What’s with all this verbosity? Is he simply saying that you don’t have a right to your labor and property? Or that other people have a right to your labor and property because they have some sort of automatic right?
You’re only entitled to what you work for. Do you know what work means?
I don’t think he’s saying anything simply.
True. It’s quite the bloated diatribe. Let’s wait for a precis.
“The idea that a laborer should trade their work for a wage, rather than for equity in his workplace, is fundamentally flawed. And, in a truly free market, it becomes apparent that it’s just plain stupid. However, in a society where this is has already been established as the norm, it certainly becomes difficult for the individual to resist.”
This is your opinion, I see no reason for it. I think that people do A LOT of stupid things. I could write a book on all the ways I think people waste their lives and could live better, yet fundamentally these are disagreements that I have with people, a matter of preference, not of objective ought (a contradiction). Your belief that workers trading equity for wages is your opinion and in a free market it would be settled outright. From experience it would appear that workers prefer straight up wages instead of equality or share of profits. There is no inherently right or wrong answer to this.
“Power structures claim to bring order. But they are merely a different manifestation of disorder.”
Define power structures and explain the second statement. Are you talking about hierarchy or what?
Edit
Also, damn. You sure got this place going wild.
Alright, then we’re in agreement… your usage of the word “capitalist” roughly corresponds with my usage of the term “power elite” or “permanent establishment.” I agree with you that what you call capitalists are a predatory, parasitic class that siphon away the lion’s share of the real product of the productive class (what you term the proletariat) and use these stolen proceeds to build a perpetual motion machine of propaganda, conspicuous consumerism, compulsory schooling (indoctrination) etc. to secure the system of economic serfdom in the form of taxes, inflation, absurd public debt, repressed labor compensation via restriction of entry into the labor market through cartelization and monopolization of industry into the hands of what you call the capitalists, etc. As you said, it is a structural problem.
I think you would immensely benefit from listening to the following lecture in full - we have more in common than you realize:
Clayton -
Thescout’s posts in 41 seconds:
So we have laissez-faire capitalism?
Are you refering to todays corporatism, mixed economy, fiat-monetary system, central planning etc, or a society based on Austrian economics?
Isn’t anyone gonna sig this?!
crickets
LOL
Clayton -
I’m just going to flat-out, and in the briefest fashion that I can, state a few critical observations about your precious capitalist system. Firstly let me observe that in the laboratory of history and real-life experience capitalism has revealed itself to be every bit as much of a failed experiment as the pseudosocialism of the now defunct Soviet system. In fact, having gone global, having spread exploitation, sweatshops, debt, and financial crises across the entire planet; having produced a plutocracy that now rules most of humanity and makes a hollow fraud of democracy; and having incurred worldwide climatic consequences that will eventually destruct our so-called civilization and return a fractional remnant of survivors to a Palaeolithically hand-to-mouth existence; well, having earned such a rap sheet one can arguably say that capitalism has proven to be a much worse disaster than the counterfeit communism of Messrs. Stalin and Mao.
Of course this isn’t at all something that you-all are ideologically capable of taking in in an intellectually honest fashion. No, you have your stock free-marketarian sophisms, selective statistics that belie reality, authoritative quotations from von Mises, and dogmatic faith to shield you from the ugly ogre of capitalism’s objective truth. But ultimately the truth will out. The cloak of the euphemism “free market” can’t really be wrapped all the way around capitalism, can’t conceal its actual nature entirely or indefinitely. Can’t conceal that capitalism isn’t, is absolutely not a human-wellbeing oriented system; can’t conceal that it is inherently and irremediably geared to and driven by inhuman economic dynamics, by an addictive need to accumulate capital that strikingly resembles the addiction of a junkie in the way that it completely overtakes every other concern or aspect of life and negates all other values, leaving us with an increasingly socially dysfunctional and anomie-afflicted society bent on moral and ecological self-destruction; can’t conceal that it’s a system that deprives working and poor individuals of resources while at the same time paradoxically throwing them on their own resources in the struggle for economic survival and solvency, i.e., a system that presents us with a proposition of sink or swim in the choppy waters of an economy recurrently roiled by its perennial business cycle; can’t conceal that capitalism’s endemic materialism, economism, and consumerism dehumanizes, alienates, and vapidizes us, leaving us as individuals and as a civilization in an existentially desperate state, to put it mildly. Nope, calling capitalism the “free market”, touting its licence to be greedy as a precious form of liberty; or touting its impressive productivity, its production of unequally distributed wealth hardly compensates for any of its above enumerated shortcomings, and hardly impresses one with the brilliance or humanism of capitalism apologists.
The fell futuristic scenario from the film In Time was of course intended to starkly illustrate the ethically intolerable nature of these inequities and iniquities built into capitalism and moralistically rationalized by the concept of “earning”. That is, the movie presents a science-fictiony 22nd century society in which average people have to “earn” not merely food and shelter, but life itself; and in which capitalists do in a slightly more direct and deadly fashion what they of course already do in the real world, control our access to the ability to live and enjoy well-being by controlling the means of producing and the distribution of the fruits of technology, and by to a great extent rigging the entire racket that is our economico-political system. Now then, one might think that such a dystopian scenario would perhaps drive home the immorality of the injustice that exists under actually-existing capitalism, and the dangerous potential of the concept of “earning” when it’s taken to an extreme. However, judging from the responses that I’ve received thus far it apparently fails to do this for “libertarians” and capitalism’s other true believers. Why is this?
This, alas, is the case because capitalism’s true believers are dyed-in-their-dogmatism Darwinians who in fact believe that the ideal form of society would be one in which only the capitalistically fit, shall we say, are deemed worthy of surviving, thriving, and dominating the rest of us. They actually have no ideological problem with fellow humans being allowed to prematurely perish from poverty, so of course why would they be troubled by a scenario in which poor people are forced to earn “living time” and literally drop dead in their tracks when they fail to do so? In the pro-capitalist’s unlovely Darwinian outlook the poor, after all, are the weak, the inferior, and have no right to live or to partake of the same quality of life as alpha capitalists. It’s quite horrible to say but this, ideologically and psychologically, is indeed where our dear doctrinaire defenders of capitalism and its “earning”-oriented ethos are coming from. It’s not at all overly reductionistic to say that capitalism and the concept of “earning” boil down to social Darwinism; to the primitive and pitiless logic of the caveman, according to which the strong alone are entitled to life, liberty, and power.
Okay, but this brings us to the question of why free-marketarian conservatives and “libertarians” go in for such Darwinian logic when most of them aren’t alpha capitalists. The answer is a really quite simple and short one, vicariously identifying with empowered and dominant individuals, with society’s social and economic alphas feels better, is a good deal more appealing to the ego, than identifying with underdogs and victims, with the poor and disenfranchised. And this ego-serving preference for identifying with the rich & powerful rather than empathizing with the dispossessed & disempowered in turn leads them into the ideology and rationalization of capitalism, into the stance of being capitalism’s staunch advocates and apologists, praising the wealthy and denying sympathy to their fellow workers.
And this, the self-serving and ideological choice of working-class conservatives & right-libertarians to side with the economic elite against their own class is precisely why I refer to them as the Lord Haw-Haws of capitalism. Lord Haw-Haw, in case you’ve never heard the nickname, was actually the ridiculing sobriquet given to several pro-Nazi traitors from the UK who did treasonous English-language broadcasts on German radio during WWII praising the Nazis and advocating the German cause. Well, advocates of the capitalist ruling class and their system who hail from the ranks of blue and lower white-collar workers are essentially committing the same sin of treason, in the class war of plutocrats vs. proletarians. Mm-hmm, rightists indeed and quite reprehensibly side with and stick up for the enemy, i.e., for the aggressing plutocratic foe against their own innocent proletarian compatriots. This indeed makes them little Lord Haw-Haws of capitalism, and amply deserving of being dubbed with that derisive nickname.
To sum up and close, I would urge all of the little Lord Haw-Haws out there to seriously and deeply reconsider how perhaps your idealization of capitalism, your Darwinism, and your conservative or “libertarian” ideology has tragically led you astray from where your true loyalties lie, from a social loyalty to your fellow working-class man and woman; an ethical loyalty to social and economic justice; a human loyalty to human decency and life; and a universal loyalty to all of life, to all of the innocent life on this planet that capitalism is currently in the relentless process of bringing a holocaust down upon. Yes, I would suggest that you give a good bit more thought to the hypothetical scenario of a status quo that requires workingpeople to earn their tenure on life under the penalty of perishing if they don’t, and its disturbing resemblance to our own capitalist status quo, and then ask yourself once again if you can in good conscience continue to play the part of a Lord Haw-Haw-like booster of the “free market”. Well, this is assuming that you-all possess the moral courage and integrity to do so. I’ll give you at least that much credit, without making you “earn” it, but please don’t promptly proceed to forfeit it.
Oh, so you’re psychotic. That explains a lot.
Michael,
I think that’s unfair
Thescout,
You are an ideologue who prefers talking about consequences over actually understanding and discussing causal relationships. This is fine within your own intellectual circles, but it’s foolish outside of them. You’re using the language and method of a bold revolutionary when you need to be talking like a persuasive scientist. You remind me of a younger me, back before I realized that you inevitably have to use reason over all else.
You’re talking past us, at us, not to us, so I don’t understand what you hope to achieve by being here. No one is going to read through your long paragraphs which talk about things you find important, rather than the actual concerns we have been raising.
Why are you here? Did you come to educate and to learn, or did you just come to lecture at us and practice writing out passages no one will read?
Edit
I had to add this. Like seriously, look at this post of yours
This is one of the few cases you quote someone and presumably attempt to respond to them, yet you fail utterly. You don’t deal with anything he’s talking about in the quoted passage, you go on about capitalist morality and the Marxist explanation of value and labor relations, why, in a forum full of right-libertarians and anarcho-capitalist start of a sentence with:
“Ah, yes, this assumption comes from the logic employed by apologists for capitalism. Behold a right-libertarian egoistic individualist reductionistically dismiss the social-relational nature of human beings and their existence, their social morality, and their capacity for altruism and heroic solidarity as a herd mentality!”
…
Apart from bringing up a whole different line of discussion, proving nothing, adding nothing to the conversation, asserting a whole host of hugely controversial subjects around here, and further alienating/angering everyone on this forum except for yourself, what exactly did you hope to achieve?
Why are you here?
To troll the foolish ancaps. Why else?
Don’t waste your time. He fails to grasp simple concepts and obfuscates the rest.
Capitalism is, at it’s heart, nothing but a series of mutually beneficial exchanges between individuals. Who could possibly object to that?
I was going to point out this obvious answer but he’s beat me to it. Damn!
“To troll the foolish ancaps. Why else?”
Sigh,
The answer would seem to be in order to look like a fool… And a pretty sad one.
Wow… I actually realized that I legitimately have so much pity for someone who would write pages no one would read in order to “troll” a group of people they disagree with while at the same time talking about community, love, and solidarity… Mother of god…
I’m practicing for my English PHD.
Godwin’s Law. Abort Thread.
However, for the benefit of lurkers, I will proceed to respond to this Godwin’d thread.
Given that you include the President of the United States in the word “capitalist”, I agree with you. Let us extend “capitalist” to include the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at least the upper house of Congress, and many in the lower house, probably all the US governors, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the cabinets of this and almost all prior administrations at least back to Wilson, the SCOTUS and really the entire government court system down to the municipal level, the Federal regulatory agencies - SEC, FTA, FAA, FCC, etc. etc. - as well as the usual suspects in private industry - most of the big-shot CEO’s and the incestuous traveling circuses of pampered corporate board members, and the VPs and upper management seeking to book-lick and brownnose their way to The Top. We should also not forget to mention the crucial enablers of these thugs in the intelligentsia: the CFR, the news media, the university system and the public education indoctrinational pipeline, the think-tanks of all stripes (yes, even including nominally libertarian ones like CATO). And we should take care to note the corresponding permanent Establishment present in other nations - after all, the permanent Establishment is inherently international: the Royal Houses of Europe and Britain, the nobility (yes, they’re still there), the clerical elites, etc.
Of course, economists do not use the word “capitalist” to refer to any of these folks… not out of an attempt to whitewash or ignore their crimes but, rather, because they are interested in a technical problem, which is, how is it that the productivity of Britain - and, to an extent, the continent - exploded in and around the 18th century? The answer of economists is: greater investment of private capital in more “producer’s goods”, that is, goods useful not for direct consumption but, rather, to enable increasingly roundabout methods of production.
Well, what you refer to as “capitalism” is merely the identical twin of Stalinesque communism… they are just nominally different methods of implementing the same goal: economic parasitism.
The business cycle is indeed a creature of the permanent Establishment - the ruling Elites. Its most aggravated manifestation is total war. You can’t get any more “non-equilibrated” than total war.
Economists would describe the Amish as “free market capitalists” - I guess your criticisms must include Amish as materialists, consumerists, dehumanized, alienated, vapid?
Well, thieves are no less greedy than businessmen - yet the free market model presupposes that thievery is not permitted or, at least, cannot succeed well enough to perpetuate a system of organized thievery. A State can be modeled as precisely this… an organized and self-perpetuating system of thievery (taxation). So, while the same greed may motivate both the thief and the private businessman, so long as the businessman does not steal what rightly belongs to another, then his private motives are of no concern unless you want to live in a society of pervasive thought-control… and I think humanity has done that to death with nothing to show for it except millions of corpses.
Well, inequality of material circumstance is not solely due to unjust actions, intentions or even unjust structural relations. For example, the congenitally blind man is permanently and irrevocably impoverished by the roulette wheel of fortune. The tall, handsome man is - through no merit of his own - blessed with a permanent and perennial genetic advantage that will pay out in greater economic, social, political, romantic, etc. opportunities throughout his entire life, vis-a-vis an average man of average looks. Of course, this doesn’t that unjust, imposed inequality does not exist - thievery exists, taxation exists, monetary devaluation exists - but it does mean that egalitarianism in its most fanatical form is simply unhinged (cf Harrison Bergeron).
Funny thing, the movie was produced by people you would call capitalists. Why would they publish a movie you hold is deeply critical of their very system?
This is an strawman - you are exaggerating the fact that we acknowledge the brute fact of individual variation into a worship of genetics - worship, by the way, which is perpetuated by the very permanent Establishment that you and I agree exists and ought to be opposed. If the competition of the marketplace is a form of artificial selection imposed upon some human beings by other human beings (and I agree that, in the system of crony capitalism, it is), then how much more so the competition of war. Young men (and now, women) sent out to the battlefield to literally shoot at each other … may the fittest survive! Of course, the officers don’t die, as a rule - among their ranks hide many members of the permanent Establishment who is running this sick Hunger Games-style system of combat-driven artificial selection… Social Darwinism.
I largely agree with this in regards to the right-wing though I would say that it also applies to many of those who nominally care about the poor, that is, the political left. But I disagree that it describes most libertarians… I think you are genuinely mistaken in thinking that libertarians are mostly or even primarily “ultra-right-wingers”. This is because you mistakenly believe that conservatives are for limited government… a canard foisted by the Republican party onto the American electorate over much of the 20th century.
<snip Godwin’s Law portion of post>
Clayton -