactly, or hadn't you really thought about it that far along -- ?


Truth To Power wrote:
You are simply makin' $#!+ up again.



ckaihatsu wrote:
'Salarization of ownership' is what *I* say, because society / the world doesn't need this continuous no-off-switch dynamic of the *primitive accumulation of capital*:



Truth To Power wrote:
The world DOES need JUSTICE, which requires rewards commensurate with contributions.



What *you* mean is 'justice for capital', or private property rights all the way up to *corporate personhood*.
#15227633
ckaihatsu wrote:Horseshit.

Fact.
You're invoking Stalinistic *ghosts* here -- it's *capital* that makes the rules these days,

No, it's privilege.
so if labor becomes 'uniform' and 'interchangeable' as a *commodity* these days you can thank a *corporation* / capitalist for that.

Labor is not and can't become a commodity.
And *other* consumers *do* pay the premium for 'name brand' products -- hence the success of Nike, Apple, etc.

Because those aren't commodities.
Here's the definition of 'commodity' again, in the *economic* -- not 'business' lingo -- sense:

No, that is just another bald falsehood from you. YOUR OWN SOURCE gives the ECONOMIC definition:
"(economics) Raw materials, agricultural and other primary products as objects of large-scale trading in specialized exchanges. "

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/commodity

I'm right, you're wrong. Try to remember that as we go along. It's going to continue happening. A lot.
(Blah, blah, blah.)

Thanks for agreeing that you know I am objectively correct and your own claims are objectively false.
And let's *glorify* that executive-type role, etc., to disproportionate extents -- the *fetishization* of capital ownership and its material / functional role in capitalist economics.

Calling identification of the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality "glorifying" and "fetishization" cannot alter them, sorry.
*Another* way of looking at it is that it's the pre-existing *corporate bureaucracy* that provides the vaunted 'production system [of social coordination]', while actual capital ownership just makes bets and *doesn't* do any of the actual physically-productive (blue-, pink-, white-collar) *work*, that produces *commodities*.

Yes, that is another way of looking at it: an objectively incorrect way. The entrepreneur by definition does not rely on any pre-existing corporate bureaucracy (Strike One), the production system he creates is not "social coordination," (Strike Two) and unlike investing in producer goods to create a production system, making bets is zero-sum. That's three strikes, Casey. You're out.

Labor is human effort devoted to production. Production is relief of scarcity. The "equity capitalist" who invests in producer goods to enable creation of a production system is performing all three actions necessary to be expending effort as labor: obtaining information, making a decision, and implementing that decision. The rentier's effort is NOT labor because it is not productive. Unlike the investor in a production system, the rentier devotes his effort to obtaining returns not by relieving scarcity but by inflicting scarcity on others.
You keep using strongman-type *Stalinism* as a *strawman* for your dismissiveness of (proletarian) socialism, so you can let the Cold War rest there, back in the 20th century.

Stalinism has nothing to do with it; that's just another false and disingenuous strawman fallacy on your part, like all the "farming" nonsense.
Socialism means 'workers control', nothing less.

It means collective ownership of the means of production: land (natural resources) and capital (producer goods). Socialism fetishizes the latter and slights the former because it completely misunderstands the character of capitalist exploitation of labor.
What about the relative privilege of finance / equity capital ownership -- ?

Those are two entirely different things. You merely refuse to know the difference. All Marxism consists in refusal to know indisputable facts of objective physical reality.

A privilege is a legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation. Finance capital is obtained by privilege -- private commercial bank licenses in a debt-money system -- but ownership of producer goods in a production system is not. It is obtained by devoting one's purchasing power to relief of scarcity.
You keep trying to make capital itself sound like God's blood plasma, or something -- are financial bettors to be so *lauded*?

<yawn> You merely proved (again) that you refuse to distinguish between rent-seeking, speculation, and investment in producer goods to create a production system.

All Marxism consists in refusal to know indisputable facts of objective physical reality.
Hey, *keep going* with your diatribes against rentier capital -- I'll hand-wave. But just keep in mind that it's only *half* of the story, since *equity* capital is *also* from the blood, sweat, and tears of the workers, for thousands of years.

No it's not. While we can't know how any given individual person initially obtained their purchasing power -- rent seeking, wage labor, theft, a poker game, an inheritance, marriage, who knows? -- the earnings from investment in creation of production systems is just the commensurate reward for a contribution to production, and is not obtained at the worker's or anyone else's expense. It comes out of the increase in production.
Well, I'm reminded of the following from Wilde, but I'm admittedly more *ambivalent* about the sentiment, myself.

Wilde was clever and eloquent, but he was no economist. Like all socialists, he refused to know the difference between private property in the fruits of one's labor and private property in others' rights to liberty. He gets part of it right:
"...it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought."

And easier to engage in charity than to fight for justice.
"Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease."

Bingo. Each act of charity diverts attention from the injustice that caused the need for charity, thus enabling the injustice to be sustained.
'Bring-back-the-commons'.

That's not what I'm advocating. There is a reason the commons passed out of existence: market allocation is more efficient. Wicked and unjust as it is, having a private landowner collecting and pocketing the rent of land is better than no one collecting it.
Big fish eat smaller fish. Got it.

That is not the gravamen of what I said. Government isn't just bigger. It uses force.
Any comment on *this*:

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

You could make an effort to understand it.
Bullshit.

Fact.
Natural resources are *rentier*-type assets, typically from a government *concession*, or diktat / edict / law.

Here's actual *history*, again:

That is completely irrelevant to what I said: production systems can in some measure substitute land for labor, vice versa, labor for producer goods, vice versa, land for producer goods, and vice versa.
You were trying to *downplay* the role and impact of *equity* capital, just so you could go back to whipping your favorite ragdoll, *rentier* capital valuations.

No, I was trying to get you to find a willingness to know the fact that the owner of producer goods has NO POWER to do anything but offer the worker access to economic opportunity he would not otherwise have, while the rentier has NO REASON to do anything but demand the worker pay him just for PERMISSION to access economic opportunity he WOULD otherwise have.
Competition exists among providers of *rentier* capital, too, like different banks, or various geographic locations to choose from

No. Rentiers don't and can't compete. They just accept the payment that results from the competition to secure their permissions.
-- you're trying to *dichotomize* the parasitic and exploitative roles of rentier and equity capital, respectively, over the labor-power commodity.

No, I am identifying the fact that the role of the rentier is parasitic and exploitative, while the role of the owner of producer goods is not.
You're playing good-cop-bad-cop with the roles of rentier capital, versus equity capital.

No, I am identifying the indisputable facts of objective physical reality that prove one cop is actually bad and the other actually good.
You're using *showmanship* and *opinionating*, rather than any kind of objective *analysis*.

No, that is merely another bald falsehood from you. I have repeatedly identified the relevant indisputable fact of objective physical reality that proves my analysis is objectively correct and yours objectively incorrect:

The owner of producer goods has NO POWER to do anything but offer the worker access to economic opportunity he would not otherwise have, while the rentier has NO REASON to do anything but demand the worker pay him just for PERMISSION to access economic opportunity he WOULD otherwise have.

The owner of producer goods relieves scarcity, the rentier inflicts it. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way of explaining that fact to you.
No, neither I nor any other Marxist would 'ignore [equity capital]'

What you ignore is exactly what I said you ignore: the fact that producer goods constitute a contribution to production by their owner.
-- I've been *addressing* it. *You're* the one who keeps deifying non-rentier-capital, meaning *equity* capital.

See? You always have to falsely and disingenuously substitute the silly Marxist gibberish term "equity capital" for the objectively correct term, "producer goods." You have no choice: it's the only way you can prevent yourself from knowing the relevant self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality that prove your beliefs are false and evil.
I'm nowhere saying that capitalism isn't dynamic, but ultimately it's about the *cut*, labor vs. capital -- capital's role in the commodity-productive process is simply *over-valued* in society, and especially by *you*.

See? You have to refuse to know the difference between "capital" that relieves scarcity and "capital" that inflicts scarcity on others. You have no choice: it's the only way you can preserve your false and evil beliefs.
It's not a 'guarantee', but it's a *fuck* of a lot better odds than someone with *zero* capital, so anything further is really *hair-splitting*.

No it isn't. A typical worker has a lot better odds in the market than someone with an 80 IQ. That doesn't mean he isn't earning the difference in their wages, and it is most certainly not hair-splitting to point out that he is not being paid the difference for no reason.
And the worker has to risk life and livelihood for the sake of being present for employment, plus relevant costs out-of-pocket, *plus* the downward-pressure of job-market competition, and now consumer price inflation. Got any praise for any of *this* -- ?

No, because it's all irrelevant to the point. Working is risky whether you work for someone else or for yourself, and it mainly depends on the type of work you are doing: self-employed farmers incur far more injuries and deaths in the course of their work than typical factory workers. You just don't understand how landowner privilege causes unemployment, low wages, etc. But I do.
Because they showed up for work.

No, because they performed the labor they agreed to perform in return for their wages.
Nope.

Yep.
You *still* haven't responded to *your own* past scenario of the freshly-laid *eggs* -- who does the work to *gather* those eggs? It's not the capitalist investor, that's for sure.

<sigh> How many times do I have to explain it to you? The investor provided the chicken coop, the feed, the fencing that keeps predators out, etc. and the decisions, initiative and PLANNING that enabled the eggs to be laid. Your absurd, disingenuous and anti-economic Marxist "analysis" says that the kid who gathers the eggs from the nest boxes is the only one contributing anything to their production! It's just self-evidently tripe that no one over the age of five could possibly believe.
Taking *another* swipe at unintended, imperialist-imploded nationalist *Stalinism*.

No, socialism.
Instead of absentee landlordism and absentee investing (think 'securitization' here),

Why would I think of irrelevancies like securitization instead of being willing to know the fact that the decision, initiative and labor of the investor in producer goods enabled the creation of the production system?
why not let the *workers* do what they know the best, at *their* workplaces, without outside interference -- ?

Because they don't know it best -- if they did, they would be managers -- and they have no right to appropriate the fruits of others' labor and investments of purchasing power.
You're just *name-calling* here, without actually *addressing* anything

No, I'm pointing out that you are just using meaningless bloviation to deflect from the relevant facts.
-- how do you reconcile inherent private interests in market 'turf', versus your hallowed mythologized 'dynamic markets' rhetoric, exactly -- ?

By being willing to know the fact that private interests can only control the market by privilege.
It *also* produces more 'externalities', that *society* has to pay-for, like environmental and financial *clean ups*, so where's the 'return' to the *public*, from that public underwriting of private corporate *fuck ups*, and cover-ups -- ?

Look all around you fer chrissakes. There is a reason capitalist countries build walls to keep people from entering, while socialist ones have to build walls to keep their people from escaping.
And how do you prevent the typical rentier-capital-versus-equity-capital *friction*, and *rivalry*, over such 'administration'

Vigilance. Corruption is an issue that has to be addressed any time there is potential for obtaining unearned wealth. So what? It's not like any other system has ever eradicated it.
-- and who *pays* for it, since 'administrators' are 'administrating', and are definitely *not* producing humanely-needed *commodities* for society, as *wage workers* do, for people's necessary consumption.

They are producing a service people need a lot: secure, exclusive land tenure for those who will use the land most productively.
Sounds closer to 'corporate personhood'.

No it doesn't. It has nothing to do with corporate personhood. You simply made that up.
You're really claiming that, due to capitalism's *overproduction*, that profit-making is '[negligible]' -- ?

"Profit" is just an accounting term: revenue less expenses. It can consist of rent, productive contribution, luck, and any number of other things. The return to ownership of producer goods is a small fraction of rent, which is the great majority of "profit."
That equity capital in a capitalist's hands is like beer money, and is inevitably *frittered away* -- ?

No, it is competed away by others who are interested in making those same profits.
What you're trying to ignore-away is that *privilege* also exists from *equity wealth*,

I am not ignoring it. I am stating the fact that it does not exist because unlike owning privilege, owning producer goods does not make anyone else worse off.
meaning that those *with* equity wealth in-hand are more-privileged than those *without* equity wealth.

No they aren't. All they have is an advantage, not a privilege. You have simply decided never to know the difference.
You're *sidestepping* the point

No, I'm identifying it.
-- if you're so *anti-landlord*, then wouldn't you be for *land reform*, such as making more land *available*, by government policy?

Only if it is such as to solve the problem. Just redistributing land while leaving the institution of private landowning intact does not solve the problem, it just starts the same dynamic all over again.
You're sounding more *pro-monopoly*, than 'anti-rentier-privilege', right now.

No I'm not. You simply made that up.
(See the previous segment.)

See the facts.
No, you're ignoring the tangible real-world results of the work of a *bricklayer*, for example.

No I'm not. That's just another bald fabrication on your part. You are the one who is ignoring -- in fact, refusing to know -- the contributions of those who provide producer goods for a production system.
You're conveniently forgetting *government's* role in genocide, for appropriating land and decreeing it to be 'commodified'

No I'm not. You simply made that up. I have stated the fact that private titles of ownership to land are ALWAYS based on nothing but forcible dispossession -- almost always by government -- of those who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land.
-- even in *your* Geoist politics there would have to necessarily be a monolithic-type *administration* to referee over all competing land-related claims.

Correct. The idea is that it would be designed to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all citizens.
But monolithic government administration *costs money*, and you haven't begun to describe how this idealized government administration of yours would be *paid for*, or anything else, for that matter.

What on earth do you incorrectly imagine you think you might be talking about? It's paid for out of the publicly created unimproved rental value of the land that exclusive landholders repay to the community that creates it, obviously, like other public expenditures on desirable public services and infrastructure.
What if all of these 'holy' equity capital owners / investors *didn't want to* pay 'x' amount in taxes to the monolithic government for its operating expenses,

BY DEFINITION, land rent is what the high bidder is WILLING TO PAY for the economic advantage conferred by secure, exclusive tenure.
and those of the monolithic government bureaucracy didn't want to grant all of the *land concessions* that the equity capital owners *wanted* -- ?

Then they would be stupid (like some other people I could name), because that is the way they would get revenue.
How would *that* kind of a dispute be handled, exactly, or hadn't you really thought about it that far along -- ?

Please. I have been thinking about this for decades, more clearly and deeply than you can possibly imagine.
What *you* mean is 'justice for capital', or private property rights all the way up to *corporate personhood*.

No, I mean justice for all, and that means rewards commensurate with contributions and costs commensurate with deprivations.
#15227679
Truth To Power wrote:
Bingo. So the Marxist assumption that labor is uniform and workers are all interchangeable is tripe.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Horseshit.



Truth To Power wrote:
Fact.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're invoking Stalinistic *ghosts* here -- it's *capital* that makes the rules these days,



Truth To Power wrote:
No, it's privilege.



No, it's *capital* / privilege, because capital can buy *rentier*-type assets, *and/or* equity-type assets.

Those *without* capital / privilege, though, are under existential *duress* to sell their labor at a loss-of-value, for an exploitative wage, for the sake of necessities for life and living.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
so if labor becomes 'uniform' and 'interchangeable' as a *commodity* these days you can thank a *corporation* / capitalist for that.



Truth To Power wrote:
Labor is not and can't become a commodity.



You don't dispute that labor is paid a *wage*, so labor-*power* *is* a commodity.


ckaihatsu wrote:
And *other* consumers *do* pay the premium for 'name brand' products -- hence the success of Nike, Apple, etc.



Truth To Power wrote:
Because those aren't commodities.



Nike *shoes*, Apple *computers* -- at *premium prices*, due to the brand.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Here's the definition of 'commodity' again, in the *economic* -- not 'business' lingo -- sense:



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that is just another bald falsehood from you. YOUR OWN SOURCE gives the ECONOMIC definition:



ckaihatsu wrote:
"(economics) Raw materials, agricultural and other primary products as objects of large-scale trading in specialized exchanges. "



Again, this is just business *lingo* / jargon, and now you're quibbling over *terminology* -- the rest of the world continues to say that anything bought or sold -- including labor-power -- is a *commodity*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/commodity



Truth To Power wrote:
I'm right, you're wrong. Try to remember that as we go along. It's going to continue happening. A lot.



You've simply been *quibbling* -- hair-splitting for the sake of your preferred lingo isn't 'being right'.


ckaihatsu wrote:
(Blah, blah, blah.)



Truth To Power wrote:
Thanks for agreeing that you know I am objectively correct and your own claims are objectively false.



"Thanks" for being *overbearing* and *imputing* your own conclusions -- that's called 'projecting'.


ckaihatsu wrote:
And let's *glorify* that executive-type role, etc., to disproportionate extents -- the *fetishization* of capital ownership and its material / functional role in capitalist economics.



Truth To Power wrote:
Calling identification of the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality "glorifying" and "fetishization" cannot alter them, sorry.



No, I'm saying that you're glorifying the role of *capital* itself -- *any* governmental and/or corporate bureaucracy could perform the same 'social-organization' function that capital does, and they *do*, internally, free of bothersome turbulent market activity.


ckaihatsu wrote:
*Another* way of looking at it is that it's the pre-existing *corporate bureaucracy* that provides the vaunted 'production system [of social coordination]', while actual capital ownership just makes bets and *doesn't* do any of the actual physically-productive (blue-, pink-, white-collar) *work*, that produces *commodities*.



Truth To Power wrote:
Yes, that is another way of looking at it: an objectively incorrect way. The entrepreneur by definition does not rely on any pre-existing corporate bureaucracy (Strike One), the production system he creates is not "social coordination," (Strike Two) and unlike investing in producer goods to create a production system, making bets is zero-sum. That's three strikes, Casey. You're out.



Fun. Baseball analogies are always fun.

Yeah, again, you're glorifying *one* kind of executive function out of many -- consider the *Board of Trustees*, for example, which is greater in decision-making corporate authority than any given *single* capitalist, usually.


Truth To Power wrote:
Labor is human effort devoted to production. Production is relief of scarcity. The "equity capitalist" who invests in producer goods to enable creation of a production system is performing all three actions necessary to be expending effort as labor: obtaining information, making a decision, and implementing that decision. The rentier's effort is NOT labor because it is not productive. Unlike the investor in a production system, the rentier devotes his effort to obtaining returns not by relieving scarcity but by inflicting scarcity on others.



Correct on the rentier part, but the 'labor' done by ownership / management / capitalists / entrepreneurs, is all strictly *internal*, since, it, too, like *rentier* capital, is actually *non-productive* of commodities.

All of those 'internal' executive-type duties -- like accounting, and whatever else -- is *overhead*, and is an (operational) *cost* to private ownership, well before the slightest *possibility* of making a profit. Typically managers are looking for ways to *minimize* these overhead costs, most notably by *downsizing* the workforce, to save on wages, instead favoring financial value-boosting from *stock buybacks*.

I'll note, for illustration, that the work of *janitors*, incidentally, fits into this category as well -- the office itself is a *non-productive overhead expense* (to equity capital), including paying for the labor of *janitors* to keep the office clean. See? No commodities produced that could be sold for revenue -- either by executives, or by the janitor.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Why the regular over-emphasis on *land* -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
The astronomical unimproved value of land proves, repeat, proves that I am not over-emphasizing it in the least. There are also three very good and independently conclusive reasons why land should be emphasized a lot more than it is in both socialist and modern mainstream neoclassical economics:



ckaihatsu wrote:
You keep using strongman-type *Stalinism* as a *strawman* for your dismissiveness of (proletarian) socialism, so you can let the Cold War rest there, back in the 20th century.



Truth To Power wrote:
Stalinism has nothing to do with it; that's just another false and disingenuous strawman fallacy on your part, like all the "farming" nonsense.



It's not *my* politics that glorifies the farmer -- again you're thinking of (workerist) *Stalinist* politics, since it oriented to the *peasants* instead of to the urban industrial proletariat, with *disastrous* results.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Socialism means 'workers control', nothing less.



Truth To Power wrote:
It means collective ownership of the means of production: land (natural resources) and capital (producer goods). Socialism fetishizes the latter and slights the former because it completely misunderstands the character of capitalist exploitation of labor.



(Proletarian) socialism does *not* fetishize capital *at all* -- it seeks to *overthrow* all private-property-based social relations, meaning the *abolition* of all exchange-value -- money, finance.


[7] Syndicalism-Socialism-Communism Transition Diagram

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What about the relative privilege of finance / equity capital ownership -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Those are two entirely different things. You merely refuse to know the difference. All Marxism consists in refusal to know indisputable facts of objective physical reality.



And all *you* do is name-call, so as to avoid dealing with the *particulars*. If you don't want to address something just *let it go*. Name-calling just makes you look defensive and inadequate in regards to the subject matter.


Truth To Power wrote:
A privilege is a legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation. Finance capital is obtained by privilege -- private commercial bank licenses in a debt-money system -- but ownership of producer goods in a production system is not. It is obtained by devoting one's purchasing power to relief of scarcity.



You're *really* saying that finance capital (debt), has *nothing* to do with ownership of producer goods?


ckaihatsu wrote:
You keep trying to make capital itself sound like God's blood plasma, or something -- are financial bettors to be so *lauded*?



Truth To Power wrote:
<yawn> You merely proved (again) that you refuse to distinguish between rent-seeking, speculation, and investment in producer goods to create a production system.



Not true -- I've addressed both rentier capital, and equity capital.


Truth To Power wrote:
All Marxism consists in refusal to know indisputable facts of objective physical reality.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Hey, *keep going* with your diatribes against rentier capital -- I'll hand-wave. But just keep in mind that it's only *half* of the story, since *equity* capital is *also* from the blood, sweat, and tears of the workers, for thousands of years.



Truth To Power wrote:
No it's not. While we can't know how any given individual person initially obtained their purchasing power -- rent seeking, wage labor, theft, a poker game, an inheritance, marriage, who knows? -- the earnings from investment in creation of production systems is just the commensurate reward for a contribution to production, and is not obtained at the worker's or anyone else's expense. It comes out of the increase in production.



Not true. Again, capitalism is *not* a zero-sum situation -- new incoming valuations have to come from *somewhere*, and that's from the economic exploitation of the labor commodity.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, I'm reminded of the following from Wilde, but I'm admittedly more *ambivalent* about the sentiment, myself.



Truth To Power wrote:
Wilde was clever and eloquent, but he was no economist. Like all socialists, he refused to know the difference between private property in the fruits of one's labor and private property in others' rights to liberty. He gets part of it right:




"...it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought."



Truth To Power wrote:
And easier to engage in charity than to fight for justice.



Your idealistic ideal of 'justice' is for capital to somehow be *unfettered* by rentier values / land, but you don't understand that capitalism *can't function* without the (economically draining) role of rentier ownership.

How is anyone to know what parcel of land (etc.) belongs to *whom*, whenever capital is not actually *active* (as active ongoing equity investments) in the commodity-production process -- ?

You *wish* equity capital could be 'independently' 'disembodied', and 100% swirlingly active all the time, everywhere, all-at-once, but capital doesn't really *behave* that way. Much of the time it's just *sitting around* -- being *rentier* capital -- and then there's no objective empirical *reason* for 'justice-for-equity-capital'.

TLDR: Capital that's just sitting-around is automatically *rentier* capital, and is *not* equity capital.


---



"Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease."



Truth To Power wrote:
Bingo. Each act of charity diverts attention from the injustice that caused the need for charity, thus enabling the injustice to be sustained.



ckaihatsu wrote:
'Bring-back-the-commons'.



Truth To Power wrote:
That's not what I'm advocating. There is a reason the commons passed out of existence: market allocation is more efficient. Wicked and unjust as it is, having a private landowner collecting and pocketing the rent of land is better than no one collecting it.



Better for *whom*, please.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
Not sufficient, but necessary. Labor is also needed, and producer goods that can generally be obtained at nominal cost.



ckaihatsu wrote:
To the capitalist these are three different kinds of *costs*, though each on its own functions differently than the others, of course.



Truth To Power wrote:
They don't function "on their own." And the fact that they are different kinds of costs should tell you something. The extortion demands of a protection racketeer are also a different kind of cost to the "capitalist" -- the difference from the cost of meeting the rentier's extortion demands being that the rentier has government on his side.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Big fish eat smaller fish. Got it. No tears from *you*, please.



Truth To Power wrote:
That is not the gravamen of what I said. Government isn't just bigger. It uses force.



You're talking about the *legitimacy* / authority / legality of rentier-capital (to impose costs), versus the rough-and-tumble of inter-capitalist *competition*.

Again, you're expressing *wishful thinking* that capital could somehow be *even more* disembodied / untethered / willful, while still remaining somehow *secure*, grounded, and *immutable*, like granite cliffs.

Basically, you're blaming capital itself for not constantly being in circulation, and actively useful. Capital that's not actively facilitating commodity production automatically reverts back to being *stagnant* rentier capital, your mortal enemy.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Any comment on *this*:



Truth To Power wrote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure



ckaihatsu wrote:
You could make an effort to understand it.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Bullshit.



Truth To Power wrote:
Fact.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Natural resources are *rentier*-type assets, typically from a government *concession*, or diktat / edict / law.



Truth To Power wrote:
Here's actual *history*, again:


usually the establishment of capitalist relations of production involves force and violence; transforming property relations means that assets previously owned by some people are no longer owned by them, but by other people, and making people part with their assets in this way involves coercion. This is an ongoing process of expropriation, Proletarianization and Urbanization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive ... cumulation



Truth To Power wrote:
That is completely irrelevant to what I said: production systems can in some measure substitute land for labor, vice versa, labor for producer goods, vice versa, land for producer goods, and vice versa.



No, you were just arguing that these three economic components are all *unique*, and now here you want to pretend as though they're somehow *interchangeable* and *substitutable* for each other.

Where's your typical *indignation* at the 'privileged' role of land / rentier capital -- ? Changed your mind?


ckaihatsu wrote:
You were trying to *downplay* the role and impact of *equity* capital, just so you could go back to whipping your favorite ragdoll, *rentier* capital valuations.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I was trying to get you to find a willingness to know the fact that the owner of producer goods has NO POWER to do anything but offer the worker access to economic opportunity he would not otherwise have, while the rentier has NO REASON to do anything but demand the worker pay him just for PERMISSION to access economic opportunity he WOULD otherwise have.



Yeah, I've heard this line of yours before -- to clarify, the rentier owner exacts a cost from the equity owner, *and* from the wage laborer, *both* -- rent.

The worker has no *special* 'economic opportunity' (if-you-like) from one employer, versus all others, because, *economically*, it's for the sake of a *wage*, for life's essentials.

I could just as validly be glass-half-empty here, and say that the worker is *compelled* by the tacit agreement of *all* employers, that *coerces* the wage worker to *have* to work for one-or-another employer, for a wage, to cover life's ongoing material costs.

You call it 'opportunity', and *I* call it 'compulsion'.

To extend your 'political spirit' here, I can validly say that 'You need to find a willingness to know the fact that the owner of producer goods has NO REASON to do anything but demand the worker pay him just for PERMISSION to access the economic opportunity [of employment].'

So just as all-landowners enjoy a cumulative 'privilege' of extracting rents from both labor and equity capital, we can also say that all-employers enjoy a cumulative 'privilege' of *exploiting surplus labor value* from wage laborers.

The wage-laborer is both *extorted* by rentier capital (rent), and *exploited* by equity capital (wages-for-greater-produced-values).


ckaihatsu wrote:
Competition exists among providers of *rentier* capital, too, like different banks, or various geographic locations to choose from



Truth To Power wrote:
No. Rentiers don't and can't compete. They just accept the payment that results from the competition to secure their permissions.



You just *contradicted* yourself -- is there competition, or isn't there? Is it king-of-the-hill, or do rentier capitalists all just sit-tight and passively take in whatever necessarily-local business comes their way -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
-- you're trying to *dichotomize* the parasitic and exploitative roles of rentier and equity capital, respectively, over the labor-power commodity.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I am identifying the fact that the role of the rentier is parasitic and exploitative, while the role of the owner of producer goods is not.



Untrue, contrary to your contentions -- see the previous segment.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're playing good-cop-bad-cop with the roles of rentier capital, versus equity capital.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I am identifying the indisputable facts of objective physical reality that prove one cop is actually bad and the other actually good.



Nope. Not true.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're using *showmanship* and *opinionating*, rather than any kind of objective *analysis*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that is merely another bald falsehood from you. I have repeatedly identified the relevant indisputable fact of objective physical reality that proves my analysis is objectively correct and yours objectively incorrect:



Truth To Power wrote:
The owner of producer goods has NO POWER to do anything but offer the worker access to economic opportunity he would not otherwise have, while the rentier has NO REASON to do anything but demand the worker pay him just for PERMISSION to access economic opportunity he WOULD otherwise have.



Truth To Power wrote:
The owner of producer goods relieves scarcity, the rentier inflicts it. I'm not sure there is any clearer or simpler way of explaining that fact to you.



But you're talking about 'relieving scarcity' in the *abstract*, as though scarcity-relieving commodity production all goes into some kind of a 'commons' -- which it *doesn't*.

A worker, through their labor, can produce commodities that 'relieve scarcity', but that doesn't mean that scarcity is relieved *for that worker*. The worker isn't paid enough to *afford* the very thing that it is they're producing.


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, neither I nor any other Marxist would 'ignore [equity capital]'



Truth To Power wrote:
What you ignore is exactly what I said you ignore: the fact that producer goods constitute a contribution to production by their owner.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- I've been *addressing* it. *You're* the one who keeps deifying non-rentier-capital, meaning *equity* capital.



Truth To Power wrote:
See? You always have to falsely and disingenuously substitute the silly Marxist gibberish term "equity capital" for the objectively correct term, "producer goods." You have no choice: it's the only way you can prevent yourself from knowing the relevant self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality that prove your beliefs are false and evil.



What problem do you have with 'equity capital' -- ? It's *synonymous* with 'producer goods' / means-of-mass-industrial-production -- while actually *active*, that is, producing goods and services.


ckaihatsu wrote:
I'm nowhere saying that capitalism isn't dynamic, but ultimately it's about the *cut*, labor vs. capital -- capital's role in the commodity-productive process is simply *over-valued* in society, and especially by *you*.



Truth To Power wrote:
See? You have to refuse to know the difference between "capital" that relieves scarcity and "capital" that inflicts scarcity on others. You have no choice: it's the only way you can preserve your false and evil beliefs.



(See the previous segments.)


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The capitalist's input of *capital* is 100% recovered by revenue (plus the profit),



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just SMG. A lender gets paid his principal plus interest IF the entrepreneur recovers his costs. An equity investor gets a share of any profits, but might not, in the end, even get back his investment. Nor is the entrepreneur who puts his own funds into the production system guaranteed to get his money back, let alone a profit.



ckaihatsu wrote:
It's not a 'guarantee', but it's a *fuck* of a lot better odds than someone with *zero* capital, so anything further is really *hair-splitting*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No it isn't. A typical worker has a lot better odds in the market than someone with an 80 IQ. That doesn't mean he isn't earning the difference in their wages, and it is most certainly not hair-splitting to point out that he is not being paid the difference for no reason.



You're changing the topic -- this isn't about inter-employee competition in the jobs market, or any kind of management-imposed employee 'tiers' of formal job roles.

What I'm saying is that your concern only extends as far as capitalist economic *factionalism* (rentier-vs.-equity), while ignoring that *both* types of capital are drains on the worker's wages purchasing power.


ckaihatsu wrote:
And the worker has to risk life and livelihood for the sake of being present for employment, plus relevant costs out-of-pocket, *plus* the downward-pressure of job-market competition, and now consumer price inflation. Got any praise for any of *this* -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
No, because it's all irrelevant to the point. Working is risky whether you work for someone else or for yourself, and it mainly depends on the type of work you are doing: self-employed farmers incur far more injuries and deaths in the course of their work than typical factory workers. You just don't understand how landowner privilege causes unemployment, low wages, etc. But I do.



Okay, you're *admitting* that your only concern is for the interests of equity capital.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
In other words the worker doesn't get a 'cut' -- they get a *wage*,



Truth To Power wrote:
Even if the employer takes a loss.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Because they showed up for work.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, because they performed the labor they agreed to perform in return for their wages.



Okay.

You haven't challenged my position that the given 'wage' is paid-out according to the discretion of the capitalist / *employer*.

Again, it's not a 'split' of the incoming revenue between capitalist and worker -- it's an intrinsic *power relation* since the capitalist employer *controls* the revenue.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Nope.



Truth To Power wrote:
Yep.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You *still* haven't responded to *your own* past scenario of the freshly-laid *eggs* -- who does the work to *gather* those eggs? It's not the capitalist investor, that's for sure.



Truth To Power wrote:
<sigh> How many times do I have to explain it to you? The investor provided the chicken coop, the feed, the fencing that keeps predators out, etc. and the decisions, initiative and PLANNING that enabled the eggs to be laid. Your absurd, disingenuous and anti-economic Marxist "analysis" says that the kid who gathers the eggs from the nest boxes is the only one contributing anything to their production! It's just self-evidently tripe that no one over the age of five could possibly believe.



I'd call it a matter of *perspective* -- you're lauding the role of *representation of capital*, while I'm saying that the role of the *worker* is recklessly *undervalued*, for reasons of blatant economic interests.

There's nothing 'progressive' or 'productive' about employee lay-offs and stock buybacks, and yet *those* economic activities raise overall market valuations, for the benefit of capital ownership -- and that's (nominally) *equity* capital. At *that* point 'the kid who gathers the eggs from the nest boxes' *becomes* 'the only one contributing anything to their production'.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're saying that rentier-based values / rent is what 'distorts' the valuation of all *equity* values -- got it.

But, yes, economic exploitation of the worker (Marx's 'alienation') *does* take place, in parallel, simply because the product of the worker's labor is sold for more than they're paid, in wages.

The capitalist's input of *capital* is 100% recovered by revenue (plus the profit), whereas the worker's input of *time and work* is *not* recovered by the worker, in an appropriate proportion, given the inputs, from the sales revenue. In other words the worker doesn't get a 'cut' -- they get a *wage*, and the employer controls the revenue throughout.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



Truth To Power wrote:
Because he is the one whose decisions, initiative and labor create and operate the production system, and thus produce the product.
< SMG snipped >



ckaihatsu wrote:
Then it's an admission / acknowledgement that *cuts against* your cheerleading for capitalism --



Truth To Power wrote:
I haven't done any cheerleading for capitalism. That's just an outright fabrication on your part. I have merely observed that socialism is even worse than capitalism, and I have explained exactly why.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Taking *another* swipe at unintended, imperialist-imploded nationalist *Stalinism*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, socialism.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Instead of absentee landlordism and absentee investing (think 'securitization' here),



Truth To Power wrote:
Why would I think of irrelevancies like securitization instead of being willing to know the fact that the decision, initiative and labor of the investor in producer goods enabled the creation of the production system?



'Investment [of equity capital]' *includes* the practice of securitized investments, and we all know how *that* turned out, 2008-2009. So your hallowed equity capital is also *toxic*, from the historical record.


ckaihatsu wrote:
why not let the *workers* do what they know the best, at *their* workplaces, without outside interference -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Because they don't know it best -- if they did, they would be managers -- and they have no right to appropriate the fruits of others' labor and investments of purchasing power.



No, they *wouldn't* [automatically] 'be managers' -- they have *different economic [class] interests*, than the managers and owners of capital have, so their *running* of all workplaces, globally, collectively, would be different than capitalist economics.

Again, remember that the *bricklayer* (for example) is the one who put down the bricks that the factory building is *made* of, so that makes your social-construction of 'capital' actually 'dead labor', meaning the past-real-physical-work of laborers.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're just *name-calling* here, without actually *addressing* anything



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I'm pointing out that you are just using meaningless bloviation to deflect from the relevant facts.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- how do you reconcile inherent private interests in market 'turf', versus your hallowed mythologized 'dynamic markets' rhetoric, exactly -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
By being willing to know the fact that private interests can only control the market by privilege.



Correct -- you're supporting my argument, that capitalists have private interests in *gaining market share*, all the way to the point of controlling markets monopolistically. These interests for ever-aggrandizing private accumulations are *counter* to the glorified equity-capital market *dynamism* that you cherish so tenderly.


ckaihatsu wrote:
It *also* produces more 'externalities', that *society* has to pay-for, like environmental and financial *clean ups*, so where's the 'return' to the *public*, from that public underwriting of private corporate *fuck ups*, and cover-ups -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Look all around you fer chrissakes. There is a reason capitalist countries build walls to keep people from entering, while socialist ones have to build walls to keep their people from escaping.



Recall that the *original* meaning of socialism is international *workers power*, while what *you* mean is historical *Stalinism*, as in Stalin's misguided 'socialism-in-one-country', which, by-definition, *isn't* workers-power international proletarian socialism.

Take it up with Stalin.


ckaihatsu wrote:
And how do you prevent the typical rentier-capital-versus-equity-capital *friction*, and *rivalry*, over such 'administration'



Truth To Power wrote:
Vigilance. Corruption is an issue that has to be addressed any time there is potential for obtaining unearned wealth. So what? It's not like any other system has ever eradicated it.



Good admission. 'Corruption' is unavoidable, because any given capitalist government can always make policy in favor of *rentier* capital (higher interest rates), versus your favored *equity* capital (lower interest rates).

Toughie, huh -- ? (frowny face)


ckaihatsu wrote:
-- and who *pays* for it, since 'administrators' are 'administrating', and are definitely *not* producing humanely-needed *commodities* for society, as *wage workers* do, for people's necessary consumption.



Truth To Power wrote:
They are producing a service people need a lot: secure, exclusive land tenure for those who will use the land most productively.



And do you *believe* this, or are you just *saying* it, to serve as a kind of *placeholder* in your politics....

Do you remember all of your past indignance at the 'privileges' of rentier capital, to charge rents -- ?

Well, guess what -- ? It just so happens that *government administration* enjoys a privilege of *its own*, that of not having to *produce commodities* for society, actually similarly to the way that *rentier capital* also not-produces anything / any commodities, and instead *appropriates* other-produced-values (rent from others' wages, from work done), for itself.

Does *government administration* (over the "service" -- though not-really -- of administrating over all land, for leasing) really *earn* the socio-political favoritism that it enjoys, namely being-paid despite not-producing any commodities for the economy.

Your politics is now *defending* the privileges of the government administration (as over land leasing), to not-produce -- exactly the same as the non-commodity-producing privilege of the *rentier capitalists*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Sounds closer to 'corporate personhood'.



Truth To Power wrote:
No it doesn't. It has nothing to do with corporate personhood. You simply made that up.



Equity values, valorized and subsidized, *do* add-up to corporate-personhood. That's the *actual history*.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, it's not just *rentier* capital values, like land, it's *also* about *equity* capital / 'producer goods', or the means of mass industrial production, since that's what produces *commodities* / commodity valuations, in society.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, because investment in producer goods doesn't produce persistent -- class -- inequities: unlike the rents of privilege, the return to productive investment tends to be competed away.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You're really claiming that, due to capitalism's *overproduction*, that profit-making is '[negligible]' -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
"Profit" is just an accounting term: revenue less expenses. It can consist of rent, productive contribution, luck, and any number of other things. The return to ownership of producer goods is a small fraction of rent, which is the great majority of "profit."



You're *digressing* -- you're speaking to the valuation of *rent*, and passing on my observation that you're downplaying the *quantitative* magnitude of equity investment profit-making.

I'll remind that you *acknowledged* that the history of society has been a history of *increasing total valuations*, or a 'surplus' over what it would take for all people to just subsist levelly, day-to-day and decade-to-decade.

Access to profit-making, through sufficient levels of equity and/or rentier capital ownership, is *exactly* what defines *class*, and the class-divide, versus the working class.


ckaihatsu wrote:
That equity capital in a capitalist's hands is like beer money, and is inevitably *frittered away* -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
No, it is competed away by others who are interested in making those same profits.



Again, '[profits] competed away' is *problematic*, because you're making it sound as though *no one* is making any profits, because of competition, which is just *ridiculous*.

Profits, anyway, are realized chronologically *after* the prerequisite acquisition of market-share -- so the 'competition' has already taken-place, market share is established, and *then* profits are made, respectively by each and all 'players'.


ckaihatsu wrote:
What you're trying to ignore-away is that *privilege* also exists from *equity wealth*,



Truth To Power wrote:
I am not ignoring it. I am stating the fact that it does not exist because unlike owning privilege, owning producer goods does not make anyone else worse off.



What you *are* ignoring is that equity capital does not always equal economy-beneficial commodity-production. As soon as equity capital *stops* an active role, in activating labor-power, for new commodity production, then it's automatically, by-default, *rentier capital*, and will begin drawing value from the larger, pre-existing total world economy, to itself (interest payments and rent payments), since that's what it *does*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
meaning that those *with* equity wealth in-hand are more-privileged than those *without* equity wealth.



Truth To Power wrote:
No they aren't. All they have is an advantage, not a privilege. You have simply decided never to know the difference.



Equity wealth *is* a privilege, *and* an advantage -- it's a privilege because not everyone is *born* into it, so in that way it more-resembles *hereditary* privilege, like that of past monarchs and aristocracies, than the mythological by-one's-bootstraps, rags-to-riches tale.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're *sidestepping* the point



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I'm identifying it.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- if you're so *anti-landlord*, then wouldn't you be for *land reform*, such as making more land *available*, by government policy?



Truth To Power wrote:
Only if it is such as to solve the problem. Just redistributing land while leaving the institution of private landowning intact does not solve the problem, it just starts the same dynamic all over again.



It's called a *reform* for a reason -- it's *not* a solution to the problem of private property ownership. Here's Wilde again:



It is immoral to use private property in order to alleviate the horrible evils that result from the institution of private property. It is both immoral and unfair.



https://www.marxists.org/reference/arch ... /soul-man/



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're sounding more *pro-monopoly*, than 'anti-rentier-privilege', right now.



Truth To Power wrote:
No I'm not. You simply made that up.



ckaihatsu wrote:
(See the previous segment.)



Truth To Power wrote:
See the facts.



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, you're ignoring the tangible real-world results of the work of a *bricklayer*, for example.



Truth To Power wrote:
No I'm not. That's just another bald fabrication on your part. You are the one who is ignoring -- in fact, refusing to know -- the contributions of those who provide producer goods for a production system.



Look, TTP, I'm not going to 'Red-Rover' go-over to join the side of equity valuations. I don't know *who* you're arguing with, but until you can address the question / issue of where *new value* *comes from*, you're just going in circles.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're conveniently forgetting *government's* role in genocide, for appropriating land and decreeing it to be 'commodified'



Truth To Power wrote:
No I'm not. You simply made that up. I have stated the fact that private titles of ownership to land are ALWAYS based on nothing but forcible dispossession -- almost always by government -- of those who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land.



Okay.


ckaihatsu wrote:
-- even in *your* Geoist politics there would have to necessarily be a monolithic-type *administration* to referee over all competing land-related claims.



Truth To Power wrote:
Correct. The idea is that it would be designed to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all citizens.



ckaihatsu wrote:
But monolithic government administration *costs money*, and you haven't begun to describe how this idealized government administration of yours would be *paid for*, or anything else, for that matter.



Truth To Power wrote:
What on earth do you incorrectly imagine you think you might be talking about? It's paid for out of the publicly created unimproved rental value of the land that exclusive landholders repay to the community that creates it, obviously, like other public expenditures on desirable public services and infrastructure.



Sounds uncomfortably close to 'market socialism' -- any comment?


Centralization-Abstraction Diagram of Political Forms

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What if all of these 'holy' equity capital owners / investors *didn't want to* pay 'x' amount in taxes to the monolithic government for its operating expenses,



Truth To Power wrote:
BY DEFINITION, land rent is what the high bidder is WILLING TO PAY for the economic advantage conferred by secure, exclusive tenure.



ckaihatsu wrote:
and those of the monolithic government bureaucracy didn't want to grant all of the *land concessions* that the equity capital owners *wanted* -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Then they would be stupid (like some other people I could name), because that is the way they would get revenue.



Okay -- what if the *present*, *existing* private property owner for any given parcel of land, *didn't want to* sell it out to the local community's communal interests -- ? What then? How do you bring about that desired paradigm shift of yours -- ?

I'll also gladly remind that, even if such a sea-change *did* happen -- the equivalent of a mass spontaneous fire-sale *selling-off* of private land assets to the markets, as for community-based scooping-up -- over *all* parcels, all at once, there would *still* conceivably be *labor commodity exploitation*, since labor is treated like *any other* commodity, and 'bought-low' / low-wages, while 'sold-high' / high volume and revenue of labor-resulting products.


ckaihatsu wrote:
How would *that* kind of a dispute be handled, exactly, or hadn't you really thought about it that far along -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Please. I have been thinking about this for decades, more clearly and deeply than you can possibly imagine.



Image


x D


ckaihatsu wrote:
What *you* mean is 'justice for capital', or private property rights all the way up to *corporate personhood*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I mean justice for all, and that means rewards commensurate with contributions and costs commensurate with deprivations.



Okay, well, like anyone else, you gotta address the *transition*, like how to make this / any overhaul of all-asset-administration, for a lack of a better term.

So far it looks like it would have to somehow happen *spontaneously*, all in a good-guy direction, without any complications. Good-luck-with-that, to put it generously.
#15227694
Again:


Truth To Power wrote:
A privilege is a legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation. Finance capital is obtained by privilege -- private commercial bank licenses in a debt-money system -- but ownership of producer goods in a production system is not. It is obtained by devoting one's purchasing power to relief of scarcity.



You make 'private commercial bank licenses' sound like a royal-favoritist *christening*, resulting from dramatic governmental *palace intrigues* and the goings-on of bureaucratic nobility.

Are you sure that such licenses *aren't* approved based on a standard business-regulatory framework, like anything else?

You're dramatizing things in the direction of stoking resentment against the bourgeoisie's *own* ruling apparatus, the nation-state.

Does finance / debt really only pour-forth from the graciousness of 'big-gubmint', and only to 'winners', and not-me, or is it *really* more a function of capitalism *itself*, like debt-to-GDP ratios -- (!)

If finance is so governmentally 'privileged', then wouldn't that make your 'ownership of producer goods in a production system' to *also* be 'privileged', since much equity capital / market capitalization, is *itself* based on debt-based / leveraged *financing* -- (!)

These touted capitalist / entrepreneurial 'angels', relieving scarcity everywhere they gaze, have most-likely provided *leveraged equity* / *debt*, which refers back to capitalist-financial-benchmarks, or the everyday pedestrian rule-of-capital, and *not* big-gubmint as a cartoonish villain.

So you gotta puff out the chest a little, and own-up to the *rainy* days, as well as the sunny ones, regarding capitalism.
#15227759
ckaihatsu wrote:You make 'private commercial bank licenses' sound like a royal-favoritist *christening*, resulting from dramatic governmental *palace intrigues* and the goings-on of bureaucratic nobility.

No I don't. It doesn't matter how they are granted. As it happens, they are only granted to people who are rich enough to put millions of dollars of their own money into the bank's capital.
Are you sure that such licenses *aren't* approved based on a standard business-regulatory framework, like anything else?

I'm sure there is a framework. I am also sure that whatever that framework is, the privilege of a bank license is -- almost literally -- a license to print money.
You're dramatizing things in the direction of stoking resentment against the bourgeoisie's *own* ruling apparatus, the nation-state.

AFAIK there is no necessary relationship between nation-states and debt-money banking.
Does finance / debt really only pour-forth from the graciousness of 'big-gubmint', and only to 'winners', and not-me, or is it *really* more a function of capitalism *itself*, like debt-to-GDP ratios -- (!)

Debt-to-GDP ratios are not a function of capitalism simpliciter, though they are of modern finance (debt-money) capitalism.
If finance is so governmentally 'privileged', then wouldn't that make your 'ownership of producer goods in a production system' to *also* be 'privileged', since much equity capital / market capitalization, is *itself* based on debt-based / leveraged *financing* -- (!)

No, because it is the bank that gets income via privilege rather than production, not the borrower. Duh.
These touted capitalist / entrepreneurial 'angels', relieving scarcity everywhere they gaze, have most-likely provided *leveraged equity* / *debt*, which refers back to capitalist-financial-benchmarks, or the everyday pedestrian rule-of-capital, and *not* big-gubmint as a cartoonish villain.

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but it sounds disingenuous and deceitful.
So you gotta puff out the chest a little, and own-up to the *rainy* days, as well as the sunny ones, regarding capitalism.

You persist in falsely claiming that I advocate, praise, or defend capitalism. I do not. I am merely aware of the fact that socialism is even worse.
#15228121
ckaihatsu wrote:No, it's *capital* / privilege, because capital can buy *rentier*-type assets, *and/or* equity-type assets.

By that brain-dead Marxist "logic," splitting firewood is the same as beheading one's neighbor, because an axe can be used to do both.
Those *without* capital / privilege, though, are under existential *duress* to sell their labor at a loss-of-value, for an exploitative wage, for the sake of necessities for life and living.

What stops them from just making a living without capital or privilege, as their remote hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding ancestors did?

Oh, wait a minute, that's right: the need to meet a landowner's extortion demands in return for his permission to do so.
You don't dispute that labor is paid a *wage*, so labor-*power* *is* a commodity.

Paying for something doesn't make it a commodity.
Nike *shoes*, Apple *computers* -- at *premium prices*, due to the brand.

So they aren't commodities.
Again, this is just business *lingo* / jargon,

No, it is the economic definition, which is used because it implies near-perfect competition.
and now you're quibbling over *terminology* -- the rest of the world continues to say that anything bought or sold -- including labor-power -- is a *commodity*.

No. As with most SMG, that usage removes useful information.
You've simply been *quibbling* -- hair-splitting for the sake of your preferred lingo isn't 'being right'.

Identifying the fact that the definition is what it is, and not what you claim it is, is actually being right.
"Thanks" for being *overbearing* and *imputing* your own conclusions -- that's called 'projecting'.

No, it's called "identifying the relevant facts."
No, I'm saying that you're glorifying the role of *capital* itself

No, I am stating the fact that providing producer goods and creating a production system are contributions to production.
-- *any* governmental and/or corporate bureaucracy could perform the same 'social-organization' function that capital does, and they *do*, internally, free of bothersome turbulent market activity.

No. Government typically can't do it as well as private investors and entrepreneurs, as we saw proved so very conclusively in the 20th century, because government doesn't have to compete. Government investment in producer goods and creation of production systems can only perform as well as private enterprise when applied to natural monopolies like roads, water and sewer systems, power grids, policing, fire protection, etc., where no efficiency can be achieved by competition.
Yeah, again, you're glorifying *one* kind of executive function out of many

No, simply identifying the fact that it is a contribution to production, which Marxists so cretinously deny, is not "glorifying."
-- consider the *Board of Trustees*, for example, which is greater in decision-making corporate authority than any given *single* capitalist, usually.

The Board of Directors is there to safeguard the interests of shareholders, because otherwise executives might just use their decision making authority to line their own pockets at the expense of investors.
Correct on the rentier part, but the 'labor' done by ownership / management / capitalists / entrepreneurs, is all strictly *internal*, since, it, too, like *rentier* capital, is actually *non-productive* of commodities.

No. The entrepreneur's labor creates the production system, and investors' labor provides producer goods thereto, both of which add to production and are therefore productive.
All of those 'internal' executive-type duties -- like accounting, and whatever else -- is *overhead*, and is an (operational) *cost* to private ownership, well before the slightest *possibility* of making a profit.

No. Accounting, marketing, and a few other functions are organizational overhead that are needed to maintain the production system, but the creation of the production system by the entrepreneur and provision of producer goods thereto by the investor are crucial contributions to production.
Typically managers are looking for ways to *minimize* these overhead costs, most notably by *downsizing* the workforce, to save on wages, instead favoring financial value-boosting from *stock buybacks*.

Garbage. Managers are just looking to get the necessary work done at minimal cost. That means hiring the right number of the right workers, not just firing people arbitrarily.
I'll note, for illustration, that the work of *janitors*, incidentally, fits into this category as well -- the office itself is a *non-productive overhead expense* (to equity capital), including paying for the labor of *janitors* to keep the office clean. See? No commodities produced that could be sold for revenue -- either by executives, or by the janitor.

Janitors, accountants, salesmen, etc. are needed to keep the production system running, and to ensure that it is actually productive and not wasteful. You clearly have no idea how private business actually runs, because you have spent your life reading silly Marxist trash instead of working for a living.
It's not *my* politics that glorifies the farmer -- again you're thinking of (workerist) *Stalinist* politics, since it oriented to the *peasants* instead of to the urban industrial proletariat, with *disastrous* results.

No, I am talking about socialism, and its false and absurd basic axiom that production systems and producer goods are available unconditionally, like natural resources.
(Proletarian) socialism does *not* fetishize capital *at all* -- it seeks to *overthrow* all private-property-based social relations, meaning the *abolition* of all exchange-value -- money, finance.

But it fetishizes producer goods by claiming that it is their private ownership that causes the exploitation of labor, when in fact, the owner of producer goods has NO POWER to to anything but offer the worker access to economic opportunity he would not otherwise have.
And all *you* do is name-call, so as to avoid dealing with the *particulars*.

GARBAGE. I have clearly identified the relevant particulars. You just refuse to know such facts, because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.
You're *really* saying that finance capital (debt), has *nothing* to do with ownership of producer goods?

No, I'm saying that ownership of producer goods has no necessary connection to finance capitalism -- i.e., that producer goods would still be privately owned under classical capitalism, without debt money, or indeed under a non-capitalist (geoist) system. Ownership of producer goods is only connected to finance capital under the current system because the current system is finance capitalism.
Not true -- I've addressed both rentier capital, and equity capital.

No, you have only pretended to -- as proved by the fact that you persist in calling them both "capital," and calling the owners of both "capitalists" as if there were no difference in their relationships to production.
Not true.

It is indisputably true.
Again, capitalism is *not* a zero-sum situation

"Zero-sum" describes a transaction system, and is not a descriptor that could apply to capitalism.
-- new incoming valuations have to come from *somewhere*, and that's from the economic exploitation of the labor commodity.

No. You just contradicted yourself. Production is not zero-sum under any system, so the fact that producer goods increase production proves that the returns to their providers are not obtained by exploitation of labor but by increasing production. Everything the worker obtains above what he could earn without the employer is a contribution from the employer.
<SMG snipped>
Your idealistic ideal of 'justice' is for capital to somehow be *unfettered* by rentier values / land, but you don't understand that capitalism *can't function* without the (economically draining) role of rentier ownership.

No, you simply made that up. I have repeatedly stated the fact that capitalism by definition requires private ("rentier") ownership of land. You merely persist, as always, in falsely claiming that I am advocating, defending, or justifying capitalism. I am not. I am merely aware of the fact that socialism is even worse than capitalism.
How is anyone to know what parcel of land (etc.) belongs to *whom*, whenever capital is not actually *active* (as active ongoing equity investments) in the commodity-production process -- ?

I have no idea what that means. In a geoist system, everyone knows which land they have paid the community for secure, exclusive tenure on, and that they can't use other land without first finding out if anyone has paid the community for secure, exclusive tenure to it and securing the necessary permission.
You *wish* equity capital could be 'independently' 'disembodied', and 100% swirlingly active all the time, everywhere, all-at-once, but capital doesn't really *behave* that way. Much of the time it's just *sitting around* -- being *rentier* capital -- and then there's no objective empirical *reason* for 'justice-for-equity-capital'.

See? You claim to have distinguished between rent collection privileges -- which you misleadingly and disingenuously call, "rentier capital" -- and producer goods ("equity capital"), but the first thing you do is pretend there is no difference between them.
TLDR: Capital that's just sitting-around is automatically *rentier* capital, and is *not* equity capital.

No, that is just objectively false. "Capital" (purchasing power) that does not consist of ownership of privilege confers no entitlement to extract economic rent, and therefore does not make its owner a rentier. Only the owner of privilege can collect economic rent and thus be a rentier. The notion that a guy with $50 in his pocket is thereby a rentier is simply cretinous Marxist drivel.
Better for *whom*, please.

The community, which has an interest in relief of scarcity.
You're talking about the *legitimacy* / authority / legality of rentier-capital (to impose costs), versus the rough-and-tumble of inter-capitalist *competition*.

No, I'm talking about the fact that the government imposes privilege by force, without the victims' consent, while the owner of producer goods is dealing with everyone via voluntary transactions.
Again, you're expressing *wishful thinking* that capital could somehow be *even more* disembodied / untethered / willful, while still remaining somehow *secure*, grounded, and *immutable*, like granite cliffs.

No idea what that is intended to mean, if anything.
Basically, you're blaming capital itself for not constantly being in circulation, and actively useful. Capital that's not actively facilitating commodity production automatically reverts back to being *stagnant* rentier capital, your mortal enemy.

No, I am stating the fact, which you permanently refuse to know, that "capital" as you use the term is not an economically meaningful concept, as it subsumes economically unlike quantities. It is as idiotic and disingenuous as using the word, "Russians" to mean Russian people, Russian cocktails, and Russian dolls.
No, you were just arguing that these three economic components are all *unique*, and now here you want to pretend as though they're somehow *interchangeable* and *substitutable* for each other.

No, "substitutable" is an economic concept that does not mean "interchangeable." If you can get the same amount of production by using less of one factor and more of another, those two factors are substitutable.
Where's your typical *indignation* at the 'privileged' role of land / rentier capital -- ? Changed your mind?

<sigh> It's not the role of land in production that is privileged, it is the owner, who gets to take a share of production in return for no contribution to production.

The fact that land and labor can be substituted for each other at the margin doesn't mean you could produce anything with NO land or NO labor. Clear?
Yeah, I've heard this line of yours before -- to clarify, the rentier owner exacts a cost from the equity owner, *and* from the wage laborer, *both* -- rent.

Congratulations on finding a willingness to know a relevant fact.
The worker has no *special* 'economic opportunity' (if-you-like) from one employer, versus all others, because, *economically*, it's for the sake of a *wage*, for life's essentials.

Non sequitur. The fact that the worker would not otherwise have the opportunity the owner offers him is not related to his financial condition. It is exactly the same whether he is flat broke or has $1M in the bank.
I could just as validly be glass-half-empty here, and say that the worker is *compelled* by the tacit agreement of *all* employers, that *coerces* the wage worker to *have* to work for one-or-another employer, for a wage, to cover life's ongoing material costs.

No you could not, because your claim is just objectively false. There is no such tacit agreement. All there is is the landowner's privilege of forcibly depriving the worker of his liberty right to earn a living on his own, thus his alternatives to wage employment, and thus his bargaining power.
You call it 'opportunity', and *I* call it 'compulsion'.

The difference is that unlike you, I know who is applying the compulsion, and who is just offering the worker an opportunity to relieve its effects.
To extend your 'political spirit' here, I can validly say that 'You need to find a willingness to know the fact that the owner of producer goods has NO REASON to do anything but demand the worker pay him just for PERMISSION to access the economic opportunity [of employment].'

No you could not, because the employer would be the one paying the worker, not the other way around.
So just as all-landowners enjoy a cumulative 'privilege' of extracting rents from both labor and equity capital, we can also say that all-employers enjoy a cumulative 'privilege' of *exploiting surplus labor value* from wage laborers.

No, we would be lying if we said that, because it is self-evidently and indisputably the contribution of the production system by the entrepreneur and producer goods by the investor that create the "surplus" value, and not the wage laborers.
The wage-laborer is both *extorted* by rentier capital (rent), and *exploited* by equity capital (wages-for-greater-produced-values).

No. Without the landowner forcing the worker into a disadvantageous bargaining position, the employer would have no means to exploit the worker, who would then be perfectly at liberty to make his own arrangements to earn a living.
You just *contradicted* yourself

I most certainly did not, and I will thank you to remember it.
-- is there competition, or isn't there?

There is competition for what the rentier withholds from everyone else, but not between rentiers.
Is it king-of-the-hill, or do rentier capitalists all just sit-tight and passively take in whatever necessarily-local business comes their way -- ?

<sigh> Do you or do you not understand that the landowner can't do better than to just accept the high bid?
Untrue, contrary to your contentions -- see the previous segment.

No, my statement is indisputably true, and I proved all your garbage to the contrary was false and ridiculous. See the previous segment.
Nope. Not true.

What I said is indisputably true, which is why you cannot offer any factual or logical argument to the contrary, just fallacious, absurd and disingenuous Marxist denials of perfectly evident facts.
But you're talking about 'relieving scarcity' in the *abstract*, as though scarcity-relieving commodity production all goes into some kind of a 'commons' -- which it *doesn't*.

It goes into the market, where it also relieves scarcity of all substitutable products.
A worker, through their labor, can produce commodities that 'relieve scarcity', but that doesn't mean that scarcity is relieved *for that worker*. The worker isn't paid enough to *afford* the very thing that it is they're producing.

Production by definition relieves scarcity. Who gets the production is irrelevant to that fact.

Sorry, but I have had my fill of your absurd and disingenuous Marxist refusals to know facts for today. I may come back and answer the rest of your tripe another time.
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