Why do people not understand socialism ? - Page 15 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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As either the transitional stage to communism or legitimate socio-economic ends in its own right.
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#15242092
ckaihatsu wrote:You spoke of 'natural resources' and 'producer goods' as *variables*, each of which may be under private-property-type 'ownership', *or* may be under collectivized proletarian control, but to *you* it's a toss-up, and could very well be *random*, due to your lack of a class analysis.

No, that is just another false claim from you. No class analysis is required to identify the relevant facts -- indeed, class analysis can only obscure them.

Natural resources are not produced by labor and therefore can never rightly have become private property.

Producer goods are produced by labor and are therefore rightly the private property of their producers unless purchased by others in consensual exchange.
Here's where the 'class' thing becomes *unignorable*:

Stupid Marxist garbage doesn't have to be ignorable to be wrong.
New UK rail strike brings train services to a crawl
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wi ... l-87476471
Over 1600 London bus drivers to join rail and underground strike
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/over-1 ... 022-08-05/

And...?
#15242551
ckaihatsu,
I hope you will not be angry if I find that you a dogmatic. You have full confidence in the fact that Marx has once for all expressed THE TRUTH. I think- maybe I'm wrong because it is a supposition- that you do not read enough rightist literature. My opinion is that everyone interested in politics should read the same number of leftist books and rightist books. I do so. I suggest you to read "Human Action" by Ludwig von Mises. You know that I defend "market socialism". The book of Mises defends liberalism against socialism. His style is bad but his arguments are strong. He dismisses very efficiently a large part of marxist credo. Every socialist should read this book. He would become stronger... but less dogmatic.


*********************

You're implying, though, that the state can *be* democratic, when it started out being limited to white male property holders, and most recently has been subject to a presidential *coup* (and at *other* countries, too, historically).





If the state *isn't* allied with the ruling class (the bourgeoisie), then why is it that the *wealthy* don't suffer from police brutality and killer cops, and most other political inconveniences -- !





But that's what the state *does* -- it's an organ of the *ruling class*. Again, note the lack of *imposition* on the wealthy from its government apparatus.





Explain.[/quote]
#15242560
Monti wrote:
ckaihatsu,
I hope you will not be angry if I find that you a dogmatic. You have full confidence in the fact that Marx has once for all expressed THE TRUTH. I think- maybe I'm wrong because it is a supposition- that you do not read enough rightist literature. My opinion is that everyone interested in politics should read the same number of leftist books and rightist books. I do so. I suggest you to read "Human Action" by Ludwig von Mises. You know that I defend "market socialism". The book of Mises defends liberalism against socialism. His style is bad but his arguments are strong. He dismisses very efficiently a large part of marxist credo. Every socialist should read this book. He would become stronger... but less dogmatic.



Maybe you can address the point that I already made about your attempt to mix capitalism and socialism together:


Monti wrote:
The choice between capitalism and socialism is a political choice.



Truth To Power wrote:
But more importantly, it's a false dichotomy fallacy.



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, it's *not* a false dichotomy -- it's a *real* dichotomy, because society would inevitably have to ask / determine how major productive means (factories), are to be *valued*, and that's where you would see the difference instantly.
#15242561
ckaihatsu wrote:
If genetics is so 'overriding' (or else *you* provide a qualitative description), then there *can't* be any free-will, because it's our *genes* that are doing the talking.



Truth To Power wrote:
What are you talking about? Your genes largely determine who you are. If you are doing the choosing, that's free will by definition.



Okay, so then it's a *mix* (of genes and 'nurture' and individual free will).

You're saying that genes 'largely' determine who you are, but based on various cultures and religions over the millennia, all over the world, we can see that people tend to reflect the culture that they're *born into*, myself included.


Truth To Power wrote:
See? A pseudo-issue.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Obviously, from looking at various cultures and religions, anyone can see that personal beliefs are very much *socially determined*



Truth To Power wrote:
Beliefs are not the same as personality and choices, and statistics do not describe individuals.



That's just it, though -- *yeah*, on the whole, individuals *are* determined 'largely' by the environments that they grow up in -- meaning 'nurture'. (Another good example is with *pets*, whose 'personalities' are largely determined by how they're raised by their owners, and by their owners' personalities.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
(the political 'superstructure', which is dialectically related to the 'base' of socio-material social production).



Truth To Power wrote:
Nope. That's just more anti-scientific Marxist bull$#!+.



Relax -- it just means 'culture' and 'practices', for any given society. The 'superstructure' is what results from what the society is able to *materially produce*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Snideness for the sake of snideness, huh -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
No, truth for the sake of humanity.



ckaihatsu wrote:
A *moment* ago you were treating socialism rather even-handedly, but now your handlers have yanked on the leash, and you're back to your blase casual dissing of anything non-market-values.



Truth To Power wrote:
You were talking about anti-geoism, not socialism.



And I simply said that they sounded *similar*. You need to chill.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
I only stop there when considering the economic problem -- relief of scarcity -- because those are the only two concrete factors -- assets -- that can be allocated to relieve scarcity. There is also labor, which relieves scarcity but is not an asset, and the assets -- i.e., privileges -- that redistribute and aggravate scarcity rather than relieving it.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Go on. (I'm hoping to catch you in a fleeting sun-breaking-through-the-clouds moment of *critical* / enlightened political sentiment.)



Truth To Power wrote:
Your absurd Marxist critical theory is not enlightened, it is a form of brain damage.



Name-calling aside, look at what you stated -- the [material-] economic problem of relief-of-scarcity requires [1] labor, and [2] assets (which I take to be the means of mass industrial production, or 'producer goods').

I have *no contention* with that statement itself, but what's more-to-the-point is *how* labor and productive assets are to be *organized*, and of course who gets to *enjoy* / own that social production, and by what rationale.


Social Production Worldview

Spoiler: show
Image



labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

Spoiler: show
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https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338


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ckaihatsu wrote:
Aren't you supposed to have some kind of *indestructable weapon* for what you're doing -- ? (grin)



Truth To Power wrote:
The truth is certainly indestructible. But that does not mean it is omnipotent, because people -- like socialists and capitalists -- are free to choose lies over the truth.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Point-A-to-Point-B -- ? Anyone?



Truth To Power wrote:
First, understand the problem. Hence my efforts here.



'Relief of scarcity'. I'd say that's a start.

I just saw the following video, where Wolff suggests that any given left-leaning municipality could use eminent domain to readily *seize* any productive assets that capital ownership doesn't actually *use* -- so that the workers at that workplace could get it running again, under their own collective control, a workers co-op.


Economic Update - Noam Chomsky on Fragile US Empire




There's something of a fairly recent historical example to point to for this, as well:



New Era Windows is an American worker cooperative formed by Chicago union members seeking to purchase their workplace, a window manufacturing plant located on Goose Island.

Image

Contents
1 History
2 Funding
3 References
4 External links

History

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

Find sources: "New Era Windows" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The plant, was originally owned by Republic Windows and Doors and then purchased by Serious Energy, assembles vinyl windows and sliding doors. The workers have twice occupied the plant in their struggle to secure their wages and maintain their jobs.

Towards the end of 2008, after Bank of America discontinued Republic Windows and Doors' credit line, Republic closed the Chicago factory.[1] Following the sudden closure of the factory, workers were fired with only three days' notice, violating the WARN Act. The WARN Act requires 60 days' notice of a plant closing, or 60 days' pay if timely notice is not given.[2]

Workers and members of the UE Local 1110[3] organized and decided to stage an occupation of the factory in protest of the firings. On December 5, 2008, the plant was occupied by workers for six days, drawing comparisons to the autoworkers strikes of the 1930s.[4] The workers' action drew extensive media coverage and attracted wide support. President Barack Obama said that Republic should follow through on its commitment to the plant's employees and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan launched an investigation into violations of the WARN Act.[5] Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich banned state business with Bank of America, because the bank's cancellation of the company's line of credit had prompted the shutdown.[6] Protest demonstrations at Bank of America branches took place in dozens of U.S. cities during the sit-in. On December 10 the union members voted to end the occupation after Republic, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and the union negotiated a settlement that paid each worker eight weeks wages, plus all accumulated vacation pay, and health insurance for two months.[7]

The workers and their struggle were featured in Michael Moore's 2009 documentary Capitalism: A Love Story.[1]

In February 2012 Serious Energy management announced the plant's immediate closing. The news was unexpected and the union responded in the same way it had four years prior. On February 23, 2012, workers represented by the UE Local 1110 and supported by organizers from Occupy Chicago occupied the factory again for 11 hours.[1][8] Despite its drastic diminution—Serious Energy had called back 75 of the plant's 250 employees, with only 38 employed by the closing's announcement—workers successfully negotiated an agreement with management by that night. Assistance and publicity coincided with the Occupy movement in Chicago, members of which came to the plant. The union agreed to 90 days of employment before the plants closing.[9]



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
What *you* mean is 'Those who do the paperwork and who are at the Board of Trustees meetings' when you say 'producers'.



Truth To Power wrote:
No I don't. I mean those who contribute to relief of scarcity.



You mean *capital ownership*, and capital itself doesn't produce any commodities for the company to sell.


labor and capital, side-by-side

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
That's quite a *stretch*, really, since the executive class



Truth To Power wrote:
There is no "executive class." There are just people who have been hired as managers because they have the intelligence, skills, knowledge and experience to understand, plan, coordinate, direct and control production and solve related problems.



Oh, okay, then do you think that *managers* are actually 'producers' -- ?

They're *not*. Managers *also* do not produce any commodities for the company to sell.


ckaihatsu wrote:
hasn't produced a single commodity,



Truth To Power wrote:
That is of course an outright falsehood. Relief of scarcity takes many forms in addition to "production of commodities"; and the manager's application of his skills is most definitely labor -- human effort devoted to production -- that contributes far more to production of commodities than the labor of the semi-literate machine-tenders you so absurdly claim are capable of managing a productive enterprise.



Sure, managers do 'white-collar' kinds of labor, but it's *non-productive* labor -- it's a *cost* to capital, the same as janitorial services for the office are. Doing nothing but running an office would *not* produce anything that the company could sell, for revenue, for profits.


ckaihatsu wrote:
so are hardly 'producers'.



Truth To Power wrote:
As previously noted, you have obviously never held a job in any productive capacity, so you have not the slightest idea what producers do or who they are. I have.



This isn't about *me* -- you can set the insults aside because they're not helping your case at all.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Set aside the comic book lingo and talk normally,



Truth To Power wrote:
I will continue to identify the relevant facts of objective physical reality in clear, simple, grammatical English.



ckaihatsu wrote:
and there'll be some reason to reply



Truth To Power wrote:
I don't care if you reply. You are just here as a negative example, a stalking horse, someone for me to demolish and humiliate for the benefit of readers who are open to learning something (i.e., not you).



More comic-book rhetoric. Fun.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
The ultimate purpose of all economic activity is to enable consumption. Learn it, or continue to talk nonsense on the subject permanently.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- many would *disagree* with your 'theory' there,



Truth To Power wrote:
It's not a theory. It's a plain fact.



I'll just mention the simple touted objective of 'Maximizing shareholder value', which some would say is the *real* reason for capitalist economic activity.


[11] Labor & Capital, Wages & Dividends

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
since there *is* such a thing as economic *factionalism* under capitalism.



Truth To Power wrote:
That's just another non sequitur fallacy from you.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Should interest rates be *raised*, to tamp-down economic activity and benefit *savers* / rentier capitalists, or should interest rates be *lowered* (as has mostly been the case in recent decades) to benefit *investors* and money-capitalists -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
That depends on whose consumption you want to enable, and when. It's also a false dichotomy fallacy.



Right -- see, that's it: 'Whose consumption'.

That fork-in-the-road of 'whose consumption' means that it's *not* a false dichotomy, it's a *real* dichotomy, because if interest rates are *raised*, then *pre-existing* capital (rentier capital / 'savers') is favored, while *lowered* interest rates means that *future* / *speculative* capital gains are favored, which are the interests of *equity* capital, or investors -- antithetical to the interests of 'savers' / rentier capitalists.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Here's "another" type of economic activity that's kinda *hard to bury*:



Truth To Power wrote:
The sad thing is, you think that is relevant to something. It's actually easy to bury if you are committed to justice (hint: you aren't).



*Your* idiosyncratic definition of 'justice' is really 'strong currency values for equity capital', which *most* people wouldn't describe as 'justice'.

Bad banks, zombie banks, and zombie companies are *all* the result of runaway government subsidization of capital (cutting of interest rates / 'printing-money'), as has been the prevailing U.S. monetary policy for the last two decades.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You tell me -- this was *your* metric.



Truth To Power wrote:
No it wasn't. It was yours. I proposed market value as the metric of cost and benefit. You claimed you could do it using GDP. OK. How?



Maybe kick the question over to Monti, since he at least *purports* to be a 'market socialist', whatever the hell *that* is.

I included *my own* model for a post-capitalist political economy, above, so the metric *I* advocate is the liberated-labor-internal 'labor credit' which only gets 'paid-forward' from laborer to laborer, with *zero* exchangeability for any goods / resources / materials.

On the '[organic] demand' side of things people could simply *prioritize* their needs / demands, #1, #2, #3, through infinity, for any and all days that they like, which would obviate the empirical societal need for *market* values / valuations.


ckaihatsu wrote:
(You may want to specify a particular political-economy paradigm.)



Truth To Power wrote:
I have: the geoist paradigm of liberty, consent, and justice.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Then how do you account for the 1,000 deaths per year in the U.S. at the hands of cops? That's the *state* in action.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, it's a particular state. It's also a very small number compared to how many would be killed by fellow civilians in the absence of a state, as history proves.



Horseshit. I certainly don't agree -- and you're showing your *statist* colors here, since your touted system *requires* the nation-state / government / bureaucracy. *You* subscribe to the 'Purge Day' conception of society, which is Hobbesian, basically.


ckaihatsu wrote:
What metric then would determine people's *access* to the fruits of AI (by extension) if there are 'no workers', getting *no wages*.



Truth To Power wrote:
Previous contributions to production and just compensation for the abrogation of people's rights by exclusive tenure.



Well, that's a *problem*, because you're *admitting* that all you have to go by (for a future-type 'post-work' social scenario) is *market valuations* and real-estate valuations.

Recall that the private sector has been bailed-out *repeatedly* by the U.S. government, most recently in 2020, so that's a *non-starter*.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
Collective control of producer goods will ensure that production is negative.



ckaihatsu wrote:
That's just *naysaying*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, it's a plain fact, confirmed by historical experience.



No, neither you or *anyone else* can point to any sustained history of proletarian collective control of producer goods.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
No, you *haven't*



Truth To Power wrote:
I most certainly have, and I will thank you to remember it.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- you just *claim* so,



Truth To Power wrote:
Any reader can confirm the truth of my statement.



ckaihatsu wrote:
and out of the *other* side of your mouth you do-acknowledge that employment is the *exploitation* of labor.



Truth To Power wrote:
:roll: NO!!



ckaihatsu wrote:
HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT TO YOU?



ckaihatsu wrote:
FOR THE HUNDREDTH TIME: EMPLOYMENT CAN ONLY EXPLOIT WORKERS WHEN -- AS UNDER CAPITALISM -- THEIR RIGHTS HAVE BEEN FORCIBLY REMOVED WITHOUT JUST COMPENSATION, DEPRIVING THEM OF THEIR OPTIONS AND THUS THEIR BARGAINING POWER.



ckaihatsu wrote:
THAT IS NOT THE SITUATION IN A GEOIST ECONOMY.



Yelling through text doesn't change the fact that *you* think all social values are derived from *real estate* valuations, while at the same time you think that *equity* capital values are somehow 'unimpeachable'.

Equity capital would still continue to exploit / extract / expropriate *surplus labor value* from the working class, even in your geoist utopia.


material-economic exploitation

Spoiler: show
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Spoiler: show
Image



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ckaihatsu wrote:
Collectivization has to be by the workers,



Truth To Power wrote:
If they want to die by starvation or violence.



Naysaying.


ckaihatsu wrote:
around the sites / workplaces of *social production*.



Truth To Power wrote:
Production is inherently private, not social.



'Social production' means 'That which is produced by society, in one way or another'.

The only reason why production is currently private is because of *capitalism*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You definitely underestimate the role of labor in society's productivity.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I identify its contribution accurately: the value it would produce in the absence of the producer goods the entrepreneur, investor and factory owner contribute to the production process.



Those parties you just listed are all *non-productive* of commodities for their companies.

Capital itself cannot beget more capital -- there *has* to be a production process, to produce new commodities, to sell, for revenue, for profits, or else it's all just *finance*, which is fictitious-capital.



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



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
You spoke of 'natural resources' and 'producer goods' as *variables*, each of which may be under private-property-type 'ownership', *or* may be under collectivized proletarian control, but to *you* it's a toss-up, and could very well be *random*, due to your lack of a class analysis.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that is just another false claim from you. No class analysis is required to identify the relevant facts -- indeed, class analysis can only obscure them.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Natural resources are not produced by labor and therefore can never rightly have become private property.



Truth To Power wrote:
Producer goods are produced by labor and are therefore rightly the private property of their producers unless purchased by others in consensual exchange.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Here's where the 'class' thing becomes *unignorable*:



Truth To Power wrote:
Stupid Marxist garbage doesn't have to be ignorable to be wrong.



ckaihatsu wrote:
New UK rail strike brings train services to a crawl

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wi ... l-87476471


Over 1600 London bus drivers to join rail and underground strike

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/over-1 ... 022-08-05/



Truth To Power wrote:
And...?



And:



“Hell on Earth!”—US railroad workers speak out against intolerable working conditions

Our reporters
14 July 2022

The World Socialist Web Site has received a large volume of comments from railroad workers across the United States in recent days. Railroaders voted by 99.5 percent for strike action this month, after working nearly three years without a contract under intolerable working conditions. But the rail unions, instead of organizing a strike, are calling for Biden to appoint a Presidential Emergency Board, which would be tasked with imposing a government settlement, blocking a strike.



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/0 ... l-j15.html



---


BlutoSays wrote:
Image



Military-industrial complex.
#15242563
Regarding 'scarcity':



In economics, overproduction, oversupply, excess of supply or glut refers to excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market. This leads to lower prices and/or unsold goods along with the possibility of unemployment.

The demand side equivalent is underconsumption; some consider supply and demand two sides to the same coin – excess supply is only relative to a given demand, and insufficient demand is only relative to a given supply – and thus consider overproduction and underconsumption equivalent.[1]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overproduction
#15243254
ckaihatsu wrote:Okay, so then it's a *mix* (of genes and 'nurture' and individual free will).

The individual's will is the result of genes and environment. There is no other "will."
You're saying that genes 'largely' determine who you are, but based on various cultures and religions over the millennia, all over the world, we can see that people tend to reflect the culture that they're *born into*, myself included.

Of course. The point is that there isn't anything other than the individual produced by genes and environment. So each individual's decisions being "determined" by genes and environment is what it means for them to have free will.
That's just it, though -- *yeah*, on the whole, individuals *are* determined 'largely' by the environments that they grow up in -- meaning 'nurture'. (Another good example is with *pets*, whose 'personalities' are largely determined by how they're raised by their owners, and by their owners' personalities.)

The University of Minnesota Twins Study demonstrated decades ago that identical twins reared in different families are more alike in their behavior, personality and even beliefs than fraternal twins reared together. That is effectively proof that genes are more important than environment -- which was already implied by evolution anyway.
The 'superstructure' is what results from what the society is able to *materially produce*.

That's physical infrastructure, not culture or beliefs.
And I simply said that they sounded *similar*. You need to chill.

They aren't.
Name-calling aside, look at what you stated -- the [material-] economic problem of relief-of-scarcity requires [1] labor, and [2] assets (which I take to be the means of mass industrial production, or 'producer goods').

Wrong again. Land is only an asset when it has been appropriated as private property. People used land to relive scarcity for millions of years before it was an asset. Producer goods have to be contributed by labor; land is already there, ready to use, with no help from its owner or any previous owner.
I have *no contention* with that statement itself, but what's more-to-the-point is *how* labor and productive assets are to be *organized*, and of course who gets to *enjoy* / own that social production, and by what rationale.

Production is inherently private, not social, and its result is therefore rightly owned by its private producers: i.e., the people whose decisions, initiative and labor result in the product existing rather than not existing.
<ridiculous Marxist tripe snipped>
I just saw the following video, where Wolff suggests that any given left-leaning municipality could use eminent domain to readily *seize* any productive assets that capital ownership doesn't actually *use* -- so that the workers at that workplace could get it running again, under their own collective control, a workers co-op.

:roll: As I already explained, when socialists steal factories, there are fewer factories available for production. Do you think any entrepreneur is going to build a factory in a jurisdiction where the local authorities just steal factories?? Why is it so hard for socialists to understand such facts?
There's something of a fairly recent historical example to point to for this, as well:

There's nothing wrong with workers' cooperatives buying or building factories as private interests in competition with other producers. It's when socialists seek to steal private owners' factories and forcibly prohibit competition from entrepreneurs other than workers' collectives that they abrogate rights and aggravate scarcity.
You mean *capital ownership*,

No I don't. I mean those who contribute the production factors -- producer goods and labor -- that would not otherwise have been available for production. They are in contrast to the landowner, who is merely legally entitled to demand a payment from the producer just for permission to use what would otherwise have been available.
and capital itself doesn't produce any commodities for the company to sell.

Neither does labor itself. So what?
Oh, okay, then do you think that *managers* are actually 'producers' -- ?

Of course. If you had ever actually witnessed any production, let alone participated in it, you would know that.

All labor (human effort devoted to relief of scarcity), from flipping burgers to running a multinational corporation, consists of three steps: obtaining information, making a decision, and implementing the decision. Managers do all three.
They're *not*.

They most certainly are.
Managers *also* do not produce any commodities for the company to sell.

Garbage. Their labor enables and enhances production of "commodities."
Sure, managers do 'white-collar' kinds of labor, but it's *non-productive* labor

No, that's just silly nonsense from someone who has not the slightest idea how production happens because he has never even witnessed any, let alone participated in it.
-- it's a *cost* to capital, the same as janitorial services for the office are.

Yes, and labor on the production line is also a cost. So what?
Doing nothing but running an office would *not* produce anything that the company could sell, for revenue, for profits.

And doing nothing but physical labor would not produce anything for the company to sell either, because without managers and investors there would be no raw materials for workers to perform labor on, no customers to pay for the products, no power to run the machines in the factory, and indeed, for that matter, no machines or factory. See how that works?
This isn't about *me* -- you can set the insults aside because they're not helping your case at all.

It's not an insult. It's a reasoned and informed surmise about why you make such false and absurd claims that anyone who has ever witnessed productive labor, let alone performed any, knows are false.
I'll just mention the simple touted objective of 'Maximizing shareholder value', which some would say is the *real* reason for capitalist economic activity.

And why do you imagine shareholders would want that, hhhmmmmm?
That fork-in-the-road of 'whose consumption' means that it's *not* a false dichotomy, it's a *real* dichotomy, because if interest rates are *raised*, then *pre-existing* capital (rentier capital / 'savers') is favored, while *lowered* interest rates means that *future* / *speculative* capital gains are favored, which are the interests of *equity* capital, or investors -- antithetical to the interests of 'savers' / rentier capitalists.

Wrong. You obviously don't know anything about it, any more than you know anything about production.
*Your* idiosyncratic definition of 'justice' is really 'strong currency values for equity capital', which *most* people wouldn't describe as 'justice'.

No, that's just another bald fabrication on your part.
Bad banks, zombie banks, and zombie companies are *all* the result of runaway government subsidization of capital (cutting of interest rates / 'printing-money'), as has been the prevailing U.S. monetary policy for the last two decades.

No, you obviously don't know anything about it.
Maybe kick the question over to Monti, since he at least *purports* to be a 'market socialist', whatever the hell *that* is.

I'm asking you.
I included *my own* model for a post-capitalist political economy, above, so the metric *I* advocate is the liberated-labor-internal 'labor credit' which only gets 'paid-forward' from laborer to laborer, with *zero* exchangeability for any goods / resources / materials.

So, nothing but an absurd Marxist fantasy divorced from all economic reality. Check.
On the '[organic] demand' side of things people could simply *prioritize* their needs / demands, #1, #2, #3, through infinity, for any and all days that they like, which would obviate the empirical societal need for *market* values / valuations.

No, because utilities are not commensurable and ordinal numbers are not cardinal numbers.
Horseshit.

Fact.
I certainly don't agree

Because you are objectively wrong.
-- and you're showing your *statist* colors here, since your touted system *requires* the nation-state / government / bureaucracy.

Any economy above the hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding level requires secure, exclusive land tenure. There is no way to implement that but by force. The state makes that force controllable, predictable, and thus less destructive.
*You* subscribe to the 'Purge Day' conception of society, which is Hobbesian, basically.

No, anthropologists have determined that stateless societies are more violent.
Well, that's a *problem*, because you're *admitting* that all you have to go by (for a future-type 'post-work' social scenario) is *market valuations* and real-estate valuations.

No, you made that up.
Recall that the private sector has been bailed-out *repeatedly* by the U.S. government, most recently in 2020, so that's a *non-starter*.

No, that's a non sequitur.
No, neither you or *anyone else* can point to any sustained history of proletarian collective control of producer goods.

Of course: it's invariably so catastrophic that it can't be sustained.
Yelling through text doesn't change the fact that *you* think all social values are derived from *real estate* valuations,

That is just another fabrication from you with no basis in fact.
while at the same time you think that *equity* capital values are somehow 'unimpeachable'.

It is simply a fact that private property in the fruits of one's labor does not abrogate anyone else's rights.
Equity capital would still continue to exploit / extract / expropriate *surplus labor value* from the working class, even in your geoist utopia.

Because "surplus labor value" is a Marxist anti-concept that actually means, "the additional production that the owner of producer goods enables by contributing them to the production process":
material-economic exploitation

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See?
Naysaying.

Reason and history.
'Social production' means 'That which is produced by society, in one way or another'.

Society does not produce anything.
The only reason why production is currently private is because of *capitalism*.

No, it has been private since time immemorial.
Those parties you just listed are all *non-productive* of commodities for their companies.

No, their contributions enable and initiate production.
Capital itself cannot beget more capital -- there *has* to be a production process, to produce new commodities, to sell, for revenue, for profits, or else it's all just *finance*, which is fictitious-capital.

So what? Labor itself cannot beget more labor, either.
Military-industrial complex.

Irrelevant.
#15243291
ckaihatsu wrote:
Okay, so then it's a *mix* (of genes and 'nurture' and individual free will).



Truth To Power wrote:
The individual's will is the result of genes and environment. There is no other "will."



Then how do you explain the existence of culture-referencing creativity, as in a journalism article, or a work of art or music -- ?

How did the individual's particular *selection*, and decision-making 'sub-selections' (of 'this', over 'that') take place, exactly, for the final product to be finished? Are you really going to say that biology and nurture together definitively steer the individual to a particular *domain* of interest and work, like sports-over-music, or engineering-over-fiction -- ?

If so, please provide some *backing* for this claim.


Humanities-Technology Chart 2.0

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Worldview Diagram

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And:



Most twins have two identities: The one they share with their twin brother or sister as part of a pair, and the one that they enjoy all on their own.



https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... mmon-bonds



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ckaihatsu wrote:
You're saying that genes 'largely' determine who you are, but based on various cultures and religions over the millennia, all over the world, we can see that people tend to reflect the culture that they're *born into*, myself included.



Truth To Power wrote:
Of course. The point is that there isn't anything other than the individual produced by genes and environment. So each individual's decisions being "determined" by genes and environment is what it means for them to have free will.



Pass. (See the previous segment.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
That's just it, though -- *yeah*, on the whole, individuals *are* determined 'largely' by the environments that they grow up in -- meaning 'nurture'. (Another good example is with *pets*, whose 'personalities' are largely determined by how they're raised by their owners, and by their owners' personalities.)



Truth To Power wrote:
The University of Minnesota Twins Study demonstrated decades ago that identical twins reared in different families are more alike in their behavior, personality and even beliefs than fraternal twins reared together. That is effectively proof that genes are more important than environment -- which was already implied by evolution anyway.



This, though, isn't the same thing as your thesis that 'The individual is determined entirely by genetics and environment.'

You're a *behaviorist*, 'black-box' type -- *you* think that examining all of the inputs and outputs around a person would be enough to define the person, because you effectively deny *cognition*.


philosophical abstractions

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ckaihatsu wrote:
The 'superstructure' is what results from what the society is able to *materially produce*.



Truth To Power wrote:
That's physical infrastructure, not culture or beliefs.



The physical infrastructure / what-society-produces / the 'base', is distinct from culture-or-beliefs / the superstructure:


Image


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ckaihatsu wrote:
And I simply said that they sounded *similar*. You need to chill.



Truth To Power wrote:
They aren't.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Name-calling aside, look at what you stated -- the [material-] economic problem of relief-of-scarcity requires [1] labor, and [2] assets (which I take to be the means of mass industrial production, or 'producer goods').



Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong again. Land is only an asset when it has been appropriated as private property.



I'll add that complementarily, land is only an asset *economically* once *labor* (the labor commodity) has been applied, to transform the raw land into a *commodity* / private property.

My previous point stands that relief of scarcity requires *commodity production*, which capitalism does by socially organizing workers based on accumulations of equity capital.


Truth To Power wrote:
People used land to relive scarcity for millions of years before it was an asset.



Let's say 100,000 years. (And, it could be said that there *was* no scarcity in pre-class society because people simply lived off the land.)

Since we're in *capitalism* now land *is* officially distinguished as an 'asset'.


Truth To Power wrote:
Producer goods have to be contributed by labor; land is already there, ready to use, with no help from its owner or any previous owner.



That's not entirely true. You're not recognizing that *labor* is required to convert raw land into something *usable*, and *saleable* -- a commodity.

Are you saying that producer goods (physical infrastructure like factories and equipment, and/or capital) are *produced* by labor?


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
I have *no contention* with that statement itself, but what's more-to-the-point is *how* labor and productive assets are to be *organized*, and of course who gets to *enjoy* / own that social production, and by what rationale.



Truth To Power wrote:
Production is inherently private, not social, and its result is therefore rightly owned by its private producers: i.e., the people whose decisions, initiative and labor result in the product existing rather than not existing.



You're describing *capitalism*, of course -- your politics *glorifies* the owner / executive role, and *any* capital-organizational role, while such social organization for commodity production does *not* itself produce any commodities. The *wage laborers* are the ones who produce the actual commodities for sale by the company, for revenue, for profits.


Social Production Worldview

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Truth To Power wrote:
<ridiculous Marxist tripe snipped>



ckaihatsu wrote:
I just saw the following video, where Wolff suggests that any given left-leaning municipality could use eminent domain to readily *seize* any productive assets that capital ownership doesn't actually *use* -- so that the workers at that workplace could get it running again, under their own collective control, a workers co-op.



Truth To Power wrote:
:roll: As I already explained, when socialists steal factories, there are fewer factories available for production. Do you think any entrepreneur is going to build a factory in a jurisdiction where the local authorities just steal factories?? Why is it so hard for socialists to understand such facts?



What's the *alternative* -- for the factories to just *sit around* doing nothing? How would there be 'fewer factories', really, when the ones that *exist* are not even being used to *produce* anything? It may as well *not* be a factory, because the ownership can't get the figures to work out properly, so then everything grinds to a halt. What's the difference? Let the workers do their thing, in the place that they've *been doing* their thing, so that actual production of needed commodities can *resume*.

'Steal' is really inappropriate and unkind -- a worker's co-op at any given site would be for the sake of the *productive entity* first and foremost, which is certainly more / better than layoffs and scrapping the whole thing for salvage.

Commodity production itself isn't *dependent* on entrepreneurship, as you're making it out to be -- any given factory *could* potentially be run collectively by its workers, as you're objecting to, so we both *know* that's it's logistically / realistically *possible* (without entrepreneurship).


ckaihatsu wrote:
There's something of a fairly recent historical example to point to for this, as well:



Truth To Power wrote:
There's nothing wrong with workers' cooperatives buying or building factories as private interests in competition with other producers. It's when socialists seek to steal private owners' factories and forcibly prohibit competition from entrepreneurs other than workers' collectives that they abrogate rights and aggravate scarcity.



It's not stealing if the municipality uses eminent domain to *reclaim* any unused facility, so that its *workers* can continue to run it. That said, this is merely a *tactic* and not a whole politics itself.


Anatomy of a Platform

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ckaihatsu wrote:
What *you* mean is 'Those who do the paperwork and who are at the Board of Trustees meetings' when you say 'producers'.



Truth To Power wrote:
No I don't. I mean those who contribute to relief of scarcity.



ckaihatsu wrote:
You mean *capital ownership*,



Truth To Power wrote:
No I don't. I mean those who contribute the production factors -- producer goods and labor -- that would not otherwise have been available for production. They are in contrast to the landowner, who is merely legally entitled to demand a payment from the producer just for permission to use what would otherwise have been available.



For the sake of *each* of our own time and sanities let's nail-down some terminology here:

- 'Producer goods' means the-means-of-mass-industrial-production, or physical *workplaces*, basically, and/or the same as represented in ownership of proportionate *capital*.

- 'Labor' means 'wage labor', or those who are paid an hourly wage or salary, for their forfeiting of their work product to the employer.


ckaihatsu wrote:
and capital itself doesn't produce any commodities for the company to sell.



Truth To Power wrote:
Neither does labor itself. So what?



Incorrect. Any laborer hired to produce widgets will be producing *widgets* during their time at work, correct?


ckaihatsu wrote:
Oh, okay, then do you think that *managers* are actually 'producers' -- ?



Truth To Power wrote:
Of course. If you had ever actually witnessed any production, let alone participated in it, you would know that.



'I would know that' -- ?

*That's* your argument for how you think that managers are producers -- ?

Again, I'll just note the thought-experiment scenario of a company that only has a managerial office, and nothing else. If this company *only* ran its managerial office it would have *zero revenue*, because running an office is an *expense* only and does not itself produce any commodities that the company can sell for revenue, for profits.


Truth To Power wrote:
All labor (human effort devoted to relief of scarcity), from flipping burgers to running a multinational corporation, consists of three steps: obtaining information, making a decision, and implementing the decision. Managers do all three.



You're conflating *wage* labor -- that inherently produces commodities for the company -- with *internal* 'labor', or *management*, really, which does *not* produce any commodities for the company. It's an important distinction.


ckaihatsu wrote:
They're *not*.



Truth To Power wrote:
They most certainly are.



(See the previous segment.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
Managers *also* do not produce any commodities for the company to sell.



Truth To Power wrote:
Garbage. Their labor enables and enhances production of "commodities."



'Enhances' isn't the same as 'producing'. You're having to make a distinction here, between 'enhancing' / 'value-added', in terms of *exchange values* / valuation / pricing, and the production *itself* -- of the company's commodity that it sells, the widgets themselves.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Sure, managers do 'white-collar' kinds of labor, but it's *non-productive* labor



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just silly nonsense from someone who has not the slightest idea how production happens because he has never even witnessed any, let alone participated in it.



(See the previous segments.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
-- it's a *cost* to capital, the same as janitorial services for the office are.



Truth To Power wrote:
Yes, and labor on the production line is also a cost. So what?



So the distinction to be made here is 'Does the labor in question actually produce saleable commodities, or not'.

Managerial / executive / ownership / upkeep / maintenance / janitorial / internal work is all some kind of *work*, certainly, if you ask any person doing those things, but what's at-issue is whether the work is 'internal' to the business organization (company) itself, or if the work in question actually *produces saleable commodities*, as *wage* labor does, certainly.

This is the *class* distinction.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Doing nothing but running an office would *not* produce anything that the company could sell, for revenue, for profits.



Truth To Power wrote:
And doing nothing but physical labor would not produce anything for the company to sell either, because without managers and investors there would be no raw materials for workers to perform labor on, no customers to pay for the products, no power to run the machines in the factory, and indeed, for that matter, no machines or factory. See how that works?



Your *empirical* description is empirically true because of the prevailing societal practice / institution of *private property*, which could be termed as part of society's 'superstructure' -- its culture or beliefs.

Without the private-propertization of *land* there is no private 'real estate', as for locating factories, and, likewise, without the private-propertization of *producer goods* / factories -- requiring companies, managers, and investors -- there is no *commodity production*, for the things that people / customers need and want.

I can perfectly *analogize* these relations formally:

land : producer goods :: producer goods : commodity production


You're making my argument *for* me, that without control of *private property* (producer goods), workers are *dispossessed* from the means of *commodity production*, just as the aspiring factory owner has no avenue to controlling a factory if they're dispossessed from control of the *land* needed to *locate* that factory.


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This isn't about *me* -- you can set the insults aside because they're not helping your case at all.



Truth To Power wrote:
It's not an insult. It's a reasoned and informed surmise about why you make such false and absurd claims that anyone who has ever witnessed productive labor, let alone performed any, knows are false.



Whatever. Maybe just keep your opinions to yourself.


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Truth To Power wrote:
The ultimate purpose of all economic activity is to enable consumption. Learn it, or continue to talk nonsense on the subject permanently.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- many would *disagree* with your 'theory' there,



Truth To Power wrote:
It's not a theory. It's a plain fact.



ckaihatsu wrote:
I'll just mention the simple touted objective of 'Maximizing shareholder value', which some would say is the *real* reason for capitalist economic activity.



Truth To Power wrote:
And why do you imagine shareholders would want that, hhhmmmmm?



You're *not contending* that 'maximizing shareholder value' is the *objective* of capitalist economic activity.


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ckaihatsu wrote:
That fork-in-the-road of 'whose consumption' means that it's *not* a false dichotomy, it's a *real* dichotomy, because if interest rates are *raised*, then *pre-existing* capital (rentier capital / 'savers') is favored, while *lowered* interest rates means that *future* / *speculative* capital gains are favored, which are the interests of *equity* capital, or investors -- antithetical to the interests of 'savers' / rentier capitalists.



Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong. You obviously don't know anything about it, any more than you know anything about production.



If I'm wrong, then simply tell me if interest rates should be *raised*, or if they should be *lowered*, in general -- what does (any given) economic *theory* say about interest rates?

*More* face-values / more liquidity / larger money supply / lower interest rates / more government subsidies means more financial instruments available that can be used to leverage production of commodities, for sales, for revenue, for profits, while *fewer* face-values / less liquidity / smaller money supply / higher interest rates / no government subsidies means that 'savers', or those with pre-existing wealth, benefit.


ckaihatsu wrote:
*Your* idiosyncratic definition of 'justice' is really 'strong currency values for equity capital', which *most* people wouldn't describe as 'justice'.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's just another bald fabrication on your part.



In the past you used the word 'community' to refer to the system of centralized banking, or central banks -- *that's* why I say that you're fronting social-justice / civil-society terms, when what you *really* mean is the greater monetization of face-values, or strong-currency / 'monetarist' politics.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Bad banks, zombie banks, and zombie companies are *all* the result of runaway government subsidization of capital (cutting of interest rates / 'printing-money'), as has been the prevailing U.S. monetary policy for the last two decades.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, you obviously don't know anything about it.



Note that you're not *contending* anything that I'm saying here, so you're *forfeiting* any counter-claims.

My point stands:



A bad bank is a corporate structure which isolates illiquid and high risk assets (typically non-performing loans) held by a bank or a financial organisation, or perhaps a group of banks or financial organisations.[1] A bank may accumulate a large portfolio of debts or other financial instruments which unexpectedly become at risk of partial or full default. A large volume of non-performing assets usually make it difficult for the bank to raise capital, for example through sales of bonds. In these circumstances, the bank may wish to segregate its "good" assets from its "bad" assets through the creation of a bad bank.



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



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ckaihatsu wrote:
Maybe kick the question over to Monti, since he at least *purports* to be a 'market socialist', whatever the hell *that* is.



Truth To Power wrote:
I'm asking you.



ckaihatsu wrote:
I included *my own* model for a post-capitalist political economy, above, so the metric *I* advocate is the liberated-labor-internal 'labor credit' which only gets 'paid-forward' from laborer to laborer, with *zero* exchangeability for any goods / resources / materials.



Truth To Power wrote:
So, nothing but an absurd Marxist fantasy divorced from all economic reality. Check.



No, it's actually a *model* for a post-capitalist political economy, since you asked.


ckaihatsu wrote:
On the '[organic] demand' side of things people could simply *prioritize* their needs / demands, #1, #2, #3, through infinity, for any and all days that they like, which would obviate the empirical societal need for *market* values / valuations.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, because utilities are not commensurable and ordinal numbers are not cardinal numbers.



Think of it in terms of 'marginal utility' -- from *all* of the consumer / consumption choices available, one has to empirically prioritize those options that will provide the *most utility*, or use-values.

My model simply indicates the same thing, but *explicitly*, as the consumer's own formally numbered 'shopping list', listing all needed and desired items, from #1 -- most-needed -- to # *whatever*, which would be *least*-needed and *least*-desired, both.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Horseshit.



Truth To Power wrote:
Fact.



ckaihatsu wrote:
I certainly don't agree



Truth To Power wrote:
Because you are objectively wrong.



ckaihatsu wrote:
-- and you're showing your *statist* colors here, since your touted system *requires* the nation-state / government / bureaucracy.



Truth To Power wrote:
Any economy above the hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding level requires secure, exclusive land tenure. There is no way to implement that but by force. The state makes that force controllable, predictable, and thus less destructive.



So you're *admitting* that the institution of capitalist private property *requires* a statist monopoly on the use of force, in order to uphold the institution of private property. Thanks. Now the reader can fully see what 'private property' is based on.


ckaihatsu wrote:
*You* subscribe to the 'Purge Day' conception of society, which is Hobbesian, basically.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, anthropologists have determined that stateless societies are more violent.



Bullshit. Here's from previously:



Before class

The world as we enter the 21st century is one of greed, of gross inequalities between rich and poor, of racist and national chauvinist prejudice, of barbarous practices and horrific wars. It is very easy to believe that this is what things have always been like and that, therefore, they can be no different. Such a message is put across by innumerable writers and philosophers, politicians and sociologists, journalists and psychologists. They portray hierarchy, deference, greed and brutality as ‘natural’ features of human behaviour. Indeed, there are some who would see these as a feature throughout the animal kingdom, a ‘sociobiological’ imperative imposed by the alleged ‘laws’ of genetics.1 There are innumerable popular, supposedly ‘scientific’ paperbacks which propagate such a view—with talk of humans as ‘the naked ape’ (Desmond Morris),2 the ‘killer imperative’ (Robert Ardrey),3 and, in a more sophisticated form, as programmed by the ‘selfish gene’ (Richard Dawkins).4

Yet such Flintstones caricatures of human behaviour are simply not borne out by what we now know about the lives our ancestors lived in the innumerable generations before recorded history. A cumulation of scientific evidence shows that their societies were not characterised by competition, inequality and oppression. These things are, rather, the product of history, and of rather recent history. The evidence comes from archaeological findings about patterns of human behaviour worldwide until only about 5,000 years ago, and from anthropological studies of societies in different parts of the world which remained organised along similar lines until the 19th and earlier part of the 20th century. The anthropologist Richard Lee has summarised the findings:

Before the rise of the state and the entrenchment of social inequality, people lived for millennia in small-scale kin-based social groups, in which the core institutions of economic life included collective or common ownership of land and resources, generalised reciprocity in the distribution of food, and relatively egalitarian political relations.5

In other words, people shared with and helped each other, with no rulers and no ruled, no rich and no poor. Lee echoes the phrase used by Frederick Engels in the 1880s to describe this state of affairs, ‘primitive communism’. The point is of enormous importance. Our species (modern humans, or Homo sapiens sapiens) is over 100,000 years old. For 95 percent of this time it has not been characterised at all by many of the forms of behaviour ascribed to ‘human nature’ today. There is nothing built into our biology that makes present day societies the way they are. Our predicament as we face a new millennium cannot be blamed on it.



Harman, _People's History of the World_, pp. 3-4



viewtopic.php?p=15241394#p15241394



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ckaihatsu wrote:
What metric then would determine people's *access* to the fruits of AI (by extension) if there are 'no workers', getting *no wages*.



Truth To Power wrote:
Previous contributions to production and just compensation for the abrogation of people's rights by exclusive tenure.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Well, that's a *problem*, because you're *admitting* that all you have to go by (for a future-type 'post-work' social scenario) is *market valuations* and real-estate valuations.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, you made that up.



Well then where are prospective consumers supposed to get the *money* with which to make *purchases* for the things they need, if it's a 'post-work' AI world with no work and no wages -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
Recall that the private sector has been bailed-out *repeatedly* by the U.S. government, most recently in 2020, so that's a *non-starter*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that's a non sequitur.



I'm saying that the private sector has *proven* itself to be incapable of *self-sustainability*, having almost gone-under in 2008-2009, and then again in 2020. Government bailouts to the private sector means that private-equity-type valuations *alone* aren't enough, because if they *were* then there wouldn't have had to be *bailouts* -- and the same applies to any possible future 'post-work' world, as well.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
Collective control of producer goods will ensure that production is negative.



ckaihatsu wrote:
That's just *naysaying*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, it's a plain fact, confirmed by historical experience.



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, neither you or *anyone else* can point to any sustained history of proletarian collective control of producer goods.



Truth To Power wrote:
Of course: it's invariably so catastrophic that it can't be sustained.



Cute. Yeah, again, just keep your opinions to yourself.

You're not contending my statement, so my point stands that you're just *naysaying*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Yelling through text doesn't change the fact that *you* think all social values are derived from *real estate* valuations,



Truth To Power wrote:
That is just another fabrication from you with no basis in fact.



Your *entire* 'geoist' politics is situated on the argument that lessened real estate availability is an empirical *hindrance* to the interests of equity capital -- my point *stands* that you think all social values are derived from *real estate* valuations. (Also because *you* think of the 'community' as being the system of *central banks*.)


ckaihatsu wrote:
while at the same time you think that *equity* capital values are somehow 'unimpeachable'.



Truth To Power wrote:
It is simply a fact that private property in the fruits of one's labor does not abrogate anyone else's rights.



Equity and rentier capital values are not all obtained through one's own personal efforts, though -- *inheritance* is a huge factor in how the well-off became well-off from birth. This means that the realm of private property is *detached*, and *abstracted* from personages themselves, and capital valuations are *not* a meritocratic mirror-image of their owners, as you'd *like* it to be, according to your 'equity-heaven' utopian idealism.

If, instead, you mean to indicate *wages*, from *wage labor*, then you should use the term 'wages' for that.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Equity capital would still continue to exploit / extract / expropriate *surplus labor value* from the working class, even in your geoist utopia.



Truth To Power wrote:
Because "surplus labor value" is a Marxist anti-concept that actually means, "the additional production that the owner of producer goods enables by contributing them to the production process":



No, you're thinking of 'value-added', which has to do with capital valuations outside of the production process itself, according to the post-production dynamics of overall supply-and-demand. (An example would be sending a shipment to the customer in *4* days instead of in 7 days, which has nothing to do with the *production* of the commodity / shipment itself.)

I'm going to recommend that you not-concern yourself with 'surplus labor value' at this point, and instead just concentrate on 'labor value' itself -- that which the labor commodity provides through the commodity-production process itself.

I happened to see it in a recent video -- it's at 3:53:


Image


The Stagnating Economy of Canada _ Economics Explained




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material-economic exploitation

Spoiler: show
Image


Spoiler: show
Image



Truth To Power wrote:
See?



ckaihatsu wrote:
Naysaying.



Truth To Power wrote:
Reason and history.



You're being too vague to make any point here. You may want to explain what you mean.


ckaihatsu wrote:
'Social production' means 'That which is produced by society, in one way or another'.



Truth To Power wrote:
Society does not produce anything.



A synonym for 'society' is 'the total human population on the face of the earth' -- and, yes, production *does* happen.


ckaihatsu wrote:
The only reason why production is currently private is because of *capitalism*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, it has been private since time immemorial.



No, it hasn't, because 'private [property]' implies land / real-estate as a *commodity*, and social production has *not* always taken place for the sake of producing commodities. Commodity production is a function of *capitalism* only, and is basically *synonymous* with it.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
No, I identify its contribution accurately: the value it would produce in the absence of the producer goods the entrepreneur, investor and factory owner contribute to the production process.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Those parties you just listed are all *non-productive* of commodities for their companies.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, their contributions enable and initiate production.



Again you're having to make a *distinction* here -- ownership and management 'enable' and 'initiate' production, which is *not* the same thing as actually producing commodities, which is what only *wage labor* does.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Capital itself cannot beget more capital -- there *has* to be a production process, to produce new commodities, to sell, for revenue, for profits, or else it's all just *finance*, which is fictitious-capital.



Truth To Power wrote:
So what?



Allow me to rephrase: If capital does not enable and initiate the production of new commodities, for new commodity values -- for whatever reason -- then it's functionally *inert* and is as good as a lump of clay in the ground that hasn't been sourced by human labor yet.

(Thanks for honestly tacitly acknowledging that debt / finance isn't the same thing as equity or rentier values.)


Truth To Power wrote:
Labor itself cannot beget more labor, either.



Actually, it *can* -- it's better-known by the term 'biological human reproduction', and 'socialization', as in getting younger people ready for the workplace, through education, training, and experience.


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BlutoSays wrote:



ckaihatsu wrote:
Military-industrial complex.



Truth To Power wrote:
Irrelevant.



No, the present-day U.S. military-industrial complex is an *excellent* example of 'big government', or the bloated non-commodity-producing bureaucracy / state that capitalism unavoidably relies on. It's also called 'military Keynesianism', or 'military syndicalism'.
#15243300
ckaihatsu wrote:
I included *my own* model for a post-capitalist political economy, above, so the metric *I* advocate is the liberated-labor-internal 'labor credit' which only gets 'paid-forward' from laborer to laborer, with *zero* exchangeability for any goods / resources / materials.



Truth To Power wrote:
So, nothing but an absurd Marxist fantasy divorced from all economic reality. Check.



ckaihatsu wrote:
No, it's actually a *model* for a post-capitalist political economy, since you asked.



---


I'll briefly elaborate, to say that Marxism-type post-capitalist liberated-labor *should* be divorced from the material world of assets / resources / materials, and all goods for consumption, at least 'economically'. The historical norm to-date has been one of rewards-for-labor -- the *commodification* of labor -- which should *not* be the societal norm, hence the need for proletarian revolution to *remove* the institution of private property that inherently commodifies labor and labor value.

Here's from the 'labor credits' communist-gift-economy model / framework:


Necessarily-earned labor credits would simply be passed-forward to newer incoming groups or individuals of liberated-laborers once they've fulfilled their work roles according to an agreed-upon formalized 'policy package'. Since there are no monetary-rewards-for-labor, there's no *commodification* of such liberated labor, as by the yardstick of wages, vouchers, or goods in-kind, all of which require exchange-value-mediated *exchanges*.



There's also a solid *philosophical* objection to be made here, that of the problematic of using rewards-for-labor, as already mentioned above. Any *exchange* of material-for-labor effectively *commodifies* that labor because the liberated-laborer can always politically question how that valuation for his or her labor was arrived-at: 'Am I getting the correct amount of material compensation for the work I've put in?'.



One major problem with the 'communal' approach, even if implemented worldwide, is that we can't just pretend that all work roles are the same -- the unstated assumption with the 'communal' approach is that as long as one is *contributing* to the material commons, one should be able to *partake* from that resulting complex social production, for one's own needs. This is *not* an entirely bad premise, actually, because one implication of it is that people should be consuming from social production according to their *needs*, and not according to what they've *contributed* to society, because that would mean rewards-for-labor, or the implicit *commodification* of labor based on what goods can be exchanged for it.



I'll note that, to be precise, my 'labor credits' is *not* the same as conventional Marxist 'labor vouchers'. Labor vouchers are meant to be a wages-like *placeholder* -- as I understand it -- for formally recognizing liberated-work voluntarily done for the collective / commons, and to *reward* that effort with a monetary-type reciprocity, though one that's controlled *intentionally* by an administrative portion of the revolutionary, upsurging workers.

I find this conventional rewards-for-labor approach to be misguided, since it's not in the direction of the ultimate goal, that being to *eliminate* money (and all private-property relations) -- and I would argue *as soon as possible* so that society-in-revolt is on the right path towards moneylessness.

On the other hand, my 'labor credits' formulation is meant to "valuate" one thing only, that of liberated-labor-effort-hours, and to keep this "valuation" / quantification strictly *internal* to the subset of people who are *active* liberated-workers -- labor credits are voluntarily forwarded to those who step-up to do socially-necessary labor, going-forward, for the public good.



https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338
#15243340
ckaihatsu wrote:I'll briefly elaborate, to say that Marxism-type post-capitalist liberated-labor *should* be divorced from the material world of assets / resources / materials, and all goods for consumption, at least 'economically'. The historical norm to-date has been one of rewards-for-labor -- the *commodification* of labor -- which should *not* be the societal norm, hence the need for proletarian revolution to *remove* the institution of private property that inherently commodifies labor and labor value.

So, nothing but an absurd Marxist fantasy divorced from all economic reality. Check.
Here's from the 'labor credits' communist-gift-economy model / framework:

Your self-quoted text offers nothing but a transparently fallacious and disingenuous rationalization for those whose "labor" does not actually contribute to production to nevertheless be entitled to consume the same portion of production as those whose labor does contribute to it. I find this is almost universally the case with Marxists: they oppose economic justice because they know that their own "labor" -- such as the effort that generates ckaihatsu's vast and tedious spew of worthless Marxist blather here on PoFo -- cannot contribute anything to production, so they are quite reasonably afraid that in a perfectly just economy, they would starve to death.
#15243351
Truth To Power wrote:
So, nothing but an absurd Marxist fantasy divorced from all economic reality. Check.



Not quite. It's a *model*, so that implies that it's *internally self-consistent*. This would be akin to any *other* kind of modeling, as for the weather, or the stock markets, etc.

It's not-so-much 'my fantasy' as it's an *illustration* of the outlines / 'contours' of such a post-commodity-production society -- one in which all of *humanity* would be able to collectively control and use the world's implements, for the first time ever in human history.


Truth To Power wrote:
Your self-quoted text offers nothing but a transparently fallacious and disingenuous rationalization for those whose "labor" does not actually contribute to production to nevertheless be entitled to consume the same portion of production as those whose labor does contribute to it.



Here's the interesting part -- you're implictly conflating *scales of values* with the ownership / managerial white-collar-type efforts *over* such private accumulations.

If someone owns a million dollars, what value are their ownership-based, white-collar efforts *worth*, in relation to that sum? It all depends on the *results*, right -- if the portfolio goes *up* in value, or *down* in value.

This 'fluctuation' dynamic of portfolio value is obviously *not* from the same kind of 'efforts' / labor that's done by hired / wage labor, for the same company.

You think you can just *flip* the 'accusation' around, like I've delivered a simplistic *insult* (as *you're* prone to doing) -- but it's *not* about hurling accusations around, and/or pejorative labeling.

Sure, I think that *some* kind of social-organization is necessary for realizing potential upsides, meaning economies-of-scale at present-day corporate-type transnational scales of coordinated industrial mass production. (*Many* who are left-leaning *do* eschew this factor of *scale*, but *anyone* on reflection would realize that localist-only production is not economically competitive or realistic under capitalism, or beyond.)

So, as ever, the crux of the issue in front of us is 'Where does value come from?'

I maintain that profit-making is *entirely* dependent on the economic exploitation of the labor commodity.


labor and capital, side-by-side

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---


Truth To Power wrote:
I find this is almost universally the case with Marxists: they oppose economic justice



Your so-called 'economic justice' is actually economically *supply-sided*, like the perennial 'trickle-down theory' that's used as the rationale / put-on for providing-liquidity-to-the-system-at-public-expense, also known as 'bailouts' and 'tax breaks for the rich'.

Such intentional *increasing* of the wealth gap is definitely *not* 'economic justice' in any conceivable way.

At this point you may want to address / describe what's so special, exactly, about 'market capitalization'. Should any given executive / manager's own compensation (for their internal 'labor') from the company be "meritocratically" valuated according to the size of the portfolio they manage?

Does having *two* managers on the same portfolio mean that *twice* the management 'service' is being provided?

By comparison, on the *production line* itself having *twice* the number of laborers *would* scale linearly to twice the *production*, with everything else being proportional as well. This is because the output is *discrete* -- a per-piece / per-service *commodity* that is paid-for at a specific price by the customer. Goods and services are produced and outputted by wage labor, and commensurate *revenue* is inputted in return, in quantifiable tit-for-tat material reciprocity.

The same *cannot* be said for the company's *internal* 'services' of ownership and management decision-making, because such is not hands-on over the production process of commodities *directly*. It's more like the captain's efforts for steering a ship into an unknown ocean, rather than the daily upkeep of the ship itself.


Truth To Power wrote:
because they know that their own "labor" -- such as the effort that generates ckaihatsu's vast and tedious spew of worthless Marxist blather here on PoFo --



My 'blather' as you call it, *is* admittedly not commodity-production, if you'd like to get technical about it for the sake of example. This is *politics*, and it can be said to be just as non-productive and speculative ('proto-administrative', perhaps) as any 'contribution' of equity capital into an enterprise, since such capital investment *also* does not directly produce commodities -- capital 'enables' and 'initiates' the production process of economically exploiting wage labor, to use *your own* descriptors. My 'political' 'labor' can be equated to capital's executive-type functioning of *ownership*, and even all the way up to nationalist *administration*, if you'd like to analogize it that way. (Of course my politics are *not* nationalist, though, and are *working-class* oriented.)


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

Spoiler: show
Image



---


Truth To Power wrote:
cannot contribute anything to production, so they are quite reasonably afraid that in a perfectly just economy,



Funny -- this is a common fallacy in political-economy, that of conflating *production*, with *consumption*. The two are *not* comparable at the individual scale, because the individual obviously doesn't only make what they themselves consume, and they don't only consume that which they themselves *make*.

You're attempting to ratio the production of goods and services, to consumption, through the individual themselves -- these quantities *do* have to balance-out, though, at *mass* / total scales:


Pies Must Line Up

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My entire post-capitalist *approach* is premised on a *detachment* (or 'divorce', to use *your* term), of (collectivist) production, from (individual) discretion over personal consumption.


Truth To Power wrote:
they would starve to death.



This is just sheer Stalinistic *fearmongering*, here in our current era of industrial mass production and AI / automation over the same, for *massive* ratios of material productivity per unit of labor input.

My politics is *not* Stalinist-type specialized separatist elitist bureaucratic administration. Nice try, though.


Political Spectrum, Simplified

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#15243606
ckaihatsu wrote:Not quite. It's a *model*, so that implies that it's *internally self-consistent*.

No it doesn't. More importantly, it's not consistent with objective physical reality.
This would be akin to any *other* kind of modeling, as for the weather, or the stock markets, etc.

No, because those models are tested by reference to reality. Marxist excrement is not.
It's not-so-much 'my fantasy' as it's an *illustration* of the outlines / 'contours' of such a post-commodity-production society -- one in which all of *humanity* would be able to collectively control and use the world's implements, for the first time ever in human history.

But in fact, it's just a fantasy.
Here's the interesting part -- you're implictly conflating *scales of values* with the ownership / managerial white-collar-type efforts *over* such private accumulations.

No, I am identifying the fact that value is earned and rightly owned by those who create it.
If someone owns a million dollars, what value are their ownership-based, white-collar efforts *worth*, in relation to that sum? It all depends on the *results*, right -- if the portfolio goes *up* in value, or *down* in value.

No, because there is a difference between the owner who is earning a return by commensurate contributions to production and one who is merely obtaining a return by dint of privilege. You just have to refuse to know the fact that the former exists.
This 'fluctuation' dynamic of portfolio value is obviously *not* from the same kind of 'efforts' / labor that's done by hired / wage labor, for the same company.

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, as explained -- for the umpteenth time -- above. You claim, falsely and absurdly, that producer goods their owner contributes to production represent "dead" labor, while the worker's contribution is "living" labor. But in fact, the worker is being paid for what he contributed a few hours to a few weeks before, while the owner of producer goods is being paid for what he contributed days, weeks, months, or years before. At what point, exactly, did the owner's contribution "die"?
So, as ever, the crux of the issue in front of us is 'Where does value come from?'

As I have already explained to you very patiently, multiple times, in clear, simple, grammatical English, it comes from the intersection of scarcity (supply) and utility (demand).
I maintain that profit-making is *entirely* dependent on the economic exploitation of the labor commodity.

But that claim is just objectively false. How is labor exploited through being offered, and voluntarily accepting, access to economic opportunity that would not otherwise be available?
<stupid Marxist garbage snipped>
Your so-called 'economic justice' is actually economically *supply-sided*,

Because the only people who justly get a share of the supply of goods and services are those who have contributed commensurately to their production.
like the perennial 'trickle-down theory' that's used as the rationale / put-on for providing-liquidity-to-the-system-at-public-expense, also known as 'bailouts' and 'tax breaks for the rich'.

No, that is just you makin' $#!+ up again. There is a difference between the injustice of government servitude to privilege that you describe and the justice of commensurate rewards for contributions to production that I advocate. You cannot address the contribution to production made by the owner of producer goods, so you have to pretend that there is no such contribution, and the goods would be available just the same without their owner having initiated and paid for their production. But that is just objectively false.
Such intentional *increasing* of the wealth gap is definitely *not* 'economic justice' in any conceivable way.

It is also definitely not what I have advocated in any conceivable way. You just have to pretend that it is because you cannot address what I have actually said. That is also why you always pretend that I am advocating or defending capitalism.
At this point you may want to address / describe what's so special, exactly, about 'market capitalization'. Should any given executive / manager's own compensation (for their internal 'labor') from the company be "meritocratically" valuated according to the size of the portfolio they manage?

Market cap is at least a better basis for compensation than stock price, but I won't try to second-guess how owners choose to compensate managers for their labor.
Does having *two* managers on the same portfolio mean that *twice* the management 'service' is being provided?

It might. There is a law of diminishing returns, just as with any labor. Giving a single manager too many responsibilities can result in degraded performance on all of them, so it might be best to hire another one even if there is only enough work to keep them both busy half the time.
By comparison, on the *production line* itself having *twice* the number of laborers *would* scale linearly to twice the *production*, with everything else being proportional as well.

Nope. Flat wrong. The most productive workers are hired first -- at least, that is certainly the employer's intention. Hiring less productive workers does not double the production of the most productive workers. Indeed, at a certain point, additional hires are so unproductive that they can easily result in net losses to the employer. This is not at all an uncommon situation for large employers, which are always trying to identify such workers and get rid of them.
This is because the output is *discrete* -- a per-piece / per-service *commodity* that is paid-for at a specific price by the customer. Goods and services are produced and outputted by wage labor, and commensurate *revenue* is inputted in return, in quantifiable tit-for-tat material reciprocity.

Nope. Flat wrong again. You again prove that you have no knowledge or experience of actual production.
The same *cannot* be said for the company's *internal* 'services' of ownership and management decision-making, because such is not hands-on over the production process of commodities *directly*. It's more like the captain's efforts for steering a ship into an unknown ocean, rather than the daily upkeep of the ship itself.

Wrong again. You self-evidently have no idea what workers actually do, let alone what managers do.

ALL labor consists of three steps: obtaining information, making a decision, and implementing the decision. Some of the decisions just require more experience, training, intelligence and background knowledge than others.
My 'blather' as you call it, *is* admittedly not commodity-production, if you'd like to get technical about it for the sake of example.

It is also not informed by any knowledge of or experience with commodity production.
This is *politics*, and it can be said to be just as non-productive and speculative ('proto-administrative', perhaps) as any 'contribution' of equity capital into an enterprise, since such capital investment *also* does not directly produce commodities -- capital 'enables' and 'initiates' the production process of economically exploiting wage labor, to use *your own* descriptors.

No, you are just makin' $#!+ up again. It is not the production process or offering workers access to economic opportunity they would not otherwise have that enables exploitation of labor, but the forcible removal, without just compensation, of their liberty rights to access opportunity that they would otherwise have. It is therefore the owner of producer goods -- the factory -- who alleviates the condition of exclusion from access to economic opportunity and consequent material want that the landowner has imposed on the landless worker. And Marxism-socialism then, falsely and despicably, blames the factory owner, who is actually the worker's benefactor, for what the landowner has done to the worker.
My 'political' 'labor' can be equated to capital's executive-type functioning of *ownership*, and even all the way up to nationalist *administration*, if you'd like to analogize it that way. (Of course my politics are *not* nationalist, though, and are *working-class* oriented.)

You seem to think that what you are doing here is in some sense a worthwhile contribution to some future production; yet you deny that the efforts of entrepreneurs, managers and investors in actually enabling current production could be worthwhile contributions to production??

Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that....
<absurd Marist garbage snipped>
Funny -- this is a common fallacy in political-economy, that of conflating *production*, with *consumption*.

No, your statements continue to be objectively and provably false. It is simply an indisputable fact of objective physical reality that consumption cannot exceed production, which must precede consumption.
The two are *not* comparable at the individual scale, because the individual obviously doesn't only make what they themselves consume, and they don't only consume that which they themselves *make*.

No, that is merely the usual absurd, disingenuous, concrete-bound Marxist refusal to know the fact that by producing value, one earns the right to trade for values others have produced.
You're attempting to ratio the production of goods and services, to consumption, through the individual themselves -- these quantities *do* have to balance-out, though, at *mass* / total scales:

Nope. Wrong again. They don't have to balance on any scale; consumption merely cannot exceed production. It is only the requirement of justice that production and consumption balance on the individual scale.
<absurd Marxist garbage snipped>
My entire post-capitalist *approach* is premised on a *detachment* (or 'divorce', to use *your* term), of (collectivist) production, from (individual) discretion over personal consumption.

Which makes it irreducibly unjust and therefore evil.
This is just sheer Stalinistic *fearmongering*, here in our current era of industrial mass production and AI / automation over the same, for *massive* ratios of material productivity per unit of labor input.

You forget: the fact that AI is eliminating the need for labor proves that Marx's labor-centered analysis is irrelevant garbage, and always has been.
My politics is *not* Stalinist-type specialized separatist elitist bureaucratic administration. Nice try, though.

Stalinism, unlike your nonsense, at least has the merit of being implementable in practice.
#15243870
ckaihatsu wrote:
Not quite. It's a *model*, so that implies that it's *internally self-consistent*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No it doesn't. More importantly, it's not consistent with objective physical reality.



Yes, it *is* consistent with objective physical / socio-material reality. That was the point, obviously -- the model *has* to address the relevant components of that political economy, or else what-is-it-modeling.

Specifically, I'll note the following main components from the model: 'Point of production', 'liberated labor', 'infrastructure / know-how', 'assets & resources', 'goods & services (materials)', among others.


labor credits framework for 'communist supply & demand'

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Image


https://web.archive.org/web/20201211050 ... ?p=2889338


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This would be akin to any *other* kind of modeling, as for the weather, or the stock markets, etc.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, because those models are tested by reference to reality. Marxist excrement is not.



How about 'capital and labor' -- are *those* referring to reality -- ?

Since capitalism *sucks* at social-distribution once there's a market / material *abundance* of production (as for cars), the idea here is to *rethink* how 'labor and capital' can be re-done -- socialism.


labor and capital, side-by-side

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Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
It's not-so-much 'my fantasy' as it's an *illustration* of the outlines / 'contours' of such a post-commodity-production society -- one in which all of *humanity* would be able to collectively control and use the world's implements, for the first time ever in human history.



Truth To Power wrote:
But in fact, it's just a fantasy.



Right now it's being done for various *private* interests, so, yeah, I'd say the world could do *better*.


---


Truth To Power wrote:
Your self-quoted text offers nothing but a transparently fallacious and disingenuous rationalization for those whose "labor" does not actually contribute to production to nevertheless be entitled to consume the same portion of production as those whose labor does contribute to it.



ckaihatsu wrote:
Here's the interesting part -- you're implictly conflating *scales of values* with the ownership / managerial white-collar-type efforts *over* such private accumulations.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, I am identifying the fact that value is earned and rightly owned by those who create it.



You're throwing around terms like 'value' and 'earned' and 'create' -- but you haven't even bothered to *define* your own descriptions for these key, important terms in the field of political economy.

Since your politics is based on the social convention of *private property*, you're entirely content to retain *status quo* practices for such, especially for *equity* capital. Your 'politics' only has a simple contractual-party objection to prevailing *market* norms, meaning that of relative availability of land / real estate, for factories and commodity-productive activity, for equity values.

This is almost empirical and 'everyday' to the point of being economic-factionalist *whining*, rather than a full set of purported politics. In other words, you're not even at the *starting line* -- 'sour grapes' isn't politics, sorry.


ckaihatsu wrote:
If someone owns a million dollars, what value are their ownership-based, white-collar efforts *worth*, in relation to that sum? It all depends on the *results*, right -- if the portfolio goes *up* in value, or *down* in value.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, because there is a difference between the owner who is earning a return by commensurate contributions to production and one who is merely obtaining a return by dint of privilege. You just have to refuse to know the fact that the former exists.



Why do you keep 'resetting', or erasing your experience of what-we've-gone-over already -- ?

I *do* make the distinction of rentier capital, versus equity capital, which covers your question / accusation.


ckaihatsu wrote:
This 'fluctuation' dynamic of portfolio value is obviously *not* from the same kind of 'efforts' / labor that's done by hired / wage labor, for the same company.



Truth To Power wrote:
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, as explained -- for the umpteenth time -- above. You claim, falsely and absurdly, that producer goods their owner contributes to production represent "dead" labor, while the worker's contribution is "living" labor. But in fact, the worker is being paid for what he contributed a few hours to a few weeks before, while the owner of producer goods is being paid for what he contributed days, weeks, months, or years before. At what point, exactly, did the owner's contribution "die"?



No-one-is / I-am-not attacking the *efforts* of *ownership* and any and all *management* on its *own* behalf.

Don't you *get* it, though -- that's all *internal*, which could be as small as a mom-and-pop -- as the libertarians are so fond to project. If it's a *corporation*, then it's something of a *regulatory* concern, and if it's fully private-equity (the Koch conglomerate, from another thread), then there's a problem.

What can you call that organic-living-person-worker-doing-stuff-that-makes-bricks, *but* is indisputably an organic-to-inorganic valuation process, as socially-necessary as it may be?

This is the *crux* of it -- how can society make *any* kind of valuation here? It's preposterous to begin with and it also happens every hour of every day, everywhere.


ckaihatsu wrote:
So, as ever, the crux of the issue in front of us is 'Where does value come from?'



Truth To Power wrote:
As I have already explained to you very patiently, multiple times, in clear, simple, grammatical English, it comes from the intersection of scarcity (supply) and utility (demand).



I refrained from calling your mindset a 'lobotomy' this-far, but this latest now explains it clearly -- *this* is where you think valuation comes from.

*But* -- just to *fully*-evidence how crazed you actually are -- don't you yourself know that the standing price for any given commodity tends to reflect the price / cost of its initial *production* -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
I maintain that profit-making is *entirely* dependent on the economic exploitation of the labor commodity.



Truth To Power wrote:
But that claim is just objectively false. How is labor exploited through being offered, and voluntarily accepting, access to economic opportunity that would not otherwise be available?



We're not *in* your fantasy world of *moral* exploitation, with its myopic vision of the office-signing only, while the world burns around, outside.

The labor-commodity / people *are* materially exploited in every hour of work.


material-economic exploitation

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Spoiler: show
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ckaihatsu wrote:
<stupid Marxist garbage snipped>



ckaihatsu wrote:
Your so-called 'economic justice' is actually economically *supply-sided*,



Truth To Power wrote:
Because the only people who justly get a share of the supply of goods and services are those who have contributed commensurately to their production.



'Commensurately' -- that's hardly solid or uncontroversial.

'Dead labor' is what you're concerned with, and pre-existing private property is what exploits *living labor* (if you like).

(It's really curious, because how *could* this materially-empirical organic-to-inorganic process -- its outputs -- be valued, *anyway* / conceivably -- ?)


ckaihatsu wrote:
like the perennial 'trickle-down theory' that's used as the rationale / put-on for providing-liquidity-to-the-system-at-public-expense, also known as 'bailouts' and 'tax breaks for the rich'.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that is just you makin' $#!+ up again. There is a difference between the injustice of government servitude to privilege that you describe and the justice of commensurate rewards for contributions to production that I advocate. You cannot address the contribution to production made by the owner of producer goods, so you have to pretend that there is no such contribution, and the goods would be available just the same without their owner having initiated and paid for their production. But that is just objectively false.



Wow, so private-sector-all-the-way, huh -- ? Like you could bring a *flag* of it to a football game in the fall, and wave it around, right? (grin)

'Dead labor' comes from *living labor*, correct?


ckaihatsu wrote:
Such intentional *increasing* of the wealth gap is definitely *not* 'economic justice' in any conceivable way.



Truth To Power wrote:
It is also definitely not what I have advocated in any conceivable way. You just have to pretend that it is because you cannot address what I have actually said. That is also why you always pretend that I am advocating or defending capitalism.



Lemme guess -- *state* private property, or bureaucratic elitism over all land parcels. Yup. Got it. And how *is* that 'Evergrande' whole-thing going, exactly -- ?


China’s bursting housing bubble summed up in a viral video, as official tells citizens to ‘Buy one property, then a second. Bought a second? Buy a third, and fourth’

https://fortune.com/2022/08/17/china-pr ... buy-homes/


---


ckaihatsu wrote:
At this point you may want to address / describe what's so special, exactly, about 'market capitalization'. Should any given executive / manager's own compensation (for their internal 'labor') from the company be "meritocratically" valuated according to the size of the portfolio they manage?



Truth To Power wrote:
Market cap is at least a better basis for compensation than stock price, but I won't try to second-guess how owners choose to compensate managers for their labor.



Of course you won't.


ckaihatsu wrote:
Does having *two* managers on the same portfolio mean that *twice* the management 'service' is being provided?



Truth To Power wrote:
It might. There is a law of diminishing returns, just as with any labor. Giving a single manager too many responsibilities can result in degraded performance on all of them, so it might be best to hire another one even if there is only enough work to keep them both busy half the time.



Just found out about 'SimCity' -- ?


x D


More-to-the-point, you're proving my point about such labor being *internal* -- like that of a *household*, actually -- and so certain 'pragmatic' / small-scale particularities are at the fore, which isn't even *business* anymore, really, at that point. It more resembles a *clubhouse* than a market-cap-driven thing. Spending is more-or-less discretionary, and *collective* (interestingly).


ckaihatsu wrote:
By comparison, on the *production line* itself having *twice* the number of laborers *would* scale linearly to twice the *production*, with everything else being proportional as well.



Truth To Power wrote:
Nope. Flat wrong. The most productive workers are hired first -- at least, that is certainly the employer's intention. Hiring less productive workers does not double the production of the most productive workers. Indeed, at a certain point, additional hires are so unproductive that they can easily result in net losses to the employer. This is not at all an uncommon situation for large employers, which are always trying to identify such workers and get rid of them.



That's blatantly *disingenuous* -- I *never* said 'less-productive'. You're introducing a gradient of your *own*, for your own favored fantasy-land.

Thanks for the fugue-state rendition of 'marginal utility', for the bleacher seats.


ckaihatsu wrote:
This is because the output is *discrete* -- a per-piece / per-service *commodity* that is paid-for at a specific price by the customer. Goods and services are produced and outputted by wage labor, and commensurate *revenue* is inputted in return, in quantifiable tit-for-tat material reciprocity.



Truth To Power wrote:
Nope. Flat wrong again. You again prove that you have no knowledge or experience of actual production.



You *don't disagree* that management-type necessarily-white-collar efforts, as over the stock ticker, are *not* the same kind of labor as from the production line, by wage-labor.


ckaihatsu wrote:
The same *cannot* be said for the company's *internal* 'services' of ownership and management decision-making, because such is not hands-on over the production process of commodities *directly*. It's more like the captain's efforts for steering a ship into an unknown ocean, rather than the daily upkeep of the ship itself.



Truth To Power wrote:
Wrong again. You self-evidently have no idea what workers actually do, let alone what managers do.



(See the previous segment.)


Truth To Power wrote:
ALL labor consists of three steps: obtaining information, making a decision, and implementing the decision. Some of the decisions just require more experience, training, intelligence and background knowledge than others.



ckaihatsu wrote:
My 'blather' as you call it, *is* admittedly not commodity-production, if you'd like to get technical about it for the sake of example.



Truth To Power wrote:
It is also not informed by any knowledge of or experience with commodity production.



If you *persist* I'm going to start calling you an 'experientialist'.


ckaihatsu wrote:
This is *politics*, and it can be said to be just as non-productive and speculative ('proto-administrative', perhaps) as any 'contribution' of equity capital into an enterprise, since such capital investment *also* does not directly produce commodities -- capital 'enables' and 'initiates' the production process of economically exploiting wage labor, to use *your own* descriptors.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, you are just makin' $#!+ up again. It is not the production process or offering workers access to economic opportunity they would not otherwise have that enables exploitation of labor, but the forcible removal, without just compensation, of their liberty rights to access opportunity that they would otherwise have. It is therefore the owner of producer goods -- the factory -- who alleviates the condition of exclusion from access to economic opportunity and consequent material want that the landowner has imposed on the landless worker. And Marxism-socialism then, falsely and despicably, blames the factory owner, who is actually the worker's benefactor, for what the landowner has done to the worker.



I don't think you *realize* that you're assuming some kind of 'non-land-based' 'blank slate' of distributed social ownership -- like if the entire *earth* were suddenly removed and everything could just hang in mid-air, we'd have *perfect valuations*, because only factories would get capital, and also everyone started at the same time regardless of year of birth, etc. -- a *fantasy* (that I could do in 3D, for a price) (grin).

So in your equity-heaven fantasy, factory ownership would only go to the most economically deserving somehow, and everyone would agree with that, and iron would never rust, *ever again*.


ckaihatsu wrote:
My 'political' 'labor' can be equated to capital's executive-type functioning of *ownership*, and even all the way up to nationalist *administration*, if you'd like to analogize it that way. (Of course my politics are *not* nationalist, though, and are *working-class* oriented.)



Truth To Power wrote:
You seem to think that what you are doing here is in some sense a worthwhile contribution to some future production; yet you deny that the efforts of entrepreneurs, managers and investors in actually enabling current production could be worthwhile contributions to production??



That's all beside the point -- it's forest-for-the-trees, really. Corporate history, or political economy?


Truth To Power wrote:
Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that....



ckaihatsu wrote:
<absurd Marist garbage snipped>



ckaihatsu wrote:
Funny -- this is a common fallacy in political-economy, that of conflating *production*, with *consumption*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, your statements continue to be objectively and provably false. It is simply an indisputable fact of objective physical reality that consumption cannot exceed production, which must precede consumption.



The crisis of capitalism -- if you didn't get the memo -- isn't that of *scarcity*, it's that of *overproduction*, of dollar-commodities, anyway, like the famed 'petrodollar'.

So it's not about consumption-exceeding-production, it's about production-exceeding-consumption, and where-to-put-all-the-stuff, Wall-E-style. (So-to-speak -- Wikipedia gives a much better description, around *values* themselves.)



In economics, overproduction, oversupply, excess of supply or glut refers to excess of supply over demand of products being offered to the market. This leads to lower prices and/or unsold goods along with the possibility of unemployment.

The demand side equivalent is underconsumption; some consider supply and demand two sides to the same coin – excess supply is only relative to a given demand, and insufficient demand is only relative to a given supply – and thus consider overproduction and underconsumption equivalent.[1]



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



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
The two are *not* comparable at the individual scale, because the individual obviously doesn't only make what they themselves consume, and they don't only consume that which they themselves *make*.



Truth To Power wrote:
No, that is merely the usual absurd, disingenuous, concrete-bound Marxist refusal to know the fact that by producing value, one earns the right to trade for values others have produced.



But here -- seriously -- is the crux of it, so if you *can* provide some kind of treatment here, besides the status-quo 'supply-and-demand' ideology / faction / cult, then feel free to do so.


ckaihatsu wrote:
You're attempting to ratio the production of goods and services, to consumption, through the individual themselves -- these quantities *do* have to balance-out, though, at *mass* / total scales:



Truth To Power wrote:
Nope. Wrong again. They don't have to balance on any scale; consumption merely cannot exceed production. It is only the requirement of justice that production and consumption balance on the individual scale.



What about the face-values *themselves*, though -- the fussed-over 'monetary policy', or 'money supply', that took the bulk of my 30s (kidding).

What we're circling-around here, I think, is simply the *absence* of any reasonable *policy* and/or *institutions* (arguably), for contemporary political economy. We're constantly playing catch-up to the historical emergence of the *Industrial Revolution* / mass-production, in various contexts, even here, 100+ years later.


ckaihatsu wrote:
<absurd Marxist garbage snipped>



ckaihatsu wrote:
My entire post-capitalist *approach* is premised on a *detachment* (or 'divorce', to use *your* term), of (collectivist) production, from (individual) discretion over personal consumption.



Truth To Power wrote:
Which makes it irreducibly unjust and therefore evil.



Comic book cover writer is back. Fun to see.

So, anyway, to drill-down, what's here is that if the political economy is to be *egalitarian*, and primarily for the sake / ethos of *human need*, then there *can't* be the commodification of basic-need things, like food, housing, etc., because we're seeing the *complications* (to put it euphemistically) of such market-type 'hands'off' kinds of conventional approaches.


Why Rent In NYC Is Out Of Control Right Now




And:


Social Production Worldview

Spoiler: show
Image



---


ckaihatsu wrote:
This is just sheer Stalinistic *fearmongering*, here in our current era of industrial mass production and AI / automation over the same, for *massive* ratios of material productivity per unit of labor input.



Truth To Power wrote:
You forget: the fact that AI is eliminating the need for labor proves that Marx's labor-centered analysis is irrelevant garbage, and always has been.



You're still *sidestepping* the issue, which is where are people / consumers supposed to get the *money* from, in a post-work / post-wages society, to give to Equity Titan 01, for basic-cable -- ?

Ever see the movie 'Brazil' -- ?


ckaihatsu wrote:
My politics is *not* Stalinist-type specialized separatist elitist bureaucratic administration. Nice try, though.



Truth To Power wrote:
Stalinism, unlike your nonsense, at least has the merit of being implementable in practice.



(Haha.)
#15243871
ckaihatsu wrote:Then how do you explain the existence of culture-referencing creativity, as in a journalism article, or a work of art or music -- ?

People (not Marxists, of course) have the ability to create and adopt new ideas.
How did the individual's particular *selection*, and decision-making 'sub-selections' (of 'this', over 'that') take place, exactly, for the final product to be finished?

No one knows what specific molecules underwent what specific reactions to give rise to which specific thoughts, and maybe never will.
Are you really going to say that biology and nurture together definitively steer the individual to a particular *domain* of interest and work, like sports-over-music, or engineering-over-fiction -- ?

Certainly.
If so, please provide some *backing* for this claim.

Google "University of Minnesota Twins Study" and start reading.
<absurd Marxist garbage snipped>
This, though, isn't the same thing as your thesis that 'The individual is determined entirely by genetics and environment.'

There isn't anything else.
You're a *behaviorist*, 'black-box' type -- *you* think that examining all of the inputs and outputs around a person would be enough to define the person, because you effectively deny *cognition*.

No, because the genetic person has to exist before it can receive any inputs, and cognition is one of the outputs.
The physical infrastructure / what-society-produces / the 'base', is distinct from culture-or-beliefs / the superstructure:

As I said, and Marxism denies.
I'll add that complementarily, land is only an asset *economically* once *labor* (the labor commodity) has been applied, to transform the raw land into a *commodity* / private property.

No, that's just another bald falsehood from you. Unimproved land is also an asset.
My previous point stands that relief of scarcity requires *commodity production*, which capitalism does by socially organizing workers based on accumulations of equity capital.

No, because the organizing of workers and producer goods into a production system is accomplished by the private owners of the producer goods -- entrepreneurs -- not "socially."
Let's say 100,000 years. (And, it could be said that there *was* no scarcity in pre-class society because people simply lived off the land.)

No, that could not be said, except as an absurd and disingenuous Marxist fabrication. Scarcity is the permanent condition of all living organisms.
Since we're in *capitalism* now land *is* officially distinguished as an 'asset'.

But that is not relevant to the geoist system in which all have equal rights to use it.
That's not entirely true.

Yes, of course it is. The fact that you have to deny it is conclusive proof that your beliefs are objectively false.
You're not recognizing that *labor* is required to convert raw land into something *usable*, and *saleable* -- a commodity.

No, I am identifying the indisputable fact of objective physical reality that land must first BE usable before anyone can apply their labor TO it.

See how that works?
Are you saying that producer goods (physical infrastructure like factories and equipment, and/or capital) are *produced* by labor?

I've stipulated it many times -- but notice how you had to smuggle in the ambiguous term, "capital" in order to sneak in the basis for a later equivocation fallacy.
You're describing *capitalism*, of course

No I'm not. I'm identifying the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality under any system of production.
-- your politics *glorifies* the owner / executive role,

No, it only identifies the relevant fact of objective physical reality that the owner/manager/entrepreneur performs a contributory role in production.
and *any* capital-organizational role,

No, that is just another bald falsehood from you. I have stated the fact that ownership/management of privileges is not a productive contribution. Only a contribution that relieves scarcity is a contribution to production.
while such social organization for commodity production does *not* itself produce any commodities.

But it is that decision and initiative that result in production occurring rather than not occurring. You might as well falsely, stupidly and disingenuously claim that the farmer does not produce any eggs "by himself," but requires the hens to lay them. Who do you think arranges for the hens to be there in the barn in the first place, to be fed and protected from predators, to have nest boxes to lay eggs in, etc. hhhmmmm?

Give your head a shake.
The *wage laborers* are the ones who produce the actual commodities for sale by the company, for revenue, for profits.

Again, that is the same moronic Marxist filth you have already excreted multiple times. It is logically equivalent to claiming -- falsely, stupidly and disingenuously -- that the farmer does not contribute anything to egg production because the hens are the ones doing the laying.
<stupid, evil Marxist filth snipped>
What's the *alternative* -- for the factories to just *sit around* doing nothing?

Yes, if there is nothing productive for them to do. You just think you know better than the owner how a factory should be used.
How would there be 'fewer factories', really, when the ones that *exist* are not even being used to *produce* anything?

Because the ones that could produce a net increase in value rather than a net decrease won't be built.
It may as well *not* be a factory, because the ownership can't get the figures to work out properly, so then everything grinds to a halt.

And you figure some workers' committee of semi-literate machine tenders can somehow "get the figures to work out" when the owner can't? You think they can somehow make the factory's output be worth more than its inputs when the entrepreneur who built it can't?
What's the difference?

The difference is between people who are competent to make the relevant decisions and people who are not.
Let the workers do their thing, in the place that they've *been doing* their thing, so that actual production of needed commodities can *resume*.

And what happens when no one wants to buy those commodities at a price that can pay for the inputs, hmmmm?
'Steal' is really inappropriate and unkind

You mean it is accurate.
-- a worker's co-op at any given site would be for the sake of the *productive entity* first and foremost, which is certainly more / better than layoffs and scrapping the whole thing for salvage.

No it isn't. It is the entrepreneur who has created the productive entity and rightly owns it because he is the one who knows best whether it is able to produce greater value than it consumes.
Commodity production itself isn't *dependent* on entrepreneurship, as you're making it out to be --

It certainly is. SOMEONE has to plan, coordinate, and make and implement the relevant decisions to bring the production system into existence.
any given factory *could* potentially be run collectively by its workers,

Very incompetently, and only after the entrepreneur has created it.
as you're objecting to, so we both *know* that's it's logistically / realistically *possible* (without entrepreneurship).

Land already exists without labor. Factories do not. You have merely decided never to know that fact. I can only identify the facts for you. I cannot provide you with a willingness to know them.
It's not stealing if the municipality uses eminent domain to *reclaim* any unused facility, so that its *workers* can continue to run it.

Yes it is.
That said, this is merely a *tactic* and not a whole politics itself.

It's an attempt to evade reality.
For the sake of *each* of our own time and sanities let's nail-down some terminology here:

That will not be possible because you always have to replace valid economic concepts with invalid Marxist anti-concepts in order to prevent honest, accurate thought:
- 'Producer goods' means the-means-of-mass-industrial-production, or physical *workplaces*, basically, and/or the same as represented in ownership of proportionate *capital*.

See? That is false. Producer goods are products devoted to production.
- 'Labor' means 'wage labor', or those who are paid an hourly wage or salary, for their forfeiting of their work product to the employer.

See? That is false. Labor is human effort devoted to production (relief of scarcity).
Incorrect.

No, it is most definitely correct.
Any laborer hired to produce widgets will be producing *widgets* during their time at work, correct?

Not BY HIMSELF. He needs the entrepreneur/owner to provide him with raw materials, tools, a factory building, a location for the factory, a production plan, training, coordination with other workers, etc. By himself, he will indisputably produce no widgets whatsoever.
'I would know that' -- ?

*That's* your argument for how you think that managers are producers -- ?

No, that's my identification of the fact that like Marx, you do not know anything about actual production or who contributes what to it, because you have never engaged in or even witnessed it.
Again, I'll just note the thought-experiment scenario of a company that only has a managerial office, and nothing else. If this company *only* ran its managerial office it would have *zero revenue*, because running an office is an *expense* only and does not itself produce any commodities that the company can sell for revenue, for profits.

That's logically equivalent to observing that a farmer can't produce any eggs by providing a barn, feed, nest boxes, etc. in the absence of any hens, and then claiming the barn, feed, and nest boxes therefore make no contribution to egg production. It's just absurd, disingenuous Marxist filth.
You're conflating *wage* labor -- that inherently produces commodities for the company -- with *internal* 'labor', or *management*, really, which does *not* produce any commodities for the company. It's an important distinction.

No it isn't. It's nothing but a ridiculous and disingenuous Marxist anti-concept: an invalid artificial concept contrived to prevent use of a valid natural one.
(See the previous segment.)

Where you were duly demolished and humiliated for your absurd and disingenuous Marxist filth.
'Enhances' isn't the same as 'producing'.

Sure it is. And so is "enables."
You're having to make a distinction here, between 'enhancing' / 'value-added', in terms of *exchange values* / valuation / pricing, and the production *itself* -- of the company's commodity that it sells, the widgets themselves.

Labor at a firm can be divided into "line" and "staff." The notion that only line employees contribute to production is so idiotic that only a Marxist who has decided never to know any relevant facts could possibly entertain it for one second.
(See the previous segments.)

For your due demolition and humiliation.
So the distinction to be made here is 'Does the labor in question actually produce saleable commodities, or not'.

No, because that distinction is completely irrelevant, like a distinction between the labor of providing hens with feed and nest boxes and the labor of picking up the eggs from the nest boxes.
Managerial / executive / ownership / upkeep / maintenance / janitorial / internal work is all some kind of *work*, certainly, if you ask any person doing those things, but what's at-issue is whether the work is 'internal' to the business organization (company) itself, or if the work in question actually *produces saleable commodities*, as *wage* labor does, certainly.

This is the *class* distinction.

No it isn't. Class is determined by privilege, not by whether you are tending a machine, or repairing, building, designing, or ordering it.
Your *empirical* description is empirically true because of the prevailing societal practice / institution of *private property*, which could be termed as part of society's 'superstructure' -- its culture or beliefs.

No, it's true of any production system in any society.
Without the private-propertization of *land* there is no private 'real estate',

<sigh> Why can't you ever remember that Hong Kong proves you wrong about everything?
as for locating factories, and, likewise, without the private-propertization of *producer goods* / factories -- requiring companies, managers, and investors -- there is no *commodity production*, for the things that people / customers need and want.

Wrong, as hunter-gatherer economies prove.
I can perfectly *analogize* these relations formally:

land : producer goods :: producer goods : commodity production

No, that is an absurd and invalid attempt at analogy.
You're making my argument *for* me, that without control of *private property* (producer goods), workers are *dispossessed* from the means of *commodity production*,

No, I proved that "argument" is false because the workers cannot be "dispossessed" of something they would not otherwise have. You could with equal "logic" claim that if I make a ham sandwich and decline to give it to you, I am "dispossessing" you of it. It's just absurd, disingenuous and evil Marxist filth.
just as the aspiring factory owner has no avenue to controlling a factory if they're dispossessed from control of the *land* needed to *locate* that factory.

The land would otherwise have been available. The factory would not. You just have to refuse to know that fact because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.
Whatever. Maybe just keep your opinions to yourself.

It's a self-evident fact.
You're *not contending* that 'maximizing shareholder value' is the *objective* of capitalist economic activity.

Right. What would be the point?
If I'm wrong, then simply tell me if interest rates should be *raised*, or if they should be *lowered*, in general -- what does (any given) economic *theory* say about interest rates?

They should be allowed to reach the market level. It's the debt money system that makes it necessary to periodically raise and lower them to prevent positive feedback from wrecking the economy.
*More* face-values / more liquidity / larger money supply / lower interest rates / more government subsidies means more financial instruments available that can be used to leverage production of commodities, for sales, for revenue, for profits, while *fewer* face-values / less liquidity / smaller money supply / higher interest rates / no government subsidies means that 'savers', or those with pre-existing wealth, benefit.

That depends on how the money is created and for whom. Marx didn't know anything about that, so you don't, either.
In the past you used the word 'community' to refer to the system of centralized banking, or central banks --

Quote?
*that's* why I say that you're fronting social-justice / civil-society terms, when what you *really* mean is the greater monetization of face-values, or strong-currency / 'monetarist' politics.

I merely observe that a stable currency is more useful for the thing currency is used for: exchange.
Note that you're not *contending* anything that I'm saying here, so you're *forfeiting* any counter-claims.

My point stands:

Wrong. Your "point" is trash because you do not understand how the debt money system works, or how it gives rise to finance capitalism.
No, it's actually a *model* for a post-capitalist political economy, since you asked.

So, nothing but an absurd Marxist fantasy divorced from all economic reality. Check.
Think of it in terms of 'marginal utility' -- from *all* of the consumer / consumption choices available, one has to empirically prioritize those options that will provide the *most utility*, or use-values.

Which is impossible even if different people's utilities were commensurable, which they are not.
My model simply indicates the same thing, but *explicitly*, as the consumer's own formally numbered 'shopping list', listing all needed and desired items, from #1 -- most-needed -- to # *whatever*, which would be *least*-needed and *least*-desired, both.

That is what markets do, but far more efficiently, accurately, and practically.
So you're *admitting* that the institution of capitalist private property *requires* a statist monopoly on the use of force, in order to uphold the institution of private property.

Private property IN LAND. You always have to pretend there is no difference between private property in land and private property in the fruits of one's labor. And any socialist or other non-capitalist state with an economy above the hunter-gatherer and nomadic herding level also has to use force to secure exclusive land tenure, for the exact same reason.
Thanks. Now the reader can fully see what 'private property' is based on.

The reader can fully see, again, for the umpteenth time, that you have to pretend there is no difference between owning the fruits of one's labor as private property and owning others' rights to liberty.
Bullshit.

Fact.
Here's from previously:

That says nothing about VIOLENCE.
Well then where are prospective consumers supposed to get the *money* with which to make *purchases* for the things they need, if it's a 'post-work' AI world with no work and no wages -- ?

They will have just compensation for the removal of their liberty rights to use all land, including the right to secure, exclusive tenure on enough of the available advantageous land of their choice to have access to economic opportunity. In a post-labor economy, that will include access to everything they need, and purchasing power to obtain scarce things they want.
I'm saying that the private sector has *proven* itself to be incapable of *self-sustainability*, having almost gone-under in 2008-2009, and then again in 2020. Government bailouts to the private sector means that private-equity-type valuations *alone* aren't enough, because if they *were* then there wouldn't have had to be *bailouts* -- and the same applies to any possible future 'post-work' world, as well.

You are absurdly claiming that a unique historical situation is the same as every possible other situation. Finance capitalism is inherently unstable. That doesn't mean the private sector per se is. Hello?
Cute. Yeah, again, just keep your opinions to yourself.

It's a fact.
You're not contending my statement, so my point stands that you're just *naysaying*.

Observing that your plan has always failed in the past is not "naysaying."
Your *entire* 'geoist' politics is situated on the argument that lessened real estate availability is an empirical *hindrance* to the interests of equity capital

No it isn't. It's situated on the FACT that factories do not otherwise exist, while land does.
-- my point *stands* that you think all social values are derived from *real estate* valuations. (Also because *you* think of the 'community' as being the system of *central banks*.)

Both of those views are bald fabrications on your part.
Equity and rentier capital values are not all obtained through one's own personal efforts, though --

Irrelevant. Obtaining a land title or slave deed through one's personal efforts still abrogates others' rights, while obtaining a factory by inheritance or in a poker game does not.
*inheritance* is a huge factor in how the well-off became well-off from birth.

Inheritance of privilege, not factories.
This means that the realm of private property is *detached*, and *abstracted* from personages themselves, and capital valuations are *not* a meritocratic mirror-image of their owners, as you'd *like* it to be, according to your 'equity-heaven' utopian idealism.

The value of producer goods is in fact a measure of their owners' contributions to production.
If, instead, you mean to indicate *wages*, from *wage labor*, then you should use the term 'wages' for that.

No. Wages are just money obtained in voluntary exchange for one's property rights in the fruits of one's labor.
No, you're thinking of 'value-added',

No I'm not.
which has to do with capital valuations outside of the production process itself, according to the post-production dynamics of overall supply-and-demand.

Marxist gibberish.
(An example would be sending a shipment to the customer in *4* days instead of in 7 days, which has nothing to do with the *production* of the commodity / shipment itself.)

Wrong again. The customer gets it three days earlier, increasing its value to him.
I'm going to recommend that you not-concern yourself with 'surplus labor value' at this point,

Because I have identified it for the absurd and disingenuous contrivance it is.
and instead just concentrate on 'labor value' itself -- that which the labor commodity provides through the commodity-production process itself.

Marxist gibberish.
I happened to see it in a recent video -- it's at 3:53:

<absurd Marxist garbage snipped>
You're being too vague to make any point here. You may want to explain what you mean.

I have been rubbing your nose in them.
A synonym for 'society' is 'the total human population on the face of the earth'

Wrong.
-- and, yes, production *does* happen.

But it is performed by specific individuals and groups, not "society."
No, it hasn't,

Yes it has.
because 'private [property]' implies land / real-estate as a *commodity*,

No it doesn't. There was private property in the fruits of one's labor before land was ever appropriated as private property.
and social production has *not* always taken place for the sake of producing commodities.

There is no such thing as social production.
Commodity production is a function of *capitalism* only, and is basically *synonymous* with it.

No, that is baldly false. Commodities are produced in all economies.
Again you're having to make a *distinction* here

No, you are trying to make an invalid one.
-- ownership and management 'enable' and 'initiate' production, which is *not* the same thing as actually producing commodities, which is what only *wage labor* does.

No, enabling and initiating production -- making the products exist rather than not exist -- IS actually producing commodities, which is why the farmer is the one producing the eggs even though it is the hens that actually lay them.
Allow me to rephrase: If capital does not enable and initiate the production of new commodities, for new commodity values -- for whatever reason -- then it's functionally *inert* and is as good as a lump of clay in the ground that hasn't been sourced by human labor yet.

No, because it is still a product of human labor and rightly owned by its producer, unlike a natural resource.
(Thanks for honestly tacitly acknowledging that debt / finance isn't the same thing as equity or rentier values.)

To bad you can't find a willingness to know the fact that privilege is not the same as production.
Actually, it *can*

No it can't.
-- it's better-known by the term 'biological human reproduction',

Equivocation fallacy. Potential workers are called, "labor," but they are not the same thing as human effort devoted to relief of scarcity.
and 'socialization', as in getting younger people ready for the workplace, through education, training, and experience.

Same equivocation fallacy.
No, the present-day U.S. military-industrial complex is an *excellent* example of 'big government', or the bloated non-commodity-producing bureaucracy / state that capitalism unavoidably relies on. It's also called 'military Keynesianism', or 'military syndicalism'.

Still irrelevant because I am not defending capitalism.
#15251485
From OP: "A society which is based on altruism is called socialism."

I consider myself a socialist and I don't think you are correct - though we are all ignorant and I may be wrong.

We know altruism is "selfless concern for the well-being of others" - I think that your idea is balderdash.

I believe it is wanting the best for yourself and family - not selfishness - just treating people as though family.

Wokery is how the Left have gone to extreme - totally over the top e.g. BAME only jobs are bad as white only.

New Labour are not socialists - Thatcher called them her greatest achievement - and still Labour MPs don't get it.

New Labour are neoliberal globalists that are clearly worsening social mobility for British working class kids.

How am I wrong?
#15251520
ckaihatsu wrote:All right!

Any faves to pass along?

I happen to like Wilde a lot, so that's my go-to:

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


My favorite socialists, are Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Jack London, and many many more. Erich Fromm is the one who's philosophy I think is the best in describing why he is a socialist. It is about mental and emotional maturity and health.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_d ... socialists

Some recent ones:

Politicians
Salvador Allende, President of Chile (1970–1973)
Jacobo Árbenz, President of Guatemala (1951–1954)
Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1945–1951)
Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile (2006–2010; 2014–2018)
David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel (1948–1954; 1955–1963)

People who do not understand socialism? A lot. Too many messages about every socialist is a dictator in waiting and socialism is dangerous. Only capitalism is about freedom and democracy. It is all not true. But? That is what the capitalist want the message to mean. That these people are dangerous. They are crazy. And stupid. Or they are radicals threatening our society of peaceful profitmongering. Lol. No. The truth is without socialist programs? Capitalism would have been so hated by the vast working classes that the capitalists would have been run out of government long long ago.

We don't need these programs like food stamps, public housing, and social security. Well, then. Get rid of them and see if you survive the fury.

You won't. Capitalists would prefer to pay no one any pensions and have the old people beg their family members for food every month. That is what happens here in Mexico. Old people who work their whole lives and until recently had to be begging for food from their other family members. If you don't have a developed system with some older people who worked for fifty years allowed to live with minimal needs met? Can you call yourself a civilized society? Or are people just commodities? To be used and abused without any mercy? Work without any rights. Without dignity. Without a place in society.

There are vast variations of socialism. From Christian socialists, to international socialists, to democratic socialists, to scientific socialists, to utopian socialists and to think you know a lot of people who practice true socialism and are really just sellout liberals who love payoffs? Is deceitful.

Socialism has been hijacked by a lot of people who are unethical, bloody, violent dictators and they don't want to do the work involved in working on policies that work for their own countries. They just are fascists in disguise.

National socialists are fascists. They are incredibly different from international socialists. In which way? Very important differences.

National Socialism and socialism are two different political ideologies that first emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. Socialism advocates for the equal distribution of wealth across all social classes, while National Socialism is more focused on building pride in the special abilities of the Aryan race, rather than solving the long-standing problem of inequality.


Read more: The Differences between Socialism and National Socialism | Difference Between http://www.differencebetween.net/miscel ... z7iBQIIylY

That is the issue right there. The problem of inequality.

It is not about Master Race and only Germany, only USA, only whatever. Forget that crap! It is a lie. Racial purities and class privileges and no real commitment to solving the inequality problems. If people really believe that somehow they are the better race, class, social ranking, creed, religion, and so on? Then they come up with crazy schemes to deny the rights of others to life, dignified work that pays a living wage, housing, education, health, and a future. Deny them that. They are Mexican and from the lower classes, or not supposed to be here. Or from the wrong religion, the wrong sex, the wrong something. Wrong language, wrong culture, etc. It is for the people who want everything, easy folks. Because dealing with differences is hard. It always has been. But it is nature's way. Nature is about variation in people. Accept that or realize you are not respecting facts.

The differences are important.
Last edited by Tainari88 on 19 Oct 2022 18:05, edited 2 times in total.
#15251521
Tainari88 wrote:
My favorite socialists, are Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Ghandi, Martin Luther King Jr, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Jack London, and many many more. Erich Fromm is the one who's philosophy I think is the best in describing why he is a socialist. It is about mental and emotional maturity and health.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_d ... socialists

Some recent ones:

Politicians
Salvador Allende, President of Chile (1970–1973)
Jacobo Árbenz, President of Guatemala (1951–1954)
Clement Attlee, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1945–1951)
Michelle Bachelet, President of Chile (2006–2010; 2014–2018)
David Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel (1948–1954; 1955–1963)



Uh, Tainari, do you realize that a *Zionist* is on that list -- ?

I think that shows you the limitations of *social democracy* if an oppressive racist settler-colonial state -- and the U.S., too, for that matter -- are able to just *mow over* the indigenous populations, respectively, for their 'blank slates' of property availability.
#15251525
ckaihatsu wrote:Uh, Tainari, do you realize that a *Zionist* is on that list -- ?

I think that shows you the limitations of *social democracy* if an oppressive racist settler-colonial state -- and the U.S., too, for that matter -- are able to just *mow over* the indigenous populations, respectively, for their 'blank slates' of property availability.


I do know that. I also know Jews were super traumatized after WWII and being rejected and turned over to the Nazis by many governments. I frankly have the view that they internalized the violence of the German Third Reich and instead of realizing what Palestineans were being subjected to? Became zealots in their need for an independent nation. Chris, Hebrew was DEAD as a language. Do you know what it takes to revive a dead language and to reconstruct some dead traditions from nothing?

That issue of Israel is super difficult. I am on the side of Palestine. Because the bottom line is you need equal human rights. Not Zionist nationalism. But go and tell a Jew that when everybody in their hour of need with the extermination camps was saying [NO] to them?

They hyper-militarized and became what they are now. Oppressive and intolerant.

One has to rise above such oppression not to become an oppressor, but to be a seeker of humane government and justice.

It is complicated as hell Chris.

I am not an expert on the Middle East or Israel. I hope you enlighten a bit Chris eh?
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