Why is Capitalism seen as a system of oppression?

It confers real power to command others' labor.

No. I propose taking it from those who have acquired it unjustly, by evil means, and giving it to those who have worked for it and earned it by commensurate contributions to production, but had it stolen from them through legal means and given to rich, greedy, evil, privileged, parasitic scum.

Not what you falsely claimed was intended, no. What I actually said, above.

 

Nope. False on both counts. Capitalism is not fully vountary because it forcibly removes people's rights to liberty through forcible appropriation as private property of the natural resources people need to survive. And Hong Kong proves that the geoist system -- private property in products of private labor, public trust administration of natural resources -- is unambiguously superior to capitalism in its ability to foster growth and prosperity.

 

As it is indisputable fact, if anyone did take issue with it, they would just inevitably lie.

Land is different from capital. When someone owns capital, it does not abrogate anyone else's rights. When someone owns land, it does.

 

It's a multi barbed subject but, it certainly IS oppression. More simply for the sake of more and at any cost to whomever is crapitalism gone wrong in my opinion, and it needs to be abandoned ASAP.

 

Yep. That is correct.

 

If you agree to work for a certain amount, that's what you deserve... How you can apply some moral valuations to that is beyond me...

 

Bill Gates might disagree, seems he did ok after the 60's... There are plenty of others, but I understand that won't fit your narrative...

 

My reply is that you should do some reading about the geolibertarian perspective on this issue.
Basically, it submits that while man does not have a right to the fruit of another man's labor, man does have some right to the natural endowments of God, the gifts that no man created of his own labor.

 

I don't know how many times I have to point out that the USA and UK have the lowest rates of social mobility in the Western world. They are the bottom of the barrel in the thing most important to a society. Yes, sure Bill Gates mades it, whoopty-do, well done Bill (seriously, well done), but the STATSTICS tell us how unlikely it is for a person to follow in his footsteps.

 

I disagree, the bigger problem is that too many products have become standardized and efficient enough. Every year there is less room for innovation and meaningful improvement. The 80's and 90's were full of upward mobility due to the massive advancements in computers then the internet. It was an untapped market and innovation thrived. It goes in cycles, but those cycles have demanded higher and higher skill levels than the ones that came before them...

 

If that was to blame, then all Western countries would have similar problems. But they do not. The problem is far more complex and our (UK and USA) levels of social mobility is lowering as time passes.

 

Main Entry:3 capital
Function:noun
Etymology:French or Italian; French, from Italian capitale, from capitale, adjective, chief, principal, from Latin capitalis
Date:circa 1639: “1 a (1) : a stock of accumulated goods especially at a specified time and in contrast to income received during a specified period; also : the value of these accumulated goods (2) : accumulated goods devoted to the production of other goods (3) : accumulated possessions calculated to bring in income b (1) : net worth (2) : CAPITAL STOCK c : persons holding capital d : ADVANTAGE, GAIN *make capital of the situation*”

Jefferson and Paine were not only referring to land but property, which in the nature of things includes all capital assets or the stock of accumulated goods; everything you can put in your hand and call yours is property, whether it be dirt, your wallet, or your Artificially Intelligent Robot Principle Means of Production. When said stock is able due to accumulated efficiency passed down without death taxes to manufacture at such low cost such that no labor could compete we call that advantage and GAIN. And if said net worth is not taxed progressively to offset the same benefits acquired by the Landed Estate aristocracy that Jefferson was referring to, then the game lands of the aristocracy that Jefferson’s progressive taxes would have freed up for farming is still analogous to the greater advantage of the capital assets of the Artificially Intelligent Robot Principle Means of Production no amount of peasant labor can match. With the Artificially Intelligent Robot Principle Means of Production doing everything, and being passed down without death taxes through what Paine called the “unnatural law of primogeniture,” and being untaxed progressively or taxed flatly so as to make the robot’s greater ability unequal to the human, then the human is in fact oppressed. Equal land distribution is meaningless if one farm is tilled by human hands and one is tilled by the aristocracy's capital of Artificially Intelligent Robot Principle Means of Production producing to the point that the human is subsistence farming and unable to buy a pair of shoes.

 

1. If one participates in the market system one must wish to do so. One's need is not relevant to this, nor is there a way to get around this in the Georgist system, because someone must choose to allocate a scarce means of production, and the natural factors are no less scarce, therefore one it is still involuntary unless everyone reaches a consensus on the issue. If they cannot then true community ownership is impossible. The system of private property within a capitalist system is voluntary.

2. Hong Kong is hardly a case of Geoism. It does have a land value taxes but they aren't very high as far as I can tell.

3. The Georgist system, if ever fully implemented, would dilute the price structure and lead to miscalculation as entrepreneurs flee from land. It would be far easier just to nationalize land, with equally negative results. Even if there was no negative effect to taxing the full value of land, there would still be the indirect effect of giving the government additional funds, which is more destructive then any private use that it could be put to

 

Ownership of land or property (capital) is not oppressive in and of itself; it is only when the taxes are not fair does one have advantage over another.

Capitalism or land ownership is not oppressive, it is only unfair taxes that create inequity and can sustain aristocracy to the oppression of those without inherited capital or equal ability.

Say for instance one land owner is appraised at fair market value and another at reconstruction costs, like say the homeowner’s taxes went up 20% under Zig Zag Zell and the identical property next door because it had a store (which was built on the same floor plan as the house, and later expanded more than the private residence) was paying less in property taxes due to appraisal at reconstruction costs which were lower. So you could wind up with the residence paying more than the business (with larger improvement) for the exact same acreage; if the business was then zoned residential it would pay more.

If a business has friends in high places (willing to commit a felony) and though actions reduces the neighbor’s fair market value, and the residence cannot have the same perks of zoning as the business, to like say build a fence as high as the business could, because the business has a variance not to build a buffer or is protected from obeying the law the business has advantage and oppression exists You might have a young Republican Zoning Board member saying, “If I was you I would have taken the law into my own hands,” when he voted in my favor with the only black to allow me to build a fence higher than four feet, and the minutes of meeting show nothing of the evidence of felony committed by the County Attorney and county Marshalls…, and the newspaper does not print it because the owners of the paper’s editor said they were afraid of retaliation. Capitalism had nothing to do with the criminal acts of oppression or all the gray headed old Southern Democrats on the Zoning Board, that the County Attorney pointed me out to before I was the last one to be heard, turning me down such that only the Newspaper woman was the only one in the room beside the criminals and the Republican and the Negro.

A corporation could own 600 acres and it be appraised at $650 per acre, and under Zig Zag Zell a man’s property taxes on 20 acres of pasture could increase 250% due to location meaning that one acre would have taxes so high that the highest and best use is greater than using the pasture for cows simply because of location. So because some guy is content to raise cattle but the corporation sees the highest and best use is Doctors and truckers like CNN’s Bernita having fancy houses bordering his land, and the spawn of the rich want a mall nearby, he is oppressed into giving up his dream of milking cows where it has been done for a hundred years.

Capitalism has nothing whatsoever to do with the price of the milkman’s acre costing him more due to a mall next door, nor does it have anything whatsoever with my not being able to build and fence higher than four feet to shield oneself from a favorite crook’s business.

I moved to another state. Now I am told I cannot cut down my palm trees but must pick up the palm fronds that land on a business’s property; twice I have been told to fix the business man’s fence, and twice had to tell code enforcement I cannot build a fence higher than four feet; one of the line of palm trees on the property line I am forbidden to cut down has the remains of the buffer fence the business no longer has to maintain.

Capitalism has nothing whatsoever to do with the missing fence, the lower taxes of the business, or code enforcement refusing to allow me to build a fence higher than four feet in one county and making me maintain a buffer with commercial concerns in another. Land ownership is not oppression, only sometimes people who claim to be capitalists are oppressors.

 

Individual business endeavors aimed at maximizing profit and competing more effectively than those with whom one comes into conflicts of interest with beget winners and losers in any given arena - each of these arenas having its own social hierarchy, rules governing competition, and prizes of capital to capture. Capital is desirable because its the means by which one can either produce or exert the necessary influence over others to procure the things one needs and wants in life. Folks who have a lot of capital and know how to wisely apply it will generally have more freedom and power than those who do not. The subsequent emergence of social classes based on how much of what kinds of capital people possess or have otherwise captured influence over via competitive successes isn't completely fair because, all else being equal, a family with a lot of capital will have better tools at their disposal relative to a family with less capital to raise their children in a better home environment in a better neighborhood with better schools, better prospects for healthy social lives, better access to nutritious foods, better access to better health care, and so on.

That is to say, the circumstances of your birth matter more than willingness to work productively 40 hr/wk in influencing how much freedom you get to have in life. Someone poor needs to compete much better than someone in the middle classes, and someone rich need not compete so vigorously as someone in the middle classes, to improve their living conditions and advance their respective interests. Rags-to-riches stories are the exception - not the norm - for workers.

There is enough social mobility in spite of this for someone disadvantaged to ascend to a higher socioeconomic class provided they by coincidence happen to be in the right place at the right time to seize uncommonly good opportunities or work substantially harder and smarter than relatively well-off rivals in competition, yet as a general rule most children are likely to achieve an overall position in the class hierarchy similar to that of their parents if they are not exceptionally great or awful competitors. People in different classes can generally expect to have different prospects in life when it comes to material standards of living, stress - especially during times of personal hardship or uncertainty, both educational and work-related opportunities, developing and then maintaining satisfying relationships with other people, and otherwise going about their day-to-day efforts to fulfill all of their needs.

Minority groups are at a disadvantage in terms of their possession of capital relative to folks in the majority due to their families' relatively recent arrivals from poorer countries and/or the fact their ancestors were (or they themselves still are) discriminated against by people in the dominant social group. Capitalism is in that sense "oppressive" because instead of starting out on a level playing field with everyone else, folks in many different minority groups have to start out with (and for generations continue to shoulder) a competitive disadvantage they did nothing to earn, and will consequently be less likely to as effectively and satisfactorily fulfill their needs in life - or be free to pursue happiness - than folks in the majority even if they put in just as much effort as everyone else to improve their own lots in life. Most people either propose reforms for trying to make capitalism fairer than it would be if we left it all alone, or favor an alternative system.

 

"Agree to work" under what circumstances? A slave "agrees" to work rather than be whipped. The landless "agree" to work rather than continue to be deprived of the opportunity to sustain their own lives, and thus starved to death.

 

But land is in fact different from capital, whether Jefferson and Paine understood that fully or not. And Paine certainly did understand it:

"It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property." -- Agrarian Justice

What does that even mean?

There is no production without labor. Capital just makes labor more productive.

Nope. The aristocrat's ownership of the game lands FORCIBLY DEPRIVES THE WORKER of his opportunity to use those lands, an opportunity he would otherwise have enjoyed. Your nutso robot thingy -- which does not exist, and may never exist -- does not.

Nope. If the man's right to liberty is intact, he may not be able to compete with your nutso robot thingy, but HE CAN STILL SURVIVE BY HIS OWN LABOR. If the land is privately owned, he can't.

Wrong again. If his right to use land is intact, he can make his own shoes, as his remote forebears did. If his right to use land has been removed by private landowning, he can't. He has no way to access the raw materials or opportunity, or even a place to work.

 

Rather than be forcibly starved to death, you mean....?

I predict that you will now be spewing a bunch of stupid, dishonest garbage in an attempt to rationalize privilege, greed, and injustice.

Refuted above.

The notion that one's need is not relevant to the voluntariness of one's participation in the market is a good example of stupid and dishonest garbage, as I prophesied above.

I'm not talking about the "Georgist" system but a geoist system that recognizes the equal individual right to liberty. Henry George missed the fact that his land tax proposal did not actually restore people's rights to liberty, as they would still have had to pay the full market rent for access to useful and desirable land. The geoist system recognizes that each individual must have free access to enough land for a normal person to sustain himself, through a universal individual exemption from the requirement to pay land rent to the community (or, second best, through distribution of an equivalent citizens' dividend paid out of such rents).

Nope. Each individual can (and should) have the liberty to allocate their own equal share of the available scarce resources. This is roughly analogous to the traditional Celtic system of village commons, wherein each household had a temporary right to exclusive use of a portion of the village lands, but with the added benefits of more efficient allocation, more capital investment, and more investment in public services and infrastructure due to recovery of the publicly created rent for public purposes and benefit.

Wrong again. But "community ownership" of land is not necessary any more than it is for the earth's atmosphere, or the sun. As long as each individual's equal liberty right to use the resource is recognized, it can remain unowned, but with its use administered in trust by the community to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to use it.

Flat false. It is logically impossible for a system of private property in land to be voluntary.

HK is by definition a case of geoism: products of labor are privately owned there, while land is publicly owned.

Stupid, meaningless, and dishonest garbage.

Wrong again. It is obviously and indisputably the current system of landowner privilege that leads to miscalculation, as the sub-prime mortgage crisis proved so very conclusively.

Wrong again. Entrepreneurs would not flee from land any more than they do from renting land from private owners now, because entrepreneurs do not seek to profit from idly owning land. Only parasites do. Enrepreneurs seek to profit by PRODUCTIVELY USING land, and would no more flee that opportunity if they were paying the rent to the community than they do now, when they pay the exact same amount to private landowners. Indeed, the reduction and elimination of other taxes would ATTRACT entrepreneurs to the land taxing jurisdiction.

The results of recovering publicly created land rent for public purposes and benefit would be enormously positive, as they have been everywhere it has ever been tried.

LOL! Back to stupid, dishonest garbage, I see....

Do you really imagine that there is anyone reading this who is so stupid, they don't know that Slovenia is incomparably better than Somalia? Among democratic countries, there is a strong direct correlation between the government share of GDP and the quality of life. You just have to refuse to know such facts, and spew stupid, dishonest garbage in order to keep yourself ignorant of them.

 

No. I have already proved to you that ownership of land is inherently oppressive, while ownership of products of labor (capital) is not. Refusal to know that fact is the fundamental error shared by socialists and capitalists.

Wrong. Private land ownership (and therefore capitalism) is inherently oppressive because it forcibly deprives people of their rights to liberty without just (or usually any) compensation.

I have no idea what point you erroneously imagine you were making, or how you imagine your example relates to the issue.

Huh? The fact that a corrupt capitalist system is more oppressive than an honest one is not an argument that an honest one is not oppressive.

The point is that there would still be oppression under capitalism WITHOUT the corrupt proceeding you appear to be protesting.

If the free market declines to make your dream come true, that is not oppression.

Well, it did make both places private property.

Uh, whatever...

I guess you need to get over the idea that you can rightly own land.

Wrong. Capitalism is what persuaded you of the false notion that you can rightly own land.

Land ownership is definitely oppression, as I have already proved. The only difference between owning a slave and owning land is that when you own a slave, you remove all of one person's rights, while when you own land, you remove one of all people's rights.

 

You refuted nothing, you merely made an assertion. You need to learn the difference between merely claiming something and providing a compelling chain of reasoning as to why it is wrong. You have not done so in this case. If I do not force you to do something within an interaction it is voluntary. You are not entitled to resources by your mere existence. Merely because natural resources come from nature does not give one the right to confiscate it from others. Man's ability to cooperate for mutual self interest is something to be valued, but merely saying that someone needs something regardless of their actual ability or willingness to contribute to society is incredibly base.

Is this, in full, the system that you advocate? I didn't mean to inaccurately label you as a Georgist. As for your first suggestion (starting at the bolded portion), land is an important price, just like wage rates and the price of capital. They exist for a reason. If land prices didn't need to be paid then they wouldn't be a part of market calculation, but they are because it reflects the opportunity cost of land, which is what a price does. At least the Georgist system advocates nationalization of land rent (which is the same as your second suggestion), but getting rid of land rents would drastically distort land allocation, unless they were merely implemented in such a way that people could somehow implement rent in some other way (in a similar way that that some online companies can get around taxes by decreasing the price of a good and increasing the price of shipping).

I find this sentence to be incoherent. The sun's rays cannot be owned because its allocation to someone cannot be prohibited and there is a more than ample supply whenever it is shining. Similarly oxygen cannot be owned because it isn't a condition of economic action under most situations, it is plentiful. What does the "the securing and reconciliation of equal rights" entail?

1. Why?

2. But owning private goods is voluntary? Why

Can you give me a source that discusses this in detail? I can't find anything.

How so? How so? How So? Each of your claims is without reasoning to back it.

Just because I support private ownership of land does not mean that I support the current system, which does lead to miscalculation, although it was chance as much as anything else that lead to the distortion being in housing. It's not that it's land, but rather that housing has a lot of special qualities about it.

I'm talking about entrepreneurs who speculate in land ownership and its future value, who serve the same service of properly, swiftly, and efficiently allocating a service to its most productive use.

How can government spending be positive?

..

Why is it dishonest? Why is it stupid? Why is it garbage? Your claims are claims, not a substantive reasons

... You reference Hong Kong as an example of an effective and prosperous system, and Hong Kong probably has the lowest portion of government spending to GDP of almost any developed nation and it is among the most prosperous nations on earth. I find this blatant contradiction in your reasoning very odd. Furthermore, just because nations become more statist doesn't mean that it causes modernization, indeed the reverse is true. As Schumpeter points out, more socialistic rhetoric is generally more popular than capitalistic rhetoric, and the very system that capitalism creates is destructive to itself, not because of its failings, but because of how successful the system truly is.

I am not unaware that many of the most prosperous nations in the world today have the highest standards of living, but many of those with the highest: Romania, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Etc. Aren't exactly nice places to be. There are more factors than just government spending, but I see no reason to believe that it is associated with higher growth and prosperity. Due to the inherent ownership incentives of government, and the effective incentives of democracy, government spending is likely to be wasteful and allocated poorly. This is an inherent side effect of democracy, where voters have little incentive to be educated on issues (rationally irrational), and the fact that politicians don't own resources, and therefore have no need to allocate them to their most productive purposes. The government lacks the very incentives that make the private systems work.

Calling someone else's work dishonest garbage is merely making an assertion, particularly when you don't give any reason why. You're not convincing anyone that the other person is unintelligent or wrong, you just look like you're arrogant and that you don't have anything substantive to say. Providing limited reasoning and a bunch of assertions is not impressive, nor does it make you appear at all reasonable.

 

Republicans do not want to abolish all regulation. GW Bush enacted more regulation than any other president besides Obama.

Libertarians want to abolish all regulation.

 

True. Republicans in Virginia think that forcing vaginal probes into women seeking abortion is a fantastic idea. In fact, they even insist you pay for it.

 

People dont starve to death in the US. And most people wouldnt know the first thing about sustaining their life with a plot of land. This isnt the 1700s

 

Only because government rescues them (at enormous taxpayer expense) from landowners' greed. Without that massive government intervention, there would be mass starvation, as there is in every country where private capitalistic landowning is well established, but government does NOT rescue the victims through welfare, minimum wages, publicly funded health care, labor standards laws, etc.

You're just throwing out red herrings. A plot of land -- i.e., a suitable location to live at -- gives people access to economic opportunity. In the 1700s, that meant a few acres for subsistence farming because that was what the economy was all about, and people knew how to do it because they grew up doing it. Nowadays the economy is all about services and industry, and people grow up in an environment where they see the burger servers at McDonalds, the shelf stockers at Walmart, etc. and they pretty much know how to do those things or can be trained to do them in a few minutes. The people who knew how to make a living farming in the 1700s mostly wouldn't have a clue how to make a living stocking shelves at Walmart or serving burgers at Mickey D's -- for one thing, they typically couldn't read; for another, they had no clue about keeping themselves clean, maintaining standards of hygiene and sanitation, etc. that everyone these days grows up knowing about, just as people in the 1700s grew up knowing how to cut hay, winnow grain, etc.

 

False. I identified a fact that proved your claim false: that contrary to your claim, one's mere participation in the market is not evidence that said participation is voluntary. That constitutes a refutation.

No, dumpling, you do.

Yes, I have. YOU need to learn the difference between disputing facts and merely denying them.

False. That is just the lie that apologists for capitalism always have to resort to. Observe:

A man stumbles into an oasis in the desert, dying of thirst. Under the capitalist system, the oasis happens to have been appropriated as private property by a greedy parasite. The parasite does not permit the dying man to drink from the natural spring that waters the oasis because he considers it is his "private property." However, another man -- call him an "entrepreneur" -- has paid the proprietor for the water concession, and is selling spring water for $1K/L.

Evil, lying apologists for capitalist greed, privilege and oppression claim that when the dying man forks over the $1K to the entrepreneur for a liter of water to drink, that is a voluntary transaction because the water seller did not use force on him. Evil, lying apologists for capitalist greed, privilege and oppression simply choose not to know the fact that the dying man's right to liberty has been forcibly removed by the greedy, parasitic landowner, and that this forcible removal of his liberty right makes his transaction with the entrepreneur anything but voluntary, to the entrepreneur's profit.

Yes, I am, because the opportunity to access and use natural resources is liberty, and I AM entitled to liberty by my mere existence.

Exactly, thus refuting your claim that they can rightly be confiscated as private property from the others who would otherwise be at liberty to use them. Proving me right and you wrong. Nicely done.

Class dismissed.

People need access to natural resources before they CAN contribute to society. That's a little detail that, in their incredible baseness, evil, lying apologists for capitalist greed, privilege and oppression always seem somehow to miss.

?? Of course not. It's just a couple of lines of text. The full system is however BASED ON and developed from the simple principle of equal human rights to life, liberty and property in the fruits of one's labor. These rights imply that all have a right to access and use enough natural resources for a normal person to sustain himself, and that those who deprive their fellows of more than that owe just compensation to the community of those whom they deprive.

No problemo. It's a common enough error.

The price would still need to be paid, but each person would simply have, in effect, a voucher good for a certain amount of that price. This does not interfere with the market setting prices of land any more than food stamps interfere with the market setting prices of food -- i.e., to some derisory extent.

I don't propose doing away with rents, just ensuring that each person has a right to use a modest amount of the available advantageous land without having to pay for it. Similarly, food stamps don't do away with food prices, but merely enable their recipients to get enough food to live on for free.

Of course it can: just pass a law making it into someone else's property, same as land's allocation to someone is prohibited.

While sunlight is not naturally scarce, it can be MADE scarce by law, same as patent and copyright law make scarce what is naturally abundant and freely available.

But it could in theory be made scarce. Consider a man who invents a machine that compresses atmospheric air very cheaply. He runs his machine until the air gets so thin that people have to pay him for air to breathe, or suffocate. By your evil "logic," he is just a good capitalist entrepreneur, making a profit by his ingenuity. In fact, of course, he is an extortionist and murderer.

Compensation from those who use more than their equal share of the natural resources to those who are consequently deprived of that opportunity.

Because it removes others' liberty to use it, depriving them of what they would otherwise have. That is the fundamental form of rights violations.

Because owning products of labor does NOT deprive anyone of anything they would otherwise have: if it hadn't been made by its producer, no one else would have been able to possess or use it.

What do you mean, "in detail"? Land is publicly owned in HK, products of labor are almost all privately owned. What detail is missing?

False. You just refuse to know the relevant facts, because you have already realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.

Yes, it does.

Garbage. The entire scam was predicated on large, growing, and unsustainable welfare subsidy giveaways to landowners. That's the only thing (other than inflation) that could keep land values rising fast enough to maintain mortage collateral.

Land is not a service, and the landowner qua landowner does not provide any service. He does not allocate land, the market does. He merely pockets the high bid in return for nothing. His only function is to demand money for not stopping production.

That is why you cannot answer The Question:

"How, exactly, is production aided by the landowner's demand that the producer pay HIM for what government, the community and nature provide?"

By providing desired public services and infrastructure that, for reasons of market failure, the private sector cannot provide efficiently.

Because that is the only way to rationalize greed, privilege, oppression, and evil.

No, I identify the facts and their logical implications.

Right, because it is (largely) geoist, and the government consequently doesn't have as many social and economic injustices to address.

There is no contradiction. Geoism means the government doesn't have to spend a large fraction of GDP trying to undo injustice.

What does "more statist" even mean?

Garbage with no basis in fact.

<yawn>

Cannot parse. In any case, the countries you mention are not democracies. I don't claim that the spending of undemocratic governments is socially beneficial.

But it is in democracies, because government can correct for market failures that the private sector can't.

Only when land is privately owned and its rent privately appropriated. See the Henry George Theorem.

Only where land rent is privately appropriated instead of being recovered to pay for the government spending on desired services and infrastructure that creates it.

I have given some of the reasons why. And YOU KNOW that your "arguments" are fallacious and dishonest.

I know you are intelligent. You are just wrong because you have chosen to serve evil.

I'm sure I do look arrogant: I can't be bothered being polite to servants of evil, it's a waste of brain energy. But you and everyone else reading this knows that I very much have something substantive to say.

I refute everything you say, but you can't refute anything I say. I think that makes me appear pretty reasonable, if not impressive.