CyborgMarx [any, any] @ CyborgMarx @hexbear.net

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5 yr. ago

THE FUTURE IS NOW! OLD MAN!

The Mark of Shame I call it

By the way, I always worry that I seem argumentative when I ask a lot of questions, but to be clear, that's not the intent! I'm just laying out my current mental picture so people can see where it's wrong and help me update it. I had some existing notions in my head, but they didn't all seem to add up.

No worries, I didn't take it that way, I'm more than happy to answer questions and help comrades flesh out their understanding

That "tariff" gives you more wiggle room to charge above cost.

That's the thing, it's not above cost, it is simply the cost, production and transport are under the same cost structure, got to pay to make it and pay to move it, wages, material and energy are the main costs. In competition-as-war an army with an advantageous position is fair policy

It's not a guarantee of victory, but it's certainly not a war crime, profitability is defined by what you can get away with

I assume it also matters somewhat for brick and mortar stores — a consumer isn't going to drive to the next town just to pay slightly less for bread. But I don't know how big a chunk of profit can be blamed on this. Is it more of a footnote or is it a big deal?

"location, location, location" is a saying in business for a reason, again it's not a guarantee for success, firms that have overwhelming technical development, enormous scale or juicy patents can still overwhelm your location advantage and kick you out of the leading regulator game, but it depends on the sector and frankly energy costs in the wider economy

They know their time in Palestine is over and they're already setting the stage for another occupation

By "imperfect competition" I just meant that the lowest production cost doesn't always win among similar products, due to factors like

True, it's not always the path to success, but it typically is and that's what matters on the macro scale across sectors and national economies

transport costs — either moving product to consumer, or consumer to product — which can give companies a local pricing advantage over more distant competition

That still falls under the overarching cost structure that firms need to lower

consumer inability to compare products in a consistent way — whether comparing use values of products at a given price, or comparing prices at a given use value

That forms part of the bedrock of the turbulent regulation of demand, that capitalists are constantly overshooting or undershooting as they try to continually adjust

marketing, branding, packaging, and other appeals to consumer psychology

Attempts at scalability that may or may not work, an attempt by firms to regulate demand as it's regulating them, leads right back to the overshooting and undershooting problem which has enormous implications for future investments, or more importantly the potential lack thereof

So everyone's racing to automate, exploit, and cut corners ahead of the others. What happens when they run out of room? Do they just start buying each other?

Capitalists stop investing, begin layoffs and a depression ensues, no room for profits and growth means no investments

Platform for Change and Diagnosing the System for Organizations are my main resources from Beer

Beer's book Platform for Change is my go to resource, but if you want more technical stuff his book Diagnosing the System for Organizations is interesting, because you literally see him describing how the system forces the choices I illustrated in my previous comment that capitalists face every day

There's nothing more annoying than Star Trek loving chuds

I don't understand how anyone can stand it, it's like the worst of reddit had a baby with a dollar store version of 4chan

Is everyone here having constant offscreen adventures on the rest of lemmy? I haven't commented off Hexbear in over a year

I sure do, he's one of my primary sources alongside Stafford Beer

Lower costs, undercutting, technical development, patent hoarding, scalability, and bought government patronage are how regulating capitals generate the "gravitational profits" other firms in their sector orbit, including other regulating capitals, because leading capitals also regulate each other, even across sectors

Creating not sustained perfect or even imperfect equilibrium, but instead turbulent equalization of prices, equalization is the reason you can ask the average Joe on the street what the price of milk is and they'll give you a rough and accurate estimation of the price, even if milk prices turbulently rise and fall over the long years, even though milk prices are equalized across the country around an average: $3-5 in this case

And like perfect competition is fiction, there's also no such thing as "imperfect competition" because that idea also arises right out of the liberal whine about workers, firms and governments "cheating" the market of it's "rightful" returns. No, there's only competition-as-war, that's what defines capital accumulation; profits arise from those firms that can cut costs and undercut their competitors, raising prices is only a secondary bonus if you can get away with it before bumping into another regulator, what's important is lowering costs which is why I placed it first amongst the list of profit generators and also why the wage vs profit contradiction is always the most important aspect of the system in general

From those two simple ideas (low costs and undercutting) arise everything we see under capitalism; the regulation of supply and demand by profitability, the everlasting desire to suppress wages that cut into profits, the drive toward technical developments to make production easier and cheaper, the cowardly need of all capitalists to run away from competition and toward rent-seeking behaviors etc.

Regulating capitals are large armies trying to keep at bay a 100 smaller armies from eating their lunch, and the 100 smaller armies are also competing amongst each other, one year a mid sized army may discover how to make a better cannon and they supplant a leading regulator and take its place, another year a small army figures out how to conscript more soldiers and they overwhelm a dozen other smaller competitors, putting themselves one step closer to becoming the regulator instead of the regulated

Profits comes from firms picking the right combinations at the right time from these options: Lower costs, technical development, undercutting, patent hoarding, scalability, and government patronage but lower costs is typically the primary, go-to solution

He doesn't need to court people who already agree with him, he needs to court soft libs and apathetic voters who mistrust politicians, neolibs expects him to act like Sanders, talk tough and deliver nothing, when he says shit "actually billionaires will fuckin work for and with me" he throws the media for a loop and gets to expand on his platform without having to explain ad nauseam why billionaires deserve to die

Unlike Sanders he's an actual intelligent and strategic politician, because of the simple fact he understands how cynical media actually is unlike media illiterates like Sanders and AOC, another sign that there's a real Marxist under there

He's dogwhistling, and doing a pretty good job of it

In Marx it's gravitational, supply and demand are part of large cohort of turbulent regulators, constantly undershooting and overshooting each other while achieving turbulent equalization of profit rates, but NEVER sustained equilibrium like liberal economics asserts

The "gravitational bodies" that supply and demand "orbit" are the leading regulating capitals in any given sector, who are leading because they establish the lowest unit cost-price of production that other firms "gravitate" around......."Wal-Mart in a small town" being a common textbook example

Liberal economics doesn't believe regulating capitals exist and that supply and demand orbit each other in a perfect eclipse and if they don't it's because the government and workers are "cheating"

Most science production in the US is geared toward instruments of death, computerized financialization and funneling money to administrators

By scattering American brain power across the world, true scientific research can blossom in the most unexpected places, to say nothing of the advantage China will hold in the future

99% of the time accelerationist developments are a net negative, but this is definitely a 1% exception, a brainless empire is a dead empire

Is this the real Turkish Communist party or the fake one started by Attaturk? I can't remember which are which

Well I thought 9/11 was a scary movie about a smoke monster eating people, so definitely 2003