[ckaihatsu]

You're missing the point, as usual, by conflating the *labor* commodity with any given *non-living* good or service (*also* commodities) -- by valuating only the *market value* / exchange-value aspect of labor-power.

No, YOU are missing the point -- quite deliberately and disingenuously -- by refusing to know the fact that consensual exchange does not violate anyone's rights or deprive anyone of anything they would otherwise have, whether the exchange is for physical goods or services.

You're assuming it's a level playing field, and it's *not* -- the simple 'externality' factors of [1] scale of operations, respectively (capital vs. labor), and [2] transaction costs around any given deal (since there's no inherent 'referee'), aren't factored into your considerations of *business*, basically (labor-power leveraging, and wage exploitation / compensation).

It's a stacked-deck, and yet you expect the sheep to be shorn, as ever, with no complaints about it.

Your 'consensual' description is something of a *stretch*, I'd say, even to the point of being perceived as *mythologized* or *propagandized*. The employer and employee at the workplace are *not* a relationship of equals, as much as you would like to *pretend* so.

That exchange-value yardstick you've chosen doesn't reflect expropriated *surplus labor value*, the appropriation of which happens in the regular course of employing labor for a wage.

No, the metric of exchange value doesn't reflect expropriated surplus labor value because that is not only silly Marxist gibberish (SMG) but non-existent. Employing labor for a wage does not appropriate or expropriate anything. It is a consensual exchange.

At the other thread you've been unable to address the idea / variable of *socially necessary labor*.

It's not complicated, it's not invalid -- What does it take for the world's labor power to sustain itself, going-forward -- ?

*That's* 'socially necessary labor', and socially necessary labor value. If we can all wake up and do the same day all over again as yesterday then at least we know we're *sustaining* things, meaning a day's worth of total global labor-power / value.

So -- yup, here it comes -- what happens to all of the *extra* stuff that all those laborers worldwide produce? *They* don't need it. *They* don't receive it, regardless. If all workers can produce enough for their own numbers, day-by-day, then why aren't they sent home after that 16 hours, or whatever, instead of having to clock-in 40+ hours, for a typical workweek -- ?

(Recall that 'surplus labor value' is a percentage *above* 'socially necessary labor value', or the constant-vector of total active labor value -- work -- taking place at any given moment, self-sustainably, indefinitely.)

SMG. If that sentence meant anything (it doesn't), it would be wrong. It's just a bunch of made-up concepts with invalid definitions designed to prevent people from understanding the relevant economic relationships. But I am here to expose such deceitful tripe.

Sounds fun and/or *delicious*. See the previous segment.

Also, on the *capitalism* / management side of things, the figure of 'price' (of any given commodity) is forced to do *double duty* -- it initially reflects the *production cost* of the commodity (from capital + labor),

No it doesn't. Your claims are just bald falsehoods with no basis in economics, fact, or logic.

[23] A Business Perspective on the Declining Rate of Profit

Spoiler: show

---

but then it takes on the additional task of finding the median between economic *demand*, and material-economic *supply* -- this *secondary-market* speculative pricing activity / fluctuations, has no bearing whatsoever on the initial, preceding economic *inputs* / costs, yet this potentially inflationary or deflationary 'price' number-value is socially accepted under capitalism to be *appropriate*, somehow, just by-default.

No, it is accepted because it balances supply and demand: if the price is high, production is profitable and increases; if it is low, production is unprofitable and decreases.

But the economic / money *demand*, and the (material) supply are *two different things* -- sure, it's an *exchange*, but there's no telling that these qualitatively *very* different quantities / categories will all line-up and correctly correspond, over the whole.

In other words how do *I* know that everything all just magically balances-out -- ?

If the going rate for PPE soars sky-high, does that automatically mean that the PPE market price is 'correct' -- ?

Should a PPE *profiteer* be lauded by society for smart calculations, or is there more to it than just what the market says, with its valuation number? And, what does that going-rate number have to do at all with the actual past material *cost* for physically *making* that item, like a face mask -- ?


Pies Must Line Up

Spoiler: show

---

Again, the biggest overall travesty is this *commodification* of living people's own lives -- 'labor' -- that's simply part-of-the-system.

Again, labor is not a living person's own life -- though their liberty rights to use land are close.

Yes, the time that one spends at work, and in preparation / transportation around work, *is* one's own life-time. No one can afford to send in a *proxy* to do their work *for* them.

The world's moved-on, past land itself, and the *industrial* age, that we're still in, is far more to the point these days, especially since everyone loves smartphones, etc. (Therefore factories / equity capital, and wage labor, and exploitation, etc.)

It wreaks havoc in people's lives being under such physical / existential *duress* just for the basic necessities of life -- Squid Game comes to mind here.

GARBAGE. Scarcity is the natural condition of all living organisms. It is the natural condition of a human being to labor to sustain himself. The Marxist just seeks to evade the responsibility of sustaining himself -- the responsibility of living -- by stealing from those who have not evaded that responsibility.

Bullshit. You're just being glass-half-empty about natural and modern resources, for the individual. (How much does a cheeseburger cost these days....)

You can't claim 'theft', because *I'm* claiming theft -- of the worker's surplus labor value, or 'dead labor', meaning everything that exists today, built-up by actual intelligent, focused attentions and efforts / work.

No, the wage worker *can't* be politically bought-off for the price of a wage -- the wage paid-out is *exploitative*, so all of the cumulative work-product of civilization to-date really belongs to the world's working class, and not to the labor-exploiting capitalist employers.

You're only describing how it looks *on paper* -- which, has been, admittedly, *unavoidable*, for past historical reasons of historical *necessity* (for bourgeois administration, etc.),

No, I am identifying the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality.

but society has been capable of 'modern' 'socialism', for lack of a better term, since the Industrial Revolution.

Right. And modern socialism has been tried, and the result has always been tyranny, poverty, stagnation, and mass murder because the alternative to consensual exchange is force.

No, you're erroneously thinking of imperialism-imploded, post-revolutionary historical *Stalinism*. The workers weren't in control of production, so it wasn't proletarian socialism.

Wilde actually has a pretty-good treatment of it:

No, Wilde was an economic ignoramus who understood economics as little as you do:

Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery,

Idiocy. It is landowners and other privilege holders who own people's rights to liberty, not machines.

and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve.

Idiocy. Landowners have never needed machines to starve the landless to death.

This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition.

No, it's the result of our system of property in land, which forcibly strips the landless of their rights to liberty, thus their options, and thus their bargaining power.

One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment,

No they aren't. They are freed to do easier, more human jobs that machines can't do.

and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving.

Idiocy. What stops them from working on their own account? The only way they can have no work to do is if they can't afford to pay a landowner full market value just for permission to work. But that is not the fault of the machine's owner. It is the fault of the landowner.

It's *also* the fault of the machine's owner, because his / her ownership of the machine *deprives* others of its use, due to the societal institution of *private property* (over the means of mass industrial production).

The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it,

No he doesn't. He has to give most of it to the landowner just for permission to use the location the machine occupies.

and has five hundred times as much as he should have,

No he doesn't. By the machine he provided, he has fantastically increased production, of which he gets to keep only a small portion (if any), while the landowner gets most of it for doing and contributing exactly nothing.

And yet *equity* values have hardly been *flagging*, historically, so what *is* it exactly that you're whining about?

and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants.

Wilde was an economic ignoramus (like some other people I could name). The Law of Rent shows why the landowner gets the additional production, not the machine owner.

(Poor equity capitalists.) (sniff)

Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it.

No they wouldn't. Only the landowner would benefit. Wilde was an economic ignoramus, like every Marxist.

Duh -- then collectivize the *land*, along with the *machinery*. Workers collective *administration* over all of it.

It would be an immense advantage to the community.

Nope. Only to the landowner.

All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery.

But the people who invent, create, produce, invest in and contribute that machinery to the production process must be robbed of it, and their contributions relentlessly lied about and made to vanish from people's minds? That's how you are going to get that machinery???

Again, you're *incorrect* because you're fetishizing the contribution of capital, and those with capital.

Administratively / social-organizationally, capital is just a *number* at any given moment -- more of it leverages more real-world activity / development, sure, but that doesn't mean that the capitalist *with* that capital is some kind of mega-titan striding over entire city blocks at a time, and doing the work of *thousands* with every muscle flex.

I don't think anyone's trying to 'memory-hole' your intellectual property, or whatever -- looks like the Stalinist boogeyman *got* to you in your dreams last night.

Society-beneficial productive machinery should be available to *everyone*, and not hoarded and lorded over everyone by quote-unquote, 'private interests'. It's exactly as Wilde said.

Also:


Social Production Worldview

Spoiler: show

---

Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing.

WHO IS GOING TO PROVIDE THAT MACHINERY, HMMMMMMMMMMM?

Exhale. It *already exists*.

At present machinery competes against man.

Only to an economic ignoramus who thinks the first stone hand axe and sharpened stick were competing against man.

Not comparable -- industrial machinery leverages *mass production*, using *fuel*. That's why it's inherently absurd for it to be in *private* hands. Those who put in the *labor* -- even to build the machine in the first place -- should be the ones *controlling* it, and not private capitalist interests.

Under proper conditions machinery will serve man.

The proper conditions being when Marxist know-nothings find a willingness to know self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.

Disagree-to-disagree, I think.

Because I am objectively correct and you are objectively wrong.

No, you're *not* correct -- you fetishize *capital* and its role in material-productive society.

Again, consider the *premium* made from the employment of wage labor -- that's the sound of the worker getting *cut-out* of their own provisioning of work-product, however you'd like to slice that.

They aren't "cut out" of the provisioning of their own work product. They are paid wages for it.

*That's* not a functioning of equity *partnership* in the enterprise -- it's crumbs from the table.

The only sound I hear is the landowner laughing at you because you refuse to know the fact that he charges the laborer full market value for permission to live close enough to the factory to work there, and then turns around and also charges the factory owner full market value for permission to hire the laborers that live near his factory! By refusing to know facts, you contrive to blame the factory owner for what the landowner does to the worker, and thus enable the landowner to keep robbing the worker. The worker's straitened circumstances are therefore YOUR FAULT. YOU ARE THEREFORE TO BLAME for every worker who can't afford a decent place to live, every worker who can't afford medical care for his family, every worker who can't afford education for his kids, and every worker who drowns his shame in drink or commits suicide in despair.

YOU. Not the factory owner. YOU.

Bummin' me out, brah. (See above.)

All that accumulated 'dead labor' adds-up immensely over time, while the worker themselves is saddled with the everyday expenses of *employment*, and living, etc., that are necessarily paid-for out of wages *only*, and not from the gains of ownership of capital / dead-labor.

There is no such accumulation. Wealth accumulates around privilege, not machinery, as I have already proved.

You're really saying that there's no such thing as *equity wealth* -- ?

Capital / surplus ownership means having no material-economic necessity to perform labor for the sake of one's own life and living.

GARBAGE. Machinery loses you money if you can't use it productively. But land yields income even if you are comatose. You just refuse to know such facts, and that makes you as guilty of the robbery and murder of workers as any landowner.

Again, all of this money / capital is a relative *advantage* over what the wage worker has -- only their own labor power, to sell below market-value (of what the products of their labor is worth), to the capitalist employer.

If the laborer *wasn't* being economically exploited there would be *no profits*, because total valuations in the economy would be zero-sum and *static*, only swirling-around at best.

[ckaihatsu]

discussion board subtopic tracker

Spoiler: show

[Cartertonian]

Any time you'd like to invite a bunch of homeless people into your house to live with you, feel free.

...

In a properly run society there would be no homeless people, thus obviating your McCarthyist self-interest.

I appreciate that offering up coherent arguments isn't your forte, Bluto, but can you explain why your worldview relies so much on having homeless people to denigrate?

[Tainari88]

China's competition for living space _ DW Documentary

This documentary you posted I found very interesting indeed @ckaihatsu . Good urban development and government space planning should always include people who are retired, who have low incomes, and who struggle to pay market-based rents. In the end, many studies done by reputable institutions dedicated to calculating the costs to governments recommend common-sense solutions to the homeless populations and investment in affordable housing. Also, Mexico allows a type of unplanned scene because they don't have the ability or the will to get people into government housing. Rural towns should be completely encouraged to retain and expand their housing for people who grow crops and agriculture. People who grow up in agricultural regions of the world prefer usually and like living in rural towns and they want to be able to stay in the small towns and not have to go traveling long distances looking for important supporting government-sponsored and funded institutions such as great elementary schools, middle schools and high schools for their children. They also want their community-based buildings done with forethought and if China can do that? It is a great accomplishment. The reality is contaminating rivers and streams, having huge urban unplanned sprawl because you kick out the people living in buildings being modernized and condemned? It is terrible.

Some nations do deal with the homeless correctly. Others don't. I think one should study the nation whose government provides housing for the vast majority of its citizens at very affordable costs and or free because the person or families are unable to pay costly rents? Is a great thing. Unoccupied buildings deteriorate with time and no one there living in them or fixing them, and upkeeping them is problematic for all countries. They just become eyesores. And hazards. So it is best for government to not be negligent in dealing with housing dilemmas.

I used to work dealing with housing issues for a nonprofit for years. So did my husband. There are incredibly great solutions to all of it. But it won't ever happen if people do these three things to prevent it--1. Hang on to a lack of political will to help invest in affordable housing and monitoring the entire process of start to finish of building these places or renovating the ones that could be done over and reoccupied by low income and or fixed income tenants. 2. Hold on to hatred or fear of the homeless and refuse to give the government permits to build near them or alongside them in their communities. 3. Only want high-income people to have decent places to live and steady services to enjoy. You got to realize poor and lower-middle-class people also are consumers, human beings with needs, and they also need clean water, warm apartments with heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer, laundry facilities, and garbage hauling twice to three times a week. They also need access to public schools and libraries and medical clinics and dental offices, and stores to buy locally grown produce, and basics and fresh products. Not just for rich folks. For everyone. 4. Government has to plan things out and discuss the needs of the poor and the homeless versus the needs of the wealthier residents. If you don't cope with that situation your city will have problems. Not housing them creates crime, despair, and higher costs for government and individuals in taxation in the end, and worst of all? Children and women and seniors and ex military veterans not getting their basic needs met.

[ckaihatsu]

Thanks as ever for sharing, Tainari.

I didn't mean to just plop that spreadsheet down, but I'd just finished it and had to get some shut-eye.

For those interested, that whole chart, from the posts on this thread, shouldn't be the *goal* for anyone -- it's just a thorough *sample*, to show the 'subtopic label' and 'subtopic code' over several examples, for illustration.

So the database isn't *just* creepy (grin), the idea is that *anyone* can put in one line, like

Code: Select allWhydoMAY18NGTR8065

to reference a *particular* argument, from someone, which could even be from *another* thread.

I could add my own 'subtopic label', or encapsulation of what I'm referencing, and also a 'type' or 'quicktype', to indicate what 'level' of verbiage I perceive that subtopic / segment to have.

So if I were to post to this thread and I wanted to reference Negotiator's original post, I could include that referencing code, *plus* a 'type' or 'quicktype' to briefly indicate where I think that segment is, qualitatively:

Code: Select allWhydoMAY18NGTR8065 1POINT

Or

Code: Select allWhydoMAY18NGTR8065 1 asserting

This line would be in my post, so it would clearly be from *me*, and it would show to the thread's participants that this is a *formalization* of a particular subtopic / segment that's of interest to me.

If Negotiator, or someone else, wanted to *follow-up* on this subtopic, they might reference *my* new post, with whatever content, and also include the *original* reference code that *I* used, above, for something like this:

Code: Select allsocial organization WhydoMAY22CK8849 1POINT  ten commandments WhydoMAY18NGTR8065 1 asserting

I guess these references could be added-on *indefinitely*, to build up a *long* code line over time, but that would be cumbersome and unnecessary -- assuming others wanted to address this particular subtopic, they could just include the last *1* or 2 referenced posts -- or even just the *original* one, like the example there, for good tracking.

One could also 'pre-label', in advance, for any post about to be posted -- the post ID wouldn't have been assigned yet, so one could just leave that off, like this:

Code: Select allsocial organization WhydoMAY22CK 1POINT  ten commandments WhydoMAY18NGTR8065 1 asserting

Hopefully this tracking approach can provide some 'threading' through the threads, by actual subtopic, so as to make for more subject-driven posts.

[BlutoSays]

:lol: ...

In a properly run society there would be no homeless people, thus obviating your McCarthyist self-interest.

I appreciate that offering up coherent arguments isn't your forte, Bluto, but can you explain why your worldview relies so much on having homeless people to denigrate?

Thanks, but we don't need you "running" anything.

You keep your failure to yourself. embrace it and eat it. But stop trying to spread your failures to others.

[Pants-of-dog]

I understand why capitalists do not understand socialism.

What I do not get is why capitalists do not understand capitalism.

[Cartertonian]

Thanks, but we don't need you "running" anything.

You keep your failure to yourself. embrace it and eat it. But stop trying to spread your failures to others.

Which failure would that be, Bluto?

You don't know anything about me...in particular you fail to appreciate that in my role as an Administrator of this site, I have a special interest in the quality of debate. You fail quite spectacularly in that regard, in every post you make.

[Negotiator]

If you possess and know how to use a good dictionary.

As much as I love the simplicity of your world view - I dont share it.

Highly ideological terms like socialism are defined differently by different people and as a christian I naturally primarily use the christian definition.

Besides, different dictionaries define socialism differently, too.

Heck dictioraries recently massively changed the definition of terms like "herd immunity" and "anti-vaxxer". Herd immunity was suddenly only possible with vaccines, the idea of natural immunity just vanished. And anti-vaxxer is anyone who has any objection whatsoever about vaccines. Before an anti-vaxxer was somebody who opposed any vaccine whatsoever on principle.

Dictionaries obviously have their uses but they are also not perfectly neutral.

Communism is abolition of private property.

No, private property is a human right. Only very extreme interpretations of communism remove private property.

Communism just means people should be economic equals.

Communism on the most minimal level would be to me simply a society without anyone suffering from poverty.

The difference: governments don't create or provide what they exercise authority over. The factory owner does.

The factory owner owns the means of production just like the mediveal nobility owned the land. The factory owner doesnt produce anything per se by themselves at all. It is the workers who do the work.

It of course depends upon the actual person. Some factory owners are actual inventors etc. But others are just shareholders. They've never seen the factory, let alone have any clue about the people there, or know what work at the factory is actually like, etc. They just bought shares on the financial market so they can make money from money.

Any many companies are just siphoning for example all the science that the government had organized. The iPhone for example doesnt contain a single invention done by Apple themselves. These things have been invented at univesities, which the government runs.

Governments do a lot of things. They certainly provide a lot, too. The social system is typically the majority of the spending of governments.

Governments might only do organization work, not actual production. Organization is also necessary, though.

[Godstud]

@Negotiator The problem isn't how Socialism is defined, but by the people who think it's all or nothing.

[ckaihatsu]

No, private property is a human right. Only very extreme interpretations of communism remove private property.

Since 'money' is synonymous with 'private property', I think it's the *standard dictionary definition* that says communism = 'no private property' (meaning no private ownership of society's means of mass industrial production).

Noun

communism (countable and uncountable, plural communisms)

1. Any political ideology or philosophy advocating holding the production of resources collectively, especially by seizing it through revolution.
Synonym: (dated, rare) aspheterism

2. Any political social system that implements a communist political philosophy.

3. The international socialist society where classes, money, and the state no longer exist.

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

---

Communism just means people should be economic equals.

Communism on the most minimal level would be to me simply a society without anyone suffering from poverty.

Sure, I agree on the latter statement, since it's the *humaneness* that counts, after all -- beyond a baseline of basic humaneness, over society's material distribution, I don't really care politically about more 'civilizational', built-up aspects of what society may or may not do.

But 'economic equals' *requires* that private property be abolished, because as long as society's means are in *private* hands, there *won't* be 'economic equals'. That's a certainty.

The factory owner owns the means of production just like the mediveal nobility owned the land. The factory owner doesnt produce anything per se by themselves at all. It is the workers who do the work.

It of course depends upon the actual person. Some factory owners are actual inventors etc. But others are just shareholders. They've never seen the factory, let alone have any clue about the people there, or know what work at the factory is actually like, etc. They just bought shares on the financial market so they can make money from money.

Any many companies are just siphoning for example all the science that the government had organized. The iPhone for example doesnt contain a single invention done by Apple themselves. These things have been invented at univesities, which the government runs.

Governments do a lot of things. They certainly provide a lot, too. The social system is typically the majority of the spending of governments.

Governments might only do organization work, not actual production. Organization is also necessary, though.

Yup.

@Negotiator The problem isn't how Socialism is defined, but by the people who think it's all or nothing.

It *is* mutually contradictory to the societal practice of *private property*. (Where does a dollar in *revenue* go -- to the shareholder, or to the wage worker?)

[Truth To Power]

Highly ideological terms like socialism are defined differently by different people and as a christian I naturally primarily use the christian definition.

Unless we use the same definitions, we can't communicate.

Besides, different dictionaries define socialism differently, too.

And some are better than others. The consensus is that socialism is collective ownership of the means of production: producer goods ("capital") and natural resources ("land").

Heck dictioraries recently massively changed the definition of terms like "herd immunity" and "anti-vaxxer".

No they didn't. Government officials did.

Dictionaries obviously have their uses but they are also not perfectly neutral.

True. That's why it is important to use good ones, and take a consensus from them.

No, private property is a human right.

Which communism abrogates. Right.

Only very extreme interpretations of communism remove private property.

The Communist Manifesto says that's what it is.

Communism just means people should be economic equals.

No it doesn't.

Communism on the most minimal level would be to me simply a society without anyone suffering from poverty.

That's a wealthy society with a strong social safety net, not communism.

The factory owner owns the means of production just like the mediveal nobility owned the land.

No he doesn't. The factory owner owns the factory because he arranged for it to exist rather than not exist, and therefore does not deprive anyone else of anything they would otherwise have. The landowner, by contrast, merely owns a legal entitlement to abrogate others' liberty rights to use the land, and therefore DOES deprive others of something they would otherwise have.

The factory owner doesnt produce anything per se by themselves at all.

It doesn't matter if the original owner builds the factory with his own hands or pays others to do it. He is still the one whose decisions, initiative and labor caused the factory to exist rather than not exist. And any subsequent owner paid him for it.

It is the workers who do the work.

No, they only do some of it. They DO NOT do the work of bringing all the production factors together to create the factory. There merely perform some labor that the owner pays them to perform, thus relinquishing their claims to the product. But like ckaihatsu, you seem think doing only some of the work somehow entitles them to all of the product.

It of course depends upon the actual person.

No it doesn't.

Some factory owners are actual inventors etc.

All factory owners either built the factory by their own decisions, initiative and labor, or paid someone else who did so.

But others are just shareholders. They've never seen the factory, let alone have any clue about the people there, or know what work at the factory is actually like, etc. They just bought shares on the financial market so they can make money from money.

They paid the producer of the factory for their product, or paid someone who paid someone, etc. It is not the fact of ownership that determines whether it is rightful, but what is owned. If you refuse to know that, you cannot understand anything about economics, ever.

Any many companies are just siphoning for example all the science that the government had organized. The iPhone for example doesnt contain a single invention done by Apple themselves. These things have been invented at univesities, which the government runs.

Yes, some companies are just rent-seeking operations. But it is not simply being a company that makes a company a rent-seeking operation. It is its use of privilege rather than production to make profits. Are you willing to know that fact?

Governments do a lot of things. They certainly provide a lot, too. The social system is typically the majority of the spending of governments.

And landowners get to charge everyone else full market value just for permission to access everything government provides.

Governments might only do organization work, not actual production.

They almost always build roads, water and sewer systems, etc. and provide security and arbitration services.

Organization is also necessary, though.

And it is the original owner of the factory that does that work, not the workers.

[Godstud]

It *is* mutually contradictory to the societal practice of *private property*. (Where does a dollar in *revenue* go -- to the shareholder, or to the wage worker?)

No, it's not contradictory, as the revenue goes back to the shareholder(the people), in the form of tax revenue(for infrastructure, healthcare, etc.). It works quite well in many countries now, where the government runs utilities and national resources for the benefit of all.

In every country the governments own land, too. Does that infringe on your rights to private property, even though it's technically socialized land ownership?

Most people have a very delusional view of what private property is, as in EVERY country, the government can take your property away from you if they have a good enough reason, and sometimes without compensation. Read the fine print on a property deed or title. It says so in black and white.

[ckaihatsu]

It *is* mutually contradictory to the societal practice of *private property*. (Where does a dollar in *revenue* go -- to the shareholder, or to the wage worker?)

viewtopic.php?p=15229123#p15229123

No, it's not contradictory, as the revenue goes back to the shareholder(the people), in the form of tax revenue(for infrastructure, healthcare, etc.).

You're conflating two different spheres -- the private sphere ('shareholders' / private capital), and tax revenue (for government spending, as on infrastructure, healthcare, etc.).

Not all people own (private-equity) *shares* of stock, but all people *do* need infrastructure and healthcare, like the kind government provides ('natural monopolies').

It works quite well in many countries now, where the government runs utilities and national resources for the benefit of all.

In every country the governments own land, too. Does that infringe on your rights to private property, even though it's technically socialized land ownership?

Most people have a very delusional view of what private property is, as in EVERY country, the government can take your property away from you if they have a good enough reason, and sometimes without compensation. Read the fine print on a property deed or title. It says so in black and white.

No argument.

Here's regarding the first part:


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show

[Truth To Power]

No, it's not contradictory, as the revenue goes back to the shareholder(the people), in the form of tax revenue(for infrastructure, healthcare, etc.). It works quite well in many countries now, where the government runs utilities and national resources for the benefit of all.

In every country the governments own land, too. Does that infringe on your rights to private property, even though it's technically socialized land ownership?

Most people have a very delusional view of what private property is, as in EVERY country, the government can take your property away from you if they have a good enough reason, and sometimes without compensation. Read the fine print on a property deed or title. It says so in black and white.

The above was a rejoinder to ckaihatsu, not me.

[Unthinking Majority]

There's a big difference between voluntary altruism that Jesus advocated versus "altruism" being forced upon you by government at the barrel of a gun, which isn't altruism at all. Jesus also did not advocate for altruism by force of violence through government. He said give to the needy. Giving and taking are not the same thing.

[Truth To Power]

Since 'money' is synonymous with 'private property',

No it isn't.

I think it's the *standard dictionary definition* that says communism = 'no private property' (meaning no private ownership of society's means of mass industrial production).

No, that is not what "abolition of private property" means.

Sure, I agree on the latter statement, since it's the *humaneness* that counts, after all

No it isn't.

But 'economic equals' *requires* that private property be abolished, because as long as society's means are in *private* hands, there *won't* be 'economic equals'. That's a certainty.

There won't be economic equals whether any of society's means are in private hands or not. That is also a certainty.

It *is* mutually contradictory to the societal practice of *private property*. (Where does a dollar in *revenue* go -- to the shareholder, or to the wage worker?)

To the entrepreneur whose decisions, initiative and labor created the value, of course. He has already paid the wage workers the agreed wage for their contributions, has paid any suppliers the agreed prices for theirs and any creditors the principal and interest for theirs, and will then pay the shareholders the agreed dividends for theirs. You just have a false and absurd belief that only the workers made any contribution to production, and being paid the agreed wage for their contribution somehow does not extinguish their claims to the product.

[Unthinking Majority]

If I earn money I should be able to give it t anyone I want when I die, including my children. Keep your hands off my stuff, it's not yours it's mine.

My advice to the poor is to get your shit together and do everything you can to get your kids educated. I'm willing to give some of my earnings to help help anyone who can't afford it get educated. And if you're sick/disabled I have no issue helping you too. But if you're able-bodied and just don't want to work hard or make stupid decisions in your life that's your problem. A society that rewards good decisions and punishes bad ones is a just society.

People should all be given access to education to make something of themselves and their children. But in a free society there will never be equality of outcome because there will never be equality of ability or choices.

[ckaihatsu]

If I earn money I should be able to give it t anyone I want when I die, including my children. Keep your hands off my stuff, it's not yours it's mine.

My advice to the poor is to get your shit together and do everything you can to get your kids educated. I'm willing to give some of my earnings to help help anyone who can't afford it get educated. And if you're sick/disabled I have no issue helping you too. But if you're able-bodied and just don't want to work hard or make stupid decisions in your life that's your problem. A society that rewards good decisions and punishes bad ones is a just society.

People should all be given access to education to make something of themselves and their children. But in a free society there will never be equality of outcome because there will never be equality of ability or choices.

Thanks to my handy-dandy chart of posts on this thread I can see that late, in post #15228306, has already pointed out that right-wingers tend to conflate (bourgeois-capitalist) social *programs*, with full-on paradigm-shift worker-controlled *socialism*, so you can just stop now. (grin)

The alarmism here is that 'your' family (of the reader) will be hamstrung by government, with an iron grip over your modest family fortune.

Do you also go around to nursing homes in your scariest Halloween costume, to frighten pensioners -- ?

Socialism is all about liberating society's *implements*, so that not only those with capital have access to its productivity.

[ckaihatsu]

But 'economic equals' *requires* that private property be abolished, because as long as society's means are in *private* hands, there *won't* be 'economic equals'. That's a certainty.

There won't be economic equals whether any of society's means are in private hands or not. That is also a certainty.

All *you're* doing is arbitrarily raising the bar, into the *stratosphere*, to irresponsibly say that socialism is all about enforcing a lowest-common-denominator gruntwork Stalinist gray conformity -- a favorite trope of yours, obviously.

'Economic equals' doesn't mean genetic-clone-type uniformity -- despite the caricature -- it's just that the age of privilege for the *equity bourgeoisie* is in its twilight.

Why should *mass production* be so tightly guarded -- ? It doesn't benefit the *owners* -- like a multiplicity of *mini-sovereigns* in our modern world -- and it definitely doesn't benefit the *worker*, who you've acknowledged is at a natural *disadvantage* in the economic transaction with the employer.

You're trying to slyly implicate 'human nature', despite knowing better *yourself* that such an idealistic construction *doesn't exist*.

Wouldn't we be 'economic equals' implicitly if we could manage to first be *social* equals, by widespread individual intention / self-determination (and proletarian revolution, of course).

It *is* mutually contradictory to the societal practice of *private property*. (Where does a dollar in *revenue* go -- to the shareholder, or to the wage worker?)

To the entrepreneur whose decisions, initiative and labor created the value, of course. He has already paid the wage workers the agreed wage for their contributions, has paid any suppliers the agreed prices for theirs and any creditors the principal and interest for theirs, and will then pay the shareholders the agreed dividends for theirs. You just have a false and absurd belief that only the workers made any contribution to production, and being paid the agreed wage for their contribution somehow does not extinguish their claims to the product.

Fetishization of the role / importance of capital, as I've said before.

Since you want to repeat yourself across multiple threads, I'll return the same in kind, to say 'Salarize all ownership.'