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
---
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
---
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
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/
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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
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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.
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.