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Yeah if nothing else since it's mostly based on our actions it's much closer to being malleable than the Tendency. Like if everyone worked together we could probably solve it (or hell if everyone who doesn't just eats poo poo due to having extremely short sighted administration such that they become a drop in the bucket compared to the efforts of those who do it'd probably still work then), but even if humanity suddenly became a eusocial organism it'd only delay the inevitable lowering of profit, and would in fact just make the Tendency probably more evident by virtue of the measurements of the system becoming much less erratic due to less motivated reasoning/noise from inefficient behavior.
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Feb 8, 2024 02:52
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I currently believe capitalism is essentially inevitable. There's a lot of serious flaws to capitalism, causing an environmental Armageddon is one of them. I'm not approaching trpf from the ignorance argument "you must prove to me". The theory is solid. But I don't see it in execution. The salt mines still exist and still produce. I combine trpf with pe and can resolve. Large capitalist firms like E&Y combine trpf with other ideas formulaically, I didn't invent this.
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Feb 8, 2024 02:55
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a description of a system over time does not mean all parts of the system meet the description at an instant in time. we're not even arguing here about whether the particular description is right, we're arguing whether your criteria makes any sense https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/09/weather/weather-record-cold-antarctica-climate-change/index.html posted:In a year of extreme heat, Antarctica’s last six months were the coldest on record.
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Feb 8, 2024 02:56
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BillsPhoenix posted:But Marx uses it as a building block for an inevitable collapse. Salt mining has not collapsed, and still produces the maximum utility of salt. I've read all your posts and they seem incoherent to me. And I don't mean that to be insulting; I mean I think you're making a bunch of category errors that probably make perfect sense to you, because subjective-utility-as-value is a pretty hegemonic and hard-to-break habit, especially among people who've studied econ at expensive universities. Case in point: What does the "utility" produced by a salt mine have to do with the theories being discussed? Simply put: Nothing at all, unless one specifically conflates value with utility, as bourgeois universities try their damnedest to train people to do. If the profitability of salt (or any other commodity) falls below the general rate, then ceteris paribus investment will creep away from that product and toward sectors that are realizing more than the general rate, until market forces have their say (e.g., supply decreases, price rises, profit commanded rises, etc). These corrections aren't all-or-nothing, they're gradual, occurring in historical rather than logical time. Does that make sense?
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Feb 8, 2024 02:57
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*on trampoline* look like gravity a lie
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Feb 8, 2024 03:03
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FirstnameLastname posted:*on trampoline* look like gravity a lie lol
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Feb 8, 2024 03:03
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BillsPhoenix posted:I currently believe capitalism is essentially inevitable. There's a lot of serious flaws to capitalism, causing an environmental Armageddon is one of them. The Tendency doesn't require capitalism or Communism or anything to prevail, and it doesn't really care about short term increases because it's a tendency. Mines run out, and even if you go to another one the next will run out eventually too. Tools wear out, and you either replace them or lose the efficiency of them and your profit lowers. The value of the mines product also trends downwards as you either have bunches of pre refined material around, or as population and efficiency peaks, and the consequences of the mining and any other economic process proceed (and trying to make someone pay for those instead just means you pull from the pocket of those who are to pay you for the mined product one way or another). The very best you could hope for even in a spherical cow situation of perfect exploitation by a eusocial organism consistimg of all human life working with the singular goal of maintaining the rate of profit would be stagnation slowly trending down towards some oscillating function with solar radiance until said radiance began to inhibit work as the sun reaches the end of its lifespan. Considering that would be a dramatically more efficient state than even communism itself and it could not maintain profit, I don't see how the West is going to maintain profit while tearing it's high efficiency physical industry apart and intentionally lowering the number of beneficiaries for this as close to 1 as possible, while also slowly being kicked out of nations as it shutters it's ability to repel any sort of armed resistance against this and loses more places to extract resources.
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Feb 8, 2024 03:06
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BillsPhoenix posted:I currently believe capitalism is essentially inevitable. There's a lot of serious flaws to capitalism, causing an environmental Armageddon is one of them. Salt production and distribution en masse predates Capitalism by thousands of years. It will be a thing still when the last humans bake away in the future. It is utterly vital to human life and has countless uses beyond that, and can be so cheaply mined as to be trivial to consider. Even if salt were a net loss to extract it would still be extracted because we must do that, but we don't need to worry about that because salt also makes food delicious and blunts fullness. A most wonderful trait for a system that relies on ever increasing levels of consumption, forever. If liberalism had Gods it would certainly be in the pantheon. The market forces that are most illuminating about food is distribution, thanks to Mr Haber-Bosch for the moment at least. I'm no expert so I won't speculate, and in any case Capitalism's interaction with food and the horrors that entails is to my mind more of a moral argument.
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Feb 8, 2024 03:11
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FirstnameLastname posted:*on trampoline* look like gravity a lie
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Feb 8, 2024 03:11
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I do like salt.
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Feb 8, 2024 03:15
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Boeing is making maximally efficient use of bolts, and Norfolk Southern is making maximally efficient use of Ohioan homes for soaking chemical spills, while Raytheon and GenDyn are making maximally efficient usage of US military personnel, ipso facto capitalism cannot be stopped
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Feb 8, 2024 03:18
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That's not to say that salt is exempted from anything, it's more to say 1) I don't understand why this particular commodity is the lynchpin of your argument 2) It's an eternal feature of any civilization. Both Communism and Capitalism fare just fine in this regard, so I'm not sure what difference it is supposed to illuminate. The only thing I can think is it would be a sound condemnation of every form of government before easy gathering and manufacture of salt became a thing, and note of praise to any that came after. In other words, the only relevance I can see has nothing to do with your broader argument
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Feb 8, 2024 03:18
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FirstnameLastname posted:*on trampoline* look like gravity a lie
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Feb 8, 2024 03:21
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Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:I do like salt. yep
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Feb 8, 2024 03:21
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capitalist owns a factory. They manufacture, I dunno, washing machines. they start selling washing machines to people eventually, the number of people who might need washing machines all have their needs fulfilled by having bought a washing machine, either from this guy, or their competition at which point, you start selling fewer washing machines that doesn't mean you stop selling washing machines: children grow into adults, and they start needing washing machines. People move into the capitalist's market, and they start needing washing machines. Someone's washing machine breaks down and they need a new one but the number of washing machines the capitalist gets to sell, eventually tapers off and the capitalist can still take proactive steps to stem the tide: they can engage in marketing, to convince people who do not currently want a washing machine, that they should have one or, they can widen their logistical reach so that they're serving a larger market than they used to (and this impulse essentially drives imperialism, at the highest levels of capitalism) but even if you could sell washing machines to every person in the world, eventually you're still going to hit a point where everyone who needs a washing machine, already has one, and after that, the only people you can still sell washing machines to, are people who age into adulthood, or replacements for broken ones the number of washing machines you sell, month-on-month, ergo, your rate of profit, has a tendency to fall ___ or for a more contemporary example: fuckin' NETFLIX ___ EDIT: you could even combine the two: washing machine company uses its washing machine profits to diversify, and they start up a media streaming service, so that they can still make a profit even after the washing machine market has been tapped out. A particularly far-seeing capitalist might even do this specifically for this reason. But even then, the tendency still rears its ugly head once the media streaming market is also tapped out. an OMNICORP CONGLOMERATION that sells every product (and service!) in the world will still eventually run out of customers could you project this out onto a horizon long enough to make it practically irrelevant to the capitalist involved, and some of the stakeholders? sure, but that doesn't mean the tendency isn't there gradenko_2000 has issued a correction as of 03:30 on Feb 8, 2024 |
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Feb 8, 2024 03:22
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Monosodium Glutamate is also quite nice. Only difference is no chlorine! Edit: Also all of those interventions have their own cost, which further takes from them, as does the presence of old Washing machine parts allowing extended use of old Washing machines, people sharing washers, or even just doing it by hand if prices are too high. The more detail you add the more powerful the Tendency, but even in the most simplistic situation it still comes through (and is if anything more apparent as said). thechosenone has issued a correction as of 03:26 on Feb 8, 2024 |
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Feb 8, 2024 03:23
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Instead of thinking of the sciences as "hard vs soft" maybe consider them as efficiency-focused and efficacy-focused. Even if mathematics, the only hard science, is morally neutral, life is not lived in morally neutral spaces and lives are not governed by rationality or reason. It is not a tool that can help you there, if you want an oracle you want a cynic or a depressive. Or, if that's too grim a prospect, you turn to Marx and the handful of people carrying his torch of a human-centric economic framework into the modern day, scorned and reviled. I do miss Croup now because I know he'd orbital strike me if I was getting meandering, so now I have to worry about that. Anyway those are my thoughts.
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Feb 8, 2024 03:26
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Salt mines utility fulfillment is to state the industry hasn't experienced a partial collapse or crises resulting in an inability to fill societal demand as a result of the loss of profitability. I understand you apply the loss of profitability not at a industry level, but as a whole. Starting with salt mines, capital was reinvested, reducing labor - and thus definitionally reduce profitability; which is surplus labor value. The companies do this do gain a competitive edge, and profit. But profitability is falling, which is not profit. Focusing only on salt mines here - they are still producing profit. A new salt mining company isn't coming into existence, we all agree on that. I'm now going to differ and point to PE as the reason. Adding a new set of labor (via a new mining company) to salt mining will actually produce profit (not profitability). So why isn't it done? Because adding to a different industry will produce more profit. I'm starting to see why my posting is hard to follow...
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Feb 8, 2024 03:26
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I'd argue that a civilization or economic mode that cannot supply its people with salt is tough to study because it would immediately collapse. Survivor Bias on a grand scale.
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Feb 8, 2024 03:27
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That tends to happen when you start from the assumption of profit being able to increase without bound, which is incoherent. Salt, and indeed everything in a finite system has an ultimate maximum for how much can be sold, and since each unit has a fixed cost to it (labor), and the development of methods to improve efficiency by lowering costs that aren't fixed also have fixed cost (labor), there is a point where any amount produced over that would ultimately actually reduce profit, and there's no getting around it. Eventually you have enough salt, and making more won't make you more money, but will cost you money. Edit: Epic High Five posted:I'd argue that a civilization or economic mode that cannot supply its people with salt is tough to study because it would immediately collapse. That too. Any society that can't get people salt is not much of a society. Trying to keep people from salt (for the purpose of profit for example) is one of many things that would absolutely bust any nation today, tomorrow or in the past almost immediately. thechosenone has issued a correction as of 03:48 on Feb 8, 2024 |
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Feb 8, 2024 03:46
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peak oil guys are just modern day trpf guys without knowing it
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Feb 8, 2024 03:53
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BillsPhoenix posted:On that we can agree
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Feb 8, 2024 04:07
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The Voice of Labor posted:could you rephrase that in the language of one piece please? its like if the celestial dragons got rugged and attractive over the generations instead of turning into sheltered inbred freaks. once you completely rule the world with an unshakeable grip from the holy land at the top of the red line theres nowhere to go but back down into the sea…..or fairy vearth i guess
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Feb 8, 2024 05:45
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Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:I agree that hiring third persons (I am assuming Marx means directly, as artisans) would not transform bookkeeping into an activity that creates value, from the perspective of the capitalist paying the bill. It's a cost. However, if we bring in an accounting firm, I think the situation changes. From the perspective of the capitalist who owns the accounting firm, and is paying their accountants a wage, surplus value reappears. The principal of the firm takes it from the accountants. surplus labor reappears for the capitalist because it "makes" them the same amount of money, it just makes that money by defraying a cost rather than creating new value. like, normally, the capitalist class as a whole would lose X value to logistics. but if they pay an accountant V to do accounting for the day, that accountant will actually be able to take a (V+S)-sized bite out of X, which allows the accountant's employer to pocket S additional value, just as though they were hiring the accountant to make widgets instead
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Feb 8, 2024 06:03
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gradenko_2000 posted:capitalist owns a factory. They manufacture, I dunno, washing machines. from what i understand, arguments that the rate of profit doesn't necessarily fall (or doesn't even necessarily have the TENDENCY to fall) are based on the fact that technical innovation might well make C shrink faster than V, so it's not always going to be true that we need more constant relative to variable capital over time, and therefore it's not always going to be true that S/C+V is going to decrease. however this strikes me as similar to liberals who think that inventing star trek replicators is going to solve class conflict for us, and, as you say, diminishing returns have a way of hitting every possible product or service as a matter of course
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Feb 8, 2024 06:07
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FirstnameLastname posted:*on trampoline* look like gravity a lie
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Feb 8, 2024 07:06
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FirstnameLastname posted:people can theoretically do something about global warming Same as capitalism. Bunch of salty posting going on.
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Feb 8, 2024 10:59
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BillsPhoenix posted:I currently believe capitalism is essentially inevitable. There's a lot of serious flaws to capitalism, causing an environmental Armageddon is one of them. Why would you expect that salt mines just vanish?
If you want to bring up Pareto Efficiency you'll first have to be sure that the concept of utility isn't whack, but also I don't see how you need it to explain what's going on. Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:I agree that hiring third persons (I am assuming Marx means directly, as artisans) would not transform bookkeeping into an activity that creates value, from the perspective of the capitalist paying the bill. It's a cost. However, if we bring in an accounting firm, I think the situation changes. From the perspective of the capitalist who owns the accounting firm, and is paying their accountants a wage, surplus value reappears. The principal of the firm takes it from the accountants. Productive and unproductive labor is a question of macroeconomics. A capitalist will not care either way. Edit: 40 posts too late, whatever, never read genericnick has issued a correction as of 12:57 on Feb 8, 2024 |
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Feb 8, 2024 12:47
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gradenko_2000 posted:capitalist owns a factory. They manufacture, I dunno, washing machines. I mean it's not really just one thing that leads to the tendency of profits to fall. There's also: Introduction of new process using more fixed capital -> Abnormal profits -> new process becomes the common process -> profit normalizes, but at a lower level than before.
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Feb 8, 2024 13:23
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I got in over my head in a friendly argument over lunch. Does anyone remember the logical proofs that systematize orthodox historical materialism? I vaguely remember: IF it is the case that if an event of type E were to occur at t1, then it would bring about an event of type F at t2 THEN an event of type E occurs at t3. and The production relations are of kind R at time t because relations of kind R are suitable to the use and development of the productive forces given the level of development of the latter at t. but I couldn't really explain it succulently and it's possible I was trained wrong as a joke.
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Feb 8, 2024 18:34
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I'm going to try again, starting over. I am criticizing the empirical "proof" of trpf. I don't believe it can be proven. First - definitional alignment on profitability. R = s/(c+v). R is rate of profit. S is surplus labor or profit, as defined by Marx. This isn't the same definition that companies use to report profit. C is constant capital. V is wages. Wages is going to be one item I am going to use, so I'm going to further define: Wages are the cost of labor power, which is how its used in the above formula. But wages can also be used to purchase capital. Is this all correct under Marx?
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Feb 8, 2024 20:32
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BillsPhoenix posted:I'm going to try again, starting over. I am criticizing the empirical "proof" of trpf. I don't believe it can be proven. It's impossible prove literally anything by pure induction in an open system, so... fine? If you're arguing that the facts in question are underdetermined and therefore also explicable on the basis of a competing theory, please present the theory.
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Feb 8, 2024 20:42
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Just read Marx?
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Feb 8, 2024 20:48
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Aeolius posted:It's impossible prove literally anything by pure induction in an open system, so... fine? Thanks for summarizing better than I could rn
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Feb 8, 2024 21:34
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Frosted Flake posted:I got in over my head in a friendly argument over lunch. Does anyone remember the logical proofs that systematize orthodox historical materialism? I vaguely remember tbqh I never heard there was formal proof for it until now since, you know, analytic philosophy really loving hates dialectics
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Feb 8, 2024 21:53
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Alright I guess that's it. Because proof is impossible, so is debate, reason, and evidence. I now get why this space and debate are quite literally unable to interact.
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Feb 8, 2024 22:09
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BillsPhoenix posted:Alright I guess that's it. Because proof is impossible, so is debate, reason, and evidence. brother i gave you a link to michael robert's analyses on TRPF, which is data and evidence based. you can debate whether that data is correct, or used correctly, or the conclusions drawn from them are viable, but you didn't even engage with it
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Feb 8, 2024 22:12
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its you, you were the karl popper poster in a previous reg weren't you
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Feb 8, 2024 22:13
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BillsPhoenix posted:Alright I guess that's it. Because proof is impossible, so is debate, reason, and evidence. My impression was that Hegel and Marx used the dialectic precisely because you can reach an understanding where otherwise proof would be impossible? Or something?
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Feb 8, 2024 22:14
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That was more arrogant than intended. I'm not saying anyone here is wrong. My analogy would be philosophy vs physics. It's just fundamentally different.
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Feb 8, 2024 22:15
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