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LTV describes how production works, people who subscribe to LTV as a model generally tend to be pretty drat left wing and have ideas about changing the nature of society. LTV doesn't actually advocate for any sort of societal change, it's just a description of how production works and describes a concept of value based on labour input. You keep asking questions that are outside the remit of LTV so the answers keep including ideas generally espoused by people who subscribe to the theory.
OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:32 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 05:29
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OwlFancier posted:Hell no, usury is like the platonic ideal of capitalism. Just because you have money doesn't mean you have a right to force other people to give you more money for the privilege of borrowing it. so let's say I'm an individual who worked very hard at my socialist co-op and accumulated $1000 am I allowed to loan this at 2% interest to another newer Socialist co-op whose workers I know and all met with me and all agreed to pay me the 2% interest to buy a piece of machinery which increases profit by 4%? Or is that still considered exploitation.
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Mar 28, 2019 05:29
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Typo posted:so let's say I'm an individual who worked very hard at my socialist co-op and accumulated $1000 am I allowed to loan this at 2% interest to another newer Socialist co-op whose workers I know and all met with me and all agreed to pay me the 2% interest to buy a piece of machinery which increases profit by 4%? Or is that still considered exploitation. Yes it's exploitation, because you are charging them a portion of their surplus for the pleasure of having access to your capital. You can do this because you have the capital and they do not. The nature doesn't change because you made the numbers smaller. The non exploitative version would be complete socialization of both funding and "profits" you don't have $1000 to begin with. $1000 is available on request from a collective bank at zero interest, the 4% gains in productivity are put back into the same store. This also probably doesn't involve money at all, or even any of the, stages of the process. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 05:30
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Marx's version of the labour theory of value is explicitly only applicable under a capitalist system of production.
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Mar 28, 2019 05:33
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Yeah LTV is supposed to be applied to the world as it presently exists, and people often structure their suggestions for how the world should be, using it as a tool to highlight where problems are.
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Mar 28, 2019 05:36
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OwlFancier posted:Yes it's exploitation, because you are charging them a portion of their surplus for the pleasure of having access to your capital. You can do this because you have the capital and they do not. The nature doesn't change because you made the numbers smaller. What happens when the system collapses under the weight of bad investments and misallocated resources because the collective bank is run by people who don't know wtf they're doing or have an incentive to use resources wisely? What happens when the collective bank decides it's not giving out money to fund co-ops of type X and a bunch of people want to start a co-op of type X anyway? Where do the resources even come from to fund the lending of the collective bank if not from the gains of the enterprises it's funding?
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Mar 28, 2019 14:43
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wateroverfire posted:What happens when the system collapses under the weight of bad investments and misallocated resources because the collective bank is run by people who don't know wtf they're doing or have an incentive to use resources wisely? I dunno what is it like living under capitalism?
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Mar 28, 2019 14:43
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wateroverfire posted:Where do the resources even come from to fund the lending of the collective bank if not from the gains of the enterprises it's funding?
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Mar 28, 2019 15:21
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OwlFancier posted:I dunno what is it like living under capitalism? Capitalism has answers to all of those things, though they're not pretty or compassionate answers. What are the answers under the system you're advocating?
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Mar 28, 2019 15:21
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In capitalism the answer is "nothing, it's a feature" So "maybe we'd try not to do that" would be an improvement.
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Mar 28, 2019 15:25
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Typo posted:I want to be very clear here: is this discussion about savings or investment, or are you treating the two as the exact same thing? Investment is what I am calling cruel and unethical. Savings, context matters. Saving under socialism is a non-sequitur. People don't own capital TO invest. Under capitalism, as I said, you saved one of two ways- you were overcompensated for your work (your savings are stolen from an undercompensated worker) or you lived below your own means. The former is unethical, the latter is ethical though masochistic. So wealth might be ethically accumulated under capitalism but that does not then justify the inherently unethical practice of investment. quote:is this something you are stating axiomatically, or something you are deriving from LTV? The axiom is "violence is wrong." LTV suggests that private property is violence. Ergo, in an ethical socialist society means of production and excess production belong to society not individuals. Taking advantage of that society without upholding your duty to that society is violence (i.e. he who does not work, neither shall he eat.) Conversely, though, as long as you participate in society you have an equal right to the socially owned goods (otherwise, some gatekeeper of goods preventing you from your fair share effectively owns private property.) quote:But it seems to me like you -are- telling me that doctor labor hour is more valuable than janitor labor hour More desirable, from the market perspective. I.e. more valuable by subjective theory of value. The key point of LTV is that the market demand refers to price which is distinct from the actual value. Consider a society where clean floors are religiously important and medical practice is considered blasphemy. Such a society would prefer janitors to doctors and the PRICE of janitorial work would be higher. But is medicine any less valuable in that society? Can a society make clean floors more valuable than human life? What I'm arguing is OBJECTIVELY the hour of heart surgery and hour of floor cleaning have the same value or cost society the same. If I then ethically argue that saving a life is more important than a clean floor, we should focus our distribution of valuable labor more towards saving lives, or our doctors probably ought not be cleaning floors. wateroverfire posted:Where do the resources even come from to fund the lending of the collective bank if not from the gains of the enterprises it's funding? Freely given by the workers for projects workers collectively deem worthwhile to society instead of stolen from the workers for the benefit of individuals.
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Mar 28, 2019 16:21
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Infinite Karma posted:That's an interesting proposition. I guess I see a significant difference because bitcoins can only be traded, not used or improved. This is a ways back, but its worth emphasizing that at least 85-90% of Bitcoin trading was faked: https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/613201/nearly-all-bitcoin-trades-are-fake-apparently/
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Mar 28, 2019 16:26
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OwlFancier posted:Yes it's exploitation, because you are charging them a portion of their surplus for the pleasure of having access to your capital. You can do this because you have the capital and they do not. The nature doesn't change because you made the numbers smaller. so if the state investment fund gains returns on capital (so they have more money to invest into other industries etc), is that exploitation? Does ROI need to be 0 at all times for the investor. Typo fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 17:36
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wateroverfire posted:What happens when the system collapses under the weight of bad investments and misallocated resources because the collective bank is run by people who don't know wtf they're doing or have an incentive to use resources wisely? The government initiates a Troubled Assets Relief Program and... Oh wait we were talking about socialism, my bad, these days it's hard to keep track of which decaying economic system we're discussing. Joking aside, actually existing socialist societies (i.e. the "Second World" or communist bloc) are mostly noteworthy for developing by forcing a much higher rate of savings and investment than would have been possible without substantial state coercion. Obviously these aren't precise comparisons but I would say that if you look at the 20th century development history of, say, India vs. China or Brazil vs. Russia then it's noteworthy that these regimes were vastly more efficient at forcing a higher rate of investment. Since the start of the 19th century the trend outside the OECD countries has been toward divergence - the gap between rich and poor countries has overall increased rather than decreased - and the USSR and China are two of the rare counter examples to that trend. The Soviet Union between 1928 and 1970 had the fastest growth rate in the world except for Japan. That growth was only possible because the USSR had soft budget constraints and an at-all-costs attitude toward raising the rate of investment. Also, contrary to some early western scholarship, consumption did rise in the USSR thanks to the investments in heavy industry. Hell, following World War II there was actually a brief period when the USSR achieved a higher living standard than America. Problems seem to have arose - speaking from an economic development perspective - from the 1970s onward. There are different arguments for why this happened. Some people blame Kruschev and his economic policies (which de-emphasized heavy industry and shifted toward producing more consumer goods), others argue that while central planning performed effectively as long as the main task was putting idle resources to use that the system wasn't very good at squeezing more efficiency out of existing plant and machinery. Other scholars (not just Marxists) have suggested that the principle problem was the size of the Soviet military budget dragging down the rest of the economy. I won't elaborate on those points I just thought they were worth noting in passing since they offer potential reasons for the growth slow down. MixMastaTJ posted:
This may describe your own views but it is directly contradictory of what Marx and Engels were arguing. The value of a doctor's labour power is greater than that of a janitor because of the huge amount of additional resources that were required to give the doctor his knowledge. Marx does say that in any given time and place there will be some received traditions that also influence how pay is determined (i.e. if doctors are highly esteemed they might be paid more than just what it objectively cost to educate them) but Marx is quite clear - and Engels even more so in Anti-Duhring, where he directly critiques the version of the theory you describe - that a doctor's labour has more value under the capitalist system than a janitors.
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Mar 28, 2019 17:48
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Typo posted:so if the state investment fund gains returns on capital (so they have more money to invest into other industries etc), is that exploitation? Does ROI need to be 0 at all times for the investor. Shall I take by your total silence on my last post that you're conceding the argument?
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Mar 28, 2019 17:48
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MixMastaTJ posted:Savings, context matters. Saving under socialism is a non-sequitur. People don't own capital TO invest. Under capitalism, as I said, you saved one of two ways- you were overcompensated for your work (your savings are stolen from an undercompensated worker) or you lived below your own means. The former is unethical, the latter is ethical though masochistic. What about differed consumption? Let's say I'm throwing a party next month so I save up a little this month to spend more the next? That doesn't seem masochistic to me. Are you equating Socialism with "post-scarcity"? quote:The axiom is "violence is wrong." LTV suggests that private property is violence. Ergo, in an ethical socialist society means of production and excess production belong to society not individuals. quote:Taking advantage of that society without upholding your duty to that society is violence (i.e. he who does not work, neither shall he eat.) So how does LTV treat people who work but work more or less, is the guy who work 9 hours a day deserving of same share of the economy as the guy who works 4 hours a day? quote:What I'm arguing is OBJECTIVELY the hour of heart surgery and hour of floor cleaning have the same value or cost society the same. quote:But not all labour is a mere expenditure of simple human labour-power; very many sorts of labour involve the use of capabilities or knowledge acquired with the expenditure of greater or lesser effort, time and money. Do these kinds of compound labour produce, in the same interval of time, the same commodity values as simple labour, the expenditure of mere simple labour-power? Obviously not. The product of one hour of compound labour is a commodity of a higher value—perhaps double or treble — in comparison with the product of one hour of simple labour. Typo fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Mar 28, 2019 |
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Mar 28, 2019 17:54
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Helsing posted:Shall I take by your total silence on my last post that you're conceding the argument? your post is pretty long (which I appreciate) and I will respond to it in due time, I'm not ignoring it
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Mar 28, 2019 17:55
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Typo posted:so if the state investment fund gains returns on capital (so they have more money to invest into other industries etc), is that exploitation? Does ROI need to be 0 at all times for the investor. Not if the sole purpose of the investment fund is to reinvest, no. If the fund is freely available to anyone who needs it that's not exploitative. It is when the process results in the transfer of surplus labour from the collective output of the workers to the control of a single owner, by virtue of the power relationship between the owner and the workers, which is embodied in the ownership of capital that is the surplus, that it is exploitation.
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Mar 29, 2019 06:13
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wateroverfire posted:What happens when the system collapses under the weight of bad investments and misallocated resources because the collective bank is run by people who don't know wtf they're doing or have an incentive to use resources wisely? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008
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Mar 29, 2019 11:45
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Typo posted:What about differed consumption? Let's say I'm throwing a party next month so I save up a little this month to spend more the next? That doesn't seem masochistic to me. Today, in American society there are people barely scraping by. I, personally, have a decent paying job and a lot of privilege. When I "differ consumption" to stock up on snacks and booze for a party it's my excess compensation at the expense of those less fortunate than me. But if we're talking I buy one loaf of bread a month instead of two or I skip my weekly hot shower so friends and I can get a six pack... That's masochistic. (But, sure, perfectly ethical.) But this understanding of saving is rooted in capitalism. Instead of getting a paycheck which you either spend or put in the bank, imagine a warehouse containing all society's goods not being used. You ONLY have control over your own taking from this warehouse, not others. You are entitled to a fair share of the goods, which is based on how many goods there are and how many people we're dividing between. How much you took yesterday is not a factor in what your fair share is. If you want a soda today whether or not that soda is part of your fair share depends on the availability of soda. Either there is a soda for you or not. Same with a keg of beer for your party. Either we have enough for you to throw your party or we do not. So, okay, I suppose you can limit your beer consumption in HOPES that we will have enough for a kegger next month, but without controlling other people's consumption that relationship is very abstract. Maybe taking your daily bottle of beer when there's exactly enough beer produced for everyone to have one bottle and stashing it for your party rather than drinking it could be acceptable, but it stratles the line. Taking something you have no intention to use for the purpose of denying the consumption of others is bad. But I would say denying yourself a beer you would have drunk today would merely be masochistic. (Minorly so, but it's still denying yourself pleasure you have the right to.) But we're talking about saving itself and using those savings for something that is not unethical. If you saved up your beer to trade for some other good (such as an extra loaf of bread) that's leveraging your capital which is unethical, regardless of how ethically that capital was obtained. quote:when you say private property are you talking about personal property or private ownership of capital? Private capital, very specifically. quote:Right, so already, it seems that -not- everybody has a right to equal share in economic output of a society. Because you are telling me voluntary unemployment is violence against society and presumably a crime and person straight-up deserves to starve. Which tbf actually makes it more congruent with LTV. It's less they deserve to starve as society is under no obligation to feed them. And I'm talking WILLFULLY refusing to contribute to society. If a farmer says he needs help on his field and you say you don't feel like it, maybe they don't "feel" like sharing their bread. That doesn't apply to actual reasons you can't. Child rearing, illness, working on a painting prevent you from specific work but aren't refusing to participate in society. As well, after a couple days going hungry, you're free to do your part and earn your food. Refusal to work has to be a conscious action. If you crawl to the farmer begging for food and they say "sure, just help with some chores" and you still refuse then that's on you. quote:So how does LTV treat people who work but work more or less, is the guy who work 9 hours a day deserving of same share of the economy as the guy who works 4 hours a day? Again, LTV makes no ethical judgement. I suppose, then, you can argue that everyone is exactly entitled to the work the put in. But there are a lot of problems with that. I would instead argue that members of a society are owed equal share of goods (at least, so much as the can actually use them. Obviously someone without children doesn't have "equal rights" to diapers) and we owe to society whatever our fair share of work is. That fair share of work is going to require context. If society works fine with everyone working 30 hours a week then 30 hours a week is your fair share. And if we're in a famine and everyone needs to put in 9 hour days farming then that's the fair share. Someone who is working more than their fair share is either being unfairly exploited or is working because they want to. Which is fine, but they aren't entitled to a greater share beyond whatever immediate benefits their extra labor might produce.
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Mar 30, 2019 00:55
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MixMastaTJ posted:Today, in American society there are people barely scraping by. I, personally, have a decent paying job and a lot of privilege. When I "differ consumption" to stock up on snacks and booze for a party it's my excess compensation at the expense of those less fortunate than me. If you knew you wanted a keg of beer next month so you could throw a party, it's stupid to have a society set up where you just show up and hope there's a keg waiting when you want it... and sensible to have some way of either waiting your turn, or trading other luxuries for the luxury beer keg. Commodification of goods is a natural consequence of any economy that has scarcity. Commodification and savings is really only a problem when it gives unequal access to the means of production. Leveraging "beer power" from your hoarding to get more bread than would be a fair trade might be unethical, but the act of trading one good for another according to your preference isn't. Trading in order to make a profit is the quagmire, because the profit had to come from somewhere, not because of the trade itself.
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Mar 30, 2019 02:30
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MixMastaTJ posted:When I "differ consumption"
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Mar 30, 2019 04:41
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MixMastaTJ posted:Private capital, very specifically. quote:So, okay, I suppose you can limit your beer consumption in HOPES that we will have enough for a kegger next month, but without controlling other people's consumption that relationship is very abstract. This sort of society sounds outright totalitarian, even more so than real life Stalinism. It's one thing to ban people from buying shares of stocks in companies they don't work in, it's another to ban someone from saving up food and beverages for their kid's birthday party next month. I suspect whatever the principles are, implementing this sort of political economy is going to involve a lot of cases of government police going to farmer's houses and forcibly taking their seeds for planting next year and the food they have stocked for the winter to feed themselves. I leave the implications up to you. quote:It's less they deserve to starve as society is under no obligation to feed them. And I'm talking WILLFULLY refusing to contribute to society. If a farmer says he needs help on his field and you say you don't feel like it, maybe they don't "feel" like sharing their bread. quote:I would instead argue that members of a society are owed equal share of goods (at least, so much as the can actually use them. Obviously someone without children doesn't have "equal rights" to diapers) and we owe to society whatever our fair share of work is. That fair share of work is going to require context. If society works fine with everyone working 30 hours a week then 30 hours a week is your fair share. And if we're in a famine and everyone needs to put in 9 hour days farming then that's the fair share. Typo fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Mar 31, 2019 |
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Mar 31, 2019 04:28
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Generally commies would probably suggest that you have plenty of productive capacity to feed and house anyone who wants it, and should. However, this in contrast to capitalism, which creates a structural necessity to feed and house and support the spectacularly wasteful excess and senseless accumulation of the parasite class of bourgeoisie whether it's good to do so or not.
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Mar 31, 2019 04:33
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roomforthetuna posted:While differ still makes a kind of sense in this context, the original person saying it really meant "defer", which makes more sense. you are right I meant defer
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Mar 31, 2019 04:33
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OwlFancier posted:Generally commies would probably suggest that you have plenty of productive capacity to feed and house anyone who wants it, and should. for instance, SomethingAwful Forum accounts
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Mar 31, 2019 04:43
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Typo posted:for instance, SomethingAwful Forum accounts Eh?
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Mar 31, 2019 04:48
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Many commies would probably deem the Somethingawful forums a "spectacularly wasteful excess" and demand that the ::tenbucks:: being spent on this go to something else. Helsing: You raised some interesting points. I don't know whole lot about the economic growth of the USSR but China had several things working its way that had nothing to do with communism - 1) a high initial savings rate, 2) a huge mostly pre-industrial population to be turned into an internal market and 3) fortuitous timing. They also did allow what people ITT would call private ownership of capital, just with the heavy hand of the state involved. OwlFancier posted:Not if the sole purpose of the investment fund is to reinvest, no. If the fund is freely available to anyone who needs it that's not exploitative. It is when the process results in the transfer of surplus labour from the collective output of the workers to the control of a single owner, by virtue of the power relationship between the owner and the workers, which is embodied in the ownership of capital that is the surplus, that it is exploitation. A fund freely available to anyone who needs it would be quickly depleted. There would have to be gatekeepers, auditors, administrators, and that sort of thing. Those people would have to be paid, which would have to come out of the returns generated by the fund. To grow and support more projects the fund would have to retain some of its earnings to invest later in more people, more expertise, etc, to support those new projects. In almost all ways, if the fund is well run, it would have the same relationship to the funded companies as exists under Capitalism.
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Apr 1, 2019 15:56
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wateroverfire posted:Many commies would probably deem the Somethingawful forums a "spectacularly wasteful excess" and demand that the ::tenbucks:: being spent on this go to something else. I mean maybe if they're weird tankies fighting a culture war? Sure with socialism it'd be publicly funded but maintaining a public forum is entirely useful be it a concrete one or a digital one? wateroverfire posted:A fund freely available to anyone who needs it would be quickly depleted. There would have to be gatekeepers, auditors, administrators, and that sort of thing. Those people would have to be paid, which would have to come out of the returns generated by the fund. To grow and support more projects the fund would have to retain some of its earnings to invest later in more people, more expertise, etc, to support those new projects. In almost all ways, if the fund is well run, it would have the same relationship to the funded companies as exists under Capitalism. Sure you need administrators, but the point is that say, a VC fund does not invest in anyone who needs it, it invests where the fund manager thinks will give the greatest monetary return to the fund. Because the point of money in capitalism is to accumulate more money. A socialist fund is one which interfaces with the production chain to provide resources where they are needed to ensure the things that are needed, are produced. What is needed is decided democratically rather than by some guy with a lot of money having a "brilliant idea" and setting about making it in the most profitable, but not the most useful way possible. It is profitable, for example, to make rapidly obsolete electronic devices which are manufactured by brutally exploitative labour practices in countries that are not the actual market for the product. It is useful to make more reliable and longer lasting devices which necessitate less labour and also to expand the use of such devices to more places so that everyone can get the benefit of them. It is profitable to power the world on fossil fuels because the production of energy via that method comes at the cost of externalized climate damage, something the power company does not actually have to pay for. It is useful to power the world via renewable and nuclear energy but that requires capital investment and does not immediately improve profits, so it doesn't happen. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 07:39 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 07:36
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OwlFancier posted:I mean maybe if they're weird tankies fighting a culture war? Sure with socialism it'd be publicly funded but maintaining a public forum is entirely useful be it a concrete one or a digital one? A public forum, maybe. Somethingawful.com....I mean, probably not. Useful is not the word I'd use. Sorry, Lowtax. =( OwlFancier posted:Sure you need administrators, but the point is that say, a VC fund does not invest in anyone who needs it, it invests where the fund manager thinks will give the greatest monetary return to the fund. Because the point of money in capitalism is to accumulate more money. A socialist fund is one which interfaces with the production chain to provide resources where they are needed to ensure the things that are needed, are produced. What is needed is decided democratically rather than by some guy with a lot of money having a "brilliant idea" and setting about making it in the most profitable, but not the most useful way possible. There are funds that do all those things. Invest in renewable energy, invest in providing things people need (or at least want. And I mean...of course, right? Otherwise who would buy?) Maybe not so much nuclear energy right now because, ironically, the environmental lobby makes that very risky. Investment funds usually have a committee that evaluates the viability of a project, risk vs return, that sort of thing. A "socialist" fund would likewise probably have to have a committee evaluating potential investments along the same lines, including declining to invest in things that don't seem to have enough upside even if they're popular. It's just kind of a necessary part of the activity of investing and not related to any economic system. Things would still have to be produced where they're relatively cheap to make and there's have to be some mechanism (ie: people paying for stuff, or some analog of that) to both ration what people consume and ensure enough resources (or money to buy resources) get back to the institutions doing the production to fund operations, innovate, expand, etc. Those are also just kind of things that are necessary to the functioning of an economy and not something to do with any particular economic system. The reality of maintaining a modern society kind of dictates that in a lot of details the practical implementation of a socialist system is going to look a lot like what exists in, say, Scandanavia, today.
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Apr 2, 2019 14:29
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The difference is that in a capitalist society everything is driven by profit, and profit is not utility. The only reason people invest in renewable energy is because governments stepped in to create a profit motive to do so. Once the subsidies are withdrawn they will stop doing it, absenting the latent marketability of presumed-to-be-eco-friendly products which, critically, do not actually have to be eco friendly, they merely have to seem to be. See also, fairtrade, charity branded products, "woke advertising" in general. What you are selling is not the actual result, merely the sense of validation the consumer can feel if they believe they are consuming ethically, which they are not, as explained by noted political economist sonic the hedgehog. Critically when the problem is environmental destruction as a result of rampant expansion of production, capitalism is inherently incapable of dealing with that. Because capitalism demands ever more production and ever more sales and when that is saturated you must invent more things to sell people and manufacture more demand for them. It is an engine of commodified consumption which is not the same as an actual need driven economic system. You don't need a $800 or whatever machine to palpate prepackaged partially mulched juice bags, but capitalism will produce and try to sell you one! You don't need to have everyone driving a car, but capital driven decentralized urban development will make it so that mass transit is impractical and force you to buy one to particpate in work! There are a lot of problems in the world that you can't solve with profit motives. Because exploiting and killing people who aren't your consumers to benefit yourself is never not profitable. Capitalism can not deal with problems external to the individual capitalist, because the material motives are entirely their enrichment, and nothing else.
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Apr 2, 2019 17:37
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wateroverfire posted:There are funds that do all those things. Invest in renewable energy, invest in providing things people need (or at least want. And I mean...of course, right? Otherwise who would buy?) Maybe not so much nuclear energy right now because, ironically, the environmental lobby makes that very risky. Investment funds usually have a committee that evaluates the viability of a project, risk vs return, that sort of thing. A "socialist" fund would likewise probably have to have a committee evaluating potential investments along the same lines, including declining to invest in things that don't seem to have enough upside even if they're popular. It's just kind of a necessary part of the activity of investing and not related to any economic system. the natural conclusion of this is that capital allocation if not the consumer industry as well is going to be ran by a state central planning
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Apr 2, 2019 17:41
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OwlFancier posted:The difference is that in a capitalist society everything is driven by profit, and profit is not utility. The only reason people invest in renewable energy is because governments stepped in to create a profit motive to do so. Once the subsidies are withdrawn they will stop doing it, absenting the latent marketability of presumed-to-be-eco-friendly products which, critically, do not actually have to be eco friendly, they merely have to seem to be. See also, fairtrade, charity branded products, "woke advertising" in general. What you are selling is not the actual result, merely the sense of validation the consumer can feel if they believe they are consuming ethically, which they are not, as explained by noted political economist sonic the hedgehog. so under socialism are people just going to stop wanting additional goods at some point?
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Apr 2, 2019 17:50
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OwlFancier posted:The difference is that in a capitalist society everything is driven by profit, and profit is not utility. Profit is an indicator that whatever enterprise you're involved in is running well enough to generate a surplus. If there's no profit then your enterprise has to pull resources generated from other enterprises to fund the thing it is doing. But then those enterprises have to be generating a surplus, and if they're not they have to pull from somewhere... and etc. Profit - or something analagous to profit - is going to exist as part of any successful economic system. If it doesn't, that system is ultimately going to collapse. OwlFancier posted:It is an engine of commodified consumption which is not the same as an actual need driven economic system. How does one figure out what people need? The worst mechanism we have - except for all the others we´ve tried - is a market economy. It's imperfect and it results in a lot of bullshit but it works better than central planning by a lot. A successful economic system is going to have markets or market analogs as well. You can't really get around it. I guess you could posit a world in which people are allocated a defined package of goods and services that it has been decided satisfy their needs? OwlFancier posted:Critically when the problem is environmental destruction as a result of rampant expansion of production, capitalism is inherently incapable of dealing with that. Socialism is not inherently environmentally friendly. People are going to want things. People are going to need to live places. New people are going to be born, and they're going to need new things and new places to live. Resources are going to need to be exploited to accomplish those things. Those are ultimately the drivers of environmental damage, not profit per se. Profit is just keeping score.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:12
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Typo posted:so under socialism are people just going to stop wanting additional goods at some point?  I would suggest that just perhaps, perhaps, the reason why our culture is so driven by consumption of commodities might have something to do with the fact that our entire economic system depends on it, and gargantuan amounts of effort and resources are expended to encourage it, yes. wateroverfire posted:Socialism is not inherently environmentally friendly. People are going to want things. People are going to need to live places. New people are going to be born, and they're going to need new things and new places to live. Resources are going to need to be exploited to accomplish those things. Those are ultimately the drivers of environmental damage, not profit per se. Profit is just keeping score. I didn't say it was, I said that if you want environmentalism, what you need is something akin to socialism. I did not say that socialism is inherently environmentally friendly, I said that capitalism is inherently environemtnally destructive.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:13
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OwlFancier posted:I didn't say it was, I said that if you want environmentalism, what you need is something akin to socialism. I did not say that socialism is inherently environmentally friendly, I said that capitalism is inherently environemtnally destructive. And I'm saying you're wrong about that. The drivers of environmental damage are the same independant of the economic system. People are inherently environmentally destructive. =(
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Apr 2, 2019 18:16
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OwlFancier posted:I would suggest that just perhaps, perhaps, the reason why our culture is so driven by consumption of commodities might have something to do with the fact that our entire economic system depends on it, and gargantuan amounts of effort and resources are expended to encourage it, yes. so how come even in historical socialist countries people wanted more/better consumer goods and got annoyed that their tv or furniture sucked? pretty sure they didn't have a lot of tv ads running
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Apr 2, 2019 18:19
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wateroverfire posted:And I'm saying you're wrong about that. The drivers of environmental damage are the same independant of the economic system. People are inherently environmentally destructive. =( No they absolutely aren't? How the hell do you come to that conclusion? You have an economic system which is directed by obscenely wealthy people who are all fully of the belief that whatever happens to the majority of the planet won't happen to them, the same way it works right now? So the rest of the world can burn and drown and they can all gently caress off to new zealand. Do you think that isn't at all related to the amount of damage being done to the environment?
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Apr 2, 2019 18:19
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OwlFancier posted:No they absolutely aren't? How the hell do you come to that conclusion? You have an economic system which is directed by obscenely wealthy people who are all fully of the belief that whatever happens to the majority of the planet won't happen to them, the same way it works right now? So the rest of the world can burn and drown and they can all gently caress off to new zealand. Do you think that isn't at all related to the amount of damage being done to the environment? I'm pretty sure as long as you have an industrial economy it's going to be environmentally destructive even if you suppose some sort of government committee puts a cap on individual consumption. Unless you are literal Pol Pot who tries to restore the economy of 0AD, but I'm pretty sure that's not what the Socialist vision is
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Apr 2, 2019 18:21
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Typo posted:I'm pretty sure as long as you have an industrial economy it's going to be environmentally destructive even if you suppose some sort of government committee puts a cap on individual consumption. Quoting because yeah, basically, this.
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Apr 2, 2019 18:23
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