This isn’t universally true. You have to be exact in this conversation, especially when you disagree with someone, or else all your points come across as not fully thought out, and I can’t really trust anything you’re saying, which makes this a lot harder.
This is hypocritical. You claimed that you can’t risk money you don’t have, and I gave multiple examples that contradict this. At no point did I say any investor is just going to give you money out of charity.
ealized what I said was almost ambiguous, the way you interpreted it is a valid way to parse the syntax of my statement if I slightly misused the word “demoted”, but there’s another way to parse it and that’s the way I intended it
It’s all good. On re-read I feel like I probably should have interpreted it properly. However, I think the reason I misinterpreted it is because it’s agreeing with my point. They run the risk of being “demoted.” They are the ones taking a risk. The labor is still going to be exactly where they started if they take a job and they get laid off.
Hand waving is uninteresting.
I didn’t handwave it away, I pointed out how you used a subjective term - where we could argue forever and never come to an agreement on what is justified - and how it’s besides the point. The point had literally nothing to do with morals, but understanding subjectivity.
As to the rest of my point, you keep losing what we are talking about. At this point, I almost feel like you’re trying to avoid the point. I disagree with you that this is a “failure” as I think it leverages what is typically human - in times of peace we tend to compete within a society - while many other systems ignore this part of human nature.
But, again, I’m coming from the angle that the meme doesn’t make sense because the labor doesn’t risk like the capitalist does. You’re basically agreeing with me again.
“Might this not hurt them much because they have a lot? Sure. But they were the ones who took the risk [therefore it’s justified for them to take the surplus value of labor created by the workers]”
Please don’t put words in my mouth. Again, this all comes in reference to the meme. You are projecting your “morals” and attempts to label things as “justified” onto me. If we want to talk about it, I’m a “proof is in the pudding” type of guy, and it has nothing to do with the subjective “justified” but what works.
And you’re sitting here, typing to me on a computer that was the result of capitalism, presumably with a western education that was funded by a capitalist system, and probably benefiting a lot from that capitalist system. It works. It’s not without flaws. It’s not perfect. But this attempt to paint it as some failed system requires me to reject what I can see with my own two eyes. It requires me to reject what I can clearly see is in the pudding.
We just need words to describe the concepts elucidated by Proudhon and Marx, and those are the words they chose, not me.
And I’m just telling you you attract more flies with honey than vinegar.
If you can point to actual socialist failed experiments that you dislike, go for it.
Again, putting words in my mouth. You seemingly can’t help yourself. As I said earlier, I’m a proof is in the pudding type of guy. You’ve pointed out multiple cases where socialist experiments have failed, and none that have succeeded. Of course, this isn’t the fault of the system. No. It’s external forces.
The central theme of my point is that those “external forces” are simply the result of human nature, which is why capitalism as come out on top time and time again. It’s leverages human nature, it doesn’t try to oppress it.
And you’re sitting here, typing to me on a computer that was the result of capitalism, presumably with a western education that was funded by a capitalist system, and probably benefiting a lot from that capitalist system
Western (U.S) education is failing on essentially every metric imaginable. It’s either insanely expensive, or astronomically worse than any other country (vast majority of EU countries, China, Cuba, etc.). That said, this is even orthogonal to your point, as none of my education was funded by capitalism, it was publicly funded. Publicly funded education has nothing to do with private enterprise or private ownership of the means of production. Publicly funded education existed long before capitalism.
My computer wasn’t developed by capitalism. Most individual parts, and even the network we’re using to communicate (both the internet broadly and lemmy more specifically) exist despite natural capitalist tendencies. The internet for example is built on ARPANET, which was funded by the DoD. It’s not something a capitalist envisioned and came up with. Another example is the microprocessor, again backed heavily by government funding, because private enterprise/companies/capitalists would not fund research with payout decades later.
Private capital could not have, and more importantly didn’t, develop the vast majority of technology we use today. Private enterprise tends to take already researched and developed technologies and combine them for products that can yield short term profits. It’s extraordinarily rare in the real world for private capital to research and develop technology that will yield profits in 20+ years.
Essentially the only times you see private enterprise take on long term research is when the capital is public, e.g the DoD funding some private contractor to do some research. Private investors/capital have very little interest in profits that long term, compared to the normal months or years they’re looking at. It would be just as easy for the government to fund a worker cooperative instead of a private firm, it’s just our government prefers private capitalist ventures over cooperative worker ones, so that’s what they choose to fund. Once you have public money funding worker cooperatives, the means of production are owned by the workers and the capital is provided by the state, and there’s no definition of capitalism that that falls under.
This is hypocritical. You claimed that you can’t risk money you don’t have, and I gave multiple examples that contradict this. At no point did I say any investor is just going to give you money out of charity.
It’s all good. On re-read I feel like I probably should have interpreted it properly. However, I think the reason I misinterpreted it is because it’s agreeing with my point. They run the risk of being “demoted.” They are the ones taking a risk. The labor is still going to be exactly where they started if they take a job and they get laid off.
I didn’t handwave it away, I pointed out how you used a subjective term - where we could argue forever and never come to an agreement on what is justified - and how it’s besides the point. The point had literally nothing to do with morals, but understanding subjectivity.
As to the rest of my point, you keep losing what we are talking about. At this point, I almost feel like you’re trying to avoid the point. I disagree with you that this is a “failure” as I think it leverages what is typically human - in times of peace we tend to compete within a society - while many other systems ignore this part of human nature.
But, again, I’m coming from the angle that the meme doesn’t make sense because the labor doesn’t risk like the capitalist does. You’re basically agreeing with me again.
Please don’t put words in my mouth. Again, this all comes in reference to the meme. You are projecting your “morals” and attempts to label things as “justified” onto me. If we want to talk about it, I’m a “proof is in the pudding” type of guy, and it has nothing to do with the subjective “justified” but what works.
And you’re sitting here, typing to me on a computer that was the result of capitalism, presumably with a western education that was funded by a capitalist system, and probably benefiting a lot from that capitalist system. It works. It’s not without flaws. It’s not perfect. But this attempt to paint it as some failed system requires me to reject what I can see with my own two eyes. It requires me to reject what I can clearly see is in the pudding.
And I’m just telling you you attract more flies with honey than vinegar.
Again, putting words in my mouth. You seemingly can’t help yourself. As I said earlier, I’m a proof is in the pudding type of guy. You’ve pointed out multiple cases where socialist experiments have failed, and none that have succeeded. Of course, this isn’t the fault of the system. No. It’s external forces.
The central theme of my point is that those “external forces” are simply the result of human nature, which is why capitalism as come out on top time and time again. It’s leverages human nature, it doesn’t try to oppress it.
But, again, we are way off the point.
Western (U.S) education is failing on essentially every metric imaginable. It’s either insanely expensive, or astronomically worse than any other country (vast majority of EU countries, China, Cuba, etc.). That said, this is even orthogonal to your point, as none of my education was funded by capitalism, it was publicly funded. Publicly funded education has nothing to do with private enterprise or private ownership of the means of production. Publicly funded education existed long before capitalism.
My computer wasn’t developed by capitalism. Most individual parts, and even the network we’re using to communicate (both the internet broadly and lemmy more specifically) exist despite natural capitalist tendencies. The internet for example is built on ARPANET, which was funded by the DoD. It’s not something a capitalist envisioned and came up with. Another example is the microprocessor, again backed heavily by government funding, because private enterprise/companies/capitalists would not fund research with payout decades later.
Private capital could not have, and more importantly didn’t, develop the vast majority of technology we use today. Private enterprise tends to take already researched and developed technologies and combine them for products that can yield short term profits. It’s extraordinarily rare in the real world for private capital to research and develop technology that will yield profits in 20+ years.
Essentially the only times you see private enterprise take on long term research is when the capital is public, e.g the DoD funding some private contractor to do some research. Private investors/capital have very little interest in profits that long term, compared to the normal months or years they’re looking at. It would be just as easy for the government to fund a worker cooperative instead of a private firm, it’s just our government prefers private capitalist ventures over cooperative worker ones, so that’s what they choose to fund. Once you have public money funding worker cooperatives, the means of production are owned by the workers and the capital is provided by the state, and there’s no definition of capitalism that that falls under.