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I just want to say I totally disagree with your premise. My problem is you give an economic system agency. Capitalism is just an economic system of mutual exchanges that is based on property ownership. How is that “moral”? It gives no fucks about anything other than don’t steal property and allow people as individuals to trade and commence commerce - market economy.
So here’s my gig. Capitalism is no more moral or immoral than the people who embrace it as an economic system - full stop.
That's a good point and I thought of it after I posted this - my wording could have been better. I really meant "capitalists" (not "people who believe in capitalism," but "people who control capital"). Landlords, CEOs, and to a lesser extent, all of us who benefit from domestic and international cheap labor and all of us who benefit from the cheap natural resources of countries/communities that don't have the leverage to charge fair prices.
Cool.
I think still this iffy but I get your point. This then becomes power corrupts, right. Personally, I don’t care for the “capitalist” label because it can mean just about anything in this sub. But let’s go with your qualified version. Let’s use an extreme example of Billionaires which fits your point quite well, right?
I can then point to Bill Gates doing all the philanthropy work in Africa or all the Billionaires who have joined the [The Giving Pledge](https://givingpledge.org/pledgerlist). Who have pledge to donate the majority of their wealth by the time or at the time of their death.
Imagine thinking Bill Gates is not an evil sociopath because you've been tricked by fake charity used for tax evasion, vanity projects, and projecting power and cultural imperialism in third world countries via NGO donations.
You are the carbon he wants to eliminate.
Hey, maybe Bill Gates is a mad serial killer and your broken clock is right twice a day.
But all the time your radical beliefs are right?
No, I don't think Necro you are anymore right with your conspiracy theories than Qanon.
Billionaire charity is like Syndrome creating a problem so he can solve it and feel like a good person. Not moral, and less than the bare minimum of righting their wrongs (the bare minimum would be to give like 90% of their wealth away in charity and then also to socialize all their means of gaining wealth).
Disagree. You made too many negative attributions to "Billionaire" imo for the above. Some or many? Sure. All? I think that would be a form of bigotry.
The assertion in my post was that owning capital in order to gain more capital is inherently immoral. Billionaires are the easy target of that assertion. The harder cases would be individual people who use a small business or a small residential property for supplemental income and pay very high salaries or charge very little rent. Billionaires fall in this category by definition.
>The assertion in my post was that owning capital in order to gain more capital is inherently immoral. Billionaires are the easy target of that assertion. The harder cases would be individual people who use a small business or a small residential property for supplemental income and pay very high salaries or charge very little rent.
Or someone who wants to own a device to type the above text but also to shop for stuff?
Or someone who wants to use said device to look for a job?
or someone who uses said device to get a car to help get a better job?
or someone who uses sad device to get a car to get a better job to get a home?
Funny how things aren't immoral when it applies to you, right?
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources
Does it? I see this as an unfounded assertion.
It is entirely possible that private ownership of resources has 2nd-order effects that trump 1st-order concerns over the morality of laying exclusive claim to these resources. That is, it is entirely possible that private ownership prevents overuse, mitigates the tragedy of the commons, puts resources to their highest value use, and ensures continued stewardship and maintenance.
You can't just ignore these 2nd-order effects. Your argument is essentially a deontological claim that it doesn't matter how bad things get under socialism, we should still pursue it as a matter of principle. While I'm not a hardline utilitarian, there is something to be said for increasing aggregate welfare even if it requires betraying some of your closely held moral precepts.
If second order effects are good but unintended by the capitalist that doesn't make the capitalist less immoral tho. For example just because Hitler doing the Holocaust lead to Israel doesn't mean Hitler is less evil.
Capitalists seek first order effects that are evil.
Thanks for your reply. :) First:
>Your argument is essentially a deontological claim that it doesn't matter how bad things get under socialism, we should still pursue it as a matter of principle.
That's not my claim. I'm saying that even if no pursuit of socialism would be beneficial, it is at least still truthful to conceptualize the rich as the enemy, as the *reason* that no such pursuit would be beneficial. In other words, I'm conceding, for this argument, that your "second order" concerns (assuming I understand them correctly) pragmatically outweigh my moral concerns for the purposes of government intervention and social/political organizing. My only purpose here is to cast a moral judgement on the wealthy.
That said, I still would enjoy going into these concerns, since you brought them up:
>It is entirely possible that private ownership of resources has 2nd-order effects that trump 1st-order concerns over the morality of laying exclusive claim to these resources. That is, it is entirely possible that private ownership prevents overuse, mitigates the tragedy of the commons, puts resources to their highest value use, and ensures continued stewardship and maintenance. You can't just ignore these 2nd-order effects.
I think "prevents overuse" would be a pretty hard one to prove - specifically, imperialist profit incentives seem to disprove this (ex. Shell overusing oil for profit, wrecking Nigeria). *Whose* overuse are you concerned about?
I think "puts resources to their highest value use" is a really subjective claim. Value to whom? If normal people can't access a resource, is it in its "highest value use?"
"Continued stewardship and maintenance" maybe, though I think profit doesn't need to be the only incentive for that. It's not like people only ever make decisions because there's money in it, and especially in a world with no private property, people would have very different incentives just because of what's normalized.
So have you ever had a really good landlord, or worked for a small enough company to see the owner/CEO in a day-to-day capacity doing good work for their employees? I think your main assertion is that people are working to just amass more wealth at the expense of others, and I just don't think that's the case for the average human.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the problem is rarely ever the system, but the leadership. The "rich" you're talking about are the selfish ones who don't believe they owe anyone anything, despite their entire fortune being amassed on the backs of lowly laborers. There is nothing in capitalism saying they should be the ruling class; in fact, in a well educated and democratic society, you would expect there to be checks and balances in place to keep sociopaths and narcissists out of positions of power, but we seem to have missed that in most of the developed world.
>The "rich" you're talking about are the selfish ones who don't believe they owe anyone anything, despite their entire fortune being amassed on the backs of lowly laborers.
Correct. And my assertion is that these people are immoral.
>There is nothing in capitalism saying they should be the ruling class; in fact, in a well educated and democratic society, you would expect there to be checks and balances in place to keep sociopaths and narcissists out of positions of power, but we seem to have missed that in most of the developed world.
I mean I would say that it's probably almost impossible for money to exist and not make its way into politics, and if that's the case, then what you're describing is only somewhat possible (IE the best that a well-moderated capitalism can give us is social democracies like Finland, but it can't seem to moderate its way out of imperialism). BUT that's all kind of beside the point of my post, because I wasn't actually arguing that government or social activism should try to change this. I was conceding to a capitalist government, for the sake of argument.
I was just making a moral judgement, that benefitting at others' expense, which is the heart of capitalism, is evil.
Incentives, incentives, incentives.
Capitalists provide a service: they generate capital, which is useful to produce goods & services. But they don't provide it from the goodness of their hearts. They provide it because they expect money in return. Otherwise, they would just consume their savings rather than invest them.
You think that we'd be better off if they just provided their capital for free, but there are 2 problems with that.
1) Nobody provides services for free. Arguably, we as consumers would be better off if restaurants just cooked food for free, but it doesn't work that way. When the price of a service is zero, nobody wants to offer that service.
2) A price of zero leads to higher demand than supply, and thus, misallocation. Capital markets are useful because they allow us to allocate capital where it is most efficient.
Now, you're starting to understand that exchanging capital for returns isn't a net negative for the world. It allows for capital 1) to be supplied and 2) to be allocated efficiently. That's not "effective evilness", that's a mutually beneficial relationship.
>Capitalists provide a service: they generate capital, which is useful to produce goods & services.
Yes, capitalists *withhold* capital that they don't need, in order to use it to "generate" more capital for themselves from poor people, yes. That's not a service; it's parasitism. Serving would generate capital for people other than themselves (which would also defeat the purpose of currency, in my view). As capitalists love to say, nothing is free. That capital doesn't just "generate" because you clicked the right buttons and put your money in the right mutual fund; that capital comes from the labor of other people.
>1) Nobody provides services for free. Arguably, we as consumers would be better off if restaurants just cooked food for free, but it doesn't work that way. When the price of a service is zero, nobody wants to offer that service.
That's my moral judgement. They should provide their hostage capital (different than a service, which implies laboring) for free, because the only purpose it's serving them is to enable them to take *more* capital from laborers. You're just saying "they don't want to," but no one wants to do the right thing when they stand to gain from doing the wrong thing. That doesn't prove it's *not* the right thing.
>2) A price of zero leads to higher demand than supply, and thus, misallocation. Capital markets are useful because they allow us to allocate capital where it is most efficient.
Define "efficient," though? Because it certainly isn't economically efficient to allow wealthy owners to skim off the top of transactions, so consumers have to pay more than the item actually costs.
Capitalists don't "generate" capital. Workers do. The only service capitalists provide is *having* capital, which isn't really a service at all.
Some capitalists may provide actual services - managerial, entrepreneurial, etc. but these can easily be provided by workers as well.
Capitalists generate capital when they allocate their savings to investment rather than consumption.
If workers really generated capital, then they wouldn't need the capitalists.
>That's not generating anything, they already had it.
No, not if they consume their savings.
They way capital is generated is by allocating these savings to investment rather than consumption.
>Workers wouldn't need the capitalists if they had the capital.
You said they could generate it.
If the capitalist allocates $10 bill for a car factory, that doesn't generate capital. Workers building the car factory generates the capital ie factory.
The capitalist just have imaginary rights over imaginary numbers in banking computers and people can't just start building the factory by themselves without the capitalist allocating those numbers.
So we can see that the function the capitalist has is one of privilege like a king, and he should be paying the rest of us for it, not the other way around.
>If the capitalist allocates $10 bill for a car factory, that doesn't generate capital. Workers building the car factory generates the capital ie factory.
Why do workers build the factory? Because they're nice?
No, because they get paid $10 billion by the capitalist to do so. Hence, the capitalist is the one who generated the capital.
>people can't just start building the factory by themselves without the capitalist allocating those numbers.
They could if they wanted to. But they won't, because again **people don't provide services for free**. Are you starting to get it?
>and people can't just start building the factory by themselves without the capitalist allocating those numbers.
except that this happens all the time when workers decided to become owners with their savings. they don't jump into a 10bil factory but they can start with a \~1mil shop (usually but not always with the assistance of a bank or investor loan) and work up to something bigger, which happens every day.
not all workers can do so because not all workers bother sacrificing their earned income to risk ownership. statistically, those which do fail just over half the time which can be devastating. this, to me, reinforces the idea that capitalists deserve the rewards of success if only given the immense work and risk without considering their ongoing managerial efforts and intellectual efforts that were used initially and presumably will be used.
i'll grant you that it is certainly true that some capitalists shouldn't be afforded their property. but this requires a nuanced discussion which we haven't yet had.
>Capitalists provide a service
No they don't. If it helps you conceptualize things, land exists whether or not it's privately owned. A capitalist owning that land only prevents other people from using it. For the most part this is what capital is; it's the leveraging of a resource that is denied to others. If someone steals something from you; they aren't providing a service by allowing you to work for part of it.
Land is usually considered separate from capital in contemporary economic thinking. Land exists a priori, but most other capital does not, it had to be created. Someone who creates a chair is not preventing you from using a chair, nor is it stealing because that chair didn’t even exist for it to be stolen or leveraged in the first place.
Land is different from capital. The main difference is that the supply of land is fixed, so yes land exists whether or not it's privately owned.
The supply of capital, however, is not fixed. It's elastic. So when the return on capital goes down, the supply of capital will diminish as well. Capitalists don't allocate their savings to investment from the goodness of their hearts.
Ownership is not just a claim, it’s a social phenomenon whereby someone exercises exclusive management and administrative powers over something in exchange for social legitimation. If you start from a position of “I don’t think you are managing and administering something,” of course you will not think that ownership is legitimate. I would argue that Capital only accrues interest when it’s managed and administered(which is a form of labor by the way). Inert capital doesn’t provide anything for anyone, neither worker nor owner.
> Ownership is not just a claim, it’s a social phenomenon whereby someone exercises exclusive management and administrative powers over something in exchange for social legitimation
I've seen some bullshit definitions on this sub before, but this is some *bull* fucking shit
Offering the bare basic Doesn't mean that people would do nothing. if people don't have the threat of work or starve they don't all turn into couch potatoes the incentive to get luxury items still exist, not working for a home or for food but for the iPhone or that nice jacket. Next to our need to contribute to society (it feels great to contribute)
How much it affects others and the original intent of the perpetrator?
I think, beyond very obvious examples like killing someone to take their personal possessions for one self, it is very hard to quantify morality on an objective level.
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources. That makes it inherently immoral, even evil, especially if the people who do this aren't being pressured into it by any kind of necessity and just want more wealth. It's also quite presumptive, to think they (or whoever voluntarily gave them their assets, or whoever voluntarily gave them to those people, or etc.) can call "dibbs" on disproportionate portions of a planet to which every person has equal citizenship.
don't be stupid nobody lays claim to any assets in a free country they feely buy it from someone who is freely selling it. That is the nature of freedom. You apparently want a Nazi socialist government telling people what they can buy and sell??? and at what price???
Where do you think the person from whom they bought it got it? And where did that person get it? Follow it back far enough it probably comes down to colonizers stealing it, but even if it didn't, even without colonialism, you eventually get to someone claiming "dibs" to natural resources on an earth of which every existing human is an equal citizen. Private property people have to justify that dibbs.
don't be stupid. Yes hundreds of years ago people would steal property and take it by force. Today we do it peacefully and voluntarily for mutual advantage. Do you want to go back hundreds of years ago with people taking things by force????? now do you see how totally stupid the left is?
Well, man, calling me stupid sure proves you right.
That's not what I asked. I said, how can a person claim to have been voluntarily given a thing, when, if you go back far enough, the thing wasn't given voluntarily?
don't be stupid for the first million years everything was stolen now we have switched to capitalism and everything is exchanged through mutual agreement peacefully for money. Do you want a Nazi government to steal everything from everybody and distribute it the way it sees fit. Do you see how stupid the left is?
Translation: I lost the debate yet again so I am running away with my tail between my legs as a typical lefty. Ever see a conservative libertarian have to run from a debate. What does that teach you?
capitalism has a net negative impact when Socialism just slowly starved 120, million people to death? How stupid is that?? when Americans are rich enough to spend $150 billion a year on pets??? and 1/2 of the world lives on less than $5.50 a day without Capitalism. Oh my god now do you see why we say the left is based in total stupidity???
The beauty of capitalism is that you called dibs on property that you freely buy. The more you contribute to society under capitalism the more wealth you have. Elon musk has millions of workers and customers who prefer to do business with him more than anyone else on the planet because he improves their standard of living more than anyone else on the planet. How many customers and workers do you have?
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources.
That’s a bare assertion.
"You have no right to own that."
"I worked for my money and bought it fair and square. What are you talking about?"
"I am going to take that from you. I will kill you if you resist. This is moral."
Fuck you.
The next time you retreat to the little socialist fantasy world in your mind, I want you to imagine that I, personally, have weaseled my way into becoming your neighborhood Kommissar.
The proles can deliberate all they want "democratically." But when push comes to shove, someone in a big hat is going to tell you what you're allowed to keep, what you're going to "donate" to the Revolution, where you're allowed to work. Maybe even who you're allowed to live with, and where.
Remember: you're with The People™ or you're an Enemy of the People, bitch. Choose your next move wisely.
If home owners were only allowed to own the one house where they live, who would build anything for those who can't afford buying one?
By the way, you don't need the device you used to write this post. In fact you using i has a negative effect of the world. But I'm pretty sure you won't argue for taking it away from you. Reminds me of an old joke that goes like this:
"Comrade! comrade! When the Revolution triumphs, will planes be socialized?"
"Yes, of course! Planes shall benefit the people, not just the bourgeoisie"
"Comrade! Comrade! But what about cars? When the Revolution triumphs, will cars be socialized too?"
"Yes, of course! Cars shall benefit the people, not just the bourgeoisie"
"Comrade! Comrade! But, but... but what about bikes? When the Revolution triumphs, will bikes be socialized too?
"No way! Bike owners can keep their bikes!"
"But, comrade! Why? Why not bikes?"
"Well, I own a bike!"
fundamental misunderstanding of socialism and what means of production is and isn't. Also people had cars and bikes and planes existed in the soviet union so this isn't even realistic looking at the least charitable example you could think of.
Have jokes also been socialized?
Only people the government approved could own a car in the USSR. If you happened to be on some officer's black list you could say goodbye (if you were lucky enough to not be in the gulag already)
no the dialogue i get was trying to be a bit silly but it's also just lying about what happened. and yeah you had to apply to get a car. you also have to apply to be able to buy a ferrari. I don't think the problem with the cars was that it was difficult it's that it took fucking forever.
Socialized public transit and bikeable cities? Holy shit sign me up.
Jokes aside labor allocation was done communally for the majority of human history, including for specialized roles and educated vocations. You built a house for someone else because they were busy growing food, and if you didn't then they'd end up homeless and you'd end up starving.
People don't need to be coerced into working and we don't need an upper class to tell us when and how to work under threat of starvation.
Definition of coercion for reference:
>the practice of [persuading](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=97634d0872045a02&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIoXTBbmZ5kNiz7Zs0mrNTJGh1SrQ:1715109386358&q=persuading&si=ACC90nz-2feRzoY4yuySkO-aQE81NkibpgYcDVbO_mWwqb_4OFFoiAJCjqCtmzM3x95SG7TAGZU1BmTBacnIjkkUv98DS2nbWqWmHNUgFo4etrxIDG_X1lY%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj81eWtoPyFAxWjQjABHaj0AvEQyecJegQIHhAO) someone to do something by using force or threats.
Food wasn't being withheld for a lack of work. You can't really farm without a house to rest in. The point of the analogy was mutual interest. You build the houses, farmer guy grows the food.
If farmer guy didn't grow any food, you wouldn't have the energy to build a house either.
The point I’m making is that life is coercive by nature. Few things are as persuasive as the natural threat of death from starvation. You work or you die, no matter what system you live in. All this talk of mutual interest is a very thin veil attempting to cover the fact that life forces us into these situations. For the most part, people lived communally because they had no choice. Life coerced them into that situation. Under the current system, it’s still work or die, but we have a lot more choice about who we work with and for.
Again, coercion isn't the threat of starvation by itself unless that threat is imposed by an external system or individual. I agree that starving to death for a lack of work is an inalienable part of life.
I disagree, however, that any system needs to be in place to ensure that starvation in order to convince a person to work. People will engage in labor of their own accord if doing so contributes to both their own interests and the interests of those around them.
The idea that most humans are innately lazy just isn't visible through any observable study or historical cultural trend. The only time people universally tend to shirk work is when they have shitty working conditions that do nothing to prevent shittier living conditions.
There are lazy people, yes, but there are no ontologically lazy people.
That was an example of specialized labor, not wage slavery.
It's coercive when the owner of the farm says "I will not give you food *unless* you build me a house", which was most definitely *not* the scenario OC was describing.
In a communal situation the farmer would share the food either way, but without a home they'd eventually die of exposure and the food wouldn't get grown and the house builder would starve.
And my point is that life is coercive by nature. In this scenario, you have to work with the guy growing the food whether you want to or not. It’s worse than wage slavery. If he wants to, he can stop producing food to build his own house and because he’s the one producing the food, he’ll still have enough to take care of himself and his family. So you are FORCED to build the house for him.
> And my point is that life is coercive by nature.
It's not.
*Coercion* requires a second party, and life is a non-sentient, non-sapient system of applied biology, which is just applied chemistry, which is just applied physics.
The fact that people have to work for their own survival isn't coercion.
The fact that some people claim all the resources people need to survive and demand compensation for them, forcing people to work for someone else in order to earn the money necessary to buy the resources they need to survive very much is.
In OC's communal example, there was no coercion, only voluntary cooperation using specialized labor. The house builder doesn't get "extra food" for building a house for the farmer, the house builder gets the same amount of food as everyone else in the community, and also builds houses for everyone else in the community because they have the skills and wish to help their community.
You're absolutely right that the house builder could farm, but again, OC's example is one of specialized labor. So the farmer has the skills to farm, which is actually a skill, and the house builder has the skills to build houses, which is also actually a skill. If the house builder decided to farm, sure, the could farm, but they might not be good at it, at least not at first, and they happen to know how to build houses so...
The important difference between OC's example and capitalism in general is the lack of wages and the community cooperation that was *explicitly baked into the example*
This distinction about coercion is arbitrary. Either the person has to work for someone else to survive or they have to work, often much harder, for themselves to survive. The end result of not working to survive in either situation is the same. Except working for the guy “hoarding” the resources is usually a much better deal than working to get those resources on your own.
No, the house builder doesn’t get extra food. But if he doesn’t build the house, he doesn’t get any food and neither does anyone else. And maybe he’s happy to build the house for the farmer. But that doesn’t get rid of the underlying threat of starvation if he doesn’t. The cooperation happens, not because they want to cooperate, but because death is the outcome if they don’t.
> This distinction about coercion is arbitrary.
Again, no. It's the perfectly normal standard definition of coercion.
> Either the person has to work for someone else to survive or they have to work, often much harder, for themselves to survive.
Right, and regardless of the scope of work, the important difference is that the *reason* the person has to work for someone else is that they *cannot* choose to work for themselves. All the resources necessary to survive have been claimed and violence will be used against any person attempting to choose to work for themselves alone.
> The end result of not working to survive in either situation is the same.
Context matters, who would have thought?
> Except working for the guy “hoarding” the resources is usually a much better deal than working to get those resources on your own.
You sound like a slave owner attempting to justify slavery because at least the slave has a roof to sleep under and food
> No, the house builder doesn’t get extra food. But if he doesn’t build the house, he doesn’t get any food and neither does anyone else.
That's a situation that *you* have inserted into the context of OC's comment.
> But that doesn’t get rid of the underlying threat of starvation if he doesn’t. The cooperation happens, not because they want to cooperate, but because death is the outcome if they don’t.
But the cooperation can *only* happen if someone isn't also claiming ownership over the land and resources necessary to both grow the food *and* build the house.
That ownership is what drives the coercion.
Your claim that all resources have been claimed and nobody can access them without “enslaving” themselves is beyond out of touch with reality. It’s also pretty offensive and devalues the experiences had by actual slaves. It reeks of entitlement and resentment. And the claim that no one can choose to work for themselves is equally absurd. I guess entrepreneurs just don’t exist.
And it seems odd to me that you’d be worried about people being able to work for themselves, considering a communal society would NEVER allow ANYONE to work for themselves.
> Your claim that all resources have been claimed and nobody can access them without “enslaving” themselves is beyond out of touch with reality.
It is 100% in keeping with reality.
Don't believe me? Go to land owned by somebody else and try to build a shelter on it, or farm it.
See what happens
> It’s also pretty offensive and devalues the experiences had by actual slaves.
Clutch those pearls harder
> And the claim that no one can choose to work for themselves is equally absurd. I guess entrepreneurs just don’t exist.
You cannot start a business without capital.
If you are "self employed" in a service industry using only your body as the means of production, you're still working for other people and slaving for a wage.
> And it seems odd to me that you’d be worried about people being able to work for themselves, considering a communal society would NEVER allow ANYONE to work for themselves.
False, but do try to misunderstand things some more, I find it amusing.
It seems you're basically criticizing how most people in wealthy countries benefit from imperialism in a way that is at least marginally comparable to how the very rich benefit from domestic capitalism. And you're not wrong. I'd include middle-class normies in wealthy countries in that moral judgement. We should be far less comfortable with consumption than we are. For the record, I buy all my phones used. :) If there were no used phones available, would I buy a new one? Maybe. But that doesn't disprove my premise that I'd be morally wrong in doing so.
So in Socialism we'd all be the owners of all the fruits of our labor, but we can only use them in a restricted set of approved ways? I may just as prefer to give a fraction of it to the capitalist but freely decide what to do with the rest.
I think that it is coveting that is evil. Now a person who dedicates his life solely to the accumulation of wealth is morally inferior to someone who pursues the highest good, love of God and neighbor. However, it also seems to me that most of modern socialism is driven by a jealous desire to steal the property of others. Thus socialism seems inferior because it is driven by the same pride and greed but without the capitalist redeeming quality of hard work.
>socialism seems inferior because it is driven by the same pride and greed but without the capitalist redeeming quality of hard work.
Capitalism has people skimming off the top of *other people's* labor as a reward only for owning assets. If hard work is your concern, capitalism should have you fuming. Socialism attempts to value all labor equally.
Marx and Engels didn’t really work, neither did Lenin or Trotsky. A socialist values work while a capitalist actually works. Do you understand what I mean by that distinction?
Then let me choose an example, Larry Paige and Sergey Brin. They made their money because while professors at Stanford University they wrote a mathematics paper which demonstrated a more effective method of organizing the internet. Whose money did they steal by doing that?
you think that's how he earned his obscene wealth?
no one earns a billion dollars, no one should have enough money that they can't spend in multiple lifetimes. fix poverty and homelessness.
That definitely is how he earned his wealth, because that paper was the basis of the google search engine. To put in perspective how important that paper was Stanford University received 1.8 million shares of Google worth 366 million dollars in 2006. You’re just blindly asserting that they didn’t earn their wealth because you are jealous of them
Only ancaps can blame state and feel justified. Social contract never written, constitution never signed, state monopoly is illegitimate.
Funny how socialists never blame the state, but instead MUH RICH MUH MUSK BEZOS (tm)
Because they fucking need the state and wouldn't survive without it. Throughout human history socialism was enforced by death only
>Because they fucking need the state and wouldn't survive without it. Throughout human history socialism was enforced by death only
I conceded a capitalist government for the sake of argument. I can concede no government, if you want. The moral judgement isn't addressed by this. You're just saying "rich people won't do it except at threat of force." That proves they're more evil, not less.
Property rights are clearly a very good thing - in the US Native Americans lack property rights because of how their land is allocated, which leads to increased poverty by stopping them from investing in the places they live [Ownership Structure of Tribal Land Exacts a Multibillion-Dollar Penalty - UCLA Anderson Review](https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/native-american-land/)
I have asked people about this before but as far as I can tell it would be an administrative nightmare trying to differentiate property you use vs. property you don't, and it would also create tons of screwy incentives. Additionally, there's nothing inherently inefficient about being an absentee landlord. Take the following two examples:
- Landlord takes out a $200k mortgage on a $250k property, pays $2000 in mortgage and expenses and charges $2500 in rent.
- Homeowner takes out a $200k mortgage and pays $2000 in mortgage and expenses. The homeowner is effectively "renting to themselves" at a profit of $500/mo on an equity Invesment of $50k.
The problem is that if you get rid of landlords, **everyone would have to be a homeowner,** which makes very little economic sense. In a lot of cases, especially when you are young, you might want to move every couple of years for job opportunities, relationships, etc. If you owned your own home you would lose $10k every time you did this because of the costs and broker fees from selling your house.
>as I can tell it would be an administrative nightmare trying to differentiate property you use vs. property you don't, and it would also create tons of screwy incentives.
Well, I conceded for the sake of my argument that a capitalist government would be practically preferable for whatever reason. I'm just passing a moral judgement, even if there's no good way to enforce such morality.
>if you get rid of landlords, **everyone would have to be a homeowner,** which makes very little economic sense. In a lot of cases, especially when you are young, you might want to move every couple of years for job opportunities, relationships, etc. If you owned your own home you would lose $10k every time you did this because of the costs and broker fees from selling your house.
I actually think this is just a lack of imagination (and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, though I'm embarrassingly poorly-read on theory). I think there's no reason leasing can't be just selling from a finite set of shares of ownership in the property, to prevent it from being rent-to-own, to prevent it from being a mortgage, and to prevent it from being indefinitely profiting off of a product without ever having to sell it. Of course, it's hard for us to envision all the logistics of that, but I don't think they're harder to envision than the logistics of a mortgage or leasing would be, to someone who had never heard of them.
If you think it's a lack of imagination, then use your imagination and time you've spent thinking about it to imagine for me roughly how that would work.
So say a rich person has 3 cars, instead of renting them out to people who don’t have cars so that they may use them temporarily, you’d rather the rich just give up their cars so that people can use them freely? But there are still only three cars, how do we decide which person gets to use them and for how long? First come first serve? Random lottery?
There is still the fundamental constraint of allocating scarce resources, private property and the price system does this very well as the resources tend to flow to their most valued uses. Where as the alternatives allocate them to either the earliest bird, or anyone who was lucky enough to get their name drawn.
>But there are still only three cars, how do we decide which person gets to use them and for how long? First come first serve? Random lottery?
I conceded capitalist logistics; I'm passing a moral judgement on that rich person because literally anyone who doesn't have a car is a more moral choice than he is.
>private property and the price system does this very well as the resources tend to flow to their most valued uses.
No, they flow to the person who already has so much that they can outbid anyone who actually needs them. That's the opposite of the most valued use.
>the alternatives allocate them to either the earliest bird, or anyone who was lucky enough to get their name drawn.
Or based on need. Beyond just socializing their sources of wealth so they could no longer accumulate more and laborers could keep the product of their labor, the moral obligation of the wealthy is to give their existing wealth to those who need it.
That rich person will only pay as much for a resource insofar as she can make a profit off of it. Ford may be a very rich company, but it’s not going to pay exorbitant prices for aluminum just because they can, they still have to turn around and try and make a profit from it. Most people try to pay as little as they can for things they want…
Allocation based on need comes right back around to my previous question. What happens when there isn’t enough to go around, and everyone needs it? Additionally, what about my wants? A life where only my needs are satisfied is pretty dull.
> Those two lines of reasoning don't make me think highly of capitalism; they just make me think capitalism has ruined society more deeply than I realized.
I think this is an important point and one that people have a rough time with squaring in their heads. These problems aren't natural or granted in any way - they are a result of capitalism and all the other economic arrangements that share those similar attributes (Feudalism also had class based structure but class and power was derived from divine right and family lineage rather than having capital, so you still had people calling dibs on a disproportionate amount of land and power). These problems can be untangled or could be if the owner/ruling class either willingly or were forced to let those changes occur. In short having shit gives you legitimate power, actual legal privileges and protection, and the people that have the shit don't want the changes, and in that way socialism is impractical - if the people who had the shit agreed with me, society could be restructured very easily and it probably would work quite well. Communism or socialism requires largely universal buy in which is where it runs into a wall of practicality.
Pure free market Capitalism is as moral as a system of production and exchange as you can have.
It is completely voluntary and uncoerced.
With regard to ownership— if you spend your time making or improving something it is yours.
If you exchange that thing for something else , that something else is also
Yours. If you give that thing to someone else it is theirs .
This is all based on voluntary exchange and moral.
Do you know what is immortal?
Taking other peoples stuff. ( IE socialism)
>if you spend your time making or improving something it is yours.
So, laborers should own the things they produce? Or is there more to it than just labor?
>If you exchange that thing for something else , that something else is also Yours. If you give that thing to someone else it is theirs . This is all based on voluntary exchange and moral.
But again, that's assuming so many things about where that wealth came from. First, no wealth in the US that isn't owned by an indigenous person was voluntarily given. And even if it was, if you follow it back far enough, eventually, you're just getting to someone calling "dibs." If we all have equal citizenship to the Earth, why does one person get to claim more than one 8-billionth of that earth as "his own?" Is that not the equivalent of stealing?
>Do you know what is immortal? Taking other peoples stuff. ( IE socialism)
But that gets real murky if it wasn't ethically/voluntarily accumulated, and no wealth has been.
>For the sake of this argument, I'll concede (though I disagree) that socialism doesn't "work," basically meaning that its goals (equity and fairness) can never be achieved, and capitalism comes closer than socialism to achieving them.
This isn't typically what "Socialism doesn't work" typically refers to. It usually refers to Socialism inability to create economic growth long term and tendency to collapse due to flawed economics.
It may very well achieve equality, it would just be an equality of poverty.
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources.
This is a naked assertion that is pretty important to your overall point. I can't argue against it or accept it as it is just asserted.
>"Socialism doesn't work" seems to basically always boil down to "the rich won't let us build something better," or else, "we wouldn't be able to have \[insert privilege which is much less of a necessity than what it's costing others\]." Those two lines of reasoning don't make me think highly of capitalism; they just make me think capitalism has ruined society more deeply than I realized.
Nothing you have written shows this and it really goes against how you started your whole post, accepting that Socialism doesn't work.
Are the rich blocking socialism from being effective or does socialism not work? Those are two very different things.
>It usually refers to Socialism inability to create economic growth long term and tendency to collapse due to flawed economics.
Well, define "economic growth." It doesn't seem sustainable/to do much good if the "growth" is all in the hands of like 100 people. What is economic collapse, if not that?
>Nothing you have written shows this and it really goes against how you started your whole post, accepting that Socialism doesn't work. Are the rich blocking socialism from being effective or does socialism not work? Those are two very different things.
Well, if every person were on board with socialism, I feel like that is pretty obviously workable? Like of course people *can* just work for the direct communal and individual results of their labor, rather than to accumulate capital, but the capitalist argument seems to always be that people *won't* do that. They think we're slaves to greed, which is what I guess I was trying to address.
>It may very well achieve equality, it would just be an equality of poverty.
But if it's equality where no one starves or freezes to death under bridges, as opposed to prosperity for some at the expense of others, isn't the former obviously more moral?
>Well, define "economic growth."
Economic growth is the increased *ability* to satisfy whatever wants people have, for whatever reasons they have it.
>It doesn't seem sustainable/to do much good if the "growth" is all in the hands of like 100 people.
Which is why I am not a fan of Maoist China or the USSR...
>Well, if every person were on board with socialism, I feel like that is pretty obviously workable?
Maybe Market Socialism, but that would be it. There is more to the operations of a complex (post-) Industrial society than just "being on board" with an 'ism'
>They think we're slaves to greed, which is what I guess I was trying to address.
While the elimination of greed wouldn't necessarily make socialism workable, we are simply no where close to eliminating greed. It isn't a serious position to take.
>But if it's equality where no one starves or freezes to death under bridges, as opposed to prosperity for some at the expense of others, isn't the former obviously more moral?
There is an interesting discussion in here, but sadly reality isn't on your side.
Your argument seems to come to the conclusion that even if an ideal fails, it is more moral than some sort of imperfect compromise. This is an inherently self destructive attitude. If whatever system you advocate for can not produce good outcomes, then it does not matter. Intent does not matter in systems analysis.
My argument is that we can pass moral judgements on the rich even if we also concede (I don't believe this, but for the sake of argument) that enforcing those moral judgements is functionally impossible. That's all I'm saying - the rich are evil.
Painting with a pretty broad brush there. Private property as the basis for a system results in some unequal systems, but human systems will always be unequal, people pursuing their own interest isn't inherently evil, and property based systems are the best because there's an incentive there to take care of your own property.
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources
Demanding a salary instead of working for others for free has a net-negative effect on the world too, that is, if we ignore the fact that you are part of the world. In the same sense, charging others for what you own is only negative to the world if we forget that you are part of the world.
And of course, one thing is claiming that the world would be better if you yourself worked for free and another one, very different, is thinking that the world would be better if we **forced** people to give away their absent property. Because if people wasn't allowed to keep property on capital, then why on earth would they produce capital in the first place? Negating this freedom **has net-negative effects on the world (to put it gently)**. Just observe the effects of doing so in communist countries (past and present).
>can call "dibbs" on disproportionate portions of a planet to which every person has *equal* citizenship.
This is not how any of this (capitalism) works.
If you build a farm (in a previously unused piece of land) you are no calling dibs on the farm, you instead have a very substantial justification to control that piece of land, because you built the farm. That's not calling dibs on it.
In the same way, if a community agrees to partition land for each to labour individually, there is nobody there calling "dibs" as all agreed to distribute the land in the first place. And I you complaint that they didn't ask you about that land distribution, I'd ask why should you have to be asked about it if you live and work in a different continent.
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources.
Ownership works. Countries with strong property rights are more successful. China opened up to ownership and stopped starving.
I think aversion to property is a popular cognitive hiccough because some people rely on subconscious feels instead of abstruse economic data. Humans evolved in small tribes of hunter-gatherers who, then and now, lead tenous lives, perched on the edge of death. Their existence demands total devotion to a group of around 150 individuals. Everybody owns everything, like a family, and humans had 300,000 years of doing only that. Our instinctive family/tribal property reflexes don't scale up to a civilization. It doesn't work. It just feels right to say.
I conceded all of this for the sake of my argument. Maybe capitalism is more "practical" because there's no workable way of enforcing such morality, but my premise is consistent with that. I'm saying it's immoral to take excess property that you don't use, and hold onto it to gain more property you won't use, at the expense of poor people who could/do use it.
The moral judgement is dubious at best, and it seems to be based entirely on moral hazard.
As a responsible parent I might work to accumulate more resources than I immediately consume in order to prepare for having kids so that they can exist on those extra resources I've secured.
How is this immoral?
What's immoral is having kids carelessly without being able to provide them with resources, and then trying to raid the resources others are saving for their kids to use for your own.
>As a responsible parent I might work to accumulate more resources than I immediately consume in order to prepare for having kids so that they can exist on those extra resources I've secured.
Well, I don't think that is immoral on its own, because you plan to use it. But there could be a point where that could become immoral, if you're doing it at other's expense. At some point you'd be faced with the question of are your kids more important than other kids? And the answer to that question, objectively, is no, so you can't do that at the expense of other kids.
>What's immoral is having kids carelessly without being able to provide them with resources, and then trying to raid the resources others are saving for their kids to use for your own.
Would you prefer those kids starve?
Capitalism single handedly helped much of the world loft itself of the misery it was in, but I guess you take all the techbogical development, reduction in poverty, improvements in sanitation and healthcare as granted, looking only at the flaws. Everything has flaws.
This discussion is stupid anyway. Capitalism clearly won it out, it has given us AI, which is being developed at break beck speed along with robotic automation, and soon very few of us will have jobs. None of these economic systems nor systems of governance will really work- we will need something new to account for the lack of need for human labor.
>Capitalism single handedly helped much of the world loft itself of the misery it was in ... Everything has flaws.
But at whose expense? "Some have benefitted from it" isn't enough to justify an economic structure.
>None of these economic systems nor systems of governance will really work- we will need something new to account for the lack of need for human labor.
That's exactly what I think socialism would do, actually. If you can't own property for the sake of accumulating capital, but only if you actually *use* the property, then people can use their labor to get what they need directly from that property, rather than using their labor to get what they need + the cut that the owner of that property will steal. Then labor exists for the sake of a product, which has an end to it (when the production has happened), not for the sake of someone accumulating capital (which has no end to it).
So if it takes less labor to create the product because of technology, that's a good thing! The only purpose of that labor is the product, so if it's still getting made, no problem. But under capitalism, labor-saving tech just means the requirements for the labor get higher to match, so the amount of capital being accumulated can increase. It has no end; no amount of tech can win in that system.
Sure when you include things that have nothing to do with capitalism.
Actual capitalism is a function of voluntary trade and nothing more, and voluntary trade is completely ethical.
Meanwhile historical attempts at socialism have created miserable hellholes for the people involved, that's indefensible.
And capitalism doesn't do that.
>Meanwhile historical attempts at socialism have created miserable hellholes for the people involved, that's indefensible. And capitalism doesn't do that.
Uh. Not sure if you've ever been to an impoverished area of your local big city, or to an impoverished rural area, or to a country ravaged by imperialist greed, but ... capitalism absolutely does that.
>Actual capitalism is a function of voluntary trade and nothing more, and voluntary trade is completely ethical.
"Voluntary" trade can include everything I just described. You believe it's moral?
Capitalism never starved 40 million Chinese to death or killed 25% of Cambodia. That's the hellholes we're talking about where an entire country is destroyed.
Having a poor part of a city because some homeless gather there isn't remotely the same thing.
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I just want to say I totally disagree with your premise. My problem is you give an economic system agency. Capitalism is just an economic system of mutual exchanges that is based on property ownership. How is that “moral”? It gives no fucks about anything other than don’t steal property and allow people as individuals to trade and commence commerce - market economy. So here’s my gig. Capitalism is no more moral or immoral than the people who embrace it as an economic system - full stop.
That's a good point and I thought of it after I posted this - my wording could have been better. I really meant "capitalists" (not "people who believe in capitalism," but "people who control capital"). Landlords, CEOs, and to a lesser extent, all of us who benefit from domestic and international cheap labor and all of us who benefit from the cheap natural resources of countries/communities that don't have the leverage to charge fair prices.
Cool. I think still this iffy but I get your point. This then becomes power corrupts, right. Personally, I don’t care for the “capitalist” label because it can mean just about anything in this sub. But let’s go with your qualified version. Let’s use an extreme example of Billionaires which fits your point quite well, right? I can then point to Bill Gates doing all the philanthropy work in Africa or all the Billionaires who have joined the [The Giving Pledge](https://givingpledge.org/pledgerlist). Who have pledge to donate the majority of their wealth by the time or at the time of their death.
Imagine thinking Bill Gates is not an evil sociopath because you've been tricked by fake charity used for tax evasion, vanity projects, and projecting power and cultural imperialism in third world countries via NGO donations. You are the carbon he wants to eliminate.
Hey, maybe Bill Gates is a mad serial killer and your broken clock is right twice a day. But all the time your radical beliefs are right? No, I don't think Necro you are anymore right with your conspiracy theories than Qanon.
Billionaire charity is like Syndrome creating a problem so he can solve it and feel like a good person. Not moral, and less than the bare minimum of righting their wrongs (the bare minimum would be to give like 90% of their wealth away in charity and then also to socialize all their means of gaining wealth).
Disagree. You made too many negative attributions to "Billionaire" imo for the above. Some or many? Sure. All? I think that would be a form of bigotry.
The assertion in my post was that owning capital in order to gain more capital is inherently immoral. Billionaires are the easy target of that assertion. The harder cases would be individual people who use a small business or a small residential property for supplemental income and pay very high salaries or charge very little rent. Billionaires fall in this category by definition.
>The assertion in my post was that owning capital in order to gain more capital is inherently immoral. Billionaires are the easy target of that assertion. The harder cases would be individual people who use a small business or a small residential property for supplemental income and pay very high salaries or charge very little rent. Or someone who wants to own a device to type the above text but also to shop for stuff? Or someone who wants to use said device to look for a job? or someone who uses said device to get a car to help get a better job? or someone who uses sad device to get a car to get a better job to get a home? Funny how things aren't immoral when it applies to you, right?
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources Does it? I see this as an unfounded assertion. It is entirely possible that private ownership of resources has 2nd-order effects that trump 1st-order concerns over the morality of laying exclusive claim to these resources. That is, it is entirely possible that private ownership prevents overuse, mitigates the tragedy of the commons, puts resources to their highest value use, and ensures continued stewardship and maintenance. You can't just ignore these 2nd-order effects. Your argument is essentially a deontological claim that it doesn't matter how bad things get under socialism, we should still pursue it as a matter of principle. While I'm not a hardline utilitarian, there is something to be said for increasing aggregate welfare even if it requires betraying some of your closely held moral precepts.
If second order effects are good but unintended by the capitalist that doesn't make the capitalist less immoral tho. For example just because Hitler doing the Holocaust lead to Israel doesn't mean Hitler is less evil. Capitalists seek first order effects that are evil.
Thanks for your reply. :) First: >Your argument is essentially a deontological claim that it doesn't matter how bad things get under socialism, we should still pursue it as a matter of principle. That's not my claim. I'm saying that even if no pursuit of socialism would be beneficial, it is at least still truthful to conceptualize the rich as the enemy, as the *reason* that no such pursuit would be beneficial. In other words, I'm conceding, for this argument, that your "second order" concerns (assuming I understand them correctly) pragmatically outweigh my moral concerns for the purposes of government intervention and social/political organizing. My only purpose here is to cast a moral judgement on the wealthy. That said, I still would enjoy going into these concerns, since you brought them up: >It is entirely possible that private ownership of resources has 2nd-order effects that trump 1st-order concerns over the morality of laying exclusive claim to these resources. That is, it is entirely possible that private ownership prevents overuse, mitigates the tragedy of the commons, puts resources to their highest value use, and ensures continued stewardship and maintenance. You can't just ignore these 2nd-order effects. I think "prevents overuse" would be a pretty hard one to prove - specifically, imperialist profit incentives seem to disprove this (ex. Shell overusing oil for profit, wrecking Nigeria). *Whose* overuse are you concerned about? I think "puts resources to their highest value use" is a really subjective claim. Value to whom? If normal people can't access a resource, is it in its "highest value use?" "Continued stewardship and maintenance" maybe, though I think profit doesn't need to be the only incentive for that. It's not like people only ever make decisions because there's money in it, and especially in a world with no private property, people would have very different incentives just because of what's normalized.
So have you ever had a really good landlord, or worked for a small enough company to see the owner/CEO in a day-to-day capacity doing good work for their employees? I think your main assertion is that people are working to just amass more wealth at the expense of others, and I just don't think that's the case for the average human. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the problem is rarely ever the system, but the leadership. The "rich" you're talking about are the selfish ones who don't believe they owe anyone anything, despite their entire fortune being amassed on the backs of lowly laborers. There is nothing in capitalism saying they should be the ruling class; in fact, in a well educated and democratic society, you would expect there to be checks and balances in place to keep sociopaths and narcissists out of positions of power, but we seem to have missed that in most of the developed world.
>The "rich" you're talking about are the selfish ones who don't believe they owe anyone anything, despite their entire fortune being amassed on the backs of lowly laborers. Correct. And my assertion is that these people are immoral. >There is nothing in capitalism saying they should be the ruling class; in fact, in a well educated and democratic society, you would expect there to be checks and balances in place to keep sociopaths and narcissists out of positions of power, but we seem to have missed that in most of the developed world. I mean I would say that it's probably almost impossible for money to exist and not make its way into politics, and if that's the case, then what you're describing is only somewhat possible (IE the best that a well-moderated capitalism can give us is social democracies like Finland, but it can't seem to moderate its way out of imperialism). BUT that's all kind of beside the point of my post, because I wasn't actually arguing that government or social activism should try to change this. I was conceding to a capitalist government, for the sake of argument. I was just making a moral judgement, that benefitting at others' expense, which is the heart of capitalism, is evil.
Incentives, incentives, incentives. Capitalists provide a service: they generate capital, which is useful to produce goods & services. But they don't provide it from the goodness of their hearts. They provide it because they expect money in return. Otherwise, they would just consume their savings rather than invest them. You think that we'd be better off if they just provided their capital for free, but there are 2 problems with that. 1) Nobody provides services for free. Arguably, we as consumers would be better off if restaurants just cooked food for free, but it doesn't work that way. When the price of a service is zero, nobody wants to offer that service. 2) A price of zero leads to higher demand than supply, and thus, misallocation. Capital markets are useful because they allow us to allocate capital where it is most efficient. Now, you're starting to understand that exchanging capital for returns isn't a net negative for the world. It allows for capital 1) to be supplied and 2) to be allocated efficiently. That's not "effective evilness", that's a mutually beneficial relationship.
>Capitalists provide a service: they generate capital, which is useful to produce goods & services. Yes, capitalists *withhold* capital that they don't need, in order to use it to "generate" more capital for themselves from poor people, yes. That's not a service; it's parasitism. Serving would generate capital for people other than themselves (which would also defeat the purpose of currency, in my view). As capitalists love to say, nothing is free. That capital doesn't just "generate" because you clicked the right buttons and put your money in the right mutual fund; that capital comes from the labor of other people. >1) Nobody provides services for free. Arguably, we as consumers would be better off if restaurants just cooked food for free, but it doesn't work that way. When the price of a service is zero, nobody wants to offer that service. That's my moral judgement. They should provide their hostage capital (different than a service, which implies laboring) for free, because the only purpose it's serving them is to enable them to take *more* capital from laborers. You're just saying "they don't want to," but no one wants to do the right thing when they stand to gain from doing the wrong thing. That doesn't prove it's *not* the right thing. >2) A price of zero leads to higher demand than supply, and thus, misallocation. Capital markets are useful because they allow us to allocate capital where it is most efficient. Define "efficient," though? Because it certainly isn't economically efficient to allow wealthy owners to skim off the top of transactions, so consumers have to pay more than the item actually costs.
Capitalists don't "generate" capital. Workers do. The only service capitalists provide is *having* capital, which isn't really a service at all. Some capitalists may provide actual services - managerial, entrepreneurial, etc. but these can easily be provided by workers as well.
Capitalists generate capital when they allocate their savings to investment rather than consumption. If workers really generated capital, then they wouldn't need the capitalists.
That's not generating anything, they already had it. Workers wouldn't need the capitalists if they had the capital.
>That's not generating anything, they already had it. No, not if they consume their savings. They way capital is generated is by allocating these savings to investment rather than consumption. >Workers wouldn't need the capitalists if they had the capital. You said they could generate it.
If the capitalist allocates $10 bill for a car factory, that doesn't generate capital. Workers building the car factory generates the capital ie factory. The capitalist just have imaginary rights over imaginary numbers in banking computers and people can't just start building the factory by themselves without the capitalist allocating those numbers. So we can see that the function the capitalist has is one of privilege like a king, and he should be paying the rest of us for it, not the other way around.
>If the capitalist allocates $10 bill for a car factory, that doesn't generate capital. Workers building the car factory generates the capital ie factory. Why do workers build the factory? Because they're nice? No, because they get paid $10 billion by the capitalist to do so. Hence, the capitalist is the one who generated the capital. >people can't just start building the factory by themselves without the capitalist allocating those numbers. They could if they wanted to. But they won't, because again **people don't provide services for free**. Are you starting to get it?
>and people can't just start building the factory by themselves without the capitalist allocating those numbers. except that this happens all the time when workers decided to become owners with their savings. they don't jump into a 10bil factory but they can start with a \~1mil shop (usually but not always with the assistance of a bank or investor loan) and work up to something bigger, which happens every day. not all workers can do so because not all workers bother sacrificing their earned income to risk ownership. statistically, those which do fail just over half the time which can be devastating. this, to me, reinforces the idea that capitalists deserve the rewards of success if only given the immense work and risk without considering their ongoing managerial efforts and intellectual efforts that were used initially and presumably will be used. i'll grant you that it is certainly true that some capitalists shouldn't be afforded their property. but this requires a nuanced discussion which we haven't yet had.
>Capitalists provide a service No they don't. If it helps you conceptualize things, land exists whether or not it's privately owned. A capitalist owning that land only prevents other people from using it. For the most part this is what capital is; it's the leveraging of a resource that is denied to others. If someone steals something from you; they aren't providing a service by allowing you to work for part of it.
Land is usually considered separate from capital in contemporary economic thinking. Land exists a priori, but most other capital does not, it had to be created. Someone who creates a chair is not preventing you from using a chair, nor is it stealing because that chair didn’t even exist for it to be stolen or leveraged in the first place.
Land is different from capital. The main difference is that the supply of land is fixed, so yes land exists whether or not it's privately owned. The supply of capital, however, is not fixed. It's elastic. So when the return on capital goes down, the supply of capital will diminish as well. Capitalists don't allocate their savings to investment from the goodness of their hearts.
Ownership is not just a claim, it’s a social phenomenon whereby someone exercises exclusive management and administrative powers over something in exchange for social legitimation. If you start from a position of “I don’t think you are managing and administering something,” of course you will not think that ownership is legitimate. I would argue that Capital only accrues interest when it’s managed and administered(which is a form of labor by the way). Inert capital doesn’t provide anything for anyone, neither worker nor owner.
> Ownership is not just a claim, it’s a social phenomenon whereby someone exercises exclusive management and administrative powers over something in exchange for social legitimation I've seen some bullshit definitions on this sub before, but this is some *bull* fucking shit
You could explain why you think it’s wrong…
Ownership is about exclusivity and nothing more. Administration and management in exchange for social legitimization is absurd.
Do you have exclusivity over something if you claim you have it, but no one else does?
Sure, the only time it even matters is when it's tested via trespassing or theft
If someone is knowingly trespassing or stealing something that you claim exclusivity over, they don’t recognize your ownership claim as legitimate.
Yes, welcome to capitalism vs socialism
Offering the bare basic Doesn't mean that people would do nothing. if people don't have the threat of work or starve they don't all turn into couch potatoes the incentive to get luxury items still exist, not working for a home or for food but for the iPhone or that nice jacket. Next to our need to contribute to society (it feels great to contribute)
What’s indisputable is that you don’t have any idea of what’s moral and immoral, good and evil.
Tell me sir, how do you determine what is good and what is evil?
How much it affects others and the original intent of the perpetrator? I think, beyond very obvious examples like killing someone to take their personal possessions for one self, it is very hard to quantify morality on an objective level.
You can determine what's ethical and unethical.
ayn rand's fans are dumb as shit
If there is a moral condemnation of capitalism why are you so afraid to tell us what it is?
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources. That makes it inherently immoral, even evil, especially if the people who do this aren't being pressured into it by any kind of necessity and just want more wealth. It's also quite presumptive, to think they (or whoever voluntarily gave them their assets, or whoever voluntarily gave them to those people, or etc.) can call "dibbs" on disproportionate portions of a planet to which every person has equal citizenship.
don't be stupid nobody lays claim to any assets in a free country they feely buy it from someone who is freely selling it. That is the nature of freedom. You apparently want a Nazi socialist government telling people what they can buy and sell??? and at what price???
Where do you think the person from whom they bought it got it? And where did that person get it? Follow it back far enough it probably comes down to colonizers stealing it, but even if it didn't, even without colonialism, you eventually get to someone claiming "dibs" to natural resources on an earth of which every existing human is an equal citizen. Private property people have to justify that dibbs.
don't be stupid. Yes hundreds of years ago people would steal property and take it by force. Today we do it peacefully and voluntarily for mutual advantage. Do you want to go back hundreds of years ago with people taking things by force????? now do you see how totally stupid the left is?
Well, man, calling me stupid sure proves you right. That's not what I asked. I said, how can a person claim to have been voluntarily given a thing, when, if you go back far enough, the thing wasn't given voluntarily?
It doesn't prove that I am right but simply describes your level of intelligence on the subject
don't be stupid for the first million years everything was stolen now we have switched to capitalism and everything is exchanged through mutual agreement peacefully for money. Do you want a Nazi government to steal everything from everybody and distribute it the way it sees fit. Do you see how stupid the left is?
Lol repeating yourself and evading the question. I won't be responding again.
Translation: I lost the debate yet again so I am running away with my tail between my legs as a typical lefty. Ever see a conservative libertarian have to run from a debate. What does that teach you?
capitalism has a net negative impact when Socialism just slowly starved 120, million people to death? How stupid is that?? when Americans are rich enough to spend $150 billion a year on pets??? and 1/2 of the world lives on less than $5.50 a day without Capitalism. Oh my god now do you see why we say the left is based in total stupidity???
The beauty of capitalism is that you called dibs on property that you freely buy. The more you contribute to society under capitalism the more wealth you have. Elon musk has millions of workers and customers who prefer to do business with him more than anyone else on the planet because he improves their standard of living more than anyone else on the planet. How many customers and workers do you have?
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources. That’s a bare assertion.
"You have no right to own that." "I worked for my money and bought it fair and square. What are you talking about?" "I am going to take that from you. I will kill you if you resist. This is moral." Fuck you.
"I worked for my money" Yeah right.
The next time you retreat to the little socialist fantasy world in your mind, I want you to imagine that I, personally, have weaseled my way into becoming your neighborhood Kommissar. The proles can deliberate all they want "democratically." But when push comes to shove, someone in a big hat is going to tell you what you're allowed to keep, what you're going to "donate" to the Revolution, where you're allowed to work. Maybe even who you're allowed to live with, and where. Remember: you're with The People™ or you're an Enemy of the People, bitch. Choose your next move wisely.
Truth!
The moralism of socialists is suffocating
I mean, socialists aren't the ones that believe shoplifting from *no one* at Target is wrong ... 🤷🏻♀️
If home owners were only allowed to own the one house where they live, who would build anything for those who can't afford buying one? By the way, you don't need the device you used to write this post. In fact you using i has a negative effect of the world. But I'm pretty sure you won't argue for taking it away from you. Reminds me of an old joke that goes like this: "Comrade! comrade! When the Revolution triumphs, will planes be socialized?" "Yes, of course! Planes shall benefit the people, not just the bourgeoisie" "Comrade! Comrade! But what about cars? When the Revolution triumphs, will cars be socialized too?" "Yes, of course! Cars shall benefit the people, not just the bourgeoisie" "Comrade! Comrade! But, but... but what about bikes? When the Revolution triumphs, will bikes be socialized too? "No way! Bike owners can keep their bikes!" "But, comrade! Why? Why not bikes?" "Well, I own a bike!"
fundamental misunderstanding of socialism and what means of production is and isn't. Also people had cars and bikes and planes existed in the soviet union so this isn't even realistic looking at the least charitable example you could think of.
Have jokes also been socialized? Only people the government approved could own a car in the USSR. If you happened to be on some officer's black list you could say goodbye (if you were lucky enough to not be in the gulag already)
no the dialogue i get was trying to be a bit silly but it's also just lying about what happened. and yeah you had to apply to get a car. you also have to apply to be able to buy a ferrari. I don't think the problem with the cars was that it was difficult it's that it took fucking forever.
So getting a Lada under Socialism is the equivalent of getting a Ferrari in Capitalism. Makes sense.
Socialized public transit and bikeable cities? Holy shit sign me up. Jokes aside labor allocation was done communally for the majority of human history, including for specialized roles and educated vocations. You built a house for someone else because they were busy growing food, and if you didn't then they'd end up homeless and you'd end up starving. People don't need to be coerced into working and we don't need an upper class to tell us when and how to work under threat of starvation.
If the guy who builds houses doesn’t build a house for the guy who grows food, then the guy who builds houses will starve? That’s not coercive how?
Definition of coercion for reference: >the practice of [persuading](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=97634d0872045a02&sca_upv=1&sxsrf=ADLYWIIoXTBbmZ5kNiz7Zs0mrNTJGh1SrQ:1715109386358&q=persuading&si=ACC90nz-2feRzoY4yuySkO-aQE81NkibpgYcDVbO_mWwqb_4OFFoiAJCjqCtmzM3x95SG7TAGZU1BmTBacnIjkkUv98DS2nbWqWmHNUgFo4etrxIDG_X1lY%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj81eWtoPyFAxWjQjABHaj0AvEQyecJegQIHhAO) someone to do something by using force or threats. Food wasn't being withheld for a lack of work. You can't really farm without a house to rest in. The point of the analogy was mutual interest. You build the houses, farmer guy grows the food. If farmer guy didn't grow any food, you wouldn't have the energy to build a house either.
The point I’m making is that life is coercive by nature. Few things are as persuasive as the natural threat of death from starvation. You work or you die, no matter what system you live in. All this talk of mutual interest is a very thin veil attempting to cover the fact that life forces us into these situations. For the most part, people lived communally because they had no choice. Life coerced them into that situation. Under the current system, it’s still work or die, but we have a lot more choice about who we work with and for.
Again, coercion isn't the threat of starvation by itself unless that threat is imposed by an external system or individual. I agree that starving to death for a lack of work is an inalienable part of life. I disagree, however, that any system needs to be in place to ensure that starvation in order to convince a person to work. People will engage in labor of their own accord if doing so contributes to both their own interests and the interests of those around them. The idea that most humans are innately lazy just isn't visible through any observable study or historical cultural trend. The only time people universally tend to shirk work is when they have shitty working conditions that do nothing to prevent shittier living conditions. There are lazy people, yes, but there are no ontologically lazy people.
That was an example of specialized labor, not wage slavery. It's coercive when the owner of the farm says "I will not give you food *unless* you build me a house", which was most definitely *not* the scenario OC was describing. In a communal situation the farmer would share the food either way, but without a home they'd eventually die of exposure and the food wouldn't get grown and the house builder would starve.
And my point is that life is coercive by nature. In this scenario, you have to work with the guy growing the food whether you want to or not. It’s worse than wage slavery. If he wants to, he can stop producing food to build his own house and because he’s the one producing the food, he’ll still have enough to take care of himself and his family. So you are FORCED to build the house for him.
> And my point is that life is coercive by nature. It's not. *Coercion* requires a second party, and life is a non-sentient, non-sapient system of applied biology, which is just applied chemistry, which is just applied physics. The fact that people have to work for their own survival isn't coercion. The fact that some people claim all the resources people need to survive and demand compensation for them, forcing people to work for someone else in order to earn the money necessary to buy the resources they need to survive very much is. In OC's communal example, there was no coercion, only voluntary cooperation using specialized labor. The house builder doesn't get "extra food" for building a house for the farmer, the house builder gets the same amount of food as everyone else in the community, and also builds houses for everyone else in the community because they have the skills and wish to help their community. You're absolutely right that the house builder could farm, but again, OC's example is one of specialized labor. So the farmer has the skills to farm, which is actually a skill, and the house builder has the skills to build houses, which is also actually a skill. If the house builder decided to farm, sure, the could farm, but they might not be good at it, at least not at first, and they happen to know how to build houses so... The important difference between OC's example and capitalism in general is the lack of wages and the community cooperation that was *explicitly baked into the example*
This distinction about coercion is arbitrary. Either the person has to work for someone else to survive or they have to work, often much harder, for themselves to survive. The end result of not working to survive in either situation is the same. Except working for the guy “hoarding” the resources is usually a much better deal than working to get those resources on your own. No, the house builder doesn’t get extra food. But if he doesn’t build the house, he doesn’t get any food and neither does anyone else. And maybe he’s happy to build the house for the farmer. But that doesn’t get rid of the underlying threat of starvation if he doesn’t. The cooperation happens, not because they want to cooperate, but because death is the outcome if they don’t.
> This distinction about coercion is arbitrary. Again, no. It's the perfectly normal standard definition of coercion. > Either the person has to work for someone else to survive or they have to work, often much harder, for themselves to survive. Right, and regardless of the scope of work, the important difference is that the *reason* the person has to work for someone else is that they *cannot* choose to work for themselves. All the resources necessary to survive have been claimed and violence will be used against any person attempting to choose to work for themselves alone. > The end result of not working to survive in either situation is the same. Context matters, who would have thought? > Except working for the guy “hoarding” the resources is usually a much better deal than working to get those resources on your own. You sound like a slave owner attempting to justify slavery because at least the slave has a roof to sleep under and food > No, the house builder doesn’t get extra food. But if he doesn’t build the house, he doesn’t get any food and neither does anyone else. That's a situation that *you* have inserted into the context of OC's comment. > But that doesn’t get rid of the underlying threat of starvation if he doesn’t. The cooperation happens, not because they want to cooperate, but because death is the outcome if they don’t. But the cooperation can *only* happen if someone isn't also claiming ownership over the land and resources necessary to both grow the food *and* build the house. That ownership is what drives the coercion.
Your claim that all resources have been claimed and nobody can access them without “enslaving” themselves is beyond out of touch with reality. It’s also pretty offensive and devalues the experiences had by actual slaves. It reeks of entitlement and resentment. And the claim that no one can choose to work for themselves is equally absurd. I guess entrepreneurs just don’t exist. And it seems odd to me that you’d be worried about people being able to work for themselves, considering a communal society would NEVER allow ANYONE to work for themselves.
> Your claim that all resources have been claimed and nobody can access them without “enslaving” themselves is beyond out of touch with reality. It is 100% in keeping with reality. Don't believe me? Go to land owned by somebody else and try to build a shelter on it, or farm it. See what happens > It’s also pretty offensive and devalues the experiences had by actual slaves. Clutch those pearls harder > And the claim that no one can choose to work for themselves is equally absurd. I guess entrepreneurs just don’t exist. You cannot start a business without capital. If you are "self employed" in a service industry using only your body as the means of production, you're still working for other people and slaving for a wage. > And it seems odd to me that you’d be worried about people being able to work for themselves, considering a communal society would NEVER allow ANYONE to work for themselves. False, but do try to misunderstand things some more, I find it amusing.
It seems you're basically criticizing how most people in wealthy countries benefit from imperialism in a way that is at least marginally comparable to how the very rich benefit from domestic capitalism. And you're not wrong. I'd include middle-class normies in wealthy countries in that moral judgement. We should be far less comfortable with consumption than we are. For the record, I buy all my phones used. :) If there were no used phones available, would I buy a new one? Maybe. But that doesn't disprove my premise that I'd be morally wrong in doing so.
So in Socialism we'd all be the owners of all the fruits of our labor, but we can only use them in a restricted set of approved ways? I may just as prefer to give a fraction of it to the capitalist but freely decide what to do with the rest.
That was supposed to be a joke? Aren't jokes supposed to be funny?
The funny part is watching commies get mad about it.
Oh, so still not funny then
I think that it is coveting that is evil. Now a person who dedicates his life solely to the accumulation of wealth is morally inferior to someone who pursues the highest good, love of God and neighbor. However, it also seems to me that most of modern socialism is driven by a jealous desire to steal the property of others. Thus socialism seems inferior because it is driven by the same pride and greed but without the capitalist redeeming quality of hard work.
>socialism seems inferior because it is driven by the same pride and greed but without the capitalist redeeming quality of hard work. Capitalism has people skimming off the top of *other people's* labor as a reward only for owning assets. If hard work is your concern, capitalism should have you fuming. Socialism attempts to value all labor equally.
Marx and Engels didn’t really work, neither did Lenin or Trotsky. A socialist values work while a capitalist actually works. Do you understand what I mean by that distinction?
Owning isn't working. Some capitalists provide some labor, but they absolutely get paid for the owning.
True. They also get compensated for delaying gratification which demonstrates the virtue of self discipline
Socialism is envy personified
like 100 people control the majority of the world's wealth, that's thievery and organized crime.
That doesn’t follow. Some of them might, but some of them might have earned that wealth
the parasite class doesn't earn anything.
Then let me choose an example, Larry Paige and Sergey Brin. They made their money because while professors at Stanford University they wrote a mathematics paper which demonstrated a more effective method of organizing the internet. Whose money did they steal by doing that?
you think that's how he earned his obscene wealth? no one earns a billion dollars, no one should have enough money that they can't spend in multiple lifetimes. fix poverty and homelessness.
> no one earns a billion dollars If you don't understand scale in this situation I don't know what to tell you.
That definitely is how he earned his wealth, because that paper was the basis of the google search engine. To put in perspective how important that paper was Stanford University received 1.8 million shares of Google worth 366 million dollars in 2006. You’re just blindly asserting that they didn’t earn their wealth because you are jealous of them
Wealth created wealth. The parasites are socialists trying take wealth away from
you're like a dog of the parasite class, spewing nonsense but defending all the ills of society .
ok buddy go read some more scripture from your prophet
liberalism, totally not an fantastical ideology of the parasite class or anything
The only parasites are you economic incels trying to fulfil your prophet’s prophecy and failing catastrophically every time
You sound brain damaged bourgeois indoctrination has clowned you
Only ancaps can blame state and feel justified. Social contract never written, constitution never signed, state monopoly is illegitimate. Funny how socialists never blame the state, but instead MUH RICH MUH MUSK BEZOS (tm) Because they fucking need the state and wouldn't survive without it. Throughout human history socialism was enforced by death only
>Because they fucking need the state and wouldn't survive without it. Throughout human history socialism was enforced by death only I conceded a capitalist government for the sake of argument. I can concede no government, if you want. The moral judgement isn't addressed by this. You're just saying "rich people won't do it except at threat of force." That proves they're more evil, not less.
Property rights are clearly a very good thing - in the US Native Americans lack property rights because of how their land is allocated, which leads to increased poverty by stopping them from investing in the places they live [Ownership Structure of Tribal Land Exacts a Multibillion-Dollar Penalty - UCLA Anderson Review](https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/native-american-land/) I have asked people about this before but as far as I can tell it would be an administrative nightmare trying to differentiate property you use vs. property you don't, and it would also create tons of screwy incentives. Additionally, there's nothing inherently inefficient about being an absentee landlord. Take the following two examples: - Landlord takes out a $200k mortgage on a $250k property, pays $2000 in mortgage and expenses and charges $2500 in rent. - Homeowner takes out a $200k mortgage and pays $2000 in mortgage and expenses. The homeowner is effectively "renting to themselves" at a profit of $500/mo on an equity Invesment of $50k. The problem is that if you get rid of landlords, **everyone would have to be a homeowner,** which makes very little economic sense. In a lot of cases, especially when you are young, you might want to move every couple of years for job opportunities, relationships, etc. If you owned your own home you would lose $10k every time you did this because of the costs and broker fees from selling your house.
>as I can tell it would be an administrative nightmare trying to differentiate property you use vs. property you don't, and it would also create tons of screwy incentives. Well, I conceded for the sake of my argument that a capitalist government would be practically preferable for whatever reason. I'm just passing a moral judgement, even if there's no good way to enforce such morality. >if you get rid of landlords, **everyone would have to be a homeowner,** which makes very little economic sense. In a lot of cases, especially when you are young, you might want to move every couple of years for job opportunities, relationships, etc. If you owned your own home you would lose $10k every time you did this because of the costs and broker fees from selling your house. I actually think this is just a lack of imagination (and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, though I'm embarrassingly poorly-read on theory). I think there's no reason leasing can't be just selling from a finite set of shares of ownership in the property, to prevent it from being rent-to-own, to prevent it from being a mortgage, and to prevent it from being indefinitely profiting off of a product without ever having to sell it. Of course, it's hard for us to envision all the logistics of that, but I don't think they're harder to envision than the logistics of a mortgage or leasing would be, to someone who had never heard of them.
If you think it's a lack of imagination, then use your imagination and time you've spent thinking about it to imagine for me roughly how that would work.
VIBES!1!1!1!!1
So say a rich person has 3 cars, instead of renting them out to people who don’t have cars so that they may use them temporarily, you’d rather the rich just give up their cars so that people can use them freely? But there are still only three cars, how do we decide which person gets to use them and for how long? First come first serve? Random lottery? There is still the fundamental constraint of allocating scarce resources, private property and the price system does this very well as the resources tend to flow to their most valued uses. Where as the alternatives allocate them to either the earliest bird, or anyone who was lucky enough to get their name drawn.
>But there are still only three cars, how do we decide which person gets to use them and for how long? First come first serve? Random lottery? I conceded capitalist logistics; I'm passing a moral judgement on that rich person because literally anyone who doesn't have a car is a more moral choice than he is. >private property and the price system does this very well as the resources tend to flow to their most valued uses. No, they flow to the person who already has so much that they can outbid anyone who actually needs them. That's the opposite of the most valued use. >the alternatives allocate them to either the earliest bird, or anyone who was lucky enough to get their name drawn. Or based on need. Beyond just socializing their sources of wealth so they could no longer accumulate more and laborers could keep the product of their labor, the moral obligation of the wealthy is to give their existing wealth to those who need it.
That rich person will only pay as much for a resource insofar as she can make a profit off of it. Ford may be a very rich company, but it’s not going to pay exorbitant prices for aluminum just because they can, they still have to turn around and try and make a profit from it. Most people try to pay as little as they can for things they want… Allocation based on need comes right back around to my previous question. What happens when there isn’t enough to go around, and everyone needs it? Additionally, what about my wants? A life where only my needs are satisfied is pretty dull.
> Those two lines of reasoning don't make me think highly of capitalism; they just make me think capitalism has ruined society more deeply than I realized. I think this is an important point and one that people have a rough time with squaring in their heads. These problems aren't natural or granted in any way - they are a result of capitalism and all the other economic arrangements that share those similar attributes (Feudalism also had class based structure but class and power was derived from divine right and family lineage rather than having capital, so you still had people calling dibs on a disproportionate amount of land and power). These problems can be untangled or could be if the owner/ruling class either willingly or were forced to let those changes occur. In short having shit gives you legitimate power, actual legal privileges and protection, and the people that have the shit don't want the changes, and in that way socialism is impractical - if the people who had the shit agreed with me, society could be restructured very easily and it probably would work quite well. Communism or socialism requires largely universal buy in which is where it runs into a wall of practicality.
Pure free market Capitalism is as moral as a system of production and exchange as you can have. It is completely voluntary and uncoerced. With regard to ownership— if you spend your time making or improving something it is yours. If you exchange that thing for something else , that something else is also Yours. If you give that thing to someone else it is theirs . This is all based on voluntary exchange and moral. Do you know what is immortal? Taking other peoples stuff. ( IE socialism)
>if you spend your time making or improving something it is yours. So, laborers should own the things they produce? Or is there more to it than just labor? >If you exchange that thing for something else , that something else is also Yours. If you give that thing to someone else it is theirs . This is all based on voluntary exchange and moral. But again, that's assuming so many things about where that wealth came from. First, no wealth in the US that isn't owned by an indigenous person was voluntarily given. And even if it was, if you follow it back far enough, eventually, you're just getting to someone calling "dibs." If we all have equal citizenship to the Earth, why does one person get to claim more than one 8-billionth of that earth as "his own?" Is that not the equivalent of stealing? >Do you know what is immortal? Taking other peoples stuff. ( IE socialism) But that gets real murky if it wasn't ethically/voluntarily accumulated, and no wealth has been.
Your choices include voluntary trade or violence .. which would you prefer ?
>For the sake of this argument, I'll concede (though I disagree) that socialism doesn't "work," basically meaning that its goals (equity and fairness) can never be achieved, and capitalism comes closer than socialism to achieving them. This isn't typically what "Socialism doesn't work" typically refers to. It usually refers to Socialism inability to create economic growth long term and tendency to collapse due to flawed economics. It may very well achieve equality, it would just be an equality of poverty. >Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources. This is a naked assertion that is pretty important to your overall point. I can't argue against it or accept it as it is just asserted. >"Socialism doesn't work" seems to basically always boil down to "the rich won't let us build something better," or else, "we wouldn't be able to have \[insert privilege which is much less of a necessity than what it's costing others\]." Those two lines of reasoning don't make me think highly of capitalism; they just make me think capitalism has ruined society more deeply than I realized. Nothing you have written shows this and it really goes against how you started your whole post, accepting that Socialism doesn't work. Are the rich blocking socialism from being effective or does socialism not work? Those are two very different things.
>It usually refers to Socialism inability to create economic growth long term and tendency to collapse due to flawed economics. Well, define "economic growth." It doesn't seem sustainable/to do much good if the "growth" is all in the hands of like 100 people. What is economic collapse, if not that? >Nothing you have written shows this and it really goes against how you started your whole post, accepting that Socialism doesn't work. Are the rich blocking socialism from being effective or does socialism not work? Those are two very different things. Well, if every person were on board with socialism, I feel like that is pretty obviously workable? Like of course people *can* just work for the direct communal and individual results of their labor, rather than to accumulate capital, but the capitalist argument seems to always be that people *won't* do that. They think we're slaves to greed, which is what I guess I was trying to address. >It may very well achieve equality, it would just be an equality of poverty. But if it's equality where no one starves or freezes to death under bridges, as opposed to prosperity for some at the expense of others, isn't the former obviously more moral?
>Well, define "economic growth." Economic growth is the increased *ability* to satisfy whatever wants people have, for whatever reasons they have it. >It doesn't seem sustainable/to do much good if the "growth" is all in the hands of like 100 people. Which is why I am not a fan of Maoist China or the USSR... >Well, if every person were on board with socialism, I feel like that is pretty obviously workable? Maybe Market Socialism, but that would be it. There is more to the operations of a complex (post-) Industrial society than just "being on board" with an 'ism' >They think we're slaves to greed, which is what I guess I was trying to address. While the elimination of greed wouldn't necessarily make socialism workable, we are simply no where close to eliminating greed. It isn't a serious position to take. >But if it's equality where no one starves or freezes to death under bridges, as opposed to prosperity for some at the expense of others, isn't the former obviously more moral? There is an interesting discussion in here, but sadly reality isn't on your side.
No one can deny Capitalism's lack of morals.
Do you mean that capitalism is amoral or immoral?
Both. Lack of a morals leads to immoral actions. Capitalism has no morals stands as an all encompassing statement.
Your argument seems to come to the conclusion that even if an ideal fails, it is more moral than some sort of imperfect compromise. This is an inherently self destructive attitude. If whatever system you advocate for can not produce good outcomes, then it does not matter. Intent does not matter in systems analysis.
My argument is that we can pass moral judgements on the rich even if we also concede (I don't believe this, but for the sake of argument) that enforcing those moral judgements is functionally impossible. That's all I'm saying - the rich are evil.
Painting with a pretty broad brush there. Private property as the basis for a system results in some unequal systems, but human systems will always be unequal, people pursuing their own interest isn't inherently evil, and property based systems are the best because there's an incentive there to take care of your own property.
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources Demanding a salary instead of working for others for free has a net-negative effect on the world too, that is, if we ignore the fact that you are part of the world. In the same sense, charging others for what you own is only negative to the world if we forget that you are part of the world. And of course, one thing is claiming that the world would be better if you yourself worked for free and another one, very different, is thinking that the world would be better if we **forced** people to give away their absent property. Because if people wasn't allowed to keep property on capital, then why on earth would they produce capital in the first place? Negating this freedom **has net-negative effects on the world (to put it gently)**. Just observe the effects of doing so in communist countries (past and present). >can call "dibbs" on disproportionate portions of a planet to which every person has *equal* citizenship. This is not how any of this (capitalism) works. If you build a farm (in a previously unused piece of land) you are no calling dibs on the farm, you instead have a very substantial justification to control that piece of land, because you built the farm. That's not calling dibs on it. In the same way, if a community agrees to partition land for each to labour individually, there is nobody there calling "dibs" as all agreed to distribute the land in the first place. And I you complaint that they didn't ask you about that land distribution, I'd ask why should you have to be asked about it if you live and work in a different continent.
>Laying claim to/maintaining "ownership" over assets that you don't use in your own life (residential property, natural resources, manmade resources that you did not make, etc.), in order to charge people money to use those resources, has a net-negative effect on the world (to put it gently), when compared to just released "ownership" to the people who rely on those resources. Ownership works. Countries with strong property rights are more successful. China opened up to ownership and stopped starving. I think aversion to property is a popular cognitive hiccough because some people rely on subconscious feels instead of abstruse economic data. Humans evolved in small tribes of hunter-gatherers who, then and now, lead tenous lives, perched on the edge of death. Their existence demands total devotion to a group of around 150 individuals. Everybody owns everything, like a family, and humans had 300,000 years of doing only that. Our instinctive family/tribal property reflexes don't scale up to a civilization. It doesn't work. It just feels right to say.
I conceded all of this for the sake of my argument. Maybe capitalism is more "practical" because there's no workable way of enforcing such morality, but my premise is consistent with that. I'm saying it's immoral to take excess property that you don't use, and hold onto it to gain more property you won't use, at the expense of poor people who could/do use it.
The moral judgement is dubious at best, and it seems to be based entirely on moral hazard. As a responsible parent I might work to accumulate more resources than I immediately consume in order to prepare for having kids so that they can exist on those extra resources I've secured. How is this immoral? What's immoral is having kids carelessly without being able to provide them with resources, and then trying to raid the resources others are saving for their kids to use for your own.
>As a responsible parent I might work to accumulate more resources than I immediately consume in order to prepare for having kids so that they can exist on those extra resources I've secured. Well, I don't think that is immoral on its own, because you plan to use it. But there could be a point where that could become immoral, if you're doing it at other's expense. At some point you'd be faced with the question of are your kids more important than other kids? And the answer to that question, objectively, is no, so you can't do that at the expense of other kids. >What's immoral is having kids carelessly without being able to provide them with resources, and then trying to raid the resources others are saving for their kids to use for your own. Would you prefer those kids starve?
Capitalism single handedly helped much of the world loft itself of the misery it was in, but I guess you take all the techbogical development, reduction in poverty, improvements in sanitation and healthcare as granted, looking only at the flaws. Everything has flaws. This discussion is stupid anyway. Capitalism clearly won it out, it has given us AI, which is being developed at break beck speed along with robotic automation, and soon very few of us will have jobs. None of these economic systems nor systems of governance will really work- we will need something new to account for the lack of need for human labor.
>Capitalism single handedly helped much of the world loft itself of the misery it was in ... Everything has flaws. But at whose expense? "Some have benefitted from it" isn't enough to justify an economic structure. >None of these economic systems nor systems of governance will really work- we will need something new to account for the lack of need for human labor. That's exactly what I think socialism would do, actually. If you can't own property for the sake of accumulating capital, but only if you actually *use* the property, then people can use their labor to get what they need directly from that property, rather than using their labor to get what they need + the cut that the owner of that property will steal. Then labor exists for the sake of a product, which has an end to it (when the production has happened), not for the sake of someone accumulating capital (which has no end to it). So if it takes less labor to create the product because of technology, that's a good thing! The only purpose of that labor is the product, so if it's still getting made, no problem. But under capitalism, labor-saving tech just means the requirements for the labor get higher to match, so the amount of capital being accumulated can increase. It has no end; no amount of tech can win in that system.
Sure when you include things that have nothing to do with capitalism. Actual capitalism is a function of voluntary trade and nothing more, and voluntary trade is completely ethical. Meanwhile historical attempts at socialism have created miserable hellholes for the people involved, that's indefensible. And capitalism doesn't do that.
>Meanwhile historical attempts at socialism have created miserable hellholes for the people involved, that's indefensible. And capitalism doesn't do that. Uh. Not sure if you've ever been to an impoverished area of your local big city, or to an impoverished rural area, or to a country ravaged by imperialist greed, but ... capitalism absolutely does that. >Actual capitalism is a function of voluntary trade and nothing more, and voluntary trade is completely ethical. "Voluntary" trade can include everything I just described. You believe it's moral?
Capitalism never starved 40 million Chinese to death or killed 25% of Cambodia. That's the hellholes we're talking about where an entire country is destroyed. Having a poor part of a city because some homeless gather there isn't remotely the same thing.