Comments by "" (@Cloud_Seeker) on "TIKhistory"
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@paidgovernmentshill_6950 Part 1
I know you are trying to explain something here but you said many false things. Just to be clear. I come from Sweden. A so called "socialist paradise" according to people in the US. So I have a fair deal of experience with socialism, even if it isn't complete socialism like behind the iron curtain.
"Benefits are you don't get exploited"
- This is very much wrong. You are even more exploited then ever. Do you know what the tax rate is here in Sweden? It is about 60-80%. You have around 25-30% income tax, but the employer is also has to pay a hidden tax in so called "Social fees" so your wage is actually 31.42% higher then what you can see. We also have VAT tax which is 25% on most products. So even when you get your wage 50% is already gone, then 1/4 is removed just for the privilege of being able to spend it. This is why a normal McDonald's meal cost around 12 USD in Sweden. High taxes might work if you get something for it. The problem is that we do not. Schools are literally falling apart. Crimes are going out of control to the point even rape cases are closed as there isn't resources to spend on solving it. Don't even bother with lesser crimes. If you are sick don't think you can have a private doctor, you get who you are assigned to. If you are on a waiting list for a operation, you might very well die before it is your turn simply because the tax money can't pay for more doctors.
So if I have to give 60-70% of my income to the government because they have this socialist worldview, but not get this so call utopia. I am exploited for sure. Exploitation happens under socialism just as much under capitalism. The idea you don't get exploited is nonsense. USSR only survived because they exploited people. When the Gulag system was removed, the death of the USSR started.
"you are in control of your own workplace and you can work less for the same reward"
- No you can't. That is just a promise socialists give but it has never actually been shown to happen. In capitalism you are not forced to work for anyone. You are free to start your own business and make your own money. Then you own everything, which include your workplace. However, that doesn't mean you can work less for the same reward. If you do that you will go out of business fast. This is just a lie socialists say will happen, but when it actually comes to delivering on it they NEVER present anything. The only people that are able to work less for the same reward are people that exploit someone else.
"a common thread is the worker controlling the means of production"
- A point I want to bring up here is that we need to talk about how this manifest. How is the worker controlling anything? Under socialism this control was collected under the government since the government is the representation for the people and the workers. If the government represent the workers, the workers controls the government, which means that if the government controls a business the worker also controls the business. In reality however this doesn't work out. It is because the workers are so extremely tiny compared to everyone else in the country that their slice of control is so small it doesn't exist. So the government elite will also think they own everything and the worker doesn't own anything. So in reality you just how a powerful elite controlling the means of production while the worker owns 0,5% of his workplace.
In Capitalism this can be solved as well. A corporation can pay people in shares. If all workers are shareholders, the corporation works for the workers.
"rather than private entities doing so for profit"
- I think you are displaying a rather big problem here. EVERYONE works for profit. Even socialism does. You show here that you don't understand profit. Profit is the money left over after costs are removed. If you don't have profits in what you do, you have wasted time. Valuable time. If you don't have profits you can grow. If you don't have profits you don't have a rainy day fund. If you don't have profits you will die since you have absolutely no flexibility in anything you do. If you make a birdhouse for 10 USD and don't get more from it then what you had to spend to make it you will make birdhouses forever until you starve to death. That is because instead of gathering food you spent all your time making birdhouses and didn't even get enough money to pay someone else to gather food for you.
Profits exist everything. No matter if it is public or private. Everyone has to make profit.
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@paidgovernmentshill_6950 Part 2
"A bunch of wood costs 10 units. I make a chair out if it, which I sell for 110 units. My labour was therefore worth 100 units."
- That is incorrect. You have to earn something on making the chair. If you don't there is no point making the chair since you have other more important things to do to survive. Your labor is not worth 100 units but 40 to 50 units. If you don't have a margin you will die. But that is only if you actually manage to sell the chair for 110 units. Maybe it is so ugly you can only sell it for 70 units. Is your labor still worth 100 units then? In capitalism it might be since you don't take that risk.
"What are the chances of me getting paid 100 units? Zero. Because the owner has to make a profit,right?"
- That is wrong simply because your labor was never worth 100 units in the first place. If you think you can do better then factory owner you can start your own chair factory and compete. If you do that you will notice very quickly that having to earn profits is not the problem. Do you not want to have an emergency fund? Are you doing charity work?
*"Ok, you say. But he has made the capital investment in the factory, machines etc (the means of production) and has to pay the energy bills to keep them running and so on.
That cost works out at another ten units per chair made."*
- Are you not forgetting about labor cost? No. The costs isn't just the material costs. The human labor cost is the most expensive thing. Which has to play a factor. The owner also has to be paid for his work. This is not profit.
"Let's say you accept that the factory machinery saves you labour so you only add 90 units by your labour. Reckon you'll get paid 90 units? Nah, the owner still has to make a profit."
- You are still falling into the same problem. You don't understand what profits is. The owner isn't just sitting around and doing nothing. He also works just like you are. He is making new deals. Trying to get people to buy the chairs and so on. Doesn't he deserves a wage? So if the chair cost 10 units in materials and 90 units in labor, that leaves 10 units left. So he has to pay himself something like 5 units and have 5 units in profit since he needs a rainy day fund in case a machine breaks down. If he has no profits he also can't replace a broken machine which means you can't build chairs which means you are fired. So is it fair that you get 90 units while the owner, the person making sure you can even get 90 units working for him, gets 5 units? That doesn't seem fair. Looks to me like you are exploiting him.
"Ok, says the (socialist) worker, how about if me and my fellow workers share the cost of that instead. So, we share the cost of the raw materials, the upkeep of the factory, power etc, (the means of production) and then we can keep the value we add via labour for ourselves instead of getting exploited."
- Apart form that you are not being exploited. You are working with fallacious reasoning and very much overestimate your own value. Do you think that 100 units is you alone? Do you sell the chair? Do you haul the chair? Do you make the business deals and so on? You think you are owned 100% of everything you make while ignoring that other people also has a hand in that process. If you start your own business with this reasoning you will fall apart fast because you have no idea what you are doing.
"Prices fall as there is no profit motive - people cooperate in making the goods that society need or wants instead of competing."
- No they will not. Prices will increase since you have to print more money if something happens. You need profit no matter who you are. You don't spend 10 hours a day working only to wake up in the same exact situation as you were in yesterday. You need profit to survive. Survival isn't just about not moving from where you are right at this very moment. Life itself can not be predicted like that. What if a hurricane comes in and destroy the chair factory? If the owner had not profits he can't replace it since he worked on a zero sum game. The only way to replace the factory is if someone else give away their resources and effort at their own expense to help you. Or you have to give away your efforts only to restore what you used to have.
You also don't seem to understand that we need competition. I already hinted at this but if you wish to drive down prices all you need to do is to create your own factory and compete in that of making chairs. If you think the factory owner have to much profits, sell your chair cheaper. That way his costumers go to you, and the factory owner has to lower his prices. If there is no competition however and there is only one person making chairs. Now that is when prices skyrocket as you can only but chairs from 1 guy, and he can set whatever price he wants as long as people pay.
The idea that competition is bad is extremely unhealthy. Even ecology shows how that is nonsense. In Yellowstone National Park all wolves were removed due to being hunted by humans. This harmed the park because the deer population grow out of control and ate all plants, they also grow unhealthy due to that no one killed the sick and weak members. This forced a lot of animals out like beavers. When wolves were reintroduced, the deer were brought to a controlled population. Beavers came back and built dams which created ponds which brought even more animals back. Competition is healthy. If you don't have it you grow sick and stale.
Edit: I also want to add that the reason Marx thought that you can achieve more with less work is because he thought the worker will become hype productive as soon as the "oppressor" is removed. I also want to add that Karl Marx never worked in a factory in his life since he mostly lived with his parents and was a journalist. He wasn't a worker and didn't understand how reality is.
I know you say this is all in theory but everything about this is extremely flawed. It lack a complete understanding of how reality looks like.
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There is a pretty big issue here in this explenation of inflation. Inflation and deflation is not inherently bad or good things. Inflation can be bad, but also good. Deflation can be good, but also bad. Having a currently in short supply so each dollar is valued highly doesn't make it better then a currently in high supply and every dollar isn't worth all that much. The point of a currency is to be a medium of exchange that is readily available to help people buy and sell things without having a barter system.
Lets say we have the following situation. A and B wants bread. You Z are a baker and sells bread. A and B pay 1 dollar for 1 bread, and since you bake 2 breads you make two dollars.
But if the economy grow and people increase. We now have A, B, C and D that wants bread. So if they want to go and buy bread, they only have 1/2 of a dollar so they only get half of a bread. You the baker has to sell 2 breads to 4 people. Clearly the curreny is worth more then it is, so people will hold out and demand that bread becomes cheaper since the bread is not worth 1 dollar anymore.
So the baker lower the price by 50% and the farmer lower the price by 50%. This is deflation.
A big problem here is that if you are smart you just noticed that since the demand for curreny itself has increased with an increasing population, but the supply of currency hasn't increased in turn. Now lets say you are someone that has 5 dollars before the deflation. Now you have 10 dollars of value just because 1 dollar increased in value as people are trying to make do with less. So if you are even smarter, you can start hoarding money. Why spend it when it will be worth more and more money just for existing and doing nothing? So now we have person E that only focus one being Scrooge McDuck and collect as much money as possible.
This will in turn lower the supply of money until most of it belong to E, and A, B, C, D, Z and the farmers simply can't do anything anymore because the money they used to use as a medium of exchange just isn't floating around anymore. The puprose of money is to be used as an exchange medium to remove a barter system, but in this situation a barter system is the only way you can conduct business since growth and E have ruined the money supply. This will cause industry to grind to a halt out of inefficiency. Its like a engine that needs oil, but there is no oil for the engine so it just stands there ready and waiting.
A way to solve this issue, is just to print more currency and inflate the money supply. Price stability is actually something you want. Yes. More people will come and demand more bread, but lets not forget that they are workers as well and produce things
Lets say C and D are farmers, and they allow the cost of producing bread to be cut in half. This means the baker and bake 4 breads for the same price it took to bake 2 breads in the past, so he can sell it for 1 dollars each. Maybe the farmers invent a new machines to cut the price to 75% instead of 50%, which makes the bake go 25% profit so he can expand his business. There is ofc issues here, but nothing is without issues. But the main point is that neither inflation or deflation are inherently bad. Deflation encourage people not engage in the economy and hoard money for hoardings sake, which cause stagnation in the economy. Inflation is a tax on savings which makes working less and less valued, so people can not engage in the economy as their money becomes more and more worthless.
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"However, food and most of consumer goods are not dependent on limited resources."
- That is incorrect. EVERYTHING is dependent on limited resources. Food is not just automatically spawned into existence. It has to be seeded, it has to be cared for, it has to be harvested and prepared. You also can not grow food indefinitely and forever. You can't just plant crops closer to each other to increase production as that will cause the plants to struggle for resources, like water. The soil is also not the same all over the world, and rainfall is not even and predictable. If food wasn't limited on resources, farming societies should have been the most well fed people in the world. But history show they were not, so your assumption is very much wrong.
I also do not get what you are talking about consumer goods. They are the very definition of being dependent on limited resources. Do you think phones, TV's, clothing and so on are not dependent on resources? You do know human labor is a resource right? A factory is a resource. I don't even know how you can say consumer goods are not affected by limited resources with a straight face. Do you know that computers and stuff today has a 6-12 month delay right now if you buy them from factories in China? Do you think it will take a year from us ordering computers from a factory to getting them if they were not limited by resources?
" In those cases, increased demand increases production and lowers the unit price."
- This is just tortured logic. Increased demand does not always increase production. Just because there is a high demand for it does not mean the supply can be increased to meet that demand. There is only so much you can carry in a truck, boat, train or airplane. There is only so many hours in a day, month and year.
"Inflation results when people are getting paid without creating adequate value."
- Not at all. Inflation is when you expand the money supply. That is it. You can mask the effect of inflation by increasing supply, but fact is that if you have increased production 100% but the price remain the same. Inflation has happened and the money before was worth more than now.
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Not really. It has a point, but it is about as accurate as the idea that it was the US that saved the world and saved the Soviet Union because they provided lend-lease.
As TIK has said before. We typically find that the war started to change by the end of 1942. When Germany had reach the end of its logistical reach, where it the Battle of Stalingrad was taking place, the battle for Moscow was taking place and so on. It was during the winter the Germany lost and was being pushed back. During this time the US didn't provide that much in lend-lease. The UK gave more lend-lease than the US did during the end of 1942. Lend-lease sure as hell helped a lot, but it didn't win the war. It helped lower the casualties and allowed the Red Army to pressure the German forced until they reached Berlin. I do believe that if you are going to say that one nation defeated the German army on their own, it is most likely something the Soviet Union can say.
However it is just as wrong as saying that the Soviets were alone. They were not. The UK was still in the fight and they still refused to give in. While the Germans invaded the USSR in 1941, the UK was bombing German territory trying to disrupt as much as possible. The western front was a technological war that required fuel, aircrafts skilled engineers, AA guns and scientists that might have been able to be used in the eastern front. If the UK should have stayed out of the fight, only a minimal force should have been left in the west, which means the USSR may have lost due to the fact Germany should have had more resources, more man power and a single focus of attack.
I do believe that if you are going to say that one nation defeated the German army on their own, it is most likely something the Soviet Union can say for the fact it was mostly through their efforts the war was turn around and started going downhill. However as I said before. They literally were not alone through the fact the UK was literally in the fight the whole time. The UK forced the Germans to divide their forces as they were not able to defeat the UK.
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