Current Events > Major Corporations say they will turn most gains from tax cuts to shareholders

(+) Yeah! (+)

This is why Zeak is on my ignore list.

It was literally just a day or two where I very clearly and concisely explained why I support UBI even though I'm a staunch capitalist. In a topic he saw lmao. It was the glasses topic Pinky made IIRC.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Zeeak4444 posted...

Let me ask you this instead. If capatalism is perfect why do you support UBI?

I don't think Proud is quite enough of fanboy to believe capitalism is all unicorns and rainbows, but let's find out...

Lol should have quoted the whole thing. He won't be able to respond to the good parts now.
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Sure, what the hell:

Zeeak4444 posted...

Let me ask you this instead. If capatalism is perfect why do you support UBI?

While it would likely strengthen capatalism the reason why it would is because capatalism is unsustainable the way we're progressing.

You're pretty much trying to redefine capatlism while at the same time making arguments that its current form is perfect.

Godnorgosh posted...

They have leverage relative to other companies. That leverage could come in the form of investment, but it could also come in the form of more overall capital, more assets (e.g. human labor), etc. That's why it doesn't really say much about investment itself.

So you agree then that leverage in the form of investment and shareholders is the superior method for creating companies that survive and succeed at their goals.

Godnorgosh posted...

Do you have a deductive argument for this or not?

It's been damn near 250 years and we haven't seen anything close to it. Not to mention that what you're envisioning (a stateless society) is a contradiction in terms, so it can't exist.

Godnorgosh posted...

Even in the 1800s, Marx would've admitted that life in industrial England was probably better than in the ancient world, despite how miserable it was regardless. That's not really the point.

Since then, capitalism has made life even better. And at a faster pace than any other system could have. And it continues to do the same. Why do you think sequencing the human genome is so much cheaper just ten years later? Or what about the cost of solar even without subsidies? Or what about the electrification of transportation?

Godnorgosh posted...

You haven't even defended these claims, lol. Why is a stateless society a contradiction? Why does a society without profit necessarily precede capitalism? Don't rely on inductive inferences.

Any society that exists has a state. Any amount of organization amongst a people represents a state amongst that people. And no stable and civilized society exists without a state of some kind. A stateless society is just a crumbling vestige ripe for dictatorship.

Godnorgosh posted...

This is far from the only example of capitalist exploitation of the environment and the commons.

Why is it that when socialism fails hard you find excuses for how it's not real socialism or how it was tampered with, but don't have that level of nuance when capitalists do bad things? Why is that indicative of capitalism being the problem?

Also, I can point to many examples of the tremendous good capitalism has done and is doing. Whereas you wouldn't be able to point me to any examples of the good Marxism has done lmao.

I have more faith in capitalism to restore individual rights, individual freedoms, and ubiquitous access to energy/computing/resources, than I do communism.
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Also, why are you so confident that your worldview is coherent and possible? If there are no precedents for what you believe, how can you know or begin to understand how your worldview would look if implemented? How do you know if it'll work?
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Questionmarktarius posted...

Sure, what the hell:

Zeeak4444 posted...

Let me ask you this instead. If capatalism is perfect why do you support UBI?

While it would likely strengthen capatalism the reason why it would is because capatalism is unsustainable the way we're progressing.

You're pretty much trying to redefine capatlism while at the same time making arguments that its current form is perfect.

Well thanks for trying mate.
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Zeeak4444 posted...

Well thanks for trying mate.

Probably best to not try to break up this dog-fight right now...

Godnorgosh posted...

No, I merely pointed out that leverage relative to other companies is an obvious advantage in a capitalist marketplace. That doesn't mean that a company doing the same things as Tesla can't exist without shareholders. Your conclusion doesn't follow from your premise.

There is no such thing as the "capitalist marketplace." There is only the marketplace. Even under communism, a group of people who were supported by other people's resources and promised more resources for successfully delivering innovation and progress would succeed more than a group of people who didn't have that support.

Investment as leverage takes that basic principle and magnifies it to an extreme degree because of what kind of power a ton of cash can bring. But if we got rid of all "profit" and "money" and instead bartered and traded, you'd still end up in the same type of society where people work for more and invest for more.

People aren't starting companies like Tesla outside of shareholder/investor models because they don't stand a chance against people who are motivated for the profit.

Godnorgosh posted...

This is where looking at things through a historical lens comes in handy. Feudalism dominated from the 9th through the 15th century. You could just as easily have claimed in the 12th century that feudalism would last forever. After all, it's lasted for three centuries already! That's why inductive reasoning is unreliable here.

Again, you haven't proven your claim that a stateless society is a contradiction. A contradiction comes in the form x is not x. I have no reason to believe, based on what you've said so far, that that's what a stateless society consists in.

There's a huge difference though. Since the early to mid 1900s, we've had much faster access to a larger volume of information. In our day and age, information travels quickly and yet we still haven't seen what Marx said come to fruition. Not even considering all the tryhards who wanted to force those things to happen. 9th century feudalism doesn't compare to the ripe ground of the information age we are living in right now.

No society exists without state. I'll get to your attempted examples in the next block quote.

Godnorgosh posted...

And it was better to be a commoner in the 15th century than it was to be a slave in the ancient world. So what?

Only marginally, considering that being a commoner in the 15th century made you beholden to royalty and/or the church. It was not much better to be a commoner in the 15th century than a slave in the ancient world. Whereas it's exponentially better to be a poor American than being royalty in the 15th century. It's so much better that you can't even compare the two.

It might even be arguable that what Marx wanted from communism came to us through capitalism and that it was capitalism that gave us a tremendous standard of living to begin with. If Marx was alive now he'd probably be a capitalist if he could compare our standard of living with his own.

Godnorgosh posted...

But we already have historical examples of stateless societies, including certain indigenous North American societies as well as even earlier societies.

The societies that were wiped out by in-fighting and superior forces? What is an example of a functional and lasting anarchy?
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Godnorgosh posted...

That's easy: a necessary condition for socialism is that the proletariat owns the means of production. That isn't a kind of evasion or deflection; that's simply how it's defined. That hasn't happened yet. But if we define capitalism as private ownership of the means of production for the sake of profit, then that's existed for hundreds of years.

There is no singular owner of the means of production. That's what Marx (and his followers) continually miss. There are as many means of production as there are individuals who wish to create and invent them. No single private owner holds the means of production in his pocket. Not even the wealthiest of men.

So that definition of capitalism is ignorant. And it'd be false to argue that there's never been a society that attempted socialized / nationalized ownership of every means of production. Many places have attempted that, including Romania, and it failed miserably. It just doesn't work.

So this doesn't excuse you from blaming capitalism for the bad things some capitalists do but finding no fault in socialism whenever socialists and communists butcher people and drive economies into the ground.
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Godnorgosh posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

Also, why are you so confident that your worldview is coherent and possible? If there are no precedents for what you believe, how can you know or begin to understand how your worldview would look if implemented? How do you know if it'll work?

I wouldn't claim to know for certain what a post-capitalist world would look like since that would entail predicting the future; Marxism is a theoretical framework, not a crystal ball. But I would deny that any of the arguments I've seen claiming for certain that it wouldn't work have held under scrutiny.

That's willful ignorance. You've not explained (at all) any of the questions I asked about how that world would exist and operate under that theoretical framework. There are no explanations. You only say that the arguments have held under scrutiny because you've already committed yourself to accepting and espousing communism.

It's literally no different than when I was into Christianity. Communism is your religion and Marx is your lord and savior.
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You mean you haven't been doing something productive in between posts? Holy fuck I can't be that much of a challenge.
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Eh, trust me, Marxism is not much different than Christianity or any other hocus pocus. I know religion when I see it. :P

<3
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https://twitter.com/AltYelloNatPark/status/936785961240772609
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