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You're nit picking. Whether the risk goes to zero or just very low, that doesn't change the point that there is generally significant risk to start up, which does not exist with labor. Labor is almost always a zero startup risk, a business is almost always the opposite.
And you're completely missing the point that this argument doesn't scale.
I don't even know what that means. Zero risk is zero risk.
You keep saying the word risk, and liberal capitalists do this all the time. Companies limit personal liability, so risk goes to zero there for a bunch of legal issues.
What most people are talking about is money, but not everyone has access to money. If you take two people, one born into a rich family, and another born into a homeless family, the rich kid gets a massive inheritance and "risks" 30% of it starting a business. Let's say he hires the person born into a homeless family.
The liberal conception here is that the rich person, handed a massive amount of cash for absolutely nothing, deserves the surplus value of labor from the poor person because he "risked" a small part of his inheritance that the poor person never had access to. It's a wild assertion.
This might seem fabricated, but in the real world this is how it goes, people with capital accumulate more capital. Jeff Bezos "built Amazon" with a $245,000 loan from his parents, and worked out of their garage. He then used that loan and later capital investments to hire people to actually build Amazon.
His parents could've just as easily gone the standard capitalist route, and instead of loaning the money instead valuated the company at $300,000 and assumed ~80% ownership for the company. The only reason this isn't how it played out is because parents don't like exploiting their kids, there was a biological component at play that disallowed the standard capitalist exploitation from taking place. So they offered him a deal that no capitalist in their "right mind" would offer, because it left Jeff with far too much and the capitalist with far less.
Companies limit personal liability
Sure, they can limit it, and you can shield yourself personally from losses taken by the company, but there is a still (generally speaking, again) a significant financial risk to starting a company at all. You can't "shield" yourself from start up costs.
If the argument is that "rich people are financially more secure so it's easier for them to take risk" I 100% agree. There's no question that rich people start off with a massive head start. I fully recognize "the uterine lottery."
But the meme is about this risk being equal to the "risk" taken by people just being paid to do labor. Don't get my position wrong, I believe labor deserves way more of a share right now. But there is no risk in it. Sure, you can lose your job which sucks, but (again generally speaking, there are exceptions e.g. people might move across the country to take a job) you didn't invest any money into starting the job. So now you are out a job and need to find a new one. You are not in the negative.
And we need this. We need to incentivize risking capitol to make capitol, as that helps labor too. It's just that this isn't infinite and doesn't mean people should be able to amass any and all wealth they can. There is a middle ground and that is where the discussion needs to be. Not in this silly "well, labor is really involved in the risk of losses too!!"
It's not, and this is specifically why I've avoided multiple opportunities to risk shit to start a new company: I would rather be a skilled laborer as I can just jump from job to job when I want, than to risk what seems to me to be a lot of money on trying to start a company. Too much pressure. It's easy for me to not give a shit.
You misunderstood my argument slightly, it's not that it's "easier" for rich people, it's that it's literally impossible to risk money you don't have, and as a result of that you have exploitation of labor; stealing the surplus value of labor from a class that has no option other than to participate in wage labor.
Also the idea that there's no risk in labor but there is risk in being a capitalist is a liberal lens that fails to actually account for material reality. What's the absolute worst case for both the capitalist and laborer? That they lose all access to their money, and have to rent themselves out to a capitalist.
Put another way, the risk capitalists engage in is being demoted from the owner class to the working class. That risk doesn't justify them taking the surplus value of labor to accumulate vast hoards of wealth.
Left liberals view this as a quantitative issue, but it's a qualitative one. Profit is definitionally surplus value of labor, so no matter how small you make the capitalist's profit, it's always theft.
We need to incentivize risking capital
Absolutely, without capital injection the economy couldn't function. Capitalism by definition requires exploitation of labor, and theft of the surplus value of labor is what incentivizes capitalists to not hoard all their wealth.
It's a fundamentally broken system. Private entities shouldn't be the ones handling investment, nor handling direction of development. Those should be handled democratically by worker syndicates, the capital should be injected from the state/communities.
Essentially anytime private corporations are involved in an industry (housing, healthcare, capital injection, governance, etc.) it breaks the system. Liberals are slowly seeing these material realities unfold, and so the propaganda being fed to them is harder to buy. You don't find many people in support of private healthcare or governance anymore, and some are starting to learn about the others too.
it’s that it’s literally impossible to risk money you don’t have, and as a result of that you have exploitation of labor;
Except this isn't true. You can go and find investors, or get a loan if you are willing/capable of putting up something as collateral. Is it easier for rich people? Yes, we both agree it is.
But the risk does not get "demoted" to the working class. The working class did not take a risk (again, all generally speaking, I hope I don't have to keep repeating that). They applied for a job, someone offered them money for their labor, and they accepted. If the job disappears, they've lost nothing. They can go apply for another job and have another person pay them for their labor. At the end of the day, the worst they can be is back to zero.
While someone who puts millions of dollars into starting a business or expanding one can lose all of that money, and be net negative one million dollars. Might this not hurt them much because they have a lot? Sure. But they were the ones who took the risk.
That risk doesn’t justify them taking the surplus value of labor to accumulate vast hoards of wealth.
What is justified is kind of besides the point, because that is a subjective question. If one does not benefit from risking their capital, then you are simply going to see fewer, if anyone, actually risking their capitol. I'm trying to argue within what I believe to be the frame of reality: someone has to take the risk and I think the only way to incentivize that is to reward them disproportionately for doing so. Is the current balance off? Absolutely, we both agree on that.
Capitalism by definition requires exploitation of labor, and theft of the surplus value of labor is what incentivizes capitalists to not hoard all their wealth.
You're using too strong of words that is just going to turn off many rational people. It's not theft if you and I agree that you'll do something and I'll pay you for it. It's not exploitation, in and of itself, if you and I both agree upon the terms of our relationship, but I benefit more from it financially.
It’s a fundamentally broken system.
In theory every pure system works, in practice none of them does. Certainly, capitalism is no exception. But from just looking around, it seems to me that as a starting point, capitalism is unquestionably the best. I'm not some anachro-capitalists, it's clear that we need to socialize things, and I think healthcare is one of the most obvious that falls into that system, and it is also obvious that labor should have a larger share of the pie. But this idea that everything breaks because of capitalism, seems to be the opposite of what is most often the reality.
But I feel like we are getting off the point. What the meme is about is how labor is "risking" something because they can lose their job and end up back at zero. It's simply not comparable to a capitalist with their potential of actually losing money.
You can go and find investors, or get a loan if you are willing/capable of putting up something as collateral.
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.
Some people can go and find investors. Some people (not everyone) can try, but investors aren't charities, they're looking for a return on their profits, not something that is good for humanity. If you're trying to run a cooperative food bank, you won't get investors, even though this has a vast amount more humanitarian value than tobacco investment.
But the risk does not get “demoted” to the working class.
Again, you misread what I said(realized 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 not the risk getting demoted, it's the people. The risk for the bourgeois is becoming part of the proletariat. The risk itself isn't changing class, the person is.I think you read the word "demoted" as "delegated", which is not the same word (or assumed I misused the word demoted slightly).
What is justified is kind of besides the point, because that is a subjective question.
Hand waving is uninteresting. Even if you're a moral subjectivist (you shouldn't be, but that's orthogonal to this), you still operate with some level of moral understanding (see next response for an example). Even though this is antithetical to the nature of moral subjectivism, and moral subjectivists will pretend like they don't operate with a moral understanding, in the real world they do. The hand waving away any moral question is an incredibly powerful technique, modernized by Nietzsche and utilized by some incredibly terrible actors, like slave owners and nazis. It's not a practice you want to get into the habit of, even if you don't understand the philosophical ground for truth-apt morality.
The rest of your paragraph ignores what I already responded with. Your general point being "capitalism doesn't work without private capital investment which only works with the existence of profit", and my counter is "exactly, that's one of the many failings of capitalism, it requires this exploitative relationship between capital and labor".
While someone who puts millions of dollars into starting a business or expanding one can lose all of that money, and be net negative one million dollars. Might this not hurt them much because they have a lot? Sure. But they were the ones who took the risk.
There's an implication here that hides the moral statement you're making, but it's still being made. I'll make it explicit: "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]"
Not saying the quiet part out loud, and then hand waving away any explicit claims I make about what is justified is just a rhetorical tactic, one that would be best left unused if you're actually interested in truth-seeking.
You’re using too strong of words that is just going to turn off many rational people
I'm using words by their definitions, maybe they're definitions you're unaware of, but I'll share some wikipedia links because it's a good aggregator of resources, and you can easily get a broadstrokes idea of what I'm saying. I can suggest essays and books if you prefer too, but I figured this is easier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft! & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour
If saying the word "theft" and "exploitation" gives you an icky feeling, then just replace it with "yunktee" and "ufurghle" or words of your choosing, I don't really care. We just need words to describe the concepts elucidated by Proudhon and Marx, and those are the words they chose, not me.
But from just looking around, it seems to me that as a starting point, capitalism is unquestionably the best.
Christian theocracy/monarchies were "unquestionably" the best prior to any democratic experiment. If you can point to actual socialist failed experiments that you dislike, go for it. However, Revolutionary Catolonia, the early days of the Bolshevik revolution before Lenin's dismantling of worker syndicates, and a half a dozen other large real world examples of socialism exist where the oppressive capitalists were taken out of power. In most of these examples, either conservative Marxists or fascists dismantled socialism either by invasion/war or policy backed by state violence. They didn't just suddenly collapse without external force and revert into an earlier stage of production (e.g capitalism).
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.
But, again, we are way off the point.
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.
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
Those "external forces" are literally violent fascists murdering workers and seizing the means of production on behalf of private enterprise. Even in the case of the U.S, Britian, France, etc. Enclosure was a violent process by capitalists to seize the commons. They often used liberal framings like "the tragedy of the commons" to justify seizing common land and handing it off the private enterprise. In Europe this was done with some physical violence, but not nearly as much as the U.S. The U.S literally genocided the native americans over hundreds of years to seize the commons here and sell it off to private enterprise.
Either your position is:
- Capitalism is ahead because it effectively uses violence to enclose the commons or suppress any socialist government or revolution time and time again
- Capitalism should be ahead because it effectively uses violence to enclose the commons or suppress any socialist government or revolution time and time again
If it's 1, that's obviously correct, that's just a recount of history. If it's 2, that's ridiculous, and we can go into it, but I honestly have no idea which one of these is your position. At first you made it seem like you were defending capitalism, but you've repeatedly rejected any framing of your positions as one towards "justification", so I honestly have no idea if you're even defending capitalism, or if you just think I don't understand that the world is capitalist, and you're trying to teach me that the world is capitalist.
I can assure you, I understand violent capitalism dominates the international stage. I don't know what would give you the impression that I don't see this
You are projecting your “morals” and attempts to label things as “justified” onto me
Again, like I said earlier, if you're not actually defending capitalism because you think it's fair, I have no idea why we're having this conversation.
This is hypocritical
Nope, what I said was correct. It's literally impossible to risk money you don't have. It's possible to get money sometimes, for some people. You can have a job, get investment, get government welfare or subsidies, get money from a charity, etc. These aren't all universally available options to everyone, and if they're unavailable to you, you don't have access to money, and it's literally impossible to spend it if you don't have it. What I said was tautologically true, and supposed to be a simple premise to the actual point I made. It wasn't something you were supposed to disagree with, because it's literally true just by the construction of the statement.
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.
Yup, the risk is becoming part of the class that's being exploited (or ufurghled; you never gave your own word that you wanted to use). You have to remember, you're the one defending capitalism, I'm the one arguing against it. So my position is that it's unfair for the capitalist to exploit workers for the surplus value of their labor on the premise that they risk being brought down to the level of a worker, your premise is that this is fair. It's important to note, if that's not your premise, then you're not defending capitalism, and I have no idea why we're having this conversation.
I disagree with you that this is a “failure” as I think it leverages what is typically human
Requiring exploitation is a failure. Even capitalists tend to admit this, so I wouldn't try to hang onto this point. The real position capitalists tend to take here is that "the ends justify the means", not that the means themselves are inherently justified, because they're obviously not. If exploitation of workers and alienation of labor were done in isolation, without any other considerations, they'd be obviously wrong to anyone.
The argument is what you laid out in your other responses, so I'd stick to that. Not that exploitation is inherently justified because it's human nature. First of all, human nature is complex, trying to tie it down to something as simple as "exploitation through competition" is just simply reductive, but furthermore even if you could reduce human nature to that statement, it's still committing a naturalistic fallacy (it's not right just because it's natural).
But this attempt to paint it as some failed system requires me to reject what I can see with my own two eyes.
Slavery was a system that worked, and yet I would call it a failed system. Not because it failed to produce products, but because it failed to be morally justified. It was immoral.
It might sound like an absolutely insane comparison to a 21st century westerner, but you want to know who didn't think the comparison was insane? Literal slaves. Frederick Douglass for example wrote about how we should abolish wage labor along with chattel slavery, and how wage labor was only "a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other"
And I’m just telling you you attract more flies with honey than vinegar.
This is a deflection. You don't actually care about my tactics for getting people onboard with socialism. Proudhon and Marx described real social phenomena, and used the words theft and exploitation to describe them. I'm not attached to the words, if you want to use different words go for it, but we need words to describe it.
Annihilating the language that socialists use to critique capitalism is a common tactic, but it's also uninteresting because the sound or shape of the word is actually irrelevant to any point being made. Choose your own words, or adopt the words that are already used to describe the concepts. I chose the latter because it's easier, but if you have a major qualm with the words I'm unbothered if we choose different ones.
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.
Capitalists have been violently surpressing socialism for over 100 years at this point. The CIA has literally admitted to forcing regime changes when they adopt socialist policies via democratic elections, they'll actually overthrow democratically elected socialists and install pro-U.S fascist dictators. Companies like Coca Cola hire death squads in south america to kill union organizers.
Capitalism works because of systemic violence. The examples I gave were of working socialist examples, they worked for years or even decades before violent interference from capitalists. Capitalists need the violence of the state to maintain order, so if you're defending capitalism because it "works", what you're really doing is defending capitalism because it exists as a result of violent suppression of socialism.
Might doesn't imply right, you shouldn't defend a system just because one side is better at using violence than the other.
Again, putting words in my mouth.
I said "if you can", that's not putting words in your mouth. The other example of me "putting words in your mouth" I already addressed in two other comments.
You’ve pointed out multiple cases where socialist experiments have failed, and none that have succeeded.
Each example I illustrated was a success. They were just conquered. Having a worse military is not a failure of a system, it's a result of capitalist interests having the backing of the state, and said states having trained military forces, while workers are untrained in how to use violence to achieve the means they want, so they're generally less effective at it. Being effective at using violence is not the mark of a good system, usually the opposite actually.
Companies limit personal liability
Sure, they can limit it, and you can shield yourself personally from losses taken by the company, but there is a still (generally speaking, again) a significant financial risk to starting a company at all. You can't "shield" yourself from start up costs.
If the argument is that "rich people are financially more secure so it's easier for them to take risk" I 100% agree. There's no question that rich people start off with a massive head start. I fully recognize "the uterine lottery."
But the meme is about this risk being equal to the "risk" taken by people just being paid to do labor. Don't get my position wrong, I believe labor deserves way more of a share right now. But there is no risk in it. Sure, you can lose your job which sucks, but (again generally speaking, there are exceptions e.g. people might move across the country to take a job) you didn't invest any money into starting the job. So now you are out a job and need to find a new one. You are not in the negative.
And we need this. We need to incentivize risking capitol to make capitol, as that is what helps labor too. It's just that this isn't infinite and doesn't mean people should be able to amass any and all wealth they can. There is a middle ground and that is where the discussion needs to be. Not in this silly "well, labor is really risking it just as much too!"