Topic: Capitalism (continued from How do you deal with the thought about taxes) - page 6. (Read 12620 times)

Are you splitting hairs on definitions again? Are rights and crimes things only defined by governments on paper in your world view? Ok, fine. Replace "crime" with "unjust deeds" in every one of my statements.


But you are. You are ascribing situations and examples to capitalism, which themselves have nothing to do with capitalism, other than just existing along-side it. "Did you know tat there are murders that happen within socialist communes? That obviously means that communes lead to murder."


Yes we can. If by "inherit" you mean "given, and assume it's ours, without knowing any better." If no one comes to claim it, then it's technically abandoned property. If someone does come to claim it, we have to give it up. You obviously have never bought a house, but when people buy houses, they have to pay for something called a Title Insurance, which is insurance specifically against a situation where someone shows up and claims that the house you bought from someone else wasn't actually someone else's to sell. What happened in Americas was tragic, though, but, again, theft and collonialism isn't what capitalism is about.


Is it "violence" if I tell my neighbor that the land I own is my property, he tells me that the land he owns is his property, and we agree to respect each other's property to avoid any annoyances or conflicts? Isn't agreeing to respect each other's property "peace?"


Your opinion is that the tomato garden I am growing is "commonly owned." My opinion is that the land, and the tomatoes that I grew on it, are owned by me. If we both agreed to collectively own the land, and both contributed to growing tomatoes on it, we wouldn't have a problem, but you coming in and taking he tomatoes I spent time and labor on, just because in your opinion they are "commonly owned," would lead to problems. So, in regards to those who recognize that all resources re commonly owned, I think they will run into some problems and violence along the way, since they would rightfully be considered thieves and parasites. Better?


You obviously misunderstood my meaning of "responsible." By "responsible" I mean "I own this beautiful garden, with its big red tomatoes" and thus is it in my interest to make sure it stays beautiful and the tomatoes continue to grow. I am "responsible" for that garden. If the garden was "commonly owned," then I have no responsibility for maintaining the garden. I can just come in, take the tomatoes, and leave garbage behind. You are not responsible, either. No one is. And sure, we could all feel responsible for maintaining it, but it will only take one asshole in the group to take a bunch of tomatoes ad carelessly leave garbage, before everyone else starts to feel that it's not their problem either. This is how Soviet farming worked.



And so what if the were? What does theft have to do with trade?



Explain the process of how that actually happens.

They're no capitalist? Don't the best hunters get the most praise, the best mothers get the most help, and the best medicine men get the more reverence? Or do they all share everything equally, including fruits of labor and status in the community, regardless of how much effort they put into supporting the community? I don't know, so you'll have to tell me. As for 'horrible conditions,' what is the life span, disease rate, level of hardship and quality of life in those communities?

Perhaps we should stop arguing about Capitalism, or supposedly specifically defined terms that we apparently have differing definitions of, and start arguing about the concepts by actually describing what they do.

So, I am for people being able to claim that they own something when they make things from items they have traded for or created, for being able to trade anything with anyone without having some third party sticking their nose into the trade, and for being able to compete against other people who own or do things without anyone else setting the rules but the people who are trading. Who's with me?

If only...
Private ownership attempts to reconcile personal posessions with the commons, and does so in a linear and oligarchical way. Its rather a rejection of chaos.

Hi.

Those born without capital are as a rule kept that way by capitalists.

All the time? Seriously?


A bit to go still, huh...
Who picks up the slack? Africa?
An increase in affluence is a bad thing, it increases gentrification, obliterates culture, wastes people's lives on working for a boss, and the list goes on. A fully employed world is a very bad thing.

A state - free Capitalist loses his stockpile.
Do Capitalists not attempt to centralize resources limitlessly?

Moonshadow said matriarchies.
Again.

Can't have crime without the state.

I'm not the one attempting to redefine capitalism.

Can we not inherit stolen land and goods? You know, like in the case of the Americas?

Again, without violent coersion, "property" reverts back into its natural state.

You wanna rephrase that so it makes some sense maybe?

"Responsible" lol

Hey! Gimmie back my argument!
Glad you're only talking about the Forests/ Land/ Oil/ Minerals/ Time That wasNEVER stolen from ANYONE.
Stay tuned for part 2.

Yes, you could.  Start by not wording your opinons as facts. Don't make statements in a vacuum.


Sadly, I'm not surprised.


Yes, you could say that.  Families are communal by definition, and by nature.  The problems only arise when the well intended try to apply the communal elements of a family beyond Dunbar's Number.  It can't work only because it's simply not scalable.  Capitalism may appear harsh from a certain perspecitive, but it's both sustainable and scalable.  The assertion that it requires some degree of slavery or government force to function is false, and provablely so.  The sad fact is that, yes, slavery has historicly been found coincincidntal to capitalsim. It's also been found coincidental to just about every other known form of governance, including those matriachies that certain posters seem so fond of.  Corrolation is not causation.


It's a balance of motivations, however.  You can look at trade as an advesarial relationship (a conflict) if you like.  That's not a completely unsupportable position.   However, trade is almost always more profitable for both parties when both parties benefit, because voluntary exchange is less costly than war.  In the cases that voluntary exchange is not mutually beneficial, such exchanges cannot (by reason) be voluntary.  That's conflict, war, theft, and force.  Those are the halmarks of governments.  Corporations cannot fight wars because they don't hold monopolies on force, their governments do.  Would corporations wage wars if governments did not exist or were too weak to prevent it?  I don't know, maybe they would.  The East India Company was known to function in such a manner in far flung corners of the British Empire.  Still, corporations are not naturallly occuring "corporate' structures; as they all require the support of some government to even exist.  I question whether or not corporations, as we know them, could even exist in the absence of supporting governments.

You simply refuse to pay attention. Here:

Can i have been any clearer?


You totally lost me.


So, you're saying that your model societies are communistic?  That's a refreshing change   Let's try that, then?


I agree that you own yourself if it maximises my profit.  If it doesn't, i agree that i own you.  In other words, you're right, trade, by definition, is not peaceful but aggressive -- otherwise it's called gift-giving.  I want to get the most, you want to give the least:  A recipe for aggression.


This is another paragraph's worth -- have to run out for a few, brb.

Perhaps you could avoid that by not stating your personal opinions (the world is a 2 year old, all borked) as an objective observation or fact.  It's not, there are many people that are quite capable of managing themselves (i.e. 'adults' in your worldview) that do not feel the need to intervene with the (follwoing through with your analogy) childish tantrums of governments or societies at large.  I don't consider those 'tantrums' to be so much a flaw of societies, but the failed experiments not yet permitted to follow through with a natural ending.  If the whole of Europe devolves (again) into a roiling toddler fight, the adults will be those who choose to stay out of the way as best as possible.  The Roma have a culture that is at least as old as the rest of Europe and isolated from the rest of Europe, and doesn't suffer from the cultural connections to particular parcels of land.  The Roma don't have national loyalties, don't fight for nations, and don't care what happens to most of Europe.  Whatever happens to Europe (Germany, France, Italy, whatever), they'll still be Roma.  Whatever happens to the United States, there will still be Anabaptists; and again, they don't much care what happens to the rest of us either.  They may or may not be the 'adults' in the room, that remains to be seen; but nor are they among the 2 year olds.

A further irony, is that both of those cultures deal with the greater world on capitalistic terms, and among themselves on  particularly communistic terms.  But of course, I don't trade with my own children either; I trade with those beyond my family unit.  Capitalism is how soverigns deal with each other in peace; they make agreements about borders and property, etc.  If you don't agree that you own yourself, and that I own myself; then we cannot trade on peaceful terms.  If you do agree that I own myself, you must also agree that I own the fruits of my labors; and therefore have the right to tarde those fruits under my own terms, or otherwise rent out my labors, as I alone see fit.  If we can agree on this simple principle, then capitalism is the only economic system that can arise from that on any significant scale.  No other form of economy can naturally or voluntarily grow beyond Dunbar's Number.  Therefore the only form of peaceful anarcy that could ever exist is an Ancap society.

wow, some very interesting views . . .

I go heavy on the "private ownership of the means of production" & "maximising profit as the motivator."  I try to limit my arguments to those two as definitive of capitalism, just so i don't get sloppy.  The feudal lord is a "natural person" (thanks, DeatAndTaxes -- got that from one of your posts), and he owns the land (means of production), so i think i can squeeze through that.


Probably, though today we have some new shananigans.

I'm no expert but couldn't Feudal Serfdom be more similar to communal autocracy than to capitalism? (The general population owns nothing and works for the central planning authority who holds the monopoly on the right to violence within the geography).

The point I was looking to make was that there is a vast slushiness in the terms which is not helping my understanding of what folks are hoping to discuss here.  It seemed to start out on reconciling the notion of capitalism with the notion of taxes, and veered widely.

I suppose the taxation regime in feudalism had a great deal of coercion involved, and probably more in some than in others.

Depends on what you mean by merit.  I was born into a whole bunch of good stuff.  Do i merit more than the guy who was born in a trailer?  Just so you know, i never really had to try to get by -- things came easy, so there was no need.  The trailer-trash guy?  He worked damn hard, but he ain't that bright & he went to a shitty school & straight to work at 7/11.  


The richest tend not to have been born that way?  Now, please, go cherry-pick a few examples for us -- that always makes a good case.  Charities?  After i rob you & yours of everything, i'll make sure to donate my fabulous art collection to some museum.  You'll get to see it when you get laid off from work, 'coz i'll make sure to close the museum on the weekends.

Edit:  I'll be sure to leave most of my money to charity, leaving my children just enough money to be unspendable in 5 lifetimes

As if!  The only thing that makes me better (in my own eyes) than the idiots with their hands on the reins is knowing that they're idiots, that i too am an idiot & should never be trusted with any sort of pony tack & see the whole ordeal of reining as distasteful & doomed to failure.  This doesn't affect knowing that what we have here is a dumb two-year-old.  Now stop making me out to be a power-hungry tyrant -- not interested.  


Edit: whoops, didn't see that -  will update in a min.
Edit2:  Hate it when this stuff happens.  I point out that something's fundamentally borked, and people instantly assume that i want to fix it, that i'll fix it the wrong way, & act like i've already offered & they've refused.  No, ffs!  I don't want to fix it, i don't know how to fix it, & i certainly never made any offers.  It's borked nonetheless.

I'm not sure if you find that absurd, but think back to serfdom (commonly considered a form of slavery, just hit wikip & the wikipedophiles seem to agree).  What was it if not renting the chunk of land from your feudal lord in a fair & mutually beneficial exchange?  No like?  Where's that entrepreneurial spirit?!  Pull yourself up by your bootstraps & market your vast skills elsewhere!  

Wow.  You make it sound like the whole of society woudl self destruct without the 'adults' around to make us eat our broccoli, and stop smoking, and recycle, and don't get the Big Gulp.  Who the hell do you think you are?  Do you think that you are better suited to decide for me or my children?  Do you think you have the right to tell me I shouldn't eat cake?  Everything in moderateration isn't unhealthy, and chocolate is good for human beings.

Statist mentality in a nutshell.  There is no greater evil that can ever be done by men to men, but by those who belieive they are doing so for the greater good.

I mostly agree with you -- there's enough guilt by association to go around.  Capitalism = fat bankers starving innocent children, communism = Stalinist Soviet Russia & gulags, Christianity = self-righteous hypocritical church ladies.  Happens.  I have no problem with claims that capitalism is more than a successful economic system (in the strict sense, as an organism that endures & multiplies is successful), more than just "is"  -- that it is also somehow better because it holds a higher moral ground.  That it is fairer, more "according to nature, logic & all things good." 

I probably didn't make some things clear:  I believe that capitalism, as we know it now and as we know it in the past, is what mankind degenerates to when unshackled -- in a way it *is* the natural state of man, though not a pretty one.  Laissez-Faire capitalism is the two-year-old left to his own devices, stuffing himself with delicious caek until he pukes, and then adults have to pick up the reins & make him wash & eat his broccoli -- that's capitalism as we have it now.  The two-year-old is grumpy, he hates broccoli & the adults (his ego, whatever works) are miserable 'coz disciplining a brat ain't fun, and pointless, too -- he's never growing up, and as soon as they leave it's back to the caek, it's delicious he must eat it.  This only hints at the rest of the problems.
What i'm saying in too many words is capitalism *necessitates* the oppressive regimes you want to dissociate it from.  I didn't try for a clear argument or a irrefutable, logical derivation, but simply a vague sense of what i'm talking about when i lump slavery & capitalism together.

The unsustainable nature seems more of a feature than a bug.  Shouldn't a good economic system should foster socioeconomic mobility (rich becoming poorer, poor becoming richer) based on merit?  This feature has degraded significantly in the USA since the broad adoption of state socialism over the last hundred years, but even still, the richest tend to not have been born that way.  They have famously tended to give the bulk of their wealth to charities rather than to their children.

For what it is worth, there is also some disagreement on the tern "slavery".
Some here are using it inclusively to also cover "entry level employees".