com/cap/com debate - laboring under delusions

[Kidlicious]

Flubber,

Let me respond to the bulk of your post latter. But here's the definition of social benefits

The total benefits of an economic activity to both the individual and the spillover effects to third parties. Social benefits are the total of private benefits and any external benefits.

There's some graphs there too that you can look at.

[Kidlicious]

I just realized that there's a problem with that definition. I'm sure you've already seen that. The employer isn't a third party.

Here's the definition from the Oxford Dictionary of Economics.

social benefit The total benefit from any activity. This includes not only benefits accruing directly to the person or firm conducting the activity, but also external benefits accruing to other people who cannot be charged for them.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Flubber
Also doctors and nurses and teachers should get paid far far more than TV repairmen if we are talking social utility. Healing the sick and teaching would seem to me to be far more socially valuable than any commercial product. Again who decides?

In a capitalist system the market decides and it's possible for the TV repairman to make more than the teacher and possibly even the doctor.

If you want to switch it to economic value of the product, then I hope you are willing to pay oil workers and diamond miners millions of dollars per year since thats what their labor produces ( conveniently forgetting the billions of dollars that owners may have spent to get it ready for production). But what do you compensate the janitor at the diamond mine?? You can't share the diamonds or oil now, can you ?? and what about the janitor back at the hospital where (in canada) no commercial service occurs??

I don't know why you are saying this. I think you are confusing my Marxist theory of labor value with what Che claims is the Marxist labor theory of labor.

No I think in the end the communist state would pay these people a "fair wage" and the individual would have less say in what that wage is than they do now. With no other employers, no right to strike, no possibility to move etc, how would your state employer differ from the very worst of the monopolistic capitalists . . . Oh thats right the decision makers are all philosopher kings that only have the general good-- which somehow they can ascertain-- as their goal.

I'm not against strikes or workers speaking out. Certainly not.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kontiki
Let's ignore the practicality issue for now. I just want to flesh out the morality thing here. Here's what we're working with right now as I see it. Please correct me if you see something wrong:

- value is created from a combination of capital and labour
- we have a widget factory where some people make widgets, and some people sell them
- these people are labour, and should rightfully be compensated for their efforts
- none of these jobs would exist if the capital wasn't there to build the factory. That is, no one is making these widgets, and no one is selling the now non-existant widgets

This is where your model breaks down. For one thing, very few widgets cannot be built without a factory. Secondly, why can't workers' collective build such a factory?

[Jaguar]

What happens then when a new worker joins the team? It's not fair to let him profit off of the previous workers' efforts in building the factory.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Flubber
IHowever on a claim that the the communist system would give the laborer the full value of their work I would say bullcrap. The Hibernia oil platform generates $8 million in revenue every day and lets say 200 people work on it every day. Lets even attribute another 800 people to the other shifts and planners, managers and hangers on to the production of that value. So 8 million a day multiplied by say 300 days of production a year divided by 1000 people involved in that year . .. That comes to $2.4 million each per worker per year.

But does the worker collect $2.4 million? Not on any discussion of communism I have seen.

In a communist system, the workers do not get paid. On the other hand, he doesn't have to pay for things either.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kontiki
But he hasn't done nothing, he's invested his money in a structure which allows the labour to create something of value. If he didn't do that, the labour would create nothing.

Did the capitalist in fact do something?

Somebody else moved the money around for him. Another group of people did the planning, calculations, and constructions. Yet another group of people had built the machines and a last group moved the machines in place.

Nope, can't say he did something.

[chequita guevara]

This thread is two days old, and it's already almost halfway done.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
This thread is two days old, and it's already almost halfway done.

I have an idea. On the next com/cap thread make a rule that each individual can only post a minimum number per day.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Kontiki
Say you work in a labour-owned widget factory and make 400 unpainted widgets a year. Someone else in the same factory paints the widgets, and you make X number of dollars through your hard work. But now, the people in the paint factory have drastically improved their productivity, so paint becomes cheaper. Your factory buys the cheaper paint, and your factory makes more money without you increasing the amount or changing the type of work you do. You have now profitted from doing nothing. How does this jive with your morality?

It appears that you are talking about a collective factory inside a capitalist system. The difficulty arises at the interface, i.e., when the factory is building supply from the outside and when it's selling finished goods. I don't think you can speak of morality when something crosses the boundary, because you are just smashing two contrasting systems together.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
This thread is two days old, and it's already almost halfway done.

We should be happy about that. It means the debate is vigorous and the thead stays visible to most Polytubbies.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Jaguar
What happens then when a new worker joins the team? It's not fair to let him profit off of the previous workers' efforts in building the factory.

Off the top of my head there are two solutions:

1. No new worker can join unless he's given a share of ownership by an existing worker.

2. New worker performs extra duties for a period of time.

[Jaguar]

1. Cronyism
2. That means the other workers, who collectively own the plant, are exploiting the new worker, by your own definition.

[Velociryx]

So far, Spiffor and GePap have made the most sense to my brain.

Spiffor's vision of communism is really hardly communism at all, with the preservation of interests (rent on money), really all he's against is the multi-generational flow of capital and private ownership of factories.

GePap concedes that until we achieve the point of Replicators (Star Trek), such a system is essentially non-viable (at which point, capitalism won't fold via revolution, but EVOLUTION, when it becomes no longer necessary).

None of this, however, has changed my core views that:

* Private ownership is good (yes, including of the "means of production"--which is usually so amorphously defined that it can cover most anything, and thus, as a term to provide a bounding box for what is and is not okay to own, is rather silly

* Rents and Interests are not only good, but necessary to cover the RISKS of those who invest capital toward productive ends. By choosing to ignore payment of the risk premium, all incentive to invest capital toward ANY enterprise is rendered non-existent, and is, in fact, exploitation OF the folks (or the state) with the capital to invest

* Capitalists, by virtue of applying their capital TO a given venture, are enablers. Without their capital, the venture would never be born, and thus, they deserve compensation for the risks assumed with the allocation OF that capital. Further, there is nothing exploitive in this.

* Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Your work is valued at (ie "worth") only what you can convince someone to pay you for it. It has relatively little to do with the value of what you create or produce.

* The risk premium must be acknowledged EVEN IN a command economy. In this case, it is the state that assumes the risk and responsibility of capital allocation, rather than an individual, but this in no way means that the risk has vanished. The enterprise is not guaranteed to succeed, and the capital is still "at risk" - compensatable risk.

Further, even IF we disallow the dispersion of wealth across generational boundaries (ie, no "inheritance") this will not solve the problem unless you also outlaw the giving of gifts, and surely no one sees a moral problem with gift giving?

So...you make inheritance illegal, then people with capital, who want the best for their children, will simply give them gifts of capital while they are still alive, nicely circumventing the (absolutely rediculous) "rule" that parents should be prevented from playing a role in assisting in their childrens' future.

Further still, I observe that communism is essentially at odds with itself.

One of the mandates in pure communism is that there IS no state, and yet, "the state" owns all the means of production and controls production (centralized, command economy).

Thus, the paradox. IF the state owns everything, then some means of enforcement and self-preservation MUST exist. IF the state is to set production paramaters, then there must be someone serving IN that capacity (and in Kid's utopia, we've got to have LOTS of State "Watchers" to ensure that no one ever becomes wealthier, or ever has an opportunity to exploit).

The two conditions cannot exist together, rendering the entire argument....smoke.

Of course, the counter argument is that the workers are all supposed to "own" the means of production, but this opens up all sorts of other cans of worms.

As Jag pointed out....what happens if you bring someone new on after the factory is built? The new worker has no stake in the labor already done by the other workers, and thus, should not be able to lay claim to their prior labor.

Further, as he points out....to exploit him for a time is essentially croneyism, and runs against the grain of the system.

Also, what happens if the employee later decides to move? Different city, different job? Is he given a severance package equal to the lump sum of the value of his portion of the means of production he labored for, so he can "buy into" the next place he works at? Or are people simply not allowed to relocate in the name of "freedom and equality?"

-=Vel=-

[Kidlicious]

Bit of a broken record don't you think. The thread has moved on, but you haven't.