ckaihatsu wrote:
Interesting special case
Truth To Power wrote:
It's the general case: line workers know their own jobs, but generally cannot do their supervisors' jobs, let alone the entrepreneur's or investor's. If you had ever had such a job, you would know that. A chef is the one who is in the kitchen, using the utensils and appliances, but that doesn't mean he knows how to start, design, or manage a restaurant, and the great majority who try to do so fail.
You're using a *capitalism* yardstick, though -- as though workers would have to fit-into the *existing structure*, and become financial / managerial movers-and-shakers.
All workers know *their own* workplace roles, and also the roles of those they interact with, to greater or lesser extents.
The *point* of all of this is to say that, *functionally*, this is sufficient -- and, built-out, would be sufficient for inter-worker coordination, and co-administration on mass scales, beginning with the individual worker's own known work roles / tasks / duties.
ckaihatsu wrote:
-- you're saying that all infrastructure-building-type workers are just *fucked* either way, by the landowners and the government, or by the commies.
Truth To Power wrote:
No, I'm saying every honest, productive person is fucked unless and until they live in a geoist society.
Okay, it's not clear if you were trying to make a point about construction workers in particular, or blue-collar workers in particular / general, or what.
On the condition / treatment of workers in *general*, in society, sure, I can partially agree that 'geoist' global land reform, in a single-payer kind of way, would be an incremental societal *improvement*, but it would still be *incremental*, and a radical-reform for just land only. Why not extend it to *health care*, and *housing*, etc. -- ?
Do you have any reservations with full *nationalization* -- of land, healthcare, housing, etc.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Society 'steamrolls' them (heh) for their labor, very much in a natural-monopoly kind of way, since the total labor power needed for any discrete public works project, like a bridge, is going to be 'x', and then the construction workers don't exactly live in their own apartments on the bridge afterwards.
Truth To Power wrote:
No idea what that is supposed to mean, but it is certain to be wrong.
In other words the construction workers aren't receiving any kind of *equity* -- you were initially indicating some sort of 'unappreciated social role', or a special-case kind of 'dispossession', perhaps for all blue-collar workers in general, but you weren't clear as to what you were getting-at.
Wouldn't you regularly say here that a *wage* is 'fair', including for all *construction workers* as well -- ?
ckaihatsu wrote:
So what's the metaphorical equivalent of 'salvation' here -- ?
Truth To Power wrote:
Honesty.
Am I being less-than-forthright about anything here? Any objections?
ckaihatsu wrote:
Do I still have a chance to love equity capital, and despise landholdings and equity-finance, for the sake of my soul? (grin)
Truth To Power wrote:
Of course you can choose honesty and righteousness. Nothing stops you but your commitment to injustice and evil.
Are you going to stick to *politics* / economics, or are you edging things over to some kind of imposed *moralism*, on my person in *particular* -- ?
If so, go-fish elsewhere.
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Would you really deny the overthrow of *monarchy* to the people of Russia, even though the American colonies kicked out the *British* crown -- ?
Truth To Power wrote:
The Russian monarchy had already been overthrown several months before the socialists took power by violence, and there was no chance it could be restored after it was formally dissolved a month before the Bolshevik putsch.
Note that the overthrow of the Russian monarchy was accomplished by (revolutionary) *violence*:
Revolutionary activity lasted about eight days, involving mass demonstrations and violent armed clashes with police and gendarmes, the last loyal forces of the Russian monarchy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_Revolution
And, similarly:
1766
[...]
Liberty Pole erected in New York City commons in celebration of the Stamp Act repeal (May 21). An intermittent skirmish with the British garrison over the removal of this and other poles, and their replacement by the Sons of Liberty, rages until the Province of New York is under the control of the revolutionary New York Provincial Congress in 1775
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_ ... Revolution
So again my point stands that there was U.S. and Allied *discrimination* against the people of Russia and China, in *their* nationalist / anti-colonialist revolutions.
Regarding the 'putsch', maybe you're thinking of *this*:
1917 Russian Revolution: The Kornilov putsch
[...]
In the dramatic weeks after the July Days of 1917 in Russia, the small forces of the Bolsheviks had started to recover and regroup, gaining ground not least in the proletarian base of Petrograd. Yet the danger of reaction had not gone away. During the summer, General Kornilov had been appointed to lead the Russian forces on the Western front.
It soon became clear, however, that he had ambitions of his own and saw himself as a Russian Napoleon, ready to “save” the country by becoming its dictator. His intention was to use the military forces under him to achieve that aim.
https://www.socialist.net/1917-russian- ... putsch.htm
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ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, let me *clarify* this: There's 'nothing wrong' with private-equity debt,
Truth To Power wrote:
<sigh> Only when it is undertaken to finance creation of a production system. Can't you read?
ckaihatsu wrote:
*or* with debt-creation by private commercial banks, based on a debt-money system,
Truth To Power wrote:
No, based on a 100% reserve system where private commercial banks cannot increase the money supply because they have to have reserves to cover their demand deposits.
I repeat: can't you read?
This is a *reactionary* political position, because you're calling for a *deflationary* money supply, one that *can't* expand with either the population growth rate, *or* with the increased productivity and an *increased* supply of produced goods and services, that need a larger money supply, to provide face-values / valuations for all of that production.
Free silver was a major economic policy issue in the United States in the late 19th-century. Its advocates were in favor of an expansionary monetary policy featuring the unlimited coinage of silver into money on-demand, as opposed to strict adherence to the more carefully fixed money supply implicit in the gold standard. Free silver became increasingly associated with populism, unions, and the fight of ordinary Americans against the bankers and monopolists, and the robber barons of the Gilded Age capitalism era and was referred to as the "People's Money."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_silver
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ckaihatsu wrote:
*or* with the endless bidding-up of rentier-type (non-productive) assets -- ?
Truth To Power wrote:
Can't you read? I have stated that a geoist economy would abolish such assets entirely.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Does capitalism *pay* you to be a tour guide? How does that work, exactly?
Truth To Power wrote:
As you know, but always pretend not to, I oppose capitalism. I am merely aware of the fact that socialism is even worse.
No, you *don't* oppose capitalism because you're all-for *private equity capital*.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Paradigm-shift, brah -- like trees-into-a-forest. Just *happens*. 'Emergent'.
Truth To Power wrote:
Nope. Flat wrong.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Tons of cash sitting around? Yeah, junk bonds and subprime loans, historically. Just sayin'.
Truth To Power wrote:
The history of finance capitalism describes finance capitalism, not geoism.
ckaihatsu wrote:
Just saw a documentary -- what would you say to J.P. Morgan -- ?
Truth To Power wrote:
"Time's up."
Should Morgan have bailed out the U.S. economy, as he did, or not -- ?
(As soon as he *does*, that's *finance*, and is *debt* for the U.S. government, the same as if it had printed its own fiat currency.)