Comments by "buddermonger2000" (@buddermonger2000) on "Imperialism Today: Unequal Exchange and Globalized Production" video.

Well that's one way to deal with that feeling. Though all it does is set you on a really poor road which leaves basically everyone worse off. It's not exactly shiny, but it's probably the most effective system for overall wellbeing as well as ability to carry human populations. The biggest problem is inherent inequality. However even the floor rises under the system (especially since it's really the only reason industrialization started at all given how Russia had to import western industrialists to industrialize and how none of the centrally planned systems allowed it and in fact in China actively crushed it in the 11th century).
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@degamispoudegamis Imagine thinking you're being exploited because someone else is richer than you and then calling the only system which ever gave you the means to wealth unimaginable to your ancestors, capable of carrying over 2000 times more people than before, and for the first time in history twice as many people obese as there are starving with less than 12.5% of the world starving (and even then being largely for political reasons), terrible and something that should be torn down. And once again... all because your country was simply late to the game and only started recently.
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@ABPAID You are selling your labor. Without the capitalist getting the surplus value, they are broke and treading in place. I know to you this sounds like a good thing, but without the capitalist making money, they have no way to pay more workers or give raises, nor do they have the money to live either as they have to pay themselves. It's not exploitation. It's a necessary factor of all production if everyone is to benefit.
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@ABPAID A: some people have to own things. Someone has to foot the bill for the upfront costs. If no-one foots the bill, it doesn't get started. Then no-one has a job and nothing is done at all. Not to mention that the other thing you're getting for selling your labor is a steady income. Such a thing is not guaranteed for the capitalist. Thus, working for someone else is safer. B: In terms of everyone being working class, if you want to have that and still have industrial society, then you're looking at a technological barrier and not a social one. The way current technology is, centralization is power. Centralization = more production => more output/more growth. Industrial manufacturing at this moment is not viable enough in small scale to really have such an economy yet. We're getting there. Though as things stand, still favors centralization. Edit: There is technically one way through social change to break the power of the large owners: buy local. If people have a stronger sense of community and are more incentivized to buy what is best available in their community you break the power of large corporations by denying them markets they'd otherwise have as well as distributing the population under far more owners who are far more accountable to their local areas than you do currently. They also have a higher stake in the success of local businesses given that the communities would depend on them. However... people who are incredibly money conscious need to be willing to pay more to support their local businesses.
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@ultraman_99 I don't think this means what you think it means. Why would competition mean as much profit as possible? I'm not going to pretend it's some moral system that won't try to depress wages or often become too obsessed with higher profits, but I'm going to bring up that companies often have to raise wages to be more competitive because of that very competition. If they get all of the workers, no-one else can compete. Companies are trying to lower their costs, but wages are only one part of that. Reputations and quality are also important as that's much of their customer base, unless they're deliberately selling the bottom of the barrel. I'll also bring up that companies have to operate in a sustainable enough fashion that they can continue to survive and make more money, thus, there's a practical upper limit to how much profit they can chase or else that very competition will force them to either collapse or stop as they'll stop being competitive and bringing in more money. So no. Companies aren't trying to extract as much "surplus value" as possible. It doesn't even exist. It's just the total cost for the factors of production, but the labor is also a cost.
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@ultraman_99 labor is actually in the imperial core. Not the periphery or semi-periphery. Secondly, usually the pay there is actually better than most local pay meaning that the average wage there rises as well. They're paid what they produce. A labor monopoly is basically impossible to establish except through the state owning all of the labor. They're not going to push the wages immediately back down because then they'll simply leave and people will be around to start their own businesses again which pay better. No natural monopolies have ever existed, even the famous Standard Oil in the USA which was split when it had less market share than it started with. The only time one exists is when they're already the most efficient producer (though there are industries which are simply difficult to get into). If you lose all of your workers by paying less your monopoly is broken as others are simply able to come back and undercut you. Reputation is in regards to quality. While many may buy The cheapest good, there are many tiers of goods and thus many tiers of supplier. We all admit that quality of goods are not equal and so aren't priced that way. Competition in markets does not force excess profit generation. What it will do is force down prices in order to generate one. However, so long as you're generating profits and can in the future, other companies have little effect on you. Others eating into your profits is a long term threat of no longer being profitable. Forcing more profits than the others is simply ridiculous of a notion. Finally, no, expansion is a luxury caused by having enough profit to afford it and thus repeat the action. Without that profit, no expansion.
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@ultraman_99 While in some capacity, it's been moved to the periphery and semi-periphery, it's not even a majority for the core. The reason they're lower is usually, most fundamentally, a lower level of production per hour of work. With lower capital costs to boot. This is changing as we speak. Yeah, no, the wages are usually not paltry, or if they are, they're paltry to us with the wages from the core. There are several examples where the local company, due to its increase in pay, is basically a driver for local economic development which is the normal pattern of behavior. The dependence is short term as the wealth spreads among the population. Also, while cartels are enforced by force of arms, if you look at the history of trusts and monopolies beyond what's normally said about it, you'll find it's true what I've said about the market share declining with the biggest example of standard oil. They were certainly large businesses, but they weren't monopolies and those businesses you mentioned aren't monopolies even now as they all have very large competitors. Also, no, the majority of people worldwide do NOT buy the cheapest good as unless you're at the poverty line where that's all you can afford, there are still tiers of goods with differing quality for different markets. That's simply the truth of any economy as income brackets exist. Also, no, the unfortunate reality is that YOU don't know what you're talking about. And in fact, you quite literally contradicted yourself as if the goal is maximum profits, then trying to undercut your competitors by not generating profit is explicitly antithetical to that goal. The problem is that the idea of the monopoly is simply a widely held myth perpetuated by the trust-busting of the gilded age in the US and as a useful rallying cry today. The closest analogue to an actual monopoly coming from the free market itself are those very capital intensive industries with a high barrier to entry. Beyond those, no such thing as a monopoly from the free market. It's always from states, who are themselves monopolies in a certain area, who grant them such as utilities or historical examples such as the East India Company. Whether or not it's necessary is a separate conversation, but they're an example of actual monopolies being created and controlled by the government. Finally, yes it is a luxury to expand, as loans come with terms and conditions, and even then, have to return the investment over time. So it's not like they can simply not profit, or they must go under. Cheap money keeps businesses afloat who would otherwise have already fallen, so called "zombie companies", but they fall eventually either in the next recession or simply when the money runs out. Because it does run out.
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@degamispoudegamis Oh my God you're actually stupid. First off: He said he was Nepalese. What you said genuinely doesn't apply here given that they were never conquered and actually had friendly enough relations that continue to this day in the form of the elite Gurkha unit. In this capacity his country was never a colony in either formal or even informal capacity since relations for foreign elite troops have been a tradition of a fair few militaries across history (another example is the French foreign legion). Secondly: Most of the issues of the post-colonial states have little to do with the actual colonialism itself and more to do with the instability that comes from the ethnic makeup of the regions not correlating with the actual borders and thus no real national identities to really govern around. In fact some evidence of this was with how the economies of the colonies actually shrank after the end of colonialism while the western nations still grew. And of course the fastest rising economies were the ones who industrialized while still having a national identity (see the Asian tiger economies + China + Isreal). Those who have weaker national identities have risen slower as they industrialized but even now many of those places can still be seen as rising (take Nigeria for example as well as 5 of the states of the EAF who have very fast rising economies and other examples can be seen in the southeast Asian states such as Indonesia and the Phillipines). And then finally, I'd like to add that time is a crucial factor in this. Most of these places have only been independent for 70 years while most other states have been independent for double or more which has allowed them to build that wealth. In real terms the differences in wealth come down to a combination of level of industrialization and level of trust in a society (something that affects political and social stability and even slows industrialization). Ethnic tensions drastically lower social trust which stops much of the normal building of wealth. Then there's economic mismanagement but that tends to really just affect industrialization speed.
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@Alex Well, fundamentally, there are some pre-conditions to industrialization as well as the resources required for it. It's also the intellectual and population resources required to implement the technologies until they sufficiently advance to be able to be implemented easier. For example, if you've no coal in the 1850s, how do you expect to be able to even try to make a factory? Then as another example, how do you expect to make a steel foundry if you don't actually have the technology to access the Bessemer process or know-how to build the thing (and this is very early tech not even modern steel production)? Remember that agricultural societies at the start of the agricultural revolution were a very small few until such practices began to expand and started to out-compete the more migrant peoples (which I'd also like to add, wasn't until the invention of gunpowder since nomadic horse archers would still create piles of bodies through invasions every few centuries). The fundamental problem is that all practices take time to create and disperse (you don't just press research and get the correct outcome, sometimes your R&D just doesn't come out with something that's any good), and then after to learn and implement (most places had to import western technicians to get the industrialization processes started). I'd also like to add that the poorest countries are in places where the state basically didn't exist until the Europeans LEFT. Which is almost exclusively Africa as even southeast Asia with either history of state structures or simple length of time under colonial rule meant that they already possessed state structures before decolonization. Add to that the fact that most countries before widespread globalization simply didn't have the fuel resources required to attempt to have widespread electricity and creation of factories, and you had honestly a select few countries at the start for proper development, and then afterward the environment changed to allow said processes to disperse via the internet and globalization. Not to mention, renewable energy maturation means that more places have the ability to power an industrialized society.
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@jacoblandry9377 they are Marxists after all
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@andresamplonius315 Marxist realism cannot exist due to the fact that Marxism is inherently false.
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@andresamplonius315 The problem is that it's not exploitation, which I've gone over in quite a bit of depth at this point. Though, realistically, grassroots cooperation is indeed a way to really give a check on the power of capital.
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@andresamplonius315 Ultimately, Marxism is realistically better seen as a bad religion than a realistic tool of analysis.
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