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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I'd like a clear, professional, non polemic explanation of that theory that I can show to facebook friends without looking like a maoist third worldist. I'm doing a Let's Read which focuses on the theory of monopoly capitalism and transnational corporations. It doesn't exactly say 'destroy easy entry into markets' but it shows why firms would act to make entry as difficult as possible and maximise profits.
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Oct 18, 2011 21:20
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Shout "Labour theory of value, you poo poo!" and smash him over the head with a spinning jenny. Alternatively ask him how much extra effort it takes to write those extra zeroes on a cheque to make that extra investment.
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Nov 3, 2011 22:57
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Strudel Man posted:Economic growth refers to an increase in the rate of economic activity, so no, it would not. You didn't justify the 'if' at the beginning of your suggestion for fixed widget sales. There's a few criteria to justify if that 'if' can be true and they're all nonsense. Namely; infinite resources to produce widgets at identical extraction rates, permanently fixed production costs, infinite money in the purchasers hands to continue purchasing widgets, a one sector economy so that there is no competition between widgets and anything else, no technological development to improve widgets or widget manufacture. Take any of these out and you introduce mechanisms for changes through competition which inevitably creates growth through the needs of competition (lowering prices, accessing new markets, defending against growing outsider, best returns on financing, etc). The idea of permanently fixed sales assumes a neverending pattern of buyers collecting widgets and sellers collecting money, which is also completely nonsensical if that's all they do.
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Jul 21, 2012 17:06
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Strudel Man posted:More to the point, I don't have to justify my 'if.' Vermain said that competition requires growth - it's not necessary for me to describe the conditions leading up to a no-growth scenario to refute that, I only have to demonstrate that competition can exist in a situation without growth, which isn't exactly difficult to do. It's incredibly easy to show anything if you are allowed to set any parameters you want. Hey I solved the energy crisis because oil is infinite and global warming isn't real! quote:Do you think that consumers similarly require infinite money to fuel our indefinite and regular need to purchase, say, food? They would require a regular income, something your hypothesis doesn't explain or allow unless every consumer is a producer in which case why the gently caress are they selling widgets only to buy the same widgets. If they derive that income from other capitalist activities then there's no reason the widget market would be fixed except for you saying so and if they have them from non-capitalist economic sources then it's growth as the need for currency encroaches on these systems and expands market activity. Your whole example is begging the question.
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Jul 22, 2012 01:03
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The Industrial Revolution was the destruction of specialised labour under the guild system and the development of specialised machinery which is operated by generic labour in a wage labour system. Bargaining power of individuals was smashed until they organised into labour unions and used non-market operations like strikes and riots against corporate and corporate-demanded state oppression to force better living and working conditions. The potential for increased living conditions was based purely on the technological level of development, which would have had much better results if it was properly orientated to increase living standards rather than facilitate market operations. Actual living standards for the urban proletariot were often significantly worse than their marginal rural counterparts but the countryside could no longer sustain them.
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Aug 12, 2012 00:51
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Cahal posted:I've never seen how marxism relies on the LTV. All it relies on is the claim that workers can employ capital for themselves and hence using the law to create profit that goes to individuals/a few individuals is extractive. If value is derived externally from production then class struggle is just the struggle of individuals in the workplace over that value rather than exploited surplus value from labour to the bourgeoisie. Of course even without alienation you can generate a very strong social critique based on the outcomes and imbalances of this struggle but it tends to lead to social democratic frameworks rather than socialist ones.
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Aug 13, 2012 19:59
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'Marxism is wrong because we don't work in assembly line factories' is really just the laziest critique. How does someones education defend them from the possibility of outsourcing or when a multinational goes bust or just closes their factory making them unemployed without their say? How does having a (usually mortgaged) house allow someone to acquire the necessary commodities to survive each day? When did profit turn into something other than revenue from sales minus costs of production? When did we substantially change wage labour into this new incompatible form? Why does capitalism still suffer busts about once a decade? Capitalism looks different because we live in the first world and have hundreds of years of capitalist-driven technology to make everything flashier and faster. In other places you'll find conditions right out of the period Marx wrote in and you'll notice that's where much of the production takes place nowadays and that's where the Western bourgeoisie are talking about when they say economic prosperity and work ethic and so on. Nothing has changed, but for us more resources are spent on hiding it.
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Aug 17, 2012 21:14
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quote:You are arguing that neoclassical economics should be thrown out entirely and replaced with Marxism. I guess Marx's economics still sort of work in the third world, but in terms of first world domestic policy, they're pretty much meaningless. Class themed and otherwise Marx inspired analyses of stuff are fine, but using this framework as the basic economic theory is ridiculous. Right so at the heart of it you accept that it can be valid and is valid in some places. Why does education and the expansion of the petit bourgeois from around 1945 to 2007 such as found in the first world somehow undo his analysis? Differing poverty levels is not indicative of this.
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Aug 17, 2012 21:41
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icantfindaname posted:I'm not saying it's entirely useless, I'm saying that for the purposes of domestic economics in a first world country, it is a bad choice for a basic economic theory. Yes I understand that but I'm not seeing your reasoning for this except for suggesting that there are fundamental differences in first and third world populations like education which undo his analysis. But you're just stating this; how does first world education disrupt the exploitation of the workplace? People are still hired for set wages by contract and businesses still make (or try to make) profits, extraction of surplus value is still inherent and thus so is alienation and class struggle. How does education alter this?
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Aug 17, 2012 21:54
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It's an organisation set up solely to attack any criticism of Israel. If they're a member of it there's probably nothing more that you can do.
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Aug 29, 2012 00:26
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Empathise with his tragedy, then point out how much more common it is for it to happen to women and how women who accuse men of it are treated by the public. Beyond that any 'benefits' women receive from society are almost entirely cultural enforced things which they have to do or are not trusted to do themselves. This is ridiculously patronising (literally) for independent women and reflects poorly on men in many ways as well.
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Sep 8, 2012 18:03
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FISHMANPET posted:For all the imperfections of the free market, it's still the best way to allocate resources (and I say this as a far left liberal). The total amount of money you have available to spend is in no way related to your want or need and thus any allocation is horrifically distorted by this artificial limitation as well as being massively unequal and unfair. 'Best' is a weaselword for you to escape having to make any sort of solid position on anything, even about poverty. Edit: Ah ok someone put a little more effort into explaining it. Great.
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Nov 1, 2012 00:09
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FISHMANPET posted:Putting a price ceiling is just going to create a black market and have people flaunt the law anyway. Should we have some kind of government rationing program in place to allocate these scarce resources? Something else? Money is not some automatic and impartial device which moves where it's needed and automatically arrives at the socially optimal outcome. Money is spent when people consciously spend it on options which other people have consciously created for sale for their own gratification, limited only by the amount of money that they have which is initially granted to them by social mechanisms consciously and unconsciously devised by people including wage labour and private property. Considering the amount of thought that already goes into having a cash-based economy and how widely it misses the mark when it comes to social goals, shouldn't we try and focus peoples attention directly onto needs rather than keep them chasing money as a proxy?
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Nov 1, 2012 00:35
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Serene Dragon posted:My brother is currently debating a guy on facebook over Thatcher and her impact on Britain and the guy is basically talking a load of crap about it, saying that most of Britain regards her positively and that it wasn't her or bankers or corporations that have hosed us over, it's the "baby-boom generation". General opinion of Thatcher outside of London: http://youtu.be/xmmomV-ax-s
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Nov 19, 2012 22:08
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Serene Dragon posted:I'm Scottish, so I automatically despise her. Unfortunately this guy thinks that she benefited many and only disadvantaged a "vocal minority". And calling him a loving idiot isn't helping, apparently. Lack of affording or social housing? Thatcher:  Lack of industrial jobs? Thatcher: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/16/why-britain-doesnt-make-things-manufacturing Total reliance on financial services to have an economy? Thatcher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_%28financial_markets%29 These demolished any power that 'Baby boomers' as a bloc would have had.
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Nov 19, 2012 22:51
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Kekekela posted:Please goons help me to refute this line of thinking that I get constantly from a coworker..."read Aftershock, we're heading for hyperinflation because the money supply has tripled" Just because there's supposedly three times as much money doesn't mean everything is going to suddenly cost three times as much (first of all this doesn't even meet the strict definition of hyperinflation unless it happened within the space of a month and then kept on going). The money is distributed out through a number of financial institutions which in turn operate different kinds of economic activity over quite a long time meaning it will only slowly affect the prices of things as they're actually purchased or revalued. Similarly because this money doesn't just suddenly hit there are long periods of time when this extra money appears to be an increase in real value which can spur real growth to match the increased amount of money meaning there's no problem. This is ignoring the actual beneficial action of QE which is theoretically (in this case meaning it's a lie, but whatever) supposed to allow lending institutions greater stability and security to lend the additional funds to grow the economy with the same effect. Depending on trade relations, international debt and capital controls inflation can also be exported to different countries (this is probably what has happened, assuming you're American) based upon exchange rates.
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Dec 3, 2012 19:52
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They are less likely to kill you in their search for food.
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Oct 24, 2013 20:40
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TwoQuestions posted:So we're essentially bribing people with food? That may work, as food is much less expensive than prison. Any reason why it shouldn't be more than three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sundays? Why should people be forced to give up their money so poor people can eat above starvation from a Libertarian perspective? The simplest system to ensure they have access to this food is also going to be the cheapest and our economic system is already aligned to deal with people handing over money for things, rather than administrators running kitchens with the required supply lines/staff/etc or bureacracy issuing special cards, just calculate cost of living (or poverty level or whatever) in the region and give that money to them. There's no specific argument that will get a completely self-interested person to respect the lives and quality of living of others but the arguments made in The Spirit Level about how more unequal societies generate worse outcomes for all might help you. namesake fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Oct 24, 2013 |
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Oct 24, 2013 21:14
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MisterBadIdea posted:I am not up on my UK history, so I can't really analyze this very well, but it sounds to me like socialism in 1940s England might very well have a much different definition than the ones modern American conservatives use. In any case, Churchill supported unemployment benefits far more than any conservative would today. Socialism in 1940 was the USSR apart from cool theory from Luxembourg and some totally undeveloped whining from Trotsky. Also always character assassinate Churchill; he was an alcoholic shithead who oversaw the disasterous Gallipoli landings in WW1 and supported the use of chemical weapons (gas) against civilians.
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Jan 20, 2014 21:36
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Er well to change that sort of persons mind you normally need surgical equipment. They're recognising that there's transfers of resources between people but don't seem to understand what these mechanisms are. Good luck arguing that it's the fault of private companies and billionaires maximising their profits through lowering wages as much as possible with the threat of unemployment rather than any sort of 'theft' on the part of the poor.
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Feb 11, 2014 15:00
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Remember the economy is supposed to be a means of improving wellbeing, if people are geniunely prefering to work less then its up to the other person to show that any reduction in production causes a greater detrimental effect on the populations welfare or it doesn't matter.
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Feb 12, 2014 21:35
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Libertarianism is a one trick pony of arguments 'government exclusively creates monopoly conditions which allows businesses to make excess profits and that's why everything isn't perfect right now'. All companies will try to increase prices to maximise their profits at all times and often succeed without government intervention, competition fails and monopolies exist without government action all the time. Technological development is a distraction from this because production isn't organised to encourage making everything cheap and available for everyone.
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Apr 2, 2014 21:35
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Well if they don't think institutional racism or sexism exists then you'd better start there, what with it being heavily studied, documented and existing for a really long time. If you can do that (well done), it's pretty simple just to say 'Well now imagine your life not having to deal with that. It's not necessarily a boost to your ability but when others have that millstone around their necks you can see my point.'
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May 3, 2014 18:52
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You don't. If you're taking the line that individuals need to enter the voting booth (or return the voting card, etc) as part of their duties in maintaining a democratic society then it's the same as paying taxes and needs a similar level of systemic coercion for it to operate.
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May 16, 2014 19:12
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twodot posted:Probably because those ideas are incompatible. A society that has mandatory things is not free. A society that makes certain things mandatory is clearly better than a free society. Voting could be one of those things (I personally don't think so, at least not without broad reform), but making voting mandatory indisputably reduces freedom. You correctly realise that (by your liberal definition of) free societies aren't nice places to live but also by that definition a free society cannot exist. Multiple numbers of individuals cannot all exist in a state of absolute freedom; either one is an undisputed god-king of all the others, giving them no mandatory restrictions but many restrictions for everyone else, or some mandatory restrictions apply to everyone to allow them to function as a group. Once you're willing to move from the liberal conception of freedom as total individual autonomy towards a social conception of freedom where the agency of the many means freedom it's more than possible to place mandatory restrictions on someone to increase freedom.
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May 16, 2014 21:49
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Coohoolin posted:Arguing with a "compassionate conservative" about the environment, he's using the usual "private entities are more efficient and we should put them in charge of managing the environment", anyone have any examples of private fuckups in environmental care or even better, some numbers or stats on private management of the environment? Er, literally every oil spill ever? Pretty much every kind of modern resource extraction is disasterous as well (fracking, mountain decapitation, etc). Also for the theory behind private ownership being better, Coase theorum and its criticisms is your friend, or in more simple terms 'how do you define ownership of things like air and water, which are constantly moving and changing, in a way which is practical for a private entity to monitor, control, protect, fix and seek compensation if it is damaged?'.
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Jun 1, 2014 21:03
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Yeah the best argument against that is the fact that there's pretty much no evidence minimum wage increases do anything to demand for labour (some say less teenagers work, this is not a bad thing as they often only work to top up the poor wages of their parents). Secondly their argument can be rephrased as 'people who are discriminated against by employers need to be legally allowed to be paid less than people who aren't discriminated against because freedom' which is literally just enabling discrimination.
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Jul 22, 2014 22:33
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icantfindaname posted:That's a slippery slope fallacy. You say the government will only take over this group or kind of property, and he insists the government will actually take over all of it because reasons. There's no reason to think that other than the standard "i'm a conservative and i have Common Sense therefore i'm right" Yes that's the point, liberalism just has 'property' and due to its individualist perspective on economy and morality that's as deep as it goes, further investigation is impossible. The only real argument is to get them to think about why they own things; get them to recognise use values as a distinctive element to property and then hammer home why capital doesn't have a use value and things that are kept for their use values aren't capital.
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Oct 20, 2014 23:31
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Globalised transport and communication networks, globalised capitalism, the entry of women into the workplace after the second world war (and the current backlash in Europe under austerity) and overseas wars gently caress with concepts of the nuclear family far more than anything mentioned so far.
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Oct 25, 2014 16:25
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ProperGanderPusher posted:
Ok so you've reached the crux of the argument; there are running costs to society which must be paid, what is the fairest way to gather the resources necessary to do so? I'd point out that you DO have to buy things like food, so is he arguing for sales taxes on essentials (raising the cash through volume) or the absolutely massive sales taxes on luxuries (raised on total item cost) necessary to fund a state? If he's taxing essentials then he's instituting a regressive tax system as the poor pay vastly more of their income on those essentials, if he's for taxing luxuries try and walk him through the difficulties of sustaining a state by taxing yachts. twodot posted:I don't buy this argument. There are no services, where prior or after purchasing it, the service provider checks how much you enjoyed or benefitted from the service and then charges you accordingly. There are models where we pay more or less based on enjoyment (tipping), but this is voluntary. Government and income exist simultaneously; if your income is higher than others under a state you have benefited more than others. That's objective (not that they won't argue about this).
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Nov 21, 2014 21:11
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ProperGanderPusher posted:Her own health conditions have worsened over the years, and to her, that's all the evidence she needs. She claims that she doesn't breathe as well on a "spray day". Also, something something Bill Gates population control. She also points to the effects of global warming as proof, but it can't be global warming because that theory is supported by the Powers That Be. Yes she is a conspiracy theorist, relying on faulty associations to create a narrative about the environment. The internet doesn't help with this due to the amount of information flying around making it easy to mistake coincidence or simply lies with reality. A rebuttal won't help in this case unless she internally uses those facts to break her previous chain of logic so don't propose a counter-narrative, try and discover some fact that she also believes which would disprove what she's currently saying. Eventually one of those has to be rejected and you just hope it's the conspiracy theory.
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Dec 9, 2014 21:02
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Actually there's a table in there that says that in all the regions surveyed a majority support only having muslims affected by Sharia. And they prefer democracies to strong leaders. Basically if you went around Europe and north America asking the same thing for 'christian values' you'd probably get some pretty similar results.
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Dec 20, 2014 18:09
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It's a philosophical concept used to explain contradictions in existence or in an idea or ideology. In short a thing (thesis) is stated or observed, however from that thing its exact opposite is inherently also brought into existance (antithesis). The existance of two mutually contradictory elements creates conflict which can only be resolved by the creation/resolution of a third thing (synthesis) which is neither thesis or antithesis but is created by the existence of both. Hegel uses this to explain how our reality is an illusion of ideas which contradict and resolve until the ultimate Truth of reality is revealed. Marx literally turns this upside down and uses it as a basis for the history of class struggle where a opressive class inherently creates an oppressed class. These classes arise due to the existance of the other but their entire existance is opposed to the other (the capitalist class against the labouring class, either which can only benefit at the cost of the other) which causes class struggle until the synthesis of a classless society is brought about by a revolution of the working class. Other (idealist) examples are the Christian holy trinity (the Holy Spirit is the synthesis) and non-existance-existance-creation. The Tea Party probably just knows its a socialist thing.
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Dec 27, 2014 23:13
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Surely the only pure arguments needed against libertarianism philosophy are either the impossibility of accurately defining property rights in all circumstances to ensure absolute liberty meets with observably positive outcomes or pragmatically the ridiculous carrying costs of constantly defining all property rights in all circumstances. At some point you've just got to see that absolute definition of this kind is nothing more than an idle dream, an attempt to turn economics into a physical science which physical reality repels on the spot and even if it would yield to total classification the costs of such would render such a society suboptimal except for those who only concern is the libertarian concept of liberty.
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Jan 8, 2015 19:03
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wateroverfire posted:What? This all seems dumb. If there's no conflict to be resolved everyone goes on about their merry way and there is no need to invoke property rights at all. If there is a conflict for whatever reason you use more or less the same mechanisms we use now to figure out who owns what, who has right of way, or whatever else. Like slave island this seems like an argument designed to convince no one. But how can you know what your way is without a firm grasp of what you can do without creating conflict and then a clear process of responsibility to end that conflict? Whose land you're on might be very obvious but whose air are you breathing? If you're smoking in a smoking area and breathing the smoke out into a non-smoking area owned by someone else who is responsible here? How does that work on an industrial scale? Can you ever conclusively prove who caused this acid rain? Society avoids that now because we're allowed to pro-actively stop people from doing things on and with their property based on general conclusions based on science, public opinion and carried out by the state. Removing this possibility means society only functions by being rigidly defined down to the very last detail and a surveillance system set up capable of monitoring everything down to that last detail or else peoples rights are being violated and they don't even know about it. Vague contracts will necessarily result in coercion as there becomes no defined and agreed resolution to a disagreement, failure to monitor might well be a matter of 'personal responsibility' but that's what I mean by the extreme cost of the system; everyone their own FDA and EPA.
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Jan 8, 2015 21:07
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Cingulate posted:And there are libertarians engaging in similar reasonings, and redefining their libertarianism in response to that: http://www.libertarianism.org/blog/six-reasons-libertarians-should-reject-non-aggression-principle Er ok but the link you've posted there is just saying 'yeah come to think of it the NAP is dumb as poo poo' but having done that aren't you just a liberal? Thinking private property is awesome and a great basis of society but you've got to have the state actively doing stuff too is pretty much liberalism.
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Jan 8, 2015 21:26
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Cingulate posted:Have you checked out Nozick's solution? I had a quick look; like I thought they collapse into standard liberalism; right to private property is absolute except when it isn't. *engages in discussion about when it's appropriate to violate it* wateroverfire posted:Indeed. Also, the time-honored strategy of "muddle through relying on social convention while constructing ad-hoc solutions that no one exactly likes but everyone can live with, when necessary" works as well for libertarianism as it does for everyone else. If it really seemed like society couldn't function without one you could create a Libertarian EPA that, idk, just did certain pollution controls and nothing else. Are you trying to say libertarianism is a consistent basis for society so long as its core principles are ignored when things get a little hazy? I'd suggest that means it's incomplete or flat out wrong.
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Jan 8, 2015 21:45
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wateroverfire posted:Sort of. I mean libertarianism is a utopian political philosophy, like Marxism for instance, and as such it's a statement about a certain kind of ideal society rather than a blueprint for some existing society, with all its real complications, to follow. Oh so like Platos Republic? Fair enough then. I'd say that libertarianism is a far more precise philosophy though which is brought down by its precision methods unable to handle reality while Marxism is concerned with eliminating the failures of our current reality and stumbles on how to actually do that.
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Jan 8, 2015 22:55
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Ask him about the IRA?
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Aug 18, 2016 13:34
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