Racial eqaulity

[HARDCORECAPITALIST]

So can anyone explain to me why this is so important to you all? What is so good about it?

[Invader Zim]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 06:20 PM
So can anyone explain to me why this is so important to you all? What is so good about it?
Why should a person of a different race suffer discrimination because of race?

It is a far more apt question to ask why we should put up with racism.

[HARDCORECAPITALIST]

Valid point, but why all the special measures to ensure equality? What makes minorites more valued that the majority?

[Eoin Dubh]

How are "minorities" more valued? Really , answer that please.

[HARDCORECAPITALIST]

Positive discrimination (affirmative action) for instance. That would fit with marxist ideology right?

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 05:48 PM
Positive discrimination (affirmative action) for instance. That would fit with marxist ideology right?
Wrong.

And secondly, some of us largely disagree with Marxism

[HARDCORECAPITALIST]

Far left ideology then.

[loveme4whoiam]

But still, positive discrimination is not advocated by any far-left ideology I know of. Advancing one group over another group is discrimination; there's nothing positive about it. Far-leftists want a meritocracy, where people get jobs they are good enough for, regardless of any other qualifyer. And just to point out, this is not the case now by any means.

[chimx]

Race is a social construction that has no scientific basis. The focus should turn to cultural equality.

[Zingu]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 05:57 PM
Far left ideology then.
Most of us do not not identify ourselves with the "left". Nor do we follow ideology, Marxism is theory, ideology is not.

[Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor]

Affirmative action is a program designed to give blacks special treatment to make up for the racial discirmination they face. It is simply an attempt to make the world more equal. If blacks and whites do not control roughly the same amount of power, there is racial discirmination occuring. When this stops happening, affirmative action will no longer be neccessary.

[Hiero]

I like Martin Luther King's quote on Affirmative Action

"Whenever this issue [compensatory treatment] is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but should ask for nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the second would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up."

[Tungsten]

Dooga Aetrus Blackrazor

Affirmative action is a program designed to give blacks special treatment to make up for the racial discirmination they face.
At whose expense?

It is simply an attempt to make the world more equal. If blacks and whites do not control roughly the same amount of power, there is racial discirmination occuring.
There isn't an equal number of black and white people for that power to be equal in the first place, so that's complete nonsense.

When this stops happening, affirmative action will no longer be neccessary.
In other words, people can't be trusted to treat each other with respect, so people's minds must be policed.
Hiero

On the surface, this appears reasonable, but is not realistic. For it is obvious that if a man enters the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the second would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up."
This is just collectivist/racist claptrap. So where are these three hundred year old people he's talking about?

[red team]

You seem confident that an economic system which allows for hoarding of resources and which allows for the best hoarders the power to hoard even more resources is capable of evenly distributing those same resources for all people to engage in the common activity of education. Then again, perhaps you don't believe in this. For you it seems that those who are best capable in the activity of hoarding should also hoard in the activity of education so that those who have hoarded their wealth can keep it for future generations of wealth hoarders while the poor should remain poor and ignorant.

If you cannot provide proof that an economic system which allows for hoarding is capable of evenly distributing resources for a common pursuit then you have absolutely no justification in opposing reverse hoarding.

[Tungsten]

red team

You seem confident that an economic system which allows for hoarding of resources and which allows for the best hoarders the power to hoard even more resources is capable of evenly distributing those same resources for all people to engage in the common activity of education.
I made no such claim, nor do I think that economic equality is a worthwhile goal or consider its opposite to be "hoarding", nor do I think that education is a "common" activity. You have to think for yourself in order to learn things- there's no such thing as "social thought".

Then again, perhaps you don't believe in this. For you it seems that those who are best capable in the activity of hoarding should also hoard in the activity of education
I wasn't aware that education was something people could "hoard" or lock up in a box away from others.

If you cannot provide proof that an economic system which allows for hoarding is capable of evenly distributing resources for a common pursuit then you have absolutely no justification in opposing reverse hoarding.
But that assumes that evenly distributing "resources" (What resources? Whose resources?) is a desirable goal. I don't think it is; such a system would require slavery and involuntary servitude to work.

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 05:20 PM
So can anyone explain to me why this is so important to you all? What is so good about it?
Can I ask you a question? Your sig says your the admin of "BGS". What exactly is that? I googled it and found "British Geological Survey", "British Geriatrics Society" and "Brussels Gay Sports". Regardless of which one it is, its pretty fascinating :)

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

You seem confident that an economic system which allows for hoarding of resources and which allows for the best hoarders the power to hoard even more resources is capable of evenly distributing those same resources for all people to engage in the common activity of education.
I made no such claim, nor do I think that economic equality is a worthwhile goal or consider its opposite to be "hoarding", nor do I think that education is a "common" activity. You have to think for yourself in order to learn things- there's no such thing as "social thought".

Education is not a common or social activity? If that were true then each individual would have to "reinvent" or "rediscover" the laws of physics, calculus etc. on their own. For the vast majority of human beings, education is a social activity where commonly held previously arrived-at knowledge is passed on/accumulated.



Then again, perhaps you don't believe in this. For you it seems that those who are best capable in the activity of hoarding should also hoard in the activity of education
I wasn't aware that education was something people could "hoard" or lock up in a box away from others.

"Hoarding" is poor wording, since education is not a physical commodity that can be stored away. Nonetheless, the point he was aiming at was that educational opportunities are not equal throughout society. Rich people get better teachers/schools etc. and thus more opportunities.



If you cannot provide proof that an economic system which allows for hoarding is capable of evenly distributing resources for a common pursuit then you have absolutely no justification in opposing reverse hoarding.
But that assumes that evenly distributing "resources" (What resources? Whose resources?) is a desirable goal. I don't think it is; such a system would require slavery and involuntary servitude to work.


Hmm, if we take "resources" to mean wealth, commodities, etc. then what you just struck at could be construed as one of the core tenets of Marxism. Capitalism is a system of production that unfairly or unjustly distributes resources/wealth. The bourgeoisie recieves and accumulates surplus wealth without providing any labor, simply by presenting capital (which is also the product of labor). Marxism is about making wealth go to the actually productive forces of society :).

edit: sorry, i have no idea why the quotes thing didnt work on this post...

[Oh-Dae-Su]

well lets see, America is like 70% Anglo, with all the important government positions, they have pretty much the privilages, so obviously if you were a minority, you would obviously try to make some organization to work together to get at least some of your rights. Imagine how would you feel if you were in Iran, where 90% of the population was Islamic, and you were Christian, i mean even if nobody called you in the streets disciminatory names, you still feel the fucking pressure and the feeling that a minority would feel of almost overwhelming inmobility. Although since racial issues is such a big thing here, the tides have almost turned, hehehe for example a black comedian can make fun of white people and still be called a comedian and everyone laughs with him, but ohh shit if a white comedian makes fun of black people! he will be coming out in the tabloids next day labled RACIST!! thats just how things are, i think its incorrect, but heck at least thats the worst your getting for having 300 years of slavery in America lmao

me as a Hispanic, i frankly don't give a shit about all this race crap, i think more and more we are beginning to accept and become more tolerant, hopefully this will continue, although discrimination will always exist, but as we become more integrated it probably wont be felt as much.

[red team]

If you cannot provide proof that an economic system which allows for hoarding is capable of evenly distributing resources for a common pursuit then you have absolutely no justification in opposing reverse hoarding.

But that assumes that evenly distributing "resources" (What resources? Whose resources?) is a desirable goal. I don't think it is; such a system would require slavery and involuntary servitude to work.


What is ownership? Please define it and tell me where ownership originated other than conquest and the subsequent forcible hoarding of the fruits of conquest. Next you'll be telling me the territories of nations wasn't founded on warfare. :lol:

But as I said before without going into a long history lesson of the evolution of predatory economic systems, what is proposed is simply equal opportunity to gain knowledge and demonstrate merit. Unless you don't believe in the Capitalist lie of meritocracy.

[Tungsten]

BattleOfTheCowshed

Education is not a common or social activity? If that were true then each individual would have to "reinvent" or "rediscover" the laws of physics, calculus etc. on their own. For the vast majority of human beings, education is a social activity where commonly held previously arrived-at knowledge is passed on/accumulated.
You've misinterprited what I said. I said it was impossible for one person to think for someone else.

"Hoarding" is poor wording,
Red team seems to be prone to that at the best of times.

since education is not a physical commodity that can be stored away. Nonetheless, the point he was aiming at was that educational opportunities are not equal throughout society. Rich people get better teachers/schools etc. and thus more opportunities.
And teachers/schools need to be paid for. Are you suggesting that they work for work's sake?

Hmm, if we take "resources" to mean wealth, commodities, etc. then what you just struck at could be construed as one of the core tenets of Marxism. Capitalism is a system of production that unfairly or unjustly distributes resources/wealth.
This rests on the following false premises-
-Wealth is "distributed" under capitalism.
-Wealth is something that needs destributing.
-All inequity is inherently unjust.

The bourgeoisie recieves and accumulates surplus wealth without providing any labor, simply by presenting capital (which is also the product of labor). Marxism is about making wealth go to the actually productive forces of society
I'm not going throught all this again. All the labour you care to add won't turn a puddle of mud in to an apple tart.
Oh-Dae-Su

well lets see, America is like 70% Anglo, with all the important government positions, they have pretty much the privilages, so obviously if you were a minority, you would obviously try to make some organization to work together to get at least some of your rights.
We're all legally equal now, so there's no more rights to be had. Who's got the important jobs is unimportant provided we remain legally equal. And don't anyone start waffling on about sentences given to ethnics minorities- there is no law that says they have to be given stiffer sentences.

in Iran, where 90% of the population was Islamic, and you were Christian, i mean even if nobody called you in the streets disciminatory names, you still feel the fucking pressure and the feeling that a minority would feel of almost overwhelming inmobility.
No, I wouldn't and I certainly wouldn't have any right to do anything about it even if I did. What would you propose?

but heck at least thats the worst your getting for having 300 years of slavery in America lmao
Everyone's had centuries of slavery and it was banned years ago, so unless these people are over a hundred and fifty years old, then there's nothing to be got back for.
red team

What is ownership? Please define it and tell me where ownership originated other than conquest and the subsequent forcible hoarding of the fruits of conquest.
It's true. No one does any work. We all just spend the day mugging people and then go home. Stealing a car is the same as manufacturing one, didn't you know? :rolleyes:

Next you'll be telling me the territories of nations wasn't founded on warfare.
As if that matters in the context of the present.

But as I said before without going into a long history lesson of the evolution of predatory economic systems,
Yours is a "predatory economic system" that requires slaves to function. Mine isn't and doesn't. We needn't go into history at all.

Good day.

[cyu]

Yours is a "predatory economic system" that requires slaves to function. Mine isn't and doesn't.

So you're saying the capitalist form of authoritarian corporate command structures is less like slavery, but a democratic corporate command structure, in which employees can replace CEOs they don't like, is more like slavery? Who are you trying to kid?

[Tungsten]

cya

So you're saying the capitalist form of authoritarian
Capitalism is not authoritarian. I don't support command economies and I favour banning the use of force in social relationships.

corporate command structures is less like slavery,
Corportate commands aren't capitalism, they're corportatism, which I don't support.

but a democratic corporate command structure, in which employees can replace CEOs they don't like, is more like slavery? Who are you trying to kid?
Does it matter whether I'm enslaved by force or by vote? I'm still enslaved all the same.

[red team]

What is ownership? Please define it and tell me where ownership originated other than conquest and the subsequent forcible hoarding of the fruits of conquest.

It's true. No one does any work. We all just spend the day mugging people and then go home. Stealing a car is the same as manufacturing one, didn't you know? :rolleyes:


Alright then, I'll find anything outside and build a fence around it to claim ownership. Then I'll print pieces of paper and get people to work for it to gain me more things I can put a fence around in exchanged for these pieces of paper so they can buy a little bit of what I have inside the borders of my fence. But of course to do this I'll need a private army. Anybody out there want to sign up? :lol:

Please tell me, aside from this little analogy I've presented, where did ownership claims ORIGINATED!!!




But as I said before without going into a long history lesson of the evolution of predatory economic systems,

Yours is a "predatory economic system" that requires slaves to function. Mine isn't and doesn't. We needn't go into history at all.


Is there a group of people called bosses?
Is there a group of people called workers?
Are bosses wealthier and smaller in number than workers?
If a worker refuses to work for a boss does he still get paid?
If a worker disputes a boss's order and is fired does he have a right of challenge to this decision?
If a boss disregards the decision of the majority of workers does the workers have the right to fire him?
Are workers paid the full amount of the value of their labour?
Do bosses keep the remainder of the amount not paid to workers without contributing anything of value to the end product themselves?
If a worker is able and willing to work in exchange for pay does he have the right to gain employment and does a boss have an obligation to hire him?

Answers:
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
No
No
No
Yes
No, No

Wealth and power of bosses > wealth and power of workers = slavery for workers

Capitalism is a predatory economic system.
Nothing else more has to be said.

[fernando]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 09:11 PM
Race is a social construction that has no scientific basis. The focus should turn to cultural equality.
Finally somebody who gets it! :)

[cyu]

Corportate commands aren't capitalism, they're corportatism, which I don't support.

Good to hear. How would you structure business then? If a decision affects a lot of people, how should the decision be made if not by democracy of the people most affected?

[Hiero]

This is just collectivist/racist claptrap. So where are these three hundred year old people he's talking about?

How the hell is it racist?

[redcom]

i think a good solution to this problem if really any it that we all start fucking and eventually there will be only one race

[Tungsten]

Hiero

How the hell is it racist?
Judging people on the basis of their skin colour is called racism, which is what Affirmitive Acion does.

red team

Alright then, I'll find anything outside and build a fence around it to claim ownership.
If it's no one else's, fair enough.

Then I'll print pieces of paper and get people to work for it to gain me more things I can put a fence around
How are you going to do that from prison after you've been charged with counterfieting?

Please tell me, aside from this little analogy I've presented, where did ownership claims ORIGINATED!!!
Who conquered who 1000+ years ago isn't relevent to present day property rights.

Is there a group of people called bosses?
Irrelevent because they don't excercise any political power. The government does that.

Is there a group of people called workers?
Irrelevent because everyone with a job is a worker.

Are bosses wealthier and smaller in number than workers?
Slavery has nothing to do with numbers or wealth- they're non essentials.

If a worker refuses to work for a boss does he still get paid?
Paid by whom?

If a worker disputes a boss's order and is fired does he have a right of challenge to this decision?
Irrelevent.

If a boss disregards the decision of the majority of workers does the workers have the right to fire him?
If the majority of people in your street want their houses painting a certain colour, do they have the right to force you to paint yours that colour too?

Are workers paid the full amount of the value of their labour?
You never learn, do you? :rolleyes:

If a worker is able and willing to work in exchange for pay does he have the right to gain employment and does a boss have an obligation to hire him?
Their business contract is whatever they mutually agree on. Anything else is slavery.

Wealth and power of bosses > wealth and power of workers = slavery for workers
Wonderful- another self-serving definition of slavery. So if I have more money than my neighbour, he's my slave is he? Very funny.

And how does this "prove" that capitalism a "predatory" economic system?

Nothing else more has to be said.
Damn right; the absurdity of your argument speaks for itself.

Next!

cyu

Good to hear. How would you structure business then?
It's not the government's role to do that.

If a decision affects a lot of people, how should the decision be made if not by democracy of the people most affected?
Depends on the context.

[cyu]

Good to hear. How would you structure business then?

It's not the government's role to do that.

Well, let's say the employees decide democratically they don't think the CEO deserves a million dollar salary. Since it's the employees who collect the money from the sales, so one day, they decide to pay the CEO about as much as everyone else is paid, the government isn't involved at all. Or let's say the CEO decides to lay off half the employees, but the employees ignore that and show up for work anyway, continuing to pay themselves from what the company earns. The government also is not involved.

Under capitalism, it is only the government that invervenes and arrests the employees for attempting to do what was just described. I would say the same thing you did, "It's not the government's role to do that."

[red team]

If a boss disregards the decision of the majority of workers does the workers have the right to fire him?

If the majority of people in your street want their houses painting a certain colour, do they have the right to force you to paint yours that colour too?


Paint on a house is not an ownership issue. It is an life style issue. Nobody gives a rat's ass about your life style. However, if you claim ownership over their labour which was never yours to claim in the first place, but they "agreed" because the bosses have a monopoly on ownership of resources, then you are in effect a slave master, therefore your ownership claims over their labour is invalid. The workers have no reason to respect any bosses orders. In other words, genuine intent for voluntary contract agreement is impossible without an environment of universal material abundance. Do we have an environment of universal material abundance? No, we have an enforced scarcity system based on arbitrary claims of ownership which originated from past conquest and preserved to the present by hoarding.

Unless you can refute the following logical arguments then my position that Capitalism is a predatory economic system is valid. I'm sure you can agree with the premises of my argument being that you're a Liberal:

The Premises:

1. Absolute liberty as defined to be absolute freedom of action is an inviolable condition of all free persons.
1b. unless the action performed limits the liberty of another free person

2. All persons recognize their own self interest in being free persons and have absolute liberty.

3. People do not act against their own self interest.

4. An important liberty in which comprises absolute liberty is the liberty to receive the full benefits of your own labour.

5. Any actions by any individual or group which limits the liberty of any individual is impermissable. which makes subclause 1b valid.

Working for an individual or group which limits the full benefits of one's labour by appropriating a portion of the total benefits of the given worker violates premise 4 therefore profit making is impermissable premise 5.

Because of premise 2 which implies premise 3 any contract agreed upon which violates premise 4 cannot be voluntary because it acts against the worker's self interest in realizing premise 1 and therefore the contract in agreeing to profiteering is invalid and nulled.

Because profit making violates the premises of individual liberty the worker does not need to respect the labour contract of the bosses and have no reason to respect any bosses orders as implied by the contract.


Oh, and about ownership and money? I'll proceed to demolish those fictions too.

1. all persons must acquire money in order to purchase a product to claim ownership over the said product.

2. You gain money by either engaging in activities to increase the material ownership of another person or group which has money or borrow it from the bank. In either case money represents ownership of resources.

The obvious question is then where did the bank or individual or company gain ownership as represented by money originally?

If the bank or individual or company acquired it from previous bank or individual or company then you have an endless regression in ownership claims which proves absolutely nothing about the validity of the ownership claim in question. Conclusion, ownership claims as represented by money and anything purchased by it is logically unprovable and therefore invalid.

[Tungsten]

cyu

Under capitalism, it is only the government that invervenes and arrests the employees for attempting to do what was just described.
It'd be like me and my buddies deciding to take your car because we don't think you deserve it. The police would rightly intervene. Likewise, the employees would be taking something that didn't belong to them.
red team

Paint on a house is not an ownership issue.
Of course it's an "ownership issue". If I have control of what you can or cannot do with your property, then you don't own it, I do.

However, if you claim ownership over their labour which was never yours to claim in the first place,
They're not claiming it, they're trading something for it. They have to.

but they "agreed" because the bosses have a monopoly on ownership of resources,
They don't have a monopoly on it. Nor do they act spontaneously as a "class". (Does this mean that the bosses should have the right to claim your labour because your "class" has a monopoly on it?)

then you are in effect a slave master,
No, I wouldn't be. Only if they were being forced to work for me- an issue that has already been discussed.

therefore your ownership claims over their labour is invalid.
I don't claim anyone's labour by right. Neither should anyone else.

The workers have no reason to respect any bosses orders. In other words, genuine intent for voluntary contract agreement is impossible without an environment of universal material abundance.
Two could play at that game, though: If what you say is true, then the bosses must be entitled to enter your house (hell, they can even take your house if they want) and take whatever they want because we don't live in an evironment of material abundence and whatever you own just came from historical plunder anyway, so you don't have any real right to it either etc.

Do we have an environment of universal material abundance? No, we have an enforced scarcity system based on arbitrary claims of ownership which originated from past conquest and preserved to the present by hoarding.
Which indoctrination manual did you copy that out of? Their ownership is arbitary and based on historical conquest? Then your ownership- regardless of how little or much you have- must be too.

3. People do not act against their own self interest.
Of course people can act against their own self interest. People smoke, take drugs engage in dangerous activites all the time.

4. An important liberty in which comprises absolute liberty is the liberty to receive the full benefits of your own labour.
I can see where this is leading- more LTV rubbish. Marx copied it off Ricardo and it doesn't work. It's wrong; let it go.

Because profit making violates the premises of individual liberty
No it doesn't. It's more circular logic on your part. You appeal to the LTV to prove the LTV is true.

1. all persons must acquire money in order to purchase a product to claim ownership over the said product.
Wrong. Merely sitting on it for a certain amoumt of time entitles you to ownership of it.

2. You gain money by either engaging in activities to increase the material ownership of another person or group which has money or borrow it from the bank. In either case money represents ownership of resources.
Irrelevent.

The obvious question is then where did the bank or individual or company gain ownership as represented by money originally?
Irrelevent, because of the answer to #1

Next!

[cyu]

Under capitalism, it is only the government that invervenes and arrests the employees for attempting to do what was just described.
It'd be like me and my buddies deciding to take your car because we don't think you deserve it. The police would rightly intervene. Likewise, the employees would be taking something that didn't belong to them.

Now you're getting into why property laws exist in the first place. People pass laws and form governments because they believe these institutions can provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number. If they decide that certain laws go against the public good, then they remove those laws or pass new ones. If it is shown that the ownership of equipment, raw materials, and buildings by people who don't use them, is harmful to society, then the laws should change.

The fact is, not only is the shareholder getting rewarded for not doing any work, the richest shareholders have so much spending power that they draw significant amounts of resources away from the average person, causing him to have less goods and services available to him. This is clearly against the public good, so the laws in this area should make it legal for employees to assume ownership of the equipment they are already using to produce goods.

[Tungsten]

cyu

Now you're getting into why property laws exist in the first place. People pass laws and form governments because they believe these institutions can provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number.
Wrong. They benefit everyone and stealing isn't in anyone's interest anyway. I shouldn't need to point out the obvious reasons why.

If they decide that certain laws go against the public good, then they remove those laws or pass new ones. If it is shown that the ownership of equipment, raw materials, and buildings by people who don't use them, is harmful to society, then the laws should change.
That's the wrong way to go about things, an example of why has already been given. Me and my buddies (we outnumber you, therefore we're automatically right by your definition- greatest good for the greatest number, remember?) decide that it's not in our interest to allow you to have a car (or a house), so we'll just throw you out and take over. Nice, huh?

[Hiero]

Judging people on the basis of their skin colour is called racism, which is what Affirmitive Acion does.

Allowing certain racial groups to be deprived of wealth, education and health is racism. Anything that tries to improve deprived peoples lives is not racism.

[red team]

If they decide that certain laws go against the public good, then they remove those laws or pass new ones. If it is shown that the ownership of equipment, raw materials, and buildings by people who don't use them, is harmful to society, then the laws should change.

That's the wrong way to go about things, an example of why has already been given. Me and my buddies (we outnumber you, therefore we're automatically right by your definition- greatest good for the greatest number, remember?) decide that it's not in our interest to allow you to have a car (or a house), so we'll just throw you out and take over. Nice, huh?


If someone owns a car or house and they're using it for their own personal utility, they're not acquiring a percentage of the benefits of anybody's labour in using that particular car or house are they?

Now if you own a shop or factory you pay people working for you using the factory or shop machinery to make something that sells at the amount corresponding to the value of their labour at which point you take a mandatory percentage off and give those working for you less than their full amount. Nice, huh?

Only fair way to deal with this is if I take back that percentage you owe me by taking out merchandise equal in value to what was ripped off from me at the back of the store or factory. Either that or the owner of the factory or shop get paid a wage proportional to the amount of work they do same as every other worker.

[S G-Bang]

The U.S. government has bent over backwards to help minorities to the detriment of whites.

Anybody *****ing about racial equality now is just making excuses.

[red team]

Originally posted by S G-[email protected] 18 2006, 11:53 PM
The U.S. government has bent over backwards to help minorities to the detriment of whites.

Anybody *****ing about racial equality now is just making excuses.
Alright, then explain the apartheid school system in America? It used to be that black children were bussed in from the poor areas of town just to have a mixed race student population. Not that the American education system is any good in the first place, it lags behind every other industrial country in academic quality, but that's another rant. The fact is no other country in world had to do this. Now that children are sticking to their own local area schools we are seeing segregation by race again. And what segregation this is! Poor minorities can go to school in crumbling buildings and have fewer moldy text books than the number of students attending! While rich white kids can go to schools with fully computer equipped libraries! Explain the difference hypocrite.

[S G-Bang]

Originally posted by red team+Mar 19 2006, 12:22 AM--> (red team @ Mar 19 2006, 12:22 AM)
S G-[email protected] 18 2006, 11:53 PM
The U.S. government has bent over backwards to help minorities to the detriment of whites.

Anybody *****ing about racial equality now is just making excuses.
Alright, then explain the apartheid school system in America? It used to be that black children were bussed in from the poor areas of town just to have a mixed race student population. Not that the American education system is any good in the first place, it lags behind every other industrial country in academic quality, but that's another rant. The fact is no other country in world had to do this. Now that children are sticking to their own local area schools we are seeing segregation by race again. And what segregation this is! Poor minorities can go to school in crumbling buildings and have fewer moldy text books than the number of students attending! While rich white kids can go to schools with fully computer equipped libraries! Explain the difference hypocrite. [/b]
"apartheid system?"

Who feeds you this garbage?

"hypocrite?"

:lol:

Damn, personal attacks right out of the box with no basis at all? Typical I guess.

In america you can move wherever you want. You can move into any school district you want.

Schools in cities/counties with little revenue are generally bad. Most inner cities have a large black population and those populations have crappy schools, JUST LIKE THE PEOPLE OF ANY OTHER COLOR IN THOSE AREAS. The school system itself has nothing to do with racism.

Maybe when you graduate middle school you'll have a better grasp on this.

[cyu]

If they decide that certain laws go against the public good, then they remove those laws or pass new ones. If it is shown that the ownership of equipment, raw materials, and buildings by people who don't use them, is harmful to society, then the laws should change.
That's the wrong way to go about things, an example of why has already been given. Me and my buddies (we outnumber you, therefore we're automatically right by your definition- greatest good for the greatest number, remember?) decide that it's not in our interest to allow you to have a car (or a house), so we'll just throw you out and take over. Nice, huh?


red team already answered this pretty well in the post above, but I'll add my own comments. Anarcho-syndicalists believe in ownership by those who use it. That's the difference between private property, like a home and a car, versus productive property like office equipment and buildings. The employees are using the productive equipment to produce goods, to the benefit of the economy. The shareholder is not using that equipment and buildings to produce anything - he's just using his claim to ownership to get a share of the revenue. Thus anarcho-syndicalists believe the employees have a right to assume ownership over the property they are already using.

[Hiero]

Originally posted by S G-[email protected] 19 2006, 10:53 AM
The U.S. government has bent over backwards to help minorities to the detriment of whites.


To quote another great Black leader.

"You can’t drive a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and call it progress." - Malcolm X.

[S G-Bang]

Originally posted by Hiero+Mar 19 2006, 04:26 AM--> (Hiero @ Mar 19 2006, 04:26 AM)
S G-[email protected] 19 2006, 10:53 AM
The U.S. government has bent over backwards to help minorities to the detriment of whites.


To quote another great Black leader.

"You can’t drive a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and call it progress." - Malcolm X. [/b]
you're using a quote from over 40 years ago?

the struggle is over. malcolm x was a great man but even he realized what a sham ALL racism is

read some jessie lee peterson if you want to grow a pair of testicles:

http://www.bondinfo.org/

or you can continue to promote this phantom struggle to keep whitey on the hook.

:lol:

Jessie Lee Peterson is the MAN. read that site and educate yourself on what being a man is all about

[which doctor]

Originally posted by S G-Bang+Mar 19 2006, 12:59 AM--> (S G-Bang @ Mar 19 2006, 12:59 AM)
Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2006, 04:26 AM

S G-[email protected] 19 2006, 10:53 AM
The U.S. government has bent over backwards to help minorities to the detriment of whites.


To quote another great Black leader.

"You can’t drive a knife into a man’s back nine inches, pull it out six inches, and call it progress." - Malcolm X.
you're using a quote from over 40 years ago?

the struggle is over. malcolm x was a great man but even he realized what a sham ALL racism is

read some jessie lee peterson if you want to grow a pair of testicles:

http://www.bondinfo.org/

or you can continue to promote this phantom struggle to keep whitey on the hook.

:lol:

Jessie Lee Peterson is the MAN. read that site and educate yourself on what being a man is all about [/b]
I'm not listening to a site that says "rebuilding the family." Fuck families!

[S G-Bang]

brillliant statement.

i guess if I had no chance of reproducing, like you, I wouldn't put any value on families either

sorry to hear that. why though? Impotent? or just plain bad with chicks? ugly? which one?

[which doctor]

Originally posted by S G-[email protected] 19 2006, 01:43 AM
brillliant statement.

i guess if I had no chance of reproducing, like you, I wouldn't put any value on families either

sorry to hear that. why though? Impotent? or just plain bad with chicks? ugly? which one?
Since when do sexual reproduction need familes?

I would rather practice free love with all kinds of women (and men).

[S G-Bang]

Originally posted by Fist of Blood+Mar 19 2006, 06:45 AM--> (Fist of Blood @ Mar 19 2006, 06:45 AM)
S G-[email protected] 19 2006, 01:43 AM
brillliant statement.

i guess if I had no chance of reproducing, like you, I wouldn't put any value on families either

sorry to hear that. why though? Impotent? or just plain bad with chicks? ugly? which one?
Since when do sexual reproduction need familes?

I would rather practice free love with all kinds of women (and men). [/b]
so you're basically saying that you stand for nothing.

how pathetic. Well, when you look back on your liife, you can say to yourself, "well, I achieved nothing but at least I stuck my dick in as many holes as possible" Goddamn you're a loser.

btw, why "Fist of Blood?"

did you stick it too far up your own ass?

[Fascist-Hunter]

I won't go into this discussion, racism sucks and I don't feel like explaining that to certain people.

just one little thing:
you're using a quote from over 40 years ago?

that's interesting. If I say today that 2 + 2 = 4... can I say that in 40, 100, 1000, 1000000000 years and will there be anything wrong with that?

[S G-Bang]

Originally posted by [email protected] 19 2006, 06:52 AM
I won't go into this discussion, racism sucks and I don't feel like explaining that to certain people.

just one little thing:
you're using a quote from over 40 years ago?

that's interesting. If I say today that 2 + 2 = 4... can I say that in 40, 100, 1000, 1000000000 years and will there be anything wrong with that?
it's a stupid little chinese proverb saying. it means nothing.

I guess the US government should go ahead and reverse all it has done for minorities?

Institutional racism no longer exists in the United States except to deny whites the same protection in employment and higher education.

I guess you're happy with that.

you know NOTHING about this issue.

tell me of the racism you've witnessed lately.

come on, it's everywhere, right? Well, tell me the stories, I'd love to hear them

[Hiero]

Originally posted by S G-[email protected] 19 2006, 04:59 PM
you're using a quote from over 40 years ago?


It doesn't matter how old a quote is. The quote is actually perfect for it's age, because basically what the government in the US has done in the time between Malcolm X's death is pull the knife out 6 inches.


malcolm x was a great man but even he realized what a sham ALL racism is

I can't see why you would call Malcolm X a great man. Malcolm X promote Black Liberation, while you promote keeping Blacks under white bourgeois control. You even want to stop what assistances and progresive programs Black people have fought for. You hate Malcolm X, you despise him.


read some if you want to grow a pair of testicles:

Jessie Lee Peterson is the MAN. read that site and educate yourself on what being a man is all about

What the hell does that even mean. Are we talking about masculinities or racial equality?

I have a funny fealing you probally watch alot of action movies and play alot of Counter Strike.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by Oh-Dae-[email protected] 15 2006, 01:37 AM
Imagine how would you feel if you were in Iran, where 90% of the population was Islamic, and you were Christian,
Kinda like being and atheist or agnostic when 95% of the population have some kind of faith.

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

Education is not a common or social activity? If that were true then each individual would have to "reinvent" or "rediscover" the laws of physics, calculus etc. on their own. For the vast majority of human beings, education is a social activity where commonly held previously arrived-at knowledge is passed on/accumulated.
You've misinterprited what I said. I said it was impossible for one person to think for someone else.

Of course one can't think for another. However, is that what you really feel educational inequality boils down to? The failure of some people to think and accept education?




"Hoarding" is poor wording,
Red team seems to be prone to that at the best of times.

since education is not a physical commodity that can be stored away. Nonetheless, the point he was aiming at was that educational opportunities are not equal throughout society. Rich people get better teachers/schools etc. and thus more opportunities.
And teachers/schools need to be paid for. Are you suggesting that they work for work's sake?

Well, this is where we come to a crossroads. According to the liberal bourgeois philosophy that rules our present society, equal opportunity (and ergo education) is an ideal. People don't have to "work for work's sake". As in many liberal countries this problem is solved through taxation and redistribution of income. I do not subscribe to this view, I of course see the deficiencies lying with the economic system that "makes the rich rich" to begin with.


This rests on the following false premises-
-Wealth is "distributed" under capitalism.

It's not? It magically appears in people's hands? I don't know where you live, but where I live, what generally happens is people give someone a physical commodity or do some kind of service, and are given money in return. This isn't a distribution of wealth? Wealth (in essence things, or the ability to acquire more things) isn't being distributed by society?


-Wealth is something that needs destributing.

It doesn't NEED it, wealth doesnt NEED anything, its a thing, not a person with needs. However, human survival and in particular human civilization rests on it. If there was no distribution of wealth, and people only kept the wealth that they themselves collected or produced, we would be pretty fucking primitive, as in pre-Caveman form.


-All inequity is inherently unjust.

Of course justice is a subjective concept. I personally don't find all inequity to be unjust. Intellectual inequity (some smarter than others) is natural, as is inequity in physical strength, creativity etc. However the undue accumulation of wealth at the expense of others is "unjust" in that it has no grounding in reality. It is also highly inefficient (for human needs that is).



The bourgeoisie recieves and accumulates surplus wealth without providing any labor, simply by presenting capital (which is also the product of labor). Marxism is about making wealth go to the actually productive forces of society
I'm not going throught all this again. All the labour you care to add won't turn a puddle of mud in to an apple tart.

I don't follow...Of course mud can't turn into an apple tart :-P However, it does take labor to turn a bushel of apples, flour, sugar etc. into an apple tart.

[Tungsten]

Hiero

Allowing certain racial groups to be deprived of wealth, education and health is racism.
You mean that if I don't rush out and provide a member of an ethnic minority with education and healthcare if they don't have any, I'm racist? How amusing.
red team

If someone owns a car or house and they're using it for their own personal utility, they're not acquiring a percentage of the benefits of anybody's labour in using that particular car or house are they?
Of course they are. Houses have to be built and then there's the gas and electricity, which have to be provided for. Are people providing these not being exploited by the owners of the house?

Now if you own a shop or factory you pay people working for you using the factory or shop machinery to make something that sells at the amount corresponding to the value of their labour at which point you take a mandatory percentage off and give those working for you less than their full amount.
You can keep on repeating the lie, comrade, but I'm afraid it doesn't get any more truthful.

[cyu]

Houses have to be built and then there's the gas and electricity, which have to be provided for. Are people providing these not being exploited by the owners of the house?

The homeowners pay for the gas and electricity. If the homeowners didn't exist, the gas and electricity workers would have no reason to keep supplying the house. The gas and electricity workers still need customers to supply them with money so that they can continue to buy food.

This is different than the employee-shareholder relationship. If the shareholder didn't exist, the employees would still have a reason to continue working. They get their money from their customers - they don't need the shareholder - in fact, they'd be better off without the shareholder taking away a cut of every sale they make.

[red team]

Now if you own a shop or factory you pay people working for you using the factory or shop machinery to make something that sells at the amount corresponding to the value of their labour at which point you take a mandatory percentage off and give those working for you less than their full amount.

You can keep on repeating the lie, comrade, but I'm afraid it doesn't get any more truthful.


Well, let's inject a huge amount of truth into this scheme shall we? :)

First let's use something more truthful than money to measure the productive output of workers because money can be quite accurately described as fictitious debt tokens issued by an arbitrary authority to be exchanged based on someone's arbitrary appraisal of value. Let's use the physical measurement of cost that the universe uses namely energy.

Here is the truth of the matter:

You employ 5000 workers in a factory and each worker uses 50 calories of energy per each 10 minutes of work or 300 calories in an hour which is about the same amount as you would spend gardening the whole time. In an 8 hour work day (note: I'm using conservative figures as 14 hour work days are common in third world sweat shops) the average worker uses up 2100 calories, skipping an hour for lunch just to make it even more accurate. In total then 5000 workers expends 5000 x 2100 = 10,500,000 calories of energy per day working in the factory. Now a handful of investors/owners take a profit from this expenditure of let's say 10% which comes out to 1,050,000 calories of energy.

Here's the source for energy expenditure measurements: energy expenditures (http://k2.kirtland.cc.mi.us/~balbachl/calorie.htm)

Wow, you can expend 1,050,000 calories of energy just from sitting in an office and directing people to do the actual energy expending work for you? :lol:

As I have said in previous posts, would you be able to generate that much power all by yourself? Maybe I should give you some extra motivation by harnessing you in front of my car. :lol:

[Hiero]

You mean that if I don't rush out and provide a member of an ethnic minority with education and healthcare if they don't have any, I'm racist? How amusing.

Typical that you would place it at the individual level.

[red team]

You mean that if I don't rush out and provide a member of an ethnic minority with education and healthcare if they don't have any, I'm racist? How amusing.

Typical that you would place it at the individual level.


All Capitalists believe in the individual "right" to hoard the wealth produced by social labour, otherwise Capitalists as a class ceases to exist. That fact alone means that Capitalism and Capitalists thrives on scarcity. If scarcity for the commodity in question doesn't exists naturally it must be artificially introduced. Note: the artificial scarcity introduced into agriculture by the development and marketing of the "terminator" seeds. Same thing goes for education. There is no such thing as equally competent in the eyes of those hiring you even if two hirees can produce more output than one. This makes dumbing down of education for the poor inevitable. The poor must be made to accept the fact that they are indeed incompetent and underqualified after receiving a substandard education, otherwise social explosion is inevitable when the Capitalist lie of meritocracy is exposed.

[Tungsten]

red team

Well, let's inject a huge amount of truth into this scheme shall we? :)
By what, repeating the lie again?

First let's use something more truthful than money to measure the productive output of workers because money can be quite accurately described as fictitious debt tokens issued by an arbitrary authority to be exchanged based on someone's arbitrary appraisal of value.
You could replace money with "goods" and the argument would remain the same.

You employ 5000 workers in a factory and each worker uses 50 calories of energy per each 10 minutes of work or 300 calories in an hour which is about the same amount as you would spend gardening the whole time. In an 8 hour work day (note: I'm using conservative figures as 14 hour work days are common in third world sweat shops) the average worker uses up 2100 calories, skipping an hour for lunch just to make it even more accurate. In total then 5000 workers expends 5000 x 2100 = 10,500,000 calories of energy per day working in the factory. Now a handful of investors/owners take a profit from this expenditure of let's say 10% which comes out to 1,050,000 calories of energy.
The labour theory of value™ version 1.01b. Still has the same problems as the previous one and just as disingenuous.

Wow, you can expend 1,050,000 calories of energy just from sitting in an office and directing people to do the actual energy expending work for you? :lol:
This assumes that all energy expenditure (and all labour) is 100% useful and 100% efficient, which is false. It has the same failings as the LTV, which you refuse to acknowledge.

All Capitalists believe in the individual "right" to hoard the wealth produced by social labour,
We're individualists; we don't believe in the existence of "social labour", but hey, you're on a roll. Don't let the facts stand in your way at this stage of the game...
Heiro

Typical that you would place it at the individual level.
Okay then, we'll have it your way. So how many people from ethnic minorites do I need to provide with education and healthcare in order to prevent myself being considered racist? Is it 2? 10? 10000000? How do we decide? Shall we use a bingo machine? How about Chinese crackers or a lucky dip?

[red team]

Well, let's inject a huge amount of truth into this scheme shall we? :)
By what, repeating the lie again?


At which point are my observations inaccurate? Please provide empirical evidence of this.



First let's use something more truthful than money to measure the productive output of workers because money can be quite accurately described as fictitious debt tokens issued by an arbitrary authority to be exchanged based on someone's arbitrary appraisal of value.
You could replace money with "goods" and the argument would remain the same.


I'll repeat it again in case you didn't understand my statement demonstrating the inadequacy of money:

money can be quite accurately described as fictitious debt tokens issued by an arbitrary authority to be exchanged based on someone's arbitrary appraisal of value.

How are "goods" anymore different than money when it comes to bartering them? By this question I mean how are "goods" given a value anymore different than an arbitrary amount of money given a value? For that matter please define value in terms of something physically measurable like electric voltage.

If you can't define it then my claim that money is a fictitious entity stands.




Wow, you can expend 1,050,000 calories of energy just from sitting in an office and directing people to do the actual energy expending work for you? laugh.gif

This assumes that all energy expenditure (and all labour) is 100% useful and 100% efficient, which is false. It has the same failings as the LTV, which you refuse to acknowledge.


Feedback from consumer demand need not be tied to compensation for labour (or machine) energy expended. The amount of output which in turn determines the amount of energy used in production can be adjusted to match the amount of revenue coming in without the need for a profit mechanism at all. Compensation for labour expended need not be tied to this feedback mechanism either. You'll have more or less units sold which affects the amount of total labour and number of workers required.

This just proves that profit is extraneous and can be removed from the production process without affecting supply and demand. Nothing in the universe is 100% efficient. This is a physical impossibility. But efficiency can be increased or decreased through human actions. Does profit increases efficiency? Back up your claims with empirical evidence if you claim that profit is not extraneous and does increase efficiency.

Furthermore, as an energy and resource rich society as most industrialized countries are, the amount of resources required by any given individual human labourer pales in comparison to the output produced by energy dependent machines. Therefore, the "inefficiency" coming from under utilization of manual labour rarely affects industrial production that is not tied to arbitrartily determined market value at all. If the opposite was true factories and offices would not need to be shutdown or operate under full capacity (as ordered by management) as is often the case now when there is a market glut of commodities (or workers, they are commodities too :lol: ). Please tell me what the under utilization of industrial resources like operating under full capacity and unemployment is other than forced artificial scarcity? Is artificial scarcity through under utilization of resources and involuntary unemployment efficient or inefficient in terms of producing material abundance?

Furthermore in this economic system where everything including labour is arbitrarily valuated, how do you determine what is useful? Do you determine usefulness in terms of utility or the ability to be traded in an exhange of arbitrarily determine prices? If you claim the latter case then narcotics and weapons must be very "useful" because they're the most highly priced items out in the market.



All Capitalists believe in the individual "right" to hoard the wealth produced by social labour,
We're individualists; we don't believe in the existence of "social labour", but hey, you're on a roll. Don't let the facts stand in your way at this stage of the game...


I didn't know that most people are independent hunter/gatherers or sustenance farmers? Nor did I know that all human developments had to be re-acquired with every new generation without building upon past achievements. Al Gore must have invented the internet (silicon chips and all) by himself as he have claimed. :lol:

Please support your claim of individualism with empirical evidence.

[Hiero]

Okay then, we'll have it your way. So how many people from ethnic minorites do I need to provide with education and healthcare in order to prevent myself being considered racist? Is it 2? 10? 10000000? How do we decide? Shall we use a bingo machine? How about Chinese crackers or a lucky dip?

You totally missed the point when i said at a individual level. I was not talking about you, not how many people you could fund. I never meant that you have to go out personally and ensure that the Black Nation gets education and other ethnic minorities that face inequalities. That is just retarded and utopian but i wasn't surprised that you take things at the individual level. I wasn't hat surprised whe you made the same mistake.

I was talking about the people who do not support programs and policies that try to fix the inequality that certian people face. People who do not support these policy are just letting the current system deprive people of oppurtunities and life chances. These people are just as similar as other open racists. It's the case of the wolf and the fox.

[red team]

Paint on a house is not an ownership issue.

Of course it's an "ownership issue". If I have control of what you can or cannot do with your property, then you don't own it, I do.


If you don't affect the economic standing of someone working in your property then it's a lifestyle issue.

A: Paint on your house
B: someone's economic standing

How does A affect B?

Are you an idiot?




However, if you claim ownership over their labour which was never yours to claim in the first place,

They're not claiming it, they're trading something for it. They have to.


Who have to do what in return for what?

Nobody have to trade anything for someone else's labour. Nazis can work someone to death and not trade anything for it at all. Terms of trade under any monetary system are based on power relations with the more powerful being those with more resources able to secure a more advantageous term of trade for themselves. If those terms of trade involves labour then you're claiming ownership over that labour if you make a profit from it.




but they "agreed" because the bosses have a monopoly on ownership of resources,

They don't have a monopoly on it. Nor do they act spontaneously as a "class". (Does this mean that the bosses should have the right to claim your labour because your "class" has a monopoly on it?)


They already do by taking a profit from it. However, workers have the right to work stoppages to claim back a little of what should be entirely theirs in the first place. Bosses often disagree though by hiring thugs to beat up strikers or enacting "back to work" legislation. Who's being the aggressor in this conflict?




then you are in effect a slave master,

No, I wouldn't be. Only if they were being forced to work for me- an issue that has already been discussed.


Sure ;) and how does the state react during a general strike? They negotiate in good faith. Well, not reeeally. :lol:




therefore your ownership claims over their labour is invalid.

I don't claim anyone's labour by right. Neither should anyone else.


Is claiming ownership over someone's labour by contract any different? Coercion by force and coercion through deprivation is still coercion. It is you that support coercion by proxy by claiming coercion through deprivation is valid. No, it it not valid because workers need wages from labour more than you need profit as a percentage of revenue which is indirectly a product of their labour.

In fact by using your justification for exploitation which rests on the fact that workers aren't directly forced into performing labour for their bosses, I could justify the slavery system of the American plantation owners. "You see the plantation workers aren't really slaves. They could just as well leave my plantation and become sustenance hunters if they want. But if they want to work for me they would have to agree with me whipping them once and a while so they don't become lazy."




The workers have no reason to respect any bosses orders. In other words, genuine intent for voluntary contract agreement is impossible without an environment of universal material abundance.

Two could play at that game, though: If what you say is true, then the bosses must be entitled to enter your house (hell, they can even take your house if they want) and take whatever they want because we don't live in an evironment of material abundence and whatever you own just came from historical plunder anyway, so you don't have any real right to it either etc.


How did you come up with such a non-sensical conclusion?

Who initially wrote the contract and who signed to work as an employee?

A: universal material abundance
B: contract agreement by worker
C: respect for bosses orders

Not A AND B then Not C
A AND B then C

How did you get:

Not A AND B then (boss can take my house)

Again, are you an idiot?




Do we have an environment of universal material abundance? No, we have an enforced scarcity system based on arbitrary claims of ownership which originated from past conquest and preserved to the present by hoarding.

Which indoctrination manual did you copy that out of? Their ownership is arbitary and based on historical conquest? Then your ownership- regardless of how little or much you have- must be too.


True, but the same goes for everything else in the world. Historical social systems evolved from Savagery, Slavery, Feudalism to Capitalism. We go along with it because we're not the class in power. The bosses are.

Now if I get myself a private army and go to some impoverished african country and conquer enough land and people with brute force then I'll be the boss. After which I can set terms of trade with anybody unfortunate enough to not have conquered as much as I did. It's the same analogy as applied to workers in other countries which have stabilised from past conquests. The countries located in much of the industrialized west have stabilised from past conquests and I have to go along with the economic system if I want to survive.




3. People do not act against their own self interest.

Of course people can act against their own self interest. People smoke, take drugs engage in dangerous activites all the time.


Not relevant to the argument at hand which is economic self-interest.




4. An important liberty in which comprises absolute liberty is the liberty to receive the full benefits of your own labour.

I can see where this is leading- more LTV rubbish. Marx copied it off Ricardo and it doesn't work. It's wrong; let it go.


Provide empirical evidence of this LTV not working.




Because profit making violates the premises of individual liberty

No it doesn't. It's more circular logic on your part. You appeal to the LTV to prove the LTV is true.


Sorry, you did not refute my logical argument using a logical argument of your own.
This is simply subjective propaganda on your part to defend profit.
If my arguments are illogical then point to the exact spot in question you claim is illogical.
Simply claiming it's circular logic without a thorough demonstration just doesn't cut it.




1. all persons must acquire money in order to purchase a product to claim ownership over the said product.

Wrong. Merely sitting on it for a certain amoumt of time entitles you to ownership of it.


Ah, so squatters have a right to abandoned, unused buildings. Funny thing is squatters get beat up and thrown out of abandoned buildings by police after their absentee owners reclaim them. Maybe we should arm the squatters.

Note: before you respond, my house is neither abandoned nor unused.




2. You gain money by either engaging in activities to increase the material ownership of another person or group which has money or borrow it from the bank. In either case money represents ownership of resources.

Irrelevent.


Thankyou for proving that ownership claims to wealth as represented by printed money is arbitrary nonsense. Since I despise arbitrary nonsense I don't respect wealth as represented by money. All money should be destroyed.




The obvious question is then where did the bank or individual or company gain ownership as represented by money originally?

Irrelevent, because of the answer to #1


Thankyou for proving that this conflict can only be resolved through arbitrary force to redistribute the past conquest of resources.

How do I justify this?

A: resources
B: present ownership claim
C: conquest ("sitting" on resources claims ownership)
D: removal of ownership claim
E: armed liberation

A and C then B

therefore:

A and E then D

[Oh-Dae-Su]

QUOTE
QUOTE

Paint on a house is not an ownership issue.



Of course it's an "ownership issue". If I have control of what you can or cannot do with your property, then you don't own it, I do.




If you don't affect the economic standing of someone working in your property then it's a lifestyle issue.

A: Paint on house you house
B: someone's economic standing

How does A affect B?

Are you an idiot?

well, for example, there are laws here that prohibit you to do whatever the hell you want with your property. They include restrictions of how things should or can be build, like for example how long or wide a fence could be in your house, or whatever. I know for example in the city of Coral Gables here in South Florida, that you can't build buildings over a certain height.

[red team]

I think that has more to do with public infrastructure and population density than anything else.
A taller building would require more public infrastructure to support than a lower building, so it would be more costly to build a skyscraper in the middle of a bunch of houses than if it was in a high rise zone originally. Also a higher population density for a tall building would also ruin the living condition preferences of the majority that moved into low population density, low rise housing neighborhoods originally.

[Oh-Dae-Su]

huh? these laws don't apply everywhere, it actually changes by city, county and state. For example the buldings im talking about in the city of Coral Gables is in the downtown area of that city, but what divides that city from Miami, is a street. I live in Miami, but a block from where i live that place is a whole different city , with different laws. So a bulding the height of the Empire State Building, can be across the street from Coral Gables, where buildings can't exceed a certain height. I don't understand how population density and public infrastructure influences this at all?? :blink:

[Tungsten]

red team

If you don't affect the economic standing of someone working in your property then it's a lifestyle issue.
Consider this policy:

"Do everything I say or I'll put bullet in your head."

Now tell me, providing the above arrangement doesn't affect your economic standing, would obeying this edict be a "(self-)ownership issue" or is it merely a "lifestyle issue"?

Nobody have to trade anything for someone else's labour. Nazis can work someone to death and not trade anything for it at all.
What's it to you if I want to trade my labour for something? That's my choice, not yours. I can imagine how your society will turn out.

Terms of trade under any monetary system are based on power relations with the more powerful being those with more resources able to secure a more advantageous term of trade for themselves.
It's not about power, it's about trade.

If those terms of trade involves labour then you're claiming ownership over that labour if you make a profit from it.
Does that mean if I don't make a profit I'm not claiming ownership? What does it matter if I profit from it or not? "Profit" has nothing to do with it. If I didn't achieve some value from the transaction, I wouldn't do it. No one would. What would be the point?

They already do by taking a profit from it.
You mean that if they were doing exactly the same thing and making a loss, they would no longer be "making a claim on your labour"? Does this mean that if I enslave someone and have them breaking rocks for no reason, while being worse off for having to pay for their upkeep, then he's no longer a slave because I'm not profiting from it? How obtuse.

However, workers have the right to work stoppages
Oh, so you have a right to your labour and property, but the boss doesn't have a right to his?

Bosses often disagree though by hiring thugs to beat up strikers or enacting "back to work" legislation. Who's being the aggressor in this conflict?
According to you, the boss is being the aggressor even if he doesn't hire strike breakers. But then again, to you it would only be aggression if he profited from it, wouldn't it?

Sure and how does the state react during a general strike? They negotiate in good faith. Well, not reeeally.
Which "state" are we talking about? Nice and vague as usual. It doesn't matter what they do- the state does a lot of things I don't agree with. I don't believe in "strike breaking".

Is claiming ownership over someone's labour by contract any different?
Of course it is. Consensus is everything or it isn't trade.

Coercion by force and coercion through deprivation is still coercion.
How is a contractual agreement "deprivation"? You mean "trade", don't you?

It is you that support coercion by proxy by claiming coercion through deprivation is valid.
No, just I don't accept your claim that trade is "deprivation".

No, it it not valid because workers need wages from labour more than you need profit as a percentage of revenue which is indirectly a product of their labour.
They don't. Do I need a car more than the salesman needs the sale? The answer is reflected in the price.

In fact by using your justification for exploitation which rests on the fact that workers aren't directly forced into performing labour for their bosses, I could justify the slavery system of the American plantation owners.
No, you couldn't.

"You see the plantation workers aren't really slaves. They could just as well leave my plantation and become sustenance hunters if they want.
Except that they couldn't "just leave"- they'd have been hunted down and either shot or chained up if they did.


Who initially wrote the contract and who signed to work as an employee?

A: universal material abundance
B: contract agreement by worker
C: respect for bosses orders

I like B: "contract agreement by worker". Contract with who? Himself? How exactly does one person enter a contract with themselves? Do you mean "contract agreement between worker and employer"?


Not A AND B then Not C
A AND B then C

How did you get:

Not A AND B then (boss can take my house)

Again, are you an idiot?
I was demonstrating the idiocy and one-sidedness of your arguments, which I've succeeded in doing. Thanks.

Now if I get myself a private army and go to some impoverished african country and conquer enough land and people with brute force then I'll be the boss. After which I can set terms of trade with anybody unfortunate enough to not have conquered as much as I did. It's the same analogy as applied to workers in other countries which have stabilised from past conquests. The countries located in much of the industrialized west have stabilised from past conquests and I have to go along with the economic system if I want to survive.
What, all of them? If not, which ones? "Anyone who's rich must have got there by historical conquest" sounds all too convenient and is obviously false. Why are there people who are rich this year who weren't last year? "Historical conquest"? :lol:

Not relevant to the argument at hand which is economic self-interest.
It's extremely relevent. Spending your daily wage on crack so that you don't have money for food isn't in your economic self interest.

Provide empirical evidence of this LTV not working.
Not my job. The burden of proof is on those who assert the positive.

Sorry, you did not refute my logical argument using a logical argument of your own. This is simply subjective propaganda on your part to defend profit.
If my arguments are illogical then point to the exact spot in question you claim is illogical.
Simply claiming it's circular logic without a thorough demonstration just doesn't cut it.
Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy. Such arguments are inherently illogical.

Ah, so squatters have a right to abandoned, unused buildings. Funny thing is squatters get beat up and thrown out of abandoned buildings by police after their absentee owners reclaim them.
That's dependent on the time frame.

Thankyou for proving that ownership claims to wealth as represented by printed money is arbitrary nonsense. Since I despise arbitrary nonsense I don't respect wealth as represented by money. All money should be destroyed.
And replaced with what?

Thankyou for proving that this conflict can only be resolved through arbitrary force to redistribute the past conquest of resources.
Thank you for admitting that your desire to use force is arbitary and with a highly questionable basis. I guess I'll have to pass on being "liberated" from the burden of deciding what to do with my labour; I'll decide that myself.

With or without your "permission".

[red team]

Originally posted by [email protected] 27 2006, 08:53 PM




If you don't affect the economic standing of someone working in your property then it's a lifestyle issue.
Consider this policy:

"Do everything I say or I'll put bullet in your head."

Now tell me, providing the above arrangement doesn't affect your economic standing, would obeying this edict be a "(self-)ownership issue" or is it merely a "lifestyle issue"?


Who's putting a bullet in who's head? What was my question? Did it mention coercion at all?
Don't try to change the subject.

Answer the original question:
How does paint on your house affect anybody's economic standing?



Nobody have to trade anything for someone else's labour. Nazis can work someone to death and not trade anything for it at all.
What's it to you if I want to trade my labour for something? That's my choice, not yours. I can imagine how your society will turn out.

Terms of trade under any monetary system are based on power relations with the more powerful being those with more resources able to secure a more advantageous term of trade for themselves.
It's not about power, it's about trade.


I'm merely stating the obvious which you have failed to acknowledged. Terms of trade (which is really another word for bartering) depends upon the relative power relations of the respective traders. Without legislation protecting the less wealthy and therefore less powerful, what's there to prevent the ultimate bargain in trade value or in other words zero for everything you have? Furthermore, since value is arbitrary, relative and unquantifiable who's to say this is not a fair bargain? There's a famous historical fact that Hitler enacted the policy of providing the Jews in concentration camps their own garden plots. That must of cost the Nazi regime some trivial amount of money to get that going, so who's to say this is not a fair return on concentration camp labour?

Note: the national German corporations were getting this ultimate bargain under the Nazi regime.

Now take a modern example. Who's to say 14 hours a day at intense manual labour in return for wages that simply cover your lodgings and food and not much else is not a fair bargain? A fair bargain for whom? Certainly not the people involved in manual labour because I'm quite certain if given the choice they would have wanted more in return. But how much bargaining power do the poor workers have relative to those who they are bargaining against?

When you say, "it's not about power, it's about trade", you are just making the unproven assumption that any trade transaction is a fair exchange of value with neither party gaining an advantage over the other. If this was a simple bartering arrangement this might be true, but profiteering in business is not a simple bartering arrangement because there is no corresponding exchange in value for the extraction of profit.

If you pay somebody to mow your lawn then that is a simple bartering arrangement, but if you act as a sales agent in a landscaping company in which you take a percentage off of every transaction made with a customer then you are not bartering but profitting because there is no corresponding exchange in value for that arbitrary percentage you take off from revenue.



If those terms of trade involves labour then you're claiming ownership over that labour if you make a profit from it.
Does that mean if I don't make a profit I'm not claiming ownership? What does it matter if I profit from it or not? "Profit" has nothing to do with it. If I didn't achieve some value from the transaction, I wouldn't do it. No one would. What would be the point?


Does that mean if I don't make a profit I'm not claiming ownership?

Yes. You seem to be understanding logical reasoning finally.

What does it matter if I profit from it or not? "Profit" has nothing to do with it. If I didn't achieve some value from the transaction, I wouldn't do it. No one would. What would be the point?


If I make a sandwich for myself do I profit from it? No, because the sandwich came about entirely from my own labour. I get rewarded for my efforts in having a nice sandwich, but I did not profit from it because there is no arbitrary percentage taken off of somebody else's labour.

The point you are failing to understand is: (reward for labour) not equal to (profit)

Nobody in this forum would disagree with equal rewards for equal labour, but profits are an entirely different animal.



They already do by taking a profit from it.
You mean that if they were doing exactly the same thing and making a loss, they would no longer be "making a claim on your labour"? Does this mean that if I enslave someone and have them breaking rocks for no reason, while being worse off for having to pay for their upkeep, then he's no longer a slave because I'm not profiting from it? How obtuse.


No, because they are attempting to make a profit in a competitive market system of commodity trading. In a globalized market system the fact that one business made a loss by not being competitive in profits means that some other business made a gain by attracting a bigger return on investment for Capitalists. Just because you lost the race for being a "better" profiteer doesn't mean you never intended to be a profiteer originally.

If this was a charity non-profit organization nobody would care because it's irrelevant to the dominant economic system that is in operation and therefore irrelevant to the profits made by investors.



However, workers have the right to work stoppages
Oh, so you have a right to your labour and property, but the boss doesn't have a right to his?


No, because profit is an arbitrary percentage of surplus value and cannot be objectively quantified against corresponding labour of which the boss performs very little in exchanged for. If you can prove that profit can be objectively quantified to corresponding labour then we can debate what would be a fair exchange of labour for profiteers, but you cannot so debate is futile. Also, as illustrated in my previous post, I've shown the ludicrousness of defending such a position when shown the disproportionate expenditures and rewards in pure energy form of the respective parties involved. I've yet to see you refute my position.



Bosses often disagree though by hiring thugs to beat up strikers or enacting "back to work" legislation. Who's being the aggressor in this conflict?
According to you, the boss is being the aggressor even if he doesn't hire strike breakers. But then again, to you it would only be aggression if he profited from it, wouldn't it?


Failure to exploit labour doesn't excuse the intention to exploit labour. You're still a profiteer. The defensive action of workers (if successful) just made it impossible for you to accomplish the task. Just because you failed from profiteering doesn't mean another profiteer didn't gained from this failure.



Sure and how does the state react during a general strike? They negotiate in good faith. Well, not reeeally.
Which "state" are we talking about? Nice and vague as usual. It doesn't matter what they do- the state does a lot of things I don't agree with. I don't believe in "strike breaking".


It's good that you don't advocate strike breaking. +1 point for you. :D :lol:

The world is not an abstract academic exercise. Just because you in particular refuse to engage in coercion doesn't mean somebody else more ruthless in defending investor profits won't. And because they don't shy away from violence means that they would be all the more wealthy in doing so and because of that they would also be more influential than you because power is indirectly derived from ownership of wealth.

Furthermore, as the commodity system we call Capitalism has progressed up to this point, nobody needs to be directly responsible for ordering the suppresion of workers. If you don't order strike breaking for your corporation there will be a strong financial incentive to replace you with someone who will, otherwise investors can just as well abandon your corporation for some other corporation which is more "competitive".



Is claiming ownership over someone's labour by contract any different?
Of course it is. Consensus is everything or it isn't trade.

Coercion by force and coercion through deprivation is still coercion.
How is a contractual agreement "deprivation"? You mean "trade", don't you?

It is you that support coercion by proxy by claiming coercion through deprivation is valid.
No, just I don't accept your claim that trade is "deprivation".

No, it it not valid because workers need wages from labour more than you need profit as a percentage of revenue which is indirectly a product of their labour.
They don't. Do I need a car more than the salesman needs the sale? The answer is reflected in the price.


Was there a company wide vote to determine compensation for investors? If there was no vote then there was no consensus. Contract agreement was based on necessity not cooperation.



In fact by using your justification for exploitation which rests on the fact that workers aren't directly forced into performing labour for their bosses, I could justify the slavery system of the American plantation owners.
No, you couldn't.

"You see the plantation workers aren't really slaves. They could just as well leave my plantation and become sustenance hunters if they want.
Except that they couldn't "just leave"- they'd have been hunted down and either shot or chained up if they did.


The slaves and the masters were just competing on a higher level. If the slave can escape their masters without detection then they deserve their freedom. If they're too dim-witted to plot an escape from their masters then they deserve to be enslaved. Pure, unmodified competition.

I can even take this higher form of competition further. If a slave is smart enough to plot an escape from his master then being that he is smarter than his master he naturally deserves to be more of a master of slaves than his former master. His former master being dim-witted to allow a smarter slave to escape, deserve to have his status demoted to that of a slave.

What's the incentive to develop a more egalitarian system than this because if you inspect this from a purely mechanical point of view, it is a functional system. The system rewards those who are smart at keeping slaves from escaping an abundance of surplus labour of dim-witted slaves. Furthermore, if a slave should show exceptional skills in escaping his masters then if he should be as brutal and cunning as other slave masters then he should deserve his new title.

How is this system anymore different than yours other than the degree of harshness?
Perhaps Tungsten don't have the nerves to agree with this, but I'm willing to wager that Uranium who is more ruthless and aggressive is able to agree with it. :lol:



Who initially wrote the contract and who signed to work as an employee?

A: universal material abundance
B: contract agreement by worker
C: respect for bosses orders

I like B: "contract agreement by worker". Contract with who? Himself? How exactly does one person enter a contract with themselves? Do you mean "contract agreement between worker and employer"?


Not A AND B then Not C
A AND B then C

How did you get:

Not A AND B then (boss can take my house)

Again, are you an idiot?
I was demonstrating the idiocy and one-sidedness of your arguments, which I've succeeded in doing. Thanks.


You did not succeed in anything other than demonstrating your ignorance of logical reasoning. You did not provide a logical counter-argument so you proved nothing.



Now if I get myself a private army and go to some impoverished african country and conquer enough land and people with brute force then I'll be the boss. After which I can set terms of trade with anybody unfortunate enough to not have conquered as much as I did. It's the same analogy as applied to workers in other countries which have stabilised from past conquests. The countries located in much of the industrialized west have stabilised from past conquests and I have to go along with the economic system if I want to survive.
What, all of them? If not, which ones? "Anyone who's rich must have got there by historical conquest" sounds all too convenient and is obviously false. Why are there people who are rich this year who weren't last year? "Historical conquest"? :lol:


Where in my post have I said that anyone who's rich must have got there by historical conquest. I've neither implied it nor have I stated it directly. I've said that the system is historically evolved from conquest, so it provides the financial backing to get Capitalism started. Nobody has an incentive to work in a scarcity based commodity system without first being rewarded with a claim on debts as represented by money. And money is worthless without being able to trade it with material value. Where did the original material value came about. Through workers labouring for fictitious paper wealth? :lol:

No, first you have slaves to provide the massive amounts of material wealth at the beginning then you have wage workers, who you can't exploit as fully as slaves, who can trade in their fictitious pieces of paper money for the real material wealth generated by slaves originally. This pattern of economic activity follows quite accurately in the historical record of all major countries.



Not relevant to the argument at hand which is economic self-interest.
It's extremely relevent. Spending your daily wage on crack so that you don't have money for food isn't in your economic self interest.


If a person chooses to kill himself with drugs that is his decision.

Stop trying to shift the argument to consumer purchases which was not in the context of the original post.

People do not act against their self interests

This is in the context of a bartering agreement including the bartering of labour. Please do try to refute this by claiming people in general desire not to have a fair exchange when bartering.



Provide empirical evidence of this LTV not working.
Not my job. The burden of proof is on those who assert the positive.


You claim "The LTV does not work". You are making a positive claim on the non-functionality of the LTV.

Can the existence of God be tested? No.

Can the functionality of the LTV be tested? Yes.

Because the functionality of the LTV can be tested you cannot make the claim that "The LTV does not work" until it is verified that it does not work.

Has the LTV been tested? No. Therefore your positive claim that the LTV fails is unverifiable.



Ah, so squatters have a right to abandoned, unused buildings. Funny thing is squatters get beat up and thrown out of abandoned buildings by police after their absentee owners reclaim them.
That's dependent on the time frame.


And who decides on the time frame? Isn't that just another piece of arbitrary, bureaucratic regulation made through authoritarian decrees that you are so fond of dismissing?

Perhaps the concreteness of utility is more important that the abstraction of ownership.
If you are not using something then it is useless to you. Please try to argue against that.



Thankyou for proving that ownership claims to wealth as represented by printed money is arbitrary nonsense. Since I despise arbitrary nonsense I don't respect wealth as represented by money. All money should be destroyed.
And replaced with what?


It should ultimately be replaced by the only sensible quantity used for the measurement of work as defined by physics. This would be energy.

Energy is neither circulated, gambled, hoarded nor negotiated. It is simply spent.

This type of energy economy is only possible at very advanced stage of human social organization so I don't expect this to be implemented until most manual work is automated.



Thankyou for proving that this conflict can only be resolved through arbitrary force to redistribute the past conquest of resources.
Thank you for admitting that your desire to use force is arbitary and with a highly questionable basis. I guess I'll have to pass on being "liberated" from the burden of deciding what to do with my labour; I'll decide that myself.

With or without your "permission".


Do you think leaders would be much use without support for their policies? I may advocate certain policies, but without mass backing it is simply what it is which is empty rhetoric. You place too much importance on "leaders" and not enough importance on the consciousness of the ordinary individual who is influenced in his perceptions and prejudices by his daily life experiences.

Who do you think I am? Napolean? :lol:

[Tungsten]

red team

Who's putting a bullet in who's head? What was my question? Did it mention coercion at all?
Don't try to change the subject.

Answer the original question:
How does paint on your house affect anybody's economic standing?
Do try to keep up:

If the majority of people in your street want their houses painting a certain colour, do they have the right to force you to paint yours that colour too?
If I'm forcing you to paint your house a cetain colour, the issue of force comes up. The issue of costs also comes up, because paint cost money. That is an ownership issue, not a lifestyle issue. If I can force you to paint your house a certain colour, I'm claiming some sort of ownership over it. You're ducking the issue in the hope that I won't notice. I have.

I'm merely stating the obvious which you have failed to acknowledged. Terms of trade (which is really another word for bartering) depends upon the relative power relations of the respective traders.
Which are completely irrelevent to the issue of force and therefore politics.

Without legislation protecting the less wealthy and therefore less powerful, what's there to prevent the ultimate bargain in trade value or in other words zero for everything you have?
Would this be the legislation banning the use of force?

Furthermore, since value is arbitrary, relative and unquantifiable who's to say this is not a fair bargain?
If it's arbitary, then how we define "fair" or "unfair" must also be arbitary, as must the enforcement of "fairness".

There's a famous historical fact that Hitler enacted the policy of providing the Jews in concentration camps their own garden plots. That must of cost the Nazi regime some trivial amount of money to get that going, so who's to say this is not a fair return on concentration camp labour?
Because it's initiating the use of force i.e. not a trade. This fact seems lost on you.

Does that mean if I don't make a profit I'm not claiming ownership?

Yes. You seem to be understanding logical reasoning finally.
Yep, I sure am. I'm going to go out and gather me some slaves. I'll just have them doing all my work for me while I sit around and do nothing.

Providing I don't make profit out of their work, I should be fine.

No, because they are attempting to make a profit in a competitive market system of commodity trading. In a globalized market system the fact that one business made a loss by not being competitive in profits means that some other business made a gain by attracting a bigger return on investment for Capitalists. Just because you lost the race for being a "better" profiteer doesn't mean you never intended to be a profiteer originally.
So it's the intention of being a profiteer that makes one a profiteer, is it? Okay, then I'll just say I didn't mean it.

If you can prove that profit can be objectively quantified to corresponding labour then we can debate what would be a fair exchange of labour for profiteers, but you cannot so debate is futile.
Values are subjective, so this whole notion of "surplus value" is a farce, as is any talk of "fair exchanges", which are also subjective.

Failure to exploit labour doesn't excuse the intention to exploit labour. You're still a profiteer.
Very funny.

The defensive action of workers (if successful) just made it impossible for you to accomplish the task.
What are they defending themselves from? Going to work? The thing they do every day out of choice?

Just because you failed from profiteering doesn't mean another profiteer didn't gained from this failure.
Read that sentence again and tell me what's wrong with it.

It's good that you don't advocate strike breaking. +1 point for you. :D :lol:
I'm not into forcing people into involuntary transactions.

The world is not an abstract academic exercise. Just because you in particular refuse to engage in coercion doesn't mean somebody else more ruthless in defending investor profits won't.
That's why it's important to ban the initiation of force.

And because they don't shy away from violence means that they would be all the more wealthy in doing so and because of that they would also be more influential than you because power is indirectly derived from ownership of wealth.
But very few of you seem shy about the use of violence either. Wouldn't you be "wealthier" for it? Do you not "outnumber" those you intend to use violence against?

Was there a company wide vote to determine compensation for investors? If there was no vote then there was no consensus.
You don't need to vote in order to give consent to something.

Contract agreement was based on necessity not cooperation.
Was it by consensus or not?

The slaves and the masters were just competing on a higher level. If the slave can escape their masters without detection then they deserve their freedom. If they're too dim-witted to plot an escape from their masters then they deserve to be enslaved. Pure, unmodified competition.

I can even take this higher form of competition further. If a slave is smart enough to plot an escape from his master then being that he is smarter than his master he naturally deserves to be more of a master of slaves than his former master. His former master being dim-witted to allow a smarter slave to escape, deserve to have his status demoted to that of a slave.
Irrelevent babbling at twelve o'clock.

How is this system anymore different than yours other than the degree of harshness?
Because there are no slaves or masters, the initiation of force is banned and there are no involuntary agreements. In other words, it's the exact opposite.

You did not succeed in anything other than demonstrating your ignorance of logical reasoning. You did not provide a logical counter-argument so you proved nothing.
You didn't provide a logical argument to counter-argue against.

Where in my post have I said that anyone who's rich must have got there by historical conquest.
Remind me of your justification for property siezure again...

I've neither implied it nor have I stated it directly. I've said that the system is historically evolved from conquest, so it provides the financial backing to get Capitalism started.
That's not what you said at all.

Nobody has an incentive to work in a scarcity based commodity system without first being rewarded with a claim on debts as represented by money. And money is worthless without being able to trade it with material value. Where did the original material value came about. Through workers labouring for fictitious paper wealth? :lol:
Why, it must have been stolen from all of the other people (who also had nothing to steal) or course. :lol:

who can trade in their fictitious pieces of paper money for the real material wealth generated by slaves originally. This pattern of economic activity follows quite accurately in the historical record of all major countries.
In other words, all money comes from slaves and historical conquest, ergo everyone is a slave driver, but some are more "historically slave driving" than others, eh, red?

Stop trying to shift the argument to consumer purchases which was not in the context of the original post.
Of course it was, you liar. Your premise was:
"People do not act against their own self interest."
Yes they do. Lots of them, and often. Consumer purchases are actions that can be either in your interest or not.

This is in the context of a bartering agreement including the bartering of labour.
Same difference.

Please do try to refute this by claiming people in general desire not to have a fair exchange when bartering.
Desiring and acting are two completely different things.

You claim "The LTV does not work". You are making a positive claim on the non-functionality of the LTV.
No, I'm not. It's your claim that it works, you prove it.

Can the functionality of the LTV be tested? Yes.
It can indeed. Now prove that it works.

Has the LTV been tested? No.
Then you have no right to claim that it does.

And who decides on the time frame? Isn't that just another piece of arbitrary, bureaucratic regulation made through authoritarian decrees that you are so fond of dismissing?
So arbitary bureaucracies and authoritarianism are bad now, are they? You've got to draw the line somewhere, like you have with copyright expiries.

Perhaps the concreteness of utility is more important that the abstraction of ownership.
Perhaps it isn't.

If you are not using something then it is useless to you. Please try to argue against that.
Does that mean I can raid your bank account for money you're not "using"?

Do you think leaders would be much use without support for their policies? I may advocate certain policies, but without mass backing it is simply what it is which is empty rhetoric. You place too much importance on "leaders"
Like hell I do.

[red team]

Who's putting a bullet in who's head? What was my question? Did it mention coercion at all?
Don't try to change the subject.

Answer the original question:
How does paint on your house affect anybody's economic standing?
Do try to keep up:

If the majority of people in your street want their houses painting a certain colour, do they have the right to force you to paint yours that colour too?
If I'm forcing you to paint your house a cetain colour, the issue of force comes up. The issue of costs also comes up, because paint cost money. That is an ownership issue, not a lifestyle issue. If I can force you to paint your house a certain colour, I'm claiming some sort of ownership over it. You're ducking the issue in the hope that I won't notice. I have.


Those were your words not mine.
I know what I've written in previous posts. I'm not an amnesiac like you. Pick an exact quote from my previous posts, otherwise I'll just consider your response as garbage.

I said nobody cares what color your house is.
Now prove that the color of your house affects somebody's economic standing.
If you cannot your argument have no legs to stand on.

The fact that paint cost money is irrelevant at the point of consumption.
At the point of production where paint is produced we get into power relations, profits and wages which is the point of dispute.



I'm merely stating the obvious which you have failed to acknowledged. Terms of trade (which is really another word for bartering) depends upon the relative power relations of the respective traders.
Which are completely irrelevent to the issue of force and therefore politics.


How is power over another person gained from except originally by force?

Power relations originates from force.

If you can't prove the opposite

Power relations do not originate from force

Your arguments again have no proof.

So your claim of irrelevance of the argument is false



Without legislation protecting the less wealthy and therefore less powerful, what's there to prevent the ultimate bargain in trade value or in other words zero for everything you have?
Would this be the legislation banning the use of force?


Incomplete question. Banning force defending which class interests? Labour or Capital?



Furthermore, since value is arbitrary, relative and unquantifiable who's to say this is not a fair bargain?
If it's arbitary, then how we define "fair" or "unfair" must also be arbitary, as must the enforcement of "fairness".


Products from businesses are sold at an arbitrary price. Relative to that price as compared to the profit of the owners the wages of individual workers are disproportionately low. Therefore, profits are "unfair". Prove otherwise, but you cannot.

Enforcement of economic laws under class society always favor the class that is in power.



There's a famous historical fact that Hitler enacted the policy of providing the Jews in concentration camps their own garden plots. That must of cost the Nazi regime some trivial amount of money to get that going, so who's to say this is not a fair return on concentration camp labour?
Because it's initiating the use of force i.e. not a trade. This fact seems lost on you.


Jews were a highly hated ethnic group in Nazi Germany. They would be killed outside of the camps. Again, provide proof that trivial garden plots are not a fair return on concentration camp labour.

I'm arguing the opposite claim to show the ridiculousness of the opposite claim that trade is neutral which in reality it is not and never will be with a commodity system.



Does that mean if I don't make a profit I'm not claiming ownership?

Yes. You seem to be understanding logical reasoning finally.
Yep, I sure am. I'm going to go out and gather me some slaves. I'll just have them doing all my work for me while I sit around and do nothing.

Providing I don't make profit out of their work, I should be fine.


Do provide housing, food, entertainment and everything else the "slaves" ask for free of charge otherwise you will be profitting by not paying for their expenses in return for their labour. This is justified by the fact that your "place" have machines that the "slaves" can work on to provide all that they want.

They also are free to leave from your place and renegotiate the schedule, pace and conditions of work.



No, because they are attempting to make a profit in a competitive market system of commodity trading. In a globalized market system the fact that one business made a loss by not being competitive in profits means that some other business made a gain by attracting a bigger return on investment for Capitalists. Just because you lost the race for being a "better" profiteer doesn't mean you never intended to be a profiteer originally.
So it's the intention of being a profiteer that makes one a profiteer, is it? Okay, then I'll just say I didn't mean it.


Doesn't matter. If you made your income from drawing a percentage of revenue then you are a profiteer. If you labour for yourself for your revenue then you are a self-employed contractor. If you labour for somebody else's profit for a wage then you are a worker. Which is it?



If you can prove that profit can be objectively quantified to corresponding labour then we can debate what would be a fair exchange of labour for profiteers, but you cannot so debate is futile.
Values are subjective, so this whole notion of "surplus value" is a farce, as is any talk of "fair exchanges", which are also subjective.


Objective labour which generated those subjective price values needs to be equitably compensated with payment under this subjective economy. Subjective profit is irrelevant and extraneous to labour, therefore subjective profitting should be abolished. The only true source of any value is labour.

Please try to prove otherwise by showing profiteering contributes to the subjective value of a product.



Failure to exploit labour doesn't excuse the intention to exploit labour. You're still a profiteer.
Very funny.


unrewarded labour demands redistribution of unearned profits. NOT very funny.



The defensive action of workers (if successful) just made it impossible for you to accomplish the task.
What are they defending themselves from? Going to work? The thing they do every day out of choice?


Their right to renegotiate their contracts from their employer's refusal to renegotiate.



Just because you failed from profiteering doesn't mean another profiteer didn't gained from this failure.
Read that sentence again and tell me what's wrong with it.


What's wrong with it? You failed in business because you couldn't return enough profit on investment because you didn't extract enough profit from your workforce. Investors just went to another business that does extract more profits from labour than your business.

See any sneaker factories in America? Want to start one up? Any workers here willing to work for Chinese worker wages and work conditions?



The world is not an abstract academic exercise. Just because you in particular refuse to engage in coercion doesn't mean somebody else more ruthless in defending investor profits won't.
That's why it's important to ban the initiation of force.


Locally or globally?

If the system doesn't profit then the system fails. With growing inequality of wealth the only way to force more profit is through force. It's inevitable.



And because they don't shy away from violence means that they would be all the more wealthy in doing so and because of that they would also be more influential than you because power is indirectly derived from ownership of wealth.
But very few of you seem shy about the use of violence either. Wouldn't you be "wealthier" for it? Do you not "outnumber" those you intend to use violence against?


No, because true Communist-Anarchists do not advocate a system where wealth can be hoarded, but only laboured in return for. Furthermore, we advocate a fair exchange in quantifiable labour or quantifiable energy if work is done by machines, not unquantifiable value as represented by money and prices.

Also, we are not hotheads (most of us). We are willing to wait to let Capitalism go to it's logical end point which would be a degeneration to nearly slave like conditions. This will just enlarge our forces.



Was there a company wide vote to determine compensation for investors? If there was no vote then there was no consensus.
You don't need to vote in order to give consent to something.

Contract agreement was based on necessity not cooperation.
Was it by consensus or not?


Workers all concede to their employers demands out of necessity. So I suppose it was consensus of a sort. But, not really. We do demand a renegotiation of wages and work conditions from time to time through work stoppages.



How is this system anymore different than yours other than the degree of harshness?
Because there are no slaves or masters, the initiation of force is banned and there are no involuntary agreements. In other words, it's the exact opposite.


If it works in the real world that is. The code of ethics such as the ban on initiation of force comes into conflict with the economic system which allows for hoarding of resources and is driven by investor demands.



Where in my post have I said that anyone who's rich must have got there by historical conquest.
Remind me of your justification for property siezure again...

I've neither implied it nor have I stated it directly. I've said that the system is historically evolved from conquest, so it provides the financial backing to get Capitalism started.
That's not what you said at all.


Look back to my original post. Capitalism is a historically evolved predatory economic system.
The value of money is incidental to the fact that it was slaves from plantations which provided the original real wealth. Redistribution of wealth through taxes is justified by the fact that exploitation of labour got things going and is still the way the system operates today. This post was originally about Racial Equality where at some point you refuse to acknowledge the historical wrongs inflicted on black people (they were afterall the ones that provided the real wealth to get everything started) which necessitates the redistribution of wealth and opportunities through affirmative action programs and integrated schools.

I justify seizures of the means of production from the fact that production in any enterprise involving wage work is a social activity with no one worker or investor claiming total ownership of the finished product because no one worker or investor is responsible for the finished product. The fact that original sources of wealth backing fictitious money is also related to the fact that people who have money now are also associated with people who brutally exploited people in the past. This corresponds to the demographic fact that there are more super-wealthy white people than super-wealthy black or hispanic people. But that is beside the point. You can be a nouveau rich by relying on investment capital to start up your profit-making, worker-renting racket. That investment capital you're relying on have their original roots in slavery or near-slavery which is basically the same thing. Your prattling on that it's your company because you originally put up the capital or rely on other investors to put up the capital is invalid without explaining where that investment Capital originated. We all know how fictitious paper money became valuable 220 years ago in America. Everything else including subsequent wealth concentrations flows from that point onwards.

Anyway you can even keep your fancy mansions after a successful revolution, provided that you're not beaten to death by the uncontrollable angry mobs that is. I may let you live, but people far more exploited and poorer than me may not be in such a merciful mood. Who am I to stand in their way? I am not responsible for the mob's violent urge for vengeance. That and the fact that I don't want to be beaten to death myself for defending a worthless parasite. The mansions of the rich would be as obsolete as the castles of the deposed monarchies. We'll build better homes for ourselves.



Nobody has an incentive to work in a scarcity based commodity system without first being rewarded with a claim on debts as represented by money. And money is worthless without being able to trade it with material value. Where did the original material value came about. Through workers labouring for fictitious paper wealth? :lol:
Why, it must have been stolen from all of the other people (who also had nothing to steal) or course. :lol:


Answer the question. In an entirely commodity barren land like America was 200 years ago, why would anybody work for paper money or gold for that matter? What's the use of it? Before I can use it trade for something that something must be built from labour. But who's labouring for what?



who can trade in their fictitious pieces of paper money for the real material wealth generated by slaves originally. This pattern of economic activity follows quite accurately in the historical record of all major countries.
In other words, all money comes from slaves and historical conquest, ergo everyone is a slave driver, but some are more "historically slave driving" than others, eh, red?


Some can use the fact the money already has real backing way back when to leverage it to do business. Of course you don't realize this fact on an individual level. Banks hold the money. You just take out a loan for it and nobody realizes how money orginally came to be valuable.



Stop trying to shift the argument to consumer purchases which was not in the context of the original post.
Of course it was, you liar. Your premise was:
"People do not act against their own self interest."
Yes they do. Lots of them, and often. Consumer purchases are actions that can be either in your interest or not.

This is in the context of a bartering agreement including the bartering of labour.
Same difference.

Please do try to refute this by claiming people in general desire not to have a fair exchange when bartering.
Desiring and acting are two completely different things.


Desire precedes actions.
If you don't desire something then you don't act upon it.

Don't try to shift this argument to the utility of consumer purchases. People want the full value of what they purchase, regardless of the actual utility of the said product. If I pay for x amount of poison (beer, smokes, drugs, etc...), I want x amount in return. Same with labour. If I labour making x amount of a given price per product, I want x amount of the price per product returned in wage.

People do not act against their self-interest

Please do try to refute this by claiming people in general desire not to have a fair exchange when bartering. Without referring to consumer utility



You claim "The LTV does not work". You are making a positive claim on the non-functionality of the LTV.
No, I'm not. It's your claim that it works, you prove it.

Can the functionality of the LTV be tested? Yes.
It can indeed. Now prove that it works.

Has the LTV been tested? No.
Then you have no right to claim that it does.


Nowhere in my post did I claim that LTVs are a success.
Where? point to the exact passage.

You however claimed the opposite by making the positive claim of failure.
All you can say is that it is unverified. But you did not. You claimed failure.

Look back at this topic: Racial Equality at its entirety. There is not a single point in which I mention the LTV as a successful scheme. The only place of mention is 9th thread down from this page: "Provide empirical evidence of this LTV not working."



Perhaps the concreteness of utility is more important that the abstraction of ownership.
Perhaps it isn't.

If you are not using something then it is useless to you. Please try to argue against that.
Does that mean I can raid your bank account for money you're not "using"?


Only if everybody else can raid everybody else's bank account for money everybody else is not using.
It's only fair.

If you're not using something, that something is useless to you.
Same goes for me.
Same goes for everybody else.

But this is a bad example money is subjective nonsense.



Do you think leaders would be much use without support for their policies? I may advocate certain policies, but without mass backing it is simply what it is which is empty rhetoric. You place too much importance on "leaders"
Like hell I do.


Ayn Rand isn't your leader? :lol:

[Tungsten]

red team

I said nobody cares what color your house is.
That's not relevent to the question I asked.

Now prove that the color of your house affects somebody's economic standing.
Nor is that.

If you cannot your argument have no legs to stand on.
Who cares? You've completely evaded it anyway.

The fact that paint cost money is irrelevant at the point of consumption.
At the point of production where paint is produced we get into power relations, profits and wages which is the point of dispute.
The use of force is the point of dispute. You seem eager to talk about power relations when it comes to economics, but never when it comes to politics.

I wonder why.


How is power over another person gained from except originally by force?
Power isn't gained over another person. That's the whole argument. A shop doesn't gain power over me because I bought something from them.

If you can't prove the opposite

Power relations do not originate from force

Your arguments again have no proof.
I don't need to, because I'm not the one making the positive claim.

Incomplete question. Banning force defending which class interests?
There aren't any class interests involved.

Products from businesses are sold at an arbitrary price.
Only relative to what people are willing to pay.

Relative to that price as compared to the profit of the owners the wages of individual workers are disproportionately low. Therefore, profits are "unfair".
Fairness is subjective.

Prove otherwise, but you cannot.
You really don't get this "burden of proof" thing, do you?

Enforcement of economic laws under class society always favor the class that is in power.
Except when there's no class in power.

Jews were a highly hated ethnic group in Nazi Germany.
Perhaps you're having difficulty understanding what I mean by "initiating the use of force". It's when we use force to deal with each other instead of voluntary means. Trade is voluntary; concentration camps aren't voluntary.

They would be killed outside of the camps.
Murder isn't voluntary.

Again, provide proof that trivial garden plots are not a fair return on concentration camp labour.
They're not voluntary, so they can't be called trade agreements.

If you made your income from drawing a percentage of revenue then you are a profiteer. If you labour for yourself for your revenue then you are a self-employed contractor. If you labour for somebody else's profit for a wage then you are a worker. Which is it?
Providing it's voluntary, it doesn't matter.

Objective labour which generated those subjective price values needs to be equitably compensated with payment under this subjective economy.
How? Using who's pricing system? "Energy" doesn't cut it- some processes are more efficient than others.

The only true source of any value is labour.
Pure LTV. :lol:

Please try to prove otherwise by showing profiteering contributes to the subjective value of a product.
If it's subjective relative to the consumer, then what am I supposed to be proving? This isn't relevent at all.

unrewarded labour demands redistribution of unearned profits. NOT very funny.
Unrewarded by who?

Their right to renegotiate their contracts from their employer's refusal to renegotiate.
No they don't. What would be the point of drawing up contract in the first place?

Locally or globally?
What do you think?

If the system doesn't profit then the system fails. With growing inequality of wealth the only way to force more profit is through force. It's inevitable.It's a waste of time discussing this issue with someone who does not (or can't) differentiate voluntary actions from forced ones.

No, because true Communist-Anarchists do not advocate a system where wealth can be hoarded, but only laboured in return for.
That would generate envy and therefore class antagonisms. Some people would have more money and therefore more buying power than others.

This post was originally about Racial Equality where at some point you refuse to acknowledge the historical wrongs inflicted on black people
It was never about that at all. I claimed that it was absurd to demand money from people today for something their ancestors supposedly did hundreds of years ago. It's too late.
(they were afterall the ones that provided the real wealth to get everything started) which necessitates the redistribution of wealth and opportunities through affirmative action programs and integrated schools.
The beneficiaries of these kind of schemes have never have known slavery and thus do not deserve any reparations for it. The people who will be made to pay are not slave masters and never have been. To call this justice is phony.

Anyway you can even keep your fancy mansions after a successful revolution, provided that you're not beaten to death by the uncontrollable angry mobs that is. I may let you live, but people far more exploited and poorer than me may not be in such a merciful mood. Who am I to stand in their way? I am not responsible for the mob's violent urge for vengeance.
Vengence for what?

"You ancestors exploited me ancestors. Me kill you."

What kind of crap is this?

Perhaps the Spanish would have been justified in killing all arabs for invading their lands in the middle ages. Perhaps the English should nuke France in retalliation for the events of 1066. Where do we stop? Answer: We don't start. Those people are dead. It's gone, finished, over.

Answer the question. In an entirely commodity barren land like America was 200 years ago, why would anybody work for paper money or gold for that matter? What's the use of it? Before I can use it trade for something that something must be built from labour. But who's labouring for what?
In the beginning, it was just a straight exchange of goods.

Desire precedes actions.
If you don't desire something then you don't act upon it.
What's this? A commie trying to understand praxeology? Stop the press!

Don't try to shift this argument to the utility of consumer purchases. People want the full value of what they purchase, regardless of the actual utility of the said product. If I pay for x amount of poison (beer, smokes, drugs, etc...), I want x amount in return.
x is to be decided how?

Same with labour. If I labour making x amount of a given price per product, I want x amount of the price per product returned in wage.
I want free car maintainence because I want to maximise the value of my car but those damn greedy maintainence workers won't do it for me. How dare they not value my car as much as me. I want the full value of my car and they're denying it to me. I'll show em...

Nowhere in my post did I claim that LTVs are a success.
Then why are you advocating one? Why are you demanding that I prove it doesn't work?

You however claimed the opposite by making the positive claim of failure.
All you can say is that it is unverified. But you did not. You claimed failure.
Why the LTV is false and will fail has been explained many times. Both by myself here and by others. Why haven't socialist countries every implemented it?

Only if everybody else can raid everybody else's bank account for money everybody else is not using.
It's only fair.
No it isn't fair. The only beneficiaries would be those who don't work.

If you're not using something, that something is useless to you.
You must be useless then.

But this is a bad example money is subjective nonsense.
That's your subjective opinion.

Ayn Rand isn't your leader?
Dead people don't make very good leaders.

[red team]

I said nobody cares what color your house is.
That's not relevent to the question I asked.

Now prove that the color of your house affects somebody's economic standing.
Nor is that.

If you cannot your argument have no legs to stand on.
Who cares? You've completely evaded it anyway.


GARBAGE!



The fact that paint cost money is irrelevant at the point of consumption.
At the point of production where paint is produced we get into power relations, profits and wages which is the point of dispute.
The use of force is the point of dispute. You seem eager to talk about power relations when it comes to economics, but never when it comes to politics.

I wonder why.


The economic structure of society influence political decisions which in turn influence the enactment of politically justified laws which are then enforced by officially sanctioned institutions of coercion. This coercion ultimately is backed by officially sanctioned brute force.

Point to any society which does not have that arrangement.



How is power over another person gained from except originally by force?
Power isn't gained over another person. That's the whole argument. A shop doesn't gain power over me because I bought something from them.


Irrelevant. What you buy for personal utility with what you earned doesn't concern me.

There's no power relation between my boss and me. (Yeah, right)
There's no power relation between my manager and me. (Yeah, right)

My boss and supervisor control everything in my work environment from my schedule, pace and wage of labour. Termination and retention of my employment is also under their control. I don't have any control over my financial compensation for the work I do regardless of the proportion of my wage relative to the market price of the product which is produced in total from my and my coworker's labour.

How is this is not a power relation?



If you can't prove the opposite

Power relations do not originate from force

Your arguments again have no proof.
I don't need to, because I'm not the one making the positive claim.


Where did the wealth of super-wealthy investors and owners come from?

1 If you say profit then justify profit.

2 If you say they originally had the investment wealth then justify the ownership of that wealth and the origins of that ownership of wealth. If you've answered this with profit then go back to problem 1.

If you can't justify either 1 or 2 then bosses and investors have no valid claim to their wealth and therefore no valid authority over workers meaning I can do whatever I want from my place of employment because don't respect the validity of their ownership of wealth and hence their power relation over me as bosses and managers.



Products from businesses are sold at an arbitrary price.
Only relative to what people are willing to pay.


Irrelevant. Consumer demand can be gauged without profits as I have explained. Investors and owners of businesses are entirely extraneous to the production process.



Relative to that price as compared to the profit of the owners the wages of individual workers are disproportionately low. Therefore, profits are "unfair".
Fairness is subjective.


Wages are objective if proportionally compared to arbitrarily set market prices of commodities, therefore fairness of compensation can be determined.



If you made your income from drawing a percentage of revenue then you are a profiteer. If you labour for yourself for your revenue then you are a self-employed contractor. If you labour for somebody else's profit for a wage then you are a worker. Which is it?
Providing it's voluntary, it doesn't matter.


Here's a shorter variant of the profit contract agreement disproof I've presented before
You're also free to challenge the logical coherence of this one too (Yeah right!).

Statement: A free person does agree to be robbed

A: A free person
B: Own's total freedom
C: (A) seeks to preserve (B)
Not C: (A) seeks to limit (B)

D: the full benefits of own's labour
E: The freedom of receiving (D)
F: (E) is included as a subset of (B)

G: An employer's profit
H: (G) is a subset of (D)
I: (G) limits (D)


C is obviously true
(Not C) is obviously false
(F) is obviously true
(H) is false if you work for somebody else's profit

Because C is true meaning (Not C) is false then (F) being true invalidates any contracts signed which limits (E) because it will also limit (B) because C is true. Because (H) is true only if the employer and you are the same person meaning you are self-employed then (H) is false if you work for an employer that is not yourself.

If you work for an employer that is not yourself then (Not H) and (I) therefore the contract is invalid because (Not C) is false C is true and (I) violates (E).

Conclusion: A free person does agree to be robbed is false which implies A free person does not agree to be robbed.
Sorry: Ayn Rand is BULLSHIT!



Objective labour which generated those subjective price values needs to be equitably compensated with payment under this subjective economy.
How? Using who's pricing system? "Energy" doesn't cut it- some processes are more efficient than others.


Irrelevant. The efficiency of preprogrammed machines can be improved upon with progess in technology. The efficiency of labour can be guaged. Both of which relies on energy being fed into them to initiate work.

Profit and price fluctuations including the value fluctuation of money itself contributes no significant improvement upon efficiency.

Even "inefficient" machines are more productive then human labour when leveraged to do work so inefficiency in a machine economy is of little importance to material production.

Supply and demand can be guaged without profit or investors making them extraneous so efficiency in adjusting to consumer demand can take place without profits, investors or valuation of commodities any kind.



The only true source of any value is labour.
Pure LTV. :lol:


LTVs have never been implemented therefore never been tested therefore never has been not verified to fail. Furthermore, I advocate the long term solution of a totally automated machine economy therefore no LTVs.



Please try to prove otherwise by showing profiteering contributes to the subjective value of a product.
If it's subjective relative to the consumer, then what am I supposed to be proving? This isn't relevent at all.


It is not subjective relative to direct producer's wages therefore it is relevant.



unrewarded labour demands redistribution of unearned profits. NOT very funny.
Unrewarded by who?


GARBAGE!



Their right to renegotiate their contracts from their employer's refusal to renegotiate.
No they don't. What would be the point of drawing up contract in the first place?


Here's a shorter variant of the profit contract agreement disproof I've presented before
You're also free to challenge the logical coherence of this one too (Yeah right!).

Statement: A free person does agree to be robbed

A: A free person
B: Own's total freedom
C: (A) seeks to preserve (B)
Not C: (A) seeks to limit (B)

D: the full benefits of own's labour
E: The freedom of receiving (D)
F: (E) is included as a subset of (B)

G: An employer's profit
H: (G) is a subset of (D)
I: (G) limits (D)


C is obviously true
(Not C) is obviously false
(F) is obviously true
(H) is false if you work for somebody else's profit

Because C is true meaning (Not C) is false then (F) being true invalidates any contracts signed which limits (E) because it will also limit (B) because C is true. Because (H) is true only if the employer and you are the same person meaning you are self-employed then (H) is false if you work for an employer that is not yourself.

If you work for an employer that is not yourself then (Not H) and (I) therefore the contract is invalid because (Not C) is false C is true and (I) violates (E).

Conclusion: A free person does agree to be robbed is false which implies A free person does not agree to be robbed.
Sorry: Ayn Rand is BULLSHIT!

Contract is invalid therefore, right to renegotiate exists unless you do not value freedom for workers.



If the system doesn't profit then the system fails. With growing inequality of wealth the only way to force more profit is through force. It's inevitable.It's a waste of time discussing this issue with someone who does not (or can't) differentiate voluntary actions from forced ones.


I'm merely predicting the logical social outcome of the Capitalist system based on the prime motivation of the class of people who have the most at stake in profitting from the system and it's continuing existence in conflict with people who have no interest in its continuation. Conflicts are resolved by force in the real world both for the agressor and the victims if agression.

You of course like to dwell in your abstract fantasy world of Capitalist harmony aka. Ayn Rand.



No, because true Communist-Anarchists do not advocate a system where wealth can be hoarded, but only laboured in return for.
That would generate envy and therefore class antagonisms. Some people would have more money and therefore more buying power than others.


Who cares if it's just wealth in consumer items of personal utility.
Seriously, who gives a flying fuck if you own a fancy car and I don't.
The fact of you owning a consumer item doesn't affect my economic standing nor my place in the social hierarchy if production relations and means of production are democratized.



This post was originally about Racial Equality where at some point you refuse to acknowledge the historical wrongs inflicted on black people
It was never about that at all. I claimed that it was absurd to demand money from people today for something their ancestors supposedly did hundreds of years ago. It's too late.
(they were afterall the ones that provided the real wealth to get everything started) which necessitates the redistribution of wealth and opportunities through affirmative action programs and integrated schools.
The beneficiaries of these kind of schemes have never have known slavery and thus do not deserve any reparations for it. The people who will be made to pay are not slave masters and never have been. To call this justice is phony.


I'll trade you my slum suite in the inner city with the villa that you bought with your grandpa's money. :lol:



Answer the question. In an entirely commodity barren land like America was 200 years ago, why would anybody work for paper money or gold for that matter? What's the use of it? Before I can use it trade for something that something must be built from labour. But who's labouring for what?
In the beginning, it was just a straight exchange of goods.


Slave plantations didn't exist. :lol:

The triangular trade of slaves, cotton, horses and rum didn't exists. :lol:

Triangular Trade (http://www.historyonthenet.com/Slave_Trade/triangulartrade.htm)

The westward expansion of America over indigineous lands didn't exists. :lol:

Britannia rule the waves is just a slogan. :lol:



Desire precedes actions.
If you don't desire something then you don't act upon it.
What's this? A commie trying to understand praxeology? Stop the press!


I praise you for being a master of the obvious.
Pffft. :P Not really. If it's obvious why do you need to be a master of it. :lol:




Don't try to shift this argument to the utility of consumer purchases. People want the full value of what they purchases. People want the full value of what they purchase, regardless of the actual utility of the said product. If I pay for x amount of poison (beer, smokes, drugs, etc...), I want x amount in return.
x is to be decided how?

Same with labour. If I labour making x amount of a given price per product, I want x amount of the price per product returned in wage.
I want free car maintainence because I want to maximise the value of my car but those damn greedy maintainence workers won't do it for me. How dare they not value my car as much as me. I want the full value of my car and they're denying it to me. I'll show em...


x is to be decided how?
Whatever is considered the listed price in any given arbitrary economic environment of any arbitrary size or form so whatever arbitrary amount x is, is irrelevant.

If the environment is a single store then item A is x price for everybody.
Nobody wants to pay x+1 price for the given item A in the store.
If the environment is a country the item A's average price x is the average price x for everybody.
Nobody wants to pay above average prices for item A in the country.

(Average prices exist in a market economy only, if economy was simply an at-cost economy there wouldn't exist this idiocy of varying prices not fixed to costs and you would have no way of attempting to worm your way out)

Subjective Rant:
Here, let me switch around so it reflects your attitude more accurately.

I want free labour because I want to maximise the value of my profits but those damn greedy workers won't do it for me. How dare they not value my company as much as me. I want the full value of my products and they're denying it to me. I'll show em...

People do not act against their own self-interest

Obviously you're incapable of providing a coherent response without being needlessly evasive so again, GARBAGE!



You however claimed the opposite by making the positive claim of failure.
All you can say is that it is unverified. But you did not. You claimed failure.
Why the LTV is false and will fail has been explained many times. Both by myself here and by others. Why haven't socialist countries every implemented it?


I want to read your explanation as does everybody else.



Only if everybody else can raid everybody else's bank account for money everybody else is not using.
It's only fair.
No it isn't fair. The only beneficiaries would be those who don't work.


Money is a bad example.

If you don't use a factory, building or land for personal utility and you have nothing within the building or land of personal utility then at a predetermined amount of time agreed upon by consensus vote you have no claim to the land or building. Something that you don't use is useless to you.

I have things within my property that I use for personal utility and my property is useful to me for personal utility, therefore I have a valid claim on it.

Same goes for everybody else.



But this is a bad example money is subjective nonsense.
That's your subjective opinion.


How much quantifiable labour do you do in your job function?
I'll take an Indian with equivalent quantifiable labour and the same job function and exchange bank accounts with you. You can have his rupees and he can have your pounds.

Why not? rupees and pounds are money aren't they? Both you and the Indian worker does exactly the same type of labour don't you? What should be true in India should also be true in Britain or America. Perhaps you want a currency with more industrial backing. Okay then, how about the Yuan then? China right now is the workshop of the world from what I've heard.
We'll exchange a Chinese praxeologist's bank account with your's. :lol:

[Tungsten]

red star

GARBAGE!
Oh dear oh dear. Someone hand this commie a tissue befor he drowns me in tears. :lol:

The economic structure of society influence political decisions which in turn influence the enactment of politically justified laws which are then enforced by officially sanctioned institutions of coercion. This coercion ultimately is backed by officially sanctioned brute force.

Point to any society which does not have that arrangement.
Which doesn't mean that I advocate it.

Irrelevant. What you buy for personal utility with what you earned doesn't concern me.
You're right it doesn't.

There's no power relation between my boss and me. (Yeah, right)
There's no power relation between my manager and me. (Yeah, right)
Not in a political sense.

My boss and supervisor control everything in my work environment from my schedule, pace and wage of labour.
Key words are: In your work environment. You control (assuming you're an adult) eveything in your domestic environment. You gets to say who stays and who goes and what they may and may not do. These arrangements are no different.

Termination and retention of my employment is also under their control. I don't have any control over my financial compensation for the work I do regardless of the proportion of my wage relative to the market price of the product which is produced in total from my and my coworker's labour.
How is this is not a power relation?
It's only a power relation only in terms of the example I gave. I'm not oppressing my neighbour by telling him to leave my house or telling him what he may or may not do here. If that's your definition of a power relation, then it applies to so many things that it applies to nothing.

Where did the wealth of super-wealthy investors and owners come from?

1 If you say profit then justify profit.
Profit is made by the exchange of commodities. In most cases, the commodities weren't stolen (not from anyone alive) and were achieved voluntarily.

If you can't justify either 1 or 2 then bosses and investors have no valid claim to their wealth and therefore no valid authority over workers meaning I can do whatever I want from my place of employment because don't respect the validity of their ownership of wealth and hence their power relation over me as bosses and managers.
I could turn this whole thing around to make you justify your very freedom.

Irrelevant. Consumer demand can be gauged without profits as I have explained.
I can assure you that the price most certainly is a relevent issue. We're talking about sales price, not profit. Most of the profit is reinvested in the company that manufactures the goods, without which the goods cannot be produced int he first place.

Investors and owners of businesses are entirely extraneous to the production process.
How many times are we going to have to go though this?

Wages are objective if proportionally compared to arbitrarily set market prices of commodities, therefore fairness of compensation can be determined.
So tell me what fairness is and how you arrive at it. (Objectively).

Here's a shorter variant of the profit contract agreement disproof I've presented before
You're also free to challenge the logical coherence of this one too (Yeah right!).

Statement: A free person does agree to be robbed
I've refuted this idiotic statement in the "Ayn Rand" thread.


Unrewarded by who?

GARBAGE!
That's not a very good answer, do you want to try again? I was making a fair point.

Statement: A free person does agree to be robbed
How many times are you going to post this?

I'm merely predicting the logical social outcome of the Capitalist system based on the prime motivation of the class of people who have the most at stake in profitting from the system and it's continuing existence in conflict with people who have no interest in its continuation.
That's not what you're doing. Sure, that's the way you'd like it to be, but it isn't. Evidence can be found in your delusion that republicans oppose birth control in order to "make more workers"- a completely baseless assertion.

Conflicts are resolved by force in the real world both for the agressor and the victims if agression.
The agressors being you. And as I've said before, property rights, including those of "capital", are indispensable when it comes to political freedom.

You of course like to dwell in your abstract fantasy world of Capitalist harmony aka. Ayn Rand.
I'm not promising any kind of harmony. I'm not a utopian, like you.

I'll trade you my slum suite in the inner city with the villa that you bought with your grandpa's money.
Irrelevent.

Slave plantations didn't exist.

The triangular trade of slaves, cotton, horses and rum didn't exists.

Triangular Trade

The westward expansion of America over indigineous lands didn't exists.

Britannia rule the waves is just a slogan.
Care to explain how you managed to extract all this from: "In the beginning, it was just a straight exchange of goods."

Are you claiming that no production or trade existed proir to slavery? You really are stupid.

x is to be decided how?
Whatever is considered the listed price
Decided how?

If the environment is a single store then item A is x price for everybody.
Nobody wants to pay x+1 price for the given item A in the store.
I want to pay the lowest price possible, within reason.

If the environment is a country the item A's average price x is the average price x for everybody.
Nobody wants to pay above average prices for item A in the country.
Nobody wants do, but they do.

(Average prices exist in a market economy only, if economy was simply an at-cost economy there wouldn't exist this idiocy of varying prices not fixed to costs and you would have no way of attempting to worm your way out)
You mean a command economy, don't you? With prices fixed and determined by some arbitary authority? Hmm. That sounds familiar...

I want free labour because I want to maximise the value of my profits but those damn greedy workers won't do it for me.
How can I be having it for free if I'm paying them for it?

How dare they not value my company as much as me.
They don't have to. They can leave and find one they do value.

I want to read your explanation as does everybody else.
Find it yourself.

If you don't use a factory, building or land for personal utility and you have nothing within the building or land of personal utility then at a predetermined amount of time agreed upon by consensus vote you have no claim to the land or building. Something that you don't use is useless to you.
So land siezure is okay providing it's democratic?

How much quantifiable labour do you do in your job function?
I'll take an Indian with equivalent quantifiable labour and the same job function and exchange bank accounts with you. You can have his rupees and he can have your pounds.

Why not? rupees and pounds are money aren't they?
We also have something called an "exchange rate", which renders the argument irrelevent.

[cyu]

And as I've said before, property rights, including those of "capital", are indispensable when it comes to political freedom.

What's your reasoning for this? If the control of capital were done democratically, why would that be bad?


So land siezure is okay providing it's democratic?


Yes, assuming the previous owner of the land wasn't using it for anything (such as just letting it sit there or having employees use it) and the new owners are.

[red team]

The economic structure of society influence political decisions which in turn influence the enactment of politically justified laws which are then enforced by officially sanctioned institutions of coercion. This coercion ultimately is backed by officially sanctioned brute force.

Point to any society which does not have that arrangement.
Which doesn't mean that I advocate it.


Abandoned, dilapidated buildings with absentee owners are inviolable private property.

Deliberate wasting, hoarding or speculation of critical life supporting necessities: food, healthcare and shelter, justified for lack of sufficient profit by those who control these necessities

Money which originated from conquest and slavery and which is preserved in value to the present with enforced swindling (profits) and speculative shell games (commodities market) is defended as a valid measure of wealth.

No right of workers for contract renegotiation, nevermind that the original contract is invalid.

This is far from a free society for everybody
You advocate it alright... But you're either deluded or just don't want to admit it.



There's no power relation between my boss and me. (Yeah, right)
There's no power relation between my manager and me. (Yeah, right)
Not in a political sense.


Irrelevant to the material security or liberty of direct producers.



My boss and supervisor control everything in my work environment from my schedule, pace and wage of labour.
Key words are: In your work environment. You control (assuming you're an adult) eveything in your domestic environment. You gets to say who stays and who goes and what they may and may not do. These arrangements are no different.


Irrelevant. Everybody's domestic environment is of personal social utility. Work environments aren't for personal social utility. I couldn't care less who you choose to socialise with or not socialise with at your personal place of residence because it doesn't affect anybody economically. No money for labour or money for shelter transactions was involved.

Work arrangements are very different. You're simply trying to evade the point.



Termination and retention of my employment is also under their control. I don't have any control over my financial compensation for the work I do regardless of the proportion of my wage relative to the market price of the product which is produced in total from my and my coworker's labour.
How is this is not a power relation?
It's only a power relation only in terms of the example I gave. I'm not oppressing my neighbour by telling him to leave my house or telling him what he may or may not do here. If that's your definition of a power relation, then it applies to so many things that it applies to nothing.


GARBAGE!

See previous reply. Neighborhood residences are not examples of an environment in which economic transactions between conflicting parties are involved. Landlords and tenants transactions are, but that's not what we're talking about.



Where did the wealth of super-wealthy investors and owners come from?
1 If you say profit then justify profit.
Profit is made by the exchange of commodities. In most cases, the commodities weren't stolen (not from anyone alive) and were achieved voluntarily.


(not from anyone alive)
Alright, let's do a detailed investigation of inheritance geneology shall we? :lol:
We'll figure out where the original source of the loot was from and who the beneficiaries are today (including which banks). Somehow I don't think the wealthy families and the wealth holding institutions of today want to have that done which is understandable as it would unravel their whole investment capital pyramid scheme.

The word "voluntarily" derives its meaning from the context in which it is used. A con-artist can get his victims to "voluntarily" cheat themselves out of wealth and get away with it by relying on uninformed consent through context manipulation.

You're a prime example of the swindling arts:

Example:

If you're robbed with or without your "argeement" you're short-changed as in not receiving full benefits of your work. That "agreement" is void.

short-changed = robbed = embezzled = swindled = conned = exploited = profitted from
And many others meaning unequalness in exchange

agree = seek to = desire = concede = intend = volunteer
And many others meaning expressing will for

robbed and short-changed means the same thing and has the same economic effects and has the same limiting effects on freedom and in the context in which I was using them they mean the same thing.

You cannot agree = seek to = desire = concede = intend = volunteer = expressing will for to have yourself short-changed = robbed = embezzled = swindled = conned = exploited = profitted from = unequalness in exchange because you agree = seek to = desire = concede = intend = volunteer = expressing will for preserve your freedom.

Now anybody who isn't intent on swindling would know those words meant exactly the same thing in the context in which they are used.

Please do expose yourself some more as a petty con-artist.



If you can't justify either 1 or 2 then bosses and investors have no valid claim to their wealth and therefore no valid authority over workers meaning I can do whatever I want from my place of employment because don't respect the validity of their ownership of wealth and hence their power relation over me as bosses and managers.
I could turn this whole thing around to make you justify your very freedom.


I would love to see an amateur con-artist like you try.



Irrelevant. Consumer demand can be gauged without profits as I have explained.
I can assure you that the price most certainly is a relevent issue. We're talking about sales price, not profit. Most of the profit is reinvested in the company that manufactures the goods, without which the goods cannot be produced int he first place.


Consumer item A produced at cost = (quantity = m, unit/total cost = c, c x m)

(Joe/Jane Consumer) buys Item A at (cost = c) x (quantity = n)
which gives you (quantity = n, unit/total revenue = c, c x n) at the point of consumption.

Back at the factory:
adjustment for consumer demand: substitute n for m
now item A is produced at cost = (quantity = n, unit/total cost = c, c x n)

Where's profit? Did prices need to fluctuate?
Profits are extraneous, price fluctuations are extraneous.
Quantity of purchases can be used in place of price fluctuations to guage consumer demand.



Wages are objective if proportionally compared to arbitrarily set market prices of commodities, therefore fairness of compensation can be determined.
So tell me what fairness is and how you arrive at it. (Objectively).


100 percent of something is 100 percent of that thing.
80 percent of something is 80 percent of that thing.

If something that is worth (100% x Price) but you gave the people who made it (80% x Price) those people will not be able to cover the cost of producing that item from the monetary circulation of purchases because they were not paid the full value of their labour. Workers will either go into debt, work harder for even less, be terminated from work, or (their) companies go bankrupt. Since the entire economy is run this way it will be impossible to have enough purchasing power to cover costs.

(Entire working population size) x (80% x Price) < (Entire working population size) x (100% x Price)

Guess what policy of the owners of the company will decide to go with? Bankruptcy? :lol:

If you give (100% x Price) to labour (labour meaning anybody who works for a living), a fair wage, you would never have this problem.

Learn some math and tell me what a percentage is.



Here&#39;s a shorter variant of the profit contract agreement disproof I&#39;ve presented before
You&#39;re also free to challenge the logical coherence of this one too (Yeah right&#33;).

Statement: A free person does agree to be robbed
I&#39;ve refuted this idiotic statement in the "Ayn Rand" thread.


GARBAGE&#33;

You refuted absolutely nothing you simply used context manipulation on the word "robbed" against what is the utility meaning of the word in the given argument in which it is used.

A common tactic for petty con-artists. I really need to congratulate you for exposing yourself as a petty swindler like this.

If you&#39;re robbed with or without your "argeement" you&#39;re short-changed as in not receiving full benefits of your work. That "agreement" is void.

short-changed = robbed = embezzled = swindled = conned = exploited = profitted from
And many others meaning unequalness in exchange

agree = seek to = desire = concede = intend = volunteer
And many others meaning expressing will for

robbed and short-changed means the same thing and has the same economic effects and has the same limiting effects on freedom.

You cannot agree = seek to = desire = concede = intend = volunteer = expressing will for to have yourself short-changed = robbed = embezzled = swindled = conned = exploited = profitted from = unequalness in exchange because you agree = seek to = desire = concede = intend = volunteer = expressing will for preserve your freedom.

Now anybody who isn&#39;t intent on swindling would know those words meant exactly the same thing in the context in which they are used.

Please do expose yourself some more as a petty con-artist.




Unrewarded by who?
GARBAGE&#33;
That&#39;s not a very good answer, do you want to try again? I was making a fair point.


Since anybody with half a brain would know exactly what I mean I don&#39;t feel compelled to give you an answer that you can manipulate out of context, but since you&#39;ve asked here it is again:

unrewarded labour demands redistribution of unearned profits. NOT very funny.

Who do you think is getting those unearned profits? Investors or Workers?

Who do you think is getting unrewarded the full value of their labour? Investors or Workers?

Who pays the workers their wage? Investors (including upper management of a given company) or Workers

Please do try your cheap debating tactics again to expose yourself as a swindler



Statement: A free person does agree to be robbed
How many times are you going to post this?


GARBAGE&#33;
Refute con-artist don&#39;t swindle.



I&#39;m merely predicting the logical social outcome of the Capitalist system based on the prime motivation of the class of people who have the most at stake in profitting from the system and it&#39;s continuing existence in conflict with people who have no interest in its continuation.
That&#39;s not what you&#39;re doing. Sure, that&#39;s the way you&#39;d like it to be, but it isn&#39;t. Evidence can be found in your delusion that republicans oppose birth control in order to "make more workers"- a completely baseless assertion.


Conjectures are not facts. I&#39;ve never stated it as a fact and it won&#39;t become a fact unless its proven true from the unfolding of future events. Conjectures are simply that: predictions from imcomplete evidence.

So how is this a "baseless" conjecture as you claim it to be?
Would not more births mean more workers in the future?
Of course that may not be the actual motivation for opposing birth controls by the Republicans, but how are you any more likely than me to uncover what the genuine motivation of the Republicans are?

Furthermore, so what if that&#39;s not their actual motivation for opposing birth controls?
What will actually result in the real world from the given policy change regardless of the underlying motivation?

I&#39;m a materialist as are most Communists. We do not need to look inside people&#39;s heads to predict the trajectory of real world events and policy changes. Those policy changes will influence real world events and hence the social/economic trends of the future regardless of individual motivations.



Conflicts are resolved by force in the real world both for the agressor and the victims if agression.
The agressors being you. And as I&#39;ve said before, property rights, including those of "capital", are indispensable when it comes to political freedom.


Irrelevant.

Whether or not you advocate it or not, the majority of wealth and therefore power will be owned by those with a stake in the system&#39;s continuing existence against those who don&#39;t have that interest. Both those who make a living through profit and those who make a living through labour may view the other one as the aggressor and from their own perspective they&#39;re "right". If the American Confederacy won against the American Union the central political debate in America right now would be the economic feasability and "morality" of a wage worker system as opposed to a slave system. History and hence codes of "morality" is written by the victor.

Also, here&#39;s a historical lesson in materialism. The south of the United States have historically been much less industrialized than the northern regions and this fact is true even up to today. This is no coincidence as there is no logical reason why factories cannot reside in the south anymore than they could reside in the north. The fact that the north of the United States is more industrialized follows from the fact that a different mode of social organization called Capitalism was developed in the North first (which made sense geographically because plantations are not sustainable in northern climates) which required a different type of work force which is wage earning industrial workers as opposed to tied to the land plantation slaves. Since the whole economic system of the south was runned from the basis of slave plantation workers there&#39;s no economic nor "moral" incentive to develop the material and intellectual infrastructure required to build factories and hence no factories. In fact it is even possible to present a humanitarian argument against industrialization to the effect that if machines replaced slaves, what would one do with all the surplus slaves? Let them starve? Kill them? (Who says slave owners aren&#39;t humane?)

The "morality" of slave owning is "debatable" with slave holders of the southern plantations because they keep their slaves well fed and housed (most of them) and only beat them if they&#39;re "lazy". Similar the "morality" of wage work and profit making is "debatable" with you because cappies keep their workers well fed and housed (most of them) and only fire them if they&#39;re "lazy".

Of course in the South in the time of the plantation slavery there were instances of well-fed and comfortable slaves: "Nice Slavery" (http://www.archives.state.al.us/teacher/slavery/lesson3/doc3f.html) which is as irrelevant as the modern counterpart of well-fed and comfortable wage workers. Again, irrelevant. Since both systems are debt token trading systems based on unsustainable labour exploitation the economy of both systems, Slavery and Capitalism and will inevitably run down with not enough food to keep slaves healthy and idle freemen rich in the case of Slavery and not enough wages for purchases to keep workers healthy and investors rich in the case of Capitalism. History will either prove me wrong and you right or me right and you wrong.

Historical Materialism (http://www.marxist.com/History/historicalMaterialism.htm)

Political freedom is irrelevant to those with no material security.
Poor people don&#39;t vote and have no shares in corporations.



You of course like to dwell in your abstract fantasy world of Capitalist harmony aka. Ayn Rand.
I&#39;m not promising any kind of harmony. I&#39;m not a utopian, like you.


Well, if none of us have ideals, none of us would be living in a "democratic" republic because the feasability of "utopian" material progress like factories and "utopian" social organization like representative democracy would be dismissed out of hand.

We would not be having this debate as I will be busy working in the fields and you would be a monk in a church contemplating the number of angels that could fit on the head of a pin. Peasant debate with clergy would mean dungeon time



Slave plantations didn&#39;t exist.

The triangular trade of slaves, cotton, horses and rum didn&#39;t exists.

Triangular Trade

The westward expansion of America over indigineous lands didn&#39;t exists.

Britannia rule the waves is just a slogan.
Care to explain how you managed to extract all this from: "In the beginning, it was just a straight exchange of goods."

Are you claiming that no production or trade existed proir to slavery? You really are stupid.


Since I&#39;m showing the rise of modern Capitalism with stratified class societies of slaves and slave owners and later bosses and workers, not the simple exchange of rudimentary items of personal or tribal manufacture and utility, your statement is irrelevant.

The above does not show the exchange of x numer of buffalo bones for y number of stone axes as would be the typical trading transaction in savage societies like the ones found in America before the time of the European colonisation. It shows what happened during and after that colonisation by an European society which have evolved beyond that stage of social organisation.



(Average prices exist in a market economy only, if economy was simply an at-cost economy there wouldn&#39;t exist this idiocy of varying prices not fixed to costs and you would have no way of attempting to worm your way out)
You mean a command economy, don&#39;t you? With prices fixed and determined by some arbitary authority? Hmm. That sounds familiar...


You haven&#39;t been reading my replies.
There&#39;s no need for a command economy at all.
I&#39;m not advocating something like the Soviet Union model either.

From the technocracy forum: Technocracy Forum (http://www.technocracy.ca)


I&#39;m residing in Canada right now which I believe would be included into the North American Technate if technocracy is going to be implemented. I browse through the Technocracy Inc. site a few years ago and found it interesting. After which I didn&#39;t bother much with it and started exploring the political ideas of the left mostly Marxist materialism and dialectics. I found the current commodity system we call Capitalism irrational, unfair and incredibly wasteful in terms of resources consumed for questionable purposes and also for the amount of compensation corresponding to social or material contribution of any given individual where some individuals are over-compensated while others are under-compensated for the corresponding amount and value of contribution of the individual. Furthermore, I think it&#39;s an economic system just waiting to collapse because it runs on the basis of extraction of surplus value, but how can you expect surplus value from all workers paid at cost? Either you print more money in which case that leads to money being valued less which is called inflation or somebody, somewhere in the system will have to work for free (slavery) or go into debt (peonage). This will be an unstable system that will degenerate at some point in the future back to a more slavocracy-like system if it isn&#39;t overthrown with something that doesn&#39;t rely on surplus value accumulation.

However much I may agree with the Marxist analysis of a commodity price system, I didn&#39;t find any of it&#39;s proposed solutions any better at solving what is ultimately a problem with how goods and services are traded. Money has it&#39;s origins in the barter system where currency was invented as a means for officially notarising debt for those engaged in the exchanged of commodities. But the problem with these debt notes is that they don&#39;t actually quantify anything except for some abstract human concept of desirability for a good or service hence the official economic term demand. This may work fine for simple barter, but this cannot ever be coherently used in a large scale modern economy without inevitably introducing absurdities in over-pricing or under-pricing goods and services corresponding to the amount of resources or human effort that goes into producing said goods or services.

That said, I don&#39;t find having a commandist centralized economy as advocated by Marxists a suitable solution to managing a complex industrial economy. For one thing, even though a centralized economy is good at distributing basic goods and services such as food, healthcare and shelter, it will most certainly fail for anything more complex because you&#39;ll have to take into account more variables for allocation or both labour and resources. This means along with more variables you&#39;ll need to be solving multiple simultaneous equations in order to optimize for efficiency in distributing those resources. This may be (barely) feasable for the limited variables needed in solving for basic goods and services, but virtually impossible if you take into account all the luxury goods people want to make their lives more enjoyable. People quickly lose enthusiasm for work and hence the social system if only given basic necessities, which is in fact what actually happened in former Socialist countries. Furthermore, given that you&#39;ll need to work out the logistics, allocation of resources and actual demand for any given product that is decided to be made, you&#39;ll need to dedicate a full time layer of professionals for performing this task, in other words a bureacracy. This bureacracy will be strategically situated in the most important supply-side part of the distribution channel which gives it enormous power as well as enormous potential for abuse of power and corruption for people intent on furthering their own financial interests. Given that money can be hoarded having this powerful layer of professionals controlling a critical part of the distribution channel will inevitably lead to corruption. Any comissioner (comissar) could be as corrupt and overpaid as any CEO.

Which leads me to believe that Technocracy is the only adequate way we have up to now to overcome corruption, hoarding, artifical scarcity, under-pricing, over-pricing and other injustices and absurdities of a price system.


From RevLeft board


In a pure technocracy with abundant amounts of energy you can be as decentralized as you want.

The thing to remember is that in a technocracy everybody is a consumer not a producer. This being made possible by the fact that production of material goods for the most part is already automated and with further research into emerging technologies like robotics and artificial intelligence it&#39;s not far fetched to imagine that every type of work involving manual labour can be automated.

If you have remaining areas of work that includes manual labour then things get messy because of the all fallible nature of human beings. For one thing, performance of manual labour for rewards can be corrupted by those willing to perform the least amount of work for the most amount of rewards. The blunt instrument of monitoring the workforce for corruption can only go so far unless monitoring is all pervasive. But then, as well as the ethical/political problems this creates in implementing a virtual police state for monitoring the working population, it is also inefficient, ineffective as well as easily defeatable. If necessary manual labour still exists then having a monitoring agency to insure work quality would drain resources away inverse proportion to the number of workers actually doing useful work as well as needing to provide income to a sector which is essentially non-productive which will be a further drain on resources. This is ineffective because even if you can build the perfect monitoring system (which is an impossibility) you cannot guarantee that the police themselves will be corrupted with bribery and extortion because you&#39;ll have a layer of people guarding the integrity of the distribution channel. But the question then becomes, "who will guard the guards?" This problem of human manual labour directed and controlled by equally human government officials led to the downfall of the Soviet experiment in Socialism which ultimately rested on material conditions. Government policies and ruling structures only played a minor role in what was really a problem of human corruptability in an economic system that is basically a wide-open door for those willing to be corrupted.

For those directly involved in the production part of the distribution channel as well as those guarding the integrity of the distribution channel it pays to be corrupt as it gains you more rewards than those who are honest. This happens in both the bureaucratic Socialist system and the market Capitalist system. The only solution to this is not to rely on either market mechanisms or bureaucratic methods, but to democratize the distribution channel by making it self-sufficient and with minimal need for human interference either by CEOs, investors or bureaucrats and that can only happen by automating the distribution channel and decentralization would play a big part in this. In the end the only democratic and stable market is an entirely consumer driven market with no investors, profits, CEOs or commisars.


From RevLeft board



The only thing I could answer in this thread, is that technocracy does not need to "be another kind of communism" in order to work, and does not need to copy marxist theories about class warfare, since technocracy exists in order to streamline the production and allow for an abundance to be distributed to all citizens. Technocratic theories could co-exist with marxism, but does not need to do that.


Being that Technocracy is more of a resource distribution methodology rather than a study on social relations which comprises an important part of Marxism, Technocracy is very good in explaining the unavoidable flaws of a price system which includes resource hoarding, price negotiation and arbitrary valuation of goods and services without regards to the actual amount of effort, energy and resources allocated for the production of said goods and services. It also presents an excellent alternative to determining the cost of a product by using universal physical properties such as the energy required to be used in the production of a good or service, rather than the arbitrary and subjective evaluation of desirability by pricing.

But where it fails is in human social relations in that it doesn&#39;t take into account the motivation for the greatest beneficiaries of the price system for maintaining it even at the expense of those who realize little benefit from it and are viewed as little more than profit making machines by those who rule over the system. It&#39;s extremely unlikely that the aristocratic rulers of a price system which has ownership claims over virtually every part of the distribution channel for goods and services from the logistics and manufacturing to distribution segments would ever want to voluntarily give up control over these critical life support systems without a challenge from those who want to replace the price system.

Furthermore, at present the production of goods and services in society is geared toward a manual labour system with the corresponding infrastructure accompanying it. If an overthrow of the price system indeed occured then the entire infrastructure that was previously geared toward a manual labour intensive economy would need to be radically modified to support a high-tech, automated economy and this requires an unavoidable transition period.


To say that technocracy competes with marxism is like saying that physics are competing with biology. It does not work.


Marxism is best for analyzing the motivation and flaws of a price system more specifically, but because it was developed as a political-economic theory in the 19th century, it failed to foresee that simply replacing a decentralized price system in which commodity prices were determined by the market by a centralized price system in which commodity prices were arbitrarily determined by government decree only centralizes the problem instead of solving it. Instead of financiers and banks driving many independent competing corporations to maximize profit for those who have an interest in hoarding it, you have a centralized government bureaucracy whose officials also have a monopoly of control over all parts of the resource distribution channel. No doubt there are "good" and dedicated government officials as well as "good" and dedicated financiers, but that&#39;s not the point. It is that there lies the potential for abuse of power and corruption for those willing to take advantage of the system&#39;s flaws. And this can be a slow process as well as a quick one in which a few corners are cut and a few short cuts are made for expediency which then proceeds gradually until the entire organization is rotten with bribery and corruption. Also, as witness in western democracies, it doesn&#39;t matter if the officials are elected or appointed. If the underlying economic system becomes corrupted to the point where wealth is more easily gained from hoarding, bribery and price manipulation than from engaging in productive activities then electoral politics becomes a sham. It&#39;s a theatrical puppet show put up by those who actually hold the economic power behind the scenes.

However, I agree that Technocracy doesn&#39;t compete with Marxism. Marxism analyzes the cause of failure of a specific price system Capitalism, but failed to present a viable alternative which works and does away with price manipulation and hoarding forever. Technocracy gets right down to the root cause of this failure by discovering the flaws of a system based on the exchange of unquantifiable debt tokens for quantifiable energy produced goods and presents an alternative method of cost evaluation through energy accounting, but doesn&#39;t go into the details of social relationships and motivations.


That technocracy would automatically be a planned economy, I do not agree though. Planned economies tends to have an inflexible system of handling supply and demand, which could be very effective if we are talking about large-scale infrastructural projects. But when we are talking about the daily consumption of consumers, markets has historically proved to be more efficient to allocate resources.


I agree with this statement, but only up to a point. The distribution system for consumer luxury goods needs to be flexible enough to respond quickly to changing consumer tastes and the varied interests and preferences of many different individuals, but there are goods and services that all consumers need that are quite stable and unchanging and which are unsuitable to be placed in a dynamic demand driven environment. Things like: power distribution, plumbing, communications, public transportation, health services, education, staple food products and many other goods and services are pretty much standard and unchanging. What is most important in these sectors are a constant and consistent supply and not variability subjected to changing individual preferences.

Furthermore, even if independent production units are allowed outside of centralized control to introduce more flexibility in responding to market demand, incentives should remain purely emotional in that production is encouraged only for a sense of prestige and accomplishment and not material rewards. Assuming we are starting from an environment of abundance in which all basic necessities and even some luxuries are available to everyone at very low cost due to automated production of these items and services, having a emotional reward system is entirely feasable as luxury and extraneous consumer items and services could be produced by fewer individuals who are fully dedicated to their production out of emotional interest and not material incentives. Introducing material incentives in an abundance based system like Technocracy is never a good idea as it will quickly lead to inequality, artificial scarcity, corruption and the eventual undermining of the energy accounting system itself.


One potentially more efficient system would be an interactive economy, where consumers could order, design and specify their demand directly to the nodes in the technate involved in production, instead of relying on market incentives, like money or energy accounting.


Energy accounting will always be necessary even in a fully automated society where all goods and services are produced by machines. Even in this ultimate techno-utopia the machines will still need to be fed fuel and energy to perform useful work and then you&#39;ll be up against the ultimate physical cost law of the universe in which there can be absolutely no cheating. Conservation of energy and thermodynamics.

An interactive economy would be a nice idea to replace the crude mechanism of a market for responding to consumer demand, but the problem with this idea at least with present and near future technologies is that production machinery is specifically designed for making only one type of item or in some cases only one unique item with limited or no variability in making something different from the original design specifications. The production machines would need to be retooled everytime a different order comes in which is probably less efficient than simply relying on market mechanisms for luxury consumer goods and centralization of production for staple consumer goods.


From RevLeft board


This is an interim solution at best as there are serious flaws as well as loopholes that could be exploited for gaining control of distribution channels:

1. Can be negotiated:

I&#39;m not sure if this is true for TLVs, but if it is ture then it presents a problem. If it could be negotiated the value of goods could fluctuate according to its demand or scarcity which will undermine your measurement of labour going into a product. This also bring up another problem with labour that I will go into.

2. Can be hoarded:

Hoarding is possible if TLVs can be saved and takes place through various activities such as: price negotiation, saving and gambling. This presents two serious problems in blocking the distribution channel of goods and services. The first is the consumer side problem which will take place if you "forecast" ahead of time the amount of goods to produce. If consumers can save their TLVs, it can be virtually guaranteed that your forecasted amount of goods to produce will overshoot the actual consumer demand. Second is the supply problem if saved TLVs could allow a section of the population to obtain a controlling share of a critical part of the distribution channel be it logistics, production or distribution part of the channel. Once a controlling share of the distribution channel is obtained, obstruction of consumer demand can take place by introduction of artificial scarcity or through the overcharging of consumer items. And this could happen quickly through bribery if it&#39;s possible to save (hoard) TLVs either on the part of those doing the hoarding or those being bribed into going along with it.

3. Difference in physical power output among workers:

Valuating the TLVs of workers would be a very subjective and imprecise activity given that work in the industrialized countries are rarely done on an entirely manual basis. Machine and technology assisted labour would inevitably skew your TLVs to value less materially productive manual labour more, since they are more physically demanding. This would drain resources away from the technology sector since wealth will be concentrated in workers performing physically demanding jobs. Progress in increasing productive forces that are dependent on technology will stall. Furthermore, even though manual workers are paid more, because there&#39;s only so much a population can consume, the increased pay in manual work (which comprises a smaller sector of the working population in industrialized countries) will not be able to consume the goods from workers enaged in machine assisted production. Overproduction of goods in which there will not be enough purchasing power to consume will take place.


Furthermore, there&#39;s the motivational aspect of a rationed labour system which has not been discussed. Many workers engaged in uninspiring manual toil will desire to escape their situation through either working toward being able to engage is more privileged, inspiring work or through hoarding of resources (point #2) so as to enable them to control a part of the distribution channel so that they can be in a position to gain excess wealth from either of the two tactics discussed: overcharging for consumer goods or introduction of artificial scarcity. No matter how you look at it TLVs is not a permanent solution and will eventually degenerate back towards a value based commodity system.


In spite of its flaws TLVs are a step in the right direction, but I doubt such a system will be stable enough to not degenerate at some point. Technology innovation to eliminate the need for certain jobs is the only long term solution that is viable. Once that is achieved an energy accounting based system as proposed by Technocracy could be implemented. After all, by then I would expect most menial jobs to be done by energy-fed machines which would make energy accounting necessary.




If you don&#39;t use a factory, building or land for personal utility and you have nothing within the building or land of personal utility then at a predetermined amount of time agreed upon by consensus vote you have no claim to the land or building. Something that you don&#39;t use is useless to you.
So land siezure is okay providing it&#39;s democratic?


Yes.

It&#39;s called land to the tiller.
A basic democratic right.

Absentee Landlords (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absentee_landlords)
Land Reforms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform)




Anyway you can even keep your fancy mansions after a successful revolution, provided that you&#39;re not beaten to death by the uncontrollable angry mobs that is. I may let you live, but people far more exploited and poorer than me may not be in such a merciful mood. Who am I to stand in their way? I am not responsible for the mob&#39;s violent urge for vengeance.

Vengence for what?

"You ancestors exploited me ancestors. Me kill you."

What kind of crap is this?

Perhaps the Spanish would have been justified in killing all arabs for invading their lands in the middle ages. Perhaps the English should nuke France in retalliation for the events of 1066. Where do we stop? Answer: We don&#39;t start. Those people are dead. It&#39;s gone, finished, over.


Just explaining the facts of revolution as an objective observer. If revolution were to happen tomorrow (very unlikely) there would be chaotic, uncontrollable violence in any place experiencing it. Personal friendship or family ties wouldn&#39;t mean a damn thing to hordes of oppressed people demanding vengeance. I may have a rich friend or relative (perhaps I do ;) ) but it wouldn&#39;t mean anything to people who want to kill him for the social role he&#39;s performing in exploiting labour. He may be a nice guy personally, but who am I to stand in the way of revolutionary violence? Who am I to defend his social role in the social hierarchy? Nevermind, that I don&#39;t want to be killed in defending him.

[Tungsten]

cya

What&#39;s your reasoning for this? If the control of capital were done democratically, why would that be bad?
Capital would be controlled by the person/people who could lie the most convincingly and intimidate the most number of people (who could do as they please).

Yes, assuming the previous owner of the land wasn&#39;t using it for anything (such as just letting it sit there or having employees use it) and the new owners are.
In other words, he is using it too.
red team

Abandoned, dilapidated buildings with absentee owners are inviolable private property.
How disingenuous. You&#39;re opposition to property rights isn&#39;t limited to dilapidated and abandoned bulidings by any means.

Deliberate wasting, hoarding or speculation of critical life supporting necessities: food, healthcare and shelter, justified for lack of sufficient profit by those who control these necessities
Profit has little to do with it. Taking property from people and giving it to various groups who you deem worthy of recieving it is the essence of pork barrel politics and political oppression. This is in practice as we speak.

Money which originated from conquest and slavery
Is this what you denied saying in the last few posts?

No right of workers for contract renegotiation, nevermind that the original contract is invalid.
You don&#39;t have a clue what the purpose of a contract is, do you?

This is far from a free society for everybody
You advocate it alright... But you&#39;re either deluded or just don&#39;t want to admit it.
But I don&#39;t use your false terminology. I don&#39;t call profit "swindling" or trade "slavery".

Irrelevant to the material security or liberty of direct producers.
Which is irrelevent.

See previous reply. Neighborhood residences are not examples of an environment in which economic transactions between conflicting parties are involved.
Neither are workplaces. You&#39;re treating the claim that these parties are "conflicting" as if it was some primary fact as opposed to a false conclusion.

Alright, let&#39;s do a detailed investigation of inheritance geneology shall we?
No thanks. "Inherited guilt" is phooey best left to christians and other religionists.

We&#39;ll figure out where the original source of the loot was from
Not relevent to the present day. Studies into how weath was used or created 150+ years ago are purely of theoretical interest. Wealth today is not created by slavery, at least not in the western world. You might get the wealth from slavery mixed up with wealth from work.

and who the beneficiaries are today (including which banks).
Who are the beneficiaries exactly? List them, or at least a few examples along with how they&#39;re representative of the majority. Claiming that all companies and sucessful individuals were slaver drivers is absurd, seeing as the majority of them weren&#39;t around until long after the abolition of slavery.

The word "voluntarily" derives its meaning from the context in which it is used. A con-artist can get his victims to "voluntarily" cheat themselves out of wealth
You can&#39;t cheat yourself. The wealth was never theirs unless it said so in the work contract. The worker agreed to work for specific sum of money, which he exchanged an agreed sum of labour. If the boss can sell the products of that labour for a profit then what does that have to do with the worker? If you sell me your car and I then sell it to someone else at a higher price than I bought it for, then what does that have to do with you? Are you going to come around to my house to demand your "share"? No. It was no longer yours to give or take.

Please do expose yourself some more as a petty con-artist.
Read the Ayn Rand thread again.

I would love to see an amateur con-artist like you try.

If you can&#39;t justify either 1 or 2 then bosses and investors have no valid claim to their wealth and therefore no valid authority over workers meaning I can do whatever I want from my place of employment because don&#39;t respect the validity of their ownership of wealth and hence their power relation over me as bosses and managers.
You have no valid claim to being paid because the money you&#39;re being paid came from historical slavery. You have no claim to freedom because you owe everything to everyone who&#39;s ever provided you with goods- which also came from slavery. So you&#39;ve got lot of paying up to do. Don&#39;t ask me who gets this payment- they&#39;re all dead anyway.

Consumer item A produced at cost = (quantity = m, unit/total cost = c, c x m)

(Joe/Jane Consumer) buys Item A at (cost = c) x (quantity = n)
which gives you (quantity = n, unit/total revenue = c, c x n) at the point of consumption.
This lesson was learned early last century- it&#39;s not what goods cost, it&#39;s what people are willing to pay for them.

Back at the factory:
adjustment for consumer demand: substitute n for m
now item A is produced at cost = (quantity = n, unit/total cost = c, c x n)

Where&#39;s profit? Did prices need to fluctuate?
Profits are extraneous, price fluctuations are extraneous.
Quantity of purchases can be used in place of price fluctuations to guage consumer demand.
Something&#39;s missing here- that&#39;s it- praxeology&#33;

If something that is worth (100% x Price) but you gave the people who made it (80% x Price) those people will not be able to cover the cost of producing that item from the monetary circulation of purchases because they were not paid the full value of their labour.
Assuming that needs to happen. How many aircraft buliders need to purchase a 747 and ought to be paid accordingly? This model uses the same static wealth theory of the LTV, which is false. Prices merely reflect value, which is subjective by its very nature. As is the price of labour.

If you give (100% x Price) to labour (labour meaning anybody who works for a living), a fair wage, you would never have this problem.

Learn some math and tell me what a percentage is.
I&#39;ve got a better idea- answer the question I asked:

So tell me what fairness is and how you arrive at it. (Objectively).
How if a "fair wage" determined, objectively?

You refuted absolutely nothing you simply used context manipulation on the word "robbed" against what is the utility meaning of the word in the given argument in which it is used.
You mean you altered the meaning of the word robbed into something it didn&#39;t originally mean, which I then changed it back and now you&#39;re complaining about it?

If you&#39;re robbed with or without your "argeement" you&#39;re short-changed as in not receiving full benefits of your work. That "agreement" is void.
But you&#39;re not being robbed if you agree to an exchange. If the exchange differs from what was originally proposed, say if I agree to swap an apple for a pear and instead of giving me a pear, the person gives me a bag with a stone in it (or forces me to accept an orange instead). That&#39;s fraud. It doesn&#39;t matter what the "cost" of a pear or an apple is if I agreed to make an exchange.

And I suggest you shoot off your loaded insults elsewhere- they won&#39;t help you here.


Since anybody with half a brain would know exactly what I mean I don&#39;t feel compelled to give you an answer that you can manipulate out of context, but since you&#39;ve asked here it is again:

unrewarded labour demands redistribution of unearned profits. NOT very funny.

Who do you think is getting those unearned profits? Investors or Workers?
The profits have been earned; the exchange between the consumer and the producer differs to the apple/pear example only on a matter of scale.

Who do you think is getting unrewarded the full value of their labour? Investors or Workers?
Not again. Don&#39;t you ever give up? Labour is just a frigging commodity, like land, machinery or logistics. It&#39;s not special, it&#39;s not holy, it&#39;s not more important and those providing it sure don&#39;t have the right to take over other people&#39;s property.

Who pays the workers their wage? Investors (including upper management of a given company) or Workers
The people who consume their goods pay the wages of both, whose value they arrive at subjectively and whose goods they either buy or don&#39;t buy. Is revenge being planned against the consumer too?

Refute con-artist don&#39;t swindle.
They do, but the people you describe are not con artists.

Conjectures are not facts. I&#39;ve never stated it as a fact and it won&#39;t become a fact unless its proven true from the unfolding of future events. Conjectures are simply that: predictions from imcomplete evidence.
Those black helicopters are coming to get you.

So how is this a "baseless" conjecture as you claim it to be?
Would not more births mean more workers in the future?
Of course that may not be the actual motivation for opposing birth controls by the Republicans, but how are you any more likely than me to uncover what the genuine motivation of the Republicans are?
Because they&#39;re bible thumpers first and foremost. Any support they lend to any other ideology is purely coincidental.


I&#39;m a materialist as are most Communists. We do not need to look inside people&#39;s heads to predict the trajectory of real world events and policy changes. Those policy changes will influence real world events and hence the social/economic trends of the future regardless of individual motivations.
Aren&#39;t real world events triggered by things "inside people&#39;s heads"? History isn&#39;t a mechanical process.

The agressors being you. And as I&#39;ve said before, property rights, including those of "capital", are indispensable when it comes to political freedom.

Irrelevant.
I know you think agression, property rights and political freedom are irrelevent. It was obvious from day one.


Both those who make a living through profit and those who make a living through labour may view the other one as the aggressor and from their own perspective they&#39;re "right".
That&#39;s not actually true. We resolve issues of force by looking at those who use aggression in place of voluntary association. They&#39;re the ones at fault. Why? Because aggresion is rather detrimental to individuals and the human race in general. The examples should not need listing.

If the American Confederacy won against the American Union the central political debate in America right now would be the economic feasability and "morality" of a wage worker system as opposed to a slave system. History and hence codes of "morality" is written by the victor.
Would Germany winning the war have made it any less the aggressor? No. Would it alter the fact that aggression is detrimental to both individuals and the people in general? No.

I don&#39;t think you understand morality, either. Commies rarely do, which would explain why they can&#39;t tell the difference between a slave, who&#39;s driven to work for others by political force or a worker who has to work in order to survive. Remember those two examples of force I gave you a while ago?

Political freedom is irrelevant to those with no material security.
Go and tell the Iraqis who were looting after the invasion of Iraq that there is no point in establishing "political freedom" because there was no "material security" at the time.

Poor people don&#39;t vote and have no shares in corporations.
They don&#39;t own those who do, either.

Well, if none of us have ideals, none of us would be living in a "democratic" republic because the feasability of "utopian" material progress like factories and "utopian" social organization like representative democracy would be dismissed out of hand.
This isn&#39;t about having ideals or desiring progress- it&#39;s about utopianism and the quasi-religious behaviour that usually accompanies it. The idea that war, inequality, dictatorship, racism, sexism, homophobia and every other bugbear will go away when we get rid of capitalism and set up a command economy in it&#39;s place is just one example of utopianism.

Since I&#39;m showing the rise of modern Capitalism with stratified class societies of slaves and slave owners and later bosses and workers, not the simple exchange of rudimentary items of personal or tribal manufacture and utility, your statement is irrelevant.
And seeing as we&#39;re living in a society of bosses and workers and not slaves and slave owners, this whole issue isn&#39;t irrelevent. The free labour market is a replacement for slavery, not some "new improved" version of it that&#39;s going to lead on to something else.

You haven&#39;t been reading my replies.
There&#39;s no need for a command economy at all.
The prices will be fixed, will they not? By who?

Yes.

It&#39;s called land to the tiller.
A basic democratic right.

Absentee Landlords
Rights shouldn&#39;t determined by vote. People can vote for anything at the detriment of others. Putting something like property rights to vote would be rather foolish. You and your fellow workers will vote your company away from your boss? Is that the plan? Go ahead. You&#39;ll be in charge until another, larger group of workers decide to vote it away from you. And then another group will vote it away from them.

Land Reforms
I should imaging your more likely to take the "Zimbabwe" approach than the "willing seller, willing buyer" approach. The only time "willing seller, willing buyer" would have any legitimacy is if the owner was genuinely absent and the land was being used productively by a different party for a certain period of time. Say, five years.

Just explaining the facts of revolution as an objective observer.
You&#39;re facts are about as objective as a Pharoah&#39;s testimony on the divine right of kings.

If revolution were to happen tomorrow (very unlikely) there would be chaotic, uncontrollable violence in any place experiencing it. Personal friendship or family ties wouldn&#39;t mean a damn thing to hordes of oppressed people demanding vengeance.
From what? From whom? Just because people wave guns around doesn&#39;t mean that they have a legitmate grievence. Look at those idiots in the middle east ranting, raving and demanding that heads roll over a cartoon they didn&#39;t like. Our countries aren&#39;t much better.

[cyu]

What&#39;s your reasoning for this? If the control of capital were done democratically, why would that be bad?
Capital would be controlled by the person/people who could lie the most convincingly and intimidate the most number of people (who could do as they please).

So you don&#39;t believe in democracy but believe in something more autocratic? Democracy may not be perfect, but it&#39;s certainly more likely to result in decisions that benefit more people than having just one person make the decisions. How is your alternative better?



Yes, assuming the previous owner of the land wasn&#39;t using it for anything (such as just letting it sit there or having employees use it) and the new owners are.
In other words, he is using it too.

Sorry, I don&#39;t understand this. Who is the "he" you&#39;re referring to and how is he using it?


Rights shouldn&#39;t determined by vote. People can vote for anything at the detriment of others. Putting something like property rights to vote would be rather foolish. You and your fellow workers will vote your company away from your boss? Is that the plan? Go ahead. You&#39;ll be in charge until another, larger group of workers decide to vote it away from you. And then another group will vote it away from them.


Rights have to be determined somehow, and if not by agreement that these rights benefit the general public, how should they be determined? Anarcho-syndicalists believe the boss does not have a claim to ownership of the company because he isn&#39;t actually using it to produce anything. The employees are the ones doing the producing. The larger group of workers would only be able to vote away control if they were formed out of the existing people who are using whatever means of production is in dispute. (Of course, anarcho-syndicalists aren&#39;t just going to stop at a, "Tough luck, we&#39;re already using this." It would be in the interest of everyone involved if every group of workers had access to capital and a way to make a living.) In any case, the revenue from the sales of the business would still be going to the people who are actually doing the work, not someone who is a parasite.

Of course, regardless of whether the system is anarcho-syndicalist or some other brand of socialism/communism, the ultimate problem I&#39;m trying to solve is the poor allocation of productive resources that results from large disparities of spending power in a market economy.

[red team]

Tungsten

There&#39;s no hope of a logical reply from you is there?

The religion of praxeology trumps logic again&#33; NOT&#33;

Your response can be summed up in one word:

GARBAGE&#33; :lol:

I&#39;ll just let the reader decide...

[red team]

Introducing the new comedy act: red team and Tungsten&#33;

Brought to you by Objectivism, the cappie cult that egotistical teens everywhere are joining&#33;
Featuring the most side-splitting illogic that Libertarian Barbarism can bring you&#33;

And now without further delay&#33; Heeere&#39;s red team&#33;



Irrelevant to the material security or liberty of direct producers.

Which is irrelevent.


Liberty is irrelevant to a class of the population for a political movement which names itself Libertarianism&#33;. Instead of calling themselves Libertarian Capitalists perhaps they should change it to something more accurate like Libertarian Hypocrites&#33;

Hah&#33; I kill me&#33;

*** Ta-Dump-Dish&#33;&#33;&#33; ***




See previous reply. Neighborhood residences are not examples of an environment in which economic transactions between conflicting parties are involved.

Neither are workplaces. You&#39;re treating the claim that these parties are "conflicting" as if it was some primary fact as opposed to a false conclusion.


Hi boss&#33; I&#39;m so dedicated to my job that I want to work overtime without pay&#33;
(Boss): Well, good for you sucker&#33; You keep busy there while I relax on my yacht&#33;

*** Ta-Dump-Dish&#33;&#33;&#33; ***




The word "voluntarily" derives its meaning from the context in which it is used. A con-artist can get his victims to "voluntarily" cheat themselves out of wealth

You can&#39;t cheat yourself. The wealth was never theirs unless it said so in the work contract. The worker agreed to work for specific sum of money, which he exchanged an agreed sum of labour. If the boss can sell the products of that labour for a profit then what does that have to do with the worker? If you sell me your car and I then sell it to someone else at a higher price than I bought it for, then what does that have to do with you? Are you going to come around to my house to demand your "share"? No. It was no longer yours to give or take.


Self-employed contractor comes home after earning &#036;500 dollars for the day and says to himself, "Well, my labour is worth a total &#036;500, but I don&#39;t really deserve all of it because I&#39;ve promised myself to give it to the man living in the mansion who didn&#39;t do anything today except had sex with the maid"

*** Ta-Dump-Dish&#33;&#33;&#33; ***

I just bought this car yesterday and while driving it today money magically appeared in my wallet&#33; It&#39;s a miracle&#33; Or maybe it&#39;s not a miracle. My car may be possessed by evil so I sold it to another person and also gave them my miracle money&#33;

*** Ta-Dump-Dish&#33;&#33;&#33; ***



If you can&#39;t justify either 1 or 2 then bosses and investors have no valid claim to their wealth and therefore no valid authority over workers meaning I can do whatever I want from my place of employment because don&#39;t respect the validity of their ownership of wealth and hence their power relation over me as bosses and managers.

You have no valid claim to being paid because the money you&#39;re being paid came from historical slavery. You have no claim to freedom because you owe everything to everyone who&#39;s ever provided you with goods- which also came from slavery. So you&#39;ve got lot of paying up to do. Don&#39;t ask me who gets this payment- they&#39;re all dead anyway.


Because of what my boss&#39;s great-grand father did to my great-grand parents or my neighbor&#39;s great-grand parents by working them to death I don&#39;t deserve the little bit of money that was part of my family&#39;s or my neighbor&#39;s family&#39;s wealth in the first place, but which I, my father and my grand father had to work some more time for on top of having a cut taken back from us, because I need it to give it back to the corpse of my great grand mother&#33;

*** Ta-Dump-Dish&#33;&#33;&#33; ***




You refuted absolutely nothing you simply used context manipulation on the word "robbed" against what is the utility meaning of the word in the given argument in which it is used.

You mean you altered the meaning of the word robbed into something it didn&#39;t originally mean, which I then changed it back and now you&#39;re complaining about it?


You made something with your own hands that I gave you &#036;50 for because to you it&#39;s worth &#036;50 and also because I said so. But, I&#39;m selling it for &#036;100 because to me it&#39;s worth &#036;100 and also because I said so. But, I&#39;m not really robbing you because you agreed to it and also because I said so. Oh, don&#39;t forget to pay my friend the rental money for your apartment because my friend said so.

*** Ta-Dump-Dish&#33;&#33;&#33; ***

Hah&#33; I kill me&#33;




If you&#39;re robbed with or without your "argeement" you&#39;re short-changed as in not receiving full benefits of your work. That "agreement" is void.

But you&#39;re not being robbed if you agree to an exchange. If the exchange differs from what was originally proposed, say if I agree to swap an apple for a pear and instead of giving me a pear, the person gives me a bag with a stone in it (or forces me to accept an orange instead). That&#39;s fraud. It doesn&#39;t matter what the "cost" of a pear or an apple is if I agreed to make an exchange.

The profits have been earned; the exchange between the consumer and the producer differs to the apple/pear example only on a matter of scale.


(Human labour cannot be separated from human beings)

For my next magic trick I&#39;m going to suddenly turn myself into an apple.
Shazaam&#33;

Whoops&#33; I&#39;ve turned into an orange instead. Will that do&#33;
*** Booo&#33; Hissss&#33; ***




Who do you think is getting unrewarded the full value of their labour? Investors or Workers?

Not again. Don&#39;t you ever give up? Labour is just a frigging commodity, like land, machinery or logistics. It&#39;s not special, it&#39;s not holy, it&#39;s not more important and those providing it sure don&#39;t have the right to take over other people&#39;s property.


(Human labour cannot be separated from human beings)

It appears that my friend Tungsten hear is speaking in tongues. I think he might be demon possessed. Seance Time&#33;

Translation: There&#39;s nothing holy about human liberty and freedom. I can sell you like a cheap rag doll because you&#39;re just a money maker to me. You&#39;re expendable assets.

Out&#33; Out&#33; Foul Demon&#33;

I think the exorcism worked&#33;

*** Ta-Dump-Dish&#33;&#33;&#33; ***




Who pays the workers their wage? Investors (including upper management of a given company) or Workers

The people who consume their goods pay the wages of both, whose value they arrive at subjectively and whose goods they either buy or don&#39;t buy. Is revenge being planned against the consumer too?


My boss lowered my wage and made me worked overtime. My friend&#39;s boss also did the same thing to him because there was no business in either of our stores. So one time when my friend got off his shift and came to my store, he looked around and said he couldn&#39;t buy anything because his boss didn&#39;t pay him enough, so I smacked him&#33;

*** Ta-Dump-Dish&#33;&#33;&#33; ***


Thankyou, Thankyou for being such a good audience tonight.

Also, I need to thank my partner in comedy Tungsten, without which I couldn&#39;t have come up with such good material myself.

[patrickbeverley]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 08:07 PM
But still, positive discrimination is not advocated by any far-left ideology I know of.
It is by my fucking far-left ideology.

(Apologies for seizing on single, irrelevant quote without addressing rest of discussion. Just wanted to chuck in my 2c.)


Affirmative action is a program designed to give blacks special treatment to make up for the racial discirmination they face. It is simply an attempt to make the world more equal. If blacks and whites do not control roughly the same amount of power, there is racial discirmination occuring. When this stops happening, affirmative action will no longer be neccessary.

My thoughts exactly.