Comments by "josh fritz" (@joshfritz5345) on "SOCIALISM: An In-Depth Explanation" video.

This video doesn't mention that some of the founding components of socialism are based on flawed premises. For example, the labor theory of value is flatly wrong. The labor theory of value claims that the value of an item is based on how much labor was put into making it. By this standard, a bowl of rice made with many hours of labor through manual farming is much more valuable than a bowl of rice from a factory farm using tractors which produces fifty times as much rice for the same amount of human labor. In reality, both bowls of rice are identical and have identical value. Value is subjective, and few care where the rice came from, only it's quality and price. For someone who believes in the labor theory of value, some terrible practices may seem like good ideas. For example, price controls and minimum wage laws make sense only if you believe that prices can be set, or that an item's value should be tied directly to the labor going into it, and disregard the consequences of said assumptions. Minimum wage effectively bans low-skill labor, making it very difficult for people with little job experience to find a job. Price controls force down prices below the actual value of the item, forcing the businesses to operate at a loss, and worse, leading to a shortage of the commodity since people will buy it all up since the prices cannot rise in response to scarcity. Additionally, if producing this commodity is no longer profitable since the businesses is being forced to sell at a loss, less if any of these goods will be produced.
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@justaguy6100 You're confusing cost with value. If you spend hours of your time carving a piece of wood into a pencil, it's function and value are identical to any other pencil. Few would pay any more for it than any other pencil other than as a novelty. Value is subjective, and the amount of labor that goes into making an item has no direct effect on the item's value. It is the buyer, and the buyer's alternative options (market competition) which determine value. Few people would normally pay $8 for a glass of lemonade, but at a baseball game where there are no market alternatives, many people would due to a lack of alternatives. The amount of labor that goes into making that glass of lemonade is irrelevant, all that matters is what the buyer is willing to pay.
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@justaguy6100 My original point was that the Marxist labor theory of value is bunk, and that value is subjective. An item's value is determined by what people are willing to pay for it, not the cost of the labor involved. The only way for labor costs to affect the value of an item is that labor costs can affect the supply of an item, but this does not directly control the costs of an item as long as alternative sources for it exist.
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They are the same thing in practice. The intentions may be different, but the end result will be more state power and less individual liberty.
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@wintermint77 Neither fully embrace free market principles, so neither are good systems. The problem with social democracy is that it tends to be used as a tool for the more revolutionary socialists who come around every generation or two. Those who identify as social democrats may genuinely not intend to have a socialist revolution, but invariably, after enough time, the revolutionaries will take over and try to create another socialist dictatorship.
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@justaguy6100 Labor costs affect the viability of producing a product for market. If you cannot produce a product at a competitive price, people will seek alternatives. As long this company does not have a monopoly on that product, they cannot set the price. Mines are an interesting case. There is no alternative source of raw materials aside from importing from abroad which is expensive for high mass, low value items like iron or coal. This means that often these materials can be produced locally more cheaply than they can be imported. This is not applicable to low-mass, high value products like gold and diamonds which is why often these are mined in third world countries and imported to wealthy countries with higher cost labor. You're right about mines being abandoned that cannot generate a profit. Labor costs are a part of that. Higher labor costs could result in operating this mine becoming unprofitable, forcing them to shut down since imports become cheaper. This shows the disconnect between labor cost and value. Ore's value is not related to how much labor is put into producing it, the cheapest ore will always be bought up first no matter the source.
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@justaguy6100 Yes, COSTS are tied to labor. Prices are not. Cost is operating expenses. Prices are the amount of money the consumer pays for the end product. Rising costs don't necessarily lead to higher prices because consumers will simply buy from another source if prices get too high. If labor costs go up, that can make local production non-viable compared to imports from places with cheap labor.
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@mysterydragontr Agreed. We should be teaching the next generation about the horrors of socialism.
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@WizardVal Exactly. That's the strongest argument against government monopoly over a given market.
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@jason59k55 Please don't vote until you take a course in economics.
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@mysterydragontr Agreed. We should teach in an unbiased way how many people were killed by communism and let children come to their own conclusions.
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@HobanProduction No, fascism is a variation of socialism. Communism, fascism, corporatism, all are derivatives of socialism. Mussolini, the founder of fascism as we know it, actually started out as a Marxist. What set apart fascism from other forms of socialism is that it "privatized" parts of the economy, allowing a handful of government selected actors to have monopoly over these industries. In fascist italy, these "private" entities were the trade unions, in modern America, these would be the corporations. In either case, the "private" entities are effectively arms of the state, they are distinct entities in name only. Corporations wield just as much government power as an official branch of government, and politicians hold similar power over corporate actions as do CEOs. Fascism is, like all other socialist systems, very much an economic system. The likely reason you believe this not to be the case is because you've always heard "fascism" used in the modern, coequal sense, a meaningless smear against any vaguely conservative ideology. This is a blatant misuse of the term. It is no more accurate to call Trump a fascist than it is to call Putin a Nazi. You can dislike either or both men, but they have no relation to the ideologies of midcentury socialists. The modern west is very, very far left in the grand scheme of things. This has brought a mix of both good and bad things. It's a long list and I'm not going to get into it now, but the modern neo-liberal is in some respects to the left of Stalin. This is not a value judgement, this is a statement of fact. Sexual liberation is an example of this. Even the modern conservative is more in favor of women's rights and gay rights than the average Marxist of the 1930s. If you want a modern example of a genuinely far right government, look at the Taliban who currently run Afganistan. Republicans are nowhere near as conservative or as authoritarian as them. If you broaden your scopes either globally (past Europe and North America) or through time, the entire western world of politics takes place within a neo-liberal framework that is rather far left and moderately authoritarian.
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@chester9585 The US is becoming more fascist. The democrat party is the far-left fascist party and the republican party is the center-left neo-liberal party. Also, fascism is not the opposite of socialism, it's just a variation of it.
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@jason59k55 Dude, it's a junk theory that has no validity to it. You can add all the addendums you want, the theory is flat out wrong. Value is subjective. Each buyer puts their own value on an item, and the actual price is created through supply vs. demand, where the supply is balanced against what the average buyer is willing to pay.
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@aramisone7198 Minimum wage laws don't actually make workers better off. If the worker isn't worth their wage to the company, they will be laid off. Raising the minimum wage will destroy the job market for low-skill workers. Most western countries have a center left party and a moderate left wing party, both authoritarian. Conservative parties are few and far between in the US and Europe. You get an occasional far-left socialist party, but you almost never have a party to the right of center, or if they exist, they're basically a joke and hold no real power. Even in the US, the Republican party are basically neo-liberal corporatists, and are scarcely any different from the Democrats aside from a handful of radicals who spend some time in the limelight.
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@mrcat6433 I've heard of it. The author is a fellow at the Hoover institution. I'll grab it on audio book.
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@PyReDZN Labor theory of value is flat out wrong. Some people will pay $3000 for a glass of brandy which cost a fraction of that to produce. Value has no real connection to labor. Digging a ditch in the middle of a field for no reason has zero value because there is no demand for it. Yes, they are wrong. Some "capitalists" embrace Kensyian economics.
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@johnrockyryan We call our current society capitalist, but in many respects, we are actually rather socialist. We tax the working class at a very high rate, and send that money to foreign countries, subsidize the billionaires, and fund wars. Historically, that is exactly what socialist nations did. The only real difference is that we have some semblance of property rights, although these are conditional.
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@jamesjohnXII Minimum wage laws make it illegal for someone to work a low skill side job that pays under some arbitrary amount per hour even if both the employer and employee would have consented to the agreement. Unless both agree to break the law, it prohibits that job from ever existing. No, they can't just pay more, their labor isn't worth $15 per hour or whatever arbitrary amount you set it to.
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@jamesjohnXII If the business isn't earning a net profit, with what money will they do this?
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@jamesjohnXII $10 per hour would be livable if the cost of living wasn't doubled by every conceivable commodity being increased in cost by taxes and regulation, not to mention the government taking 30% of your income via income tax.
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@jamesjohnXII This is the middle tax bracket in my state. I live in a communist hellhole on the coast of the US. Not cali, the other coast.
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@susanmercurio1060 If you spend 8 hours digging a ditch in the middle of nowhere, you did a lot of work. If no one is willing to pay you for that ditch you dug, it has no value. Work is not inherently valuable. Value is determined by what someone is willing to pay you in a free market.
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@sophiaroot9104 All of these things you stated are functions of the market. A note on companies firing experienced workers for new workers who don't demand high salaries. This is called incompetent leadership. It absolutely does happen, but it harms the quality and quantity of the output of the company and usually does more harm than good to the company. Depending on the field, sometimes exporting jobs to countries where labor is cheaper can be just as threatening to workers as automation. Otherwise, companies may choose to lobby to import immigrant workers who are willing to work for a low wage. Even if you don't get replaced, you will lose most of your wage negotiation power when there are large numbers of immigrants who will take your job for a fraction of the price. Thankfully, this does not usually apply to skilled labor jobs.
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@lorenzogumier7646 People who are very wealthy might be willing to pay extra money for handmade goods, but most people are not. It's a luxury that suits some people's tastes, and there isn't much room for luxury in communism. You get higher quality goods in capitalism, and people tend to be wealthy enough to be able to care whether or not their goods came from a sweatshop.
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@BeatLegato I'm pretty young, and I live in a state with very high taxes. I appreciate taking the time to read my comments, but I don't think I'm going to comment on videos anymore, most of my posts get removed by the Youtube bot. I hope life treats you well, godspeed kind stranger.
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@KneGros-nc1ss Marxism is the sister ideology of national socialism.
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@uncreativename9936 It's all kensyian economics and central planning. It's garbage either way.
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@jamesjohnXII Inflation caused by government spending money faster than it can rape it's citizen's paychecks for tax money.
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@jamesjohnXII I make ~19 per hour, but that's before taxes. I pay over 35% income tax.
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@jamesjohnXII yes
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@jamesjohnXII No, Connecticut. It's run by socialists.
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@fellowshipofthemystery6154 Inflation
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@Cherry-pu4mx The problem with that is that some people feel they are entitled to the property or labor of another. Democracy is fundamentally incompatible with human rights because it allows parasites to drain the working class by voting for the government to seize their property and labor on behalf of the parasites.
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@cindy-mq6pl Socialism is bad
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@THaNaS1s This doesn't make the LTV true. If you spend 48 hours digging a giant hole in the ground for no reason, it doesn't matter if you use a shovel or an excavator, if no one needs a giant hole in the ground, that hole and the labor that went into it has no value. Someone might actually want a giant hole in the ground, perhaps to lay a foundation, or install a septic tank, but no one wants a hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere for no reason. It's not your labor that makes it valuable, it's the demand for the product. A bottle of water on a hiking trail in the middle of the wilderness is worth a lot more than in a supermarket, because the demand is high and the supply is low.
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@GreatAdamD Literally doesn't make a difference. No matter your technology level, digging a hole in the middle of nowhere is labor which creates absolutely no value. Spending hours and hours twisting pieces of metal into "abstract art" is completely devoid of value. Labor does not create value if there is no demand for the product. Minimum wage laws and price controls are socialist inventions. They are a common band aid solution used by states when their market is failing due to over-regulation destroying market incentives. The US uses a minimum wage law to try to compensate for it's socialist policies like income tax, and the result is severe shortage of jobs in areas with high minimum wages.
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@Gelehn-Halder-USA-Paycheck I ain't reading all that. Communism is stupid. Government consistently finds the least efficient, least ethical and most corrupt way to turn small problems into big ones. Communism is the ideology that says "we should give absolute power to the state". That's how you get 900 million dollar power outlets, 300% inflation and genocides of ethnic minorities.
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@struckkk1999 No idea where you got that idea from.
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@tuubi2783 The modern western urban monoculture is probably the furthest left wing culture in all of history. On social issues, the modern left is quite literally to the left of Stalin or Mao. You can try to frame yourself as the moderate position and everyone else as "far right", but it comes off as either closed minded or disingenuous when just about anyone outside of the urban monoculture bubble sees you as being crazy leftists. It is true, it is possible to be further left on economics than the modern left wing establishment. Corporatism is a left of center system, occupying essentially the same space as fascism on the left-right spectrum, but it is to the right of fully socialist systems which seek to abolish private property and make corporations into government entities rather than have them be simply subservient to it. This isn't a disingenuous description of the socialist left's goals, it's an accurate description of what it seeks to do. The socialist left see the corporations as enemies only because they are not directly controlled by the government. If Amazon were a government service, nobody on the socialist left would be critical of them even if they were worse at providing services than they are currently. If you look at anywhere else in the world today, or anywhere at any point in history with a tiny handful of exceptions (France and Weimar Germany were quite far left socially), nearly every other culture is to the right of our current neoliberal establishment. Culturally far left societies tend to adopt the concepts of "total equality" and "total liberation". Practically speaking, their goal is to remove all stigma from people for attributes and actions. This means the abolition of racism, the acceptance of gay rights, and also recognizing the rights of "child lovers", "animal lovers", refusal to punish criminals, and many other things. The only consistent moral standard the cultural far left still have is "consent" where anything is permitted as long as both parties consent to it. They also choose to disbelieve that people can be born different despite all evidence to the contrary. This means a total rejection of genetics as a field of study, with the only exception being if genetics as a field is butchered to comply with the ideology's claim that everyone is equally capable. Obvious examples of this include the denial that men and women's bodies are different. This leads to the abolition of women's sports, and further promotes transgender ideology, who are already supported by virtue of being a repressed group. Being a "total liberation" ideology, the cultural far left sees any repression as its enemy, and anyone who is or claims to be repressed is a victim to be saved and elevated. The abolition of many forms of bigotry can easily be seen as a positive, but it leads to problems where groups compete to be the most repressed due to the benefits granted to them for the reason of them being repressed. It also incentivizes self interested, successful people who are members of that group to prolong the problems which allow them to identify as repressed since they disproportionately benefit from the aid compared to other members of their group who gain comparatively little benefit from this aid.
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@pavelm.gonzalez8608 Communism in practice is just a form of totalitarianism. Communist China is one of the least free countries in the world today.
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