BLM leader: Looting is "reparations".

[Testy Calibrate]

No. But if you think "any wealth" is a synonym for "capitalism", you're very uninformed on economic history; there was plenty of wealth, even unequal wealth, before capitalism ever developed or was defined.

But if the question is whether extreme wealth disparities are indicative of exploitation, that strikes me as tranparently obvious. You shouldn't need Marx to explain something so basic as the fact that if Reggie and Reginald both work thirty hours a week, but Reggie "works for" Reginald, and Reginald makes 2000 times what Reggie does, that Reginald is probably on the take somehow - whether by scheming or heredity, they are in a relationship where Reggie does not get compensated for his work in the same way as Reginald.

If you think that's super cool and entirely justifiable, then congratulations -- you're a capitalist! Maybe you think Reginald must be two thousand times smarter and more valuable than Reggie, that The Market would step in to magically correct it if it weren't, and it's sheer coincidence that one thousand years previous Reggie's ancestors were uncompensated serfs while Reginald's were wealthy churchmen who transitioned to banking when the gods of our society changed. Great, if you like. Nothing to stop you from drinking the Kool-aid(tm) if Kool-aid(tm) is your beverage of choice. But thinking that it is good for the wealthy to extract labor from the poor doesn't make it any less exploitative That's just grammar and logic at play.

But if the question is whether extreme wealth disparities are indicative of exploitation, that strikes me as tranparently obvious. You shouldn't need Marx to explain something so basic as the fact that if Reggie and Reginald both work thirty hours a week, but Reggie "works for" Reginald, and Reginald makes 2000 times what Reggie does, that Reginald is probably on the take somehow - whether by scheming or heredity, they are in a relationship where Reggie does not get compensated for his work in the same way as Reginald.

If you think that's super cool and entirely justifiable, then congratulations -- you're a capitalist!

Does this make one a “capitalist”? What you’ve described and referenced is an occurence in a capitalist regime. A phenomenon occurring within a capitalist regime isn’t necessarily capitalist.


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oh, so does this lead to no "pure" markets? The regime we have is called capitalism. The theoretically pure platonic form of capitalism is irrelevant. In the real world, that is a product of our actually capitalist regime.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

And imo the second guy deserves more in return for that, because he (or she) has taken the necessary initiative involving a very large risk. Not 2000 times more return.

How do you arrive to such a cutoff? Is it arbitrary? Or is there some objective approach to determining when a “return” is too much?

Perhaps it is a visceral basis? After all, Politesse’s Reggie and Reginald disparity perhaps sounds shocking to the ears and reprehensible to the eyes. When the news reports on the compensation package of a CEO, to the amount of 30 million, and refers to Peter for comparison, making $10/hr, 40 hours a day, making widgets, yeah, the immediate response, for some, is that’s unjust, wrong, or such a disparity shouldn’t be tolerated. But what, other than the shock to our sensibilities, does one base the idea such a disparity is too great? Is there an objective basis?

I too have at times found myself thinking the compensation disparity is too great, just based on how it sounds or looks. Developing an objective measure or approach to satisfactorily support the idea such a disparity is too great, unjust, and so forth, is the issue.

The law has a “shock the conscience” standard. It is not often used but does exist. The standard is rather arbitrary, some government action is impermissible because it “shocks the conscience” on little more than the judge said so, or the judge’s own sensibilities were offended and shocked. I am by no means suggesting this is your approach, but illuminating a parallel to the practice of law in which the basis for the decision, the line drawing, was arbitrary, a shock to the conscience of someone, somewhere, or some people, hence, forbidden.

It seems, I emphasize seems, the legal “shock the conscience” is parallel, obstensibly, to the line drawing of X is too much of a “return,” with both being arbitrary, perhaps shocking to some, but maybe not others. How is the line drawn?


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Because when 1 person controls the same amount of resources as millions of people, they can harm others in countless ways with impugnity. Power corrupts.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

The central tenant of capitalism is the right to private property. If citizens can't freely accumulate capital due to theft or whatever capitalism collapses. What would the purpose of a capitalistic system if people couldn't own anything? What kind of a citation do you need here?

No. Capitalism could in fact function without the current form of "right to private property". The extant model of ownership is broken in favor of a moneyed aristocracy of rent seekers. It always has been.

It could function much better with modifications to the underlying concept of ownership, wherein the person using the resource to create value (or paying to use the thing) automatically, necessarily, gains ownership stake.

If citizens can't accumulate capital because the "owners" refuse to offer contracts that decay or reduce their ownership, then the king is dead, long live the landlord (never mind the crown on their head and the throne they sit upon).

We could, as a society, redefine ownership, and capitalism would continue, albeit with more onus on the "owners" to continue to create new value rather than resting on their conquests.

No, capitalism can't survive without the right to private property. Capitalism works because it provides strong incentives to work hard, increase efficiency, improvise, innovate, invest wisely, produce superior products, and etc. But this is hard work. People aren't going to work hard if there are no incentives. No private property.

property is also the base from which credit is issued.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

I'll take it a step further. I do not know because I do not care. Their legal duty is to: charge as much as they can get away with regardless of cost, and squeeze as much work out of the workers as they can for as little as they can get away with in compensation (and as per the wage theft thread, often not paying at all!), So that the people who are doing none of that work can hoard power aand authority and relinquish none of it.

Why do I care about their names when I already know their job is to fuck me and leverage me out of my money to the best of their abilities? I don't need to know the devil's name to know what he stands for is fucked up and wrong.

Better the devil you know.

not always

 

[Testy Calibrate]

I have never in my life chosen to rent. I have rented only because I have been situationally forced to, because mortgages have a cost barrier to entry, and a time barrier to quit (though lease terms generally also have a different form of time barrier).

At any rate, some people are in situations too temporary to be able to justify the insane closing costs on a sale when they will not be in the house long enough to overcome the fucked up frontloading of interest (both of which they will necessarily be leveraged into).

These are artificial barriers designed around economic asymmetries that the common man cannot challenge because they have no leverage; we would generally reject such tactics soundly if we could. But we can't.

When a rental situation is necessary for a person's situation, all it takes is poking some holes in the asymmetrical model of ownership to bleed equity in part to the occupant. As I've stated before.

I'm not following you. If someone's situation is economically better to not buy due to short time horizon (for example); who is hurt if they decide to rent? There's nothing artificial about it.

or if they can't buy even if they wanted to.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

We don't have any examples of other systems that function anywhere near as well.

We don't have examples of any systems not run by the people who benefit most from "ownership" as it currently functions (whether by the state or by individuals, they both treat ownership as "all mine forever").

We don't have examples that force ownership to cede towards the people who do the actual living at, paying for, or the working with. We don't have those examples because we have never had the power to renegotiate a compromise on ownership itself away from rent seeking. Nobody has been able to establish a different paradigm because it is a paradigm that will absolutely NEVER directly benefit those with the most individual power, power they got originally by doing the very thing that such a model would prevent.

And while you're at it why don't you negotiate with Earth about the harmful effects of gravity.

Just because it is difficult to change does not make it a good system.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

‘I’m going to find some place to loot,’ said suspect who livestreamed himself on social media trying to break into ATM wielding a hammer, prosecutors said

Looks like Kim Foxx is finally prosecuting a looter. Helps I guess that he was videoing himself doing it. Now the other 1000 or so Chicago looters need to be arrested and prosecuted as well.

In order to make you feel like all is right with the world?

 

[DrZoidberg]

I continue to feel very confused by how Marxism is being defined in this thread.

The main problem with Marxism is that everybody is today. We've switched from "a great man" reading of history to "a materialist" reading of history. It's the idea that people are primarily motivated by incentives. Not just for consumption, but even for ideas. It was his great philosophical insight. He combined Hegel and Adam Smith. Today of course we just think of this as history. It's so obvious today we take it for granted, that we forget it's Marxism.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

I continue to feel very confused by how Marxism is being defined in this thread.

Could there even be such a thing as reparations in a Marxism-oriented society that took his ideas seriously? Reparations seem more like noblesse oblige than class egalitarianism or the reversal of subaltern alienation. Like, "here's a pittance of ransom money, now shut up and let me keep my extreme wealth". Neither the overbearing structure of powerful and powerless, nor any element of the labor structure that channels wealth from the productive workers to their dubiously talented owners, are challenged in any way by a one-time allocation of hush money. Reparations seem, to me, like the purest Capitalist solution to a class inequality problem that could possibly be imagined. I mean, Jesus, people died under slavery. Millions of them. Children were sold into sex slavery. Unfathomable stretches of land were requisitioned in Africa to support the trade. Just how big are these checks supposed to be? If you think a human life is worth, what, a few dozen thousand-dollar checks over a couple of years, then congratulations my peeps, you are Capitalists. Not Marxists. At all.

But I guess "Marxism" is just being taken to mean "any sort of critique of capitalism"...

I am not convinced that the ism after marx represents an internally consistent concept. Kapital is pure genius and basically entirely correct. But that is an economic analysis of the systemic process of capital, not a coherent ism. The manifesto is a response to industrialization and concentration of ownership of the means of production in a basically steampunk dystopia. It isn't reflecting the conditions of the information age afaict.

 

[Politesse]

I continue to feel very confused by how Marxism is being defined in this thread.

Could there even be such a thing as reparations in a Marxism-oriented society that took his ideas seriously? Reparations seem more like noblesse oblige than class egalitarianism or the reversal of subaltern alienation. Like, "here's a pittance of ransom money, now shut up and let me keep my extreme wealth". Neither the overbearing structure of powerful and powerless, nor any element of the labor structure that channels wealth from the productive workers to their dubiously talented owners, are challenged in any way by a one-time allocation of hush money. Reparations seem, to me, like the purest Capitalist solution to a class inequality problem that could possibly be imagined. I mean, Jesus, people died under slavery. Millions of them. Children were sold into sex slavery. Unfathomable stretches of land were requisitioned in Africa to support the trade. Just how big are these checks supposed to be? If you think a human life is worth, what, a few dozen thousand-dollar checks over a couple of years, then congratulations my peeps, you are Capitalists. Not Marxists. At all.

But I guess "Marxism" is just being taken to mean "any sort of critique of capitalism"...

I am not convinced that the ism after marx represents an internally consistent concept. Kapital is pure genius and basically entirely correct. But that is an economic analysis of the systemic process of capital, not a coherent ism. The manifesto is a response to industrialization and concentration of ownership of the means of production in a basically steampunk dystopia. It isn't reflecting the conditions of the information age afaict.

I would more or less agree with this. Marx has had an enormous influence. I cannot envision what my own academic discipline would look like if Marx were somehow extracted from our theorizing. Even the terms "Capital" and "Capitalism", though not coined by Marx, were most certainly popularized by him. Is there any economic school that does not employ the idea of capital as per Marx's writings as a basic element of analysis? But using elements of Marx's analysis does not, to my mind at least, make one a "Marxist". That should refer, at the very least, to some sort of agreement with Marx's sociopolitical arguments, not just his academic insights. And Marx is dated. Not just by the information age either, the rise of the stock market and many other various channels of non-material wealth accumulation and transfer happened after his time that greatly change what economists must understand and political radicals should consider. The profligacy of new schools within Marxism is a response to this and many other challenges over the past century.

Regardless, I'm not any of those things. I do not see capitalism as an unchallenged good, but I do not see it as something that could possibly be dismantled, either, at least not by the classic Marxist engine of a disgruntled Proletariat rising up against their masters. Technology may yet change the game on us, as per the FALGSC crowd, but that clearly has not happened yet, and again, I do not think it is within the abiity of society to consciously choose that future -- it either will or will not happen regardless of who has the guns. I note that Marx himself can certainly be read this way; despite the Manifesto, it's not exactly clear whether Marx-the-social-scientist thought it was possible to change the course of history, or whether he simply thought it prudent to throw in with the winning side within an unavoidable conflict of interests.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Insurance scheme??? Try again--I'm talking about houses, not people! If your HVAC dies it's at least a 4-figure repair bill and it's not something you can possibly do yourself. (Licenses are required because of the refrigerant.)

HA! HVAC is one of the easiest things in the world to repair and no licenses are required unless you're fucking with the gas line or a boiler. It's never the gas valve, and boilers are extremely rare.

Usually, it's a card, or a small transformer, or occasionally a capacitor.

Once I had to replace a flame sensor.

And yes, insurance not actually covering any of the things that actually go wrong in a home is absolutely part of the problem.

You're looking at the heating part of it. Every failure we've ever had was on the cooling side--and the usual first thing the repairman looks at is the system pressure. That takes a license.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I continue to feel very confused by how Marxism is being defined in this thread.

Could there even be such a thing as reparations in a Marxism-oriented society that took his ideas seriously? Reparations seem more like noblesse oblige than class egalitarianism or the reversal of subaltern alienation. Like, "here's a pittance of ransom money, now shut up and let me keep my extreme wealth". Neither the overbearing structure of powerful and powerless, nor any element of the labor structure that channels wealth from the productive workers to their dubiously talented owners, are challenged in any way by a one-time allocation of hush money. Reparations seem, to me, like the purest Capitalist solution to a class inequality problem that could possibly be imagined. I mean, Jesus, people died under slavery. Millions of them. Children were sold into sex slavery. Unfathomable stretches of land were requisitioned in Africa to support the trade. Just how big are these checks supposed to be? If you think a human life is worth, what, a few dozen thousand-dollar checks over a couple of years, then congratulations my peeps, you are Capitalists. Not Marxists. At all.

But I guess "Marxism" is just being taken to mean "any sort of critique of capitalism"...

I am not convinced that the ism after marx represents an internally consistent concept. Kapital is pure genius and basically entirely correct. But that is an economic analysis of the systemic process of capital, not a coherent ism. The manifesto is a response to industrialization and concentration of ownership of the means of production in a basically steampunk dystopia. It isn't reflecting the conditions of the information age afaict.

The Communist Manifesto is his projection of what was going to happen after "the end of history". It's an Hegelian concept. It was widely believed at the time that soon the last innovation would be innovated.

He's got a massive gaping hole in Das Kapital. He only counts the work in creating a product. He ignores transporting it as well as redistributing it, ie informing others about it, getting people excited about it, so logtistics, marketting and sales. He treats that entire sector in the economy as parasites not doing any real work. But anybody who has worked in sales knows that it's a tough job.

That's a big hole in his argument. It's a major omission. The economy was sophisticated back then. It's a pretty basic fuckup. And it kills the entire book. It's not just my opinion. It's a common critique. I think the people who ignore it are just Communist fanboys.

That said, Karl Marx made a tonne of predictions about how society would develop in 1840, and to about 1870 he nailed it. That's pretty amazing. What he failed to predict was that the capitalist class would conspire to let go of power and share their wealth. Which created the welfare systems that exist today in the whole world.

 

[Testy Calibrate]

Must...
Not...
Invest...
The required..
Effort...

 

[Jarhyn]

Insurance scheme??? Try again--I'm talking about houses, not people! If your HVAC dies it's at least a 4-figure repair bill and it's not something you can possibly do yourself. (Licenses are required because of the refrigerant.)

HA! HVAC is one of the easiest things in the world to repair and no licenses are required unless you're fucking with the gas line or a boiler. It's never the gas valve, and boilers are extremely rare.

Usually, it's a card, or a small transformer, or occasionally a capacitor.

Once I had to replace a flame sensor.

And yes, insurance not actually covering any of the things that actually go wrong in a home is absolutely part of the problem.

You're looking at the heating part of it. Every failure we've ever had was on the cooling side--and the usual first thing the repairman looks at is the system pressure. That takes a license.

Come discuss with us in the hyperbolic but now much more reasonable discussion in the "give up homes" thread.