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There are 90 years of studies in social science, psychology and today even the neuroscience to support Bernays studies and experiments. The reason why he is relevant today in the publicity and marketing fields.
Stop being lazy and do a minimum basic of research to literate yourself before reply to what you have absolute no clue about.
I recommend the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Get it from your library, though, don't give more money to Bezos). tl;dr: Literally no one succeeds in a vacuum. Every single successful person has had many, many environmental factors which led to their success, even if at first glance they came from nothing.
>what would be an acceptable change in our economic structure, such that a small collection of sultans who don't work can no longer force the CEO of a successful company to make decisions based on their narrow interests, so the company's decisions can be based on employee or consumer interest, and how can we change our system of retirement, so that an investment in the occasionally very unstable stock market isn't so much of a risk for ordinary working people?
We should stop making alternatives illegal.
Currently we have a regulatory system that locks in the current form of corporate arrangements and makes sure that there are plenty of roadblocks in front of the small guy. Then it makes sure that only the ~~wealthy~~ accredited investors have access to alternative forms of investing.
After spending some time as a broker I had a Joel Salatin moment; everything I wanted to do was illegal (or else needlessly complex & expensive).
>Environment doesn't guarantee anything: Rags-to-riches happen.
You should read the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
>Blaming everything on forces beyond your control is a bad mental habit; it becomes an excuse not to try to help yourself.
It's important to assign blame correctly. Taking responsibility for problems which are not your fault is just as unhealthy as failing to take responsibility for problems that are your fault.
Production Values = 10
Lyrical Meter = 8
Historical accuracy = 3.4
It's telling that the Mont Perelin society still pushes this narrative as if Ludvig Von ("The Merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history") Mises was taken seriously in his day or since.
Marx is like a welterweight runner-up and Von Mises is still trying to auction off his sweaty towels. Marx indirectly launched the Russian Revolution. Von Mises got a part-time job at the Vienna Chamber of Commerce.
But yeah totally, sure, the "Marginal Revolution" was a real revolution and not at all far-right historical revisionism.
"In 1820 everyone was poor". It's scary how good these lyricists are at presenting just how deluded conservatives really are. As if those famines were gonna hit any day now. real history suggest otherwise
Every society will have a different "breaking point". Wealth inequality is not all that matters, but it is a large factor. It introduces great friction within a society. I urge you to read The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant:
>“We conclude that the concentration of wealth is natural and inevitable, and is periodically alleviated by violent or peaceable partial redistribution. In this view all economic history is the slow heartbeat of the social organism, a vast systole and diastole of concentrating wealth and compulsive recirculation.”
I would like to coin the term fuzzword. It's like a buzzword (a technical term unique to a field used to describe concepts to laypersons) but designed to obfuscate a lack of rigor.
"Means of production" appears to be a fuzzword.
No reasonable person chooses option 1 in this scenario, as you have given it. Like, literally, moral psychologists use this as a test of whether or not you're capable of forming reasonable moral judgements.
The secret to being poor in America is to buy stuff you can't afford. Just go $30K into debt for a car, $50K for a college degree, and $170K for a house. Then clock another $16K on the credit cards.
It works in Sweden, too! In fact it works about twice as well in Scandinavia, either because they have looser purses or because the government doesn't leave them much disposable income to begin with.
"My point is that none of us are really safe, what do we do when there are simply no jobs left? "
Fully automated luxury communism
https://www.amazon.com/Fully-Automated-Luxury-Communism-Manifesto/dp/1786632632/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1KCTKGXKBSTI2&dchild=1&keywords=fully+automated+luxury+communism&qid=1614247683&sprefix=Fully+Automated+%2Caps%2C272&sr=8-1
The more that is purchased, the less available, and if someone wants to control everything, that means the demand for everything is truly infinite.
With infinite demand and increasing scarcity, the prices of the un-owned property goes through the roof.
The pareto principle states that 80 percent of the product is due to 20 percent of the effort, and this is visible throughout society, but the hyper-rich have a tendency to raise spoiled children who squander the wealth within 3 generations, a fact I think I read in the book "The Millionaire Next Door" (if anyone has a source that isn't my memory, let me know).
> It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into a compliance with their terms. The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
>Several important precepts are entirely non-empirical, such as equilibrium commodity price being a function of socially necessary labor-time. Marx does not establish this empirically nor can it be established empirically without a method of determining socially necessary labor time that isn't circular
Wrong (note: labor values = SNLT)
All you need to do to prove the LTV here is to point out a significant correlation between commodity prices and SNLT (which is the average labor time per commodity in an industry). And this study found a correlation of about 95% in many countries across the world...
>Also, Marx's entire approach is dialectical not scientific. Where do you see theory, hypothesis, and experiment in Marx? Where do you even see actual data rather than thought experiment?
He didnt have access to that data in 1840. We do now.
There is no word that describes the system we oppose that is used in the general consensus. (Capitalism means markets to a lot of people.)
There is no word that describes the system we advocate that is used in the general consensus. (Socialism means government to a lot of people.)
I also do not require that you "use my made-up definition." ("[M]ade-up" I can only imagine in this sense means "definitions we've used for 200 years.") This whole post is saying the opposite of that.
You might as well criticize physicists for talking about power to refer to the rate at which work is done rather than "ability to do or act."
>In Capitalism the capital is in the hands of a few
If you have a 401k you have capital.
Heck, buy capital in 500+ enterprises for 100 bucks over here.
>and forces people with no capital to work for people with capital.
People with nothing need to work for people with something. Is this any different in socialism? Just because you change the "people with capital" from one entity into all the entities that work somewhere you are still forced to work for people with the capital.
In fact all you have done is banned people from having capital individually, removing the only way to escape the "horrible fate" of working for others.
> Those who say that Marx ignores human nature usually mean by ‘human nature’ egoism, selfishness. Marx does not deny that in existing capitalist society people tend to be narrowly egoistic… To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough.
From here
You’re interested in arguing not learning so take care.
In general the term is "Financialization" and there is a recent book which coins the term (I think?):
​
https://www.amazon.com/Financialization-Economics-Finance-Capital-Domination/dp/1137265817
​
​
Anatomy of the State - Murray Rothbard
Machinery of Freedom - David Friedman
The Richest Man in Babylon - definitely not some guy from ancient babylon who counted shekels for a living
Applied Cryptography - Bruce Schneier
What piqued my interest in these ideas
Ron Paul - Liberty Defined
Bastiat - The Law
The US Constitution and federalist papers (relative to the rest of history)
What has helped me learn more
Henry Hazlitt - Economics in One Lesson
Michael Huemer - The Problem of Political Authority
Rothbard essays and excerpts from The Ethics of Liberty
Ludwig von Mises - Human Action (I've read maybe 15%, but that portion alone is powerful).
Lysander Spooner - The Constitution of No Authority
You should add these works of Cockshott & Cottrell as well:
https://www.academia.edu/2687240/Why_Labour_Time_Should_Be_the_Basis_of_Economic_Calculation
> If individual actors in the economy do not have perfect information when they conduct themselves, be it through the voluntary purchasing of some good or otherwise, then the exchange is simply not voluntary; ergo a regulatory agency is needed to ensure that the act is, in fact, voluntary.
Cueg, this is Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson 101. The free market will eliminate any and all cancer-causing migraine medicines over time - it'll just take a lot of people getting cancer and the spread of that information before it gets to that point! It's completely ethical.
Depending on your sect:
The Theory of Money and Credit
Atlas Shrugged
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
The U.S. Constitution
The Wealth of Nations
The Pure Theory of Capital
The Bible
Ah, so their culture is inferior, so taking their shit is okay. I have a hymn for you too.
By the way, if using things more productively justifies taking them, then I should be able to use your car when you're not using it. Why do you lock your car and prevent me from using it?
Wiki is just a place to start it's also very easy to pull up on the fly if you're looking for more in depth anarchist theory I recommend https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index it has just about everything you need to know
I think that everyone on all sides should pay greater attention to how they actually use terms. Throughout your whole post, you have capitalized both Socialism and Capitalism. Usually a proper noun conveys the intent to use these terms as groups or ideologies, not as technical terms.
So for example, socialism (with a lowercase s) is a technical term with a very specific definition. Defined as a system of property relation (where that relation is social) and a system of distribution (where that distribution is determined socially).
Socialism (with an uppercase s) indicates a group or ideology that may or may not be in line with the technical definition. For example: Republicans indicate a specific group, with a specific agenda and platform. On the other hand, a republican is "(of a form of government, constitution, etc.) belonging to, or characteristic of a republic." You can be a Republican and support and pursue very un-republican things. You can also be republican while being a Democrat. As another example, even if the former Soviet Union called it self communist or socialist, they were only in name, and hence they were Communist, not communist. Was the Soviet Union a social arrangement characterized by the dissolution of the state and the obsolescence of money? No. Therefore it wasn't communist per the technical term. Are Scandinavian countries socialist? Do the works own the means of production? Not really. Therefore they aren't socialist per the technical term.
More specifically, we can have some Socialist movement or Socialist party that seeks to bring the world marginally closer to socialism. But it wont be technically socialist till, for instance, property relations are made social, the means of production are social, and distribution is social.
> I believe humans will act in what they perceive to be their best interest
There's actually a lot of work in biology that has a different take on this if you're interested in reading a bit.
>Altruistic traits are traits that reduce the fitness (survival or reproduction) of the individual with the trait (known as the “actor”) while increasing the fitness of other individuals (known as the “recipients”).
I don't see it listed as an opposite. https://www.powerthesaurus.org/public_ownership/antonym
https://www.powerthesaurus.org/authoritarianism/antonyms
Public ownership isn't inherently bad, it just depends on how it's implemented and controlled..
In the name of public ownership, dictators and oligarchies definitely have control of resources, that we have no control ov even as a collective
1) Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell. Although I am no longer the libertarian I once was, it turned me out of a long time belief in socialism.
2) Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. Helped shape my views a lot on how the economy should be run. My current views are much closer to Friedman than to Sowell.
3) Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger. Introduced me to foreign policy realism. I am not a realist, but I am a neocon, so it did influence me.
4) The Courage to Act by Ben Bernanke. Taught me how central banking and monetary policy work.
5) Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Taught me about democracy, inclusive institutions, and how successful nations develop.
General Economics:
Dasgupta - Economics: A Very Short Introduction
Wolff - Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian
Wapshott - Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics
Austrian Economics:
Bastiat - What is Seen and What is Not Seen
Menger - On the Origins of Money
Hazlitt - Economics in One Lesson
Rothbard - What Has Government Done to Our Money?
Bien Greaves - Free Market Economics: A Basic Reader
Butler - Austrian Economics, a Primer
Econometrics/Keynesian Economics:
Krugman - Introduction to The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
Skidelsky - Keynes: A Very Short Introduction
Stock/Watson - Introduction to Econometrics
Are we just talking about capitalism and socialism? Just talking about economics specifically? If not, then I'll suggest:
Reactionary Thought:
Nietzsche - Genealogy of Morals
Carlyle - The French Revolution: A History
Gassett - Revolt of the Masses
Evola - Revolt Against the Modern World
Junger - Storm of Steel
Yarvin - An Open Letter to Open Minded Progressives
Fascism:
Gentile/Mussolini - The Doctrine Of Fascism
Passmore - Fascism: A Very Short Introduction
Griffiths - An Intelligent Person's Guide to Fascism
According to a projection study done by Pew (link to The Guardian's write-up about it),
> Europe’s Muslim population, boosted by large families and immigration, will nearly double, from less than 6% (43 million people) in 2010 to more than 10% (71 million people) in 2050, the forecast estimates.
About a half-dozen wingnutty gymnastics and you get the Extremist Islamic European Hegemony meme.
The point was to link the advertising of consumer goods and the advertising of ideologies in your mind. A lot of political ideologies are guilty of the "punch-medicine" analogy too. Encouraging people to abolish advertising is itself an advertisement. Those same people who "don't (out)weigh the pros and cons of every purchase" can't be expected to weigh the pros and cons of your ideology either.
Addendum: Here is an example of how the world's freest market, the internet, produced a solution to unwanted advertising. https://adblockplus.org/ Works wonderfully.
Don't know where you're getting that definition
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/exploitation
>noun 1. use or utilization, especially for profit: the exploitation of newly discovered oil fields. 2. selfish utilization: He got ahead through the exploitation of his friends. 3. the combined, often varied, use of public-relations and advertising techniques to promote a person, movie, product, etc.
Start here to see that working hours have indeed gone down over the past 100 years or so.
​
>Now imagine the cost of houses, they have gone exponential too, the cost of living have gone cubic and the cost of education of children have gone cubic too.
Keep in mind that as productivity has gone up the cost of many goods has gone down so that even though wages have not kept pace. Think 50 years ago no person could afford a super computer but now we all hold one in our hands.
That being said things like housing and education have gone up by crazy amounts and this is indicative of a market failure but it is not the fault of capitalism but rather a side effect of incredibly cheap money (monetary policy). If you took away cheap money, both education providers and house builders would have to build cheap housing or else not sell houses and go out of business.
> Under a capitalist system, if you're successful on your first run, then you expand because expansion is the only goal that any capitalist company ever has, ever. Growth growth growth at all costs. > But a socialist system wouldn't need that.
And that is why socialism of this sort would fail to meet the needs of its people. Economies of scale are wonderful things for producing cheap goods and services. Check out Tyler Cowen’s argument on the benefits of big business: https://www.amazon.com/Big-Business-Letter-American-Anti-Hero/dp/1250110548/ref=nodl_
> How can you consider yourself an Austrian "Econ" acolyte while rejecting Mises and Rothbard?
I was specifying rejecting their methodology, not their economics entirely. In my book, I dedicate a chapter to Rothbard.
>Also, what good is Austrian "Econ" at all without praxeology?
A lot of Austrian monetary theory, capital theory, entrepreneurship, etc. doesn't rely on praxeology. I've spoken to both Keynesians and some Austrians we seem to agree with while while prax can tell us that humans act purposefully, it can't tell us everything about economics. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, we need to do good economics as well.
>We shall again take for granted the availability of a system of public relief which provides a uniform minimum for all instances of proved need, so that no member of the community need be in want of food or shelter.
Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 424
>The arrangement that recommends itself on purely mechanical grounds is a negative income tax. […] The advantages of this arrangement are clear. It is directed specifically at the problem of poverty. It gives help in the form most useful to the individual, namely, cash. It is general and could be substituted for the host of special measures now in effect. It makes explicit the cost borne by society. It operates outside the market. Like any other measures to alleviate poverty, it reduces the incentives of those helped to help themselves, but it does not eliminate that incentive entirely, as a system of supplementing incomes up to some fixed minimum would. An extra dollar earned always means more money available for expenditure.
Milton Freedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 12 : The Alleviation of Poverty
Capital Vol. 1 is pretty much obligatory for the socialist side, and it also gives insight to some degree into classical economics with references to Smith, Ricardo, etc.
On the cap side it kind of depends on whether you want more economic or political literature. Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt is a good starting point to modern market theory from what I've heard (and read), I'd recommend Rawls for the political and philosophical side of things, though I'm obviously biased as a Social Liberal.
Milton Friedman gave multiple speeches on the topic which are available on YouTube. He also wrote about it in Capitalism and Freedom, which, while great, is a pro-classical liberalism book so maybe not what you are looking to read based on description of post.
Capitalism was not a theory to be implemented (nor is socialism/communism). The Wealth of Nations is not a proposal, it is an analysis.
"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." - Karl Marx
I understand your usage, but historically, "capitalism" meant the opposite, i.e. the "crony" in "crony capitalism" is redundant, so a free market in Lockean property is Capitalism minus crony. See Marx in chapter 31 of Capital for example.
I'm not a Marxist, but it's an historical fact that Marx and other socialists used "capitalism" in this pejorative sense before classical liberals ever used it. Locke, Smith and Ricardo were never "capitalists" or advocates of "capitalism" at all.
Even much later, in the 1940s, Henry Hazlitt, in Economics in One Lesson, does not use "capitalism" in the way that modern libertarians (particularly right-libertarians) now use it. He never uses the word "capitalism" in fact, and a "capitalist" in his lexicon is simply a proprietor, including rent seeking proprietors. He doesn't qualify "capitalist" with "crony" to indicate a political rent seeker. He doesn't use the word "crony" at all either.
> I think it is pretty easy to see what aggression is.
I agree. Just look at the many people who do not regard taxation as aggresive. Or the number of people that will call trespass an act of force.
> The use of force against someone else or something which someone else rightfully owns is aggression.
Keyword here is "rightfully owns".
> Theft, trespass, and physical violence all fall within unjust initiatory aggression.
Oh, so now it's "unjust initiatory aggression"? Just keep piling words on there.
> Children often understand "mine" vs "yours".
That is no platform to build your house of cards on. Yes, they have some notions of it. So what? They'll also claim things as theirs that don't actually belong to them (or they'll say it should belong to them).
> Yes. >> http://www.dictionary.com/browse/violence?s=t > an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power, as against rights or laws > Theft and trespass are an unjust or unwarranted exertion of force or power over something which someone else has rightful ownership.
You've just given me the definition that I am using. A pick pocket uses no force or power.
> That is one of the definitions of violence.
Only in your head it is. Go out and ask several of your non-libertarian associates and see what they say.
> If someone's ideology allows for such aggressive violence, then it is not a peaceful ideology.
You don't really need to ask this question hypothetically. In many parts of the world it already is unprofitable to provide necessary goods/services.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/food-production-hunger-waste-agriculture-commodity-capitalism/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/global-poor-spend-more-on-water-than-rich_n_56ec31cce4b03a640a6a4f4b
>“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!”
There is no source to back up that quote. Read here. Even if we were to assume he actually said that, he had a point. It was during the revolution and right afterwards, there was no court system even in place to try them. Is it ideal? No it's not, but yet again you are ignoring all of the context.
>Do you just make this shit up as you go along?
You are absolutely terrible at looking at context aren't you? In modern day, stable USA, we need to be sure we don't execute innocents. In revolutionary Cuba, which was probably lacking an extensive judiciary system, prosecutions for criminals might be done in a slightly different way than in modern day USA.
How are they supposed to find time for Nietzsche when there are so many other great books to read while they masturbate and cry?
What are you talking about? It isn't like the state isn't dealing with pharmaceutical companies. It's just that all the bargaining power is more centralized, instead of being super decentralized and broken up into a bunch of smaller groups that have less bargaining power and represent less people. In fact, SWEDEN ACTUALLY HAS A PRIVATE SYSTEM TOO. Good try though. The state is always more efficient.
For most of human history we existed as egalitarian tribal hunter gatherers.
Egalitarian: relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities.
A couple hundred thousand years ago egalitarian tribes were displaced by religious hierarchy. [http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hunter-Gatherers_and_Play] This is when we stopped having equal opportuinty, and started justify hierarchy with notions about 'character'. Even now displays of wealth is the most commonly used indicator of who deserve more wealth. Weather it's fancy suits in the west or chandeliers in the middle east, we use access to wealth as a feedback loop that causes poverty and is destroying our environment.
I am under the impression that anarchism means without rulers (a state), but not without rules. Governance may imply rulers, which is a hierarchy. But maybe I was understanding the word governance differently.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/governance?s=t
governance
government; exercise of authority; control.
a method or system of government or management.
In terms of short reads:
Economics in 1 lesson
Leave Me Alone & I'll Make You Rich
Free Market Economics: A Basic Reader
Entrepreneurship: A Primer
For some fiction that helps contextualize economic realties:
The Price of Everything
Time Will Run Back
The Invisible Heart
I think his work is really important. I think economic historian Mark Blaug had a good take on him. Im paraphrasing but basically that he was ahead of the rest in terms of intuitive economic insight. He didnt have the analytical rigour of Marx or Ricardo but you can see him, in The Wealth of Nations, grasping his way toward a model of supply and demand with downward sloping demand and upward sloping (short run) supply curves (this all about 100 years before a theory of diminishing marginal utility).
And he wasnt the first to propose that private self-interests could be marshalled to benefit the public interest given the right institutional context. (Im actually reading a work by a renaissance humanist, Vico, and he seems to anticipate this kind of thinking a lot which is interesting. Anyway). But he does do a lot of the sort of economic analysis that economists today would call comparative statics throughout The Wealth of Nations that suggests an understanding of how individual motives and welfare might relate as markets find optimal prices in equilibrium.
Overall he just had such an incisive view of this emerging system of production, how it was defined primarily by a peculiar sort of social division of labor. I got my appreciation of Smith by reading Marx actually. Its Smith who Marx credits with discovering the origin of surplus value. Great thinker.
TIL that for whatever reasons, people can accept the wide-ranging impacts of books and documents written nearly a millennium ago, such as the magna carta and the centuries-ago The Wealth of Nations, but fail to appreciate that genocide and human bondage leave impacts that reverberate for gasp more than a century.
TIL that people believe that racism and bigotry ended "six or seven generations" ago, despite massive empirical research indicating present-day unjustified disparities --- FYI, women and minorities only even got the "vote" (in quotes because massive disenfranchisement still exists) less than "six or seven generations ago."
TIL that people believe that all significant injustice toward minorities and disaffected groups ended the moment slavery did, apparently.
TIL you don't know what you're talking about.
A socialist can probably recommend a simple book on socialist policies better than I can, but the go-to intro I usually recommend is called: "An Introduction to Socialism" by Huberman and Sweezy. Useful book written for educated young folks.
For capitalism, I would start with the famous "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt. If you want to get more detailed, but still readable, read "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell, both books are easy to read, but Hazlitt's will take you less than a day to finish, while Sowell's is quite comprehensive.
> Since NAFTA imports of goods and services have increased over 100%
Why is this good?
I mean, I know the obvious answers. There's a really good chapter in Economics in One Lesson which is I think called "The Drive for Exports" that does a great job of puncturing all the simple economic arguments against free trade. But those are just economic arguments. What about non-economic arguments?
Here's an example of a non-economic argument: free trade benefits developing economies geopolitically and in terms of security much more than developed ones. Take for example America and China.
America was once the world leader in industry, but in expanding free trade (via NAFTA especially), manufacturing and other industrial operations have fled overseas. No biggie, America has made the transition to a post-industrial service economy, with some bumps along the way. Sure, some people have been left behind, but overall prosperity has grown, and standards of living have continued to rise on average.
But something has changed--America now imports a lot of what its economy needs to keep running (especially if you're a Keynesian and you think the economy runs on consumption). This puts it at a significant trading disadvantage with China, the beneficiary of its free trade policies. Think of it this way: if an impassable barrier were erected between China and the US, which one would cry uncle first? China, which is far more self-sufficient? Or the US, which (if Krugman is right) were "aggregate demand" to see a slight downtick, would collapse into an economic black hole? The fact is that the US needs China a hell of a lot more than China needs the US; China can at least feed and clothe itself. This does not put America on firm footing in terms of security or bargaining power. No wonder it has become more militant and bellicose over time.
Free trade benefits all parties economically on average, especially when times are good. But economics is one consideration among many.
>Nobody sat in a coffee shop and considered a world where capitalism would be implemented.
Maybe not a coffee shop... but this is basically what The Wealth of Nations is. It was a pre-capitalist work that defined, largely through misinterpretation of later generations, the groundwork for capitalism itself as a coherent system.
Capitalism and Freedom is actually a really good read if you want a good advocate for state capitalism. As an anarchist, it's mad weird. Every other sentence makes perfect sense, but every other sentence is the dumbest thing I've ever read.
>Marxian economics distinguishes between different forms of capital: constant capital, which refers to capital goods
variable capital, which refers to labor-inputs, where the cost is "variable" based on the amount of wages and salaries are paid throughout the duration of an employee's contract/employment,
fictitious capital, which refers to intangible representations or abstractions of physical capital, such as stocks, bonds and securities (or "tradable paper claims to wealth")
and
>Adam Smith, in his seminal work The Wealth of Nations, described wealth as "the annual produce of the land and labour of the society". This "produce" is, at its simplest, that which satisfies human needs and wants of utility. In popular usage, wealth can be described as an abundance of items of economic value, or the state of controlling or possessing such items, usually in the form of money, real estate and personal property. An individual who is considered wealthy, affluent, or rich is someone who has accumulated substantial wealth relative to others in their society or reference group.
>Marxian economics (see labor theory of value) distinguishes in the Grundrisse between material wealth and human wealth, defining human wealth as "wealth in human relations"; land and labour were the source of all material wealth.
Anatomy of the State isn't economics. It's mostly about the modus operandi of the government.
I recommend Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market by Murray Rothbard (Or, if you prefer a free digital version). It is both a treatise on economics and the synthesis of all the work done before him in the Austrian School of Economics, which is built from the ground up from the action axiom, that humans act by applying means to accomplish ends. It essentially begins with this, then with a few added observations builds out a deductive theory of economics. Moreover, it is value-free, meaning that it doesn't assume one thing is better or worse than another. This framework can be applied to all economies, and it goes way beyond Adam Smith.
The Wealth of Nations is quite different from economics today, and it has a number of issues which are fixed by Rothbard (or by those before him). For instance, the paradox between use-value and exchange-value supplied by Smith is solved.
Oh, and the book isn't Marxist at all. I don't mean to be hijacking this thread but I thought I would respond in the context of your reply.
>socialism can't work because central planning
The economic calculation problem is not exclusive to central planning and the idiots that call themselves market socialists will still face a nation wrecking calculation problem by messing with the land market.
If you think the economic calculation problem is exclusive to some sort of specific central government then you do not understand it. It was called the "knowledge problem of central planning" merely because of the context in which it was being originally used.
>was later dismissed by Mises
Nice job making shit up.
>seen as a laughing stock by mainstream capitalist economists
Unlikely socialists of course. Economists understand how socialism can work and is far better than the Austrian school of economics. The fact that "Economics in One Lesson" is one of the best selling and praised econ books of all time was written by an Austrian does not contradict your claim that they are a laughing stock and is in fact just a coincidence.
Economics in One Lesson^(pdf) by Henry Hazlitt and you'll stop being socialist.
Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard and you will stop being statist.
That's just to start, if you like what you see, the rabbit hole of libertarianism runs as deep as our love for liberty.
Not the original commentor, but the Merriam-Webster definition is sufficient. We're not trying to redefine the term when it's convenient. I think most leftists would agree with the following definitions.
1: of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority
2: of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people
>Well, no I dont think its a given. But you ignored my question which was why you believe that to be true in this case.
I haven't seen anything in this thread that leads me to believe it's true or false. This thread is full of speculation and light on research.
>Yes, working people invest. Its called a pension, or a 401k. Its how they retire.
401k's are available to most people, but most people aren't using them. I'm suspect that if you broke this data down by income brackets, working class people would be the least likely group to have a 401k.
>Maybe they have nothing to gain from worker coops because they arent productive?
I'm not discounting that possibility, I just want people to entertain all possibilities. The first post here might make for a good discussion.
> Don't other people also have at least some rights regarding the house, such as looking at it for example?
Anyone is free to look at it or picture of it or think of it or be on the same planet with it but rights only concern actions with tangible effects.
>Ok, so it's more of a moral right then?
The right that your name is always shown with your work? No.
>You think there are chimpanzees who own things?
"Property in Nonhuman Primates."
>That would imply chimpanzees have rights.
Sure, and I'm not just talking about the right to be an hilarious magician's assistant. I also think dogs have the right not to have their faces eaten alive by sandflies, even if for science.
Its not an in-joke to this sub, /u/CatWhisperer5000 is referring to this common disputably inaccurately contributed-to-John-Steinbeck quote:
I'm not defining a state, but a monopoly on violence.
>State monopoly on violence, in political science and sociology, the concept that the state alone has the right to use or authorize the use of physical force. It is widely regarded as a defining characteristic of the modern state.
http://www.britannica.com/topic/state-monopoly-on-violence
I can copy-paste definitions all day. You're trying to add what you will to a word and concept which is, again, already defined.
>Alleviate
>: relieve, lessen: such as
>a : to make (something, such as suffering) more bearable Her sympathy alleviated his distress.
>b : to partially remove or correct (something undesirable)
> b (1) : human activity that provides the goods or services in an economy Industry needs labor for production. (2) : the services performed by workers for wages as distinguished from those rendered by entrepreneurs for profits
>You pulled that number straight out of your ass.
My source comes from the Soviet statistical yearbook which has been found to be accurate. Your website uses data from the Maddison project and I wouldn't trust it too much for a couple reasons.
- He uses Gerry Kheramis international dollars. The applied Geary-Khamis method may suffer from Gerschenkron effect, i.e. may produced biased estimates for those countries whose expenditure and price structure differ substantially from the international average, which tends to be dominated by high-income countries, since the weighting scheme reflects country shares in total expenditure. In addition, he overstates the Soviet GDP per capita in 1913 and says that Soviet GDP per capita was about 1/4 of the American level. This can't be true considering that the largest sector at the time(agriculture) was producing much less than the USA despite the fact that it employed more than 6 times the number of American people in agriculture at the time. Better estimates put Soviet GDP p/c at 15% of the American level in 1913 and about 10% of the American level in 1928(beginning of 5 year plans). In addition, he under estimates Soviet GDP in 1989 as it was really about 1/2, not 31% of American GDP p/c according to the CIA and Penn World Table 5.6. This means that Maddison greatly understates growth in the USSR. Your chart(http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union) shows that Soviet GDP was only half of the American level in 1989 which was certainly better than the level in 1928(only 10% of American GDP).
>http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1981/11/05/the-health-crisis-in-the-ussr-an-exchange/ This article points out that the life expectancy was lower than other western countries...
This is true, but Soviet living standards were rapidly catching up. Soviet life expectancy back in 1928 was only about 35-40 years, but rapidly increased to almost 70 years in 1958.
It's not a 100% anonymous program, obviously, but it does work pretty well.
You can't really make a 100% anonymous program, because you can always reverse-engineer the program and find a way through.
>If you explained instead of memeing we could probably understand each other better.
Aw, what's the fun in that?
>Every owner, ceo, executive makes astronomically more than the rest of the workers.
That's literally not even close to being true. Not at the beginning, where 20% of businesses fail, or 5 years in, when half of businesses fail (that's businesses failing, not even including those who are still in debt or those equity owners receiving less than their own employees, whom they have to pay whether they go into debt or not), or even economically. Like I said, you're talking about 1% of 1% of people. Like, I don't know if you know this, but the way that business works is that you pay for expenses (including wages for employees, which is mandatory), then you make sales, and if you have more money at the end of the year than you had to spend to sell all of that, then you get to take the rest home in proportion to your equity. OR you could spend a certain amount so that you can do business next year.
>Workers are paid so little in many cases, they are only a paycheck away from homelessness.
There are more factors to this than equity ownership.
>There are vastly more homeless people now than in the past 50 years.
There are many more factors to this than equity ownership.
>There are systematic efforts to deny benefits.
This is an unfounded, untrue conspiracy theory.
>It's obvious in any city, all you need to do is look around outside.
Looks are often deceiving. We see what we're meant to see. I prefer to perceive the underlying idea to understand the reality.
Let's do a quick math problem.
I made prints of this cartoon I made https://steemit.com/cartoon/@oflameo/death-to-obamacare. I printed 8 for 4 USD and I sold 1 signed copy for 10 USD and I gave away 1 unsigned copy for free.
What is Labor Value of a signed print? What is the Labor Value of an unsigned print?
I'll let you attempt to solve the problem first.
> What do they do with their billions? They don't consume it; that would be impossible. They invest it instead.
Or, instead of investing it back into the economy, they stash it in offshore bank accounts to avoid taxes: https://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/23/business/super-rich-hidden-wealth-offshore/index.html
And I’m going to tell you that now and forever, that voting for the Libertarian party will always be a joke. They’re like the greens of the right wing ideologies.
The most effective way to remove “pay to play” lobbying and what basically amounts to bribes to change tax codes is to take money out of politics. A good example campaigning to enact the American Anti-Corruption Act.
Voting for a party every few years which hovers at or below 2% of the total active voting population isn’t going to change anything, not to mention is full of clowns like Gary Johnson.
Listen to activists, the most change occurs from constant effort especially between campaign seasons.
Not completely! There was definitely a left-wing of the technocrat movement that tended towards libertarian socialism. Marcuse Among the Technocrats: America, Automation, and Postcapitalist Utopias, 1900-1941 is a really good article on this tendency.
Specialization and expertise, just as with technology and production itself, finds applications in both capitalism and socialism, and will look differently in accordance with the organizational of the system.
>Anarchy. From the Greek work anarchos. An (negative) - archos (ruler) => absence of ruler.
Yes. And someone with authority, that is the ability to make adults do something, is a ruler, hence anarchism opposes authority. Anarchists have always differentiated between expertise (your doctor* example) and authority.
But etymology is not an argument.
Theory on the other hand, is.
*Sport coach sorry
That is a response to this: >This quote from the Manifesto is kinda close to that:
Which is a response to this: >Although I don't believe he used the phrase himself, the position "socialism or barbarism" is far more common among Marxists which followed who would also not maintain the degree of certainty implied.
Socialism or Barbarism does not equal what you said: "That capitalism will collapse and lead to socialism which will lead to communism."
No, actually - it also reduces the scarcity of paying others to rid one of perfectly good things....
...but, engineering post-scarcity is the only reasonable economic good, and it probably becomes a lot neater and more pervasive post-scarcity. :)
>And explain how we are enslaved by corporations?
If you have to ask that it suggests that you do not have the necessary intelligence to understand the answer anyway. But let's pretend that is not the case. Read this:
https://www.amazon.com/Corporatocracy-Corporate-Citizen-Invisible-Ruthless/dp/9382947205
If you want the state to create or enforce a monopoly, you aren't a Capitalist. Simply repeating "they are Capitalists!" does not make it true. These are the people who funded the Bolsheviks, does that make them Communists? They are 100% STATISTS.
https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Bolshevik-Revolution-Capitalists/dp/190557035X
They just used government to shutdown private business for a whole year while thier corporations consolidated customers. Many of those businesses will never come back. This is not Capitalism and Corporate Personhood does not exist without the State to grant special privileges while avoiding legal liability. Corporate status itself is a fiction created by the State.
>I asked you to name a pro capitalist book you have read and you could not
Lol, I did tell you about a pro-capitalist book. Where does money come from.
https://www.amazon.com/Where-Does-Money-Come-Ryan-Collins/dp/1521043892
Unless, you want me to read an ideological book that defends capitalism wholesale. No, I do not do that. I read normal business or economics books which are generally implicitly supportive of capitalism but are not willing to hold back criticism of the way it is done today.
>The book you have read is anti capitalist and about only tiny aspect of monetary policy
How on earth is it anti-capitalist?
And I do not care about socialist fascists or whatever you are talking about.
Hernado De Soto (The swiss economist, not the 16th century spanish explorer).
His work examining the differences between the formal and informal economy is considered foundational by many institutional economists as far as describing the economic role of institutions (such as contracts and formal property rights), for the development of 1st-world capitalist market-economies and what an econ looks like with and without them.
Essentially his work explains WHY indicies like "rule of law" or 'economic freedom" or "corruption percpetion index" or "anti self-dealing index", ect have the explanitory power that they do.
Also, because he campaigned on this issue in Peru, the Shining Path (maoist guerrillas) tried to assasssinate him.
Interesting guy.
EDIT: I found the <strong>amazon link to his work</strong>
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. I've heard all kinds of misinformation about him/it and I figured it was worth going straight to the source. I figure being able to cite Smith's views on rent (which I believe to be entirely consistent with my own) should cut down on the number of people calling me a communist.
I can understand wanting to keep people from snapping their minds shut and that sort of thing, but language is inherently contextual, and communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness. There's a quote from The Elements of Style:
>[Will Strunk] felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, a man floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone trying to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get his man up on dry ground, or at least throw him a rope.
So personally I'm pro-flair, but to each their own. I think there are valid arguments either way.
Seriously the correct answer is *The Worldly Philosophers * by economic hostorian Robert Heilbroner. I believe theres a pdf version you can get online and if i find it, ill link it when i get to work. This is the second most best selling economics text in history behind Samuelson's influential econ textbook. Heilbroner goes through the ideas of the major economic thinkers from Smith to Malthus to Marx to Keynes.
This is a must read for someone knew to economic theory who wants an introduction to the various schools of thought on both sides of the debate. It is authoritative and accessible. And, as a Marxist, I do not recommend Das Kapital for starters.
EDIT: Here is a pdf of the book if you're interested.
> Adam Smith
I've read much of The Wealth of Nations, and I don't recall Smith addressing this problem. Also, Smith was largely describing conditions that had already come to pass. He is not the designer of capitalism, but a describer.
Well no, obviously the presence of capital does not make a system capitalist, or else every system ever would be capitalist. It's not like any form of social organization is *social*ism, even though it's in the name.
For simplicity's sake, I'll say that capitalism is a system based on the principles described by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.
John Locke - Two Treatises of Government
Albert Nock - Our Enemy, the State
Adam Smith - Wealth of Nations
Ludwig Von Mises - The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
Henry Hazlitt - Economics in One Lesson
Murray Rothbard - What Has Government Done to Our Money
Eamonn Butler - Austrian Economics: A Primer
All come to mind but there are quite a few more
>The causal link between the economic reforms and human rights are offered by two com-peting theoretical traditions in political economy. First, the direct effects of economic liber-alism on human rights can be traced back to Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations,” which argued that people who are free from economic regulations and restraints will naturally solve collective dilemmas such as peace and security as if by use of a “hidden hand” (Smith 1776).
>Free markets encourage voluntary exchange and the allocation of goods according to supply and demand, whereas success and failure in the market is based on effort and talents rather than by privilege. These processes obtain harmony because the power to determine social outcomes largely rests with individuals and communities rather than states—in other words, respect for property rights leads to the dilution of state power and the empowerment of citizens, who are free to choose or exit with their assets.
The first point is that this is not an argument against socialism or anti-capitalism, but against a system in which "privilege" supersedes "merit", and against centralism
Secondly, this is nothing but theoretical speculation - the paper provides evidence for correlation, not for causation. And it's quite easy to speculate that the market freedoms are not the cause of the social and political freedoms. The two trends may share a common cause (this being by far the most likely scenario). Or, if a government's free market policies can cause its political policies, then the converse may also be true.
> You know Marx . . . created the word capital
This is ridiculous. The word 'capital' appears roughly three thousand times in The Wealth of Nations, which was written before Marx was born.
Capital has always referred to physical land and machines.
It's a very old Middle English word.
You nor Marx gets to redefine words in the English language.
>Aristotle... argues for re-distribution of wealth so that every man may start a business.
Whoa, what? I don't remember that part of the Nicomachean Ethics. I mean, I know he got his economics wrong, especially in Book V, but I still don't remember this claim.
Anyways, I am very much pro-Aristotle. I agree that we shouldn't pursue instant gratification, that friendships of utility are the lowest form of friendship, and his attention to virtues. I would argue though that he doesn't hold that you can only understand happiness at the end of the life so much as you need to look across someone's entire life, which for the living is just everything they've done so far.
On his pursuit of the golden mean though, I think you're wrong to apply that to liberty. Liberty itself would be a virtue, and you can never be too virtuous. We can argue that the choices offered within your liberty though might be the wrong ones, but all that means is that the vice you commit there isn't a vice against liberty, it's against some other virtue.
Aristotle was certainly concerned with society as a whole, but in doing so I don't think we can violate individual rights in that process. There should be harmony between commutative and distributive justice.
> On his pursuit of the golden mean though, I think you're wrong to apply that to liberty.
It does make me wonder, his line of reasoning seems to be he argues courage is between rashness, and timidity (dependent on fear), so true liberty strikes me as being the one step too far, one could say true liberty justifies instant gratification, ergo the golden mean says a moderate amount of liberty is right (I just wonder though, I don't think it would seem right to exclude anything from the Golden Mean tis a pretty dope tool of recognition, and like the concept of 'indeterminate free will' equals rolling a dice for every decision, and 'true free will' equals no genitive causes (and no sense of yourself), 'true liberty' wouldn't necessarily have to be the expansion of Liberty in way that is best fitting (gives me Faust-bumps))
> Whoa, what? I don't remember that part of the Nicomachean Ethics.
He does I'd re-read for that flavour, worth a pop (sorry I can't provide citation), it's not to the same extent as one might see re-distribution posited now, but more the great enabler of social justice and interaction, give everybody some wealth so they can take part and feel valued members of society
I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, but I was fairly disappointed with it :(
His teachings constantly clashed with my philosophy and what doesn't I already knew. I think I would have appreciated it when I was younger though.
This week I bought The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg and the 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch, I finished them both and I could say they've changed my perspective. I recommend these two books to anyone who wants improve in anything.
Physical book: Sexual Personae by Camile Paglia
Audiobook: A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell (re-read)
I can unequivocally recommend AHoWP (and especially the audiobook version that Audible has).
>Hayek was not "more pro-capitalist" than Keynes, that doesn't even make sense.
Well, in that sense I meant more Hayek was opposed to government intervention (which more reflects us ancaps' understanding of capitalism today). Although I will admit that Keynes saw himself as the savior of modern capitalism.
>Hayek's main lasting contributions was more in social theory
While Hayek did get trounced in classical opinion, I believe his economic contributions are still noteworthy. Are you familiar with the Hayekian Triangle? He's right in his critique of Keynes' aggregates.
>Friedman's main contribution is in methodology and monetary policy, and neither of those are really ever discussed here. His "capitalism and freedom" stuff is kind of trash.
That's a fair critique, although I disagree about Capitalism and Freedom. But like others have said, Friedman was a movement builder. He helped construct the libertarianism that we love today. Maybe I just love him more than most capitalists.
Really?
>“Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driven by want, and prompted by envy, to invade his possessions.” ― Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
Adam Smith was very much against the unlimited accumulation promoted by capitalists today.
The Armchair Economist by Steven Landsburg is really good.
I'll buy you a copy and mail it to you for free if you promise to read it. Although you could save some time and just torrent it, probably.
> You're saying Adam Smith "invented" capitalism, and that it did not exist before The Wealth of Nations was published.
> The Wealth of Nations is basically an analysis and observation of the history of capital movement up until 1776.
> By this logic, The Wealth of Nations is about something other than capitalism, since capitalism didn't exist before he published, which you are calling feudalism.
> So, fundamentally, your objection is not of capitalism, it is some feature of capitalism (and feudalism before it) and I'm asking you what that is.
You're welcome to point to all these capitalist societies that you seem to be aware of. Somehow I don't think I'll see any.
> Capital and property as concepts existed before The Wealth of Nations, as the book itself has many references to them. People had titles to their land well before 1776. They bought and sold goods. They specialized in a particular craft or study. The Wealth of Nations simply observed this.
> What's wrong with feudalism?
Oh boy.
90% of mainstream economists are brainwashed. In the early 2000s I did a stint at a phd program. I saw firsthand what goes on there. It's mostly a bunch of overeducated mathematicians calling themselves economists and fiddling with equations and numbers all day, to no real benefit.
Economics is supposed to be a way of thinking. It starts with praxeology, that human action is purposeful. That voluntary exchange benefits both sides. Everything else should follow from that principle, or it's not really economics anymore. Macro is a psuedoscience. As you said, no one knows. So they need to stop trying. Just let people be free to exchange and things will work out for the best.
As Henry Hazlitt said there is the "seen" and the "unseen". Economists today spent way too much obsessing over what can be "seen": numbers, charts, graphs, data. But the "unseen" is actually 99% of what's important in economics. What you can't see when you conduct fiscal stimulus is all the economic activity that got crowded out. But it would have existed, nonetheless. What you don't see with minimum wage is all the jobs that are not created. But they would have existed, nonetheless.
Once you understand this basic premise, 99% of mainstream economics becomes bullshit.
Just stick to the basic principles and you'll do fine. Take ECON 101 Principles of Microeconomics when you get to college, and go no further. Or better yet, just read these books:
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt
Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman
The Fatal Conceit by F. A. Hayek
The Law by Bastiat
Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
>M'lady starterpack:
The Wealth of Nations - Adam Smith
Basic Economics - Thomas Sowell
Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
The Road to Serfdom - Hayek
Capitalism and Freedom - Milton Friedman
>I want to fedora but also no government:
Anarchy, State, Utopia - Robert Nozick
Our Enemy The State - Albert jay Nock
Liberalism - Ludwig von Mises
>I want to tear these Socialists a new asshole with my supreme mind:
Capital - Bernie Sa- Karl Marx
Conquest of Bread - Kropotkin
The Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engels, but mostly Engels
>But I don't want to read about it first, give me the counter-arguments
Anthem - Ayn Rand
Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis - Mises
A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism - Hoppe
I'd recommend Milton Friedman as a source for everybody. Capitalism and Freedom, his Free to Choose novel and the accompanying ten episode video series, and some of his other lectures, novels, and debates are all a great place for Capitalists to find arguments, and for Socialists to see what they need to go up against.