Topic: Capitalism (continued from How do you deal with the thought about taxes) - page 10. (Read 12620 times)

I guess it depends in how you define "value."  I'm sure you'll meet plenty of resistance on this forum by claiming that knowledge has no value unless it's applied.  Does music have value?  If Beethoven's 9th is in public domain, is it without value?  What about the works of Shakespeare?  I think you're confusing value with price.  Or something like that.  

BTW, the first IBM (at that point going under TMC) was sold to US Census Bureau, not GE. The company was renamed IBM by Watson in 1924, and by the 1930s the company was doing brisk trade with the Nazis through its 90%-owned subsidiary Dehomag (thank you wikip), helping out with The Final Solution.  Bizniz is bizniz.

Case in point: The stinkin' commies put a sputnik in orbit, scaring the bejesus out of God-ferain' Americans.  Followed up by a man in orbit -- all by a country which was full of starvin' illiterate dirt farmers just 50 years ago.  


Please understand that some people are not driven by the same things you are.  Galileo didn't say the world is round the earth spun around the sun 'coz he wanted to get rich.  Einstein didn't come up with a neat formula to become fabulously wealthy.  Jesus didn't die on the cross because there was money to be made.  Some people are just ... fundamentally different from you.


If they live in a society where you can't accumulate wealth, there's just about nothing else to do  If you can't distinguish yourself with a money roll, you create.  

Edit: the crossed-out Galileo stupidity.

Now that you've mentioned it, it does seem a bit clumsy

Science was important also but it couldn't have happened with out private property and free trade (capitalism). Imagine if you were free to invent a tractor but if you did than you wouldn't be allowed to determine whether and in what capacity it was used. There would be no means for you to personally benefit from it so you wouldn't bother inventing it. Capitalism is the framework that allows people to have a reason to engage in scientific endeavors. granted with out capitalism some people will experiment for curiosities sake but not nearly as many and not nearly as often as if people are allowed to benefit from their effort.

How do states facilitate capitalism?  The opposite seems more common.
Government in most any its forms seem generally anti-capitalist.
The obvious exceptions being lex mercatoria and contract law.

I guess that pretty much sums it up.  Endless millennia of fail & meh, then Adam Smith writes a book and BAM!  Skyscrapers & bigass tractors! Then Ayn Rand writes a book and WAMO! Moon landings and enough crunch power to pickle! (and she was hawt, too!)

Just nonsense.  You still can't support your worldview with actual facts.

I've never depended upon a job for my own survival.  I work because I enjoy it, I work a lot because my wife and kids live well as a consequence.  But I certainly don't require the job.  I am quite capable of doing exactly what you seem to think is a great idea for everyone, scratching a living in the woods.  Sure, it can be fun for awhile when you're young and unattached.


Science is another tool for captialism, in this case.  Science alone produces nothing of value.  Just like that scene in The Lion King wherein the warthog theorizes that the stars were "giant balls of burning gas millions of miles away".  He was right, but what value is such knowledge to a warthog?  Or even a farmer?  The scientific knowledge concerning how to build a toilet, or how electrical impulses can be organized into a machine readable signal, is likewise useless without capitalism.  The founders of IBM believed that there was only a market for a couple dozen computers worldwide, and the first one ever built was sold to General Electric to calculate payroll.


The existence of free riders does not invalidate capitalism.  And copyright law is a monopoly, not capitalism. 


You think so?  You think you're sticking it to 'the man' with you're freeriding?  You're wrong.


Bridges are owned by the state.  By definition, not capitalism.  How has capitalism caused you're own poverty, specificly?

Perhaps I do. Perhaps my reading of anti capitalist literature and speaking with wage slaveshas given me perspective.
Homelessness can be fun. It can give you a taste of what its like to exist without depending on a job.
Science.

The internet is a great example of how capitalism fails, illustrated in the next part.
Between pirating and CC, the internet is sort of free.
This is what 100%of the internet is for me. If I am a freegan, capitalists lose.

The internet is awesome
I can fathom the ways that capitalism caused my poverty and homelessness.
Even bridges are owned. This is problematic if one isn't stealthy.

Science made those inventions possible.
Free trade is fantastic.
Historical capitalism has done more to hinder science than any force outside of religion.

I'm saying capitalism is only possible when the state facilitates it.

I specialize in smoking cigarettes and being a useful bum.
The fine arts didn't work out for me.
I almost inherited a fortune, but these days, I'm just not dying.

I don't think you get where any of it comes from.  You've lived under bridges?  I've done some 'urban camping' of my own in my time. Now you can argue with people from across the US and around the world in real time, and it costs you nearly nothing of consequence.  It's not quite free, but it's now cheap enough that buying an overpriced coffee can get you an hour or two of free wifi access.  The Internet itself existed for 20 years before the 'private sector' gained access to it at immense costs, and another 20 years later and more people in this world have regular access to a personal email account than have regular access to a flush toilet.  Why?

Because nearly all of the Internet is privately owned property engaging in exchanges for mutual benefits (i.e. Capitalism) whereas the vast majority of urban areas in this world are served either by water monopolies or publicly owned municipal water services.  Sure, a flush toilet is an expense, but it's value is in it's ability to deal with the human waste problem effectively and cheaply.  Even under a bridge, you benefit from our modern society in the sense that potable water is cheap.  Filling your water bottle up at a public fountain costs you nothing, but it still costs someone something, just not enough for them to bother with the costs you incur.  Less than a penny a gallon where I live, but in another part of the world wherein a gallon of drinking water might cost as much as a dime, but the average wage is $2 a day; four gallons per flush just doesn't make economic sense.  And yet, there are still people who will save for a cell phone and service to gain access to the Internet, because the efficiencies of communications make their trades more profitable.  The farmer can find a buyer for his harvest faster, without wasting time and energy traveling into town to speak to some dealer in person; as an example.

You cannot fathom the many ways that capitalism has improved your own life, even during the midst of your poverty and homelessness. 

who the hell said anything about sustaining wealth. why not just continue the processes that have lead to an explosive increase in wealth so general levels of wealth can continue to increase, not stay the same. those systems that allowed wealth to increase are not slavery or wasting resources, its private property and free exchange. before we had private property and free exchange things stagnated for literally hundreds of thousands of years, as soon as we started using private property and free exchange wealth exploded in a couple of generations. In just a few generations we went from water powered stone mills and horse and buggy and hand tools to tractors the size of houses and computers that fit in your pocket and crotch rockets.

now i know correlation isnt necessarily causation but isnt it interesting that between the year 100,000 bc and 1 bc no one invented computers and tractors than as soon as adam smith published the wealth of nations BAM a couple of hundred years later and we have sky scrapers that are regularly obscured by clouds.

So what you're saying is capitalism is only capitalism until it becomes statism/communism/fascism.

Are you a physicist? A biologist? A psychologist? Can I come to you for tax or car mechanic advice?

Wealth can be wasted. Tomatoes can rot on the vines, machines can wear out and break, capital can be put into businesses and factories that produce nothing of value. If you trade 8 hours of your hard work for a paltry sandwich, you have given up a lot of wealth (time and labor) for little reward. If your labor involved digging a hole that you turned out to have dug in the wrong place, the person who paid you a sandwich gave up what little wealth that was for a bigger expense of now having to fill that hole back in.

I need to get welfare to apply for a fastfood job I need to get to pay for the credit card I need to get to qualify for the loan I need to take out to buy the ZING I need to react to this post.

Ideally, I suppose this all more or less works.
In reality, the government steps in and becomes a customer.

Ouch. Do you acknowledge the need for abject slavery, wasting of resources, and poverty way down the line in the global picture to allow for this wealth to be sustained?
Edit: History, like Imperialism? Colonialism? Fraudulent trade? The usury that sparked the Renaissance? Genocide over resources? Insane factory conditions?
I've lived under bridges. I have $0 to my name for over 4 years. Don't be mean, buddy, I get what you're saying. I just don't think you get where it comes from.