Im Argentinian. We have 6 military dictatorships in the last century, that kills many thousand persons. Supported, financiated and trained by the USA in the school of the americans to torture, rape and kill political oposition. The same thing happened all over latin america... dont tell me than what Chomsky saids is a conspiracy theory only because you are ignorants to it.
@manuelberte Much the same is the case in Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador, and now you see two military governments in Colombia and Mexico engaging in wars on drugs that have horrible consequences for the civilian populations.
Its not a conspiracy theory... its the truth than 99% of the world lives in. You are a country than never lived an invasion to your own territory. You live in a media generated bubble... the rest of the world supports Chomsky because its one of a few "americans" that tells the truth...
I wondered if any of you had a secret for how to make anal warts go away. I've been "entertaining guests through the back door", if you know what I mean, and before you know it I started growing what look like fucking mushrooms out of my asshole. Oh, well, I guess it happens when you "putt from the rough."
I'm not an american and I'm a big fan of Chomsky. American patriots sometimes perceive him as anti-american but I really don't perceive him as such. He is a ferocious defender of freedom of speech. Chomsky defends cases where feree speech is denied in all countries around the world including mine. Last time I checked this is a core american value featured in the first amendment. Freedom of speech is really something americans should not take lightly and it's something they can be very proud of.
@Knr911 You are correct. He is anything BUT "anti-American". This charge is nonsense and is usually made by totalitarian-minded people who don't know the first thing about freedom of speech, or anything else for that matter.
No one listens, and the problems Chomsky talks about continue to get worse. I fear for his life, and that of anyone else who cares, such as all the people of OWS, when that terrible "battlefield" bill passed by the Senate becomes law.
@daveharpe Not only that, Dave, but Chomsky has been talking about LONG before most all else. But this is one of his trademarks. When one actually carries out intelligent analyses, without the blinders of indoctrination already firmly in place, one can see patterns which from which one can make reasonable and logic deductions from. Folks in power hate Chomsky-types because not only does he show the Emperor has no clothes, but also that he never had them, and the clothes he had were stolen.
"The organizer of industry who thinks he has 'made' himself and his business has found a whole social system ready to his hand in skilled workers, machinery, a market, peace and order -- a vast apparatus and a pervasive atmosphere, the joint creation of millions of men and scores of generations. Take away the whole social factor, and we have not Robinson Crusoe with his salvage from the wreck and his acquired knowledge, but the native savage living on roots, berries and vermin."(Hobhouse, 1974)
That's right dumb yourself down by insisting any uncomfortable truth is a theory. Refuse history, refuse reason, refuse to look at evidence and repeat after me. "conspiracy theory," Denial is a river in Egypt.
@maxshibui A thing is more valuable when you want/ need it more.
Assuming that you will always want/ need it more right now does not accurately represent human behaviour.
Your model says things work that way because that's how its math is structured. In some cases it is accurate but in some cases the generalisation does not hold. There is no rule or observation of human behaviour which has that implication, and exceptions to it are abundantly obvious.
@maxshibui A thing is more valuable when you want/need it more.
Assuming that you will always want/ need it more right now does not accurately represent human behaviour.
Your model says things work that way because that's how its math is structured. In some cases it is accurate but in some cases the generalisation does not hold. There is no rule or observation of human behaviour which has that implication, and exceptions to it are abundantly obvious.
@maxshibui A thing is more valuable when you want/need it more.
Assuming that you will always want/ need it more right now does not accurately represent human behaviour.
Your model says things work that way because that's how its math is structured. In some cases it is accurate but in some cases the generalisation does not hold. There is no rule or observation of human behaviour which has that implication, and exceptions to it are abundantly obvious.
@maxshibui "Such things are future goods which have no counterpart in the form of present goods."
What about two things which are available at both points in time? Say an apple now or an apple tomorrow. Is the apple always intrinsically more valuable now?
What if you had three apples already today, and frankly feel a bit sick, and would just prefer a few crackers? The apple would be better tomorrow.
@maxshibui "Such things are future goods which have no counterpart in the form of present goods."
What about two things which are available at both points in time? Say an apple now or an apple tomorrow. Is the apple always intrinsically more valuable tomorrow?
What if you had three apples already today, and frankly feel a bit sick, and would just prefer a few crackers? The apple would be better tomorrow.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''Is the apple always intrinsically more valuable tomorrow?'' You have it bass ackwards. In the mind of a person who wants to eat an apple today, said apple is more valuable to him in his mind today than it is tomorrow. It's a psychological thing.
@maxshibui "In the mind of a person who wants to eat an apple today, said apple is more valuable to him in his mind today than it is tomorrow."
And a person who doesn't want it today? Why no mention of them?
Is your dogma so important that you'd rather claim that there has never been a human being in history who didn't constantly want at least one more apple?
Would you just choke it down regardless of appetite and nausea because an apple now is always better?
@ImMichaelTaylor ''And a person who doesn't want it today? Why no mention of them?'' Well, because I am trying to explain to you that 2+2=4. It's not my fault that you insist on pointing out that there is such a thing as 3+2, and since that doesn't equal 4, then it's not valid to make a generalization that 2+2=4 in all cases. Your argument is this: ''Yesterday, John wanted three apples. Today, John only wants one apple. Thus, yesterday John did not want three apples.'' Idiot.
@ImMichaelTaylor It's a perfect analogy. But anyway, this is so simple I'm sure you'd get it if I could state it better. How about this: ''Satisfaction of a want in the nearer future is, other things being equal, preferred to that in the farther distant future.'' I should have emphasized the ''other things being equal'' part. BTW, ''too+to=4'' - that's pretty hilarious.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''The claim that something someone doesn't want today is always more valuable than something they do want tomorrow is not supportable by reason.'' Of course it's not. My generalization requires the basic assumptions that the person wants the thing and believes his ability to enjoy the thing will be the same later as it is now, i.e. all other things are equal, except the ''sooner or later'' aspect. In your example, it's John's bad stomach that changes things.
@maxshibui "Your argument is this: [Stawman 481-b ] "
No, it isn't. In those terms, my argument is;
Today, John ate apples until he puked. Thus, today John doesn't want any more apples. At some point in the future John will want another apple, and when he does that one will be more valuable to him than the one he doesn't want today.
For what seems like the 100th time, answer what I actually said or don't bother.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''John doesn't want''. What I say only makes sense if John actually does ''want.'' In my argument, the want is the same, the time preference - sooner or later - is different, and everything else is the same. The ONLY variable here is the time preference - sooner or later. Yes, making other things equal vastly restricts things, but it's still valid to do so. That's the only way to do science, I'm sure you know.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''At some point in the future...'' Of course John, at present, considers that future apple more valuable to him than a present apple, but only because he expects his ability to enjoy that future apple, thanks to a better appetite, will be greater. Even if John's appetite was fine now, a factor that is only possible in the remoter future, e.g. a chance to share the apple with his lover who visits tomorrow, could affect his valuation of the apple.
@ImMichaelTaylor If the thought of enjoying X sooner appeals more to John than the thought of enjoying X later, present X is more valuable to John than future X. Tautological, yes. But it explains why, when everything else is equal, ''something extra'' is needed to get John to postpone his enjoyment of X. How much of that ''something extra'' depends on how much ''later''. If it can be traded for money, a simple way to appease John is to offer him more money, or ''interest''.
@maxshibui You should have said that in the first place then, instead of pretending it was a universal rule and ignoring the abundantly obvious cases where it doesn't apply.
If you had initially said what you're now (after exposure to reason) saying, it wouldn't have been a problem.
But you don't temper your dogma with observations of the actual world, and you do reject without consideration anything which doesn't fit with the gross oversimplification you insist on clinging to.
@ImMichaelTaylor But this concept does not require money or interest to illustrate. It's a universal fact of human life. Nobody can deny it. If you wanted to enjoy something now, other things being equal, you'd have to be given an incentive to get you to wait and enjoy it later. Being made to wait, in itself, is neither a valuable nor a pleasurable experience. Otherwise we'd all wait indefinitely and never consume anything. Thus, ''something extra'', extra value, is needed.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''...it doesn't prove the opposite (but equally extremist) position.'' Straw man yourself. I'm not even trying to prove the opposite position, which in this case would be ''we always consume everything immediately''. If you wanted to enjoy something now, other things being equal, you'd have to be given an incentive to get you to wait and enjoy it later. What is so extremist about that?
@ImMichaelTaylor Suppose John really wants to kiss a girl right now, and the girl is willing. Other things being equal, would John give up his present chance and wait a week to do the same thing he wants to do now? No. But he might if the girl offered to sleep with him next week in exchange for not kissing her now. You don't have to be a ''greedy capitalist'' to need this ''something extra''. Even w/o money, ''interest'', the ''something extra'' would still exist in some form.
@maxshibui Actually, I think that to even think of relationships in such manner is a problem, and one which folks I know have discussed since university a LONG time ago. That to start perceiving things in terms of costs, benefits, etc...is sort of depraved. No moral person thinks in this manner. I mean, I can't say that we don't ever, say, in the example you've just given. Applying a cost/benefit analysis to everything is simply not looked upon highly by those not aspiring to a business model.
@kropotkinbeard1 I think you completely misunderstood why I used this example. I just wanted to show that the origin of interest has nothing to do with money, business, or any particular field of human activity, but with time preference alone. Thus I tried to do this by intentionally citing a case where, I agree, no moral person would consciously engage in what is called a ''cost/benefit analysis''. I think it would be a no-brainer in this case. But maybe it was a bad example...
@kropotkinbeard1 How about this one: A guy is offered a fishing rod/reel by a stranger in exchange for 5 trout that were given him by a friend. He decides the rod/reel is more valuable to him than the 5 trout, but only b/c he thinks he'll be able to catch more than 5 trout in the future with this rod/reel. It's the prospect of more trout later on that motivates him to give up the 5 that he could easily enjoy now. What would be immoral about his thinking process?
@maxshibui Nothing would in this particular scenario. Just a simple trade. I can see how arguments could be made as to how one person may be a little more business savvy, and another not, and therefore the less savvy person makes a trade he would have been better off not making, and how there may be moral issues here. Or perhaps we was simply starving and the pole was his only remaining possession which he had to trade for the fish to keep from starving, but simply prolonged his problems
@maxshibui So, what could be immoral is that the person with the fish, knows that the guy with the pole is desperate and on the edge of starvation, and where he could have offered to give him much more fish to perhaps lengthen the guys life long enough to get a job, or whatever, he trades the least amount possible. I can think of many other probably, but this will do for now.
@kropotkinbeard1 I don't get why you associate cost/benefit with business. People make cost/benefit analysis all the time, even though they don't call it that. No matter what form the cost or benefit takes, it is always considered. If somebody goes out of his way to open the door for a grandmother, he does so because the feeling he expects to get by doing so outweighs the inconvenience incurred. But he's done this enough to know unconsciously that the benefit outweighs the cost.
@maxshibui I still believe you're putting too much into the trade-offs (cost/benefit), and do not believe we are always doing that. I simply don't think it's good or healthy to perceive things this way. That being said, I asked a friend to come and pick me up tonight, and if they did I'd pay for the movie for both of us. This is a straight forward deal. No one doubts this. Upon arrival, we went to get some popcorn. I pulled out the money and paid. There was no cbanalysis here at all. Motivation.
@maxshibui How about thinking about it this way (thinking about it at all would be an improvement on rote repetition) ;
Today's supply of apples is very high and demand is very low. Tomorrow there is only one apple in the world and everyone wants it. Is each of today's glut of very cheap apples more valuable than tomorrow's apple that people are knocking down their grandmother to get to?
At best it is a rule of thumb, stop acting like it's a religion.
@ImMichaelTaylor Interesting scenario. ''Is each of today's glut of very cheap apples more valuable than tomorrow's apple that people are knocking down their grandmother to get to?'' They are less valuable in hindsight, of course. But nobody acts based on hindsight, only foresight.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''Is each of today's glut of very cheap apples more valuable than tomorrow's apple that people are knocking down their grandmother to get to?'' They are indeed not valued higher (not for consumption, but definitely for investment) today if the valuer expects he will need to trample his grandmother (unless he's looking for an excuse to do so) in order to secure possession of one tomorrow. But this scenario wouldn't fulfill the ''other things being equal'' part.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''What if you had three apples already today, and frankly feel a bit sick, and..prefer..crackers? The apple would be better tomorrow.'' True, but that is totally irrelevant with regard to a valuation made in the past under different conditions. The only thing that's relevant is how you felt when you decided to buy (or barter for) the apples, instead of saving the money (or other exchangeable), in the first place. The present doesn't affect the past, does it?
@maxshibui "valuation made in the past " But that isn't the past yet. The whole thing was specifically described from the point of view of someone experiencing the present from that point in time.
"The only thing that's relevant is how you felt when you decided to buy (or barter for) the apples"
"I" felt like I didn't want it right then, so I'd get it tomorrow instead. That was perfectly clear from what I said. So if you wanted to reply you should have replied to that; what I actually said.
@maxshibui And even if your convenient fiction had been what I said for a change, would that offer any support at all to your previous claim that the concept of economic interest is a law of nature?
No.
It doesn't matter how dumb you play it (even to the point where you feign the inability to comprehend written english) when presented with an exception to your dogma. There are exceptions, therefore it's not a law.
As far as human behaviour is concerned its a rule of thumb at best.
@maxshibui "The present doesn't affect the past, does it?"
No, it does't. How is that relevant to whether the present effects the future? A choice made today between having something now or later doesn't involve the past, The past has already happened before that. The time when it is happening is the present, and times after that are the future.
Which you already know, so you must have lied on purpose. If you can't admit it when you know you're wrong, best to keep quiet entirely.
@kropotkinbeard1 You invest in a semiconductor fab and fit it with state-of-the-art equipment.You are aware that your investment would lose much of its value if someone were to develop much more efficient production technology and a competitor adopted it and undercut your prices by a wide margin. Do you give the workers the profits, or do you try to recoup your investment to lessen the chance you'll suffer a loss of capital?
@maxshibui More of the same. Now, what does this have to do with paying yourself $400 per hour, or more, and those doing the day to day work $4? Just answer this very simple question. Oh, and try and make it sound at least a little moral. You know, like, how they're lucky you've given them this opportunity to allow you to use them. Things like that. You really don't know much about the foundations of the system, do you? You can go watch 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' for starters.
@maxshibui And no more excuses. Watch the several videos, or read the book. I'm not interested in debating Business 101 concepts. Old and boring. I'm interested in how the economy really works. You will find this fellow infinitely more economically sophisticated than yourself. And if you were EVER taught this is university I would be greatly surprised. I mean, in the business department. This is the kind of data that business students are not to be told.
@kropotkinbeard1 ''I provide the space, management, and a few other things, and then we all split the money, after rent, etc...'' Suppose you have $10mil. and decide to get into the hotel industry. You buy a hotel, supplies, etc. and hire staff. Are you going to just divvy up what's left over after non-labor operating costs (incl. depreciation) and pay it out as wages? Or, recognizing that competition could reduce the value of your hotel operation, you try to retain profits?
@maxshibui Of course not. Never even hinted of doing such either. That being said, if I need all of the people I've hired i.e.their role is somehow vital in the company, then just like a part in the engine, in order to make it work, they are necessary, and should be paid almost as everyone else. What I wouldn't do is pay some folks $4 and hour, and pay myself $400 an hour. Just common courtesy. I'd be embarrassed to pay these differences. But what makes is doubly worse is when a business owner
@maxshibui ...knows that the person applying for the job is desperate, and then using this coercion against them. Why I have the money in the first place is irrelevant. Perhaps I worked for it. Perhaps I inherited it two days earlier and did nothing. It doesn't matter. But I understand everything you're saying. Business courses spend years trying to indoctrinate students to pigeonhole everything into the free-market model. Personally, if you really want to know, I think money should b eliminated
@kropotkinbeard1 ''I provide the space, management, and a few other things,...'' Then it doesn't exactly sound like you have invested much in very specific or non-convertible capital goods which can lose significant value and even become obsolete fast in a changing market. Hence you're not in a hurry to accumulate profits to replace the capital you've invested. You do realize you're judging an entire economic system from conditions in your own particular line of business?
@maxshibui Again, it does NOT take a business major to figure the numbers. It also does NOT take a business major to calculate that when someone pays themselves 450X that of someone else, anyone else, working in the company, and then finds things as excuses not to pay out more, except for than to themselves, that they're being screwed. We know ALL of the games. Sorry. I worked in a hospital for 10 years. I remember one year the management informing us that we were not going to get the usual...
@kropotkinbeard1 Drop manager pay. It's a corporate governance issue, and corporations are not essential to capitalism. You don't fool anyone. And quit confusing management with entrepreneurship. Just answer my simple question: why shouldn't someone be concerned about recouping his investment into a business? Why should I invest a million of my own money into a business then pay my employees (including managers) so much that there is neither return of nor return on principal?
@maxshibui Drop manager pay if not himself completely. Depends on if the workers decide they need him. Of course corporations are not essential to capitalism. They simply are what such depraved system can lead to if unregulated. "Don't fool anyone" regarding what? I'm not trying to fool anyone. You are. You're the one making apologetics for institutionalized criminality. I've answered your question many times now regarding recouping his investment. I said of course he should. So?
@maxshibui Perhaps if you actually read my responses instead of just guessing that you know what they say, you know, like how you guess you know Chomsky's positions on everything when you don't, you wouldn't need to ask the same question ten times. Person X's recouping of his investment is irrelevant to anything I've been talking about. Quit trying to change the focus. I've already allowed you to escape dealing with Chomsky, and playing your game is predictable, tedious and boring. So, back to.
@maxshibui ..back to the topic of this thread....Which of Chomsky's books did you say you had read? Why is it that you find yourself having such grave difficulty even entertaining the notion of watching something as trivial as a 5 minute video? Ever consider that you fear what you may learn? And, yes, it WILL be you who is learning. I mean, that is, if you actually understand the words being said. This was precisely for the reason for my step 2. 1)Watch/read material 2)Show understanding 3)argue
@kropotkinbeard1 Okay, I'll listen to some Chomsky, since it's obvious that your entire argument against capitalism/free markets is this: top executives make 400X more than average employees, therefore the average worker in capitalism is exploited, thus we must end capitalism. As I recall you also, along with Michael, said to get rid of money. I think you both mean we should get rid of vast wealth inequality & I think abolishing fiat money specifically would help that cause.
@maxshibui " I think abolishing fiat money specifically would help that cause."
My question would be whether you think that cause is a just one, and if you do, what is the attraction of systems where that is a foregone conclusion?
If you agree capitalism makes richer people more influential and influential people richer, it cannot be claimed that system is fair or accurate. It is a feedback loop based largely on it's own structure, not the realities that form it's inputs.
@maxshibui "get rid of money" My personal approach would be to keep money in the sense of having some kind of counters to represent rewards of those actions which fit in with what the system has been evolved or designed to achieve.
Of course then it becomes a moving target of continually analysing what the system should be trying to achieve (from a human rights perspective), and adjusting the basis of reward to avoid encouraging evil.
The main thing to avoid is a system set up such that the status/value counters themselves confer the ability to alter the mechanisms by which those counters can be gained. If only one thing is under state control it MUST be that.
It's like an immune system, and the lack of one is probably the main reason free markets always become corrupt and twisted by contact with actual human beings.
@maxshibui No, this is not my "entire argument". Actually, this is just one of the many arguments I have accepting the system as it is. This is still far from what I believe would be better arrangements. You have a tendency to jump too conclusions much too easily and before knowing anything about other positions. You 'think' you know them, but you don't. My hunch is that you think the USSR was socialist, too. If so, then you are WAY off. We can get into that later. My position is that we must..
@maxshibui ...must start where things are now. I don't think it's either reasonable, logical or desirable to just do away with capitalism overnight. Must start with where things are now, and start removing the negative aspects while keeping the positive. I don't really care what "ism" this leads to. It's how most change usually takes place. Rarely are there revolutions between one day and the next, and even when actual revolutions happen there has usually been things happening for years.
@maxshibui You'll notice in the last (I think it was) video I sent where even Chomsky himself says he'd accept (maybe) free markets as long as they led to what Adam Smith and others thought they should. Chomsky's 'real' conservatism shows itself yet again. So, now that you've succumb to my pressure to watch a few videos before arguing, do I need to list them again? They've been spread out over quite a while. And remember, I'm not even offering these because they express my exact position, or
@maxshibui ...or even my position at all. These are simply views which I have a feeling that you have not been exposed to. Also, whether or not you agree with many things, or even anything, folks like Chomsky puts out, is not even the point. The point is that you will at least know a little more about some other folks positions, positions which have been argued quite thoroughly, and which offer at a minimum a good challenge, so that your arguments will be refined, even if in opposition.
@maxshibui ...usual bonus due to the fact that we had "lost" 4 million dollars. Then, a couple of weeks later we found out that, no, of course, the hospital had NOT lost 4 million dollars, but rather made a 6 million dollar profit. However, as their goal was 10 million, an arbitrary goal not in any way, shape, or form vital to anything, they said we "lost" million. Do you really think workers aren't aware of ALL such scams, as well as the never-ending excuses used to justify such theft?
@kropotkinbeard1 One year out of ten. What about the other 9? I don't know all the facts of this case, and you very well may be totally justified in being mad. But have you considered the possibility that more than 6 million in anticipated profit had already been committed contractually to investing in new equipment or improving the hospital facilities in other ways? Anyone familiar with accounting would know you can book a profit yet have no cash flow to show for it.
@maxshibui What do you mean "what about the other 9"? You really can't perceive anything anything outside the elementary textbook business plan, can you? What other 9? This was just a goal which isn't even necessary for anything. They could just has easily said their goal was 50 million dollars and that we fell short by 54 million. It's irrelevant. This is simply a way of avoiding paying workers more. It's easy to come up with things out of thin air all day long so as not to be fair. You think..
@kropotkinbeard1 I meant the other 9 years. You said you worked 10 years at a hospital and one year you didn't get the usual bonus. I was thinking 9 out of 10 years getting a bonus doesn't sound like something to get that mad about.
@maxshibui Perhaps I wasn't clear. I did work at the hospital for ten years, and this episode happened sometime in the middle years. Actually, I think the only bonus we ever received was a ham or something. It was most definitely not more than about 1/4 of a monthly salary. Here in Japan most folks working at companies, etc...receive what often amounts to three months salary as a bonus. There is also rule which has it that it is impolite for the top person to be paid 10X more than bottom. But..
@maxshibui ...such an idea was also put forth in the U.S. long ago by some of the earlier leaders who easily recognized that too much inequality was not good for the country. Benjamin Franklin was one if I remember correctly. Personally, I think 10X is much too much of a difference, but I guess it's better than 450X
@maxshibui ...the workers don't see through this transparent crap, especially when the looters at the top of the pyramid, and it IS a pyramid, are increasing their own salaries? Actually, it's insulting to even be discussing such depravity. The ONLY reason I do at all is to see what excuses can possibly be pulled from one's butt next. Why are you making excuses for looters? Why are you so against the people doing the actual work? SOrt of want to be one of those suits, eh? Get ONE girl finally?
@kropotkinbeard1 If they said they ''lost'' 4 million, yeah that's misleading. Maybe they meant they had lost 4 million in profits. Profits can be lost too, you know. You can have accumulated profits then make some mistakes and lose them. The nature of the business will of course determine how much this is a factor.
@maxshibui No, it's not complicated. 10 million was ONLY a goal. And, yes, they very well probably did have something they wished to do with the funds if achieving that goal. This is irrelevant. What IS relevant is that perhaps the folks helping to earn that extra 6 million which WAS made, decide themselves what should be done with the money THEY earned. Perhaps they'd agree to keep salaries the same, or even lower them, or just split the money between themselves. They can freely decide.
@maxshibui I'm not in a hurry to accumulate profits to replace the capital at the expense of screwing the folks doing the work WITH me. And, no, I am NOT judging an entire economic system from conditions in my own business. I've been in many businesses and know all the scams. The workers are usually well aware, too. They are well aware of costs, etc...This is not the point. Consciously screwing fellow citizens IS the point. Do you REALLY think I don't know how to maximize profits, etc. Nonsense.
@kropotkinbeard1 Ah, the simplified Marxist view of business: maximizing profits is as easy as screwing your employees. Too bad employees (excepting retards and masochists) in a free market can quit and work for a competitor that pays them market wages. Labor is a scarce and valuable service; no businessman exploits his workers with sub-market pay and seriously expects to retain their services for long (unless no other jobs are available).
@ImMichaelTaylor Yeah, it's too bad we have minimum wage laws and collective ''bargaining'' which create institutional unemployment. Too bad GM and countless airlines go bankrupt over and over because of unrealistic union demands. Rather be unemployed than ''exploited'' I guess.
@maxshibui "Rather be unemployed than ''exploited'"
I'd rather the vast majority of money and influence in the system wasn't used to enforce that false dichotomy, and systems be examined based on their resilience to creating that situation.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''...product of how desperate the peasantry is...'' Are you so blinded by Marxist dogma you don't see that the major consumers of products turned out by the middle class are the middle class!!? and if they weren't paid enough to afford such products, the ''greedy capitalists'' would have no customers except the elite class, which has no interest in buying lifetime supplies of razors, sneakers, Ford tauruses, t.v.s, blue jeans, etc. ''Desperate'' suggests they ..
@maxshibui "t the major consumers of products turned out by the middle class are the middle class!!?"
It doesn't matter how many exclamation points you use, it doesn't make your feigned incredulity any more relevant to what I said.
Every invitation to consider an alternative model seems predestined to be greeted by you saying "I don't accept that because it wouldn't be compatible with my model."
Well no shit Sherlock. My point is understanding the models by human behaviour, not the reverse.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''Desperate'' means that this ''peasantry'' has no choice but to work for subsistence wages. If that's true, who buys all those consumer staples? all those flat-screen t.v.s, digital cameras, iPads, iPhones? You mean to say the millions of these things which are produced every year are bought by the Forbes 400? (Funny, if people didn't buy so much of this stuff they'd have more savings and thus be in a better bargaining position with potential employers.)
@ImMichaelTaylor ''I'm glad unemployment is so low in the free market utopia...'' Maybe unemployment would be low if we actually had a free market! Do you think I would spend so much time arguing for a free market if I believed that what we have now is a free market? It would be pointless. I argue for the free market theory precisely because it has been taken out of practice over the past century or so, as economic literacy has been replaced by superstitions and myths.
Could you give some concrete examples of how freer markets make life better? Like identify something you see as a problem with the current system caused by too little freedom?
How do you think it should be balanced against the tendency for the "free" in "free market" to come to mean "free to lie, pollute, manipulate and collude"? Or is that another thing you're going to say is caused by not being capitalist enough?
@maxshibui Please don't talk about Marxist anything if you know nothing about Marx. You'll end up sounding as douchebaggier than you do when trying to speak about Chomsky. But funny that you mentioned Marx. Unlike you, I was actually listening to a lecture yesterday in which a British Investment banker was being interviewed by a journalist. He said that the longer he stayed on Wall Street, the more he saw the relevance of Marx, and admitted that his insights to capitalism were mostly correct.
@maxshibui And maximizing profits so as to keep the money away from the workers existed LONG before Marx entered the picture. Sorry. Can't blame Marx for everything. As a matter of fact, I just read an essay yesterday, too, about Marx when he was writing articles about the American Civil War. Very interesting. Of course he was against the racist south, and took all the moral positions, making the anti-slave contingent look too conservative. Anyway, yes, we know the coercion from management ...
@maxshibui ...which allows the worker to freely quit and potentially starve to death. This makes the depravity even more pronounced. Basically, it's little more than it would be were I to find the one banana tree on an island, the only source of food, and when the folks coming a few minutes later arrived I said that they were free to work for me and earn some of "my" bananas, or starve to death. Sorry, but I'd be in favor of setting the criminal afloat for even entertaining such depravity.
@maxshibui ANd your last blurb is what every textbook says. How do we get this through to you. WE DON'T accept many of the very premises your model is built upon. You keep trying to force everything into your model, as if this is going to help something. It doesn't. Look at the 3rd world. Chile was Friedman's experimental ground for demonstrating how well capitalism would work. Killed thousands of people after installing a dictator. Most of the 3rd world is this way because of capitalist looting
@kropotkinbeard1 ''I'm not in a hurry to accumulate profits ... at the expense of screwing the folks doing the work WITH me.'' If you paid them competitive wages, how would that be ''screwing'' them? Oh I forgot the system screws them anyway by making them ''wage slaves''. Sure. You're still ignoring the fact that there is not an unlimited supply of capital goods one can acquire for free to run a business. And I don't give a damn who started it. The issue is who paid for it.
@maxshibui I'm not going to discuss your freshman business model any more. Learned it a long time ago, and found it to be every bit as pathetic as it seemed before learning about it. Studying it only demonstrated how much effort has to be put into maintain such scam. "Competitive wages"? This is another one of those fine terms which translated mean paying as little as possible while stealing as much as possible. Nothing more. The workers can determine their wages AFTER they've seen the profits.
@kropotkinbeard1 ''We all do the same work, with the exception of a few managerial things I do..'' That explains why you pay yourselves about the same.
@maxshibui Uhhh...Yes? Most places the owners do much less work. Why on earth would or should they pay themselves 450X that of someone doing much harder work. This isn't an issue even worth discussing. You're arguments fool no one and appeal to the most predictable elements. Again, it's quite simple. That I started the company is virtually meaningless. It's most definitely not worth screwing other people for their labor. You just really think there needs to be a superman, huh? Sad and pathetic.
@kropotkinbeard1 ''Why ... should they pay themselves 450X that of someone doing much harder work. This isn't an issue even worth discussing.'' Okay, ExxonMobil has 83,600 employees. Its top 5 execs were paid $30 mil total in 2010. If the $30mil was distributed to the 83K employees evenly, they'd each get an extra $361.44 a year. Wow. Give it all to just the bottom 10K and they'd each get a $3,000 annual bonus. Not bad. But you're right. This issue isn't even worth discussing.
@ImMichaelTaylor You have to admit that there is more motivation to work harder if you believe you'll be personally rewarded well for it. Just because productivity figures are exposed doesn't mean people who know they can do much better than the average of say 10 widgets/hr won't slack off and become content with being average. This kind of reasoning explains why capitalist production is way more efficient than collectivist production.
@maxshibui Actually, no, this is the fairy tale which has been put forth to try and get easily vulnerable people to unwittingly internalize nonsense. There is no evidence anywhere that I'm aware of that shows that people don't as hard because of living in a more socially conscious society. In fact, they probably work as hard or harder. But if you're going to be a good propagandist for the economic system you're cheering for, having internalized such notions helps to make you sound more sincere.
@ImMichaelTaylor But can you objectively know what a worker's full potential is if you don't encourage him to demonstrate it by offering the prospect of higher compensation or other rewards that he doesn't have to share? And don't say by using a whip either. Positive reinforcement has been proven to produce better results than negative.
@maxshibui Why do you keep framing things in terms of how much someone should rent themselves to another for? Why should anyone be working for anyone, really? Do you believe it's just sort of a law of nature that there have evolved bosses and folks who have accumulated capital, persuaded people to adopt their concoction so that they can thereby profit off the labor of others? It's not natural in any way, shape, or form. The system is a man-made system, and as such it can be changed, as it should
@kropotkinbeard1 ''Why should anyone be working for anyone, really?'' With division of labor, everyone is by definition working for oneself and everyone else, duh. Why have bosses? b/c some are better leaders than others. Capitalists? b/c some like to save their wages and invest them in (risky) new ideas instead of doing the same routine as a worker forever - but society must offer these creative ppl the potential for handsome rewards to take such risks with their savings.
@maxshibui Just more of the same babble from freshman texts. Nothing new or interesting and has nothing to do with Chomsky. You're doing nothing more than trying to force everything into your system and its rules, just as a Scientologist tries to force everything they see in the world into the rules as outlined by their cult leader. Nothing more. And when you make sweeping statements such as the last one, how do you think people survived throughout most of history before this particular system?
@kropotkinbeard1 ''how do you think people survived throughout most of history before this particular system?'' They usually didn't for very long. The enormous growth in population we've had since capitalism spread suggests that it's a lot easier to survive with capitalism than without it. But maybe my interpretation of the data is inaccurate b/c it's clouded by all those biases you mentioned.
@maxshibui "enormous growth in population we've had since capitalism spread suggests "
Would you rank it above; agriculture, selective breeding, metallurgy, the germ theory of disease, soap, contraception, chemistry, water chlorination, vaccines and understanding nutrition?
I wouldn't.
Have a look at some of the less capitalist countries who have those things and tell me if survival is an issue there.
@maxshibui "enormous growth in population we've had since capitalism spread"
I can barely articulate how fantastical I find that. You can't eat money. You can't drink it. It doesn't stop you getting sick. Only the things you buy with it do that, and those things are still just as possible to create under alternative systems (except maybe theocracy).
In short, science is the true source of the advances you rudely try to claim for capitalism.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''You can't eat money'' I find it fantastical that you believe capitalism is just about creating more money. Science is the source, yes. And the incentives capitalism gives to improve technology created an environment for science and creativity in general to flourish. (Yes, the soviets too were good at science, but I get the impression it was mostly aerospace/defense-related.) Maybe the fact that these advancements occurred in a capitalistic era is irrelevant.
@maxshibui " these advancements occurred in a capitalistic era is irrelevant."
I'd be doubtful of even that extent of correlation, but can let it pass as a matter of academic historical interest, on the basis that causation is completely out of the question.
Capitalism can't do it without science. Science can do it without capitalism.
Could have been any system, and much of it was. No need to ask me if I think a system designed along empirical lines would help or hinder scientific progress.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''a system designed along empirical lines'' How does one use empiricism to understand complex social interactions and accurately understand cause and effect when there are practically an infinite number of factors you must control for? Empiricism is for the natural sciences and works great in labs where things can be controlled. You're obviously very knowledgeable of science. Maybe a bias is coming through here?
@maxshibui " How does [...] infinite number of factors"
At the very least by beginning to try to do that.
And more generally the same way science does anything, by making a series of slight improvements until the system under study is refined to the point of transcending its beginnings and if you're lucky reveal a revolutionary new way of doing things.
@ImMichaelTaylor What I should have said is that science can tell us how to achieve certain ends - it can lead us to knowledge of the appropriate means - but it can never tell us what ultimate ends we should aim for in the first place. No science makes value judgments. Science tells how to efficiently produce and distribute something, but not what that something should be.
@maxshibui " What I should have said is that science can tell us how to achieve certain ends - it can lead us to knowledge of the appropriate means - but it can never tell us what ultimate ends we should aim for in the first place. "
I agree. I don't think that a mathematical model can define the ends either though.
In fact I think the ultimate end is already established, and don't want the empirical (or not so empirical) means trying to sway that.
@ImMichaelTaylor The interconnectedness of the market prices for consumer and producer goods (or capital) gives us an objective way to determine, by finding the inevitable discrepancies which arise between these prices due to changing human needs, which pressing consumer needs could potentially be better met. These discrepancies show which goods/services have supply/demand ratios that are out of whack, and to what extent.
@ImMichaelTaylor The fact that the auction process of the market reduces the millions of decisions - and the multitude of considerations factored into them - made by all varieties of people with varying needs, desires, beliefs, etc., into simple consensus numbers - ''prices'' - makes it possible to observe at a glance what the majority of people want most now based on their own actions and not on the prejudices of others.This is the theory, though it's not practiced much today.
@maxshibui "This is the theory, though it's not practiced much today."
When it was, what were the results?
Should a free market be regulated at all?
What about groups or individuals who try to manipulate and restrict the action of markets? Should they be regulated against? If they are, don't you eventually end up with a market which requires even more regulations? If you regulate problems it's better than trying to regulate whatever different solutions people come up with constantly.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''Should a free market be regulated at all?'' Yes. To keep it as free as practical, and beneficial according to the theory. This only takes some basic regulations. If problems develop, whose source can actually be traced to a lack of regulation, then a regulation can be designed to combat that problem specifically. You might claim that's exactly what has happened. I would say Marxist illusions kicked off unnecessary regulations, creating new problems...
@ImMichaelTaylor Another example: Keynes blamed the Great Depression on illiquidity. Austrian economists point to the refusal of unions to reduce their wage demands and bring them in line with other prices. It wasn't illiquidity, but ridiculous demands for the same piece of pie as before, even though less than half that pie is left.
@ImMichaelTaylor The politicians found it easier to just debase the dollar's value against gold and raise the prices of commodities, etc. to lower the real wages without needing unions to accept lower nominal wages. Thus ''stimulus'' spending stuck, even though it was necessitated by a ''group who tried to restrict the action of markets.'' Now every time excess liquidity leads to a boom&bust, more regulation is called for to protect us against ''the free market''.
@maxshibui Do you even think it's an issue that lots of people will quickly realise their own profits could be increased in some cases if the market was just slightly less free in some arbitrary aspect?
@ImMichaelTaylor Only minorities can increase profits by interfering with the free market. The majority, if they understand economics and thus understand the reason for the suddenly higher prices, then they will blame the right people and ask for the right solution from their government. If economic illiteracy prevails, as it does today, the wrong things are blamed, false solutions are supported, and more problems arise.
@ImMichaelTaylor cont. But just b/c free market theory has not been perfectly implemented anywhere - perfection is impossible anyway - doesn't mean the theory makes no sense or is useless for the real world and should be disregarded in favor of a radically different system. And what is especially vicious is the citing of recent economic history to disparage a theory which government economic policy has not practiced for more than a century. All this does is divert ...
@maxshibui "free market [] not been perfectly implemented [] doesn't mean the theory [] should be disregarded in favor of a radically different system"
No, but the reasons its implementation turned out to be impossible among actual humans in the real world should be taken as clues to how it needs to be modified in order to make it possible to implement. Then that leads you to wonder if those modifications are what's important, not the model which is being awkwardly forced to conform to them.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''If you want to disparage free markets you go back to colonial times.'' You can't be serious. Colonialism started in the 15th century. One of the first advocates of free markets was Adam Smith, whose economic theories developed in the 18th century demonstrated how the mercantilists benefited at the expense of the majority. Classical liberals, the first to develop and advocate free market ideas, explicitly rejected colonialism.
@maxshibui "You can't be serious. Colonialism started in the 15th century"
And it ended around Smith's time didn't it? So didn't he live in colonial times? I don't get it. Does only the first part of an era count? How about you stop misunderstanding things on purpose, because there are plenty of things you'll misunderstand anyway without intentionally trying to.
@ImMichaelTaylor Adam Smith said the government should stop colonialism. It is neither the fault of free-market theories nor of their proponents, that governments were slow to act. How about you stop the perverse idiocy of citing a practice to blame an economic theory that explicitly calls for the abolition of said practice, but is unfortunately not immediately answered. You sound like Chomsky when he blames free-markets, rather than the lack thereof, for government bailouts.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''to disparage free markets go back to colonial times.'' Apparently your idea of free markets comes from Marx. ''Marxism views colonialism as a form of capitalism.'' (Wikipedia: colonialism) Just because capital is used doesn't make it capitalism, and definitely not a free market. In case you forgot, colonies were sponsored by governments, who gave monopolies and backed them with military might. To me and many others, that's the opposite of free markets.
@ImMichaelTaylor ''what period of history...?'' If you want a history lesson, consult wikipedia. I am currently studying economic theory, not economic history. The theory is that the restrictive, anti-innovation, anti-technology, anti-competition mindset of feudalism, mercantilism, guilds, etc. gave way to liberalism in the late 18th century, which encouraged innovation and capital accumulation, leading to dramatic growth in real incomes and population. Makes sense to me.
@maxshibui "If you want a history lesson, consult wikipedia."
I simply wondered what basis you had to object to the idea that colonial times lasted until the country ceased to be a colony. How foolish; of course you should be able to invent your own special meanings for things where "during this period" doesn't always cover things that happen after the beginning and before the end of said period (if those fact threaten your narrative).
@ImMichaelTaylor All this does is divert attention from the real issue of examining the soundness of theories of social cooperation, regardless of their names. But if your opponent believes in the doctrine of polylogism, that class affiliation (or race or history) determines human logic and therefore all thinking is merely an ideological disguise designed to justify one's selfish class interests, then it is futile to discuss the opposing theories used to interpret complex data.
Straw man 51, hints of binary thinking with a solid round bouquet of extremism and blueberries.
"polylogism"
Is bullshit. (Details available on request)
"futile to discuss the opposing theories"
From the point of view of modifying the viewpoint of extremist adherents, sometimes. From the point of view of working out which parts of each work best and how compatible those parts might be in a new system, no.
@maxshibui Oh, and also, you didn't answer my question. Why should anyone have to work for anyone else? And don't give me any "division of labor" crap. Keep it simple; Why should anyone have to work for anyone else? And have you watched any of the Chomsky on economics videos yet? Still struggling with just the thought of it, huh. Quite odd considering you know nothing about him. Usually people make such decisions AFTER they've learned the subject. But I'm not into astrology, so we're different.
gotta go to Amsterdam to forget all about Chomsky
jackblap 15 hours ago
Chomsky won that debate fyi
peoman2 6 days ago
/ragequit
CosmosFan1 1 week ago
you forgot the part where chomsky bitchslapped him with knowledge in his comeback
Wahoofuck 1 week ago
you need three life times to debunk chomsky.10 sec my ass
AWATEABRAHA 1 week ago
Im Argentinian. We have 6 military dictatorships in the last century, that kills many thousand persons. Supported, financiated and trained by the USA in the school of the americans to torture, rape and kill political oposition. The same thing happened all over latin america... dont tell me than what Chomsky saids is a conspiracy theory only because you are ignorants to it.
manuelberte 1 week ago 5
@manuelberte Much the same is the case in Chile, Honduras, and El Salvador, and now you see two military governments in Colombia and Mexico engaging in wars on drugs that have horrible consequences for the civilian populations.
nocturnezero 1 week ago
Its not a conspiracy theory... its the truth than 99% of the world lives in. You are a country than never lived an invasion to your own territory. You live in a media generated bubble... the rest of the world supports Chomsky because its one of a few "americans" that tells the truth...
manuelberte 1 week ago
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I wondered if any of you had a secret for how to make anal warts go away. I've been "entertaining guests through the back door", if you know what I mean, and before you know it I started growing what look like fucking mushrooms out of my asshole. Oh, well, I guess it happens when you "putt from the rough."
Any sugguestions?
Signed, in gay fellowship, @TemplarLeonem
TempIarLeonem 2 weeks ago
I'm not an american and I'm a big fan of Chomsky. American patriots sometimes perceive him as anti-american but I really don't perceive him as such. He is a ferocious defender of freedom of speech. Chomsky defends cases where feree speech is denied in all countries around the world including mine. Last time I checked this is a core american value featured in the first amendment. Freedom of speech is really something americans should not take lightly and it's something they can be very proud of.
Knr911 2 months ago
@Knr911 You are correct. He is anything BUT "anti-American". This charge is nonsense and is usually made by totalitarian-minded people who don't know the first thing about freedom of speech, or anything else for that matter.
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
No one listens, and the problems Chomsky talks about continue to get worse. I fear for his life, and that of anyone else who cares, such as all the people of OWS, when that terrible "battlefield" bill passed by the Senate becomes law.
daveharpe 2 months ago
@daveharpe Not only that, Dave, but Chomsky has been talking about LONG before most all else. But this is one of his trademarks. When one actually carries out intelligent analyses, without the blinders of indoctrination already firmly in place, one can see patterns which from which one can make reasonable and logic deductions from. Folks in power hate Chomsky-types because not only does he show the Emperor has no clothes, but also that he never had them, and the clothes he had were stolen.
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
Chomsky is full of win, but Sam Harris's critique of Chomsky's notions of Islam, are quite interesting and valid.
IndigoVagrant 2 months ago
The guy runs away. What a pussy hahahahaha. Didn't he also call Chomsky "the bully"? I seem to remember that.
tstruss912 2 months ago
"The organizer of industry who thinks he has 'made' himself and his business has found a whole social system ready to his hand in skilled workers, machinery, a market, peace and order -- a vast apparatus and a pervasive atmosphere, the joint creation of millions of men and scores of generations. Take away the whole social factor, and we have not Robinson Crusoe with his salvage from the wreck and his acquired knowledge, but the native savage living on roots, berries and vermin."(Hobhouse, 1974)
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
If you need 8 YT posts to finish your point, then maybe you should take your discussion to an actual forum.
Sarcasmses 2 months ago
That's right dumb yourself down by insisting any uncomfortable truth is a theory. Refuse history, refuse reason, refuse to look at evidence and repeat after me. "conspiracy theory," Denial is a river in Egypt.
joejoe652 2 months ago
This was hysterically funny, I must say...
pink0f 2 months ago
pussy
blackcreekghost 2 months ago
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@maxshibui A thing is more valuable when you want/ need it more.
Assuming that you will always want/ need it more right now does not accurately represent human behaviour.
Your model says things work that way because that's how its math is structured. In some cases it is accurate but in some cases the generalisation does not hold. There is no rule or observation of human behaviour which has that implication, and exceptions to it are abundantly obvious.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui A thing is more valuable when you want/need it more.
Assuming that you will always want/ need it more right now does not accurately represent human behaviour.
Your model says things work that way because that's how its math is structured. In some cases it is accurate but in some cases the generalisation does not hold. There is no rule or observation of human behaviour which has that implication, and exceptions to it are abundantly obvious.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui A thing is more valuable when you want/need it more.
Assuming that you will always want/ need it more right now does not accurately represent human behaviour.
Your model says things work that way because that's how its math is structured. In some cases it is accurate but in some cases the generalisation does not hold. There is no rule or observation of human behaviour which has that implication, and exceptions to it are abundantly obvious.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
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@maxshibui "Such things are future goods which have no counterpart in the form of present goods."
What about two things which are available at both points in time? Say an apple now or an apple tomorrow. Is the apple always intrinsically more valuable now?
What if you had three apples already today, and frankly feel a bit sick, and would just prefer a few crackers? The apple would be better tomorrow.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui "Such things are future goods which have no counterpart in the form of present goods."
What about two things which are available at both points in time? Say an apple now or an apple tomorrow. Is the apple always intrinsically more valuable tomorrow?
What if you had three apples already today, and frankly feel a bit sick, and would just prefer a few crackers? The apple would be better tomorrow.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''Is the apple always intrinsically more valuable tomorrow?'' You have it bass ackwards. In the mind of a person who wants to eat an apple today, said apple is more valuable to him in his mind today than it is tomorrow. It's a psychological thing.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "In the mind of a person who wants to eat an apple today, said apple is more valuable to him in his mind today than it is tomorrow."
And a person who doesn't want it today? Why no mention of them?
Is your dogma so important that you'd rather claim that there has never been a human being in history who didn't constantly want at least one more apple?
Would you just choke it down regardless of appetite and nausea because an apple now is always better?
It simply doesn't work.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
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maxshibui 2 months ago
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@ImMichaelTaylor ''And a person who doesn't want it today? Why no mention of them?'' Well, because I am trying to explain to you that 2+2=4. It's not my fault that you insist on pointing out that there is such a thing as 3+2, and since that doesn't equal 4, then it's not valid to make a generalization that 2+2=4 in all cases. Your argument is this: ''Yesterday, John wanted three apples. Today, John only wants one apple. Thus, yesterday John did not want three apples.'' Idiot.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui You've totally missed the point.
And that was a terrible analogy.
The claim that something someone doesn't want today is always more valuable than something they do want tomorrow is not supportable by reason.
It's like you're saying 2+2=4 therefore 2+22=4 and 0.0002X2222=4 and too+to=4.
You've generalised too broadly from an observation of a restricted case.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor It's a perfect analogy. But anyway, this is so simple I'm sure you'd get it if I could state it better. How about this: ''Satisfaction of a want in the nearer future is, other things being equal, preferred to that in the farther distant future.'' I should have emphasized the ''other things being equal'' part. BTW, ''too+to=4'' - that's pretty hilarious.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''The claim that something someone doesn't want today is always more valuable than something they do want tomorrow is not supportable by reason.'' Of course it's not. My generalization requires the basic assumptions that the person wants the thing and believes his ability to enjoy the thing will be the same later as it is now, i.e. all other things are equal, except the ''sooner or later'' aspect. In your example, it's John's bad stomach that changes things.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "Your argument is this: [Stawman 481-b ] "
No, it isn't. In those terms, my argument is;
Today, John ate apples until he puked. Thus, today John doesn't want any more apples. At some point in the future John will want another apple, and when he does that one will be more valuable to him than the one he doesn't want today.
For what seems like the 100th time, answer what I actually said or don't bother.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''John doesn't want''. What I say only makes sense if John actually does ''want.'' In my argument, the want is the same, the time preference - sooner or later - is different, and everything else is the same. The ONLY variable here is the time preference - sooner or later. Yes, making other things equal vastly restricts things, but it's still valid to do so. That's the only way to do science, I'm sure you know.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''At some point in the future...'' Of course John, at present, considers that future apple more valuable to him than a present apple, but only because he expects his ability to enjoy that future apple, thanks to a better appetite, will be greater. Even if John's appetite was fine now, a factor that is only possible in the remoter future, e.g. a chance to share the apple with his lover who visits tomorrow, could affect his valuation of the apple.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor If the thought of enjoying X sooner appeals more to John than the thought of enjoying X later, present X is more valuable to John than future X. Tautological, yes. But it explains why, when everything else is equal, ''something extra'' is needed to get John to postpone his enjoyment of X. How much of that ''something extra'' depends on how much ''later''. If it can be traded for money, a simple way to appease John is to offer him more money, or ''interest''.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui You should have said that in the first place then, instead of pretending it was a universal rule and ignoring the abundantly obvious cases where it doesn't apply.
If you had initially said what you're now (after exposure to reason) saying, it wouldn't have been a problem.
But you don't temper your dogma with observations of the actual world, and you do reject without consideration anything which doesn't fit with the gross oversimplification you insist on clinging to.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor But this concept does not require money or interest to illustrate. It's a universal fact of human life. Nobody can deny it. If you wanted to enjoy something now, other things being equal, you'd have to be given an incentive to get you to wait and enjoy it later. Being made to wait, in itself, is neither a valuable nor a pleasurable experience. Otherwise we'd all wait indefinitely and never consume anything. Thus, ''something extra'', extra value, is needed.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "It's a universal fact of human life."
No, it isn't.
" other things being equal"
Ah, so you agree.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui "Otherwise we'd all wait indefinitely and never consume anything."
You're not well acquainted with the phrase "within reason", are you?
Just because the caricatured example you posit as a straw man isn't true, it doesn't prove the opposite (but equally extremist) position.
That's a recipe for truncated reasoning and self-reinforcing extremist dogma.
It's not that you're stupid for having those ideas, it's more that having those ideas forces you to become stupid to sustain them.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
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@ImMichaelTaylor ''...it doesn't prove the opposite (but equally extremist) position.'' Straw man yourself. I'm not even trying to prove the opposite position, which in this case would be ''we always consume everything immediately''. If you wanted to enjoy something now, other things being equal, you'd have to be given an incentive to get you to wait and enjoy it later. What is so extremist about that?
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor Suppose John really wants to kiss a girl right now, and the girl is willing. Other things being equal, would John give up his present chance and wait a week to do the same thing he wants to do now? No. But he might if the girl offered to sleep with him next week in exchange for not kissing her now. You don't have to be a ''greedy capitalist'' to need this ''something extra''. Even w/o money, ''interest'', the ''something extra'' would still exist in some form.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui Actually, I think that to even think of relationships in such manner is a problem, and one which folks I know have discussed since university a LONG time ago. That to start perceiving things in terms of costs, benefits, etc...is sort of depraved. No moral person thinks in this manner. I mean, I can't say that we don't ever, say, in the example you've just given. Applying a cost/benefit analysis to everything is simply not looked upon highly by those not aspiring to a business model.
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 I think you completely misunderstood why I used this example. I just wanted to show that the origin of interest has nothing to do with money, business, or any particular field of human activity, but with time preference alone. Thus I tried to do this by intentionally citing a case where, I agree, no moral person would consciously engage in what is called a ''cost/benefit analysis''. I think it would be a no-brainer in this case. But maybe it was a bad example...
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui Or maybe I just didn't get it. Or maybe I did get it.
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 How about this one: A guy is offered a fishing rod/reel by a stranger in exchange for 5 trout that were given him by a friend. He decides the rod/reel is more valuable to him than the 5 trout, but only b/c he thinks he'll be able to catch more than 5 trout in the future with this rod/reel. It's the prospect of more trout later on that motivates him to give up the 5 that he could easily enjoy now. What would be immoral about his thinking process?
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui Nothing would in this particular scenario. Just a simple trade. I can see how arguments could be made as to how one person may be a little more business savvy, and another not, and therefore the less savvy person makes a trade he would have been better off not making, and how there may be moral issues here. Or perhaps we was simply starving and the pole was his only remaining possession which he had to trade for the fish to keep from starving, but simply prolonged his problems
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@maxshibui So, what could be immoral is that the person with the fish, knows that the guy with the pole is desperate and on the edge of starvation, and where he could have offered to give him much more fish to perhaps lengthen the guys life long enough to get a job, or whatever, he trades the least amount possible. I can think of many other probably, but this will do for now.
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 I don't get why you associate cost/benefit with business. People make cost/benefit analysis all the time, even though they don't call it that. No matter what form the cost or benefit takes, it is always considered. If somebody goes out of his way to open the door for a grandmother, he does so because the feeling he expects to get by doing so outweighs the inconvenience incurred. But he's done this enough to know unconsciously that the benefit outweighs the cost.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui I still believe you're putting too much into the trade-offs (cost/benefit), and do not believe we are always doing that. I simply don't think it's good or healthy to perceive things this way. That being said, I asked a friend to come and pick me up tonight, and if they did I'd pay for the movie for both of us. This is a straight forward deal. No one doubts this. Upon arrival, we went to get some popcorn. I pulled out the money and paid. There was no cbanalysis here at all. Motivation.
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@maxshibui "would John give up his present chance and wait a week to do the same thing he wants to do now?"
Excellent example of how a free market model can't express the complex information required to represent actual human behaviour in the real world.
To wit, is John a player, and is the girl part of the majority who find an apparent temporary reticence more attractive than the underlying eagerness?
Free markets don't have game, that's why they get gamed. Too simplistic and weak.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui How about thinking about it this way (thinking about it at all would be an improvement on rote repetition) ;
Today's supply of apples is very high and demand is very low. Tomorrow there is only one apple in the world and everyone wants it. Is each of today's glut of very cheap apples more valuable than tomorrow's apple that people are knocking down their grandmother to get to?
At best it is a rule of thumb, stop acting like it's a religion.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor Interesting scenario. ''Is each of today's glut of very cheap apples more valuable than tomorrow's apple that people are knocking down their grandmother to get to?'' They are less valuable in hindsight, of course. But nobody acts based on hindsight, only foresight.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''Is each of today's glut of very cheap apples more valuable than tomorrow's apple that people are knocking down their grandmother to get to?'' They are indeed not valued higher (not for consumption, but definitely for investment) today if the valuer expects he will need to trample his grandmother (unless he's looking for an excuse to do so) in order to secure possession of one tomorrow. But this scenario wouldn't fulfill the ''other things being equal'' part.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''What if you had three apples already today, and frankly feel a bit sick, and..prefer..crackers? The apple would be better tomorrow.'' True, but that is totally irrelevant with regard to a valuation made in the past under different conditions. The only thing that's relevant is how you felt when you decided to buy (or barter for) the apples, instead of saving the money (or other exchangeable), in the first place. The present doesn't affect the past, does it?
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "valuation made in the past " But that isn't the past yet. The whole thing was specifically described from the point of view of someone experiencing the present from that point in time.
"The only thing that's relevant is how you felt when you decided to buy (or barter for) the apples"
"I" felt like I didn't want it right then, so I'd get it tomorrow instead. That was perfectly clear from what I said. So if you wanted to reply you should have replied to that; what I actually said.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui And even if your convenient fiction had been what I said for a change, would that offer any support at all to your previous claim that the concept of economic interest is a law of nature?
No.
It doesn't matter how dumb you play it (even to the point where you feign the inability to comprehend written english) when presented with an exception to your dogma. There are exceptions, therefore it's not a law.
As far as human behaviour is concerned its a rule of thumb at best.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui "The present doesn't affect the past, does it?"
No, it does't. How is that relevant to whether the present effects the future? A choice made today between having something now or later doesn't involve the past, The past has already happened before that. The time when it is happening is the present, and times after that are the future.
Which you already know, so you must have lied on purpose. If you can't admit it when you know you're wrong, best to keep quiet entirely.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
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@maxshibui "These are not present goods at all."
Each of those things are available for purchase now though. Why not just have them in the present? Because you don't need them yet.
Your claim, from the start, relied on the unfounded assumption that all human desires are urgent. They aren't. Maybe it's dogs you're thinking of.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui "These are not present goods at all."
Each of those things are available for purchase now though. Why not just have them in the present? Because you don't need them yet.
Your claim, from the start, relied on the unfounded assumption that all human desires are urgent. They aren't. Maybe it's dogs you're thinking of.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
how is this considered debunking!! waste of my time
munitsher 3 months ago
@munitsher "waste of my time"
You've got to follow the link in the "show more" section to find the non-joking video. (Spoiler alert; Bolkestein ends up looking like a tit. )
ImMichaelTaylor 3 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor oh just wathced it... sooo much better, thanks for the link tip.
munitsher 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 You invest in a semiconductor fab and fit it with state-of-the-art equipment.You are aware that your investment would lose much of its value if someone were to develop much more efficient production technology and a competitor adopted it and undercut your prices by a wide margin. Do you give the workers the profits, or do you try to recoup your investment to lessen the chance you'll suffer a loss of capital?
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui More of the same. Now, what does this have to do with paying yourself $400 per hour, or more, and those doing the day to day work $4? Just answer this very simple question. Oh, and try and make it sound at least a little moral. You know, like, how they're lucky you've given them this opportunity to allow you to use them. Things like that. You really don't know much about the foundations of the system, do you? You can go watch 'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' for starters.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@maxshibui And no more excuses. Watch the several videos, or read the book. I'm not interested in debating Business 101 concepts. Old and boring. I'm interested in how the economy really works. You will find this fellow infinitely more economically sophisticated than yourself. And if you were EVER taught this is university I would be greatly surprised. I mean, in the business department. This is the kind of data that business students are not to be told.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 ''I provide the space, management, and a few other things, and then we all split the money, after rent, etc...'' Suppose you have $10mil. and decide to get into the hotel industry. You buy a hotel, supplies, etc. and hire staff. Are you going to just divvy up what's left over after non-labor operating costs (incl. depreciation) and pay it out as wages? Or, recognizing that competition could reduce the value of your hotel operation, you try to retain profits?
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui Of course not. Never even hinted of doing such either. That being said, if I need all of the people I've hired i.e.their role is somehow vital in the company, then just like a part in the engine, in order to make it work, they are necessary, and should be paid almost as everyone else. What I wouldn't do is pay some folks $4 and hour, and pay myself $400 an hour. Just common courtesy. I'd be embarrassed to pay these differences. But what makes is doubly worse is when a business owner
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@maxshibui ...knows that the person applying for the job is desperate, and then using this coercion against them. Why I have the money in the first place is irrelevant. Perhaps I worked for it. Perhaps I inherited it two days earlier and did nothing. It doesn't matter. But I understand everything you're saying. Business courses spend years trying to indoctrinate students to pigeonhole everything into the free-market model. Personally, if you really want to know, I think money should b eliminated
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 ''I provide the space, management, and a few other things,...'' Then it doesn't exactly sound like you have invested much in very specific or non-convertible capital goods which can lose significant value and even become obsolete fast in a changing market. Hence you're not in a hurry to accumulate profits to replace the capital you've invested. You do realize you're judging an entire economic system from conditions in your own particular line of business?
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui Again, it does NOT take a business major to figure the numbers. It also does NOT take a business major to calculate that when someone pays themselves 450X that of someone else, anyone else, working in the company, and then finds things as excuses not to pay out more, except for than to themselves, that they're being screwed. We know ALL of the games. Sorry. I worked in a hospital for 10 years. I remember one year the management informing us that we were not going to get the usual...
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 Drop manager pay. It's a corporate governance issue, and corporations are not essential to capitalism. You don't fool anyone. And quit confusing management with entrepreneurship. Just answer my simple question: why shouldn't someone be concerned about recouping his investment into a business? Why should I invest a million of my own money into a business then pay my employees (including managers) so much that there is neither return of nor return on principal?
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui Drop manager pay if not himself completely. Depends on if the workers decide they need him. Of course corporations are not essential to capitalism. They simply are what such depraved system can lead to if unregulated. "Don't fool anyone" regarding what? I'm not trying to fool anyone. You are. You're the one making apologetics for institutionalized criminality. I've answered your question many times now regarding recouping his investment. I said of course he should. So?
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@maxshibui Perhaps if you actually read my responses instead of just guessing that you know what they say, you know, like how you guess you know Chomsky's positions on everything when you don't, you wouldn't need to ask the same question ten times. Person X's recouping of his investment is irrelevant to anything I've been talking about. Quit trying to change the focus. I've already allowed you to escape dealing with Chomsky, and playing your game is predictable, tedious and boring. So, back to.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@maxshibui ..back to the topic of this thread....Which of Chomsky's books did you say you had read? Why is it that you find yourself having such grave difficulty even entertaining the notion of watching something as trivial as a 5 minute video? Ever consider that you fear what you may learn? And, yes, it WILL be you who is learning. I mean, that is, if you actually understand the words being said. This was precisely for the reason for my step 2. 1)Watch/read material 2)Show understanding 3)argue
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 Okay, I'll listen to some Chomsky, since it's obvious that your entire argument against capitalism/free markets is this: top executives make 400X more than average employees, therefore the average worker in capitalism is exploited, thus we must end capitalism. As I recall you also, along with Michael, said to get rid of money. I think you both mean we should get rid of vast wealth inequality & I think abolishing fiat money specifically would help that cause.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui " I think abolishing fiat money specifically would help that cause."
My question would be whether you think that cause is a just one, and if you do, what is the attraction of systems where that is a foregone conclusion?
If you agree capitalism makes richer people more influential and influential people richer, it cannot be claimed that system is fair or accurate. It is a feedback loop based largely on it's own structure, not the realities that form it's inputs.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui "get rid of money" My personal approach would be to keep money in the sense of having some kind of counters to represent rewards of those actions which fit in with what the system has been evolved or designed to achieve.
Of course then it becomes a moving target of continually analysing what the system should be trying to achieve (from a human rights perspective), and adjusting the basis of reward to avoid encouraging evil.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor (continued) .... "get rid of money"
The main thing to avoid is a system set up such that the status/value counters themselves confer the ability to alter the mechanisms by which those counters can be gained. If only one thing is under state control it MUST be that.
It's like an immune system, and the lack of one is probably the main reason free markets always become corrupt and twisted by contact with actual human beings.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui No, this is not my "entire argument". Actually, this is just one of the many arguments I have accepting the system as it is. This is still far from what I believe would be better arrangements. You have a tendency to jump too conclusions much too easily and before knowing anything about other positions. You 'think' you know them, but you don't. My hunch is that you think the USSR was socialist, too. If so, then you are WAY off. We can get into that later. My position is that we must..
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@maxshibui ...must start where things are now. I don't think it's either reasonable, logical or desirable to just do away with capitalism overnight. Must start with where things are now, and start removing the negative aspects while keeping the positive. I don't really care what "ism" this leads to. It's how most change usually takes place. Rarely are there revolutions between one day and the next, and even when actual revolutions happen there has usually been things happening for years.
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@maxshibui You'll notice in the last (I think it was) video I sent where even Chomsky himself says he'd accept (maybe) free markets as long as they led to what Adam Smith and others thought they should. Chomsky's 'real' conservatism shows itself yet again. So, now that you've succumb to my pressure to watch a few videos before arguing, do I need to list them again? They've been spread out over quite a while. And remember, I'm not even offering these because they express my exact position, or
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@maxshibui ...or even my position at all. These are simply views which I have a feeling that you have not been exposed to. Also, whether or not you agree with many things, or even anything, folks like Chomsky puts out, is not even the point. The point is that you will at least know a little more about some other folks positions, positions which have been argued quite thoroughly, and which offer at a minimum a good challenge, so that your arguments will be refined, even if in opposition.
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@maxshibui ...usual bonus due to the fact that we had "lost" 4 million dollars. Then, a couple of weeks later we found out that, no, of course, the hospital had NOT lost 4 million dollars, but rather made a 6 million dollar profit. However, as their goal was 10 million, an arbitrary goal not in any way, shape, or form vital to anything, they said we "lost" million. Do you really think workers aren't aware of ALL such scams, as well as the never-ending excuses used to justify such theft?
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 One year out of ten. What about the other 9? I don't know all the facts of this case, and you very well may be totally justified in being mad. But have you considered the possibility that more than 6 million in anticipated profit had already been committed contractually to investing in new equipment or improving the hospital facilities in other ways? Anyone familiar with accounting would know you can book a profit yet have no cash flow to show for it.
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui What do you mean "what about the other 9"? You really can't perceive anything anything outside the elementary textbook business plan, can you? What other 9? This was just a goal which isn't even necessary for anything. They could just has easily said their goal was 50 million dollars and that we fell short by 54 million. It's irrelevant. This is simply a way of avoiding paying workers more. It's easy to come up with things out of thin air all day long so as not to be fair. You think..
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 I meant the other 9 years. You said you worked 10 years at a hospital and one year you didn't get the usual bonus. I was thinking 9 out of 10 years getting a bonus doesn't sound like something to get that mad about.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui Perhaps I wasn't clear. I did work at the hospital for ten years, and this episode happened sometime in the middle years. Actually, I think the only bonus we ever received was a ham or something. It was most definitely not more than about 1/4 of a monthly salary. Here in Japan most folks working at companies, etc...receive what often amounts to three months salary as a bonus. There is also rule which has it that it is impolite for the top person to be paid 10X more than bottom. But..
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@maxshibui ...such an idea was also put forth in the U.S. long ago by some of the earlier leaders who easily recognized that too much inequality was not good for the country. Benjamin Franklin was one if I remember correctly. Personally, I think 10X is much too much of a difference, but I guess it's better than 450X
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@maxshibui ...the workers don't see through this transparent crap, especially when the looters at the top of the pyramid, and it IS a pyramid, are increasing their own salaries? Actually, it's insulting to even be discussing such depravity. The ONLY reason I do at all is to see what excuses can possibly be pulled from one's butt next. Why are you making excuses for looters? Why are you so against the people doing the actual work? SOrt of want to be one of those suits, eh? Get ONE girl finally?
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 If they said they ''lost'' 4 million, yeah that's misleading. Maybe they meant they had lost 4 million in profits. Profits can be lost too, you know. You can have accumulated profits then make some mistakes and lose them. The nature of the business will of course determine how much this is a factor.
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui No, it's not complicated. 10 million was ONLY a goal. And, yes, they very well probably did have something they wished to do with the funds if achieving that goal. This is irrelevant. What IS relevant is that perhaps the folks helping to earn that extra 6 million which WAS made, decide themselves what should be done with the money THEY earned. Perhaps they'd agree to keep salaries the same, or even lower them, or just split the money between themselves. They can freely decide.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@maxshibui I'm not in a hurry to accumulate profits to replace the capital at the expense of screwing the folks doing the work WITH me. And, no, I am NOT judging an entire economic system from conditions in my own business. I've been in many businesses and know all the scams. The workers are usually well aware, too. They are well aware of costs, etc...This is not the point. Consciously screwing fellow citizens IS the point. Do you REALLY think I don't know how to maximize profits, etc. Nonsense.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 Ah, the simplified Marxist view of business: maximizing profits is as easy as screwing your employees. Too bad employees (excepting retards and masochists) in a free market can quit and work for a competitor that pays them market wages. Labor is a scarce and valuable service; no businessman exploits his workers with sub-market pay and seriously expects to retain their services for long (unless no other jobs are available).
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui "Labor is a scarce and valuable service"
I'm glad unemployment is so low in the free market utopia you're referring to. If it was true of earth it might help a lot.
"market wages"
Surely even you must see that is a product of how desperate the peasantry is rather than how much useful effort they put in.
ImMichaelTaylor 3 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor Yeah, it's too bad we have minimum wage laws and collective ''bargaining'' which create institutional unemployment. Too bad GM and countless airlines go bankrupt over and over because of unrealistic union demands. Rather be unemployed than ''exploited'' I guess.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "Rather be unemployed than ''exploited'"
I'd rather the vast majority of money and influence in the system wasn't used to enforce that false dichotomy, and systems be examined based on their resilience to creating that situation.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''...product of how desperate the peasantry is...'' Are you so blinded by Marxist dogma you don't see that the major consumers of products turned out by the middle class are the middle class!!? and if they weren't paid enough to afford such products, the ''greedy capitalists'' would have no customers except the elite class, which has no interest in buying lifetime supplies of razors, sneakers, Ford tauruses, t.v.s, blue jeans, etc. ''Desperate'' suggests they ..
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "t the major consumers of products turned out by the middle class are the middle class!!?"
It doesn't matter how many exclamation points you use, it doesn't make your feigned incredulity any more relevant to what I said.
Every invitation to consider an alternative model seems predestined to be greeted by you saying "I don't accept that because it wouldn't be compatible with my model."
Well no shit Sherlock. My point is understanding the models by human behaviour, not the reverse.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''Desperate'' means that this ''peasantry'' has no choice but to work for subsistence wages. If that's true, who buys all those consumer staples? all those flat-screen t.v.s, digital cameras, iPads, iPhones? You mean to say the millions of these things which are produced every year are bought by the Forbes 400? (Funny, if people didn't buy so much of this stuff they'd have more savings and thus be in a better bargaining position with potential employers.)
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''I'm glad unemployment is so low in the free market utopia...'' Maybe unemployment would be low if we actually had a free market! Do you think I would spend so much time arguing for a free market if I believed that what we have now is a free market? It would be pointless. I argue for the free market theory precisely because it has been taken out of practice over the past century or so, as economic literacy has been replaced by superstitions and myths.
maxshibui 2 months ago
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@maxshibui "Maybe unemployment would be low if we actually had a free market!"
Or Stalinist work programs, or slavery. Your point?
"free market [...] has been taken out of practice over the past century or so"
Which assumes it once was. When?
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui "arguing for a free market"
Could you give some concrete examples of how freer markets make life better? Like identify something you see as a problem with the current system caused by too little freedom?
How do you think it should be balanced against the tendency for the "free" in "free market" to come to mean "free to lie, pollute, manipulate and collude"? Or is that another thing you're going to say is caused by not being capitalist enough?
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui Please don't talk about Marxist anything if you know nothing about Marx. You'll end up sounding as douchebaggier than you do when trying to speak about Chomsky. But funny that you mentioned Marx. Unlike you, I was actually listening to a lecture yesterday in which a British Investment banker was being interviewed by a journalist. He said that the longer he stayed on Wall Street, the more he saw the relevance of Marx, and admitted that his insights to capitalism were mostly correct.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@maxshibui And maximizing profits so as to keep the money away from the workers existed LONG before Marx entered the picture. Sorry. Can't blame Marx for everything. As a matter of fact, I just read an essay yesterday, too, about Marx when he was writing articles about the American Civil War. Very interesting. Of course he was against the racist south, and took all the moral positions, making the anti-slave contingent look too conservative. Anyway, yes, we know the coercion from management ...
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@maxshibui ...which allows the worker to freely quit and potentially starve to death. This makes the depravity even more pronounced. Basically, it's little more than it would be were I to find the one banana tree on an island, the only source of food, and when the folks coming a few minutes later arrived I said that they were free to work for me and earn some of "my" bananas, or starve to death. Sorry, but I'd be in favor of setting the criminal afloat for even entertaining such depravity.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@maxshibui ANd your last blurb is what every textbook says. How do we get this through to you. WE DON'T accept many of the very premises your model is built upon. You keep trying to force everything into your model, as if this is going to help something. It doesn't. Look at the 3rd world. Chile was Friedman's experimental ground for demonstrating how well capitalism would work. Killed thousands of people after installing a dictator. Most of the 3rd world is this way because of capitalist looting
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 ''I'm not in a hurry to accumulate profits ... at the expense of screwing the folks doing the work WITH me.'' If you paid them competitive wages, how would that be ''screwing'' them? Oh I forgot the system screws them anyway by making them ''wage slaves''. Sure. You're still ignoring the fact that there is not an unlimited supply of capital goods one can acquire for free to run a business. And I don't give a damn who started it. The issue is who paid for it.
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui
I have to go to Amsterdam, if you'll excuse me i'm leaving.
munitsher 3 months ago
@maxshibui I'm not going to discuss your freshman business model any more. Learned it a long time ago, and found it to be every bit as pathetic as it seemed before learning about it. Studying it only demonstrated how much effort has to be put into maintain such scam. "Competitive wages"? This is another one of those fine terms which translated mean paying as little as possible while stealing as much as possible. Nothing more. The workers can determine their wages AFTER they've seen the profits.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 ''We all do the same work, with the exception of a few managerial things I do..'' That explains why you pay yourselves about the same.
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui Uhhh...Yes? Most places the owners do much less work. Why on earth would or should they pay themselves 450X that of someone doing much harder work. This isn't an issue even worth discussing. You're arguments fool no one and appeal to the most predictable elements. Again, it's quite simple. That I started the company is virtually meaningless. It's most definitely not worth screwing other people for their labor. You just really think there needs to be a superman, huh? Sad and pathetic.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 ''Why ... should they pay themselves 450X that of someone doing much harder work. This isn't an issue even worth discussing.'' Okay, ExxonMobil has 83,600 employees. Its top 5 execs were paid $30 mil total in 2010. If the $30mil was distributed to the 83K employees evenly, they'd each get an extra $361.44 a year. Wow. Give it all to just the bottom 10K and they'd each get a $3,000 annual bonus. Not bad. But you're right. This issue isn't even worth discussing.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "Its top 5 execs were paid $30 mil total in 2010"
And how much more influence does that give them and their cronies over the markets, the courts, the media and the senate ?
Given that there is only one feasible direction for the trend, what does that say about the long term evolution of that set up?
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor Okay, I admit I pulled that out of my ass.
maxshibui 3 months ago
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@maxshibui "I admit I pulled that out of my ass."
It's pulling stuff out of other people's asses that bothers me more. At the very least take a calculated look at whose ass you're pulling it out of.
ImMichaelTaylor 3 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor You have to admit that there is more motivation to work harder if you believe you'll be personally rewarded well for it. Just because productivity figures are exposed doesn't mean people who know they can do much better than the average of say 10 widgets/hr won't slack off and become content with being average. This kind of reasoning explains why capitalist production is way more efficient than collectivist production.
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui Actually, no, this is the fairy tale which has been put forth to try and get easily vulnerable people to unwittingly internalize nonsense. There is no evidence anywhere that I'm aware of that shows that people don't as hard because of living in a more socially conscious society. In fact, they probably work as hard or harder. But if you're going to be a good propagandist for the economic system you're cheering for, having internalized such notions helps to make you sound more sincere.
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor But can you objectively know what a worker's full potential is if you don't encourage him to demonstrate it by offering the prospect of higher compensation or other rewards that he doesn't have to share? And don't say by using a whip either. Positive reinforcement has been proven to produce better results than negative.
maxshibui 3 months ago
@maxshibui Why do you keep framing things in terms of how much someone should rent themselves to another for? Why should anyone be working for anyone, really? Do you believe it's just sort of a law of nature that there have evolved bosses and folks who have accumulated capital, persuaded people to adopt their concoction so that they can thereby profit off the labor of others? It's not natural in any way, shape, or form. The system is a man-made system, and as such it can be changed, as it should
kropotkinbeard1 3 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 ''Why should anyone be working for anyone, really?'' With division of labor, everyone is by definition working for oneself and everyone else, duh. Why have bosses? b/c some are better leaders than others. Capitalists? b/c some like to save their wages and invest them in (risky) new ideas instead of doing the same routine as a worker forever - but society must offer these creative ppl the potential for handsome rewards to take such risks with their savings.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui Just more of the same babble from freshman texts. Nothing new or interesting and has nothing to do with Chomsky. You're doing nothing more than trying to force everything into your system and its rules, just as a Scientologist tries to force everything they see in the world into the rules as outlined by their cult leader. Nothing more. And when you make sweeping statements such as the last one, how do you think people survived throughout most of history before this particular system?
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago
@kropotkinbeard1 ''how do you think people survived throughout most of history before this particular system?'' They usually didn't for very long. The enormous growth in population we've had since capitalism spread suggests that it's a lot easier to survive with capitalism than without it. But maybe my interpretation of the data is inaccurate b/c it's clouded by all those biases you mentioned.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "enormous growth in population we've had since capitalism spread suggests "
Would you rank it above; agriculture, selective breeding, metallurgy, the germ theory of disease, soap, contraception, chemistry, water chlorination, vaccines and understanding nutrition?
I wouldn't.
Have a look at some of the less capitalist countries who have those things and tell me if survival is an issue there.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui "enormous growth in population we've had since capitalism spread"
I can barely articulate how fantastical I find that. You can't eat money. You can't drink it. It doesn't stop you getting sick. Only the things you buy with it do that, and those things are still just as possible to create under alternative systems (except maybe theocracy).
In short, science is the true source of the advances you rudely try to claim for capitalism.
I find the claim an affront to human dignity.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ... As if we'd need some ridiculous charade with metal disks to develop an empirical understanding of the physical world !
You'd better not say that after the glorious (insert favourite scary sounding -ism) revolution, or we'll have you all shot !
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''You can't eat money'' I find it fantastical that you believe capitalism is just about creating more money. Science is the source, yes. And the incentives capitalism gives to improve technology created an environment for science and creativity in general to flourish. (Yes, the soviets too were good at science, but I get the impression it was mostly aerospace/defense-related.) Maybe the fact that these advancements occurred in a capitalistic era is irrelevant.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui " these advancements occurred in a capitalistic era is irrelevant."
I'd be doubtful of even that extent of correlation, but can let it pass as a matter of academic historical interest, on the basis that causation is completely out of the question.
Capitalism can't do it without science. Science can do it without capitalism.
Could have been any system, and much of it was. No need to ask me if I think a system designed along empirical lines would help or hinder scientific progress.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''a system designed along empirical lines'' How does one use empiricism to understand complex social interactions and accurately understand cause and effect when there are practically an infinite number of factors you must control for? Empiricism is for the natural sciences and works great in labs where things can be controlled. You're obviously very knowledgeable of science. Maybe a bias is coming through here?
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui " How does [...] infinite number of factors"
At the very least by beginning to try to do that.
And more generally the same way science does anything, by making a series of slight improvements until the system under study is refined to the point of transcending its beginnings and if you're lucky reveal a revolutionary new way of doing things.
And then do that again, and again.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor "if you're lucky reveal a revolutionary new"
To clarify, you're apparently guaranteed that eventually, but it's partly luck whether it happens to your lab/ team/ country/ generation.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui " Empiricism is for the natural sciences "
So materiel, logistics, distribution, health and utilities can be done empirically.
What's left, and why is a market mentality better suited to those areas?
"Maybe a bias is coming through here?"
Yes. I am biased towards world views which contain in them the means to test their own efficacy in the search for the most objective forms of truth.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor What I should have said is that science can tell us how to achieve certain ends - it can lead us to knowledge of the appropriate means - but it can never tell us what ultimate ends we should aim for in the first place. No science makes value judgments. Science tells how to efficiently produce and distribute something, but not what that something should be.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui " What I should have said is that science can tell us how to achieve certain ends - it can lead us to knowledge of the appropriate means - but it can never tell us what ultimate ends we should aim for in the first place. "
I agree. I don't think that a mathematical model can define the ends either though.
In fact I think the ultimate end is already established, and don't want the empirical (or not so empirical) means trying to sway that.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor The interconnectedness of the market prices for consumer and producer goods (or capital) gives us an objective way to determine, by finding the inevitable discrepancies which arise between these prices due to changing human needs, which pressing consumer needs could potentially be better met. These discrepancies show which goods/services have supply/demand ratios that are out of whack, and to what extent.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor The fact that the auction process of the market reduces the millions of decisions - and the multitude of considerations factored into them - made by all varieties of people with varying needs, desires, beliefs, etc., into simple consensus numbers - ''prices'' - makes it possible to observe at a glance what the majority of people want most now based on their own actions and not on the prejudices of others.This is the theory, though it's not practiced much today.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "This is the theory, though it's not practiced much today."
When it was, what were the results?
Should a free market be regulated at all?
What about groups or individuals who try to manipulate and restrict the action of markets? Should they be regulated against? If they are, don't you eventually end up with a market which requires even more regulations? If you regulate problems it's better than trying to regulate whatever different solutions people come up with constantly.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''Should a free market be regulated at all?'' Yes. To keep it as free as practical, and beneficial according to the theory. This only takes some basic regulations. If problems develop, whose source can actually be traced to a lack of regulation, then a regulation can be designed to combat that problem specifically. You might claim that's exactly what has happened. I would say Marxist illusions kicked off unnecessary regulations, creating new problems...
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor Another example: Keynes blamed the Great Depression on illiquidity. Austrian economists point to the refusal of unions to reduce their wage demands and bring them in line with other prices. It wasn't illiquidity, but ridiculous demands for the same piece of pie as before, even though less than half that pie is left.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor The politicians found it easier to just debase the dollar's value against gold and raise the prices of commodities, etc. to lower the real wages without needing unions to accept lower nominal wages. Thus ''stimulus'' spending stuck, even though it was necessitated by a ''group who tried to restrict the action of markets.'' Now every time excess liquidity leads to a boom&bust, more regulation is called for to protect us against ''the free market''.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui Do you even think it's an issue that lots of people will quickly realise their own profits could be increased in some cases if the market was just slightly less free in some arbitrary aspect?
Do you believe that's even possible?
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor Only minorities can increase profits by interfering with the free market. The majority, if they understand economics and thus understand the reason for the suddenly higher prices, then they will blame the right people and ask for the right solution from their government. If economic illiteracy prevails, as it does today, the wrong things are blamed, false solutions are supported, and more problems arise.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor cont. But just b/c free market theory has not been perfectly implemented anywhere - perfection is impossible anyway - doesn't mean the theory makes no sense or is useless for the real world and should be disregarded in favor of a radically different system. And what is especially vicious is the citing of recent economic history to disparage a theory which government economic policy has not practiced for more than a century. All this does is divert ...
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "free market [] not been perfectly implemented [] doesn't mean the theory [] should be disregarded in favor of a radically different system"
No, but the reasons its implementation turned out to be impossible among actual humans in the real world should be taken as clues to how it needs to be modified in order to make it possible to implement. Then that leads you to wonder if those modifications are what's important, not the model which is being awkwardly forced to conform to them.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui "what is especially vicious"
For pity's sake man, get a hold of yourself.
One particular hypothetical way to arrange human resource distribution is being discussed. Stop acting like someone's head-butted your grandmother.
"recent economic history to disparage a theory which government economic policy has not practiced for more than a century"
Yes, that wouldn't be a valid basis to make decision on.
If you want to disparage free markets you go back to colonial times.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''If you want to disparage free markets you go back to colonial times.'' You can't be serious. Colonialism started in the 15th century. One of the first advocates of free markets was Adam Smith, whose economic theories developed in the 18th century demonstrated how the mercantilists benefited at the expense of the majority. Classical liberals, the first to develop and advocate free market ideas, explicitly rejected colonialism.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "You can't be serious. Colonialism started in the 15th century"
And it ended around Smith's time didn't it? So didn't he live in colonial times? I don't get it. Does only the first part of an era count? How about you stop misunderstanding things on purpose, because there are plenty of things you'll misunderstand anyway without intentionally trying to.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor Adam Smith said the government should stop colonialism. It is neither the fault of free-market theories nor of their proponents, that governments were slow to act. How about you stop the perverse idiocy of citing a practice to blame an economic theory that explicitly calls for the abolition of said practice, but is unfortunately not immediately answered. You sound like Chomsky when he blames free-markets, rather than the lack thereof, for government bailouts.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''to disparage free markets go back to colonial times.'' Apparently your idea of free markets comes from Marx. ''Marxism views colonialism as a form of capitalism.'' (Wikipedia: colonialism) Just because capital is used doesn't make it capitalism, and definitely not a free market. In case you forgot, colonies were sponsored by governments, who gave monopolies and backed them with military might. To me and many others, that's the opposite of free markets.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui " To me and many others, that's the opposite of free markets."
So when was the time you were referring to earlier? When you invoked the good old markets now passed, what period of history did you mean?
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor ''what period of history...?'' If you want a history lesson, consult wikipedia. I am currently studying economic theory, not economic history. The theory is that the restrictive, anti-innovation, anti-technology, anti-competition mindset of feudalism, mercantilism, guilds, etc. gave way to liberalism in the late 18th century, which encouraged innovation and capital accumulation, leading to dramatic growth in real incomes and population. Makes sense to me.
maxshibui 2 months ago
@maxshibui "If you want a history lesson, consult wikipedia."
I simply wondered what basis you had to object to the idea that colonial times lasted until the country ceased to be a colony. How foolish; of course you should be able to invent your own special meanings for things where "during this period" doesn't always cover things that happen after the beginning and before the end of said period (if those fact threaten your narrative).
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@ImMichaelTaylor All this does is divert attention from the real issue of examining the soundness of theories of social cooperation, regardless of their names. But if your opponent believes in the doctrine of polylogism, that class affiliation (or race or history) determines human logic and therefore all thinking is merely an ideological disguise designed to justify one's selfish class interests, then it is futile to discuss the opposing theories used to interpret complex data.
maxshibui 2 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@maxshibui "[blah]"
Straw man 51, hints of binary thinking with a solid round bouquet of extremism and blueberries.
"polylogism"
Is bullshit. (Details available on request)
"futile to discuss the opposing theories"
From the point of view of modifying the viewpoint of extremist adherents, sometimes. From the point of view of working out which parts of each work best and how compatible those parts might be in a new system, no.
ImMichaelTaylor 2 months ago
@maxshibui Oh, and also, you didn't answer my question. Why should anyone have to work for anyone else? And don't give me any "division of labor" crap. Keep it simple; Why should anyone have to work for anyone else? And have you watched any of the Chomsky on economics videos yet? Still struggling with just the thought of it, huh. Quite odd considering you know nothing about him. Usually people make such decisions AFTER they've learned the subject. But I'm not into astrology, so we're different.
kropotkinbeard1 2 months ago