Comments by "Michael Mappin" (@michaelmappin1830) on "Richard Wolff: Marxism and Communism | Lex Fridman Podcast #295" video.
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@BinanceUSD , the capital can come from a variety of areas. There are Cooperative banks that lend money to people for the purpose of starting a cooperative. There's a region in Spain where 44% of the GDP come from worker-owned companies. One of the reasons is that it's easier for these people to get access to Capital. When unemployed people are collecting unemployment insurance, if 10 or more of them get together for the purpose of starting a Cooperative, they can get all of their insurance money upfront.
It's easier for groups of people to get the capital they require to start a business compared to a solitary individual. It's easy for billionaires to buy up grocery stores, railroads, electric companies, Etc. Other people have no other choice other than to do it collectively. If you have the money and the means, it's probably better to buy your own home. Other people get together and form Cooperative housing. At least that way when you pay rent you're only paying for the cost of the building and its maintenance rather than some landlords lifestyle. The money that would be going to a landlord, you get to keep that and put it to word buying your own home.
Yeah, technically a plumber that owns his own business and is doing his own work, he's not a capitalist. A capitalist company is one that is privately owned and utilizes wage labour for profit. Sometimes you just have one individual operating a business. Sometimes you have an entire family. The key difference is these individuals are doing their own work and on the product of their labour.
Yeah, owning a business can be risky. There's always the potential of bankruptcy. But whether you're dealing with a capitalist company or a worker-owned company, people are protected by a limited liability. So yeah, you might lose your business and the investment you put into it, but you don't have to worry about losing your shirt or home.
Here are two successful worker-owned companies in the United States. https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ basically, it's communism at the micro-level. The workers own all of the tools and capital equally.
Here is an example of community ownership in the United States. https://youtu.be/wBJADlN2Bic
this is why I only pay $20 a month for electricity on average during the coldest winter months. I'm paying for electricity at cost. I'm just paying for the initial investment of the utility, its maintenance and the labour that goes into producing the electricity.
The workers make close to 100,000 a year, getting the full value of their labour.
If the utility was privately owned, the workers wouldn't be able to get the full value of their labour. The less they get paid, the more profit there is for the owner. And I wouldn't be getting the electricity at cost. I would still have to pay for the cost of the factory, the workers, maintenance, but on top of all of that, I would also have to pay some private individual like Donald Trump extra money for nothing! And that's what capitalism is all about. When it comes to most products, you can't buy toothpaste, shoelaces, a home, car, without having to pay extra money to some owner.
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@BinanceUSD , well I don't think they will be able to coexist with capitalist companies. With mom-and-pop businesses, yes. But not when it comes to capitalist companies because those companies are dependant upon profit. Get the workers get 100% of their labour value then there is no profit for shareholders or owners.
For example, there is a socialist bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make $70,000 a year. That's because they own the product of their labour. If all workers had the option of getting the full value of their labour, would they work at someplace like Walmart? Of course not.
If everyone had the option of social housing, worker-owned housing, why would a person choose to live in someone else's apartment building? No one in their right mind is going to want to hand over their paycheck to a landlord. Most people would rather spend their paychecks on themselves, not paying for the landlord's lifestyle. Too much social housing cuts into profits and destroys landlords. Likewise, too many cooperatives would destroy capitalist companies. Someone like Jeff Bezos would either have to increase automation or learn how to do all the work himself. 😃
That's why it's predicted that capitalism has a limited lifespan. Capitalism is the organizational system of a type 0 civilization. If we make the transition to a type 1 civilization, capitalism won't be able to exist. Kind of like Star Trek, which was based on a type 2 civilization. If you have mass abundance, if you can produce all of the goods and services required by civilization with minimal labour and energy, then their costs become nearly obsolete. For example, if gold was as plentiful as water in the ocean, how much value would it have? Capitalism is depended upon scarcity. That's why we now have so much planned obsolescence and what they refer to as contrived durability. For a long time now we've had the capacity to build things such as refrigerators that would never rust, breakdown, their colours would never fade. But if we built all appliances that way, it would be absolutely disastrous for the economy. Likewise, if we were able to cure cancer tomorrow, the economy would probably collapse! 😀 there's hundreds of thousands of high paying jobs thanks to illnesses such as cancer and diabetes. Those people spend a lot of money into the economy. If they were to lose that money, consumption rates would slow and people would get laid off. People that are laid off can't consume. Even more people get laid off. Total collapse. Efficiency, durability, healthy and happy people, all antithetical to the capitalist economy.
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@BinanceUSD , it's definitely a very exciting time to be alive. Unfortunately a lot of scientists don't believe that homo sapiens are intelligent enough to be able to make the transition from a type 0 to a type 1 civilization. We're already well into a sixth mass extinction. Ninety-nine percent of species have been wiped out.
What % of Earth's species are now extinct? Of all the species that have ever existed on Earth, 99.9 % are now extinct.
According to a recent poll, 7 out of 10 biologists think we are currently in the throes of a 6th mass extinction.
"It is reliably estimated that species extinctions now proceed at 1000 times their normal rate, and that up to 99% of the materials used in the US production process end up as waste within 6 weeks. For every ton of garbage, in turn, there are 5 tons of materials to produce it, and 25 tons extracted from nature to yield these materials.
At this stage of the global market system’s reproduction of transnational money sequences to unheard-of volumes and velocities of transaction and growth, a systematic and irreversible destruction of planetary life-organization emerges for the first time in history. If we consider the defining principles of carcinogenic invasion and eventual destruction of a life-host, and do not avoid or deny the symptom profile in evidence, we discern a carcinogenic pattern increasingly penetrating and spreading across civil and environmental life-organization.
But these facts are not connected across the fields of expertise which track them. As the earth is thus stripped and polluted by ever more unfettered global market operations, the market paradigm of value that leads governments does not factor into its calculus the countless life forms, habitats and systems which are thus extinguished and poisoned. When objections are raised, the followers of the paradigm that rules sternly warn that all is necessary ‘to keep the economy going’. Peoples increasingly observe that their life-ground is being devastated, but no ‘new discovery’ reports that every step of decision behind this process of life-destruction is taken to enact the global market programme."
There are seven defining properties of a cancer invasion which medical diagnosis recognizes at the level of the individual organism. These seven properties can now be recognized for the first time at the level of global life-organization as well. And this is the pathological core of our current
disease condition.
That is, there is:
(1) an uncontrolled and unregulated reproduction and multiplication of an agent in a host body; that
(2) is not committed to any life function of its life-host; that
(3) aggressively and opportunistically appropriates nutriments and resources from its social and natural hosts in uninhibited growth and reproduction; that
(4) is not effectively recognized or responded to by the immune system of its hosts; that
(5) possesses the ability to transfer or to metastasize its growth and uncontrolled reproduction to sites across the host body; that
(6) progressively infiltrates and invades contiguous and distant sites of its life- hosts until it obstructs, damages and/or destroys successive organs of their
life-systems; and that
(7) without effective immune-system recognition and response eventually destroys the host bodies it has invaded."
John McMurtry
"The essence of capitalism, its raison d'être, is not to build democracy, or help working people, or save the environment, or build homes for the homeless. Its goal is to convert nature into commodities and commodities into capital, to invest and accumulate, transmuting every part of the world into its own image for its own realization. The modern capitalist imperative is simply to create more money for idle investors by any means possible. This growth is often enabled by predation on the publicly-held resources that represents real value, thereby diminishing the community's ability to sustain itself in the long run. Forests are clear-cut; public utilities are privatized; social programs are gutted; and so on. The net result is that the quality of life for the vast majority of the world's citizens has declined." ~ Michael Parenti
Capitalism is the organizational system of a type 0 civilization. It's extremely primitive. Monkeys with imaginary money. Value of which is held up by nothing more than faith. 😃
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@SanJacinto23 , what are you talkin about? The Cooperative sector is expanding all the time. Even in the United States. Obviously it's a lot easier for people to start a business collectively then it is as an individual. No, it is not easy to start a business under the capitalist system. If it was you wouldn't have 90% of the population depended upon wage labor for survival. Do you have any idea how many people commit suicide every day because they're trapped in dead-end jobs such as Walmart and amazon? The United States comes in at number 27 on the social Mobility index. Number 27! Your odds of living the American dream would be better in Portugal or lithuania. LOL
But yeah, the Cooperative sector is expanding all the time. There is reasons in Europe where 44% of the GDP come from worker-owned companies. And worker-owned companies are much more durable compared to capitalist companies.
https://youtu.be/QG0FhpGdFwc
and statistically speaking, workers are happier, more creative, take fewer sick days, there's less incidence of mental illness, depression, substance abuse, etc.
▪︎ Worldwide, cooperatives represent well over $3 trillion in turnover, 12.6 million in employment, and over a billion people in total membership.
▪︎ In the United States the cooperative sector represents over $500 billion in revenues and employs about two million people
Study number 1:
Virginie Perotin's research** which looked at two decades worth of international data, shows that worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses.
It finds that worker co-operatives represent a serious business alternative and bring significant benefits to their employees and to the economy. There are thousands of worker-run businesses in Europe, employing several hundred thousand people in a broad range of industries, from traditional manufacturing to the creative and high-tech industries.
Because worker co-operatives are owned and run by them, employees in worker-owned co-operatives have far more say in the business, from day-to-day concerns through to major strategic issues.
The largest study comparing the productivity of worker co-operatives with that of conventional businesses finds that in several industries, conventional companies would produce more with their current levels of employment and capital if they behaved like employee-owned firms.
When market conditions change worker cooperatives review wages first and keep employment more stable. In a downturn worker co-operatives drop wages rather than reducing their workforce. When business picks up they are ready to
respond and can make up for lost pay because employees enjoy a share of profit."
The main findings from the analysis and review are:
• Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive.
• Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment.
• Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working “better and smarter” and production organised more efficiently.
• Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models.
• Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much narrower in worker co-operatives than other firms.
** "Virginie Pérotin is Professor of Economics at Leeds University Business School and specialises in the effects of firm ownership and governance on performance, worker co-operatives, employee ownership and profit sharing. Previous academic and research roles include positions at the International Labour Office, the London School of Economics and the Centre d’Etude des Revenus et des Coûts (CERC) in the French Prime Minister’s Office in Paris. Professor Pérotin has also acted as a consultant to the European Commission, World Bank and OECD on issues of profit-sharing, employee ownership and employee involvement schemes."
▪ Study number 2:
This study by The Democracy Collaborative found that in the US, worker cooperatives can increase worker incomes by 70-80%, and that they can grow 2% faster a year than other businesses. This data also showed that worker coops have 9-19% greater levels of productivity, 45% lower turnover rates, and are 30% less likely to fail in the first few years of operation!
▪ Study number 3:
This study of worker cooperatives in Italy, the UK, and France found “positive” relationships with productivity. It also found that worker cooperatives do not become less productive as they get larger. One 1995 study of worker cooperatives in the timber industry in Washington, USA found that “co-ops are more efficient than the principal conventional firms by between 6 and 14 percent”.
▪ Study number 4:
An in-depth study of the Mondragon Corporation released today (5 April 2017) reveals how a large global business thrives because it’s owned by its workers, caps the gap between the highest and lowest paid, and has built an ecosystem around itself.
Now you compare that with capitalist Enterprises where where the pay disparity between the top and the bottom is as high as 312 times!
CEOs and shareholders do not Work 312 times harder then the actual workers themselves. These disparities only exist in dictatorial capitalist companies where workers have no control. And that's why in Flint Michigan the workers at the Ford Motor Company plant we're forced to poison their own water supply. It's why they had no choice when production was moved offshore. Those kind of problems do not exist or happen in workplace democracies. /business/2018/aug/16/ceo-versus-worker-wage-american-companies-pay-gap-study-2018
▪ Study number 5: The Whitehall study found that workers at the bottom of the social ladder had greater concentrations of stress hormones than their counterparts in higher managerial positions.
In contrast, a survey carried out by The Anxiety Disorder Association of America, in 2006, found that workers were far less stressed and anxious when they had more of a say over their own work.
adaa.org/workplace-stress-anxiety-disorders-survey.
>>> a few examples regarding Forms of social production:
• producer cooperatives.
A producer Co-operative is owned collectively and equally by the people who work in it, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Cooperatives are one of the most common forms of nonprofit Enterprises. There are hundreds of thousands of cooperatives in the world; the United Nations estimates that half the world's population are members or customers of a Cooperative. Examples of successful producer cooperatives include Fonterra (New Zealand's largest Dairy producer), the ReWe Group (a major tourism company in Germany), Huawei (a giant Chinese electronics manufacturer, 99% owned by its workers), and Japan's Farm sector where over 90% of the Farmers belong to cooperatives). Strong networks of producer cooperatives are the dominant economic structure in Spain's Mondragon region and Italy's Emilia-Romagna region.
• Consumer Cooperatives.
A consumer Cooperative is owned collectively and equally by the people who buy its products, and is usually governed according to "one person, one vote."
Many retail cooperatives are formed to help consumers obtain lower prices and challenge the market power of private retailers. In Denmark over one-third of all retail sales are conducted through cooperatives. The E.Leclerc Cooperative operates over 500 supermarkets in France. Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-op runs the country's largest retail Network for outdoor recreation products.
• Recovered companies.
Workers in a bankrupt company effectively expropriate the Enterprise and attempt to keep it in business.
In the years after the 2001 financial crisis in Argentina, over 200 bankrupt factories were taken over by their workers, who continue to operate them (with some government support for refinancing). 2013 law in Bolivia gives workers the explicit legal authority to take over filled firms.
• Community Trusts.
A Community Trust is a non-profit Corporation, usually exempt from normal business taxes, created to purchase and development land, housing, and other Community Asset.
There are over 250 Community Land Trust operating in the US, with the explicit mission to undertake affordable housing develop, Environmental Conservation, and local job creation on lands that they own. Governance is based on a shared model that includes lessees and elected local representatives.
• Benefit corporations.
A benefit Corporation is owned by private shareholders, but obliged by its Charter to pursue social and environmental goals in addition to profit.
"B Lab" is an association which publishes an annual Global ranking of successful benefit corporations. Recent recognized firms include Echele! a tu casa (a benefit corporation based in Mexico City which develops low-cost housing for residents of poor neighborhoods), and Give Something Back (a major office supply company in California with a Community Development mandate).
• Community and nonprofit Enterprises.
Jobs in especially hard-hit regions and communities can be created by nonprofit Community Development agencies, drawing on local resources including training, housing and alternative Finance.
Community Economic Development (CED) is an "up by the bootstraps" effort to mobilize local resources
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@JordanX767 , that's right, the agenda has to be truth. That's why the first principle is to always ask why. The second one is to analyze, identify and isolate the problem. The third principle is to gather as much evidence as possible. Third, you have to analyze biased and assumptions. Your own and those of others. People have different motivations. People's behaviour and motives flow from their centres. For example, in the event of a market crash, a money-centered person behave differently then a religious centered person. The fifth principle to avoid emotional reasoning. In order to be objective, you can't get emotional. Number six, don't oversimplify or engage in black-and-white thinking or false dichotomies. Number seven, consider other explanations and interpretations. Number eight, tolerate uncertainty.
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@thedimitrator , the pill I outlined for fixing the problem? I didn't outline anyting. I said that the only reason that workers have a modicum of prosperity is because of the labour movement. Under capitalism, everything produced by workers belongs to someone else. It belongs to the owners of capital. Workers are paid as little as possible. The only reason they're not getting a dollar a day like in some third world countries is because of the labour movement. It's because of the workers fought and died for the right to unionize. In order to pacify those workers, the capitalist class had to make certain concessions. That's why we have a 40 hour work week. That's why we have an 8 hour day, the weekend, child labour laws, old age pensions, consumer safety standards, worker safety laws, regulations that prevent people from being overworked, Etc. But for some time now the capitalist class has been rolling back all of those privileges. Just like they said they would. And they're not going to stop until they return to the good old days of capitalism, the way things were before the labour movement.
Capitalism is not about working for wealth. It's about owning capital. Capitalism is about the maximization of capital accumulation. Capitalism allows the owners of capital to live off of other people's labour. The more Capital you have, the faster your wealth grows in relation to everyone else. There are some capitalist accumulating hundreds of thousands of dollars a second, even while they're sleeping :-) all of that wealth comes from other people's labour. And the less workers get paid the more profit there is.
Socialism is just various forms of collectivism that allow workers to own their own means of production so that they can own the product of their labour. If you don't own the product of your labour, then you're basically nothing more than human livestock. Basically, that's what capitalism is. It's a human livestock management system. 😃
Why do you think it is that working hours never decrease under capitalism? Again, it's because everything produced by workers belongs to someone else. If you use bovine growth hormone to double milk production of a cow, that doesn't benefit the cow because the milk belongs to the farmer. Likewise, it doesn't matter that labor-saving technology triple production output over the last 30 years, because everything produced belongs to the capitalist. That's why labor-saving technology led to the Advent of the billionaire class while workers remain depended upon a 40-hour work week.
With every passing day we can produce more and more with less and less labour. But workers need 40 hours in order to survive. The capitalist has to constantly push into the markets of other countries because labor-saving technology allows us to produce things so quickly that only a matter of time before you start running out of customers. One of the reasons why capitalism is depended upon contrived durability and planned obsolescence.
Workers can now produce a year's supply of product within only a month or two. As a consequence, decent-paying jobs that used to have benefits are becoming fewer and fewer. Workers have to compete with one another in order to gain access to those jobs. That competition drives the value of Labor downward. That's why the vast majority of the population can no longer afford a family on a single income. Children are waiting longer and longer to move away from home. Eventually whole families will be forced to live together from cradle-to-grave. Just like things used to be during the good old days of capitalism when JPMorgan, Carnegie, Rockefeller, didn't have to put up with worker demands. 😃
The founding fathers of the United States we're very clear that the country should always be ruled by those that own it! When they were talking about all people being equal, they were referring to themselves; the owning class. That's why if you didn't have property you weren't able to vote! The function of the capitalist government is to protect the capitalists from the human livestock.
The solution is to have a real economic system. An economic system where people actually have to work for a living instead of simply owning capital for the purpose of living off of other people's labour. People should own the product of their labour. No one should be entitled to the wealth that is produced by someone else. Capitalism is the economic system of parasites. It is economic feudalism.
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@SeñorSandalia , of course oil companies don't teach people economics. They pay economic experts a lot of money to produce propaganda in order to manipulate people into accepting capitalism. Capitalism is an immoral system that's based on exploitation. Not a viable system of organization.
Thomas is a paid propagandist. That's not my opinion, that's a matter of public record. That's also why he's on record saying the most absurd things. He has made many many statements that are certifiably false. Now as you can see by the list below, there are two main possibilities. Either he's stupid or he's lying. Sure, he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, but no one's that stupid. 😀
▪ the Civil Rights Movement was a communist plot.
▪ social programs and financial aid for black people was a government conspiracy to keep African Americans enslaved.
▪ Compared Obama to Adolf Hitler.
▪ Tried to convince people that Obama was a socialist, even though it's quite clear from his political record that he is centre-right. Obama even admitted that 20 years ago he would have been considered a moderate Republican.
▪ Tries to convince people that socialism and fascism are identical, even though those ideologies are on the opposite end of the political spectrum.
▪ says it's a myth that capitalism makes the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
▪ Capitalism is not inherently unstable: it wasn't responsible the Great Depression in any way, shape or form.
▪ Corporations don't earn obscene profits at the expense of consumers and workers.
▪ Corporations don't engage in predatory pricing, misleading advertising, and other deviations from the market ideal.
▪ Unrestrained capitalism doesn't lead to environmental destruction.
▪ Mergers and acquisitions have not concentrated economic and political power in fewer hands.
▪ Capitalism doesn't lead to globalism, which destroys culture and exacerbates inequality.
▪ Says government regulations are not necessary under capitalism to protect workers and consumers.
▪ claims that the free market will provide Fair wages and full employment for everyone, no government intervention needed.
▪ says there's absolutely no correlation between capitalism racism and segregation.
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@akhjanyerkin4833 , capitalism creates a central Authority. The richest 1% control most of the capital on the planet. Whoever controls the capital controls the people and the government. There's no such thing as a free market under capitalism. Why do you think most things are made in China? Why do you think the richest 1% has more wealth than the poorest 91% of the American population? 😃
Capitalism creates a situation where more than 90% of the population doesn't own the product of its labour. You know what it means when you don't own the product of your labour? You are basically a Slave. We're talking about a level of tyranny not even seen in Soviet Russia. The boss gets to decide when you work, how hard you work, what you can and cannot wear, whether or not you get a coffee break, when you get to eat, they can even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom. Capitalism has domesticated 90% of the population. Yes, wage slavery is different than chattel slavery. It's free-range slavery. 🙂
Socialism is more conducive to free markets and thriving economies. If you really believed in free markets and people being rewarded for hard work, then you would be anti-capitalist and pro-socialist.
Yeah, just because there's worker cooperatives within the capitalist framework, that's not a justification for capitalism. They were private businesses in Soviet Russia and under feudalism. Is that a justification for feudalism? There was massive increases in Innovation during the antebellum South, is that a justification for slavery?
Unfortunately under the capitalist system the vast majority of people will never be in a position where they can own their own means of production because most of the capitalist owned by the richest members of society. That's what makes most people depended upon capitalists for jobs and consumer goods. That was the purpose of the enclosure movement. People were driven into extreme states of dependency with violent Force. That's what capitalism needed in order to gain access to working-class slaves.
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@TheJoshywoshybumbleb , capitalism is literally a cancer. Most of our labor energy is going into the landfill and most of the remaining 1% ends up going to the richest members of society. There's no reason people should have to work a 40-hour work week in this day and age. That should be obvious. But again, under capitalism but everything produced by labor belongs to 1%. Do you understand the implications? 😀 people are kept working just so that they can keep consuming.
"It is reliably estimated that species extinctions now proceed at 1000 times their normal rate, and that up to 99% of the materials used in the US production process end up as waste within 6 weeks. For every ton of garbage, in turn, there are 5 tons of materials to produce it, and 25 tons extracted from nature to yield these materials.
At this stage of the global market system’s reproduction of transnational money sequences to unheard-of volumes and velocities of transaction and growth, a systematic and irreversible destruction of planetary life-organization emerges for the first time in history. If we consider the defining principles of carcinogenic invasion and eventual destruction of a life-host, and do not avoid or deny the symptom profile in evidence, we discern a carcinogenic pattern increasingly penetrating and spreading across civil and environmental life-organization.
But these facts are not connected across the fields of expertise which track them. As the earth is thus stripped and polluted by ever more unfettered global market operations, the market paradigm of value that leads governments does not factor into its calculus the countless life forms, habitats and systems which are thus extinguished and poisoned. When objections are raised, the followers of the paradigm that rules sternly warn that all is necessary ‘to keep the economy going’. Peoples increasingly observe that their life-ground is being devastated, but no ‘new discovery’ reports that every step of decision behind this process of life-destruction is taken to enact the global market programme."
There are seven defining properties of a cancer invasion which medical diagnosis recognizes at the level of the individual organism. These seven properties can now be recognized for the first time at the level of global life-organization as well. And this is the pathological core of our current
disease condition.
That is, there is:
(1) an uncontrolled and unregulated reproduction and multiplication of an agent in a host body; that
(2) is not committed to any life function of its life-host; that
(3) aggressively and opportunistically appropriates nutriments and resources from its social and natural hosts in uninhibited growth and reproduction; that
(4) is not effectively recognized or responded to by the immune system of its hosts; that
(5) possesses the ability to transfer or to metastasize its growth and uncontrolled reproduction to sites across the host body; that
(6) progressively infiltrates and invades contiguous and distant sites of its life- hosts until it obstructs, damages and/or destroys successive organs of their
life-systems; and that
(7) without effective immune-system recognition and response eventually destroys the host bodies it has invaded."
John McMurtry
Part 1 https://youtu.be/b4JsCEYpIUA
part 2 https://youtu.be/DvbhzMFWLk0
"The essence of capitalism, its raison d'être, is not to build democracy, or help working people, or save the environment, or build homes for the homeless. Its goal is to convert nature into commodities and commodities into capital, to invest and accumulate, transmuting every part of the world into its own image for its own realization. The modern capitalist imperative is simply to create more money for idle investors by any means possible. This growth is often enabled by predation on the publicly-held resources that represents real value, thereby diminishing the community's ability to sustain itself in the long run. Forests are clear-cut; public utilities are privatized; social programs are gutted; and so on. The net result is that the quality of life for the vast majority of the world's citizens has declined." ~ Michael Parenti
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@matthewwolf3531 , when you work for someone else you can never get the full value of your labor. It's not possible. You have to create more wealth for them than what they actually pay you or there wouldn't be any profit.
For example, let's say you shovel driveways for a living. $100 per driveway. No one else can afford a shovel. Let's say it represents a multi-million dollar means of production. So let's say there's hundreds of thousands of over-educated desperate people looking for work. So you decide to cash in on the opportunity. Why shovel driveways yourself when you can just pay someone else to do it for you? Well if each driveway is worth $100 it wouldn't be possible for you to pay the work $100. Because if you did then they would be no money in it for you. The only way the worker can get the full $100 is by owning his own shovel. That's why you can never ever get the full value of your labor when working for someone else.
There's a socially owned bread factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make over $70,000 a year. Technically speaking their labor produces much less wealth than an assembly line worker at walmart. But they're able to make $70,000 a year unlike the Walmart employee because they actually own the product of their labor. If they produce a million dollars worth of bread, they have a million dollars. If you produce a million dollars worth of product at walmart, you get minimum wage.
And the capitalist will always extract more and more wealth from your labor. It's just how capitalism works.
For example, look at TV commercials. At one time an hour TV show would have about 4 minutes worth of commercial time. Then it slowly increased to 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, 25 minutes, now you're looking at almost 50/50.
Likewise, a person used to have to work basically one day for free in order to get enough money to pay for the rent. Then a person had to work for 2 days in order to cover their rent. Now a person literally works for nothing for 3 weeks out of four just to pay their landlord. Why work for a living if you can just collect other people's paychecks as a landlord? It's slavery.
And again, it works the exact same way when you work for someone else. Back in the 1970s on average when you 8 hours for someone you would get paid maybe for 7 hours. And then slowly that decreased. You would work for 8 hours and only get paid for six. And then five. Corporate profits continued to increase at a faster rate than wages. So we are working 40 hours a week but literally getting paid less and less.
Capitalism is a modern form of slavery. Wage slavery is almost as bad as chattel slavery. Yes, as a wage slave you can actually choose your master. You even have the possibility of making the transition to a Slave owner. Those are the two major differences between a wage slave and a chattel slave. But it's still slavery. That back used to be recognized by everyone back in the late 1800s early 1900s. That's why the Republican Party back then was even against wage slavery. Now today most people don't even recognize it as being a forum of slavery. It's just something that's natural.
If you don't own the product of your labor, then you're basically nothing more than human livestock. Just like the dairy cow.
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@matthewwolf3531 , workers are the experts that know what to do with investments. Capitalists depend on those experts. Labor includes both mental and physical efforts. Most capitalists don't have a clue. They use their money to pay the best economists money can buy.
Of course workers at cooperatives take a portion of the earnings and put it toward Innovation and expansion. There is a region in Europe where 44% of the GDP comes from worker owned companies. There is a Cooperative that has over 100,000 workers that own their own hospital, high tech research laboratories, university, they have their own pension plan, welfare system, various types of factories, etc. Their research and development departments are so Advanced they have contracts with Microsoft and the Ford Motor Company the intel, just to mention a few. They're expanding all the time. One worker equals one share. The most important thing is that the workers together decide how much money they're going to put aside for expansion and innovation.
Statistically speaking, workers at socialist companies are more productive, more creative, take fewer sick days, there's less incidence of mental illness, the business is far more efficient, etc. Honest capitalists will actually admit that fact. Some honest capitalists have even taken advantage of the increased productivity such freedom creates. Here is just one example,
https://youtu.be/35epDjB_7WE
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@chrisrayne3274 , dude, whether you're talking about social Mobility or people owning the product of their labor by starting your own business, you have the same problem. Don't you understand why the ratio between the working-class and the owning class always remains basically the same? You have roughly a 90-10 ratio. You honestly don't know what's stopping people from starting their own business? Have any idea how difficult it is to compete against third world slave labor? State of the art automation? The ability to provide goods and services under cost until your smaller competitors go bankrupt? The ability to afford multi-billion-dollar advertisements and prizes? You're saying that anyone can start their own business and succeed, that's like saying that anyone in the United States can become president. LOL it's kind of like playing the lottery. For everyone person that does achieve becoming a business owner, you have thousands that fail. Because the ratio always remains roughly the same, that means that for every one person that succeeds, and other person ends up getting pushed down. My god, social Mobility index in the United States is number 27! I know, I know, 85% of the population just chooses dead in, low paying jobs with no benefits. But yeah, anyone if they really wanted to, all 85%, could you start own business because there's absolutely no barriers. 😀
You have some studying to do.
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@chrisrayne3274 , here are just a few stats before the pandemic!
▪︎ The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017. ~
Wall Street Journal
▪ During the last 20 years over 90% of newly created wealth went to the top 1%.
The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%
~ Time Magazine
▪ The two richest people—Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—possess almost the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the population.
▪ the richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population.
▪ The wealthiest Americans live on average 20 years longer than the poorest Americans.
▪︎ The number of homeless children in the United States is at its highest in more than a decade, according to a recent study by the National Center for Homeless Education. ~2017 stat
▪ The United States comes in at number 27 on the social Mobility index! That's even worse than Portugal and Lithuania! Never mind trying to start a business either cooperatively or individually. That number 27 a person would be lucky just to be able to retire debt free. There's a reason why most Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income. Anyone can start a business? I think not.
▪ over 40% of u.s. households are one paycheck away from poverty.
▪ Banks have foreclosed on over 7 million homes between 2004 and 2015.
▪ There are 554,000 homeless people on a given night.
▪ The United States, the wealthiest nation in the history of the world, has a larger percentage of low-income workers than any other developed nation.
▪ As of 2020, According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults 16-74 years old - about 130 million people - lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
▪ 30% of the low-wage workers live below 150% of the federal poverty line, or $36,000 per year for a family of four. 26% receive safety net assistance such as food stamps, welfare benefits, federal housing assistance, and other programs, which have been cut back throughout the years by successive Democratic and Republican administrations.
Millions of workers in “the world’s wealthiest country” are forced to sell their blood in order to survive. The Washington Post featured a 41-year-old teacher with a $50,000 salary who sells plasma twice per week to get by. “I never thought I would be in a position where I would have to sell my plasma to feed my children,” said Christina Seal of Slidell, Louisiana. “I’ve applied for every government program that I can think of. I don’t qualify for food stamps, I don’t qualify for any programs.” The Post explained that plasma donations “have quadrupled since 2006.”
▪︎ more than one-third of us healthcare costs go to bankruptcy!
▪ A study conducted by researchers at Harvard University found 45,000 Americans die each year from preventable causes because they can’t afford healthcare. But, we do have a $1.5 trillion jet fighter that can’t fly in cloudy weather. Go ‘Murcia!
▪ In 2017 Over 30 million Americans had no health insurance and even more are under-insured with high deductibles and co-payments.
As of May 2018, the numbers of people in the U.S. without health insurance have risen to 15.5%, up from 12.7% two years ago, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund tracking survey. This translates to an increase of four million uninsured people nationwide. ~ forbes.
▪ "the US tops all European countries in terms of the percentage of workers and family members who avoid necessary trips to the doctor because they fear financial ruin from the inflated costs of their private health care." ~
Prof. James Petras (the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies)
▪︎ Millions of Americans – as many as 25% of the population – are delaying getting medical help because of skyrocketing costs.
▪ more and more Americans are selling their blood for extra money.
over 40 million Americans, many of them full-time workers, require food stamps in order to get enough food to eat. That's more people than the entire population of Canada! When you're desperate enough, you'll even sell your blood!
"With 58% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, corporate America is exploiting poverty through blood and plasma donations while most other countries have banned the practice on ethical and medical grounds."
▪ economic insecurity and workplace stress is destroying the mental health of Americans.
USA #1 for mental disorders. about 1 in 4 adults. about 60 million people. ~
(Archives of General Psychiatry, 2005.)
▪ Published studies report that about 25% of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50% of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime. ~
cdc gov - mentalhealthsurveillance-fact sheet
▪ and as people become more desperate we see crime rates increasing.
▪ 3% of American adults—6.8 million people—are either in jail or prison or on parole or probation.
▪ A third of states have a form of debtor’s prison, where the poor are locked up for failure to pay fines or debts.
▪ There are 1.2 million police officers in the US—almost equal to the population of the state of New Hampshire.
▪ The police have killed 15,000 people since 2000.
▪ There are 55,000 children presently in juvenile detention.
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@chrisrayne3274 , you honestly think the only system that works the one that allows billionaires to own most of the capital and get most of the wealth produced by labor? There is no alternative? 😃 you really believe that? That's what the ruling class says and you believe it?
Dude, the workers do all of the work anyway. They are the scientists, the engineers, the accountants, the managers, etc. Capitalists are Middle Men.
There's a Cooperative in Spain where there's close to 100,000 workers that own their own hospital, university, high tech research labs, production facilities, etc. Their research departments are so Advanced they get contracts with Microsoft, Ford, and intel. Just to name a few. There's another region in Europe where 44% of the GDP comes from worker-owned companies. There's hundreds of thousands of worker own companies all over the world. So we know that socialism works. Capitalism is not the only effective mode of production.
Capitalism is not a viable system. Technically, it's not even an economic system. It's an anti-economic system. One of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. How can you achieve equilibrium when the goal is to maximize profit by keeping wages as low as possible and getting workers to produce as much as possible? 😀 if 75% of the wealth goes to the owners of capital, then the workers are only going to have 25% of the purchasing power needed to consume what they produce.
Socialist companies don't have that problem because workers get the full value of their labor. There's a socialist break Factory in the United States where the assembly line workers make $70,000 a year. They make that much because they own the product of their labor. There's equilibrium between purchasing power and production output.
What happened to socialism in Russia after the workers emancipated themselves from the rule of the czar back in 1917? What was the first thing the United States did? They got together with Canada, Germany, France and Japan to overthrow those workers. They sent troops into Russia to crush the Socialist movement. The Japanese didn't leave Russian soil until 1922! For the entire time the Soviet Union existed the United States and other countries did everything in their power to destroy them. And because they were under consonant attack they had no choice but to put a hierarchical command structure in place and as a consequence were never able to make the transition to full socialism. On top of sending troops into the country, United States also funded and weaponized the white Army. They did the same thing in Afghanistan when they funded and weaponize the mujahideen and Taliban for the purpose of overthrowing the Socialist democracy.
Look at cuba. Same thing. If socialism didn't work, the United States could just sit back and let them fall apart naturally. Despite the heavy sanctions and constant sabotage, the Cuban people actually do a lot better than most Americans in a lot of aspects.
What happened to the Democracy in Afghanistan back in the '70s? When the citizens put back their land and government from the landlords, the United States funded and weaponized the mujahzadine and Taliban for the purpose of destroying that democracy. Their job was to overthrow the government. United States national security advisor would meet with the Taliban personally! He's on video saying how they're going to make Russia bleed for as long as it takes. The mujah dean and Taliban were able to overthrow the democratic government in Afghanistan in 1979. For a brief time women were allowed to go on dates, Drive cars, participate in the government, the workers had control of their own land, etc. They got rid of the Opium and started growing food crops. Of course when the government was overthrown Warlords started growing opium again which the United States utilized a large portion of. Not my opinion, check out the National Security archive.
What happened to Yugoslavia? Why did the United States along with NATO bomb that country for 78 days straight drive dropping over 2,000 tons of bombs on schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, excetera? Gee, I wonder why socialism doesn't work?
What happened to socialism in Chile? What happened to libya? How many death squads have been trained in the United States for the purpose of murdering Communists and socialists in South america? Why did the United States Place such severe sanctions on Venezuela causing over 10,000 deaths!?
Do you have any idea how many democracies the United States has overthrown just since 1945?
https://youtu.be/1fpYY0-FMAE
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Dude, Richard wolf has started several successful businesses. He knows exactly what he's talking about. Depending on what kind of business you have, would probably be much more prosperous in a socialist economy than one that's capitalist. If you have more workers getting the full value of their labor, if you have more things being produced at home, the workers are going to have greater purchasing power. That means people are going to be able to buy more of whatever product you're selling. But when capital is companies dominate the economy, you end up with most things being made in china, you end up with most of the wealth going to a small minority of rich people, etc. The goal of a capitalist company is to maximize profit. Profit is maximized by keeping wages as low as possible. So the more successful the capitalist company is at maximizing profit, the less purchasing power workers have. Also consider the fact that Bill Gates is now the largest owner of Farmland in the united states. He even owns a big chunk of the Canadian Railway system. If you have to pay extra money to Bill Gates every time you buy toilet paper, Park your car, get a blood test, that's less money you have to spend in the economy. Billions of dollars that used to go to the workers is now going to someone like Bill gates. That's billions of dollars in reduced purchasing power. Is this good for your business?
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You're talking about a very complicated subject. You think he can sum it all up within a few minutes? Dude, the guy wrote a 400 page textbook on the subject. 😃 are you one of those individuals that demands instant understanding without doing any work? Do you have any idea what the Soviet Union went through during its existence? Right from the beginning when the poor, uneducated, illiterate workers were able to extricate themselves from the czars rule, the first thing the United States did was send troops into the country along with several other countries in order to destroy those workers. Japanese troops didn't even leave Russian soil until 1922. Those Farmers had only the most basic tools. Had no indoor plumbing, no electricity, they couldn't read or write, etc. They did the best they could. The Soviet Union was under constant attack! And then, the United States also funded and equipped terrorist and enemies of the Soviet union. Like they did in Afghanistan back in the '70s by funding and equipping the mujahideen intelliban for the purpose of destroying the Afghan democracy and the Soviet union. Not my opinion, a matter of public record.
So yeah, it's a very complicated subject. Even a 400 page textbook doesn't do it justice. And you expect it all to be summed up in a few minutes?
And what's the point of your comment anyway? Are you suggesting that Richard wolf has some reason for wanting to be disingenuous? What exactly are you trying to say?
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@jeramylaneholt , of course we have a capitalist Society. Most of our GDP and jobs come from privately owned means of production. That is a capitalist economy. Yes, of course the capitalists have a massive influence over the government. When you have billions and billions of dollars at your disposal, influencing the government is just another part of doing business.
And what do you mean you're against socialism in every form? What's wrong with workers getting together collectively so that they can have their own business, Factory, or utility? https://youtu.be/-VdbFzwe8fQ
billionaires can easily Buy railroads, (such as Bill Gates who now owns a huge chunk of the Canadian Railway system and he's also the largest owner of Farmland in the United States), grocery stores, apartment buildings, restaurant franchises, excetera, excetera.
But your average citizen can't afford those things. That's why they get together collectively, socially, so that they obtain those things which allow them to own the product of their labour and achieve sovereignty over their labour and what they produce. You actually have a problem with that? Well then you're a huge part of the problem.
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@SeñorSandalia , I could probably go on for days pointing out all of his lies.
Let's take a look at this one statement.
▪ says it's a myth that capitalism makes the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Now is he lying or is he stupid?
Under the capitalist system those were the most capital get most of the wealth produced by labor. The more Capital you have, the faster your wealth grows in relation to everyone else. There are billionaires out there making hundreds of thousands of dollars per second even while they're sleeping!
For example, there is a person who won the lottery last year where i live. he won 60 million dollars. That money is currently sitting in a bank account. He is getting 3% interest on that 60 million.
That comes to 1.8 million dollars a year.
That's $150,000 per month.
That's $35,000 per week.
that's $5,000 a day.
That's $200 an hour, 24 hours a day 7 days a week 52 weeks a year, for the rest of their life, until the day they die. and they will pass that privilege onto every child they have and every woman that they marry.
now let's look at Jeff Bezos. He has about 200 billion dollars now. So, hypothetically speaking, if he were to dump all of his Capital assets and just put that money into the bank account at 3% interest, he would be accumulating 6 billion dollars per year for doing absolutely nothing.
That's 500 million dollars a month.
That's a 115 million dollars per week.
That's 16 and 1/2 million dollars per day.
that's 685,000 per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
How long does it take you to use the washroom? Let's say it takes you 1 minute to take a dump. by the time Jeff Bezos takes a dump, he has an extra $12,000 in his bank account. 😃
where do you think that money comes from? Every dollar of that has to come from labour. Every time you take out a student loan, every time you buy toilet paper, a toothbrush, finance a house, a car, Etc. you have to pay some rich individual for that privilege. He gets to collect that amount of money without doing any work at all. And, unless he's actually capable of spending $600,000 an hour, with every passing hour, he'll be making more money than he did before.
Why do you think it is that most Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income?
Under the capitalist system profits are maximized by getting workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible. And because we can produce more and more with less and less labor all the time, we have a steadily decreasing number of decent jobs with Benefits compared to the number of educated people needing jobs. The competition between unemployed people drives the value of Labor downward. Whoever gets the job is the one who has the most education, is willing to do the most work for the least amount of money.
And that ties in with his other false claim that capitalism is not inherently unstable. Of course it is! Why do you think there's an economic downturn every 4 to 7 years?
Again, profits are maximized by keeping wages as low as possible while getting workers to produce as much as possible. Now any person who has a basic understanding of economics, anyone that has taken economics 101, knows that one of the central goals is to achieve equilibrium between Supply and demand. So why is Thomas lying? How can you have equilibrium under capitalism when the goal is to maximize profit by paying workers as little as possible.? Literally, the more successful a capitalist company is at maximizing profits, the less purchasing power workers have. If 70% of the profit is going to a capitalist owner, then the workers are only going to be able to afford 30% of what they put into circulation. So inevitably consumption rates will slow down. When that happens people get laid off. When people get laid off they can't consume as much. That means more people get laid off. Capitalists are always waiting for a turn in the tide. As soon as the value of stocks start to decrease, they tried to sell them off. If you have too many people dumping their stocks, the whole system crashes. Smaller companies go bankrupt and are bought up by larger corporations for pennies on the dollar. And that brings us to a third lie of Mr thomas.
▪ Mergers and acquisitions have not concentrated economic and political power in fewer hands.
▪ Corporations don't earn obscene profits at the expense of consumers and workers.
Yeah, every time there's an economic downturn billionaires can buy up capital and property for pennies on the dollar.
Anyone who's taking economics knows:
competition -> winners -> competition between winners -> stronger winners -> .. -> bigger corporations -> etc
If you look at most of the products in the grocery store, most are owned and controlled by just a handful of companies. Bill Gates is now the largest owner of Farmland in the United states.
And that's one of the real reasons why the price of groceries are going up. If the inflation was actually caused by shortages, then corporations wouldn't be making massive record profits.
▪ The 1% grabbed 82% of all wealth created in 2017. ~
Wall Street Journal
▪ During the last 20 years over 90% of newly created wealth went to the top 1%.
The Top 1% of Americans Have Taken $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%
~ Time Magazine
▪ The two richest people—Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates—possess almost the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the population.
▪ the richest 1% has almost as much wealth as the poorest 91% of the American population.
▪ The wealthiest Americans live on average 20 years longer than the poorest Americans.
▪The number of homeless children in the United States is at its highest in more than a decade, according to a recent study by the National Center for Homeless Education. ~2017 stat
▪ The United States comes in at number 27 on the social Mobility index! That's even worse than Portugal and Lithuania! Never mind trying to start a business either cooperatively or individually. At 27 a person would be lucky just to be able to retire debt free. There's a reason why most Americans can no longer afford a family on a single income. Anyone can start a business? I think not.
▪ over 40% of u.s. households are one paycheck away from poverty.
▪ Banks have foreclosed on over 7 million homes between 2004 and 2015.
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@akhjanyerkin4833 , dude, what you're saying doesn't make any sense. There's hundreds of thousands of worker-owned companies all over the world. Workers owning their own means of production doesn't result in people being killed. Doesn't result in tyrannical governments. What you're saying simply doesn't make any sense. It doesn't matter what socioeconomic system you're dealing with, if you give unaccountable power to some government, if you remove checks and balances, then you're asking for trouble. But what does that have to do with socialism? Nothing. Did you even listen to the discussion? And the reason that there was totalitarian governments in countries such as USSR is because they were under constant attack a country such as United States. That's why the people had to put in a centralized command structure in order to deal with constant threats. As soon as the workers took over in 1917 the first thing the United States did was get together with Canada, Japan, England, to attack those workers. The United States sent troops right into the Russia to crush them. The Japanese didn't leave Russian soil until 1922. You simply don't know what you're talkin about. You're engaging in black-and-white thinking and over-simplification. Do you have any idea how many democracies the United States has overthrown between the years of 1945 and 1999? Do you have any idea how many terrorists around the world the United States is funded for the purpose of overthrowing Communism and socialism? Why do you think the United States funded the mujahideen and Taliban in Afghanistan back in the 70s? For the purpose of overthrowing the peoples democratic government. If you look at the deaths that the United States is responsible for attacking those socialist and communist countries, they far outweigh anything committed by the Soviet Union.
Socialism is simply various forms of collectivism where communities and workers get together for the purpose of owning their own factories, businesses and means of production. That way workers and communities can keep all of the wealth of their labour produces rather than having to give most of it to some individual like Donald Trump. And of course it's the capitals Class comes up with Spook stories that the sky will fall. Yeah, of course, because they want to own the product of your labour. If you own the product of your labour, then they can't. It's almost as bad as believing that masturbation will make you go blind. I think you need to watch the video. 😃
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@Downhaven , and what about the Richard Wolff Gene Epstein debate? Richard Wolff come across as fanatical?
What was the criteria of the debate? What was the objective? The debate, as described in the title, was to determine which system produces the most equality, freedom and prosperity.
Did Epstein have a single, solitary counter-argument? No. He didn't have one.
There was nothing fanatical that Richard Wolff said. That debate was about as open and shut as you could possibly get.
▪ do workers have more freedom when they own the company and are their own boss? Yeah, obviously!
▪ do workers have more prosperity, for themselves and the economy and community when they actually get all of the wealth of their labor produces? Yeah, obviously. When workers own the product of their labour, if they produce a million dollars worth of product, they now have a million dollars. That means a million dollars worth of purchasing power. But if workers at Amazon or Walmart produce a million dollars worth of product, the workers have minimum wage. So which worker provides more demand in the economy? Again, very simple and straightforward.
▪ and which mode of production provides more equality? Obviously when workers own their own company or factory and each individual has equal voting power, they're going to have more equality then compared to a capitalist company. At a capitalist company you don't have any voting power at all! You have to do what you're told. We're talking about a dictatorship that makes Nazi Germany look like a vacation. The boss decides when you work, how hard you have to work, what you have to wear, even if you have to keep a smile on your face all day, if and when you get a coffee break, what time you get to eat your lunch, they can even tell you when and how long you get to go to the washroom!
So what was Gene Epstein's counter-argument to any of those criteria? Nothing! Didn't have a single argument. He just kept making excuses for capitalism. So who's being fanatical? 😃
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@chadjones4255 , capitalism requires a huge amount of government intervention. Otherwise it would self-destruct Within a very short time. The closest we came to having pure capitalism was back in the late 1800s, early 1900s. It was a complete disaster! You had 9-year-old children working 18-hour days, people dying of basic water and food contamination because there were no consumer safety standards, there were no old age pensions, medical, only well to do people could afford to go to school. People like JP morgan, carnegie, rockefeller, these people were making record profits while workers were dying on the job and record numbers, working 18-hour days making just barely enough to survive.
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@chadjones4255 , dude, there are no other definitions of capitalism. Capitalism is what it is. It has nothing to do with rights or life. The capitalist imperative is the maximization of capital accumulation. It doesn't matter if you steal, kill, plunder, whatever. It doesn't come with some moral book of rules. During the antebellum South slaves were just another form of capital. Wage slaves are another form of capital.
And yes, when it comes to private property you have to have a massive government apparatus. Why do you think it is that the United States has over a thousand major military bases around the world and 2,000 minor bases? And God only knows how many Lily pads.
Under the capitalist system most of the capital is owned by the richest members of society. You can't have 1% of the population owning most of the world without a huge government. It's not possible.
Also you need to differentiate between personal property and private property. Yes, private property is what made capitalism possible in the first place. The enclosure movement put people into an extreme state of dependency where they had no choice but to pay rent and work for the owners of capital in order to survive.
Capitalism is an immoral system that's based on exploitation. Technically speaking, it's an anti-economic system. IT violates basic principles of economics and destroys markets.
For example, the goal of a capitalist company is to maximize profit. If Profit can be maximized by laying people off and destroying lives, then that's what is done. It has nothing to do with morality. In order to be a successful capitalist you have to actually be divorced from morality. There was actually a study done not long ago that showed that individuals that have low levels of empathy, those were the ones that did the best at maximizing profit under capitalism. So is maximizing profit conducive to free markets and Thrive the economies? No. Of course not! One of the central goals of Economics is to achieve equilibrium. The goal of capitalism is an exact opposition to that basic principle. Profits are maximized by getting workers to produce as much as possible while paying them as little as possible. So the more successful a capitalist company is at maximizing profit the less purchasing power workers have. That's a contradiction! Why do you think there's so much debt? And you think it is that we still have a 40-hour work week after 150 years even though labor saving technology has more than tripled production output and just the last 20 years?
If you give bovine growth hormone to a cow in order to double milk production, does the cow get twice the amount of milk? Does the cow get to work half as many hours at the same rate of pay? No. Of course not. All of that milk belongs to the farmer. Likewise, under capitalism, everything produced by workers belongs to the owners of capital. So it doesn't matter if labor saving technology quadruples your output. You still remain dependent upon a 40-hour work we can order to survive. 😀
No, I'm not an expert. But I do have a high school level of understanding when it comes to math and political ideologies. LOL
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