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Bob le Moche posted: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. Such as?
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:10 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 04:38 |
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Bob le Moche posted: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? Don't be such a goddamn moron. Investing in computer chips is not why there's droughts or a lack of will to ship excess food to poor areas. Incidentally thinking like this is a major component of why Soviet industry faltered.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:13 |
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Oberleutnant posted: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! Mr billionaire could still use money to trade with the few other billionaires who also have their own fully-automated production facilities. They'd put them to use making yachts and private jets and space tourism and whatever else. They'd also put them to use building high-security luxury gated communities to live in with robo-cops to defend them and drones to bomb the poor wherever they are. Oberleutnant posted: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. Yes this was the point I was trying to make with the "prostitution" bit. In the future the only employment opportunities that will be offered to us is basically being a warm body for someone else to enjoy exerting control over. Oberleutnant posted: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. This actually sounds like the present to me :/
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:16 |
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Nintendo Kid posted:Don't be such a goddamn moron. Investing in computer chips is not why there's droughts or a lack of will to ship excess food to poor areas. Overall, capital is currently invested according to what is most profitable. Do you disagree that it would be technically possible with currently existing techniques to end hunger? Or are you arguing that there is currently a huge missed investment opportunity there and a lot more profit to be made in providing food to the poor than in buying apple stock? Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Nov 6, 2014 |
# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:20 |
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wateroverfire posted:What safety net exists for the capitalist? Where do I sign up? That sounds awesome. I'm trying to force you to see that your view of where the burden falls is naive. The people who ACTUALLY bears the burden of risk are NOT the ones get safety nets, where they be in the form of Golden Parachutes, bailouts, buyouts, or what have you. Its the poor/laborers/worker who get the shaft if a business is failed or failing, while the owners/capitalist get their pound of flesh.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:24 |
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Nintendo Kid posted:Don't be such a goddamn moron. Investing in computer chips is not why there's droughts or a lack of will to ship excess food to poor areas. That is assuming the Soviets had the extra resources to put in electronics, they didn't, the Soviet economy was stretched to the limit for most of the Cold War. Nevertheless feeding the third world isn't a supply based issue anyway, we could do it easily but there would be price/demand consequences and monetary costs.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:26 |
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quote:This actually sounds like the present to me :/
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:27 |
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Oberleutnant posted:I was going to say like 30 or 40% of unemployed but then thought "naah that's just ridiculous" and then I remembered that Spain exists lmbo Have you read "Conspicuous Consumption"? It speaks to a lot of what you were saying about needing a service-based class to provide status, and it's actually really well-written for a sociology text. You might like it.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:32 |
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namesake posted: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. Can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure whether you mean capitalists will invest in money-losing ventures that they just really like (Spruce Goose) or that they will invest in money-losing media ventures to control public opinion (Fox News, except Fox News is profitable). In either case, they're trading some of their capital stock for the privilege of doing so, which makes it available for projects that actually make sense. I think there's a good case to be made for the government to promote accurate, informative media-- but the solutions can be pretty odious. quote:The Cold War shows you can't just set up an alternative system and expect it to be a simple matter of comparing. quote: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 23:33 |
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Obdicut posted:Have you read "Conspicuous Consumption"? It speaks to a lot of what you were saying about needing a service-based class to provide status, and it's actually really well-written for a sociology text. You might like it.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:34 |
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Oberleutnant posted:I haven't, but would like to. Could you provide a link? Cheap on Amazon for Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Conspicuous-Consumption-Penguin-Great-Ideas-ebook/dp/B003P9XCTO It'll be in any well-appointed library.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:36 |
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Bob le Moche posted:Overall, capital is currently invested according to what is most profitable. Do you disagree that it would be technically possible with currently existing techniques to end hunger? Or are you arguing that there is currently a huge missed investment opportunity there and a lot more profit to be made in providing food to the poor than in buying apple stock? You need approximately 0.001% of the money invested into "gadgets" in order to send the food that's already grown to areas that need it. Thus bitching about people having modern technology is utterly irrelevant to food production or distribution. Ardennes posted:That is assuming the Soviets had the extra resources to put in electronics, they didn't, the Soviet economy was stretched to the limit for most of the Cold War. No, they did have the resources, but various purges happened to have wiped out or gulaged a lot of people who would have otherwise helped to develop "gadgets" for soviet industry, which could have helped further production of all other things a ton. Most of the stuff behind modern consumer "gadgets" started out as things for the military, and things for making the things for the military - and of course mostly government funded. Technology is a productivity increaser, not decreaser, with scarce resources.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:40 |
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Obdicut posted:Cheap on Amazon for Kindle:
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:40 |
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Nintendo Kid posted:No, they did have the resources, but various purges happened to have wiped out or gulaged a lot of people who would have otherwise helped to develop "gadgets" for soviet industry, which could have helped further production of all other things a ton. Most of the stuff behind modern consumer "gadgets" started out as things for the military, and things for making the things for the military - and of course mostly government funded. It would have taken more than some scientists killed off for political reasons, developing electronics during that era were more than gadgets but giant works expensive works projects. It took enormous money/resources and you need to have excess amounts to spend on them. Eventually corporations took over, but in return they used up resources of their own. The Soviets had computers, they just couldn't compete with the vast resource superiority of the West, especially since Western countries and companies could share technology. Technology is a productivity increaser...but you have to create the entire infrastructure to get to that point in the first place and that was the issue. It is ultimately about years if not decades of investment in education and various scientific and technical fields to get there. In a two horse race, the side that has more talent to pump into it is going to usually going to win. A big fallacy of the Cold War, especially in the US, is the expectation the Soviets and the West had roughly the same amount of resources and talent, and that somehow the Soviets just squandered their share. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Nov 6, 2014 |
# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:47 |
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Oberleutnant posted:Ah, thanks! I went looking for recent academic articles. Just bought a copy. Ironically, one of the main audiences that still reads and benefits from is advertising and marketing people. But enjoy, it's also pretty funny.
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# ? Nov 6, 2014 23:49 |
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Obdicut posted:Owners don't, in general, pick the manages, no. We're sort of at an impass here. Can we go back to a few basics? Do capitalists "control capital"? Who chooses a board of directors? Who receives "profit"? Do all laborers produce a surplus?
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 00:16 |
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So wait Obdicut are you really standing behind your statement that capitalists don't actually have any control over capital because if you buy two shares in Apple you won't get to unilaterally pick board members? This has progressed beyond obnoxious to the range of pathologically dishonest. Either that or it's some kind of elaborate joke
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Nov 7, 2014 |
# ? Nov 7, 2014 00:35 |
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asdf32 posted:We're sort of at an impass here. Can we go back to a few basics? -No, God does. It's actually spelled "bapital," because it derives from the sacrament of baptism -They self select and then determine the weakest to cull by sniffing each other's scent glands. -I do. -Sure, if you hit 'em just right. P.S. In the years you've spent going around in circles asking and then stumbling over the same basic questions, you could have read some actual books for yourself. But you wouldn't do that because whether human or bot, no part of your inquisitive demeanor actually corresponds to a real desire to learn. My most charitable reading is that you're just looking for poor or imprecise turns of phrase by expositors on a web forum, which you then nitpick endlessly in the hopes of spotting some loophole or inconsistency. Here, *don't* read this; it contains the secrets to disproving Marxism. We must keep it from you at all costs. icantfindaname posted:This has progressed beyond obnoxious to the range of pathologically dishonest.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 00:44 |
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JeffersonClay posted:Can you elaborate on this? I'm not sure whether you mean capitalists will invest in money-losing ventures that they just really like (Spruce Goose) or that they will invest in money-losing media ventures to control public opinion (Fox News, except Fox News is profitable). In either case, they're trading some of their capital stock for the privilege of doing so, which makes it available for projects that actually make sense. I think there's a good case to be made for the government to promote accurate, informative media-- but the solutions can be pretty odious. You seemed to interject on a point about market correcting misallocation of capital but in my examples the rich are either backing capital wasting projects or actively bad by dominating public discourse but are immune to economic efficiency arguments against them because somehow the capital ends up somewhere else? The point is that the market is an arbitrator of what succeeds or fails but the rich control what succeeds or fails to a much greater extent than the poor, which is not a method of economic directing that I agree with. quote:It also shows you can't assume an alternative to capitalism will necessarily be more efficient just because it's not capitalism. Yes but that's why Marxism tries to argue for a working class democracy, appealing to the same sentiments which allows republicans to otherthrow monarchies. It's a very specific form of change but still has a lot of question marks about it. quote:If government regulations, taxes and subsidies make an economy non-capitalist, there has never been and will never be a capitalist economy. If incremental changes can correct the worst defects of capitalism while retaining many of its strengths, what use is there for Marxism? Well quite, but the Marxist criticism is that it cannot correct them so that's why revolution is necessary/going to occur at some point and should be an improvement. That's why there is revolutionary socialism rather than just reformist socialism.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 00:45 |
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asdf32 posted:We're sort of at an impass here. Can we go back to a few basics? Sure. quote:Who chooses a board of directors? Shareholders who have shares with voting rights vote on a board of directors. often, this vote is put into a proxy. Many shareholders don't vote. often, nominating committees determine who the shareholders can vote for. quote:Who receives "profit"? Whoever owns the capital. quote:Do all laborers produce a surplus? No. A competent laborer in a well-structure job does. If you hire a laborer to throw poo poo on the wall, no surplus is produced. If you hire a laborer for far more than they produce, no surplus is produced. if you hire an incompetent laborer, they won't produce a surplus. icantfindaname posted:So wait Obdicut are you really standing behind your statement that capitalists don't actually have any control over capital because if you buy two shares in Apple you won't get to unilaterally pick board members? This has progressed beyond obnoxious to the range of pathologically dishonest. Either that or it's some kind of elaborate joke Again, this kind of flailing, angry posting isn't really going to get anywhere. Capitalist do have 'control' over their capital, as in, they own it and decide what to do with it. That does not mean that capitalists ever have to make any actual decisions involving the business they invest in. A capitalist can buy voting stock and not bother to vote, he can buy voting stock and ask someone else's advice, he can buy the stock through a managed fund, which means that the manager of the fund exerts his votes, he can buy non-voting stock, etc. There is nothing inherent in being a capitalist that means you also have to exert any sort of decision-making at all in the actual operations of the company. Again, this is completely common sense and is one of the big selling points of stock ownership.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 00:48 |
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Okay so we have you down as "no capitalist ever makes decisions regarding how his capital is used". If you speak and understand English you will notice this statement is invalidated by even one case of a capitalist involved in the management of his capital. This is the kind of statement you've made over and over and over again, only to turn around and say "lol that's not what i meant at all look ay how dumb you are". Hence the "pathologically dishonest or trolling". Forgive me for assuming that literally nothing you say actually lines up with any exact intended meaning, because that's how it's been the whole thread. I guess the third option is that you literally have no idea what you're talking about and hinestly cannot even conceive that you're wrong on anything, but I do want to assume you're intelligent and it's worth participating in this discussion
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 00:58 on Nov 7, 2014 |
# ? Nov 7, 2014 00:56 |
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icantfindaname posted:Okay so we have you down as "no capitalist ever makes decisions regarding how his capital is used". Nope. I never said that, or anything like that. Why would you put that in quotes when I didn't say it and you just made it up?
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:01 |
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Obdicut posted:There is nothing inherent in being a capitalist that means you also have to exert any sort of decision-making at all in the actual operations of the company. icantfindaname posted:Okay so we have you down as "no capitalist ever makes decisions regarding how his capital is used". You might want to wait a post or two so people might be lazy enough to not read what he wrote if you're going to just make poo poo up and then berate someone on their English skills...
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:01 |
icantfindaname posted:Okay so we have you down as "no capitalist ever makes decisions regarding how his capitali is used". I you speak and understand English you will notice this statement is invalidated by even one case of a capitalist involved in the management of his capital. I suspect you're going to go back on this the minute I post this and insist you meant something else though, hence the "pathologically dishonest or trolling". I guess the third option is that you literally have no idea what you're talking about and hinestly cannot even conceive that you're wrong on anything, but I do want to assume you're intelligent and it's worth participating in this discussion You're stupid, willfully so, and I want to call you all the bad words you're not supposed to use in D&D. If you have even a basic familiarity with various corporate corruption scandals or investment dramas (for example, I would recommend James Stewart's DisneyWar for an inside look at both the age of corporate raiding and the age of the golden parachute), you would realize that what Obdicut is saying is effectively true. 99% of the investors in a company do not exert meaningful control over its decisions, and times when they do are noteworthy. There are exceptions, such as in small companies, most privately-traded firms, and firms like IKEA where the majority of voting power is held within the company, but considering that the joint-stock company is one of the archetypal examples of capitalism's power, flipping out like this is frankly an example of you looking at this as a bossfight where by striking someone's glowing red weak point three times you can get a heart container and the McGuffin necessary to get you closer to fighting Ganon.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:03 |
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wait wait wait, icantfindaname, are you actually saying you're gupping efofrt into you're posts? wow that's sad
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:22 |
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Nintendo Kid posted:You need approximately 0.001% of the money invested into "gadgets" in order to send the food that's already grown to areas that need it. Thus bitching about people having modern technology is utterly irrelevant to food production or distribution. I don't know, if the reality is anywhere near that 0.001% figure it makes the thing all the more absurd and enraging to me. I don't want to take away anyone's videogames but this is pretty hosed up. It doesn't reflect very well on what our priorities are as a society.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:24 |
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namesake posted:You seemed to interject on a point about market correcting misallocation of capital but in my examples the rich are either backing capital wasting projects or actively bad by dominating public discourse but are immune to economic efficiency arguments against them because somehow the capital ends up somewhere else? The point is that the market is an arbitrator of what succeeds or fails but the rich control what succeeds or fails to a much greater extent than the poor, which is not a method of economic directing that I agree with...that's why Marxism tries to argue for a working class democracy, appealing to the same sentiments which allows republicans to otherthrow monarchies. It's a very specific form of change but still has a lot of question marks about it. quote:Well quite, but the Marxist criticism is that it cannot correct them so that's why revolution is necessary/going to occur at some point and should be an improvement. That's why there is revolutionary socialism rather than just reformist socialism. Effectronica posted:what Obdicut is saying is effectively true. 99% of the investors in a company do not exert meaningful control over its decisions, and times when they do are noteworthy This is true of any distributed decision-making system, like social democracy, as well. But many people exerting miniscule amounts of power can aggregate into a measurable force. In a joint-stock company, investors exercise control over the stock price, through their individual decisions to buy or sell, and corporations certainly respond to changes in the price of their stock.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:48 |
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Effectronica posted:You're stupid, willfully so, and I want to call you all the bad words you're not supposed to use in D&D. If you have even a basic familiarity with various corporate corruption scandals or investment dramas (for example, I would recommend James Stewart's DisneyWar for an inside look at both the age of corporate raiding and the age of the golden parachute), you would realize that what Obdicut is saying is effectively true. 99% of the investors in a company do not exert meaningful control over its decisions, and times when they do are noteworthy. There are exceptions, such as in small companies, most privately-traded firms, and firms like IKEA where the majority of voting power is held within the company, but considering that the joint-stock company is one of the archetypal examples of capitalism's power, flipping out like this is frankly an example of you looking at this as a bossfight where by striking someone's glowing red weak point three times you can get a heart container and the McGuffin necessary to get you closer to fighting Ganon. Most stock investors are not in the business of running companies. They're managing an investment portfolio to try and make a return. They exercise a whole bunch of executive control over their capital and the quality of their decisions (or the decisions of the manager/s they decided to work with) directly impacts the money they make. They don't give a poo poo about controlling the companies whose securities they own. They're only interested in the securities. This derail is dumb and Obdicut's argument is dumb.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:51 |
wateroverfire posted:Most stock investors are not in the business of running companies. They're managing an investment portfolio to try and make a return. They exercise a whole bunch of executive control over their capital and the quality of their decisions (or the decisions of the manager/s they decided to work with) directly impacts the money they make. They don't give a poo poo about controlling the companies whose securities they own. They're only interested in the securities. You just agreed with Obdicut's argument in its totality, and then called it dumb. Sounds like you should be spiraling away in self-ownage about now.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:55 |
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Bob le Moche posted:I don't know, if the reality is anywhere near that 0.001% figure it makes the thing all the more absurd and enraging to me. I don't want to take away anyone's videogames but this is pretty hosed up. Simply shipping the food out from areas of plenty (where we really do have more than enough to spare without any of us having to cut back on our consumption) to places people are starving is absurdly cheap, that's modern transportation for you. I will admit there may need to be some super expensive one time expenses in implementing the methods of distribution but as an ongoing thing, really not much money is involved. Hell imagine just the amount that would be relieved by foreign aid shipments not being tied up in kleptocratic hands.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:56 |
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wateroverfire posted:They don't give a poo poo about controlling the companies whose securities they own. They're only interested in the securities. That's what I said, genius.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 01:57 |
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And the act of buying or selling securities affects the price of those securities. Corporations respond to changes in the price of their securities. Does the phrase "maximize shareholder value" ring a bell?
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 02:03 |
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JeffersonClay posted:And the act of buying or selling securities affects the price of those securities. Corporations respond to changes in the price of their securities. Does the phrase "maximize shareholder value" ring a bell? Yes, but that management is performed post-facto, it's not related to the idea of 'investing' money to actually get something going. The shareholders who vote, almost always, respond to financials and financials alone. In fact, most places that don't muck around with arbitrage just use an algorithm.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 02:06 |
JeffersonClay posted:And the act of buying or selling securities affects the price of those securities. Corporations respond to changes in the price of their securities. Does the phrase "maximize shareholder value" ring a bell? Companies have a variety of ways to respond to a fall or rise in stock prices (and thus the price of derivatives and so on), which can't be predicted from the rise or fall of the prices alone. The actual control this represents is pretty limited. We don't say that consumers exert any meaningful control over the operations of a company, despite the fact that they're what generates revenues and thus affect the financial status of the company.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 02:07 |
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Obdicut posted:That's what I said, genius. Yes, and it's a dumb and trivial thing to get hung up on. Small investors can't control things they give no shits about controlling because their business is managing portfolios they have complete control over. This proves that capitalists don't need to exercise control over their investments because
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 02:07 |
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Guys, marxists, look... I'm sure you believe strongly in the whole marxist conception of value and that capitalists contribute nothing of value to economy, but you're not going to convince non-marxists of that. We can see that the world doesn't really work according to your principles. The value of anything isn't defined by the amount of labour put into it, but how much somebody (anybody) is willing to pay for it. Capitalists don't exploit workers, but provide work to do in the first place. Is there anything else you could offer the world? I mean, assuming you for a minute accept that these thesis' of Marxism are simply incorrect, for just a moment?
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 02:08 |
Friendly Tumour posted:Guys, marxists, look... I'm sure you believe strongly in the whole marxist conception of value and that capitalists contribute nothing of value to economy, but you're not going to convince non-marxists of that. We can see that the world doesn't really work according to your principles. The value of anything isn't defined by the amount of labour put into it, but how much somebody (anybody) is willing to pay for it. Capitalists don't exploit workers, but provide work to do in the first place. If we eliminate the idea that value is determined by labor, we have to ask ourselves why people are paid for doing a job, since they contribute no value to the company, and in fact, every company can have infinite value under pure subjectivism. Even with a social definition of value, we run into the problem that bubbles can never happen under this system. Leaving that aside, no company actually acts as though value is purely subjective. They don't deal with depreciation of capital assets by cooking the books, generally. Abandoning "Marxist" ideas like non-subjective components to value leaves us unable to understand most of the world.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 02:12 |
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Effectronica posted:If we eliminate the idea that value is determined by labor, we have to ask ourselves why people are paid for doing a job, since they contribute no value to the company, and in fact, every company can have infinite value under pure subjectivism. Even with a social definition of value, we run into the problem that bubbles can never happen under this system. Leaving that aside, no company actually acts as though value is purely subjective. They don't deal with depreciation of capital assets by cooking the books, generally. Abandoning "Marxist" ideas like non-subjective components to value leaves us unable to understand most of the world. I didn'tsay that labour had no value, I said that the value of anything, including labour, is defined by how much somebody is willing to pay for it. I mean, that's the concensus view of economics, right?
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 02:18 |
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Effectronica posted:If we eliminate the idea that value is determined by labor, we have to ask ourselves why people are paid for doing a job, since they contribute no value to the company, and in fact, every company can have infinite value under pure subjectivism. Even with a social definition of value, we run into the problem that bubbles can never happen under this system. Leaving that aside, no company actually acts as though value is purely subjective. They don't deal with depreciation of capital assets by cooking the books, generally. Abandoning "Marxist" ideas like non-subjective components to value leaves us unable to understand most of the world. Alternately, Marxism uses a peculiar definition of value different from the lay definitions, and it's as useless for understanding the world as the rest of the system.
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 02:18 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 04:38 |
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Friendly Tumour posted:I didn'tsay that labour had no value, I said that the value of anything, including labour, is defined by how much somebody is willing to pay for it. I mean, that's the concensus view of economics, right? I think you mean "the consensus view of sellout capitalist propagandists"
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# ? Nov 7, 2014 02:21 |