Most/Least Favorite Philosopher and Why?

[Kuciwalker]

That's what capitalism does. It does not recognize the value of your labour and alienates you from what you produce.

Explain how being allowed to keep what I make with my labor doesn't recognize te value of my labor...

[Harry Tuttle]

and Big Bird never seived Ernie's rubber ducky and reapportioned it out to Elmo.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by skywalker
Explain how being allowed to keep what I make with my labor doesn't recognize te value of my labor...

But you don't keep it. Your boss takes it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

But you've agreed with your Boss to keep that certain amount. Unless you want to create your own car factory, and I doubt that is even an option.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Sandman
But you don't keep it. Your boss takes it.

Only if you LET HIM. Or would you say "ok, I'm not going to let you give stuff to your boss"?

[Agathon]

Originally posted by skywalker

That's what capitalism does. It does not recognize the value of your labour and alienates you from what you produce.

Explain how being allowed to keep what I make with my labor doesn't recognize te value of my labor...

Say in a firm everyone works equally hard to produce a good. But the firm is owned by some person who inherited it and does no work at all.

The people who do the work receive as much as they can bargain for, usually not much, and the lazy good for nothing owner makes all the money. That's a problem with capitalism, it encourages this sort of behaviour since it's end is to place yourself in a position to receive but not work.

Given that about 2/3 of high wealth is inherited and because once you have a lot of money it is hard to lose it unless you are completely stupid or very unlucky, capitalism rewards indolence.

It's funny how people complain about the pittance that they have to pay welfare bums, when worthless drug addict rich kids are living off their backs.

[Agathon]

Moreover capitalism values human life only as a commodity, labour. As such it is immoral. Human beings are to be treated as ends in themselves not commodities. The market system compels people to sell themselves because all the other goods are already owned.

Locke has an interesting variant on capitalism in that he believes that everyone must be compelled to leave some property commonly available so that new arrivals can make their own way in the world. Of course he lived in a world where a surplus was freely available if one took it from natives or other un-persons.

Has anyone seen Far and Away? There's a repugnant land grab scene in that which one set of victims of capitalism grab up land stolen from other victims of it.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
But you've agreed with your Boss to keep that certain amount. Unless you want to create your own car factory, and I doubt that is even an option.

Yes, but if the alternative is to starve then you aren't really free to disagree.

Freedom to starve is not a freedom worth fighting for or defending. The world does not naturally belong to anyone, property rights are a cultural fiction which we are free to change.

This land is my land, this land is your land. - well spoken by a real American Communist.

[DAVOUT]

But the firm is owned by some person who inherited it and does no work at all.

The people who do the work receive as much as they can bargain for, usually not much, and the lazy good for nothing owner makes all the money. That's a problem with capitalism, it encourages this sort of behaviour since it's end is to place yourself in a position to receive but not work.

You are obsessed by this idea which seems to summarize all your understanding of the economy. Running a business is not as simple as you believe, and distributing from the first day all the income to the workers would always results in a quick failure. Coop business always fail because they never anticipate the future need of cash for investments, or unexpected events, or slowdown.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by DAVOUT

Coop business always fail because they never anticipate the future need of cash for investments, or unexpected events, or
slowdown.

Really? Always fail? I don't think so.

It's not an economic point, it's a moral point - about desert and reward.

Think again.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Agathon


Really? Always fail? I don't think so.

It's not an economic point, it's a moral point - about desert and reward.

Think again.

I am so sorry, I should not have entered a philosophical debate.

You have all right to affirm ideas in total contradiction with reality. I was just referring to actual experiences which have sadly demonstrated my statement. All coop and mutuals have been wiped out or taken over in the last 20 years, not only in continental Europe.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by DAVOUT

I am so sorry, I should not have entered a philosophical debate.

You have all right to affirm ideas in total contradiction with reality. I was just referring to actual experiences which have sadly demonstrated my statement. All coop and mutuals have been wiped out or taken over in the last 20 years, not only in continental Europe.

With all due respect, you should have followed the debate instead of just leaping in. And in my experience people that talk about ideas being in "contradiction with reality" are usually those who have run out of them. And using universal quantifiers (like always) in empirical statements about the social sciences is for the most part to be avoided since they are not "hard" sciences.

What's being talked about is the moral basis of the system of goods distribution. Some people (like Objectivists and Libertarians) think that the free market system is an inherently moral system, others (virtualyl everyone else with a distinct position) do not. That is a philosophical question, not an economic question.

The questions of desert are prior to the questions of how we are to achieve as close to that as is practically feasible. You are taking a position on pragmatics, rather than fundamentals or, to use, colloquial terms, you are putting the cart before the horse.

[DAVOUT]

I reiterate, more deeply, my apologies.

As an extremely poor excuse, I would like to mention that I was induced to participate by your sentence

the lazy good for nothing owner makes all the money.

which I wrongly understood as referring to the reality, when it was obviously a deep philosophical assumption, probably located in the cart (or am I wrong again?)

[Elok]

I will not post WHY I dislike Nietzsche at the moment, because I have reason to believe that I am seriously hammered. But he's on my no-list too.

[Berzerker]

That's a problem with capitalism, it encourages this sort of behaviour since it's end is to place yourself in a position to receive but not work.

Gee, that sounds like a welfare state where some sit on their butts only to be supported by those who do work.