The rich cannot be rich without the poor

Miscellaneous Newbies
101

This is the kindergarten version.

Gates and Buffet have capital. They manage capital. If you understand how credit expansion works, productive people with assets always get money first. When credit expands (and becomes cheap) the people who benefit are the marginal borrowers.

That would depend if they are net tax producers. They certainly pay more taxes than people on welfare, or people who are retired. They pay more taxes than anyone who works for the state, because they do not pay (real) taxes at all.

I think I understand credit expansion, paying taxes, and entrepreneurship much better than you do.

In America, poor people are fat. In America, everyone is relatively rich.

You must consider Hoppe a pseudo-confused-libertarian then.

Not entirely. It is influenced, it is far from absolute control. I choose how much I work, and how much I make.

Not all aspects. If that was so, it would not be possible to be an agorist.

I am coerced in many ways. The currency is irrelevant, because one simply need not hold cash, and then inflation is not as great an issue.

They are very intelligent men, with entrepreneurial skill. In a free market, they might be even more wealthy.

I daresay, Gates and Buffet have provided a lot of value to consumers over the years. They may be using the same funny money as everyone else, but many people have voluntarily selected them over and over again, worldwide.

102

Is the anti-libertarian faction is vying for dominance? Whats with all the nonsense we have to put up with lately?

Whats hilarious is that you support anarchy for the same reason that normal people oppose, an expectation of naked violence.

103

Yes, but I don’t think it directly answers the question.

To answer it, I would say, it depends upon what one considers wealth. As far as material wealth goes it does certainly seem like a rising tide lifts all boats. I don’t even think you could consider it otherwise.

In terms of pure equality of wealth, however, I think the issue is a bit more tricky. In a free economy I don’t think it’s that hard to see it going either way, with inequality growing with general material wealth and also shrinking.

As to the question itself, it seems to be one more of welfare economics and whether or not it is necessary for some in a society to be relatively poor for the wealthy to be wealthy at all. I would disagree with the theoretical necessity of this, but I would be more apt to concede that empirically it can sometimes turn out to seem that the wealthy rely on the existence of the poor.

104

It’s true for the simple reason that “poor” and “rich” are relative definitions.

105

Communists oppose Private Property period.

106

Typically communist ideology.

Not in a free market economy.

107

What do you mean by this? Why should people share their wealth? The welfarism has no place in an anarchy.

108

To anyone replying to this post: please read it all before replying. If you haven’t, it will be obvious.

No, it’s objectively of lower value*, otherwise capitalists would not invest in labor (wages) and expect a greater return. Simply buying a factory building, a parcel of land, or a manufacturing machine, does not return a profit. These “investments” just sit there; the labor that puts them into motion, alone, returns a profit. Out of all the inputs of production, only labor produces value.

I submit that the labor ToV is substantially true in that:

(1) (rough definition of value) when supply and demand are in equilibrium, prices reflect value; furthermore, that prices generally fluctuate around value;

(2) with value defined thusly, the value of all commodities can be reduced to their costs of production; and

(3) that all costs of production can be reduced to labor costs, if followed back far enough along the production chain.

*see the end of this post for a discussion of the meaning of “value” which I have attempted to use consistently throughout the post

This is true. But what determines the rough average price around which prices fluctuate? Why does a Leerjet cost thousands of times more than a loaf of bread even in the midst of a famine? What determines the price of a good when supply and demand are in rough equilibrium? (Please do not make the inane objection that “supply and demand are never in equilibrium”; that is only because supply is always responding to changes in demand, but it is always moving toward equilibrium, and if there wasn’t any tendency of capitalism to equalize supply and demand, well then it wouldn’t be a very good economic system, would it?)

The market cares. A person spending 15 hours to produce something that can be produced in 2 hours is engaging in a terrific waste of labor-time, and won’t last 5 minutes. If the prevailing technology/technique allows for the item to be produced in 2 hours, then 2 hours worth of labor is the socially necessary labor to produce it, and anyone taking 2.5 hours to produce it is going to be up shit creek without a paddle.

The fact that something “serves your needs” is known by adherents of the Labor ToV as “use-value”; it is distinct from value. Wild berries that you stumble upon have use-value, but not value, in the sense that the Labor ToV refers to value. So, as a side point, the many attempts to discredit the labor ToV by pointing out that if fails to explain some other meaning of “value” than “socially-necessary labor-time added” is a strawman.

This sense of value, furthermore, is meaningful. It explains why, if all human toil ceased, wild berries is precisely what we would be left with.

Note: I don’t care what anybody’s political allegiance or outlook is. I’m not here to argue about that. I’m not even here to argue about whether Marx’s analysis of capitalism is totally esoteric or has any practical implications whatsoever. But I do argue that Marx’s analysis of capitalism is profound, it is interesting, and it is internally consistent. Anyone who denies this is, imo, either ignorant about it or unable to mentally separate his analysis of capitalism from his talk of revolution, his talk of communism, the perceived emotionalism of his declared followers, the perceived authoritarianism of his declared followers, or some other distasteful thing with which they associate it.

109

I observe that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word “rich.” At least, if they know, the do not in their reasonings allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite “poor” as positively as the word “north” implies the word “south.” Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through the inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbor’s pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of the power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has or it,–and the art of making yourself rich…is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbor poor.–John Ruskin

Are you suggesting that poverty cannot be imposed?

110

And yet hand-made Rolls and Ferraris sell for quite a bit.

This demonstrates perfectly that desire is the source of value and labor is the result of value. Ignoring the fact that picking wild berries is labor, if I want something other than wild berries for dinner, I’ll have to expend some labor and cook it. Notice the cause and effect there. I want something for dinner, and because of that, I cook. Taking it a bit further, I go out on a limb and guess that other people may want something for dinner, too. Further, I guess that at least some other people may enjoy what I cook. So I open a restaurant. If I set my prices correctly, people will pay me for the food I cook. Again, notice the cause an effect. They want something to eat and don’t want to cook, and therefore are willing to pay for the food I sell. If I set my prices too high, they won’t buy my. The value is determined by their desire. They want to avoid cooking, but not at any price. I to set my price at or below what others are willing to pay.

Again, the amount of labor I put into the process has nothing to do with the price. Delicious meals that take minutes to prepare are much more valuable than horrible tasting meals that take hours to prepare. This is because desire, not labor, is the source of value. People desire delicious meals much more than horrible tasting meals.

The fact that the selling price is generally just above the cost is not an indication that the cost determines the sale price. Correlation does not imply causation. And to answer your questions with more questions: Why does a car lose ~25% of its value after it has driven its first few hundred miles? Why is gold worth more than silver, when they are equally difficult to mine? Why is there such a discrepancy between the cover price ($.10) and the current selling price (>$1,000,000) of a mint condition copy of Action Comics #1?

111

Which is…when?

Of what?

Incoherently and inchoately

112

The small chance for social mobility is no justification for the toil of the working class. In chattel slavery, slaves are free to buy their freedom, they have a chance at forcefully escaping or they could get lucky and work in their owner’s house instead of the field. Is that a justification for the toil that slaves endure in slavery?

Really the entrepreneurs take all the risk? I guess you are disregarding the thousands of worker deaths yearly in America alone.

113

Appeal to emotion anyone?

114

Check some facts before blindly believing marxist lies. According to the US tax data, most people start in the lowest tax bracket and end up in the highest before they retire. Even most millionaires/billionaires are first generation self-made men and women.

115

Show me a source.

Define “most”

I still don’t see it as a justification for working class toil and hardship.

“Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution, versus children of the rich who have about a 22 percent chance.”

“By international standards, the United States has an unusually low level of intergenerational mobility”

and lol.. a member of an an-cap forum takes data put out by the US government seriously..

Losing your life is a bit worse than losing your firm. Agree?

116

Sure it is.

No one is proposing slavery. We live in a world of scarce resources. You have to work for someone, or yourself, in order to provide the resources necessary to survive. Please try to keep up.

People die driving their car. Smoking cigarettes. From cancer. From aids. From too many french fries. Do you have any statistical data to prove that workers die in greater numbers than entrepreneurs?

And do you think that entrepreneurs are also not workers? And yes entrepreneurs take all of the risk, they pay the workers NOW and gamble there will be a profit later. Workers are never asked to refund their wages in the event the company goes bust or turns a loss in the fiscal period in which they worked. Workers get paid for work. They choose not to invest their labour for a slice of the end product (profit or loss). They can, when they become self-employed.

This BS is wasted on me, because I am a working class guy, raised by working class folk. The people who cry about the plight of the working class don’t have a clue what is on the other side for productive, intelligent workers with a low TP who are willing to take risks and profit for themselves. People like you come along and diss entrepreneurs, who are just workers who don’t want to be wage earners anymore and are doing something about it instead of buying into historical mysticism and self-victimization.

117

You got it buddy.

118

I hate it when I don’t see a typo until someone else quotes it

119

From time to time the idea of “profit sharing” comes back into style. Though you don’t hear much talk about “loss sharing.”

120

I live a couple blocks from a firm that is 100% employee owned. During the boom, they expanded to 4 new cities (from an original 2, total 6) they were taking on new employee owners and the old guys were cashing out. Now there is the bust, they are the most miserable lot ever.

Imagine how bad it would be if a union was running a firm and that’s what it is like!