| o_O.Q said:
1. can you expand upon this? how does the state help for example a school yard bully to take money away from weaker children? exploitation occurs because people are different regardless of whether there is a state or not and funny enough a primary purpose of the state is to REDUCE exploitation... that's why we have police for example
"Sure, but not all inequalities are part of an individual's nature." true
"Which is why I specifically spoke about norms "built into the system." " 2. such as?
"Who said I'd want to address that inequality. " 3. you speak of having workers take over businesses... the reality is that some people are just inherently better at setting up and running businesses than others that's how its relevant
4. "The painting contractor who works alone is not a capitalist. The mom and pop who run their cornerstore are not capitalists. They are all artisans." the definition of capitalism : an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. according to the definition they are
"Capitalist = = "person who uses the privilege of capital to exploit the labor of others." 5. according to this definition everyone is a capitalist... you've used capital to furnish yourself with food, electronics, water etc gathered through the labour of others... so have i and so has everyone we know... we call that trade
"It is divided and associated, because by dividing and associating labor productivity increases considerably. Why would I want to associate with a capitalist when I can associate with my peers and therefore have more autonomy over my work-life?" 6. no one has a gun to your head... but if you want money from a business you have to offer something in return correct? if you find that distasteful you are free to find your own way to make a living
" Ideas aren't worth much without capital. Anyone can have an idea, and many people do. The question is whether or not they are able to enact that idea." true
" Capitalists aren't special because they have ideas, they are special because they have capital." 7. so... the only difference between steve jobs and you is that he has money? never mind the fact that he didn't initially and worked his way up through building his business 8. how could you provide the goods and services from a business that does't exist?
"Do you think people can only make profits by exploiting others? Certainly, it's possible to create more value than was inputted without exploitation. Do you deny this? " 9. what does this have to do with what i posted which to reiterate was that people create businesses generally to profit?
"hat when the state collapses on itself the people at the bottom are going to be the ones most burdened with the costs of the collapse. Is it not clear? " 10. in what way? your statement here is very vague |
1. Rather than write a whole novel, I will link an influential text which describes quite a bit about the means by which the state systematically enables exploitation where it would've been stampered out in its absence. It also happens to be a text which explains the differences and similarities between state-socialism and libertarian socialism. It was written by the 19th century individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker. It's not too long.
State Socialism and Anarchism: How far they agree and wherein they differ.
Sure, exploitation can happen in the absence of the state in local contexts, such as your bully example, but the more an individual attempts to exploit others the more likely others will react in kind. The state allows people to exploit others with no fear of a reaction in kind.
2. For a starter the four class monopolies: money, land, tariffs, and patents are created and reinforced by the state to benefit the bargaining power of capital over labor. Adam Smith also describes how the state helped reinforce inequalities in bargaining power in his day.
From his Wealth of Nations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality_of_bargaining_power
| "It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, a merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him; but the necessity is not so immediate.[1] |
3. Do you have evidence of an inherent superiority in managing a business, with all else equal? I can accept that some people might have a better education, or they might enjoy finding new ways of making a business more efficient, but I don't think people are inherently born to manage others. That is pretty contrary to enlightenment principles, is it not? Actually, how does one define " better at setting up and running businesses" .
Is it not conditional to the intended goal of the business? Furthermore, even if it is true that some individuals are better at "setting up and running businesses" is it necessarily true that said persons can manage and run a business better than multiple people with multiple inputs of knowledge? It seems to me as if the economic calculation problem which is used to criticize central-planning can also be used to criticize large hierarchical corporations. No individual can calculate what many individuals can, because no individual has enough inputs, and hence it is ideal to have planning as decentralized as possible with respect to minimized transaction costs.
4. Dictionary definitions for complex political concepts are pretty crappy. I am sure you'd agree, for example, that the dictionary definition of feminism "people who believe in the equality of men and women" lacks nuance and context.
The way socialists used (and use the word capitalist) referred to a specific group of persons.
5. In a sense you are correct, we are all complicit to exploitation under capitalism and participate in the system. But it's very much like saying that a person who receives a stolen good is complicit to robbery. Are they the robber?
Ultimately we don't have much of a choice but to work within capitalism. It's a social structure which no individual can really escape without social change. That is the entire point of socialism as an idea, that capitalism isn't voluntary and if we were given the choice we probably wouldn't be able to exploit others without feeling the consequences (costs) of exploitation.
6. Well you know, except for the state, with its laws and regulations which if I refuse to comply with will mean I'd have a gun to my head.
7. The difference between Steve Jobs and his investors is that his investors had the capital whereas he had the idea. Why did he have to go to investors though? Why was he employed? Why couldn't he had just used his ideas and savviness with a bunch of like-minded persons and create an Apple without investors? Because he didn't have access to the requisite capital. Steve Jobs was dependent on investors (owners of capital) to effectuate his ideas. The investors then profited off of Steve Jobs' talents without doing the work that Jobs did. In a socialist system Jobs would be able to innovate without selling himself to capitalists.
8. The market demand still exists. The productive capital still exists. The natural resources still exist. The labor-force still exists. The only thing that doesn't exist is the capitalist. If I have the capital and peers to work it with me what use do I have for the capitalist though?
9. Because profits (in the strict sense of producing more value than what was inputted) can still exist without exploitation (albeit with lower margins), and therefore businesses will still exist. Your entire premise was to equivocate value production/wealth creation and exploitation, when the two aren't one in the same.
10. Those on top are much more elastic to changes and therefore can avoid costs. Furthermore, since they disproportionately control the state, they can exploit the rest of society to unstable levels if they know that the state is going to collapse anyway. This is what happened when colonies collapsed, the colonizers used the colonial governments to exploit the local population and then fled when SHTF.
