Listen to a reading of this article: ❖ I always get people telling me, "Capitalism just means free trade." No it doesn't, that's just some stupid nonsense libertarian types started saying a few years ago. Capitalism means what the Marxists who coined and popularized the term have been
Caitlin is echoing the words of populist Abrabam Lincoln who said, "Labor is the true standard of value."
"Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities are drawn."
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
"And I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.”
"But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government."
Note that Lincoln said it is the duty of any good government to protect the workers from having the fruits of their labor stolen by the class of owners who are not doing the work. There is no "Party of Lincoln" today in the duopoly party since both Republicans and Democrats don't believe in protecting workers from owner class exploitation and theft of the laborer's fruits.
Corporate limited liability exists, only because the law says so. There is also a substantial body of literature comparing the behavior of corporations where management are not necessarily owners with that of sociopaths.
Take away corporate limited liability, and where would modern-day capitalism be?
Correct. It IS capitalism. No matter the rest of the regulations to control the herd of human cattle. But since during the last 50 years the intellectual representation of critique of political economy has been systematically wiped out from academe, and the intellectuals turned into opportunistic parasites and watch dogs of the good shepherds of western democracies, and almost any kind of rule besides the one in China and - again - What is now Russia has been declared to be 'democratic', the everyday consciousness of people raised - 'socialization - and conditioned by state education and mass media either state run or corporations, there is not a trace left of any semantic point of reference where an effective political opposition could crystallize its own intellectual representation without an entanglement in the phrases and semantic stereotypes of the white noise of the propaganda inundating the minds of the people held down with the empty and redundant nonsense and dissimulation the parasites - the intellectual have turned into - proliferate from payed outlets they are recruited for to fabricate the functional equivalents of the Roman Catholic Church of the late Imperium Romanum and the Middle Ages, that is: 'Social Technology', or more correct, since even this term is ideological: The technology to control and more, to systematically destroy anything that could be rightly called 'social'. So we have 'social sciences' were nothing social is left working, a science of 'society' without a society left, and a sociology that is cleaned from anything hinting at the permanent wars that are at the basis of all 'progress' and are a necessary ingredient of all 'development', and a kind of psychologcalization of 'political science, that always blames some malignant individual for the failures of attempts to make a better world with a world order of permanent peace, a practice to explain the world and the facts of geopolitics that provides for the pretext for' 'regime change' practice that destroys whole countries and civilizations with all the means for mass murder that the military/economic/parlamentary/financial/industrial complex can drop as a bomb carpet or a drone strike from heaven over the people who's death always is an accidental collateral damage.
Another great weaving of the same long thread, Caitlin. I'm no smarty-pants economist so my following comments are necessarily pedestrian:
Any system -- whatever you want to call it -- that results in 26 individuals controlling half the wealth of the planet is due for some sort of reckoning.
If you go back to the seventies and chart both productivity and CEO compensation you will see both rise steadily. What hasn't risen is worker compensation, even though they are creating more wealth. Why?
When financial institutions crashed the economy around 2008-09, they received bailout money under the TARP program. Bank of America, which received $45 billion in TARP money, paid itself $3.3 billion in bonuses, with 172 employees receiving at least $1 million. I leave this little tidbit here for those who still claim that our entire problem lies within government.
The democrat's bad Kabuki to raise the minimum wage from its current paltry sum of $7.25 needs no further comment. Any decently operating economic system shouldn't need a government-mandated wage at all, meager as it is. But we do need it, obviously. Why?
Unions are only as good as their leadership, but the decline in union membership mirrors the steady decline of the American worker. The largest employer in the 50s was IBM; now it's WalMart.
Most truth to be had these days comes from consumer-supported, often shoestring operations sprinkled around the Net; purveyors of the rankest disinformation (aside from government sources like the CIA and State Department) come from corporate platforms and industry-affiliated entities. If we get rid of the government as some suggest, this still doesn't address the glaringly uniform dearth of reliable information shoveled by corporate sources.
Thomas Jefferson may have had a thing for slaves, but he knew what he was talking about when he warned of the danger of "moneyed interests" perverting government to their own ends. Chalk one up for Tom.
Each and every attempt by people in this hemisphere to realize any form of Socialism has met with the most nefarious and extreme violence by the United States. Murder, rape, and assassination, for those in the cheap seats. Any economic system that merrily co-exists and indeed helps precipitate these actions really ought to explain itself.
I'll close with the words of that famous economist George Carlin: "The upper class owns all the wealth and pay none of the taxes; the middle class does all the work and pays all of the taxes; and the lower class is there to scare the hell out of the middle class."
Caitlin, your ignorance of what a corporation is or how one is created is not proof of your assertion that capitalism (private ownership of property) inevitably leads to corporatism as smoking leads to emphysema. In our system, governments grant corporate charters and in doing so grant those corporations 1) the privilege of limited liability for investors and 2) legal personhood. There is nothing inherent in private property ownership that implies government must recognize such corporate entities, grant their investors limited liability or give those entities the natural rights possessed by actual individual human beings.
It is possible for an economy to consist almost entirely of small shops and factories, each owned by individuals or partnerships in which investors are 100% liable for all debts and torts. Such small owners would be very reluctant to invest in enterprises they can't directly control in order to minimize the risk of unexpected torts or economic downturns causing them to default on loans. Due to the risk involved, infrastructure would be lacking unless government stepped in to fill the void through state-owned enterprises managed for the benefit of the entire population.
As yet, no society has chosen to take the path of private enterprise without corporate entities, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
You want "proof" positive, of Caitlin's reading of Capitalism's intentions to Labor?
1) Open up an SEC filing of a company's "annual report"; it's called a "10-K".
2) go to the Table of Contents. Locate "Income Statement".
3) go to the INcome Statement section. (You'll see the two years' results (current and prior year) tabular listing of income.
In this "glorious" income statement, with ALL its myriad entries, pored over by accountants, pored over by ivy league-jock wall street kids, pored over by investors from institutional investor to mom and pops, I challenge you to find what is the straight payroll the company pays it's employees every year. Go ahead. I challenge you.
Spoiler: It's NOT THERE.
Why?
Why indeed. Think it through yourself. (spoiler: the answer is historically obvious, or...read Caitlin's above post again).
Sadly, most Americans are clueless as to what capitalism is. In fact, as Umair Haque recently pointed out, very few Americans are capitalists because they depend on earned wage incomes to survive. Likewise, Americans are clueless as to what the other major economic system, communism, is. We all just learned in high school that communism is the antithesis of free market trade and American democratic freedoms – it’s evil. That is all most people know.
In my view, there is ample evidence that both economic systems are equally vulnerable to corruption, and both systems exploit workers to a varying extent. The sturm un drang between the systems merely provides useful motivation to confuse and manipulate the workforces in either one.
Caitlin is a total Capitalist. She is using the fruits of Capitalism to speak. She has benefited tremendously from Capitalism. She is furthering Capitalism by using it's tools.
I have never seen any evidence that an economic system changes human nature.
BTW, in the US nearly 80 percent of the 6.1M employer firms have fewer than 10 employees. If you also consider non-employer businesses, that percentage becomes 96. I presume "Caitlan's Newsletter" is one of those millions of small corporations, does it exploit its labor?
Do I exploit my workers? How so? I put up the money, I train them, I have the government licenses required, I provide the clients, I sign-off on everything they do. Should we all split the profit equally? If so, what is the incentive for me to grow my business, to dilute further my share of the profit?
You want exploited labor? I think the US is a poor example - not saying it doesn't happen, but come on.
GETTING TO THE ROOT OF 'CAPITAL' (so all humanity has necessary infrastructure\, a future)
The issue for both left & right is understanding how, as Marx states in Das Kapital, 'All 'capital' (Latin 'cap' = 'head' = 'collective-intelligence) or the ability to make decisions from one's contribution, acquired experience, expertise & decision-making acumen, flows from labour'.
A number of countries worldwide such as: as Germany, Austria, Hungary, Korea (Chaebol) & Japan (Keiretsu) & previously Yugoslavia (Zadruga) obligate corporations over 30 employees to facilitate the investment of multiple-stakeholders such as Workers, Managers, Suppliers, Founders, Townspeople & Consumers. With investment stakeholders have invested interest represented on Corporate Boards. Participatory corporations have the best economic, social & environmental performance. China's Huawei Corporation, as a participatory corporation in electronics, computers & digital software is being attacked precisely because they are vastly outperforming western 'companies' (L 'com' = 'together' + 'pan' = 'bread').
Participatory corporations have a collective intelligence, which top-down hierarchal western corporations don't have. facilitate Multistakeholder participatory (L. 'part' = 'share') corporations follow laws obligating owners to facilitate the investment, ownership & board representation of workers, managers, suppliers, townspeople & consumers are government mandated for all 'corporations' (L 'corp' = 'body') over 30 employees.
The participatory economy tradition flows from all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' (L 'self-generating') heritage of universal progressive ownership over the course of one's lifetime. This intelligent productive tradition was only broken through the violence of 'exogenous' (L 'other-generated') empire colonization, genocide & war through false 'money' & false 'capital'. Domestic labours & intelligence in the once worldwide ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complex (eg. Longhouse-apartment, Pueblo-townhouse & Kanata-village) is the centre of 'economy' (Greek 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'care-&-nurture'). The specialized labours of women & men were organized in universal progressive-ownership of the Production-Society-Guild. Time-based equivalency accounting upon the worldwide String-shell (eg. Wampum on Turtle-Island / North-America, Quipu in South America & Cowrie in pre-colonial invasion indigenous Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia & all the world's islands. String-shell Value systems integrate: 1) Capital, 2) 'Currency' ('flow' or 'money' from Gk. 'mnemosis' = 'memory'), 3) Condolence (social-security), 4) Collegial mentored apprenticeship educational Credit, 5) time-math Communication, 6 professional costume. Humans animate our resources through RELATIONAL-ECONOMY https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy
The word "capital" had been around for centuries before Marx. One expends labour to accumulate capital which is synonymous with "wealth, money, funds, goods, assets, property".
"The extent to which different markets are free and the rules defining private property are matters of politics and policy."
If "You don't get to just change someone else's definition of words to defend your belief system from their criticisms; that's not a thing." -- just exactly what is happening here?
If a man is prevented from accumulating capital (in the form of wages for instance) is he then not at the mercy of the state?
I'm not defending Jeff Bezos et. al. Nor am I claiming the conclusions in this article are wrong or misguided or incorrect.
"We are ruled by untreated malignant narcissists who were elevated by this system." -- yes and some of these narcissists call themselves Communists.
I'm looking for the alternative to Capital. Make it something more than a kumbaya thing that's out there somewhere hidden behind the bromide that the workers will own the means of production -- as if the workers are all equally intelligent, ambitious and interchangeable.
Let's Go Brandon! Keynesim Social Marxism is good! Ra-ra. America bad. Capitalism bad. Kaynes the author of our current economic policy of the Western World came from wealth and never had a real job, he also loved to visit child brothels regularly, but hey, his theory of economics was sooooo much better than Capitalism. Complete Government Control of the money supply. We DO NOT HAVE CAPITALISM anymore, that was over a long time ago. This is the new better way..., don't call it Capitalism, own up to that. It was spend more and print more and it will all be okay. Don't save for the future or rainy day because inflation will take it anyway! Ra-ra. Spend! The Matrix seems to be winning the narrative even here. The Austrian School of Economic's lessons forgotten. Let's Go Brandon is the narrative... Love that meme!
I just finished watching the short documentary The Connection. The makers say that "civilization's" problems are due to technology - even the most primitive. One comment on the chat did ask about capitalism, but the reply was that capitalism had nothing to do with it.
Could you please watch it, if you haven't already, and comment?
> No it doesn't, that's just some stupid nonsense libertarian types started saying a few years ago
then take on the concept that people are trying to describe. the concepts matter more than what labels we apply to them. I want there to be no systematization of the political/coercive means in society. I want there to only be free trade and private property rights. In that "system" (which I would say is a lack of a system, but, semantics), you can have all the worker co-ops or w/e you want as long as people enter into those arrangements voluntarily. What's wrong with that?
> Capitalism is a system which financially coerces those who have nothing to sell but their labor to sell it to the owners of the means of production, necessarily at a price that is far below the amount of value they generate and with no influence over the industries they are powering with their work.
The labor theory of value, which both Adam Smith and Karl Marx believed in, was debunked during the marginal revolution in the 1800s (while Marx was writing). Value is subjective. You can do all the hard work you want erecting life sized mahogany statues of Derek Chauvin, but that doesn't mean you've actually created any value if no one wants them. In fact, the labor theory of value is backwards. Prices don't come as some sort of culmination of all the work that was put into the good. Prices come from final product and go backwards. For example, the fact that wine is highly valued makes grapes more valuable. A machine that makes microprocessors is only valuable as long as microprocessors are valuable.
What makes selling your labor not exploitation is a matter of time preference. I'm a programmer. When I was young and had no savings, I took a job for someone older than me. He paid me up front for my services for a mutually agreed-upon salary. The game was canceled before it was ever released and not a single second of my 11 months there made a dime in revenue, but I still got paid regardless. Now, 10 years later, I've been in the industry a while and have enough savings to start my own company. I still choose not to b/c it's safer to keep making money at my current job, and, honestly, I've seen how hard my boss works, and I don't want that. I also don't have any ideas for a new game.
All that being said, if you read Sam Konkin III, he's a free market advocate who's against salary labor and sees it as a holdover from feudalism. I disagree, but there's def an argument that contract labor is more moral than salary labor.
> One inevitably leads to the other.
If you have a state involved, yeah, maybe. But hey, having a state involved with a socialist/communist economic system has inevitably lead to mass starvation every single time.
Caitlin is echoing the words of populist Abrabam Lincoln who said, "Labor is the true standard of value."
"Labor is the great source from which nearly all, if not all, human comforts and necessities are drawn."
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
"And I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.”
"But it has so happened in all ages of the world, that some have laboured, and others have, without labour, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. This is wrong, and should not continue. To to each labourer the whole product of his labour, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government."
Note that Lincoln said it is the duty of any good government to protect the workers from having the fruits of their labor stolen by the class of owners who are not doing the work. There is no "Party of Lincoln" today in the duopoly party since both Republicans and Democrats don't believe in protecting workers from owner class exploitation and theft of the laborer's fruits.
Corporate limited liability exists, only because the law says so. There is also a substantial body of literature comparing the behavior of corporations where management are not necessarily owners with that of sociopaths.
Take away corporate limited liability, and where would modern-day capitalism be?
Correct. It IS capitalism. No matter the rest of the regulations to control the herd of human cattle. But since during the last 50 years the intellectual representation of critique of political economy has been systematically wiped out from academe, and the intellectuals turned into opportunistic parasites and watch dogs of the good shepherds of western democracies, and almost any kind of rule besides the one in China and - again - What is now Russia has been declared to be 'democratic', the everyday consciousness of people raised - 'socialization - and conditioned by state education and mass media either state run or corporations, there is not a trace left of any semantic point of reference where an effective political opposition could crystallize its own intellectual representation without an entanglement in the phrases and semantic stereotypes of the white noise of the propaganda inundating the minds of the people held down with the empty and redundant nonsense and dissimulation the parasites - the intellectual have turned into - proliferate from payed outlets they are recruited for to fabricate the functional equivalents of the Roman Catholic Church of the late Imperium Romanum and the Middle Ages, that is: 'Social Technology', or more correct, since even this term is ideological: The technology to control and more, to systematically destroy anything that could be rightly called 'social'. So we have 'social sciences' were nothing social is left working, a science of 'society' without a society left, and a sociology that is cleaned from anything hinting at the permanent wars that are at the basis of all 'progress' and are a necessary ingredient of all 'development', and a kind of psychologcalization of 'political science, that always blames some malignant individual for the failures of attempts to make a better world with a world order of permanent peace, a practice to explain the world and the facts of geopolitics that provides for the pretext for' 'regime change' practice that destroys whole countries and civilizations with all the means for mass murder that the military/economic/parlamentary/financial/industrial complex can drop as a bomb carpet or a drone strike from heaven over the people who's death always is an accidental collateral damage.
☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️🙄
And here I thought badmouthing Israel was the ultimate trigger; I see besmirching Capitalism really empties the woodwork. I'm surprised and impressed!
Another great weaving of the same long thread, Caitlin. I'm no smarty-pants economist so my following comments are necessarily pedestrian:
Any system -- whatever you want to call it -- that results in 26 individuals controlling half the wealth of the planet is due for some sort of reckoning.
If you go back to the seventies and chart both productivity and CEO compensation you will see both rise steadily. What hasn't risen is worker compensation, even though they are creating more wealth. Why?
When financial institutions crashed the economy around 2008-09, they received bailout money under the TARP program. Bank of America, which received $45 billion in TARP money, paid itself $3.3 billion in bonuses, with 172 employees receiving at least $1 million. I leave this little tidbit here for those who still claim that our entire problem lies within government.
The democrat's bad Kabuki to raise the minimum wage from its current paltry sum of $7.25 needs no further comment. Any decently operating economic system shouldn't need a government-mandated wage at all, meager as it is. But we do need it, obviously. Why?
Unions are only as good as their leadership, but the decline in union membership mirrors the steady decline of the American worker. The largest employer in the 50s was IBM; now it's WalMart.
Most truth to be had these days comes from consumer-supported, often shoestring operations sprinkled around the Net; purveyors of the rankest disinformation (aside from government sources like the CIA and State Department) come from corporate platforms and industry-affiliated entities. If we get rid of the government as some suggest, this still doesn't address the glaringly uniform dearth of reliable information shoveled by corporate sources.
Thomas Jefferson may have had a thing for slaves, but he knew what he was talking about when he warned of the danger of "moneyed interests" perverting government to their own ends. Chalk one up for Tom.
Each and every attempt by people in this hemisphere to realize any form of Socialism has met with the most nefarious and extreme violence by the United States. Murder, rape, and assassination, for those in the cheap seats. Any economic system that merrily co-exists and indeed helps precipitate these actions really ought to explain itself.
I'll close with the words of that famous economist George Carlin: "The upper class owns all the wealth and pay none of the taxes; the middle class does all the work and pays all of the taxes; and the lower class is there to scare the hell out of the middle class."
Caitlin, your ignorance of what a corporation is or how one is created is not proof of your assertion that capitalism (private ownership of property) inevitably leads to corporatism as smoking leads to emphysema. In our system, governments grant corporate charters and in doing so grant those corporations 1) the privilege of limited liability for investors and 2) legal personhood. There is nothing inherent in private property ownership that implies government must recognize such corporate entities, grant their investors limited liability or give those entities the natural rights possessed by actual individual human beings.
It is possible for an economy to consist almost entirely of small shops and factories, each owned by individuals or partnerships in which investors are 100% liable for all debts and torts. Such small owners would be very reluctant to invest in enterprises they can't directly control in order to minimize the risk of unexpected torts or economic downturns causing them to default on loans. Due to the risk involved, infrastructure would be lacking unless government stepped in to fill the void through state-owned enterprises managed for the benefit of the entire population.
As yet, no society has chosen to take the path of private enterprise without corporate entities, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
You want "proof" positive, of Caitlin's reading of Capitalism's intentions to Labor?
1) Open up an SEC filing of a company's "annual report"; it's called a "10-K".
2) go to the Table of Contents. Locate "Income Statement".
3) go to the INcome Statement section. (You'll see the two years' results (current and prior year) tabular listing of income.
In this "glorious" income statement, with ALL its myriad entries, pored over by accountants, pored over by ivy league-jock wall street kids, pored over by investors from institutional investor to mom and pops, I challenge you to find what is the straight payroll the company pays it's employees every year. Go ahead. I challenge you.
Spoiler: It's NOT THERE.
Why?
Why indeed. Think it through yourself. (spoiler: the answer is historically obvious, or...read Caitlin's above post again).
Sadly, most Americans are clueless as to what capitalism is. In fact, as Umair Haque recently pointed out, very few Americans are capitalists because they depend on earned wage incomes to survive. Likewise, Americans are clueless as to what the other major economic system, communism, is. We all just learned in high school that communism is the antithesis of free market trade and American democratic freedoms – it’s evil. That is all most people know.
In my view, there is ample evidence that both economic systems are equally vulnerable to corruption, and both systems exploit workers to a varying extent. The sturm un drang between the systems merely provides useful motivation to confuse and manipulate the workforces in either one.
Caitlin is a total Capitalist. She is using the fruits of Capitalism to speak. She has benefited tremendously from Capitalism. She is furthering Capitalism by using it's tools.
Does anyone actually buy this garbage of hers?
I have never seen any evidence that an economic system changes human nature.
BTW, in the US nearly 80 percent of the 6.1M employer firms have fewer than 10 employees. If you also consider non-employer businesses, that percentage becomes 96. I presume "Caitlan's Newsletter" is one of those millions of small corporations, does it exploit its labor?
Do I exploit my workers? How so? I put up the money, I train them, I have the government licenses required, I provide the clients, I sign-off on everything they do. Should we all split the profit equally? If so, what is the incentive for me to grow my business, to dilute further my share of the profit?
You want exploited labor? I think the US is a poor example - not saying it doesn't happen, but come on.
GETTING TO THE ROOT OF 'CAPITAL' (so all humanity has necessary infrastructure\, a future)
The issue for both left & right is understanding how, as Marx states in Das Kapital, 'All 'capital' (Latin 'cap' = 'head' = 'collective-intelligence) or the ability to make decisions from one's contribution, acquired experience, expertise & decision-making acumen, flows from labour'.
A number of countries worldwide such as: as Germany, Austria, Hungary, Korea (Chaebol) & Japan (Keiretsu) & previously Yugoslavia (Zadruga) obligate corporations over 30 employees to facilitate the investment of multiple-stakeholders such as Workers, Managers, Suppliers, Founders, Townspeople & Consumers. With investment stakeholders have invested interest represented on Corporate Boards. Participatory corporations have the best economic, social & environmental performance. China's Huawei Corporation, as a participatory corporation in electronics, computers & digital software is being attacked precisely because they are vastly outperforming western 'companies' (L 'com' = 'together' + 'pan' = 'bread').
Participatory corporations have a collective intelligence, which top-down hierarchal western corporations don't have. facilitate Multistakeholder participatory (L. 'part' = 'share') corporations follow laws obligating owners to facilitate the investment, ownership & board representation of workers, managers, suppliers, townspeople & consumers are government mandated for all 'corporations' (L 'corp' = 'body') over 30 employees.
The participatory economy tradition flows from all humanity's worldwide 'indigenous' (L 'self-generating') heritage of universal progressive ownership over the course of one's lifetime. This intelligent productive tradition was only broken through the violence of 'exogenous' (L 'other-generated') empire colonization, genocide & war through false 'money' & false 'capital'. Domestic labours & intelligence in the once worldwide ~100 (50-150) person Multihome-Dwelling-Complex (eg. Longhouse-apartment, Pueblo-townhouse & Kanata-village) is the centre of 'economy' (Greek 'oikos' = 'home' + 'namein' = 'care-&-nurture'). The specialized labours of women & men were organized in universal progressive-ownership of the Production-Society-Guild. Time-based equivalency accounting upon the worldwide String-shell (eg. Wampum on Turtle-Island / North-America, Quipu in South America & Cowrie in pre-colonial invasion indigenous Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia & all the world's islands. String-shell Value systems integrate: 1) Capital, 2) 'Currency' ('flow' or 'money' from Gk. 'mnemosis' = 'memory'), 3) Condolence (social-security), 4) Collegial mentored apprenticeship educational Credit, 5) time-math Communication, 6 professional costume. Humans animate our resources through RELATIONAL-ECONOMY https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy
In order for 'Political' (L 'poly' = 'many' + 'tics' = 'workings-of') Democracy to exist, it needs a universal foundation of Economic-Democracy. https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/relational-economy/8-economic-democracy
The word "capital" had been around for centuries before Marx. One expends labour to accumulate capital which is synonymous with "wealth, money, funds, goods, assets, property".
"The extent to which different markets are free and the rules defining private property are matters of politics and policy."
If "You don't get to just change someone else's definition of words to defend your belief system from their criticisms; that's not a thing." -- just exactly what is happening here?
If a man is prevented from accumulating capital (in the form of wages for instance) is he then not at the mercy of the state?
I'm not defending Jeff Bezos et. al. Nor am I claiming the conclusions in this article are wrong or misguided or incorrect.
"We are ruled by untreated malignant narcissists who were elevated by this system." -- yes and some of these narcissists call themselves Communists.
I'm looking for the alternative to Capital. Make it something more than a kumbaya thing that's out there somewhere hidden behind the bromide that the workers will own the means of production -- as if the workers are all equally intelligent, ambitious and interchangeable.
Let's Go Brandon! Keynesim Social Marxism is good! Ra-ra. America bad. Capitalism bad. Kaynes the author of our current economic policy of the Western World came from wealth and never had a real job, he also loved to visit child brothels regularly, but hey, his theory of economics was sooooo much better than Capitalism. Complete Government Control of the money supply. We DO NOT HAVE CAPITALISM anymore, that was over a long time ago. This is the new better way..., don't call it Capitalism, own up to that. It was spend more and print more and it will all be okay. Don't save for the future or rainy day because inflation will take it anyway! Ra-ra. Spend! The Matrix seems to be winning the narrative even here. The Austrian School of Economic's lessons forgotten. Let's Go Brandon is the narrative... Love that meme!
I just finished watching the short documentary The Connection. The makers say that "civilization's" problems are due to technology - even the most primitive. One comment on the chat did ask about capitalism, but the reply was that capitalism had nothing to do with it.
Could you please watch it, if you haven't already, and comment?
> No it doesn't, that's just some stupid nonsense libertarian types started saying a few years ago
then take on the concept that people are trying to describe. the concepts matter more than what labels we apply to them. I want there to be no systematization of the political/coercive means in society. I want there to only be free trade and private property rights. In that "system" (which I would say is a lack of a system, but, semantics), you can have all the worker co-ops or w/e you want as long as people enter into those arrangements voluntarily. What's wrong with that?
> Capitalism is a system which financially coerces those who have nothing to sell but their labor to sell it to the owners of the means of production, necessarily at a price that is far below the amount of value they generate and with no influence over the industries they are powering with their work.
The labor theory of value, which both Adam Smith and Karl Marx believed in, was debunked during the marginal revolution in the 1800s (while Marx was writing). Value is subjective. You can do all the hard work you want erecting life sized mahogany statues of Derek Chauvin, but that doesn't mean you've actually created any value if no one wants them. In fact, the labor theory of value is backwards. Prices don't come as some sort of culmination of all the work that was put into the good. Prices come from final product and go backwards. For example, the fact that wine is highly valued makes grapes more valuable. A machine that makes microprocessors is only valuable as long as microprocessors are valuable.
What makes selling your labor not exploitation is a matter of time preference. I'm a programmer. When I was young and had no savings, I took a job for someone older than me. He paid me up front for my services for a mutually agreed-upon salary. The game was canceled before it was ever released and not a single second of my 11 months there made a dime in revenue, but I still got paid regardless. Now, 10 years later, I've been in the industry a while and have enough savings to start my own company. I still choose not to b/c it's safer to keep making money at my current job, and, honestly, I've seen how hard my boss works, and I don't want that. I also don't have any ideas for a new game.
All that being said, if you read Sam Konkin III, he's a free market advocate who's against salary labor and sees it as a holdover from feudalism. I disagree, but there's def an argument that contract labor is more moral than salary labor.
> One inevitably leads to the other.
If you have a state involved, yeah, maybe. But hey, having a state involved with a socialist/communist economic system has inevitably lead to mass starvation every single time.