The problem of Capitalism

Yes, they do, and some are so successful they even see their sons become President of the United States like Joseph Kennedy.

 

Without reading further, I know I will be demolishing and humiliating you.

<yawn> I'm curious: exactly how do you prevent yourself from knowing the fact that chattel slavery MEANS that some people are other people's PROPERTY?

I'm not debating slavery. I'm pointing out that if you want to defend property rights, you have to account for the fact that slaves are in fact considered property.

It is not petty or dishonest in the least. I simply identified a case where reductio ad absurdum refutes the claim that property is always rightful. If you think just mentioning slavery gets me the moral high ground on the question of property, maybe you need to rethink your position on the subject.

Laws can say a lot of things, including that people can be property. They can also be changed by whatever gang of crooks, toadies, fools and charlatans happen to be sitting in a legislature somewhere. I thought we were talking about timeless principles that can't be changed. My bad.

That's just baldly false. If there is no basket, Adam does not have the use of a basket. If Ben then makes a basket and keeps it as his property, Adam has indisputably not been harmed: he is no worse off for Ben's ownership of the basket. By contrast, Adam is naturally at liberty to use all land, which has been there all along. If Ben then says he will attack Adam if Adam attempts to exercise his liberty to use WHAT WAS ALREADY THERE, then Adam has indisputably been harmed: he has been made worse off by Ben's appropriation of the land.

See how that works? Property in objects people create does not harm others. Property in things that were already there, ready to use, DOES harm others.

This fact is self-evident and indisputable, so I'm curious to see how you will prevent yourself from knowing it.

Refuted above. Property in the things people create does not make others worse off. Property in the gifts of nature does. This is self-evident and indisputable. What method will you use to sacrifice the integrity of your mind to rationalize property in gifts of nature?

It assumes no such thing. The possibility of using other land merely reduces the severity of the harm Ben's crime does to Adam, not the fact that he is committing it. And it is YOUR claim that is the logical fallacy, as already proved: if one advantageous land parcel can be appropriated as private property, leaving that much less for others, the repetition of that process will eventually leave none for the next comer.

<yawn> Try not to trot out all the usual fallacies, OK? There is a shortage of ADVANTAGEOUS land, as proved by its astronomical price.

The fact that there is vacant land available in Antarctica, the Sahara Desert, or Siberia does not alter the fact that Ben is harming Adam by forcibly stripping him of his liberty to use the good land right where he is.

Irrelevant. They are in disadvantageous locations, which is why no one wants them.

That is a bald falsehood. Ownership of land was obtained by forcible, violent conquest and dispossession of other potential users, not production of fixed improvements.

That didn't take long, did it? The landowner using the exact same "logic" to justify ownership of others' rights to liberty that slave owners used to justify their ownership of others' rights to liberty.

 

The real joke is when those who refuse to take responsibility for their own lives attempt to claim the high moral ground as if being a sh*t bum was a virtuous thing.

 

As you seem to have lost all grip on reality, I will not attempt to educate you any further. Enjoy your life of poverty, and I will enjoy mine of wealth.

 

You mean like a UBI, or welfare?

 

I suspect they go overboard with that moral high grounding due to guilt.

 

Because those are not things you are depriving me of, which I would otherwise have been at liberty to use. Land is.

See how that works?

No, I most certainly do not. It is nothing but a metaphor, and a misleading one.

Correct. It creates a product that IS NOT LAND.

No, it does not, unless those others wanted to use the resources before they were extracted. In that case, those who extract them owe compensation -- the market value of the opportunity -- to those they deprive of it. But there can be no valid argument based on reversing time or changing the past.

Wrong. Extraction means the resource qua resource NO LONGER EXISTS. It is now a product, not a resource, and there can indisputably be no right to a resource that does not exist. By contrast, the appropriated resource is still there; the appropriator simply purposes forcibly to deprive others of their liberty to use it.

I am happy to stipulate that secure, exclusive land tenure enables more productive use, just as I am happy to stipulate that peoples defeated in war are a useful source of labor to replace the casualties on the victorious side, and should consequently not be massacred just to stop them from seeking revenge. But just as the latter fact does not justify the forcible conversion of captives' rights to liberty into others' property, neither does the former fact justify conversion of everyone's rights to liberty into others' property. The old quick and dirty solutions to those problems -- slavery and landowning -- may have been the best we could do knowing what we knew then, but we now know better (more efficient as well as more moral) ways to solve those problems.

Property in the products of their labor. Not in the land. Farmers have since time immemorial worked just as productively on land they did not own. See the system of village commons that was customary in many parts of Europe before Roman times, and persisted in some places up until the modern era.

 

Yes.

No, it only takes off one constraint. Private banks' money creation would still impose the inflation constraint.

All you have to know is that private banks' money creation privilege enables them to extract wealth from the economy in the form of interest without contributing anything to wealth production in return. That will always be wrongful. It will always be a problem.

 

If you do not have a right to sustain your life without paying someone else for permission to access opportunity which they did not provide, then the right to life is meaningless.

 

Every statement in my post is true, which is why you can't refute any of them with facts and logic. Readers may note that is a consistent "feature" of your "contributions" here.

<yawn> We've been over this. I have a right to liberty whether or not you consider my right your property.

But if government declines to stop me, or decides that you haven't been repaying enough of the subsidy you are being given, you are the one who will be stopped. You hold what you consider your "property" at the sufferance of government. THAT is reality.

I've proved they are not only comparable, not only similar, but virtually equivalent, and you have offered no evidence to the contrary other than your denials.

 

Morality exists to reconcile individual with societal interests in the context of evolution. We have evolved our capacity for moral reason BECAUSE our ancestors' survival was best served by NOT just pursuing their own happiness, but by ensuring their community's survival.

Morality exists because the survival of the community -- not "others" -- is more important to the survival of each individual member's genes than the survival of that individual.

That's why we need government. But we need to make it serve our interests, and democratic accountability is how we do that. Got a better idea?

 

What an eloquent concession of defeat. Sorry, but you had never had a chance against me. I've been doing this for decades, have demolished all your "arguments" many times, and have humiliated much stronger opponents than you.

 

Nothing in your post is true. You do not have a right to the property someone else owns. You’ve never had such a right. If you try and take what someone else owns, you will be stopped. I do not need government to stop you. I can quote easily do that myself. Comparing owning land to owning a human is retarded.

 

total idiocy, money goes where profit is until high prices drive profits to $0. In my area you can buy all the property you want if you are willing to wait 25 years to break even. In Finance 101 you learn that asset classes earn the same return. You can open a supermarket with no capital required or a nuclear power plant with billions required and yet ROI will be the same!! See why we say liberaism is based in pure ignorance??

 

MMT recognises real resource availability relative to demand as the chief factor determining inflation (or deflation).

[Money does not have intrinsic value and is not a real resource in MMT, ie fiat money has an agreed value (within a system of government), whereas real resources (desired for enjoyment of life) including transformed resources (resources + labour + education) have intrinsic value.

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=43081&cpage=1

Here Bill Mitchell (an Australian originator of MMT, along with others in the US) has pointed to the astounding statistics re the parasitical derivatives trading industry; from the FIWO (Austrian Institute for Economic Research):

1. “The volume of financial transactions in the global economy is 73.5 times higher than nominal world GDP, in 1990 this ratio amounted to “only” 15.3. Spot transactions of stocks, bonds and foreign exchange have expanded roughly in tandem with nominal world GDP. Hence, the overall increase in financial trading is exclusively due to the spectacular boom of the derivatives markets …”

(Recall Warren Buffet's famous remark re "financial weapons of mass destruction").

So if the public sector (government) regulates this aspect of private sector banking, then fiscal policy can be freed from its current neoliberal fiscal constraints.

Actually, central banks everywhere are currently furiously trying to maintain growth - and failing - by monetary policy alone, as always. (See Trump openly abusing Powell recently...the latter is to be as feared as much as Xi Jinping...!.)

The next recession - already looming - will blow the neoliberal central banks out of the water, which is when MMT will finally become mainstream.

 

More from Bill Mitchell's article linked in my previous post (with the 2008 FIWO stats) :

<<2. “Futures and options trading on exchanges has expanded much stronger since 2000 than OTC transactions (the latter are the exclusive domain of professionals). In 2007, transaction volume of exchange-traded derivatives was 42.1 times higher than world GDP, the respective ratio of OTC transactions was 23.5% …”

In other words, most of the financial flows comprise wealth-shuffling speculation transactions which have nothing to do with the facilitation of trade in real goods and services across national boundaries.

This is the point that John Maynard Keynes understood well back in the 1930s. It was also the point of departure for Brooksley Born in her failed quest to regulate this growth before it turned nasty.

And turn nasty it did in 2008.>>

 

Hmmm. Government exists to protect my wallet, not pick it. There is no moral justification for the violation of an individual’s rights to ”life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; but the Declaration of Independence provides the moral justification for overthrowing those that do.

What kind of soul believes the needs of the many justifies a gun pointed at the head of the one needed by the many to ratify their needs? A corrupt one.

Ayn Rand: ”Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted.

This is the means of subordinating “might” to “right.” This is the American concept of “a government of laws and not of men.”--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/government.html

 

Whether or not they have equality of opportunity to achieve those rights? (Rights which are not inherent; rights arise from a moral sense in humans, as bringiton and gottzilla point out. Classical liberalism is wrong about "imprescriptible" rights).

By means of a financial transaction tax on the parasitic derivatives trading industry - which is many multiples of the value of real GDP.

No; they have to develop their own economy without relying so much on trade with the US

...encompassing capitalist production of goods

Actually, looking at Britain at the moment... and the level of political dysfunction in the western democracies (...the blind 'sovereigns' leading the blind 'sovereigns'...) many Chinese might be rather content, at least for the time being, with their one-party meritocracy (especially if they can reduce the incidence of corruption, which Jinping is trying to do).

Pull the other one...if that really is your 'credo', you would support an international rules-based system, which would mean Trump would no longer be able to flog arms - for a profit - to his ally the Saudis in order that they can slaughter children in Yemen (a proxy war against Iran, and countless other examples of madness resulting from the absence of an international rules based system).

Education should be free, consistent with students' abilities.

And the Red model states? My point is: middle class destruction is the consequence, ultimately, of neoliberal 'invisible hand' competitive market failure - especially evident since the 1980's - manifested in the 1st world "rust belt", and the destruction of Detroit.

No the problem is your disinterest in the reality of social disadvantage, and what to do about it. Nothing to do with "virtue signalling" - which is your escape from responsibility to ensure everyone has equal opportunity to access your precious rights.

….to promote the common welfare.....

Note: Rights only exist because humans, unlike animals, have a moral sense (nothing to do with "virtue signalling" as you perceive it)

Me...free of greed? (Perhaps I didn't make that point clear in that paragraph). I have certainly been at pains in many posts to point out that we are all subject to instinctive "unconscious greed", based in survival instincts honed over eons in a predatory (prehuman) world.

Whereas a moral sense - ie awareness of the needs of others - evolved as a mechanism best suited to ensure survival of the group, but the original instincts dedicated to survival of self remain, resulting in competitive violence….

It's amazing the conclusions you draw. Disgruntled Professors?

Addressed above. Rights exist for all, or for none.

Is that so...pass.

I will make this general observation about violence:
Violence from the Left tends to be reactive - in an attempt to gain access to necessary resources; whereas violence from the Right tends to be proactive, in an attempt to maintain control of (perceived) scarce resources.

Yes gladly; I especially like the way you have included everyone in that worthy endeavour (though it would be nice if you can rewrite "in support all of our rights" to make your meaning completely clear).

The state merely provides the required machinery/rules/infrastructure - required because we are all self-interested individuals - enabling "all of us to pursue our own dreams" aka "to promote th common welfare".

 

Ah...Starjet: still hiding from the reality - in all of us - of the potential for competitive violence (eg disputes over patents, intellectual property, etc) arising from unconscious/instinctive greed, and the need to regulate this reality... to enable universal access to life, liberty, security, and hence the pursuit of happiness according to one's own (legal) choices?

Rights exist for all or for none.

 

By definition??? No, the system does not require ownership of land; it just sets a value for the use. Perhaps, the point of land ownership needs to be addressed after the complaint of rights.

I am sorry, but what rights do you consider the liberty to use the land???

Since the rights of the individual are a construct from the afforded construct of rights the collective can grant??? You do realise that don’t you??? Or are you still foolish enough to think you have some inalienable right to life, liberty and blah, blah, that are granted and accepted by all???

OMG, You do have some foolish belief that the world owes a living. The fact is, wars have been fought for such foolishness. The issue of how Capitalism and land use comes down to who utilises it and who does not. While you sit in your insular consideration of land ownership, everybody else knows better.

To think that people must be compensated or the land is stolen comes from your idealistic belief that land ownership and usage is a right. IT is not, it becomes a product due entirely the need to survive. Capitalism cares nothing to land ownership or the usage, that is YOUR subjective matter. Let us point out the ideal of the apple and the tree, capitalism matters not who owns the tree or who eats the apples. Just as the tree doesn’t. BUT it does matter who cares for the tree and who picks the apples. You can complain that somebody hasn’t got the right to own the tree but you don’t have a leg to stand on to benefit from others work of weeding, fertilizing, watering and picking the apples.

LOL, no the people within the system empowers their greed, not capitalism. Capitalism grants NO legal powers.

As pointed out continuing to take from the system (which is what greedy people do by accumulation) the system slowly dies. That is because the system simply rewards the effort put it. Rewards come from within no some imaginary pot of gold. Since the system can only reward from what is put in, all things being equal the capitalist system curbs greed by prevention of hoarding wealth over the benefit of the group.

Thus, when the community decide there is an inherent right of anything, the only way to provide it is by corrupting the system. Such as your legal claims of righteousness of recompense for loss of ownership to the idealistic rights to claim usage.

You cannot have it both ways, either land ownership of not. Complaining the system is greedy while complaining the system has inherent rights is just ludicrous.

I think the issue you have is that you don’t understand the difference between government and capitalism. You seem to be hung up on some foolish ideal of rights and liberty. When you get over your incredible belief of how the world works, then maybe (just maybe) you will feel much better about accepting the will of your people and have the courage to stand against the tyranny of those who continue to model and change the system for their own desires… BUT I am guessing not.

 

LOL, just what is capitalist production of goods???

No, your foolish belief of human rights has been accounted down to your belief of moral imperative. it ignores the point that morals only exist where they are empowered.

 

Serving others is a personal endeavour that we all accept in varying degrees, if at all.

Serving All, however, has a different objective - and that objective is best described by the economic factor of Income Diversity. The higher the diversity, the more unfair is the market-economy. For the moment Income Diversity in the US is one of the worst of any developed country. See here:

What altruists with guns? Where?

That is your right (in red above). But I don't know of any altruists (Social Democrats) who would employ a gun to convince you of their point-of-view - and I live in a European country that has for the past 50 years been a Social Democracy (with many right-wing Presidents having been elected). The present president of France is a centrist who bends both ways, and is the first to do so. The Socialist party in France , often leading governments, is now just a fraction of its former self. But, the country remains a Social Democracy.

I can understand why you are afraid of guns. Only farmers do most of the countryside hunting in France, and one cannot even hold an automatic weapon in their hands here without committing an infraction of the law. All automatic and semi-automatic weapons ARE FORBIDDEN.

Which is only one reason why the Homicide Rate in Europe is a fraction of what it is in the US (and ditto that for the rest of Europe as well):


The other being that Europeans apparently have a higher innate-appreciation of the Value-of-life than do my fellow Yanks nowadays ... !

 

When are Americans going to understand that Socialism per se is dead and done with?

There is only one country left on earth where all the means of production are owned by the government. That's North Korea! Communist China is a totalitarian government, but it employs capitalism in order to spur production and obtain a quality of living standard that pleases most of the Chinese today. (The rampages in Hong Kong are by people - especially the young - who want very much to maintain their social-democracy based upon capitalism that they have known since the British delivered the colony to the Chinese government in July, 1997).

What has replaced Socialism in the historical timeline is called Social Democracy, defined as:

Why is the above sooooo difficult for some people on this forum to understand ... ?

 

I was hoping you would be able to 'translate' that admittedly clumsy sentence..so I will borrow Lafayette's more elegant phrasing - which has the same meaning:

<<"Communist China is a totalitarian government, but it employs capitalism in order to spur production and obtain a quality of living standard that pleases most of the Chinese today.">>

I'm listening....note that I concluded my post (#1269) to Starjet - our resident Randian - with this:

"Rights exist for all, or for none".

so I contend that your statement above unfairly characterise my stance on 'rights'.

I already know Rights don't exist in the natural world, as believed by (atheist) Paine, nor are they bestowed by 'God' - as posited by Locke - because the 'God' in the OT certainly did not bestow any such Rights on the unfortunate Amalek tribe, among other nations.

I agree with your statement:

ie, empowered by rule of law dedicated to the common welfare - a moral construct.

I see rule of law and the concept of rights, as 'emanating' from the human cortex - aware - brain (and agreed by the community under law), but since self-interested, individual (and tribal) survival instincts still 'rule the world', rights such as those fully outlined in the UNUDHR are as yet only partly realised, and certainly not by eveyone - in a world without an international rules based system.

[I'm not prepared to deny the existence of a creator God who exists before and after and beyond space-time of this universe....and perhaps the evolved human cortex brain - which enables free thought, and self (- and 'other'- ) awareness - is the organ by which we can dimly perceive this creator God. So in this sense Locke may have correctly located the 'endower' of rights, in God].

 

What is a legal entitlement? In capitalism there is never any “something for nothing”—that’s the premise of all collectivist societies—it’s always “something for something.”