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Author | Topic: Decline And Fall Of The American Empire | |||||||||||||||||||||||
ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
What if the cashier can't come to an agreement with Safeway?
Because what if the baker cant come to an agreement with the farmer? Phat writes:
Economies worked long before there were standard units of exchange. If the farmer needs capital - e.g. seed - to get started, he gets it from another farmer. What he uses to pay for it isn't particularly relevant.
Everyone has to agree on a means of value before the economy starts to work.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
New Cat's Eye writes:
How do we obtain those natural resources? Do they just leap out of the ground into the capitalist's pocket?
What about valuable natural resources?
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
It would be hard to work out a scale of "should" that had any meaning. "Should" the guy who risks his life down in the mine get more or less than the guy who pushes the buttons that print the cheques?
Which labor among them should receive the ultimate value of the sold product? Phat writes:
Realistically, much of the cost to the end-user goes to parasites who are not essential to the process.
Realistically, which labor does receive the most? Phat writes:
For a start, everybody "should" be paid a living wage. But according to the capitalists, paying a living wage to a waitress or a fruit picker would ruin the economy. Somehow, we mange to survive paying a Safeway cashier twice as much as a 7-Eleven cashier but they still claim that a higher minimum wage would kill jobs. The question is what percentage of the sale value should each aspect of the labor receive? The sad part is that too many 7-Eleven cashiers and Safeway cahiers believe them.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
New Cat's Eye writes:
Do you understand that digging resources out of the ground requires labour?
I don't understand how that answers my questions.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
And yet your examples involve "very little labour", not no labour.
To pretend that the entire value of such things comes from labor is ridiculous.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
New Cat's Eye writes:
Show me a capitalist who says he doesn't "work hard' for his money.
So, you could define labor so broadly as to be like "human activity" or something....
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
In my experience, the ones who gripe the loudest aren't working while they're doing it.
Were you to throw me in a third world nation where I was pulling old computer parts apart for copper wire, I would probably work harder, and gripe louder at the pennies a day i earned.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Phat writes:
Really? Rebuilding somebody's home is a bad thing? Paying somebody to work is a bad thing? Really? Your own social security is more important? Really? Yes...if the money comes out of social security trust funds simply to pay mass labor. (And your contempt for "mass labor" is showing through again.)
Phat writes:
If your own future is so bloody important, you should be trying to untie it.
For the vanishing middle class, our future is tied up in "future obligations" while current obligations rob us of what we collectively saved. Phat writes:
You're confusing your metaphors. The rising tide argument doesn't demolish anything. It allows the poorest members of society to have decent housing.
The whole problem with the rising tide argument is that it demolishes all of the houses built above water level.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
New Cat's Eye writes:
Where does the 100 bucks you gained come from? At some point, doesn't somebody work for it, even if you don't?
Say I buy a plot of land for 100 bucks, and somebody offers me 200 bucks for the rights to harvest the timber. I just gained 100 bucks through no labor. New cat's Eye writes:
Say I walk into a bank with a gun and walk out with 100 bucks. I just gained 100 bucks with no labour. Say I buy a plot of land for 100 bucks, and somebody offers me 200 bucks for the rights to harvest the timber. I just gained 100 bucks through no labor. But didn't somebody work for that 100 bucks?
New Cat's Eye writes:
And not all water is wet, I suppose. If you define it like that, you can come up with any conclusion you want.
Also, not all hard work is labor, imho.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
The "value" is what the buyer is willing to pay - and his ability to pay is based on labour.
Those things are increases simply because other humans want or need for your objects increases.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
New Cat's Eye writes:
Value is measured in bucks. If bucks come from labour then value comes from labour.
Your claim is not that all bucks come from labor. It is that all value comes from labor. New Cat's Eye writes:
You haven't established that natural resources have any "value' beyond what can be added by labor.
If labor is the only source of value, then who's labor causes the value that naturally occurs in the resources? New Cat's Eye writes:
In Message 84 you said, "...you could define labor so broadly as to be like "human activity" or something...." and in Message 91 you said, "...not all hard work is labor...." I'm still waiting for your definition of labor. I lean more toward the first one. Maybe you can give some examples of human activity that can't be called labour. I'd also be interested in your idea of the difference between work and labour. I might go so far as to say that even easy work is labour.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
Then give some examples. When is something worth more than what the buyer is willing or able to pay?
Sometimes, Ringo. Not always. Not all money is made by expending labor.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
New Cat's Eye writes:
Those trees didn't magically increase in value when you bought the land. You just underpaid for them.
Someone paid me for the rights to harvest the trees from my property. Those trees have value before anybody has ever touched them, and I made money off them without doing anything. I just had to own the land. New Cat's Eye writes:
I don't know what you mean by "the labour class". I'm just talking about labour.
Owning the business requires human activity but they are typically excluded from the labor class.Making sales deals on the fruits of the labor is also typically exluded from the labor class. The stock brokers trying to sell shares in the company are typically excluded from the labor class. New Cat's Eye writes:
Indeed. It's a bullshit classification - you can include or exclude at your convenience.
The Accounting and Human Resources Department are sometimes exluded and sometimes included. New Cat's Eye writes:
YES! It's ambiguous. And yet you guys call it nonsense. So in that context, when you say all value comes from labor, its pretty ambiguous what you mean. All I've done is ask for examples that don't involve labour.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
What something is "worth" depends entirely on what somebody is willing and able to pay. You can claim that your painting is worth millions but if nobody agrees, it isn't.
Things are often worth more than the buyer is able to pay. NoNukes writes:
You haven't shown where the added "value" comes from. Is it magic?
The ultimate buyer still does not have to pay using labor. NoNukes writes:
Again, the wine only increases in value if somebody is willing and able to pay more. Where does he get the money that he is willing and able to spend? For example, I can extract money from my house by borrowing more than its appreciated value, investing the funds in some passive income like buying wine to age. In the end, I can settle up and have additional funds with no expenditure of labor. It can very well be that everyone that I exchange with earned their money in similar, non-labor, ways You can't have an infinite regression of everybody getting their money for nothing.
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ringo Member (Idle past 442 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
NoNukes writes:
Then for God's sake, come up with an example that makes sense. Where does value magically come from in your world?
None of that affects the fact that value does not come from labor. NoNukes writes:
I am neither making a point nor taking a position. I'm trying to make sense of yours. So far, there doesn't seem to be any.
I have no idea what point you think you are making with this line of argument.
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