The problem of Capitalism

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by stan1990, Mar 13, 2019.

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Do you agree that the main problem of Capitalism is of moral nature?

Poll closed Apr 12, 2019.
  1. Yes

    33.3%
  2. No

    50.0%
  3. Maybe

    16.7%
  1. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    So much that LVT cannot work without widening the scope of rent to capital gains and an ignorant understanding of mortgage markets...

    To ignore rent from labour exploitation ensures irrelevance.
     
  2. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    There is no economic rent from labor exploitation.
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2020
  3. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Flat false. It would just eliminate them on land.
    Which as we have seen, are dependent on landowner privilege.
    Hiring workers does not create rent; so for irrelevance, see your own false claims.
     
  4. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    You present a paper that shows that Georgism is enfeebled without referring to capital gains and then you backtrack? That's pathetic! Of course you ignore rent in the labour market. It doesn't fit the Georgist script criteria. Given this is the most relevant injustice in capitalism, you only continue to demonstrate your irrelevance...
     
  5. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    You made that up, as you know.
    Again, you are just makin' $#!+ up. There is indeed rent in the labor market, but contrary to your absurd anti-economic garbage, it is not inherent in the employer-employee relationship. It is caused by specific privileges like labor union certification.
    No, the most relevant injustice in capitalism is the removal of workers' rights to liberty by private landowning.
     
  6. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    You in full pretend mode? It wasn't me that referred to enfeebled Georgism. That was your paper.

    Oooo, first time you mentioned rent in the labour market. Let's go with that. Why isn't underpayment, created through market power that engineers monopsony deadweight loss, not rent? Please make sure you compare it to "specific privileges like labour union certification".

    The paper you gave disagrees. It has to make cretinous comment over mortgages to attempt relevance. Could you find an alternative paper to support your position? Or will you lose another toe?
     
  7. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Because if there were any such monopsony (there isn't, and you will continue to be unable to identify any such examples), it would not be obtained by legally depriving others of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise be accessible.
    Which DOES legally deprive others of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise be accessible. See how that works?
    I have no idea what you incorrectly imagine you are achieving with such tripe.
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2020
  8. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    You'd have to dismiss all supply and demand. Monopsonistic power only requires firms to have wage making power (i.e. face an upward sloping labour supply curve). It is actually difficult to find firms who don't have that power. This is also easily empirically supported, either by proving a wage distribution (independent of human capital and compensating differentials) or by estimating underpayment directly (through, for example, stochastic frontier methods).

    And it does deprive opportunity. Wage making power increases the equilibrium unemployment rate. It isn't just about an unfair redistribution of resource from employee to employer. Just like monopoly, there is deadweight loss as economic activity is destroyed.

    Zero content again. As soon as you're off your Georgist claptrap, you dodge. Try again. Here is what you haven't answered in your one-liner prance: Why isn't underpayment, created through market power that engineers monopsony deadweight loss, not rent? Please make sure you compare it to "specific privileges like labour union certification".

    There's not much to gain to be honest. That Georgism is enfeebled is well known after all. There's mere amusement value, such as Georgism accepting neoclassical definition that capital-gains is rent.
     
    Last edited: Mar 30, 2020
  9. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    You are just makin' $#!+ up again.
    False and absurd.
    No it isn't.
    Neither of those provides any empirical support for your claim whatever.
    False.
    Thank you for agreeing that you are wrong.
    I see. So, employers hiring workers to produce goods and services destroys economic activity...?

    You are in full-court-press absurdity mode. At this point, nothing I could say could possibly refute you more conclusively than you just refuted yourself.
    More contentless filth from you.
    I already told you: because it does not legally deprive anyone of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise be accessible.
    I already did, as you know.
    If only you were...
    You again have to just make $#!+ up.
     
  10. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Your usual one liners, devoid of any content. Why you come to an economics forum to dodge economics is a paradox?

    Everything I said was factual. Monopsony, by creating wage making power, will indeed destroy the "law of one price". The wage is no longer determined purely by market supply and demand. Firms can reduce wages as an upward sloping labour supply curve must mean marginal costs of labour exceed average costs of labour. The profit maximization objective, to engineer rent gains, will therefore lead to a breakdown of allocative efficiency. There is nothing new in this. The consequences of aymmetric information was first fully developed in the 1980s by job search theorists Burdett and Mortensen. We also know that their findings are consistent with empirical relations. You cant explain wage differentials with just education and training variable. You can explain wage-size differentials with job search modelling. You can use stochastic frontier methods, originally used to measure cost and production inefficiency, to measure the extent of underpayment.

    The neoclassical approach has demonstrated that monopsonistic power is the norm. The only debate, as you'd know if you had any understanding of labour markets, is the relative importance of the sources of such power. A transport cost model, for example, will lead to different dynamics than job search.

    You need to catch up, but we both know you wont. Just like a Trumpster clinging on to government lies, you aren't interested in what the economic experts say. That would challenge core bias. In contrast, I'm happy to listen to those experts and react accordingly to their output.
     
  11. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    You are aware that is false, as it is every time you say it, which is always.
    I proved it wasn't.
    There is no one price for labor in any case, as everyone's labor is different.
    There is no such thing as "the" wage, never has been, and never will be. It's just stupid Marxist idiocy. The very concept is typical of your false, absurd, disingenuous, anti-economic Marxist garbage.
    Irrelevant, as there are much larger forces at work, such as labor standards laws.
    By that "logic" every market that has a supply curve with positive slope is a monopsony, which is indisputably idiocy.
    No, that's just more of your anti-economic garbage. Not all profit is rent.
    <sigh> Rent does not imply inefficient allocation -- it is indeed a mechanism of allocation -- and inefficient allocation is not rent.
    Also nothing true or relevant.
    Why are you falsely and disingenuously claiming I have tried to do so? Why do you always make such false and disingenuous claims about what I have plainly written in every response you make to anything I write? Why do you experience such an intense, almost sexual need to mislead readers about what I have clearly said?
    No you can't.
    Not if you falsely assume everyone's labor is the same.
    The neoclassical approach is inherently dishonest.
    They've proved they have no idea what they are talking about.
    I challenge theirs all the time.
    And stay safely uninformed.
     
  12. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Just the same ole one liners designed to avoid content. Within it, of course, you can't help but show your ignorance. The analysis showing the 'law of one price' of course controls for valid explanation for wage differential (notably numerous variables to capture human capital and compensating differential). I've already told you that so no excuse for repeating ignorance. Second, that job search monopsony impacts on all markets is just logic. Indeed, we actually expect greater underpayment in apparently more competitive industries (as the modelling also explains the relationship between wage and firm size).

    What gets me is how little you know and how much you pretend otherwise. Again, you come across just like a Trumpster.
     
  13. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    <yawn> More of your evil, despicable filth.
    "Valid" meaning invalid.
    You made that false claim; but your stating it does not make it true, sorry.
    Brain-dead, disingenuous "logic."
    Incorrectly.
     
  14. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    This neatly describes the vacuous nature of your one liners. Just like a Trumpster, you worship intellectual dishonesty. You can't critique any of the economics. Does job search generate wage making power? Yes. Does wage making power create rent which is an inefficient redistribution that destroys economic activity? Yes. You just can't correspond with anything coherent as you do not know any economics.
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2020
  15. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    It is a statement of fact.
    You have never met anyone more intellectually honest than me.
    See? You have to disingenuously pretend I haven't when you know I have.
    But not monopsony, so you are wrong.
    No. That is not what rent is.
    I know that what you think you know of economics is actually false and disingenuous garbage.
     
  16. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    You don't do content, so let's not kid ourselves you can do fact. You've again gone for one liners intended to hide, in a very cowardly manner I might add, from content. Let's go through it again and be honest. Monopsony does undoubtedly create rent. Such market power, which destroys economic activity, is of course at the very least as damaging as the capital-gains that enfeebled Georgists include. You have no means to critique its existence or its rent outcome. That is why you go into a routine that quite frankly this forum should have banned. Calling someone "evil" for correct use of economics is churlish to the extreme. The moderators on this forum should be ashamed for allowing your trolling.
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2020
  17. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Notice your immediate and invariable resort to personal insult and trolling.
    Which you have already admitted you cannot name an actual example of...
    Only if you redefine "rent" so broadly that it becomes a meaningless smear -- which is all too obviously exactly what you want to do. Rent was originally defined as the return to ownership of natural resources (land). The essence of that return is that it is obtained by depriving others of access to economic opportunity that would otherwise be accessible. What you want to call, "rent" does not even describe land rent.
    <yawn> You again repeat your false, absurd, and disingenuous claim that hiring workers to perform productive labor destroys, rather than enables, economic activity.
    See? You again resort to trolling and gratuitous insult.
    No, the capitalized rents that almost all capital gains arise from are far more damaging than employers hiring workers to perform productive labor.
    I have disproved the claim that it is rent.
    LOL! That's rich, coming from the most relentlessly insulting troll on the forum.
    It's not correct economics, merely mainstream economics; and identifying evil as such is crucial in the struggle against it. Indeed, it is perhaps the most vital blow of all:

    "Thousands hack at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." -- Thoreau

    The latter would be me.

    Technically, evil is deliberate abrogation of others' rights with intent to inflict injustice. Evil must always be justified, and the only way to justify it is with lies. Lying to justify evil enables evil and is consequently also evil. Much of the mainstream neoclassical and Marxist-socialist economics you like to rely on consists of lies designed to justify abrogation of people's rights with intent to inflict injustice, and is therefore evil as a matter of simple fact.
    As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2020
  18. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    I loved how you were manipulated. Found out for one liners, you pumped up your irrelevance. There is no economic content, mind you. There is only rant. We see that with your continued ridiculousness that somehow neoclassical and Marxist schools are somehow the same beast, designed only to allow you to go unchallenged over non-economic grunt.

    You regularly troll as you demonstrate no intent to provide economic critique. But let's be fair and test it. Please provide a critique to the following, using economics rather than "its evil" knuckle dragging bobbins:

    Capital-gains is 'merely economic rent, obtained as windfall gains in the course of speculation in portfolio securities, land and resources'. However, monopsony through deadweight loss will create a more obvious injustice as it will ensure theft of labour value.

    No one liners designed to troll and hide. Please provide a genuine critique that involves both multiple sentences and the application of economic evidence, both theoretical and empirical. Good luck.
     
  19. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    That is your customary trolling insults.
    As I have explained to you many times, and you always ignore, they share Marx's central deceit: refusal to know the difference between the factory owner, who has no power to do anything but offer the worker access to economic opportunity he would not otherwise have, and the landowner, who has no power to do anything but deprive the worker of access to economic opportunity he would otherwise have.
    OK: it's question begging.
    While rent often shows up in capital gains, which in our privilege-based economy consist of little else, that is not what rent is.
    How are the worker's rights violated by being offered gainful employment on mutually agreeable terms? I can see how the landowner violates his rights and places him in an inferior position vis-a-vis the employer by depriving him of his options and thus his bargaining power, but how does the employer violate his rights?
    That would be your habit, not mine. I always try for substantive, factual critique.
    Why would I waste my time on your question begging fallacies?
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2020
  20. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    There is at least an attempt here. Well done!

    Unfortunately you've just used that attempt to argue in favour of Georgist monism. It is not cunning to give 'they ignore...' type comment and then ignore the labour market.

    The timeline is revealing. I referred to discrimination and asked you to provide an explanation. You responded that it could be ignored and made churlish remark over both Marxism and neoclassical economics. I referred to monopsony, a market failure that is accepted as a source of economic rent. You again said is was unimportant, combining that with an obscure definition of rent. I referred to how capital gains is a source of rent, as described by standard neoclassical economics. You dismissed their definition. I asked you to provide Georgist support for your position. You provided a paper which confirmed that capital gains is indeed an important source of rent.

    There is simply nothing credible in your approach. It is based on maintaining a Goergist script, even though it is necessarily enfeebled. It is of course easy to attack any school of thought on its understanding of labour. Austrians, for example, can only muster a rather naive supply and demand approach (which ironically mirrors neoclassical economics premise of perfect competition). However, at least they try...
     
  21. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    <usual garbage snipped>
    You again, as usual, got the causal relationship backwards: rent is a source of capital gains, not the other way around.

    <more garbage snipped>
     
  22. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Crikey, you do struggle so. From the paper you provided that refers to the need to broaden the definition of rent:

    Converting ordinary income into capital gains. When A sells to B there is a large excess of the sales price over the remaining or “undepreciated” basis. This excess is taxable income. Taxing is called “recapture” of prior excess depreciation, leaving an impression of equitable treatment. Congress has classed this kind of income as a “capital gain". Most rents, therefore, show up as capital gains, not as rents."

    Of course this also corresponds to the general understanding of rent, as illustrated by the Shepherd quote:

    Capital gains are instead merely economic rent, obtained as windfall gains in the course of speculation in portfolio securities, land and resources. As this paper explores, the process of speculation creates little economic value, while it absorbs substantial volumes of resources.
     
  23. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    And you had the gall to accuse me of insults and trolling...
    Huh? That just means the rent has been accumulated into a capital gain using an accounting trick, not that the capital gain causes the rent to exist in the first place. You clearly have misunderstood the article because you have no idea what you are talking about.
    Again, because you have no idea what you are talking about, you can't understand that the capital gain merely shows an accumulation of rent, not that it causes the rent to exist.
     
  24. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Sorry to see you struggling. The capital gains is the rent. It is a windfall gain which, given it creates nothing but is heavy on resource, ultimately destroys economic activity. This is why heavy taxation is not seen as discretionary. It is deincentivising a source of gain which ultimately creates a deadweight loss no different to monopoly or monopsony.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2020
  25. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Why always troll? Why always spew evil, insulting, disingenuous filth?
    OK, so now you agree that the capital gain is not the source of the rent. Good. You have actually acknowledged one of your errors, perhaps for the first time in years.
    It's true that almost all capital gains consist of capitalized rents of privilege, as the article I linked to said -- but you were, inevitably, neither able nor willing to understand. The problem with taxing capital gains is that it reduces market liquidity, keeping assets in less productive hands, thus increasing deadweight losses. The correct way to reduce this inefficiency is to tax privilege itself, removing the opportunity for capital gains and encouraging transfer of resources into the most productive hands, who will be best able to pay the tax.
     

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