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Old 01-15-2019, 09:10 AM
 
Location: Manchester NH
15,507 posts, read 6,400,865 times
Reputation: 4831

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim1921 View Post
So, you must make your own clothes, grow your own food, ride a horse and communicate to others by sending up smoke signals.

But wait a minute. How are you posting here? Did you use a device manufactured by a corporation and is your internet connection provided by a corporation.......gasp!
The internet would still exist. Least you forget the Internet was a public invention set up by multiple networks.

The function of the internet would just no longer be controled by telecommunication companies.

 
Old 01-15-2019, 09:14 AM
 
Location: Manchester NH
15,507 posts, read 6,400,865 times
Reputation: 4831
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lekrii View Post
I hear and understand what you're saying. You have a naive view, and are wrong.

Private property would still exist 'without state enforcement'. In your perfect world, there would still be private ownership. I would keep what I earn because I earned it. I would not give it to you for free just because you feel I have more than I need.

You inherently want to restrict my freedom and force your views and beliefs onto others. Beliefs that would lead to more poverty, more restrictions for people.

How would you enforce your system? Let's say your world exists, and I decide to start a group of people in which owning, trading, renting capital is allowed. How would your society prevent that from happening?
I have no problem with people making a capitalist agreement, but it would require the consent of all parties as owners.

So if you want to pay people to work for you in a factory for example, they could all work as they’re told and receive a wage. The difference is the workers remain the owners and this agreement can only last as long as they want to.

And personal property has always been a thing, that’s different from private property.

How will you claim land on the other side of the country without legal protection? The fact is you can’t, unless you want to set up a feudal system.
 
Old 01-15-2019, 09:24 AM
 
Location: Omaha, Nebraska
10,348 posts, read 7,936,317 times
Reputation: 27742
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lekrii View Post
You inherently want to restrict my freedom...
The irony, of course, is that a hunter-gatherer has essentially no freedom (economic or otherwise). He is bound by a complex network of social obligations which controls his life, and he can no more escape it than a fly can escape from a spider's web. That network of obligations dictates who will get what part of the deer he killed, not him. He has zero freedom to distribute the products of his labor as he sees fit. And if he tries to cheat the system, he will almost certainly pay with his life (as he'll eventually be expelled from the group, and joining another is not likely to be possible).

ALL models of social organization involve a degree of coercion, including the one our OP is so fond of. The average person living under his preferred system won't be any more economically free than he is now (rather the opposite, in fact) - but he will be poorer.

Funny, isn't it, that people who idealize small communities (such as a hunter-gatherer clan, or a commune, or a cult) have generally never actually lived in one?

Quote:
How would you enforce your system? Let's say your world exists, and I decide to start a group of people in which owning, trading, renting capital is allowed. How would your society prevent that from happening?
Good question. (History, of course, has shown that once your system arises in a group, that group goes on to displace the hunter-gatherers, because that group can support larger numbers of people on the same amount of land and can therefore wield more power in a conflict. What does it matter how ideal your Utopian government is if it can't hold its own when it comes to fending off aggressive neighbors?)
 
Old 01-15-2019, 09:43 AM
 
5,985 posts, read 2,905,911 times
Reputation: 9026
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324 View Post
I have no problem with people making a capitalist agreement, but it would require the consent of all parties as owners.

So if you want to pay people to work for you in a factory for example, they could all work as they’re told and receive a wage. The difference is the workers remain the owners and this agreement can only last as long as they want to.

And personal property has always been a thing, that’s different from private property.

How will you claim land on the other side of the country without legal protection? The fact is you can’t, unless you want to set up a feudal system.
Wrong. I am the owner of multiple factories, and I am going to pay them to work in it, while I retain ownership. That's the agreement I set, and that's the agreement they are happy with.

In your society, how do you stop me from doing that? How do you enforce anything you're proposing?
 
Old 01-15-2019, 10:48 AM
 
Location: Posting from my space yacht.
8,452 posts, read 4,733,154 times
Reputation: 15354
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lekrii View Post
Wrong. I am the owner of multiple factories, and I am going to pay them to work in it, while I retain ownership. That's the agreement I set, and that's the agreement they are happy with.

In your society, how do you stop me from doing that? How do you enforce anything you're proposing?
The same way it's always done with socialism and communism. First with convincing, then with coercion and finally with violence. Lots and lots of violence.
 
Old 01-15-2019, 10:53 AM
 
Location: Pennsylvania
31,341 posts, read 14,176,868 times
Reputation: 27858
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324 View Post
Do you really think people should make money off of owning capital?

That means a person gains more economic power and freedom from producing no wealth; how is that sustainable?
I'm not sure if you are trolling or dead serious, I guess you're serious considering you have over 7,000 postings, but you would have fit in quite nicely in 2017 Bolshevik Russia. We've already been down this road -- Communism doesn't work !!!!
 
Old 01-15-2019, 10:59 AM
 
10,075 posts, read 7,506,923 times
Reputation: 15500
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324 View Post
The difference is the workers remain the owners and this agreement can only last as long as they want to.
At will has been the law of the land for the past 200+ years. People can quit if they don't agree with the work. You aren't held hostage to your job except for furloughed government workers

You don't "make" money from owning capital, it's what it does that makes money. Not the ownership of it.

Owning a factory doesn't earn money, it's a pile of metal and bricks. It's what it used for that is sold

Owning stocks doesn't make money, it is the company behind it that makes money, which in return is shared with the investors. A profitless company has profitless stock shares
 
Old 01-15-2019, 11:12 AM
 
Location: Manchester NH
15,507 posts, read 6,400,865 times
Reputation: 4831
Quote:
Originally Posted by MLSFan View Post
At will has been the law of the land for the past 200+ years. People can quit if they don't agree with the work. You aren't held hostage to your job except for furloughed government workers

You don't "make" money from owning capital, it's what it does that makes money. Not the ownership of it.

Owning a factory doesn't earn money, it's a pile of metal and bricks. It's what it used for that is sold

Owning stocks doesn't make money, it is the company behind it that makes money, which in return is shared with the investors. A profitless company has profitless stock shares
You're looking at it the reverse way.

The question is not the consequences of your actions, the question is the source of the action.

If I buy a stock and its value goes up, I have done nothing to increase that value based off of my actions. If a invest 100$ to a company, and they increase value by a thousand, that is correlated to their actions, not mine as the only value I added was the previous 100$.

Your theory is as if a king allows someone to produce pre-cut wood, and some how the value of that production is given to the king.

The king didn't produce the wealth, and as such it gives him more power and freedom to do as he wishes. Similarly if your investment allows a company to do more, that does not correlate with you doing it for them.
 
Old 01-15-2019, 11:18 AM
 
Location: Manchester NH
15,507 posts, read 6,400,865 times
Reputation: 4831
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lekrii View Post
Wrong. I am the owner of multiple factories, and I am going to pay them to work in it, while I retain ownership. That's the agreement I set, and that's the agreement they are happy with.

In your society, how do you stop me from doing that? How do you enforce anything you're proposing?
The question is how to you enforce your ownership claims, because it is enforced.

People naturally authority over what they control. If I lived on a land that was vacant but was claimed through legal means by someone else, I do not practice any force from settling there.

The force comes in when you try to claim that land with state police even though you have no physical presence there.

In the same capacity, a factory is owned by the people who control it, and physically function by it. Through consensus or democratic means they could follow your orders in exchange for some wage, but since you do not have some present control, you cannot forcibly control their labor there. You could withhold paying them a wage, but you still do not have supreme authority over them.
 
Old 01-15-2019, 11:19 AM
 
10,075 posts, read 7,506,923 times
Reputation: 15500
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winterfall8324 View Post
You're looking at it the reverse way.

The question is not the consequences of your actions, the question is the source of the action.

If I buy a stock and its value goes up, I have done nothing to increase that value based off of my actions. If a invest 100$ to a company, and they increase value by a thousand, that is correlated to their actions, not mine as the only value I added was the previous 100$.

Your theory is as if a king allows someone to produce pre-cut wood, and some how the value of that production is given to the king.

The king didn't produce the wealth, and as such it gives him more power and freedom to do as he wishes. Similarly if your investment allows a company to do more, that does not correlate with you doing it for them.
And the company could not have created 1000s without your $100 along with other investors. They didn't have the capital to do it with. So they sold a percent of their company as a share to fund raise.

Do you understand how investing works or do you think it is a magic money tree?

Your king example would be the government, it makes the environment for the logger. So it gets a portion via the tax system so it can keep that environment going. But too high a tax and you burn down the forest and no one has any trees to cut down

You try doing a job when stangers can come by and Rob/kill you. That is what the government prevents so that you can do business
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