Is capitalism actually dying, despite appearances?

[Naskra]

Nearly all wealth is in the form of knowledge. From the secret of fire to the unlocked mystery of the atom, this wealth is the common heritage of mankind. The property title chits we swap back and forth are of very minor importance.

 

[Lexicus]

The property title chits we swap back and forth are of very minor importance.

Tell it to a homeless person, lol

 

[innonimatu]

The social contract. Just as you and I agree not to kill each other because we share a mutual interest of not wanting to be killed, you and I would agree to respect each other's property rights because we share a mutual interest of having our property rights respected.

Who is the notary of that "social contract"? Who is the police, and who is the judge? A contract is an artificial construct, keep that in mind.

Count me out of your social contract, given a n unconstrained choice (by constraints I mean all those above) I have no interest nor wish whatsoever in respecting property claims on stuff that is not actually used everyday by the "owner" but rather by other people. I have no interest in respecting the "ownership" of the absentee owner of stock, or land, or houses. And to make it perfectly clear for you: I do not mean "your stuff inside the house you live in" but rather "the house someone lives in but pays rent to an owner".

That kind of "rent power relationship" is the social poison that pervades our society thanks to capitalism. And it will end in either civil war or social suicide as property gets more concentrated and most people are reduced to renters under the thumb of a few "owners": ultimately they will either rebel or die out because the "owners" unchecked will even take away their means to sustain any offspring. Why do you think we are witnessing demographic collapse in every "advanced" society as wealth inequalities rise?

 

[Lexicus]

Why do you think we are witnessing demographic collapse in every "advanced" society as wealth inequalities rise?

That's because we're not treating women like cattle anymore.

 

[innonimatu]

No, it's not that. Look at Japan, a good example because there are no immigration dynamics messing the data there. The birth rate has collapsed, people (not saying young men and women because they now have a generation virgin well into the 30s!) shun relationships, even fear attempting one. Thus they do not reproduce. Because they can't plan ahead. Because they can't see themselves able to sustain a stable family life.

Japan is heading towards demographic suicide. So is Europe, a little behind. And even the US and Australia, somewhat masked now due to immigration. Different societies where the "role of women" has been different, and changed differently. All have gone ultra-capitalist", all are collapsing. Polanyi, whom you quote, white about such social suicide albeit on a slightly different context: the original cause is the same: capitalism leads to concentration of wealth, that undermines people's sense of independence, and that it turn undermines their confidence, ultimately to a level where a society either reacts against such mortal threat, or collapses. To be take over by some outsiders who were so marginal that they remained outside its suicidal social norms and will be the ones able to finally successfully rebel and take over the physical remnants of these societies.

@civver_764 The real sad thing here is that you (and others like you) do not see that capitalism is destroying the very society you so much love: the self-reliant individual, the conservative family, all that is being destroyed by capitalism! Is is not "socialism" that is destroying it, not the "social liberals" in the US sense (except insofar as they support neoliberal economics). It is capitalism, protected (as it always is) under the power of the state it controls. And this shows in two very obvious things: collapse of public health (rising mortality rates among the people who were the core of that society) and diminishing birth rates. "The immigrants are coming" indeed to take over your country, carrying a foreign culture to supplant the dying one, and they will take it over - because capitalism led its present population, with its culture, to slow-motion suicide. It's happening. And you're voting for it and helping it happen!

At least the fascists, wrong though they were in looking back to an imaginary medieval past impossibly fused with some "uber-state" as a solution, did figure out what the problem was: capitalism was destroying societies back in the 1930s. You "conservatives" in the US are so sad that you do not even have that: still not figured out the problem, much less searched for the possible solutions. Trump is sad not because he is a fascist, but because he is not one. If he were one he'd be dangerous, but at least somewhat smart.

In any case the world did figure out ways to restrain the destructiveness of capitalism and avoid social collapse: FDR did it there in the US, the social democrats did in in western Europe in a slightly different way, and the communists did it in eastern Europe despite some... unscrupulous leaders messing things for part of the time. The world figured out the problem in the 1930s, and found some (temporary,but that's life) solutions after the 1940s. But that generation died... Now we must be at it again.

 

[Traitorfish]

Where do you draw the line then? Do you disagree that if I build a desk the desk is my possession?

Not if you work at a furniture factory. Then it's the capitalist's desk. By right, so we're told.

This seems like another fundamental contradiction of your ideology. On the one hand you say that workers are being stolen from because they don't get to own the product of their labor, but at the same time you say ownership is evil. You can't have it both ways.

I say that private property is evil. And not even evil, really, more obnoxious and obsolete. "Ownership" is a much more general concept than can be fully represented by property-deeds.

Political power comes from the gun, not the credit card. They have influence over the distribution of their own resources, but without state power how can they control other people's resources? Only through free trade. Free trade, being the opposite of aggressive force, must be the foundation of a virtuous society.

The capitalist is already exercising control over other people's resources. No one man can build and operate a factory by himself, and yet that is the fiction the capitalist entertains.

*shrugs* Well I doubt you are going to get many people on board with that. The commonsense understanding of wealth is what civver said: resources, things of value. It just doesn't seem like a good use of time to attempt to supplant this commonsense understanding with your...ah...idiosyncratic definition (particularly since 'private property' is the phrase that the left has used for a couple of centuries to describe what you're talking about).

Do people actually use "wealth" to mean "resources", though? In a direct sense? It seems to me that "wealth" always implies exclusive right to a given resource, or the potential to establish and exploit such a right. Even when people talk about national "wealth", they are opposing the right of their nation to that of other nations; the "wealth of the United States" is not the wealth of Norway or the wealth of Thailand or the wealth of Kenya.

I wish it would work this way, but civver's nonsense about 'voluntary transactions all the way down' notwithstanding, capitalists do exercise power and breaking their grip on resources will require the exercise of power.

In a practical sense, yes. What I'm getting is that, contrary to Civver's insistence, private property is not a natural phenomenon, not something that just happens, it's something that people, collectively, decide to do, so the process of abolishing private property, rather than an artificial intervention from outside of history, is simply the process of everybody deciding to do something else.

No society will ever guarantee the absence of theft. I'm sure there will always be circumstances under which someone would decide to "break the social contract" and steal. As I have said earlier in this thread, ostracization would the primary method of dealing with criminals. Those who abuse society lose the benefits of society. Banks, shops, insurance agencies, etc. would simply be free to stop associating with such people until they repay their debt.

We already do that, we just put them in prison first. It is very hard for ex-cons to get decent jobs, decent housing, to get any sort of credit; it's a large part of recidivism rates are so high. I certainly sympathise with prison abolitionism, but all your system seems to achieve is taking one of the most damaging and least effective aspects of the current system and generalising it.

I wonder if Traitorfish would be ok with me coming into his house and taking some of the "dead matter" that he's not using...

I mean, you can try, but how many back-issues of 2000AD are you going to need? Realistically?

 

[Lexicus]

Do people actually use "wealth" to mean "resources", though? In a direct sense? It seems to me that "wealth" always implies exclusive right to a given resource, or the potential to establish and exploit such a right. Even when people talk about national "wealth", they are opposing the right of their nation to that of other nations; the "wealth of the United States" is not the wealth of Norway or the wealth of Thailand or the wealth of Kenya.

The wiki article would seem to suggest so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth

The United Nations definition of inclusive wealth is a monetary measure which includes the sum of natural, human, and physical assets.[5][6] Natural capital includes land, forests, Energy resources, and minerals. Human capital is the population's education and skills. Physical (or "manufactured") capital includes such things as machinery, buildings, and infrastructure.

It's not that I think what you're saying is wrong, I just don't think it's the only way to conceptualize or talk about wealth. And "share the wealth" seems a better slogan than "destroy wealth" or "abolish wealth" or whatever is implied by your notion.

In a practical sense, yes. What I'm getting is that, contrary to Civver's insistence, private property is not a natural phenomenon, not something that just happens, it's something that people, collectively, decide to do, so the process of abolishing private property, rather than an artificial intervention from outside of history, is simply the process of everybody deciding to do something else.

We're certainly on the same page here, though I suspect we disagree on the desirability of abolishing private property. I see property as a device for social good, and I would rather change the property system than get rid of it wholesale, because as currently constituted I think it's doing a lot of harm.

 

[civver_764]

Count me out of your social contract, given a n unconstrained choice (by constraints I mean all those above) I have no interest nor wish whatsoever in respecting property claims on stuff that is not actually used everyday by the "owner" but rather by other people. I have no interest in respecting the "ownership" of the absentee owner of stock, or land, or houses. And to make it perfectly clear for you: I do not mean "your stuff inside the house you live in" but rather "the house someone lives in but pays rent to an owner".

Are you sure about that? Renting is not just something imposed on people, it is something people very much want. For example what if you had a spare room in your home and somebody else wanted to use it. Would it be wrong for you to rent it to them?

What about hotels? People like to travel, and when they travel they need somewhere to stay. Surely it is not wrong for them to rent a room in this instance.

People are always free to build or purchase their own homes, but many will choose to rent instead. Do you fault them for that? Would you rather they be homeless?

But of course, in my proposed society you would be free to form a community where renting is disallowed, if that's really what you want. I suspect that most people will want the ability to rent, however.

@civver_764 The real sad thing here is that you (and others like you) do not see that capitalism is destroying the very society you so much love: the self-reliant individual, the conservative family, all that is being destroyed by capitalism! Is is not "socialism" that is destroying it, not the "social liberals" in the US sense (except insofar as they support neoliberal economics). It is capitalism, protected (as it always is) under the power of the state it controls. And this shows in two very obvious things: collapse of public health (rising mortality rates among the people who were the core of that society) and diminishing birth rates. "The immigrants are coming" indeed to take over your country, carrying a foreign culture to supplant the dying one, and they will take it over - because capitalism led its present population, with its culture, to slow-motion suicide. It's happening. And you're voting for it and helping it happen!

At least the fascists, wrong though they were in looking back to an imaginary medieval past impossibly fused with some "uber-state" as a solution, did figure out what the problem was: capitalism was destroying societies back in the 1930s. You "conservatives" in the US are so sad that you do not even have that: still not figured out the problem, much less searched for the possible solutions. Trump is sad not because he is a fascist, but because he is not one. If he were one he'd be dangerous, but at least somewhat smart.

In any case the world did figure out ways to restrain the destructiveness of capitalism and avoid social collapse: FDR did it there in the US, the social democrats did in in western Europe in a slightly different way, and the communists did it in eastern Europe despite some... unscrupulous leaders messing things for part of the time. The world figured out the problem in the 1930s, and found some (temporary,but that's life) solutions after the 1940s. But that generation died... Now we must be at it again.

You've got an interesting perspective for sure. I don't agree, but it's interesting. You don't hear a lot of lefties talking about the negatives of immigration.

I think you are conflating "capitalism" with what I would call "greed mixed with state power". And I am just as against that as you are. State power is so dangerous precisely because the greediest and most power-hungry in society will use it to enforce their will on people.

I try not to use the word "capitalism" at all, because it can mean a lot of different things. A lot of people conflate it with "corporatism", which is the opposite of what I'm advocating. That's why I prefer terms like "free market" and "voluntary society". It really is as simple as "keep your stuff, and don't take other people's stuff." Live and let live. If you want to start a worker's co-op or a commune with like minded individuals, then you should be free to.

Not if you work at a furniture factory. Then it's the capitalist's desk. By right, so we're told.

By agreement. The worker agrees the capitalist will get ownership of the desk, in exchange for access to the capitalist's materials, tools, and customer base.

The worker was not forced into this agreement. They could build their own desk, with their own materials, and their own tools, if they really wanted. The capitalist is not stopping them.

I say that private property is evil. And not even evil, really, more obnoxious and obsolete. "Ownership" is a much more general concept than can be fully represented by property-deeds.

Eh? That seems like a pretty superficial objection. How can you distinguish wrongful "private property" from rightful property? It seems that such a distinction isn't really there.

The capitalist is already exercising control over other people's resources. No one man can build and operate a factory by himself, and yet that is the fiction the capitalist entertains.

The capitalist pays the people working in their factory in exchange for their services, just like you would pay a mechanic to fix your car. There is no expectation that you then give ownership of your car to the mechanic.

In a practical sense, yes. What I'm getting is that, contrary to Civver's insistence, private property is not a natural phenomenon, not something that just happens, it's something that people, collectively, decide to do, so the process of abolishing private property, rather than an artificial intervention from outside of history, is simply the process of everybody deciding to do something else.

And why do you think people collectively decided to do private property? Is it not because the feeling of owning something is natural?

 

[Samson]

Are you sure about that? Renting is not just something imposed on people, it is something people very much want.
...
People are always free to build or purchase their own homes, but many will choose to rent instead. Do you fault them for that? Would you rather they be homeless?

It is imposed on people, if they would rather not be homeless. I would love to build my own house, but all the land is taken. I would love to buy my own house, but my landlord takes most of the products of my labour because he has a piece of paper so this is not a realistic outcome in the current situation.

This is the nub of the problem, people who own stuff get more say / power / control / ownership than people who make stuff. This certainly does not do a good job at resource allocation, and the thread argument is that this is not good for long term stability.

 

[Borachio]

People are always free to build or purchase their own homes, but many will choose to rent instead. Do you fault them for that? Would you rather they be homeless?

This is absurd. People are not always free to build or purchase their own homes. What kind of world do you live in?

A few people will choose to rent, it is true. But these are people who are looking to live in an area for only a short period of time.

The overwhelming majority of people who can afford to purchase their own homes will do so. Because that is, in the long term, the cheaper way to house oneself.

But of the people who don't purchase their own homes, the overwhelming majority rent simply because they have no choice.

And renting will give you a house which in the long run will cost you more, and be more poorly maintained.

Renting is not the sensible option in terms of cost. And, to reiterate, people don't do it if they have a choice.

 

[innonimatu]

Are you sure about that? Renting is not just something imposed on people, it is something people very much want. For example what if you had a spare room in your home and somebody else wanted to use it. Would it be wrong for you to rent it to them?

What about hotels? People like to travel, and when they travel they need somewhere to stay. Surely it is not wrong for them to rent a room in this instance.

Shelter is a necessity. Those that cannot own one outright, rent. Or live under the bridge or on a cardboard box. Surely if given the choice between having shelter and paying rent for it, and having the very same shelter and not paying rent for it, people would always chose the second one.

I can see the usefulness of "renting" for temporary accommodations. But what is now called renting and mediated through the marked was not always so. I'm many places there have been free accommodations provided for travelers, pilgrims, etc. In some way the common purse (of the religious congregation, of the town or the state) built them and at most changed costs of maintenance. "Social housing" is ancient.

People are always free to build or purchase their own homes, but many will choose to rent instead. Do you fault them for that? Would you rather they be homeless?

That is not a free choice and you know it. As I've quoted before, the poor and the rich alike are "free" to beg or to live under the bridge. We know that only the poor must fear having to do so, and they would rather not if they had other means.

Building a house is not a "freedom", unless I were free to stake out a homestead from any currently unused land available. And free to fell the trees or gather the stone without having to pay for them. Otherwise this "free choice" is a lie, because only those with enough money to but these things (or enough credit to borrow, which leads to the same...) are "free".

But of course, in my proposed society you would be free to form a community where renting is disallowed, if that's really what you want. I suspect that most people will want the ability to rent, however.

Expanding on that statement, I would be free to form a "communist state" in your proposed society? Or a "fascist state"? Or any other kind of? What else would those communities with rules become but states? If so that means that what you are thinking is one more variant of old anarchist ideas. And as we all know from historical experience, anarchy never lasts.

You've got an interesting perspective for sure. I don't agree, but it's interesting. You don't hear a lot of lefties talking about the negatives of immigration.

I think you are conflating "capitalism" with what I would call "greed mixed with state power". And I am just as against that as you are. State power is so dangerous precisely because the greediest and most power-hungry in society will use it to enforce their will on people.

Immigration, as any other form of social change, has negative effects as well as positive ones. There are always individual winners and losers with changes to the way societies are structured. I do believe that people should be honest and discuss those without ideological taboos. Keeping in mind that each specific consequence being negative or positive will be a matter of perspective/interests...

I try not to use the word "capitalism" at all, because it can mean a lot of different things. A lot of people conflate it with "corporatism", which is the opposite of what I'm advocating. That's why I prefer terms like "free market" and "voluntary society". It really is as simple as "keep your stuff, and don't take other people's stuff." Live and let live. If you want to start a worker's co-op or a commune with like minded individuals, then you should be free to.

By agreement. The worker agrees the capitalist will get ownership of the desk, in exchange for access to the capitalist's materials, tools, and customer base.

The worker was not forced into this agreement. They could build their own desk, with their own materials, and their own tools, if they really wanted. The capitalist is not stopping them.

Eh? That seems like a pretty superficial objection. How can you distinguish wrongful "private property" from rightful property? It seems that such a distinction isn't really there.

The capitalist pays the people working in their factory in exchange for their services, just like you would pay a mechanic to fix your car. There is no expectation that you then give ownership of your car to the mechanic.

And why do you think people collectively decided to do private property? Is it not because the feeling of owning something is natural?

People did not collectively decide to do private property. Private property was created by force, when people fenced off what was previously part of the commons. Someone hunter/gathered figured out how to farm and took over a piece of land that previously had been open for everyone to use. These kinds of takeover may happen without opposition so long as there is plenty of land still available - people indeed agree not to oppose it. But this was in the pre-history of mankind. As recourses become scarcer (as they did everywhere except in the remotest regions on earth) the fencing of land meant that new generations were no longer free to take what they needed. Everything around was already taken whet they were born! Your ideal of freedom does not work because of that. There is no clean slate, and if you were to make one today the next generation would again meet this same problem, they would inherit and divide and trade the unfree land starting from different positions. And where capitalist markers work we know from history that wealth gets concentrated. Do this a few generations and you get one society where the sons of the wealthy would inherit the land and its incomes, the sons of the poor would inherit a position as contracted laborers or renters forced to give up their earnings as rents.
Land is the example here, but more generally this applies to everything that is owned, finite, and traded in the markets. Most of what we think of as wealth.

The reality is that where resources are scarce there is no freedom except what the local society grants in its property laws. Property is not the liberator in this history, it is the opposite. Laws are made to defend property against the freedom to pick and use what lies unused. Against the natural feeling of owning something that you actually use, such as the land you farm or the house you live in. If you only have the money to rent those, are unable to buy the property right to it, what happens? The natural sense of property is thwarted by the law, in order to guarantee the payments of rents to the absent owner. Property rights, when applied to things beyond what you actually can reasonably use for yourself (one possible distinction between "private property" and "rightful property"), serve the purpose of curtailing freedom, not enhancing it.
They can be defended with lots of different arguments (right or wrong): might makes right, the natural outcome of the division of labor, enhanced productivity, whatever. But this one specific argument you're putting forward about property rights as we do them today, enhancing freedom, is wrong. Our present laws of property rights enhance the freedom of the lucky few that in some way got wealthy, at the expense of the many that are comparatively poorer and can only use resources by paying tribute to those few. And "social mobility" is a set of anecdotes told to prevent the many from rebelling against this.

 

[Traitorfish]

By agreement. The worker agrees the capitalist will get ownership of the desk, in exchange for access to the capitalist's materials, tools, and customer base.

The worker was not forced into this agreement. They could build their own desk, with their own materials, and their own tools, if they really wanted. The capitalist is not stopping them.

By agreement, but not by free association. They were not forced into this agreement, but they were forced into some agreement. "Work or starve", that is the choice given to them; perhaps, in the most advance societies, this is moderated to "work or all-but-starve", although of course you would enthusiastically do away with this.

Can the worker go into business and compete with the capitalist? Unlikely- where does he find the capital, the connections? Can he band together with other workers? More plausible, but if each of them brings zero in the way of capital and zero in the way of connections, that still adds up to zero. You talk about free enterprise, but free for who? Not for the worker, not for the people who produce the goods that permit that enterprise to exist.

Eh? That seems like a pretty superficial objection. How can you distinguish wrongful "private property" from rightful property? It seems that such a distinction isn't really there.

Because "private property" has no external moral reference point. Ownership is self-sufficient, I own it because I own it, it's mine because it's mine. One might attempt to find some external reference point for private property, but this is always going to be an academic exercise, an image of the sort of context in which private property would be justified, it doesn't describe how property actually works. "Rightful property", if that's the term you want to use, is a constant process of negotiation: who is using this, who needs this, what is the most good this can do and for whom.

The capitalist pays the people working in their factory in exchange for their services, just like you would pay a mechanic to fix your car. There is no expectation that you then give ownership of your car to the mechanic.

The mechanic offers a discrete service to the customer, for which he is able to set the terms of exchange. The worker does not offer a discrete service to the capitalist, but rather his time and effort, to be disposed of as the boss sees fit. He has very limited control over the terms of the exchange, and less the more general or commonplace the nature of the skills he possesses. And the more the condition of the mechanic approaches that of the worker, the more he has been proletarianised, the more the relationship he has with his customers, while legally framed as one of free commerce, has become one of exploitation.

And why do you think people collectively decided to do private property? Is it not because the feeling of owning something is natural?

Private property was enforced from above, at enormous human cost, though enclosure, clearance and colonialism. Most people in most of the world never volunteered to participate in this system, they were forced into it, at the end of a musket.

Remember, private property isn't just "owning something", it's more fundamentally other people owning something; it may be natural for a person to feel that they should have control over the means of their livelihood, that they should be guaranteed by law access to the means of their subsistence, but it is wholly unnatural that they should expect the means of their livelihood to be controlled by another, that access to the means of their subsistence should be permitted on sufferance, so far as it was necessary for another to profit from that subsistence. That is something that humans had to invent for themselves.

 

[Lexicus]

in the most advance societies, this is moderated to "work or all-but-starve", although of course you would enthusiastically do away with this.

"Work or barely subsist and be thought of as a degenerate parasite by much of society"

 

[Borachio]

I'm quite happy to be regarded by others as a degenerate parasite.

I regard myself as working to bring the system down from within.

Although come to think of it, that is a degenerate parasite.

 

[civver_764]

Shelter is a necessity. Those that cannot own one outright, rent. Or live under the bridge or on a cardboard box. Surely if given the choice between having shelter and paying rent for it, and having the very same shelter and not paying rent for it, people would always chose the second one.

I can see the usefulness of "renting" for temporary accommodations. But what is now called renting and mediated through the marked was not always so. I'm many places there have been free accommodations provided for travelers, pilgrims, etc. In some way the common purse (of the religious congregation, of the town or the state) built them and at most changed costs of maintenance. "Social housing" is ancient.

That is not a free choice and you know it. As I've quoted before, the poor and the rich alike are "free" to beg or to live under the bridge. We know that only the poor must fear having to do so, and they would rather not if they had other means.

Building a house is not a "freedom", unless I were free to stake out a homestead from any currently unused land available. And free to fell the trees or gather the stone without having to pay for them. Otherwise this "free choice" is a lie, because only those with enough money to but these things (or enough credit to borrow, which leads to the same...) are "free".

You are free to work and make the money to buy the materials and the land. You want to get the product of someone else's labor for free, but that's just theft. Someone took the time to build the house that you want for free - why should you be able to steal it from them?

I should point out that is the STATE which prevents you making use of unused land. The state is the one who violently took over control of unused land, and then sold it off to capitalists. Under my voluntary society based on natural property rights this land would be unowned until someone makes use of it.

Of course there exist many places where all the land is used, and so what? That does not give you the right to steal the fruits of someone else's labor. The cost of real estate is directly related to how many people want to use it. If it were not for this people would swarm into these lands and destroy them. One way or another we need to decide who gets to use this land, and price is simply a natural mechanism for doing so, based on voluntary agreements between people. The other option is to create a totalitarian state which retains absolute control over all land and deals it out to people as it sees fit. This seems like the same problem you talk about multiplied by one thousand.

Places exist where the land is relatively cheap, because the demand for living there is much lower. Middle America is full of such places. There are even plots of land that can be had for under $1000. Even on a minimum wage this is not an impossible amount to save for. Even where a capitalist unjustly owns unusued land the tendency will be for them to divide it up and sell it off to people. That's why under capitalism we have seen a huge expansion in the number of propety owners, and a huge decrease in poverty. Even when things start off unfairly, the free market will tend to even things out. All of the unfair distribution of land you talk about was attained through violence, not free trade. You will not solve problems of violence with more violence.

Expanding on that statement, I would be free to form a "communist state" in your proposed society? Or a "fascist state"? Or any other kind of? What else would those communities with rules become but states? If so that means that what you are thinking is one more variant of old anarchist ideas. And as we all know from historical experience, anarchy never lasts.

Not a state, but a voluntary community yes. You can even do this today, and there are many communes and workers cooperatives that exist for you to take part in.

By agreement, but not by free association. They were not forced into this agreement, but they were forced into some agreement. "Work or starve", that is the choice given to them; perhaps, in the most advance societies, this is moderated to "work or all-but-starve", although of course you would enthusiastically do away with this.

But don't you see -- that's not because of capitalism, that's because of biology! The truth is that capitalism has made several magnitudes easier to feed oneself. It is the free market that has driven innovations in farming such that the price of food has significantly decreased and now requires less work than ever before to attain. People used to have hunt for every single meal, or work long hours on a family farm, but now they can go to the grocery store and get a meal for less than an hour of minimum wage work!

You either work to feed yourself, or you steal the product of someone else's work. I choose the former.

Can the worker go into business and compete with the capitalist? Unlikely- where does he find the capital, the connections? Can he band together with other workers? More plausible, but if each of them brings zero in the way of capital and zero in the way of connections, that still adds up to zero. You talk about free enterprise, but free for who? Not for the worker, not for the people who produce the goods that permit that enterprise to exist.

Of course he can! Starting a business is not easy, which is why it can pay off so well! Most of the time your evil "capitalists" are workers that took huge risks, put in thousands of hours of work, and created a valuable business which benefits society. Then you want to say they are not the rightful owners of what they created. Such an anti-worker sentiment!

Actually it gets easier to create your own business and work for yourself all the time. The internet provides tons of opportunities for this. Even with a crappy laptop, a cheap apartment, and a low-paying job you can create a business!

If you've got 50 workers trying to start a co-op together, and they each save $50 a month, then in one year that's $30,000 of capital to start something! In two years $60,000! And that's entirely without any outside investment. You don't have to be rich to build connections and sell your product idea to investors.

I mean you guys on the left can raise all this money for protests and ad campaigns and lobbying the government, but when it comes time to put your vision into action all of a sudden you want to roll over and play the victim? Dude you guys are the MASTERS of raising money for various causes. Stop complaining and go out there and create something! Why is violence the only way for you achieve your ends? If you really want to succeed in life there are so many paths for you to take.

 

[Berzerker]

Not if you work at a furniture factory. Then it's the capitalist's desk. By right, so we're told.

Why couldn't you build your own desk if you worked at a furniture factory?

What I'm getting is that, contrary to Civver's insistence, private property is not a natural phenomenon, not something that just happens, it's something that people, collectively, decide to do, so the process of abolishing private property, rather than an artificial intervention from outside of history, is simply the process of everybody deciding to do something else.

Does private property exist in nature? Critters make homes and defend them with zeal as any walk thru a neighborhood full of dogs will show, seems natural enough...

 

[Sommerswerd]

Does private property exist in nature? Critters make homes and defend them with zeal as any walk thru a neighborhood full of dogs will show, seems natural enough...

I saw a documentary where a guy raising Pitbulls would crack them on the head with a stick if they growled at him when he approached their doghouse. He would walk away and repeat the process until they stopped growling and instead cowered when he approached. Is that what you mean when you talk about private property existing naturally? Seems like that's what you're describing...

 

[innonimatu]

You are free to work and make the money to buy the materials and the land. You want to get the product of someone else's labor for free, but that's just theft. Someone took the time to build the house that you want for free - why should you be able to steal it from them?

You are claiming that any house - nay, every house, is owned by those who actually built it? No, houses are owned by those who ordered it built and hired people to do so, or by people who bought them already built far in the past. There is no claim to "rights of the original builder" to be made for (I dare guess) 99.9% of the housing stock in any modern country.

I should point out that is the STATE which prevents you making use of unused land. The state is the one who violently took over control of unused land, and then sold it off to capitalists. Under my voluntary society based on natural property rights this land would be unowned until someone makes use of it.

You are aware that it is the state that keeps the records of property, and manages the enforcement of it. That is the real reason why it is the state that originally created the privatization of land. And that is also what will continue to happen so long as private land exists: no owned is able to enforce ownership absent the backing of of some kind of state. Ultimately if they enforce it by themselves, they they become the territorial state. There can be no such thing as capitalist anarchy, don't you get that? It always turns into political power, into states.

Of course there exist many places where all the land is used, and so what? That does not give you the right to steal the fruits of someone else's labor.

How so "fruits of labor"? In order for the property to be somewhat generally claimed as fruits of labor there would have to be a 100% inheritance tax. Do you see that happening anywhere?

That's why under capitalism we have seen a huge expansion in the number of propety owners, and a huge decrease in poverty. Even when things start off unfairly, the free market will tend to even things out. All of the unfair distribution of land you talk about was attained through violence, not free trade. You will not solve problems of violence with more violence.

Where exactly have these decreases of poverty under capitalism happened? I can easily find either increases or decreases, depending on what is is replacing. I also see a tendency, as a capitalist regime lasts, for an increase, broken only by wars and political intervention. WW2 and the regulations and nationalizations then enacted were such a break for several western countries.

It is the free market that has driven innovations in farming such that the price of food has significantly decreased and now requires less work than ever before to attain. People used to have hunt for every single meal, or work long hours on a family farm, but now they can go to the grocery store and get a meal for less than an hour of minimum wage work!

People are actually working more than in the pre-capitalist era, where in many portions of the world about a third of the year were holidays.

 

[civver_764]

You are claiming that any house - nay, every house, is owned by those who actually built it? No, houses are owned by those who ordered it built and hired people to do so, or by people who bought them already built far in the past. There is no claim to "rights of the original builder" to be made for (I dare guess) 99.9% of the housing stock in any modern country.

If you are the owner of a home then you have the right to give that home to someone else. If I own a house and I give that to my kids and then you try to take it from my kids, you are still stealing from me! Similarly, if I sell the house to someone else the same principle applies. Also, they would have worked many thousands of hours to buy the house from me. You would be stealing those hours from them by taking the house for free.

You are aware that it is the state that keeps the records of property, and manages the enforcement of it. That is the real reason why it is the state that originally created the privatization of land. And that is also what will continue to happen so long as private land exists: no owned is able to enforce ownership absent the backing of of some kind of state. Ultimately if they enforce it by themselves, they they become the territorial state. There can be no such thing as capitalist anarchy, don't you get that? It always turns into political power, into states.

That's the "big question" so to speak. But I think that a state is not necessary at all. Just as people in a community can agree not to kill one another so too can they agree not to transgress on each other's property. And of course there are anarchist ways of resolving disputes which I have gone into extensively earlier in this thread.

Where exactly have these decreases of poverty under capitalism happened? I can easily find either increases or decreases, depending on what is is replacing. I also see a tendency, as a capitalist regime lasts, for an increase, broken only by wars and political intervention. WW2 and the regulations and nationalizations then enacted were such a break for several western countries.

Take China for example. Free market reforms have lifted 680 million people out of poverty, and the poverty rate has dropped from 84% in 1980 to just 10% today

Globally the trend has been very positive over the last 200 years:

Spoiler :

It really depends how you define capitalism. If you define capitalism like me, as letting people freely make agreements with one another, then it is clear that it is a force for good and has reduced global poverty. If you define it like yourself, as the use of state power to steal land and resources, then it does seem to be a negative thing. The point of contention I have with you is that you want to INCREASE state power in order to offset the negative effects caused by state power.

People are actually working more than in the pre-capitalist era, where in many portions of the world about a third of the year were holidays.

Oh c'mon, the jobs that people have today are much easier than those of the past! It is much easier nowadays to stockpile food for the winter, if that's what you want to do.

 

[Borachio]

If I own a house and I give that to my kids and then you try to take it from my kids, you are still stealing from me!

Oh. So any gift you give still belongs to you?

That's a very strange attitude, isn't it? I mean, that hardly counts as a gift at all.