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rudatron posted:Do not respond to IWC. He will not argue in good faith. Ever. Yeah I was more or less trying to answer previous posts which were positing such a situation (labour being unnecessary or almost so because of future sci fi tech) and implied that this would benefit the workers. I guess came out a bit pessimistic because I was trying to emphasize how unlikely it is that a transition out of capitalism would be non-violent. Hopefully it happens before labour actually becomes completely obsolete, but I don't necessarily think that the success of revolution is inevitable: we might see a new genocidal fascism arise to prevent it for example.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 15:55 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 18:27 |
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Ardennes posted:To be honest, both the CPRF and the CPU are really poor parties, they pump out rhetoric but honestly more or less are implicitly happy with the status quo in both Russia and Ukraine (before February 2014). Don't get me wrong they talk about imperialism a bunch but they really haven't made any real pushes at fixing what are almost torturous conditions in both countries. I don't think the Russian part is that bad, i think it's more pressured to be quiet than actual corrupt (terrible social views though, Russia is extremely backwards in all political spectrums in this area). But yeah, the Ukranian communist party was offensively corrupt, regionalist and a vital partner of eastern oligarchs.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 16:05 |
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icantfindaname posted:You're completely ignoring time and economic efficiency here. Sure, you might get the same end result, but if it takes you 50 years and 100 net abstract units of labor that's clearly less efficient than if it took 1 year and one net unit of labor. The capitalist improves efficiency of the allocation of resources And Marx recognizes this explicitly: the communist manifesto posted:The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 18:51 |
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JeffersonClay posted:And Marx recognizes this explicitly: Jefferson what's your take on this though? Marx obviously recognizes the productive results of capitalism generally but as you said earlier rejects the contributions of capitalists categorically (hence exploitation). Is there further clarification of that? Or is that just it?
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:07 |
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asdf32 posted:Jefferson what's your take on this though? Marx obviously recognizes the productive results of capitalism generally but as you said earlier rejects the contributions of capitalists categorically (hence exploitation). The profit motive, combined with cultural stuff, inspires people to try to make lots of money, and competition means that they're going to be hugely productive. That doesn't meant that a capitalist, by investing, is participating in the labor. What he wrote above about the relationship between labor and capital is pretty clear. You're making a category mistake, and saying "Well, capital is important, therefore capitalists are important". You can do big projects with lots of capital without having a capitalist involved; they're not a necessary part of productivity, but capital is. What the profit motive, combined with the class breakdown that removed aristocratic privilege, did was create the motive for people to make buttloads of money.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:23 |
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Obdicut posted:The profit motive, combined with cultural stuff, inspires people to try to make lots of money, and competition means that they're going to be hugely productive. That doesn't meant that a capitalist, by investing, is participating in the labor. What he wrote above about the relationship between labor and capital is pretty clear. Do factories build themselves? The profit motive only exists for the capitalist. If profit motive explains behavior then it automatically means the capitalist was "involved".
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:31 |
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asdf32 posted:Do factories build themselves? No, workers build them
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:41 |
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I don't think Marx's call to "kill the rich" has much of a future in a century where everyone and anyone can act as a capitalist.Bob le Moche posted:No, workers build them With the money and tools they receive from the hated capitalists.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:41 |
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asdf32 posted:Do factories build themselves? No, they're built by people laboring. quote:The profit motive only exists for the capitalist. If profit motive explains behavior then it automatically means the capitalist was "involved". No, the profit motive exists for everyone inside the capitalist system. Really, really confused as to why you think it only exists for the capitalist. No Marxist ever would argue that capitalism isn't hugely productive, and part of the reason for that is the new existence of private property, but the reformation of the labor market is more important. You could have removed all of the political restraints on the ur-capitalist class in feudalism and they would have gotten nowhere, because labor was frozen--people owed their allegiance and their labor to a lord. You can see this in places like Venice; there was a reason that trade was the main way that the ur-capitalists made money under Feudalism, because it doesn't require as much manpower as actually doing something, and you're traveling, not in one place under one lord's domain. Freedom of labor is one of the defining aspects of capitalism, and it's that freedom that allows capitalists to skim off the surplus value and accrue more and more capital. The profit motive drives investment, but it is the labor that allows that investment to come to anything. ONce again, you can labor your way to capital, you can't capital your way to labor. (absent an entirely robotic system from start to finish, which we're interestingly probably not that far away from.) Capitalists obviously have a role in capitalism, but it's neither the fundamental role, nor is it true that only capitalists can invest in things. Friendly Tumour posted:I don't think Marx's call to "kill the rich" has much of a future in a century where everyone and anyone can act as a capitalist. Which were built by laborers. If you follow the production chain all the way back, it always ends in labor. Labor comes before capital. The closest there is to an original capital is someone claiming they own a piece of land.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:51 |
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Friendly Tumour posted:I don't think Marx's call to "kill the rich" has much of a future in a century where everyone and anyone can act as a capitalist. No, not even. Workers built the tools too. But the choice to allocate capital to build the factory, the choice to make CD's instead of records, the location of the factory etc all trace back to the capitalist and their motive for profit. These choices and their impact (good or bad) are collectively made by capitalists in a capitalist society.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:52 |
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China has a lot of the factories now. Factories seem to be extremely important in Marxism. It makes me wonder if Marxism can catch on there? With so many factories and workers it could become an incredibly powerful Marxist state, I think.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 19:53 |
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asdf32 posted:
This isn't true. Those choices don't have to be made by capitalists, as I already showed. They are almost certainly never made by a capitalist alone. You seriously think that the shareholders of Apple get together to decide where a factory is built? Sure, there can be a capitalist who also makes all the big decisions on their own, but they are really, really uncommon, and almost always supplanted after a short period of time, if the business is successful, by a professional staff.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 20:00 |
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Friendly Tumour posted:I don't think Marx's call to "kill the rich" has much of a future in a century where everyone and anyone can act as a capitalist. Nothing like anticommunists holding forth on what Marx "probably wrote"
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 20:32 |
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Obdicut posted:This isn't true. Those choices don't have to be made by capitalists, as I already showed. They are almost certainly never made by a capitalist alone. You seriously think that the shareholders of Apple get together to decide where a factory is built? Owners pick the managers. Managers pick the managers below them and so on down to the workers. Either you acknowledge that evaluating and choosing people "below" you is a productive task, or you're invalidated the value of management in general (because this is often all managers do). In the case of a business, owners (collectively) are managers in this sense. Note that I would loosely separate the tasks of capital allocation (should I invest in Apple or Microsoft), from management but they overlap heavily. Owners can't just own a business or own capital. They're responsible for putting management in place to run it or decide how to productively use it. If they (collectively) don't do these things they don't get any profit. Also you have to understand that this is a general statement. Obviously there can be lazy owners. But that's not an argument. There are lazy laborers too. The Marxist assumption that workers necessarily produce a surplus also only works as a generalization.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 20:32 |
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its workers all the way down
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 20:37 |
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Even if one was to concede the point that a guy who inherited land with a mine on it is somehow working harder than the miners, the crucial difference is still that by virtue of being the owner he is the one who gets to claim the surplus from their labor. Let's say you have this small business which is made up of a bunch of people who each get the same salary per hour and have the same productivity. After selling the product and paying the wages there is a profit, and that profit belongs to only one of these people because they legally own the firm. That person is the capitalist.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 20:49 |
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asdf32 posted:Marx obviously recognizes the productive results of capitalism generally but as you said earlier rejects the contributions of capitalists categorically (hence exploitation). This is not entirely correct.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 20:53 |
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The ability to accurately assess the abilities of and organise others in useful tasks definitely is labour and is worth acknowledging and rewarding. It's just that owning property doesn't automatically endow anyone with that ability and the actual process of doing so only falls onto the owner due to the legal authority that ownership has given them. Any other mechanism which entitles anyone else to make those decisions can be just as valid and often preferable such as putting the matter to a vote would automatically create an agreement between the manager and their staff about the nature of the hierarchy with no coercion involved and hopefully would result in those who have demonstrated managerial skills (as decided by the workers) being rewarded with managerial positions.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:06 |
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btween my imaginary GF amd asdf32 i think someone is developing some pretty good bots and releasing them on SA
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:22 |
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namesake posted:The ability to accurately assess the abilities of and organise others in useful tasks definitely is labour and is worth acknowledging and rewarding. Also because they have put up the capital to fund the venture and are ultimately bearing the risk of its failure.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:24 |
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wateroverfire posted:Also because they have put up the capital to fund the venture and are ultimately bearing the risk of its failure. Not really. If anything everyone involved other than the capitalist is bearing the actual burdens of failure, while the capitalist at worst is just losing a portion of their expendable capital. All the safety nets are there for the capitalist, none or very little for everyone else. Also it isn't like the capitalist isn't ready and willing to pluck apart everything to recover as much as their capital as possible. Shoot, there are whole businesses built around just this in the form of ye 'vulture' capitalist firms, such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bain_Capital. Just look at the absurdity of what happened to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_Studios Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Nov 6, 2014 |
# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:29 |
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wateroverfire posted:Also because they have put up the capital to fund the venture and are ultimately bearing the risk of its failure. Yes to the first part, that's literally what I said. The risk (such as it exists) only exists in a capitalist system and is not an inescapable fact of existance: alternatives exist and potentially will be better in terms of consequences and likelihood of failure.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:29 |
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Bob le Moche posted:Even if one was to concede the point that a guy who inherited land with a mine on it is somehow working harder than the miners, the crucial difference is still that by virtue of being the owner he is the one who gets to claim the surplus from their labor. Ok let's take this and see if we can further agree. 1) Fair or not, the pizza shop owner is ultimately responsible for choosing and/or managing the employees (probably both in this case) 2) Fair or not, some amount of choice exists in the decision to operate the pizza shop instead of putting the capital it represents somewhere else Do you agree? The fact that these two responsibilities go along with ownership (again, fair or not) is all I've been recently trying to get across. Mans posted:btween my imaginary GF amd asdf32 i think someone is developing some pretty good bots and releasing them on SA A bot would probably be able to spell and punctuate though wouldn't it?
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:32 |
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namesake posted:Yes to the first part, that's literally what I said. The risk (such as it exists) only exists in a capitalist system and is not an inescapable fact of existance: alternatives exist and potentially will be better in terms of consequences and likelihood of failure. The risk is that the enterprise won't be able to sustain itself and the resources being put into its creation will be not be recouped, leaving whoever threw them in poorer. The risk is there no matter how you structure the ownership or management. Berk Berkly posted:If anything everyone involved other than the capitalist is bearing the actual burdens of failure, while the capitalist at worst is just losing a portion of their expendable capital. All the safety nets are there for the capitalist, none or very little for everyone else. What safety net exists for the capitalist? Where do I sign up? That sounds awesome. Berk Berkly posted:Also it isn't like the capitalist isn't ready and willing to pluck apart everything to recover as much as their capital as possible. Shoot, there are whole businesses built around just this in the form of ye 'vulture' capitalist firms, such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bain_Capital. I'm not following. What are these two things supposed to be examples of?
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:39 |
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wateroverfire posted:Also because they have put up the capital to fund the venture and are ultimately bearing the risk of its failure.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:46 |
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wateroverfire posted:The risk is that the enterprise won't be able to sustain itself and the resources being put into its creation will be not be recouped, leaving whoever threw them in poorer. The risk is there no matter how you structure the ownership or management. The ability for an organisation to be unable to recoup its expenses in direct payments back (with an additional profit to entice the owner to continue it) is only a failure under a capitalist system. Under another system products could be sold at production cost indefinitely or even for free if resources were to be transferred via another method.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:47 |
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asdf32 posted:Ok let's take this and see if we can further agree. Sure, if I'm correct that by "is ultimately responsible" you mean something like "has the final word on", or "has absolute control over". Usually in practice managers and executives will be hired to take care of this stuff once a business grows, but ultimately those managers have to answer to the shareholders (owners), who can fire them if they're not happy with their work. Marxist economics has no problem accounting for this stuff.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 21:50 |
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namesake posted:The ability for an organisation to be unable to recoup its expenses in direct payments back (with an additional profit to entice the owner to continue it) is only a failure under a capitalist system. Under another system products could be sold at production cost indefinitely or even for free if resources were to be transferred via another method. We could probably think of some systems where those things could be true, but they raise some thorny questions. Where are the resources coming from in these alternate systems, assuming we have finite resources? Why would they be transfered to the business you work at and not to some other business doing a similar thing? If the business you work at is lovely at what it does relative to other businesses, or what it does isn't useful anymore, what happens to it if it can't fail?
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:00 |
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wateroverfire posted:The risk is that the enterprise won't be able to sustain itself and the resources being put into its creation will be not be recouped, leaving whoever threw them in poorer. The risk is there no matter how you structure the ownership or management. Unless, of course, the compulsive brutish desire to 'recoup' and profit, is itself the problem? Remember that with many issues that are pressing in the world today, like hunger, the food (food) is not the problem, there is plenty of it - it's the distribution where it all falls apart. If the need to feed humanity and help everyone on the earth outweighs the need to exploit and profit from them, then invariably it will be done. This is why I often bring up and stress my points about near-future developments in production, engineering, technology, and computers - until those breakthroughs occur, I do not see a realistic way that any large changes can be made to the current system, as flawed as it is. Once power and labor are rendered non-expenses, then the Earth with naturally start to 'fill out' and the quality of life for the poor around the world will skyrocket. A new golden age of humanity, the day poverty dies
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:03 |
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wateroverfire posted:We could probably think of some systems where those things could be true, but they raise some thorny questions. Where are the resources coming from in these alternate systems, assuming we have finite resources? Why would they be transfered to the business you work at and not to some other business doing a similar thing? If the business you work at is lovely at what it does relative to other businesses, or what it does isn't useful anymore, what happens to it if it can't fail? As you've said there could be multiple answers to those questions, it's not up to me alone to declare which one is the right one. What I can point out is problems where a business where it is recognised or even demonstratedly shown to be better off existing rather than not existing and yet cannot sustain itself under a capitalist model or that it would not be the best possible outcome or that it might even be morally wrong to sustain itself according to a capitalist model (healthcare being the obvious example). In any of these cases the questions you've raised need to be considered to provide an alternative. Previously these were welfare states and nationalised industries (plus whatever you want to call the USSR) but they seem to be undergoing somewhat of a difficult time right now, so either classic liberal capitalism needs to be reasserted, that markets are the best moral arbitrator available regardless of observable outcome, or more serious critiques offered. Hence, Marxism.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:11 |
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namesake posted:The ability for an organisation to be unable to recoup its expenses in direct payments back (with an additional profit to entice the owner to continue it) is only a failure under a capitalist system. Under another system products could be sold at production cost indefinitely or even for free if resources were to be transferred via another method. In a non-capitalist system factories could still produce products that few people liked, that had costs of production which outweighed their benefits to society. This certainly occurs in capitalist systems, but they are not likely to continue for long, as capitalists would be unlikely to continue projects that lose money, or they go bankrupt. An economic system where the decisions about capital allocation are distributed would need a robust system to ensure capital is not misallocated to wasteful projects, and whether these systems would be more successful is an empirical question. For simplicity's sake I'm ignoring market failures like pollution which could cause a capitalist to profit from something which society did not profit from. The state should use its power to force capitalists to bear the full costs of their production, through regulations and taxes. The state should also subsidize things like education and scientific research which have social benefits which cannot be fully profited from by capitalists.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:18 |
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JeffersonClay posted:In a non-capitalist system factories could still produce products that few people liked, that had costs of production which outweighed their benefits to society. This certainly occurs in capitalist systems, but they are not likely to continue for long, as capitalists would be unlikely to continue projects that lose money, or they go bankrupt. Not entirely true, capitalist enterprises can choose to subsidise unprofitable parts so long as they have taken enough money from another source and see it is in their private interests to do so. Newspapers/new media are an example of this and also handily illustrate why they would do so. quote:An economic system where the decisions about capital allocation are distributed would need a robust system to ensure capital is not misallocated to wasteful projects, and whether these systems would be more successful is an empirical question. Ok. And? The Cold War shows you can't just set up an alternative system and expect it to be a simple matter of comparing. quote:For simplicity's sake I'm ignoring market failures like pollution which could cause a capitalist to profit from something which society did not profit from. The state should use its power to force capitalists to bear the full costs of their production, through regulations and taxes. The state should also subsidize things like education and scientific research which have social benefits which cannot be fully profited from by capitalists. I feel doing this is less simplifying an argument and more an attempt to remove some of the arguments from the anti-capitalist, because there are obvious issues with these points under capitalism.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:34 |
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Race Hate Kramer posted:Unless, of course, the compulsive brutish desire to 'recoup' and profit, is itself the problem? Remember that with many issues that are pressing in the world today, like hunger, the food (food) is not the problem, there is plenty of it - it's the distribution where it all falls apart. Malthus would like to have a word with you... it was joke you
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:49 |
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Race Hate Kramer posted:A new golden age of humanity, the day poverty dies This conclusion relies on a "trickle-down" ideology, no? What makes you think that the tiny and super-wealthy ruling class, the people who will be the ones who own and control all these new technological wonders, will decide of their own volition to put the machines to use feeding everyone on earth instead of continuing to seek personal profit? There will be no money at all to be made selling food/water/education/shelter to the masses of the earth because the masses will all be unemployed after the machines replace them, and thus unable to pay for any of that stuff. For a while increasing household debt could play a role in keeping things going by allowing people to pay for things even after their labour is obsolete, which I'd argue is already what's happening to some extent, but this can only lead to further disempowerement over time. Also a lot of low-paid useless jobs and sectors such as prostitution are likely to keep existing even with super advanced sci-fi technology, but I wouldn't call that an utopian future. Intellectual property is an already-existing example where we have a good which can be made available to everyone for free (information), but this would make it impossible to profit from it and therefore artificial restrictions on access to this good are created and enforced by the state. Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Nov 6, 2014 |
# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:49 |
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Also, I have question. What are the implications if the thesis that capitalists are indeed exploiting workers and not contributing anything useful through the discretion of using their capital is true? Are they purely moral?
lollontee fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Nov 6, 2014 |
# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:53 |
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asdf32 posted:Owners pick the managers. quote:Managers pick the managers below them and so on down to the workers. Managers are workers. quote:
Except they're usually not. Even if they are, the amount of 'work' that is quote:Note that I would loosely separate the tasks of capital allocation (should I invest in Apple or Microsoft), from management but they overlap heavily. If you invest in Apple--or more likely, invest in a mutual fund investing in Apple--you aren't going to exercise any managerial control, in general. quote:Owners can't just own a business or own capital. They're responsible for putting management in place to run it or decide how to productively use it. If they (collectively) don't do these things they don't get any profit. This isn't true. I own stock> it makes me money. I do gently caress-all to manage the companies I own stock in. quote:Also you have to understand that this is a general statement. Obviously there can be lazy owners. But that's not an argument. There are lazy laborers too. The Marxist assumption that workers necessarily produce a surplus also only works as a generalization. Your last sentence had nothing to do with anything else you said, I have no idea why you think it did. It's not about 'lazy' owners, either. You're really not getting this, though it's really simple. Ownership can be associated with management, but it doesn't have to be. The success of the stock system is exactly in divorcing ownership from management. namesake posted:The ability to accurately assess the abilities of and organise others in useful tasks definitely is labour and is worth acknowledging and rewarding. Well-put. Obdicut fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Nov 6, 2014 |
# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:59 |
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Bob le Moche posted:This conclusion relies on a "trickle-down" ideology, no? What makes you think that the tiny and super-wealthy ruling class, the people who will be the ones who own and control all these new technological wonders, will decide of their own volition to put the machines to use feeding everyone on earth instead of continuing to seek personal profit? Let's take the Lockheed Martin fusion engine which was recently announced publicly and expected to have a working prototype in 5 years. If it is completed on schedule, in ten years, it will be able to fit on the back of a flat bed and power a city of 80,000 alone. I'm not talking about gadgets like iPhones and poo poo, I'm talking huge improvements to the fundamentals of things like the power grid, high speed mass transit, etc etc, things that can be undertaken by cities or towns as projects and improve the infrastructure and existing economy.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:59 |
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Friendly Tumour posted:Also, I have question. What are the implications if the thesis that capitalists are indeed exploiting workers and not contributing anything useful through the discretion of using their capital is true? Are they purely moral? No, understanding this dynamic sheds light on how the capitalist system functions and allows us to explain and analyze better what we see happening in the world, and to make predictions.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 22:59 |
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Race Hate Kramer posted:Let's take the Lockheed Martin fusion engine which was recently announced publicly and expected to have a working prototype in 5 years. If it is completed on schedule, in ten years, it will be able to fit on the back of a flat bed and power a city of 80,000 alone. Who is going to invest into building these things and why would they do it if there's no way to make money off of it? Gadgets and iPhones are pretty good illustration of what happens with the advanced technology we currently have: we could conceivably use our currently existing techniques to feed everyone on earth but there's more money to be made selling gadgets for people who have credit cards to buy. Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Nov 6, 2014 |
# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:02 |
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Re: the whole technology ending the need for exploitative labour, and eliminating poverty: If all labour could one day be performed by machines without human interaction, you have no need for work, and no need for money, and the social power of wealth evaporates. Suddenly mr billionaire is no better off than anybody else - he might have $100billion, but he can't pay anybody to do anything with it because they already get everything they need. Sounds like mr billionaire has no incentive whatsoever to run his company along any lines that would let this happen! For this reason alone I think that the owning classes will always seek to preserve a large people-oriented service industry - they will always want to show their wealth/social power through the use of assistants, cooks, cleaners, chauffeurs, bodyguards, etc. Even if some of these jobs could be performed more efficiently and cheaply through machines (driverless cars, for example) this won't mean an end to the use of human labour, because paying a person to do a job has always been a means of showing your social status. Every time a person goes to an upmarket restaurant for a (better presented) meal they could buy for 1/100th the price at a diner three streets over they're not actually buying better food - they're paying for the novelty of having their food cooked, artistically presented, and carried to them by 15 other people as a means of showing their status. The future (if left to the people who run things now) will see massive automation of industry owned by the 1%, a smallish middle-class of technical staff to oversee it, and a vast teeming horde of service staff who are employed to consume, and to be employed - to be the means through which the upper classes express their power. (and at the very bottom a 10% of unemployed to perpetually suppress the value of the labour performed by that service class, naturally)
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:09 |