Can we have a civil, thoughtful discussion on this?

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by Kode, Jan 11, 2017.

  1. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Socialism isn't new. There are numerous non-Marxist varieties after all...

    Already said. Entrepreneurial spirit is key. Market socialism ensures worker ownership and control of the means of production, but it also recognises that the socialist planner cannot maintain innovation levels.

    Marx, like Schumpeter, ironically focused on the success of capitalism. Both have lessons for how capitalism operates. However, to suggest socialism must be Marxist is not credible.

    Already said. Market socialism. I believe in the importance of equality of opportunity. I believe that democracy in the firm, through worker ownership, is key. However, as an old fart entrepreneur, I also recognise the value of the individual. Without SME private ownership, you can eventually guarantee stagnancy. There's only so much that can be generated through increased creativity in large worker-owned companies
     
  2. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    It certainly did.
    Uh, that was your fallacy, champ. Proof: the fact that many people live with malaria does not mean no one ever dies of malaria.

    GET IT?????
    Management is never perfect. What is? PanAm's was no worse than many non-union firms' that do fine. The costs associated with its unionized workforce meant that it couldn't withstand minor shocks.
    Garbage. Overmanning, featherbedding, etc. were all proverbial on unionized railroads, and most went broke as a result.
    No, too many union workers who couldn't be fired. One reason the railroads' market share shrank was that their shipping charges had to include overpaying unionized labor to do nothing.
    Because they are forced to by law.
    They have all needed government help, and government helped them because it had to save the union jobs.
     
  3. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No. They didn't know they were "agreeing" to be landowners' slaves, and even if they had, no one since then has made any such trade. They have simply been born into servitude to landowners.
    All landowning has always been based on nothing but force.
    It had already BEEN taken, by force, from those living there. And indigenous people were generally prohibited from getting any of it back.
    Nope.
    Selling someone's rights to someone else does not make them rightly the buyer's property.
    Garbage. They were dispossessed by force for the unearned profit of rich, greedy, privileged parasites.
     
  4. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    That is exactly what slave owners said to the abolitionists. But other people's rights to liberty can't rightly be property, whether that property takes the form of a deed to a slave, to a letter of the alphabet, to the sun, to the sea, or to land. Property can never rightly consist of anything but a product of labor. It can never confer a power to deprive others of something they would otherwise have. As that is what a land deed does, it is not rightly property.
    It most certainly and indisputably does, as I have proved to you many times, because it makes everyone's liberty to use that land into the landowner's property. Landowning gives the landowner a legal power forcibly to deprive others of liberty they would otherwise enjoy. You cannot dispute that. You can only ignore it or lie about it.
    :lol: Do you think the only people who ever oppose injustice are its victims? Do you think that because you know that you favor all forms of injustice that are profitable to you personally, other people must also be greedy to profit from injustice?

    160 years ago, filthy, evil scum were saying, "I assume you don't own any slaves?"

    You are in such good company....
     
  5. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Hm, maybe my use of the term 'violated' made you think I was speaking about any particular legal system. I'm not talking about under 'Capitalist law' or 'Marcora Law' or any other law.

    I'm saying that there is only one justification for violating/trespassing against/assaulting the body or property of one's neighbor. That one reason is if he has, or has threatened to do, done the same.

    So in the case you described, a person owns a bunch of machines. Other people come and say that they are taking those machines from him. This is a violation/trespass/assault against his property. Since this violation is not in response to a prior act of aggression, I consider it illegitimate.

    My position, which is the libertarian position, is that the *initiation* of aggression is unjustified.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2018
  6. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    My rule? My rule is that it's wrong to attack others or trespass against their property. How exactly does this rule fail? (I mean other than that there are statists who want to ignore it to achieve their ends?)
     
  7. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    So, given that you are yourself a landowner yourself, perhaps you should remove the plank in your own eye before you speak of the mote in your neighbor's eye.
     
  8. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    You are a feudal "libertarian," so more accurately, you favor forcible, violent, aggressive physical coercion committed by landowners against anyone who tries to exercise their right to liberty.
     
  9. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    <yawn> If I own land, I'm a hypocrite; if I don't, I'm just envious of those who do.

    That about it?
     
  10. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    No, I don't favor forcible, violent, aggressive physical coercion by anyone. Sorry.

    You seem to be some sort of communist who wants the state to own all property, rather than private citizens owning that property. Therefore, you seem to be in favor of a monopoly actor who can forcibly, violently, and aggressively coerce anyone who tries to exercise their right to liberty.
     
  11. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, pretty much. Are you a hypocrite?
     
  12. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    I disagree. The capitalist entrepreneurial spirit is driven by desire for riches beyond what is otherwise available. Socialist entrepreneurial spirit is driven by a desire we all have for problem-solving and improvement. Capitalist innovation depends greatly on slick advertising to generate an interest in what is often otherwise of no interest and for which there is no real need. It relies on hype and false hope, and it works. Socialist innovation depends on the public wanting solutions and benefits that they don't currently have.
     
  13. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Please prove the existence of 'capitalist entrepreneurial spirit', so that we can understand your syllogism.
     
  14. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Oh, so you mean "morally".... -a violation of morals.


    But what "justifies" your values? What's your underlying "cause" or system?


    -under capitalist law.

    "His property"? According to what legal system? And what makes it a "violation/trespass/assault"? What system of law?


    -even though in some conceivable legal system it might not be a violation or illegitimate? See, you are indeed basing all this on a system of law that you take for granted as you take the sun for granted.


    There was none, except under capitalist law because in some rational and logical systems of law he didn't actually own the equipment in the first place; he just acted and thought that he did, -maybe. In such systems he would know better.
     
  15. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Ok, what I described is not your rule. Your rule anticipates, and functions in, perfection where there are no such inconvenient complications.
     
  16. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    I made a distinction between creativity and entrepreneurial spirit deliberately. We know that worker ownership can aid the former, ensuring large companies are more agile and more productive. Entrepreneurial spirit is a completely different beast. It ultimately refers to opportunity through removal of ignorance. It is destroyed within the large company (see the psychological analysis into those status quo biases) and it certainly is sidelined when you come out with blanket "private ownership can't happen" ideology.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2018
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  17. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    First we need to define the words. Then it would probably be obvious whether such a thing exists or not. But I think we all know what "capitalist" means, and we probably all know what "entrepreneurial" means, and we all know what it means to act "in the spirit of" this or that.

    Any questions?
     
  18. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Here's my "system": If a person owns something, then nobody has a right to eff with that thing. Also, nobody has a right to eff with anyone's body.

    You seem inclined to eff with people's bodies and their property. Why do you feel superior to your fellow man with which to acquire such rights.
     
  19. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    I didn't know that. A Rutgers University study of worker-owned cooperatives found that they are 4% more productive, and 14% more profitable, than equivalent top-down capitalist businesses, and I believe the study group was one of smaller businesses, -not large ones. But I don't really know. I just though such businesses were nearly all small with the exception of Mondragon Cooperative Corporation.


    huh?

    .

    So by "entrepreneurial spirit" you refer only to the drive and commitment to start a business? But you also mentioned "innovation".
     
  20. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    You're leaping to conclusions. And so you resort to attempts at intimidation and accusation.

    I think your system that "if a person owns something, then nobody has a right to eff with that thing. Also, nobody has a right to eff with anyone's body" is dandy. I can agree with that. But it is made different from our previous comments by your use of the word "if". In the scenario I laid out you believed the businessman "owned" the equipment, and in my scenario even HE believed he did. But from another viewpoint he didn't except by some contrived law that can be judged illogical and lacking in validity. We can examine the logic of that viewpoint if you like. But my point is that you have a built-in assumption that a businessman actually, logically, and rightfully owns his business and equipment (assuming he is not paying the bank for them) as though it were an "inalienable right". But notice that this is not actually valid and that in some other equally valid system he doesn't own any of it. It all depends on the laws regarding businesses and ownership backed by their own rationale and logic.
     
  21. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Who purchased the machine?
     
  22. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    I'm fully aware of the empirical evidence into productivity effects (its derived from Logue and Yates). Productivity is quite different to elimination of ignorance through entrepreneurial success.

    Your false reference to what socialism means. Socialism does not kick SMEs, with entrepreneur ownership, into touch.

    No, I refer to how tacit knowledge creates new economic opportunity. Firm creation is an output from that. Hayek was correct that the 'socialist planner' cannot mimic the impact of the entrepreneur. The market is key.
     
  23. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    The purchasing agent in the purchasing and acquisitions department..
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2018
  24. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    So who owns the machine?
     
  25. Kode

    Kode Well-Known Member

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    Elimination of ignorance through entr. success? I don't know what you're saying. I commented on the productivity of coops which you said wasn't up to that of capitalists.


    Since that isn't a sentence, give me a moment to review the preceding conversation so I can figure out what it means....... .....
    oh, I guess you reference a comment you say I made: "when you come out with blanket 'private ownership can't happen' ideology. " You should quote me because context is everything, and I stand by the notion that after "500 years of socialism" and the state and classes have mostly finished "withering away" there will be no capitalist ownership because capitalists constitute a class and classes are then "withering away". Refute it.


    We seem to be having a recurring problem and I think it has to do with your culture. I'm not familiar with the expression "into touch" and in addition, I don't know what "SMEs" are.


    I don't see the problem. There are plenty of examples of capitalist who started businesses without explicit knowledge of how each step of the business would be taken, and today all the needed knowledge and talent is in place to make such businesses a huge success. Such cases are abundant in high tech. Capitalism doesn't come with needed tacit knowledge in place. It is figured out like how to ride a bike is figured out and it is passed on in the same way with no issue as to whether it is capitalism or socialism.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2018

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