: Let's see . . . if I work 80 hours/week at $6 (employers here can't
Note: 80hrs. Commonly known as hell on earth, without a life.: My point is that much of the poverty is caused by silly pointless gov't regulations, especially housing codes. Much poverty would be alleviated if we let people find their own way. And, yes, the above narrative was exaggerated for effect.
I doubt it- if the govt. dereuglated housing the cost of rent would fall through the floor, or homelessness would increase. Much more poverty would be created.
: Pure speculation. The US has been at full employment for 7 or so years. Much longer if it weren't for George Bush.
1:Dunno bout US, but IIRC BritGov Says we'll have full employment if only 2 million people are uneomployed. tehre is always some level of unemployment.
2:IIRC some 5 million americans are involeved in the penal system, which, accounts for about 2% off the unemployement stats, IIRC. Add on the usual fiddling of teh figures,a nd you're looking at a sizeable poverty pool there.
: Yes, he could fail. I've run time and again into people who you couldn't count on them to do a job at almost any price. Business is about maximizing profit, and not about lowering cost. Hireability is about a great many things just one of which is cost.
Ability to do Job + Cost. the Employers side of the deal. Enough to Live on- employees side. Value of work done never actually enters teh equation. the employer will always want to pay as little as possible, to get the job done.
: No. It's just as difficult for the capitalist; probably more so. Factors of production do not simply pick up and move except in high-skill low-plant level industries such as computer software. And software engineers are not really the people we're talking about.
No, a low skill factory could be closed down, and production movede to another country in teh blink of an eye. A shirt factory closed down in my home town, some 400 bread winners thrown out of work, no chance of them finding employement for their skills locally.
: Yes, and it works this way for any seller of any commodity, including that of labor.
Yes, indeed, however, my objection to this specifically is that it commodifies humans.
: Did you completely ignore my earlier analysis of power relationships? Capitalists continuously compete with each other as they have radically opposing interests.
No, I read it, and countered it, they compete for workers, however the work force is over supplied, we have surplus population here and the US (thats a ridiculous notion if ever I heard one). they do compete for workers, but all upon the structural basis of alienated labour power and commodification of the workfporce. When confronting workers their interests are always teh same.
: Well, I don't know. Earlier you specifically stated taht "the capitalists are not in charge, in fact, no one is in charge". Which is it., can have no homogenous class interest as their aims continuously conflict. Monopolies are synonymous with a single interest and Marx himself acknowledged as new competitors (read capitalists) entered the market prices would be pushed lower. Implicitly, Marx acknowledged (without realizing it) that capitalists can have no homogenous class interests as they continually compete with one another. Remember, by definition, a monopoly does not compete with itself.
1:Yes, capitalists do compete with each other.
2:This is competition within the class.
3:If there are two classes, one of which owns the means of
production, out of all the social classes, that one has the monopoly.
4:They ALL have the interest of wanting to make as big a profit as possible. Of extracting as much surplus value as possible, and thereby of paying as little wages as possiblef or the work done.
5:There is only one way accessing teh means of living for workers, through capitalists, thus they ahve a monoloply, collectively, on the means of production. Individually they ay be opposed, but as a class they operate the singular system that works in their class interest.
The system is in charge, not them, however the system works for their profit.
: Well, this is like saying a shovel is a barrier to digging a hole. Capital is the means of production; that is its definition. I can't really answer this other than by saying , huh?
No, a shovel is the means of digging a hole. the capitalists ownership of capital means that they can withold it from us, their money, the property, is a means of denying us access to the means of living
.
: Uh. No. Again, see my post tomorrow on classifications. But further the only way for this to be true was that such capitalists are in harmonious and non-competitive collusion with each other to fix all prices (remember, you already denied this). The real issue is that they are not monopsonists on the labor market. A capitalist that does not outcompete other capitalists for labor earns no profit as no goods are produced.
As a class they enforce the same social system, when confronting members of another class they have the same interest of lowering wages. I'm pretty sure all capitalists wish their competitors would pay their workers more, so they can consume more, but they don't want to do so it themselves, because it lowers their profits.
They are monopolists on the labour market, because the only way for a worker to find work is to work for a capitalist. (Or themselves...but thats anotehr matter...)
: Yes, and often the uber-corp forces them to act like competitors. Each division is usually a cost center and so competes on the labor markets for scarce labor resources with other divisions from the same company. Experience has shown that a massively vertical top-down corp is usually less efficient than through cost-centers. Remember, they're in business to make a profit.
Exactly, and they all, competitively, act with that single common factor of wanting to make a profit, this defines their actions as a class, and defines their monopolistic relation to the workers. plus, can it be real competition if they are ownd by the same people?
: Now, you're giving the exact argument taht forced the economists into the marginal utility camp. The input theory just didn't have any predictive value concerning price and quantity produced. It could make general, usually propagandistic, statements and not much else. How could I say wow as obviously no person would sell an item at 'below' it's socially assigned value. If I purchased it for $1 that must have been the value its inputs.
I never said that selling doesn't happen below value, I said it fluctuates around value, value as the average, value as the bar against which such a 'bargain' is measured.
: Look, I'll be real honest here, personally I see Marx's whole input theory as sophistry. It seemed as if the man tried to construct his theories to achieve some outcome already predetermined in his mind as "good". Just my observation; I may have misread him.
He spent many, many hours in the british Library, read all teh great political economists of his day, and came up with teh only effective working model of economic crisis (which is a point you continually evade). And I think you are misreading him.
: Again, you undercut your own theory. This, among interest, etc. are many things unexplained by the input theory.
theres a big section on interest in the Grundrisse- not read it myself. No one theory could predict all price movements, particularly as God has not set laws determining how much we pay for thigns, value is only a social average, a model. i'm happy for supply and demand to determine price, as long as its cear that such fluctuation occurs around a certain level. no otehr model seems to work- yours didn't.
: Ah, yes, now we have it. The Skinnerian behaviorist has finally revealed his true self.
*ROFLMAO*- go see my Arguments against the dread lord Barry Stoller below.
: If only we can modify people's behavior by constructing their reality to its best purpose we will have the 'great' society. (Already, falsely, assumed here is the tabula rosa theory of the mind).
Which you claim is false, but never propose an alternative. And which your linguistic theory above kind off supposes as well...also, i do not talk about changing society to alter otehr epople's behaviour, I am talking about teh change in consciousness that would occur when people change their own ways of life. Any notion of environmental determinism, which you yourself subscribe to, would produce the same answer.
: If they don't demand the finite we must 'train' them to through their environment. I don't remember, but someone on this board was bashing Wittgenstein earlier for behaviorism.
I did not say 'If we could train them', I suggested, that once people learn to live a different way, their desire structuyres would change. I do not assume a rational mind planning society, to achieve scientific effects, rather, I assume that people live socially, and their consciousness changes according to their social conditions. nor did I 'bash' Wittgensein, I merely pointed out that he tends towards tehbehaviourist camp.
: I'm not sure this was in my reply but, externalities, such as pollution, are solved by further delineation of property. For more info, see Ronald Coase's 1992 Noble prize-winning essay. It's called The Law, The Firm, and The Market, good book.
By ;further delineation of property' do you mean putting a price tag on pollution so it enters the exchange value of goods? Its teh only way I can se that capitalism can attempt to regulate pollution, and that still wouldn't cover fish depletion...
: I suppose digging up holes in the ground and filling them up again could be construed as work (Hegel surely thought so.) And, more importantly, children from these homes, depending on the definition, are 8 to 33 times more likely to be subject to abuse. Abuse, by the way, that causes anti-social and not social behavior. The social cost of such is simply massive.
Hmmm- so raising children isn't a vital social peice of work? (filling in a hole would be work, not social labour- raising children is social labour, unpaid mostly as well). Perhaps there is a correlation between the abuse, and the general poverty levels and teh meanness of these peoples lives?
: They are also a part of other's choices. And this is the part that socialists don't want to face. We can either allow people to socialize themselves through trial and error or we can make sure they get socialized by supressing choices. This is called behaviorism. Period. The price method or force; it's your call.
Or free association, in communities, on the basis of co-operation and social ownership and control of teh means of production- no coercion needed. the social prodctive system, THEY build themselves, in co-operation with OTHER people, on a basis of social needs, rather than pointless profiting (wow- glo-in the dark casper teh friendly ghost stckers are sooooo necessary).
At present capitalism forces us to compoete for jobs, prevents, forceably, socialisation through piovertyabnd exclusion, and through individuation of poperty.
