Other than the fact that having money makes it easier to get an education, there is essentially no causation between one’s economic status and one’s intelligence. You can be a filthy rich retard and a poor genius. An individual’s capacity for intelligence is something they are born with; wether they have lots of money or not is irrelevant to that.
Hey Brainy! I was wondering when you’d chime in.
So, have I managed to move you back to the Labor Theory side of the force again?
Specify
It’s funny. In regards to the libertarian right you say voting gives the state legitimacy. In regards to the poor you seem to ignore this insight, how strange.
And smarter people tend to do better in life. Or are you going to deny that?
Oh, just in the sense that all value added to materials is by labor on/through capital, and that therefore the free market and therefore just wage is the exact difference between the initial/maintenance cost of capital and the final price it is sold for, and that there is therefore no room for the capitalist profit-seeking that many anarcho-capitalists seem to think will exist in a free market. With all that stuff I’ve already written. And stuff.
They’ve certainly adjusted the system to the point where intelligence is maybe the greatest factor. Simple humility and hard work are useful in an economy that produces simple goods, but in a computer age where all those dirty jobs for simple hardworking people are dealt with elsewhere (because, in no small part, of government subsidies for transportation), and the only thing left for those with less intellectual prowess are extremely low-paid service jobs, yes, the gap will be quite wide. Smart people will likely always be more wealthy on average, but the gap that exists today is a distorted nightmare.
JC, just replying to you in general, not a post in particular.
I’m wondering, if people can’t profit from deploying their capital, then why would anyone accumulate savings? If I knew my workers would organize to extort higher wages from me until my capital was no longer a benefit in the profit making process, why would I start a business?
The issue I have (recurring) with these positions (as I understand them) is not that they are left, but that they only look at things from the perspective of labour, and not the entrepreneur or capitalist. And an entrepreneur, is just motivated labour with capital, not some member of an evil elite statist cabal.
That that is the sole cause of their poverty. The state contributes heavily to it. And it isn’t only the dumb it keeps down.
What on earth makes you believe this?
Well, capital can still make you money. You can take advantage of market segments impossible without sufficient capital, and maybe make a lot of money doing it.
You save to build up the money to buy big things. Houses, cars, etc., especially since credit will be far less available without fractional reserve lending, fiat legal tender, etc. And you’d start a business to live and be your own boss. You can anticipate, in general, as I said in my initial post, much smaller-scale, local production than is currently the case. Most machines/buildings would be run by families, artistains, appretices, etc. VERY different.
Simple mathematics. You got your raw materials and machinery for somethng likely pretty close to what you could sell them for. You aren’t going to profit that way. You add value to raw materials by making them somehow more useful through labor. Your labor is the source of the difference in value between what you bought and what you sold.
Again, how does this imply there will be no profit-seeking? If you mean returns to capital, i.e. interest, that will exist regardless and will accrue to owners of capital. who have the good sense to put capital to this or to that use. If you mean profit, i.e. the reward an entrepreneur gets for correctly judging market trends, then no, again, it will not disappear.
I mean profit in terms of sale prices for goods or services in excess of costs including labor. Interest is different. Again, if you own something that goes up in value over time and then sell it, then you can make money that way. I don’t know what you mean by “the reward an enrepreneur gets for correctly judging market trends”. How does he gain the reward for his correct evaluation of the market?
It would help if you familiarized yourself with Austrian economics. Profits are the rewards entrepreneurs get when they meet a demand they anticipate successfully. This causes an increasing number of profit-oriented individuals to enter the market and also provide the good until the profits gradually dissipate, which puts the market back on the road towards equilibrium. Losses are the other side of the coin, and they’re suffered when entrepreneurs incorrectly estimate demand for a good, to the point that they cannot break even, causing them to divert resources to more profitable sectors of the economy.
I think you perhaps believe we’re speaking of profits as cost plus some arbitrary markup. Profits and losses will exist so long as uncertainty exists, and are signals that an entrepreneur is either succeeding or failing in serving his consumer base. The long-run trend of course is towards equilibrium, by way of the process described above. Look it up in Economics for Real People, or Man, Economy and State or even Menger’s Principles.
See, this is where I have a problem too. The aversion to capitalists doesn’t account for the fact that some of them squander their capital by hiring the wrong people, going into the wrong market at the wrong time, or misjudging trends in the marketplace. Some might be incompetent as ownership.
The anti-capitalist stance seems to be predicated on an aversion to capitalists using capital as a club to order around labour, but we all know that labour for the most part is voluntary. That is, people are not chained to their jobs, and changing employers is not that difficult. In fact, labour faces much less restriction in the marketplace than business does. But that’s a tangent…
I think because not all capitalists turn a profit, undermines the argument that capital is the path to “automatic profit without labour (or by purchasing someone else’s labour)”.
Some of the things I read yesterday (Tues) bothered me. I know there is a militancy about organized labour, but I guess I didn’t really realize how ideologically committed that segment of the libertarian spectrum is. Because it sounds to me, that coercion over people with capital through group organization is a-ok. Even if that capital was accumulated honestly, and deployed with sincere intentions, somehow, the labourers who did not accumulate that capital, but do use it (as a purpose for their own jobs) somehow have a higher claim on it.
I feel like this is totally wrong. But maybe I am misinterpreting it, or missing some key piece of info. But if we would think it is wrong for people to get together and coerce (through extortion) against say a church that allows gay priests, or a school that teaches {insert race here} children, then I do not see how it is justified doing the same against honest, rightful property owners.
And I use extortion, because there is this notion that one side has leverage, and that the leverage should not be removed (neither of which I can see, so I am having a hard time understanding) but rather the leverage should be given to the group (labour), instead of the individual (capitalist). That through organization (not increased production) they can raise their wages until the capitalist cannot profit from his investment of his savings and capital goods.
Frankly, it seems a little Marxian, not in the ideological sense, but in the unnatural way it expects people to act in order for the system to work. The motive for generating capital, and undertaking large capital projects, is based on profit. All trades are based on profit, we know this, it’s fundamental human action. The first thing (outside my perception of militancy) is that removing profit from economy is a big no-no. Man is wired to work off the profit (material or immaterial) motive.
Now we admit, we need capital to pay our workers, so they can produce, and then we can sell (consume). Production comes before consumption. But who in their right mind, would take all of the risk of investing their capital to buy capital goods, pay wages during production, plan etc, if the workers (who have been paid prior to the goods going to market (Say’s Law) intend to consume the full sales price in production costs?
You invest your capital. If the business fails, you lose. If the business succeeds, you get nothing (up and above your own labour, which you could have sold to someone else stupid enough to risk his capital for nothing). Am I misunderstanding this?
And one more thing just occurred to me. How do we replace capital goods, if the workers consume all revenue in wages? I mean, I can’t understand why a capitalist would even want to start a business under this scenario, but lets say he does. How does he manage the company, if in effect the budget is set by the employees and their organized wage negotiations?
Remember in Atlas Shrugged, what happened at the auto plant when the workers started deciding their own wages, and who would work overtime and so on and so forth? Disaster. And it wasn’t that far fetched, in many of Rand’s examples of socialism in that book, they are so tragic because we recognize how human nature acts when property is divorced from decision making. How man acts when everything is common, and a disparate group of people all seek to control it democratically.
Anyway, I got material for a new blog post, so I am happy. Hopefully future responses here will verify or correct any opinions I have developed. I want to be right, not right wing. When I came here, I was barely a minarchist, and couldn’t get down with anarchism. Now I’m the biggest anarchist I know. Maybe I’m slow on the uptake, but this one doesn’t reason out as something I can buy into. Unless I don’t understand it, or many of my premises need checking.
You shouldn’t have to apologize for following discussion.
I’d love to read your opinion on what I have written. You’re an intelligent guy, and I respect your thoughts. Am I missing something here?
@ Wombie - As you know more about mutualism than I do, and have shown a sympathy towards labour, I’d also like to hear your thoughts.
Yes, great, but, what do they do to meet that demand? You’re talking about it like they’re being paid as fortune-tellers. What is it they do to meet the market demand, and how do they make a profit from it?
No, not arbitrary. The businessman will always buy his materials and pay his workers as little as possible, but sell his goods for as much as possible. “Goods”, in this circumstance, can stand for any number of things. The markup is based on the market. However, what I’m saying is that the fact that there is any gap between the most he can sell for and the least he can pay is due to distortions in the market from government intervention.
They acquire resources and employ them in the direction of profit, whatever that may be. If that means putting labour and capital to work on on making widgets the entrepreneur believes will be fashionable, they will do that. If the entrepreneur predicts correctly and is the first to meet this need or one of the first, they will enjoy high profits in virtue of being one of the few suppliers of it. It is a coordinative function. If you’re asking who pays them for what, no one but consumers does so. Entrepreneurs risk their own resources on the market. If they anticipate correctly, they are rewarded by high demand for their product. If not, they suffer losses. The entrepreneur and the owner of capital tend to be one and the same person, but that isn’t necessarily so (e.g. in the case of rented capital.) At any rate, the point is given the fact of uncertainty profits will continue to exist, and potentially accrue to individuals who are not necessarily laborers or owners of capital.
Which is to say, undervalued factors will tend to earn their DMVP as the market approaches equilibrium. Yes.
This is going to be ridiculously long, but that’s okay, I guess…
This isn’t about an “aversion to capitalists”. It isn’t about the immorality of profits in and of themelves. It is about the immorality of profits because they are only possible, in the long term, through interventions in the market.
That’s a sloppy use of the word “coercion”. Coercion would be the union breaking into the capitalist’s office and threatening to beat him if they don’t get higher pay. This is just people as a group refusing to work unless their requirements for compensation or other conditions are met. There is nothing remotely coercive or immoral about that.
If a church’s leadership decides to allow gay priests, and the congregation refuses to go until they reverse that decision, I fail to see how (political opinions aside) they have done anything remotely coercive.
Why should they increase production; they only ask for the full value of their production. The owner/manager can still justifiably (if he does it well and the money is there) pay himself a hefty wage for his part in brining their goods to market, he just can’t take more than he contributes in labor.
Profit and gain are different things based on my usage. All trades are based on gain. I may not be using my terms correctly, though. Certainly, no one will invest capital unless they can gain by it.
Only one who, by himself contributing, could make more money thus using his capital than he could otherwise. Remember, if you take part in production, you will be able to claim that part of that value for yourself. It is only when you try to generate a difference between your costs and the sale price that you will be outcompeted and brought low by labor action.
No, that’s pretty much right. I’m not saying what ought to be because of some subjective preference, but because of what would be if the market were free. Blame God if you want to for the way logic and the world works. Of course, if you work for someone else, you won’t be the CEO drawing the largest wage, and you’ll have to take orders from someone else. And people will invest capital, because otherwise everyone will starve. I do believe, however, that you are ignoring my statements that large-scale production, such as what I think you envision, will be vastly the minority in a free market. Extreme small-scale, local production, frequently with the owner being the only or one of very few workers, will be the norm.
Wage-earners will have to learn to be realistic, too, and an open sharing of accounting info will help them to understand. No worker’s group with any foresight will not allow you to spend any revenue on maintenance and improvements.
I am not going to argue against a point made from a work of fiction, I’m sorry.
You’ve been playing it pretty straight, Lib. I think we are speaking slightly different languages, but I believe we are starting to understand each other. Unfortunately, as you’ve said, I don’t see this understanding leading to agreement just yet, but we’ll see.