Basic economics for Democrats/Socialists

[Curried Goats]

The foundation is there. But this thread is about economics, not "rights" as a concept. If it were, we would talk past each other. You believe that "rights" only exist when granted by government. I believe that government cannot grant rights, but only protect rights, and grant privileges, powers, license, subsidy, etc.

That is the beginning and end of our debate on rights as far as basic economics goes. You brought up rights, not I.

This is demonstrably inaccurate. I can quote the portion of your reply to me where you argue the islanders would be within their right to stop someone from picking all the fruit, again, if you like.

If you start a thread titled, "Rights only come from Government," maybe in the ethics section, I will join in the fray. It sounds fun.

Then what is the point of this thread? Seemed as if you wanted to start a discussion about how wrong progressives are and now you don't want to talk about what you mean by wrong.

Yes, and I know that there were zero houses on the Island, and now there is one. There is also effectively unlimited opportunity for the people to build their own.

As far as whether it is better to have a home than not have a home, I do know that the overwhelming majority of them would prefer to have a home. There may be some that prefer the natural existence or are not interested in doing the work to create a home. In that case, for them there is no scarcity, certainly not a scarcity of shade caused by curring down a few of thousands of trees.

What does it matter if there were zero houses before? The other islanders didn't gain a house, they lost shared resources.

That people tend to act in their own interests by acquiring material possessions is a key principle of economics. Particularly in Marxist economics which are entirely materialistic. Historically it has only been when Marxism failed that the people who established it have announced that "materialism" is a bad thing and that we should all pursue more spiritual. The promise of Marxist revolutionaries is never that production will be minimized and we will "return" to a spiritual relationship to nature. The promise is that production will continue as before, or even improve under the wise guidance of worker committees and that the workers will receive the wealth created instead of the parasitical capitialists.

You keep wanting to deviate to strawman Marxist arguments but you can't even manage to make your own argument consistent.

I proved their gain above with math, also: 1 House > 0 Houses.

How is it their gain when they have no access to the house which is now private property?

They did not have one hundred acres of land. If they can be said to have "had" the land, then prior to the first European/English settlement, they had 1.9 Billion acres of land in the area that became the current United States. By the time they were fully confined to reservations, or living as racial minorities in the White United States, there was plenty of unused land left, expecially given how much smaller their numbers were by then.

And here you explain clearly that private property cannot be forged without force. This is why it's always a negotiation. The more force you're able to wield the less you have to negotiate.

Their near-genocide was not at all caused by famers taking up too much of their land, it was caused - as nearly all human misery is caused - by government incompetence or malevelance.

I'm not arguing what caused their genocide I'm explaining to you how private property comes into existence.

Yes, I do see the problem. I'll discuss that shortly.

Yes, I have made that argument about boxing people in also. Government would grant the use of property, but would also enforce an easement for people to walk through it if that were the only way to leave a given area.

I would argue that it isn't a "right" that government grants to land, but rather an agreement that a person can treat land as if it were his private property, the same as if he had created it. That is a privilege, a license called a deed, not a right. The "right" to own land is a legal fiction, but one which is often very beneficial to many people.

In otherwords it's a social construct, a negotiation.

On my hypothetical island, the house builder probably doesn't think of the land as his, even if he correctly believes that the house is his. If the rainy season comes, and his house floods, because he didn't think of that possibility, he will just move it to another spot, not lament that "his" land isn't suitable for building.

And in this useless scenario everything is possible becuase it's the land of make believe. I care less about these hypothetical stories and more about what you mean by the property is correctly his. You never did answer my question way back about whether he owned the wood he used to build it.

Interesting. I had always thought that the government of Nazi Germany, for example, took away rights from Jews in Europe. The Jews actually had no rights except those they negotiated with government?

To the 6 million Jews the Nazi killed explain to me what tangible benefit a right to life afforded them. I don't know what you mean by a right to life. What is that? You either are alive or you aren't.

 

[Seymour Flops]

This is demonstrably inaccurate. I can quote the portion of your reply to me where you argue the islanders would be within their right to stop someone from picking all the fruit, again, if you like.

Show me the quote. IIRC, I said that they would "be right to do it," not that they would "have a right to do it."

Then what is the point of this thread? Seemed as if you wanted to start a discussion about how wrong progressives are and now you don't want to talk about what you mean by wrong.

Yes, and I don't want to talk about what the definition of "is" is either.

What does it matter if there were zero houses before? The other islanders didn't gain a house, they lost shared resources.

It matters a lot to both the math and the psychology. The tiny loss of one tree out of thousands did not affect the Islanders' quality of life in the slightest, by any measure that I can think of. But their neighbor having a house and them not did. I would have either made them envious and unhappy, or hopeful of having their own house and happy after they built it.

Probably it would be a mix of reactions between the two, depending on each of their mindset. Which mindset would be more likely held by a modern Marxist?

You keep wanting to deviate to strawman Marxist arguments but you can't even manage to make your own argument consistent.

How is it their gain when they have no access to the house which is now private property?

And here you explain clearly that private property cannot be forged without force. This is why it's always a negotiation. The more force you're able to wield the less you have to negotiate.

Of course. If you read further down, that use of force without the need for negotiation is exactly how prototypical governments were formed in the first place.

Post # 38. I guess that you could say that the home builder is only holding onto his home by force. If the envious islanders joined forces to take the house away from the house builder, that would also be a proto-government.

But their motivation for turning on their fellow islander would be that envy, not anger that he had taken one tree out of the forest for his house. The tree cannot be put back, so they are not going to attack him over the tree. But they very well might attack him to take his house away. No doubt they'd say "now this house belongs to us all, as it should!" Then the strongest one of them would move in, carefully guarded by his most loyal seconds. "It is the people's headquarters, and I have accepted the burden of maintaining it," he would say.

I'm not arguing what caused their genocide I'm explaining to you how private property comes into existence.

In otherwords it's a social construct, a negotiation.

Private property (other than land) can be created by an individual who has no human contact at all. But, you are right in that it would be meaningless in the absence of others to recognize that private property. Assuming that the islanders are naked, and have no tools or any other possessions, it is possible that the very simple house may be the first thing that they have ever seen that is not available to all.

But I would argue that living such a simple life is more animal like that human. Owning possessions is a key difference between us and other animals, even though there are a few examples of animals acting to protect their "property."

And in this useless scenario everything is possible becuase it's the land of make believe. I care less about these hypothetical stories and more about what you mean by the property is correctly his. You never did answer my question way back about whether he owned the wood he used to build it.

Yes, he gained it when he found it and picked it up for his own use. If he walked by his fellow islanders with it and they did not protest, and they did not yell, "what are you doing with our wood?" when he started to alter it into a house, then the negotiation process you speak of was complete.

To the 6 million Jews the Nazi killed explain to me what tangible benefit a right to life afforded them. I don't know what you mean by a right to life. What is that? You either are alive or you aren't.

It was you who said rights come only from negotiating with government. The Jews negotiated their right to life away if you are correct. So they had no right to life to give them a tangible benefit.

 

[Curried Goats]

Show me the quote. IIRC, I said that they would "be right to do it," not that they would "have a right to do it."

Let's assume that is what you said for the sake of brevity, what does right mean in this context?

Yes, and I don't want to talk about what the definition of "is" is either.

It matters a lot to both the math and the psychology. The tiny loss of one tree out of thousands did not affect the Islanders' quality of life in the slightest, by any measure that I can think of.

This is a confusing statement because you both acknowledge a loss and then deny any loss.

But their neighbor having a house and them not did. I would have either made them envious and unhappy, or hopeful of having their own house and happy after they built it.

Again I'm less interested in what you can imagine than what can be objectively proven, like the tiny loss of some trees.

Probably it would be a mix of reactions between the two, depending on each of their mindset. Which mindset would be more likely held by a modern Marxist?

Your scenario is useless for understanding Marxism because it is the complete opposite of the real world. In your imagined world nothing is scarce and so you can build a house and I can build a bigger house and the next guy can build a bigger house and on and on and on and we would never run out of land and wood. That's not the real world. In the real world everything is scarce because conditions are never static. River beds dry up, animals migrate, season's change, disease destroys crops and livestock. We are in a constant war against nature and our own biological needs. We can either attempt to overcome them by ourselves or as a group but you aren't entitled to anything not even the fruits of your own labor. That you must negotiate with those around you.

Of course. If you read further down, that use of force without the need for negotiation is exactly how prototypical governments were formed in the first place.

There's always negotiation it's just that not everyone is always included in the negotiations. Typically those without power. They still had to negotiate among themselves.

Post # 38. I guess that you could say that the home builder is only holding onto his home by force. If the envious islanders joined forces to take the house away from the house builder, that would also be a proto-government.

Not I guess, you can do better than that. He either is or he isn't. Private property can only originally be obtained through force or agreement with those around you.

But their motivation for turning on their fellow islander would be that envy, not anger that he had taken one tree out of the forest for his house.

This is supposition. If we're doing supposition then some would be angry he took their favorite tree, some would be envious, some wouldn't care, the point is telling people you're entitled to anything (even the fruits of your own labor) isn't going to cut it, you're going to have to convince them.

The tree cannot be put back, so they are not going to attack him over the tree. But they very well might attack him to take his house away. No doubt they'd say "now this house belongs to us all, as it should!" Then the strongest one of them would move in, carefully guarded by his most loyal seconds. "It is the people's headquarters, and I have accepted the burden of maintaining it," he would say.

Enter fiefdoms, kingdoms, empires and governments.

Private property (other than land) can be created by an individual who has no human contact at all. But, you are right in that it would be meaningless in the absence of others to recognize that private property. Assuming that the islanders are naked, and have no tools or any other possessions, it is possible that the very simple house may be the first thing that they have ever seen that is not available to all.

But I would argue that living such a simple life is more animal like that human. Owning possessions is a key difference between us and other animals, even though there are a few examples of animals acting to protect their "property."

What separates us from other animals aren't possessions or hierarchies, it's our ability to imagine the possible. We can look at trees and imagine a house.

Yes, he gained it when he found it and picked it up for his own use. If he walked by his fellow islanders with it and they did not protest, and they did not yell, "what are you dont with our wood?" when he started to alter it into a house, then the negotiation process you speak of was complete.

Negotiations are never complete, if they were he wouldn't have people beating down his door and factory owners would never be in threat of revolting workers.

That kind of question is intended to avoid debate, not further it.

No it was an honest and sincere question. What is the right to life? Explain it to me. What are it's shapes and dimensions? What tangible existence does it possess? Where does it come from?

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Can you provide any examples?
Has Bezos been excluded from having any control over Amazon?

High IQ Hackers Can Make the Orangutan Owners Pay for Their Exploitation

The fact that college is work without pay, which is an insult to intelligence, taking away the motivated drive of the intelligence. That is followed by the grand larceny of corporate patents, which its slavishness sets up. Wimpy nerd pushovers who put up with both ought to be driven to suicide.

Bezos didn't invent selling books. It is the ultimate in slavish ignorance to think that these parasites who own things must be the real productive geniuses. Steve Jobs is another example of that jealousy towards the human sources of creativity. Those are two of what your ilk would call examples, so you're too stupid and pushy to believe any real examples.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Let's assume that is what you said for the sake of brevity, what does right mean in this context?

The standard definition, same as I will use if I do mention “rights.” I don’t want to get bogged down in a lengthy discussion of what is and is not a right.

This is a confusing statement because you both acknowledge a loss and then deny any loss.

There is no significant loss. No loss great enough to have a noticeable effect on economics. By your logic, when I breathe, I take oxygen from the others. But there is plenty of oxygen, so it doesn’t matter. There is no economics of oxygen. Someday there might be, but not now.

Again I'm less interested in what you can imagine than what can be objectively proven, like the tiny loss of some trees.

Your scenario is useless for understanding Marxism because it is the complete opposite of the real world. In your imagined world nothing is scarce and so you can build a house and I can build a bigger house and the next guy can build a bigger house and on and on and on and we would never run out of land and wood.

Actually, that is the real world. Not meaning you, but I think that many progressives do not get that there is plenty of land and plenty of wood in the world. On their college campus, they typically see many spindly trees supported by braces and plastic binding, with one old magnificent oak to remind them of what trees “used to be” like.

If they would take a drive to the country, and look up from their screens, they would see that trees cover the Earth in great abundance. It is only recently that the United States had more area of cattle grazing land than forest.

The Ukraine alone could feed the whole world with modern farming methods. So why would there ever be hunger? Not because we ran out of land, or because farmers forgot how to grow food on it. Definitely not because people are hogging farmland, and not growing food on it. Bad government, not bad production, creates famine.

That's not the real world. In the real world everything is scarce because conditions are never static. River beds dry up, animals migrate, season's change, disease destroys crops and livestock. We are in a constant war against nature and our own biological needs.

Yes, and left on our own, without interference from people who want to stop us from being productive, we will win handily. Not because we are so smart, but because we have thousands of years of cumulative knowledge. The resources are there, the knowledge is there, the motivation is there.

It breaks down when someone - namely some form of government - decides to take away one or more of those elements.

We can either attempt to overcome them by ourselves or as a group but you aren't entitled to anything not even the fruits of your own labor. That you must negotiate with those around you.

I believe that one is entitled to the fruits of one’s own labor. But I don’t know how to prove it. So, maybe on some philosophical level they are not. There is no right and wrong, it is just what we agree on in negotiations. Sake of argument, let’s say so for the rest of the thread.

So, we negotiate and the people around me have all the power in the negotations since they far outnumber me. The result of the negotiation is that if I build a house, grow food, grow cotton and spin and weave and sew to make clothes, invent and build heating and cooling for the house, and build a swimming pool, people who spent that whole time napping and masturbating are just as entitled to live in the house, swim in the pool, and wear the clothes as I am.

Clearly that is indeed the attitude of modern progressives. Fine, so be it.

How sustainable is that system, though? Am I really going to wake up every day and say, “Wow, even more people moved in while I was asleep! I better invent a lighting system so I can work the farm at night as well as the day, since I’ll have more people who will be eating the food I grow.”

No, of course not. The first time I build something and it gets taken away in that kind of negotiation with the non-producers, guess what my next production will be will be? Either it will be no production at all, because I say ”screw that,” or it will be weapons with which to protect what I create from the takers.

Your idea of communal ownership of produced goods take away the vital element of motivation. Government, if it is to be of any benefit at all, would need to focus on protecting me from the loss of my produced goods to the mob. That would motivate me to keep producing. The government’s assisting the populace in taking it from me instead of protecting my ability to keep it, would have a detrimental effect in that I will stop producing food and housing.

There's always negotiation it's just that not everyone is always included in the negotiations. Typically those without power. They still had to negotiate among themselves.

Not I guess, you can do better than that. He either is or he isn't. Private property can only originally be obtained through force or agreement with those around you.

Not originally obtained. If a guy makes a tree into a house, there is no force or negotiation required for that. The possibility of force or negotiation with force to back up one or both sides only comes when the others decide it would be easier to take the house from the builder than to build their own. Again, a very common Marxist/socialist/progressive thought process.

This is supposition. If we're doing supposition then some would be angry he took their favorite tree, some would be envious, some wouldn't care, the point is telling people you're entitled to anything (even the fruits of your own labor) isn't going to cut it, you're going to have to convince them.

Enter fiefdoms, kingdoms, empires and governments.

As I mentioned in post # 38.

What separates us from other animals aren't possessions or hierarchies, it's our ability to imagine the possible. We can look at trees and imagine a house.

Negotiations are never complete, if they were he wouldn't have people beating down his door and factory owners would never be in threat of revolting workers.

Let the workers revolt and take the factory. How long will they sustain it? What evidence is there that a mob of workers can run a factory as well as factory owners and the managers that they hire? I suppose the workers could “negotiate” with the managers to stay on and manage the factory without the owners. But would not those workers revolt against the managers if the managers did not give them raises? No, workers don’t revolt to put someone else over them, and make the same wages. They revolt so they can be rich like the owners.

Nurses could revolt against doctors and throw them out of the Hospital. They have more training in medicine than a factory worker has in factory management. Would you select that Hospital for your own treatment, the one where the doctors were thrown out?

Suppose the workers did successfully run the factory. They make ten thousand ball bearings to fulfill an order from an engine factory. They proudly deliver and ask for payment. The motor factory managers say, “send us a bill, we’ll get right on that, LoL!” and never pay. Now the workers can either learn to eat ball bearings, or they will have to find some other way to feed themselves.

No it was an honest and sincere question. What is the right to life? Explain it to me. What are it's shapes and dimensions? What tangible existence does it possess? Where does it come from?

Great discussion idea! Seriously, the supposed right to life is violated constantly, with increasingly creative justification. So do we really even believe in it? If you start a thread on that, I will participate for sure.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

No, my point is that technology disrupts the economy so why should these cycles exist? What did automobiles do to horses? What happened to the farmland raising food for the 100,000 horses in NYC in the 1890s?

Maybe the changing technology created the cycles and they just happened to be 80 years. But how could WWI and WWII not be factors on the cycles? Maybe these cycles are someone's delusions based on coincidence.

Astrology Economics

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

If it's true that history moves in 80 year cycles and each cycle is divided into 4 phases defined by each generation and tied to the seasons of the year, perhaps technological change contributes its share to the economic disruptions that lead to wars like WWI and WWII?

https://www.clientfirstcap.com/posts/a-2021-look-at-the-fourth-turning#:~:text=The%20end%20of%20the%20cycle,Millennial%20generation%20takes%20the%20wheel

"Most importantly, in each human life cycle, society goes through four major turning events as each generation passes from one phase to the next.

"These four phases are High, Awakening, Unraveling and Crisis.

"Howe has tied these phases to season of the year.

"The Awakening is the summer while the Crisis is the winter and the unraveling (fall) and High (spring) are the transition seasons..."

"If the fourth turning does lead to a reset by 2026, we need to be prepared for disruption on a mass scale.

"Permanent changes in our culture and the markets are happening, causing uncertainty across the board.

"Some predict that we will see a transformation led by millennials to defund Government led initiatives such as Medicare, social security and pensions and grow the community side of the government."

No One Has a Right to Any of His Father's Wealth, Property, Position, or Influence

Hereditary power dominates the economic structure and is the well-hidden reason for its decline since the 1950s. That gets more dominant and more destructive each generation, with birth blocking worth in more and more positions.

Imagine if athlete were given the common privilege of passing on their positions to their sons. Year by year, pro sports would get worse and would end up being a joke. If you believe in inheritance, the joke's on you.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

The rich conspire to prevent sale of quality or durable consumer goods forcing repeat purchases, manufacturing, installation, recycling & disposal to keep their profits flowing.

"It's Not a Job; It's a Position"

They have no right to their jobs, gotten through Daddy buying them a generic education or by forcing no-talent brown-noses to do the same. They have to cheat because lack of natural talent no longer excludes anyone from high economic positions.

Every time we hear about conspiracies or dishonesty, it's a cover-up for Low-IQs being jealous of High IQs and dismissing them as being a factor in economic growth. The usual tired and irrelevant solution put forward, , getting ethical people in those positions, will change nothing about the shoddiness of American production run by college graduates instead of those who got us economic dominance before by starting at the blue-collar level and working their way up to the top.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

The standard definition, same as I will use if I do mention “rights.” I don’t want to get bogged down in a lengthy discussion of what is and is not a right.

There is no significant loss. No loss great enough to have a noticeable effect on economics. By your logic, when I breathe, I take oxygen from the others. But there is plenty of oxygen, so it doesn’t matter. There is no economics of oxygen. Someday there might be, but not now.

Actually, that is the real world. Not meaning you, but I think that many progressives do not get that there is plenty of land and plenty of wood in the world. On their college campus, they typically see many spindly trees supported by braces and plastic binding, with one old magnificent oak to remind them of what trees “used to be” like.

If they would take a drive to the country, and look up from their screens, they would see that trees cover the Earth in great abundance. It is only recently that the United States had more area of cattle grazing land than forest.

The Ukraine alone could feed the whole world with modern farming methods. So why would there ever be hunger? Not because we ran out of land, or because farmers forgot how to grow food on it. Definitely not because people are hogging farmland, and not growing food on it. Bad government, not bad production, creates famine.

Yes, and left on our own, without interference from people who want to stop us from being productive, we will win handily. Not because we are so smart, but because we have thousands of years of cumulative knowledge. The resources are there, the knowledge is there, the motivation is there.

It breaks down when someone - namely some form of government - decides to take away one or more of those elements.

I believe that one is entitled to the fruits of one’s own labor. But I don’t know how to prove it. So, maybe on some philosophical level they are not. There is no right and wrong, it is just what we agree on in negotiations. Sake of argument, let’s say so for the rest of the thread.

So, we negotiate and the people around me have all the power in the negotations since they far outnumber me. The result of the negotiation is that if I build a house, grow food, grow cotton and spin and weave and sew to make clothes, invent and build heating and cooling for the house, and build a swimming pool, people who spent that whole time napping and masturbating are just as entitled to live in the house, swim in the pool, and wear the clothes as I am.

Clearly that is indeed the attitude of modern progressives. Fine, so be it.

How sustainable is that system, though? Am I really going to wake up every day and say, “Wow, even more people moved in while I was asleep! I better invent a lighting system so I can work the farm at night as well as the day, since I’ll have more people who will be eating the food I grow.”

No, of course not. The first time I build something and it gets taken away in that kind of negotiation with the non-producers, guess what my next production will be will be? Either it will be no production at all, because I say ”screw that,” or it will be weapons with which to protect what I create from the takers.

Your idea of communal ownership of produced goods take away the vital element of motivation. Government, if it is to be of any benefit at all, would need to focus on protecting me from the loss of my produced goods to the mob. That would motivate me to keep producing. The government’s assisting the populace in taking it from me instead of protecting my ability to keep it, would have a detrimental effect in that I will stop producing food and housing.

Not originally obtained. If a guy makes a tree into a house, there is no force or negotiation required for that. The possibility of force or negotiation with force to back up one or both sides only comes when the others decide it would be easier to take the house from the builder than to build their own. Again, a very common Marxist/socialist/progressive thought process.

As I mentioned in post # 38.

Let the workers revolt and take the factory. How long will they sustain it? What evidence is there that a mob of workers can run a factory as well as factory owners and the managers that they hire? I suppose the workers could “negotiate” with the managers to stay on and manage the factory without the owners. But would not those workers revolt against the managers if the managers did not give them raises? No, workers don’t revolt to put someone else over them, and make the same wages. They revolt so they can be rich like the owners.

Nurses could revolt against doctors and throw them out of the Hospital. They have more training in medicine than a factory worker has in factory management. Would you select that Hospital for your own treatment, the one where the doctors were thrown out?

Suppose the workers did successfully run the factory. They make ten thousand ball bearings to fulfill an order from an engine factory. They proudly deliver and ask for payment. The motor factory managers say, “send us a bill, we’ll get right on that, LoL!” and never pay. Now the workers can either learn to eat ball bearings, or they will have to find some other way to feed themselves.

Great discussion idea! Seriously, the supposed right to life is violated constantly, with increasingly creative justification. So do we really even believe in it? If you start a thread on that, I will participate for sure.

The Smug Conceit of Suitcoated Bozos

Someone using the same snobbish fantasies you do would object to people owning stock, "Because they would demand that all profits go to dividends, leaving the business with a fatal cash-flow problem. They would eat the seed corn."

 

[Curried Goats]

The standard definition, same as I will use if I do mention “rights.” I don’t want to get bogged down in a lengthy discussion of what is and is not a right.

I thought you said you weren't talking about what is and is not a right but about what would be right or some such. See why we need clear definitions? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Why would the islanders be right to stop someone from taking all the fruit, be clear or use a different argument.

There is no significant loss. No loss great enough to have a noticeable effect on economics.

I didn't ask you to give me your opinion on how much of a loss you thought it was, I was merely wondering whether you could acknowledge that something was lost. It seems you have though you kicked and dragged your feet the entire way.

By your logic, when I breathe, I take oxygen from the others. But there is plenty of oxygen, so it doesn’t matter. There is no economics of oxygen. Someday there might be, but not now.

It would matter if they started having trouble breathing.

Actually, that is the real world. Not meaning you, but I think that many progressives do not get that there is plenty of land and plenty of wood in the world. On their college campus, they typically see many spindly trees supported by braces and plastic binding, with one old magnificent oak to remind them of what trees “used to be” like.

In the real world no one desperate is traveling to Timbuktu out of respect for your stuff just because you promise there's more stuff to be had in a place they have no reasonable way to access. If private entities have claimed all the resources in the area and they don't have the power to keep the desperate at bay they will have to renegotiate.

If they would take a drive to the country, and look up from their screens, they would see that trees cover the Earth in great abundance. It is only recently that the United States had more area of cattle grazing land than forest.

If landowners look up and see the masses gathering with pitchforks they might want to consider negotiating.

The Ukraine alone could feed the whole world with modern farming methods. So why would there ever be hunger? Not because we ran out of land, or because farmers forgot how to grow food on it. Definitely not because people are hogging farmland, and not growing food on it. Bad government, not bad production, creates famine.

Also natural events cause famine but that's besides the point.

Yes, and left on our own, without interference from people who want to stop us from being productive, we will win handily. Not because we are so smart, but because we have thousands of years of cumulative knowledge. The resources are there, the knowledge is there, the motivation is there.

Everyone loses against nature eventually.

It breaks down when someone - namely some form of government - decides to take away one or more of those elements.

You keep trying to shoehorn success and failure but people succeed and fail for all sorts of reasons not just laziness.

I believe that one is entitled to the fruits of one’s own labor. But I don’t know how to prove it. So, maybe on some philosophical level they are not. There is no right and wrong, it is just what we agree on in negotiations. Sake of argument, let’s say so for the rest of the thread.

Finally. Jesus Christ that took you long to admit.

So, we negotiate and the people around me have all the power in the negotations since they far outnumber me. The result of the negotiation is that if I build a house, grow food, grow cotton and spin and weave and sew to make clothes, invent and build heating and cooling for the house, and build a swimming pool, people who spent that whole time napping and masturbating are just as entitled to live in the house, swim in the pool, and wear the clothes as I am.

You either suck at negotiation or you need more friends.

Clearly that is indeed the attitude of modern progressives. Fine, so be it.

No. That's just reality my guy. I didn't invent it, I just recognize it for what it is.

How sustainable is that system, though? Am I really going to wake up every day and say, “Wow, even more people moved in while I was asleep! I better invent a lighting system so I can work the farm at night as well as the day, since I’ll have more people who will be eating the food I grow.”

Probably not. I wouldn't.

No, of course not. The first time I build something and it gets taken away in that kind of negotiation with the non-producers, guess what my next production will be will be? Either it will be no production at all, because I say ”screw that,” or it will be weapons with which to protect what I create from the takers.

Okay. I'm not arguing that isn't your likely response. It would be mine too. Ideally you want to form a society with like minded individuals who share your values but more than that you have to be cognizant of whether more and more people are failing in your society and take measures to mitigate that, whether it's assistance, violence or whatever. If not you can't really be surprised when they show up with pitchforks to take your shit.

Your idea of communal ownership of produced goods take away the vital element of motivation. Government, if it is to be of any benefit at all, would need to focus on protecting me from the loss of my produced goods to the mob. That would motivate me to keep producing. The government’s assisting the populace in taking it from me instead of protecting my ability to keep it, would have a detrimental effect in that I will stop producing food and housing.

I don't actually have any problem with capitalism. Not because its righteous but because having multiple interested and invested (in success) parties looking to solve human problems increases the chances of that problem actually getting solved. The best way to get people invested is to allow them to benefit from success. That I don't have a problem with in theory. In practice when too few people own to many resources or too many people are failing in society then there is an increasing risk for that society to become unstable and devolving into violence.

Not originally obtained. If a guy makes a tree into a house, there is no force or negotiation required for that. The possibility of force or negotiation with force to back up one or both sides only comes when the others decide it would be easier to take the house from the builder than to build their own. Again, a very common Marxist/socialist/progressive thought process.

If there were no need for negotiation we wouldn't be having this conversation.

As I mentioned in post # 38.

Let the workers revolt and take the factory. How long will they sustain it? What evidence is there that a mob of workers can run a factory as well as factory owners and the managers that they hire? I suppose the workers could “negotiate” with the managers to stay on and manage the factory without the owners. But would not those workers revolt against the managers if the managers did not give them raises? No, workers don’t revolt to put someone else over them, and make the same wages. They revolt so they can be rich like the owners.

I'm less interested in how you feel about their revolt and more interested in how best to prevent them in the first place.

Nurses could revolt against doctors and throw them out of the Hospital. They have more training in medicine than a factory worker has in factory management. Would you select that Hospital for your own treatment, the one where the doctors were thrown out?

You seem to be missing the point.

Suppose the workers did successfully run the factory. They make ten thousand ball bearings to fulfill an order from an engine factory. They proudly deliver and ask for payment. The motor factory managers say, “send us a bill, we’ll get right on that, LoL!” and never pay. Now the workers can either learn to eat ball bearings, or they will have to find some other way to feed themselves.

The point is that unless the winners of society look to help the losers of society or at least mitigate the number of those who are desperate no one will win because society will descend into violence.

Great discussion idea! Seriously, the supposed right to life is violated constantly, with increasingly creative justification. So do we really even believe in it? If you start a thread on that, I will participate for sure.

I still don't know what this supposed right to life is but as long as you keep mentioning them in this thread I'll keep asking you to explain. You can keep running if you like. That's fine by me.

 

[Seymour Flops]

The Smug Conceit of Suitcoated Bozos

Someone using the same snobbish fantasies you do would object to people owning stock, "Because they would demand that all profits go to dividends, leaving the business with a fatal cash-flow problem. They would eat the seed corn."

Not at all. I think people who own stock should have more input into the management of a corporation, not less. I also think they should not be immune from liability for what their corporations do.

Currently, the stockholders “own” the corporations in practice about like the American people “own” the government. The corporations are just as likely to pursue the social and political agenda of their executives as the financial interests of their stockholders.

It is possible that stockholders could influence the decisions of a corporation in a negative way, but I don’t know of any examples. There are many examples of workers taking over in a revolution and it going downhill fast.

 

[georgephillip]

No One Has a Right to Any of His Father's Wealth, Property, Position, or Influence

Hereditary power dominates the economic structure and is the well-hidden reason for its decline since the 1950s. That gets more dominant and more destructive each generation, with birth blocking worth in more and more positions.

Imagine if athlete were given the common privilege of passing on their positions to their sons. Year by year, pro sports would get worse and would end up being a joke. If you believe in inheritance, the joke's on you.

Imagine what happens when the hero generation puts the boomers out to pasture

"The end of the cycle or the 'Crisis' phase is also known as the 'Fourth Turning' when the hero generation, entering young adulthood, faces off against the prophet generation that is entering elderhood. In this case, it is the Boomer Generation retires and the Millennial generation takes the wheel.

"It has been suggested that this phase only ends when the eldest Boomers move beyond the age of political leadership and retire from public life and Gen Xers begin to retire and move into the senior role, Millennials begin to move into midlife and take over society’s institutions and those younger than Millennials are just beginning to join to society."

A 2021 look at The Fourth Turning — Client First Capital.

 

[georgephillip]

t is possible that stockholders could influence the decisions of a corporation in a negative way, but I don’t know of any examples. There are many examples of workers taking over in a revolution and it going downhill fast.

Is it possible stockholders are parasites compared to workers?
What's your assessment of this redistribution of income?

The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly

"Nowhere is this more clear than in our financial statements. Here’s the basic formula you’ll find on financial statements:

"Capital Income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Employee income + Cost of materials)

"Kelly uses some simple algebra to show that this formula could just as easily be re-written as:

Employee income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Capital income + Cost of materials)"

 

[georgephillip]

Bezos didn't invent selling books. It is the ultimate in slavish ignorance to think that these parasites who own things must be the real productive geniuses. Steve Jobs is another example of that jealousy towards the human sources of creativit

 

[Seymour Flops]

I thought you said you weren't talking about what is and is not a right but about what would be right or some such. See why we need clear definitions? I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Why would the islanders be right to stop someone from taking all the fruit, be clear or use a different argument.

Because they would be harmed significantly by losing access to a resource that they had access to before.

I didn't ask you to give me your opinion on how much of a loss you thought it was, I was merely wondering whether you could acknowledge that something was lost. It seems you have though you kicked and dragged your feet the entire way.

It is not a significant loss. Highly unlikely that they would see the house and then look for the tree and stand at the stump mourning. Highly unlikely that they would even notice that a tree was “missing.” That’s the difference between a single tree and all the fruit on all the trees.

It would matter if they started having trouble breathing.

Yes, when that happens, there will be an industry of products to make breathing easier.

In the real world no one desperate is traveling to Timbuktu out of respect for your stuff just because you promise there's more stuff to be had in a place they have no reasonable way to access. If private entities have claimed all the resources in the area and they don't have the power to keep the desperate at bay they will have to renegotiate.

Timbuktu? Drive past the city limits and the trees begin to thicken.

But yes, I agree that private entities should not be able to mark off every square foot of Earth so that the majority of people (or even a minority) cannot access natural resources.

I have a solution, but it is far too complicated for this thread.

If landowners look up and see the masses gathering with pitchforks they might want to consider negotiating.

Yes, but by that time it is usually too late to negotiate anything but a promise of safe passage that is unlikely to be kept. When that happens, either pitchforks for the landowner or wrenches and sledgehammers for the factory owner, the result will usually be a painful death for the owners and their families. Keep that in mind when you read my answer to how to keep the workers from revolting.

Also natural events cause famine but that's besides the point.

Rarely. Much more often by government incompetence and/or malice.

Everyone loses against nature eventually.

Evidence for that?

You keep trying to shoehorn success and failure but people succeed and fail for all sorts of reasons not just laziness.

Of course.

Finally. Jesus Christ that took you long to admit.

It was just so silly, that I wasn’t sure you were serious.

You either suck at negotiation or you need more friends.

Exactly. Keep that in mind when I talk about the factory owner.

No. That's just reality my guy. I didn't invent it, I just recognize it for what it is.

Probably not. I wouldn't.

Of course not. It’s the Golden Goose story, that most people understand as children, but somehow escapes Marxists/Socialists/Progressives, along with the Little Red Hen. Take away the product from the productive, and they stop producing.

Okay. I'm not arguing that isn't your likely response. It would be mine too. Ideally you want to form a society with like minded individuals who share your values but more than that you have to be cognizant of whether more and more people are failing in your society and take measures to mitigate that, whether it's assistance, violence or whatever. If not you can't really be surprised when they show up with pitchforks to take your shit.

Yes, but I would be proactive to prevent that.

I don't actually have any problem with capitalism. Not because its righteous but because having multiple interested and invested (in success) parties looking to solve human problems increases the chances of that problem actually getting solved. The best way to get people invested is to allow them to benefit from success. That I don't have a problem with in theory. In practice when too few people own to many resources or too many people are failing in society then there is an increasing risk for that society to become unstable and devolving into violence.

Failure, especially multi-generational failure, is the product not of the free market, but of charity, including the forced ”charity” of welfare that allows failures to reproduce.

If we feed the non-productive because we feel sorry for them in their incompetence, laziness, addictions, mental illness, or whatever prevents them from feeding themselves, and allow them to reproduce, we should not be surprised with their offspring grows up thinking that dependence is the normal human state and the answer to their relative poverty compared to the productive is violence.

If we don’t feed them, they’ll either learn to feed themselves, or they will die off. Either way, we live through it as we might not if we feed them, and their children.

If there were no need for negotiation we wouldn't be having this conversation.

I'm less interested in how you feel about their revolt and more interested in how best to prevent them in the first place.

The important thing is for the owners to be pro-active about the possibility of revolt. The biggest mistake owners make is to think that they can make nice with the workers and the workers will make nice with them.

No.

Pay the worker a slightly more than free market wage or slightly less. If more, you can pick and choose from the best available. If less, you will be left with the less intelligent who are less likely to revolt. Which option to go with may depend on the intelligence level needed for the various tasks, and it will likely be a mix, unless the division of labor in your farm or factory is very homogeneous.

Recruit some of them to monitor their fellow workers for signs of discontent. Better yet, send private detectives in as workers to report to you. That’s where having friends comes in. A successful producer can always hire such frIends, to help in such negotiations.

An excellent strategy is to send in an undercover worker to form a union, collect dues from the workers and then blow town, sending them a post card from a foreign country. Offer food to the workers to make up for their money lost to the union goon - but only partly, and tell they you will pray that they will not be taken advantage of by any other agitators. Instead of giving the food directly to the workers, send it to their wives with a note explaining how their husbands were scammed by the organizer.

Monitor all workers not on your side payroll for any sign of leadership. As soon as a worker shows leadership, promote them. Fire them if they do not accept the promotion. Nothing is more dangerous to a factory or farm owner than a leader who doesn’t want to lead workers to be more productive.

If any worker is reported attempting to foment a revolt, or even floating a trial balloon, kill them with as much pain as possible, and dispose of the body in the most public and humiliating way possible. Have one of your undercover folks warn the family that they are next and convince them to run away. That’s a better strategy for the first revolt than actually killing the family, but if a second revolt occurs, no such mercy.

You can always replace workers, especially if there are so many desperate people around.

Have your undercover man tell the other workers that the reason the revolt failed is that the fomenter was an idiot and that he - your undercover man - will lead the successful next revolt after careful planning. Then pay off the undercover man to disappear. When the workers ask what happened to him, put on a show of obviously pretended innocence.

You seem to be missing the point.

The point is that unless the winners of society look to help the losers of society or at least mitigate the number of those who are desperate no one will win because society will descend into violence.

A free market will be sufficient to prevent large numbers of economically desperate people. It is only in economies in which the government tries to manage it that we end up with desperate poverty. So the mitigation you seek is a free market.

I still don't know what this supposed right to life is but as long as you keep mentioning them in this thread I'll keep asking you to explain. You can keep running if you like. That's fine by me.

I don’t know that I mentioned any “right to life,” but if I do, feel free to ask me to explain.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Is it possible stockholders are parasites compared to workers?
What's your assessment of this redistribution of income?

The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly

"Nowhere is this more clear than in our financial statements. Here’s the basic formula you’ll find on financial statements:

"Capital Income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Employee income + Cost of materials)

"Kelly uses some simple algebra to show that this formula could just as easily be re-written as:

Employee income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Capital income + Cost of materials)"

It looks interesting, but I'm not sure what some of those terms mean in that context. Are they accounting terms?

I'm also not sure what Kelly (or the reviewer) means by this:

In other words, the company could just as easily be optimized to maximize employee income. All it takes is a perspective shift. Kelly then talks about the fact that employees don’t even show up on the corporate balance sheet. That’s because employees are seen as an expense, not an asset, despite the common phrase “our employees are our greatest assets.” This is because employees are essentially treated as “outsiders” in the narrative of corporate financial statements. Kelly proposes shifting this, so that labor and capital both become considered “insiders” – full-fledged members of the corporate society, each with a claim on its profits.

I will color code the two proposed formulae with blue being gain (for the company) and red being loss (for the company):

"Capital Income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Employee income + Cost of materials)

"Kelly uses some simple algebra to show that this formula could just as easily be re-written as:

Employee income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Capital income + Cost of materials)"

I think the problem is that the terms need to change when it is accounted for as a loss instead of a gain, or vice versa. It would make more sense if it said:

"Capital Income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Employee wages + Cost of materials)

"Kelly uses some simple algebra to show that this formula could just as easily be re-written as:

Employee income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Capital expendature + Cost of materials)"

In that case, the math might yield the same results. All that changes is the assumption that the capital brings in the income, while the employees are an expense. That is changed to an assumption that the employees bring in the income (to the company) and the capital is an expense. To yield the exact same results, the employee wages would have to exactly equal the expendature.

In truth, both employees and capital are an expense, the employees cost their wages and the capital costs its depreciation. The top formula leaves out depreciation and the bottom formula leaves out employee wages.

Are the shareholders parasitical?

If the goal were nothing more than enrichment of the coporation, the shareholders demainding dividends could be considered parasitical. They bring no income into the company. But their stocks represent the original investment of capital to start the company up, or a later investment into a private company that went public. Either way, the stockholders put money into the company, so they are not parasitical in that way.

Kelly's model makes the enrichment of the employees the sole goal of the corporation. In that case, the stockholders would indeed be parasitical, but so would he corporation itself.

Or maybe I misunderstood completely.

 

[Curried Goats]

Is it possible stockholders are parasites compared to workers?
What's your assessment of this redistribution of income?

The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly

"Nowhere is this more clear than in our financial statements. Here’s the basic formula you’ll find on financial statements:

"Capital Income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Employee income + Cost of materials)

"Kelly uses some simple algebra to show that this formula could just as easily be re-written as:

Employee income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Capital income + Cost of materials)"

The hard part in this is separating capitalism from Christian ideologies of right and wrong. When property is thought of as a right rather than a construct, then property owners are the righteous.

 

[Seymour Flops]

The hard part in this is separating capitalism from Christian ideologies of right and wrong. When property is thought of as a right rather than a construct, then property owners are the righteous.

Why is it hard to separate capitalism from Christian ideologies?

 

[Curried Goats]

Why is it hard to separate capitalism from Christian ideologies?

Because the notion of property rights is born out the notion of moral right. If you read The Law by Frédéric Bastiat you can see how the right to property gets rationalized from an inherent right to independent life and the fruits of your labor granted by God.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

It is possible that stockholders could influence the decisions of a corporation in a negative way, but I don’t know of any examples. There are many examples of workers taking over in a revolution and it going downhill fast.

The Reign of Terror Took Place in a Republic

No, ownership by employees only would be even more productive than this present absentee ownership by the stockholders. It is extremely snobbish to think that the employees wouldn't have the same self-interest in helping the company that the stockholders do now. Even more so, since their whole future may depend on keeping the company going.

Equal shares, with salaries voted on by the employees. If you want to continue with your bootlicking of the major stockholders, you could make up a story that the janitors would vote to have the same salary as people in more productive positions You can count on desperate nobodies believing such nonsense because they pathetically want to associate themselves with an imaginary Higher Power.


You don't really have any examples of employee-ownership being a disaster; those are just scare stories made up by the plutocratic parasites and believed only because of their control over the media and education. Preaching such hatred of the 99% is no more realistic than pretending that the stockholders would demand that all profits must be turned into dividends.