Re: do you know anyone who isn't brainwashed in some major way?

boots <no@xxxxx> was an ugly child, and now the world must suffer,
like this:


Property is theft.

I haven't followed most of this discussion because as usual $Zero has
thrown it so far into the abstract that I don't feel it's worth the
effort to decipher it.

But your statement, "property is theft", is one that I cannot agree
with. Neither can I precisely disagree with it. The concept of
property is like jello, it wiggles too much to grasp with pliers.


No, it's pretty simple actually.



It's a concept that's off to the side of where it ought to be,
somehow.

If I'm using a tool and you come up and rip it from my hands because,
well, it isn't my property because you disavow the concept of
property, I'm likely to smack you with it for your act of arrogant
aggression. Regardless of whether I have ownership rights I am using
it and your taking it away without permission is theft and fucking
rude on top of that, so careful about getting smacked.


Yes.


If I've gone to great efforts to find the tool because of its rarity
or whatever and I've left it laying on the workbench, taking it will
get you another smack because by taking it you're forcing me to go
through the effort of finding a replacement and that's coercion and
fucking rude on top of it, not to mention it being a theft of my
efforts in finding the thing.

Yes. But what does this have to do with its being your or my property?

Note that this is ultimately how all property was acquired though.



If I've gone out with an ax and cleared a thousand acres of land
because I intend to plant crops, and you come and take it from me,
again you're forcing me to go through the effort of finding and
clearing another thousand acres of land before I can plant crops and
you should expect a severe smacking for that act of aggression.

On the other hand, if I simply lay claim to a thousand acres of land
and I'm letting it lie fallow, and you want to clear it and plant
crops, it would be wrong for me to deny it to you. If I'd fenced it
or otherwise improved it, I'd expect you to somehow restore the
efforts and resources that I'd put into its improvement, that seems
only fair. If I had traded a pair of oxen for it, you'd need to
restore my oxen or you'd be taking from me. If I was to ask for a
hundred pair of oxen before I'd let you use the land, then I'd
probably deserve a smack myself.

Welcome to economics.


So the way I see it, property isn't theft, but it isn't something that
deserves the treatment people give it for the reasons it's given.

The concepts you discuss here are not property as such, but to do with
usage.

There's a lot to be said though about the uses of tools.



compare that to the dudes who designed, manufactured, marketed, and
distributed the new laptop you're using to have this argument.

I'm using the PC.


you think they would have created such a nice product for you if they
had absolutely no incentive to improve upon the last one that they
went to all of the enormous time and trouble to make?

It's a great sadness that even thinkers like yourself cannot see any
other incentive to do good things in life than the dollar.

The dollar is valueless except for its practical utility.

You can substitute the unit of exchange of your choice, boots.

If the only
things one wants are things that cannot be obtained without dollars,
then perhaps dollars are a reasonable incentive.



Ah, well, therein lies the rub, boots. If the things you want can only
be obtained with dollars, then dollars are a useful incentive.

Now, big conceptual leap to a world in which the things you want are
not things that require dollars to acquire (zero seems unaware that it
is even conceivable that humans could want things that do not cost
dollars) or we no longer require dollars for their exchange.

and the latest model is way cheaper and way better than the previous
one.

i mean, would you write a book filled with your hard-won insights on
poker, and then cut down some trees to get the paper to make the book,
set up a printing press to apply the difficult-to-extract inks to each
page, and numerous other efforts just to break out "even" on it all?

If I lived in the ideal world, of course I would.

IOW: would you go to all that effort and time-spending for nothing
other than the joy of sharing your knowledge if it meant that you
could not possibly afford the laptop you needed to type it all up?

"Afford"? Where was there any notion of affording in my world?

and before you try some strained acrobatics, realize that the
mechanism for it to all work with reasonbable feasible efficiency is
the absolute beauty of the free market.

What?


can there be those who exploit others?

yes. but that is ALWAYS the case, no matter what non-existent
alternate method you propose.

Oh.


"exploitation" is not a unique possible feature of "capitalism."

It is the essence of capitalism.

I haven't devoted enough thought to capitalism lately to comment on
whether it has any particular single essence, but it occurs to me that
you might be equating the concept of excessive profit with the concept
of exploitation. You know, without realizing it.

Okay. Just briefly, here it is.

Say you work. You produce something. Your production is valued at x.
Some guy takes your work, packages it and now it's valued at y. The
guy did not produce anything bar the packaging.

The guy has exploited you. You did the work. He just packaged it.

Yes, I know packaging is work. It's an analogy.

Capitalism says that packagers deserve greater rewards than workers. I
say that's simply rewarding thieves, who steal labour by the very same
coercive mechanism you noted and Sal is too blinkered to recognise is
coercive.

In fact, I'm quite happy not to say it's coercive. I'd call it theft.
Capitalists systematically steal some of the value of your labour
because they exploit your inability to market it.

Like most exploiters, they abuse an information gap.

it's just part of human nature.


I do not agree. I have faith that we are and can be better than that.


the bad part.

anyway, the point is, capitalism is not inherently bad.

Yes, it is.


it's the people who exploit it that are bad.



No, it isn't. It is based on exploitation. It's incredible that you
can even suggest that it isn't.

It's based on money, the idea that things cannot be obtained without
money, and the idea that risk justifies reward. It's a freaking mess
because the concept of money itself is fallacious.


No. Money is just a token, boots.


you didn't see that coming, did you?

Sadly, yes.

well, you're not very prepared for someone who saw it coming.

i'll save you the trouble and tell you why you can't:

all alternatives are pure illusions, if that.

No. They may be impossible at this point, but they are not illusory.

so would a squirrel eating a peach be stealing or not?

Not if it needed to eat a peach.

welcome home, grasshopper.

and just so you realize how wrong you've been, describe for us how you
go about determining whether the squirrel "needs" to eat a peach.

How do you determine that it doesn't?

that's not much of an answer, is it?

It's a fine answer.


so you want _me_ to answer the question for you?

i thought you came to this discussion fully prepared.

oh well.

AND how you go about regulating squirrel dining habits.

take a few days, if you like.

we'll wait.

...

critical thinking... it can be utterly exausting when you do it wrong.

You know, just because you cannot conceive of a world that works
without exploitation doesn't mean it cannot exist. I have far more
faith in us than you do, clearly.

just because you cannot conceive of a world where there's a win win
effort where nobody is unfairly exploited doesn't mean that it cannot
exist.

Of course I can conceive of it. I outlined one to you.


i mean, you certainly wouldn't pay me to be a pedantic editor, would
you?

In the ideal world, I would not pay you *at all*.

Perhaps I should go back and read what your ideal world entails, but I
am too lazy. People are, you know. Lazy. Until they are caught up
in a thing and carried away by it. Unfortunately too often the thing
they are caught up in is money and the toys money equates to in our
society. That's why Marx's theories remain theories, because people
are lazy, they don't contribute what they could; they'll take what
they need though, and more.


I have far more faith in people than you do, clearly.


of course not.

i haven't taken the time and effort necessary to study all of the
issues long enough for it to be worth it to you to pay me to provide
such a service for you.

is it all becoming any clearer for you yet?

Do you think all editors provide the same level of service? Do you
think that I am rewarded commensurately with the level of service I
can provide or by some other metric?

Some other metric. If they could afford to pay you what you're worth
you wouldn't ever need to be pissing about money. You're paid as much
as they guess to be the least they can pay without you walking out.


Yes. Which in my view amounts to stealing the amount more than that
that my labour is worth.


You might want to consider what a "market maker" does. I'm using that
phrase in the financial sense, as it is used in the trading exchanges.
I'm not sure if that will help you understand why you as an employee
are the helpless pawn of an established market rather than a unique
quantity that makes its own market.


I know what a market maker is and your analogy is fairly good. It's a
pity Zero doesn't grasp that.

But you need to take a step further. Capitalism entrenches that
established market. It's a system designed to do that. It pretends to
free us, but does the opposite. It ensures that we remain enslaved.

The latter is an important question, because in your model of
capitalism, I should be receiving more reward than P, a friend of
mine.

But P won't even work for what I get an hour. Yet he's less skilled
than I am. Go figure.

Once you understand precisely how that works you'll be on your way to
realizing a world without money.

I understand precisely how it works but I don't know how to work it.
Isn't that fucked?

--

Free Tibet?
I didn't know I was paying for it.
http://gollyg.blogspot.com -- bull*** you can trust

Ash Wensdee
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