ebola! said:
To be fair, I'll buy your picture when someone making my shoes in Malaysia owns a significant amount of stock in Nike.
First of all, chances are they don't work for Nike. They work for a factory owner in Malaysia who
contracts with Nike to sell them shoes.
Second, as I've said before, they would be making pennies instead of $2 if Nike didn't contract the factory to provide employment. Would you like that better? I think not.
Third, as I've said before, wealth takes time to grow. You are expecting economic miracles and as long as that is the case, you will be sorely dissapointed. I want them to be paid more just like you do but that takes time.
This is not the case. We communitarians advocate equal access to the means of production and free sharing outside the bonds of the system of private property, not necessarily equal and identical material outcomes. And the question of money? The answer for a communitarian system is "not applicable".
And we're back to square one. It's fine if you
advocate equal access to the means of production and whatnot. Advocate all you want. The only way to ensure that there is equality is to have someone make sure there is equality.
If you don't advocate equal material outcomes, then it necessarily follows from this inequal material outcome that some had more access to the means of production than others. The truth of this proposition can't be denied. This must be the case, otherwise, certain people wouldn't have more material possessions than others. You therefore have unequal access to the means of production.
Again, there must be "regulators" (a government) of some sort to see this doesn't happen. This is because humans are naturally competitive, just like the rest of the animal kingdom.
More commonly, though, one may be denied a job at prudential as a market analyst and be granted a job at Wal-mart. I think it revealing that your example is thoroughly professional-managerial.
Perhaps they may be granted a job at Wal-Mart as a Wal-Mart market analyst. Or perhaps not. Maybe they'd be a cashier. That's doubtful with an education like that, but certainly possible in poor economic conditions.
The point here, though, is that what you do in life is in
your hands. You are not held down and lost in a sea of communal ownership, where the truth is, you really own nothing and will never be able to meet your potential.
This is only the case if we take the capitalist system as a given.
Ok, fine, so tell me how new ideas would be put into practice in a truly communitarian system with no money system and no private property. Let's say a guy has a great idea that will revolutionize "X". How is it going to be put into place? Who is going to give up their limited resources, which have been divided out equally, and their time in order to construct and implement the revolutionary "X"?
No, you don't have this right. Trying to set-up a self-sufficient commune outside of the market economy? Try paying property taxes.
There are islands and countries you can go to where there is no such thing as property taxes.
Another option is to vote in candidates who share your beliefs that will repeal property taxes.
yes, but we have to ask what sort of preconditions make this agreement rational and seemingly mutually beneficial.
You're trying to turn this into a circular discussion. We've been through this. Private property makes this agreement rational and mutually beneficial. You may not like what happened in the past to secure some "claims" of private property and I'm right there with you on that. The past cannot be undone, though. The system of free-market capitalism we have now is the best system out there at the moment.
If you really dislike private propety that much, then by all means, give your land back to the Native Americans who originally claimed it and lift that burden from your shoulders.
No, the stats I have seen show that capitalists generally start with assets.
Yes, they start with some assets like capital. They have to, otherwise they couldn't operate. What I'm trying to say is that they almost always don't start off with
wealth becaue their liabilities far outweigh their assets.
You're right. It took hundreds of years of pillage.
To obtain some of the land we pillaged, yes. All of it, no.
Besides, simply having land doesn't ensure success. It takes creativity, intelligence, and hard work. Our success as a country has much more to do with that. You can have all the land you want, but if you can't make good use of it, then no progress will be made.
Originally posted by protovack What if my goal is to set up a square mile of land as a farming-collective in place of a Wal-Mart, and what if it is also my goal to not pay for it, considering the Earth doesn't naturally belong to anyone? What if "what I want to be" doesn't happen to be a wage-slave? Well then, I guess it does matter if the capitalist has advantages over others.
I was under the impression that you were talking about the advantages a rich individual has over a non-rich individual. If you're talking about the advantages a capitalist has over a non-capitalist, that's different.
Of course a capitalist is going to have advantages over a non-capitalist in a capitalist society. That's a given! But then that begs the question, why is the society a capitalist one? Because it has been shown over and over again that it provides more efficiency of scarce resources, more intellectual and physical freedom, more wealth, and more technological progress than any other system out there. You can argue with that all you want, but all you have to do to see the truth of it is to look around you.
Before the free-market capitalist system was developed, progress, in all aspects of society, was greatly stunted. Consider how little progress we had made as a species since we first appeared on this planet to the Enlightenment. Then contrast that with the last few hundred years, though, and you'll see a tremendous difference.
The difference was made by a return to reason as a means of "knowing" but also the recognition of what incredible things a man can do with his own property. He can invent things, provide a good or service, and at the same time, provide jobs for other people. It's amazing, really. All this from such a simple concept.
Now, to your specific questions. No, the earth as a whole doesn't belong to anyone, but sections of it do belong to individuals and rightfully so. You're forgetting that land is a scarce resource, there is not enough for everyone to have an unlimited amount. Therefore, it does fetch a price.
If you don't want to be a "wage-slave", then you don't have to. Go to school, learn a trade, contract it out to a company for much better pay, and benefit from a division in labor.
LOL. They are looking for profit eh? And where would I find profit if I were looking for it as well? Where does this "profit" come from? Workers....*COUGH*.....workers.
Profit doesn't just come from workers. Labor is only one factor of production.
More meaningless economic rhetoric. If financial markets didn't exist, we couldn't.....invent new machines......or develop better ways of running our society? That's what I think of when I hear the word "progress." Once again, the capitalists are arguing from within their own system. Take a step back and look at what you are claiming. You claim there is some kind of "progress," yet you only define this as an economy that is expanding. What exactly are we trying to expand here? The numbers labelling people's bank accounts? Or the dignity of human beings? Keep on studying those complex GDP graphs, and productivity curves, and aggregate spending equations. They will not bring you closer to any kind of truth about the economic nature of humans. And claiming that our our current exploitive financial system is somehow "necessary" for our society to progress towards a brighter future, sounds just dull and apologist.
To be honest, I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
No, if we didn't have financial markets, we couldn't develop things that better our lives. Where would companies get money to develop their ideas? Where would individuals get money to develop their ideas and start business fims?
For all your slamming of this horrible, horrible system we have, you forget that it has basically provided you with everything you see around you. Your computer, your car, your TV, everything. That is one of the many beautiful things about our system: it leaves people alone to develop their dreams and ideas. These dreams not only make money for the individual, but they provide jobs for other individuals and they better everyone else's life by providing a good or service that didn't exist before.
I suggest you smash your computer to bits, trash your car, and throw your TV out of a window, because these are all products of the "exploitative financial system" that we have. And if you get dreadfully sick, be sure to refuse medication and treatment, because they too are products of exploitation. Wouldn't want to be a hypocrite, would you?
If you think communitarianism or some other system is better, then please, if you wouldn't mind, explain to me how progress would be made in such a society. See the problem above that I proposed to ebola.
Yes I am asking why workers don't own what they produce, and you still aren't answering. You are using the same logic of the power-apologist political philosophers, who supposed that since you are born into slavery, you "kinda" entered a contract, "sort of," but that it still counts. The point is, there aren't any businesses that willingly offer their workers ownership in what they produce. You aren't making a choice and therefore are not entering into a contract. This is the same problem your argument has with scientists. Most times, scientists discoveries aren't owned by them, but their employers. If your logic consists only of saying, "Hey, since you exist, you better sit down and start producing stuff that you won't own," then I hope you are happy signing contracts which exploit you, afterall you don't really have a choice.
Workers don't own what they helped to produce for a couple of reasons.
1) They only helped produce a small portion of it, due to division of labor. It wouldn't make sense for them to "own" something that they only had a small hand in developing. The reason labor is divided, as I said, is because it's more efficient, both in production and maintenence of scarce resources. Plus, workers get paid more if they highly specialize in a skill.
2) They use the capital owned by the firm's owners. It wouldn't make sense for a worker to "own" something that was partially produced with machinery owned by someone else.
3) As I pointed out above, they voluntarily enter a contract to provide their services for monetary payment. They don't want to own what they produce because that would be meaningless. What the fuck are they doing to do with a pencil that they helped produce, for example? You can't buy things with pencils! They want to be paid in
money, not in what they produce.
People aren't paid in the things they produce because we don't have a barter system, we have a monetary system.
As for owning the means of production, I've already been through that with my financial markets example. Workers who save money in banks through a variety of ways do own the capital that business firms used to produce.
We all know how wage labor works. This argument is about the fact that the wages paid to those workers often doesn't support a family. It is also about how these jobs are mind-numbing and tedious, which both contribute to keeping the people in these positions frozen in time. It would be totally different if most jobs paid living wages like they did in pre-1970's United States. We argue about this stuff, because the system of capitalism is failing in front of us, and this failure is occuring over decades, causing obvious changes in how people live. Many of these changes affect families negatively. Wages going down, forcing both partners to work outside the home, leaving their children sitting in front of telescreens. Single mothers working 2 or 3 jobs. Middle-class households having their pension payments halted. No healthcare being provided by your employer (who cares so much about you right?). THAT'S why we debate this stuff. Which is why when people spew out their economic theories of the "free market," it just rings hollow to most humans.
If your wage is not supporting your family, perhaps it's time to consider something else. You have control over your life, nobody else does.
Capitalism isn't failing. It continues to evolve and adapt to the strains that are put on it.
The problems with capitalism are not, 95% of the time, a result of capitalism itself. Rather, the problems are from government meddling.
Want to talk about wages going down? Fine, let's talk about how government manipulation of monetary policy dramatically decreases your purchasing power.
Want to talk about unemployment? Fine, let's talk about how monetary policy tightens up money supply to the point where investment and consumption halt, forcing business firms to release workers because aggregate spending goes way down as a result.
Let's also talk about how the government has a $7 trillion debt, strangling business' ability to expand, provide new jobs, and provide higher pay?
Did you know that the last tax cut that was given was
borrowed out of the financial markets because the government is so dead broke and in debt?
Want to talk about healthcare? Fine, let's talk about how government inteference in the market in the 1940s created a dependence of our society on health insurance in the first place.
I'm game. Let's talk about these things. You'll quickly find out, though, that your blame on capitalism for the problems of society quite rightly belong on the government instead.
Originally posted by Void
Capitalism will never achieve the ideals it strives for.
I agree, which is why I advocate free-market capitalism.
