I was hoping to argue in favor of capitalism, but this may be the best deal I can get and at least I can be assured you’ll be fair.
The way I see it is that regardless of your economic model, the basic work still needs to be done - the work methods will be the same. People still need food, water, shelter et al. and the people who ran the provision of these things before are not going to suddenly forget how to provide these things even if the economic model were to change, nor are they instantly going to provide them better or worse as a result. The infrastructure will still be there, and isn’t going to evolve into the distant future or disappear overnight any more or less than it will day to day while things stay the same.
Makes sense.
The question is how best can we maintain and even improve the provision of not only the basics but also any luxuries that people might want on top of that - if additionally possible - in the long run. It’s a question of motivation to get people to do this.
Greed is a good motivator, and is perfectly applicable in a socialist system including UBI; it’s just that the “zero” mark has been moved higher: everyone starts above poverty and rises however high their toils and ingenuity can take them. Top taxes were 70-90% in the US in some of the best years which is evidence that greed thrived just fine.
There is intrinsic reward in itself to help others as well as yourself and provide what you and others need/want, but in addition to this, extrinsic reward will motivate even more. For example, one can be provided with more of an equal share of what is produced if they do more than an equal share of providing it.
I’m not sure that is capitalism since the worker is not capitalizing on anything but his own labor, and in proportion to the amount of labor he does, which is pretty much the socialist’s position. I mean, even if he doesn’t get to keep 100% of his own productivity, he should at least have the opportunity to agree to the amount that he does get to keep. At that point, redistributive taxation would no longer be ethical since the divisions of productivity would be amicable and no theft or slight of hand occurred.
More than this, it is necessary to motivate the organisers and first movers because not everyone has the initiative to get things started in the first place.
Well, it should be the minimum amount of compensation required to motivate the person to perform that task just like it is for everyone else in society. Why should society reward someone more than the minimum he’d charge to perform the service of creating a factory and supplying jobs? If a roofer puts a roof on your house, do you pay him 400x what he pays his average employee or do you pay him the least he will accept for the job?
You could retort that job creation is worth more than a roof and therefore not comparable, but that’s only arguing that the creation of more wage-slavery should be regarded as a virtue. If anything, it shouldn’t be rewarded, but taxed and disincentivized.
Now if the job creation proposed were a worker co-op, then the job creator would have to bargain with potential employees for the lowest % of productivity he’s willing to accept. If he doesn’t agree to the terms of one applicant, he can interview others. If he can’t find an applicant willing to allow him to retain a suitable hunk of the pie, then either his business model is not good enough or there are so many other jobs that the workers are not that hungry. In other words, his proposal is not construed as a service to society.
Once this is done, followers can fall into place. A good way to motivate the leaders is to give them free reign over their means to produce and a sense of responsibility through the private ownership thereof.
I don’t have a problem with private ownership. Perhaps I’m not the best defender of that brand of socialism. Socialism to me means taking care of society. Although, it wouldn’t bother me if the government seized google and prevented any further “improvements”. Google really is a public utility.
However, in a worker co-op, which is still privately owned, everyone has incentive to see the company make profit since everyone will share in that profit. Really the only aspect changed is a reduction in % the originator keeps in exchange for an army of people highly motivated to increase profits in what otherwise would have been known as “his company”.
That way they are personally accountable for the success or failure that they make from their usage.
Makes sense.
Allowing only voluntary trade will maximise their free reign, even to buy and sell different means of production to best achieve what they want to achieve in the interests of providing what people need/want in exchange for their greater share of what is produced.
It’s true that the free market is often the best guide for what people want, but there are some occasions where I wouldn’t mind seeing more regulation because the free market has no mechanism to control certain aspects of offerings. For instance if I can get a citation for having a trailer light out, then the lights should be regulated to standards of corrosion prevention. Either remove the fine or regulate the lights. I shouldn’t have to shoulder the burden of the greed of some company in making sub-standard lights. Or perhaps the best argument is food inspection: there is no free market mechanism to ensure I’m buying what the label says.
The free market has many advantages, but also has some deficiencies for lack of mechanisms to influence production decisions.
Followers are equally free to volunteer their contribution towards production, through the use of the means of production owned by leaders, in exchange for an agreed share of the comparative advantage that their additional involvement adds to what would be produced by just the owner by themselves.
Sounds good but the problem is that it isn’t an agreed share of production, but only the minimum the worker will take, which is a function of how hungry he is and how many other people are hungry. Incentive exists to keep people poor, ignorant, and hungry in order to maximize profits.
Anything left goes to the owner, to accrue over time and either spend on themselves in reward, or on more means of production to supply even more of what people need/want + potentially even greater personal reward in future.
Well, Buffett gave his money to Gates who then sent their money to Africa. A noble cause to be sure, but there are domestic needs as well. And Bezos is investing in space tourism with his share. I read that Zuckerberg got into a spat about land ownership with the natives in Hawaii in order that he could build an opulent home. What most of those people do with their money is not anything that benefits the people who gave them their profits, so it can’t be construed as representative of what is best for society.
To prevent any abuse, exploitation or fraud, anyone is free to compete for the ownership and operation of means of production in the same or different areas, to attract potential buyers to their more honest production of value. This in turn forces other capitalists to cease their malpractice to win back their share of the market.
So being born comes with the obligation of being an entrepreneur with potential to compete with big business or else have no means of recourse?
Prices are kept low to keep business owners in the market in the same way, but not so low that it can’t be afforded to operate the means of production in the first place.
True, prices are kept low by competition, but competition is not relegated to the capitalist system. A worker co-op could form to underbid another worker co-op in the same industry if someone spied a niche. Exploitation of workers is not needed to compete.
I welcome any criticism by pro-Capitalists of this attempted steelmanning: anything to add or take away.
Then if there are any pro-Capitalists with the honesty and intellectual integrity to steelman any counter positions to what I have argued above (with/without any valid corrections), Socialist or otherwise, without any petty jabs, jibes and insults - in the line with the same courtesy that I have afforded them with the above - please do so.
I really wish we could find someone to genuinely argue capitalism fairly, but having been a capitalist the majority of my life, I see clearly that it’s based on absolutist assertions with the focus being to keep people down for relative advantage, even if it means having less for oneself. Capitalism is itself an artifact of environmental stress, such as poverty, and the neurological damage caused thereby, and to think one could argue in that condition without resorting to fight/flight mechanisms seems unrealistic. The equivalent is expecting someone to cogently argue the earth is flat or that god exists without resorting to emotions in lieu of evidence and reason; it can’t be done.
The economy is zero-sum and issuance of money comes only at the issuance of debt, not the consolidation of profits. If the rich get richer, then the money is coming from everyone else. Every rich person represents a number of people who no longer have the money. Every rich city represents at least a city that no longer has the money. At the country-level, the power of the US is consolidated from china and mexico through their cheap labor which is a result of their desperation, which the US has a hand in causing by whatever means possible, I’m sure. The american workers who lost their jobs due to outsourcing are herded into concentration camps called slums and prisons where they work for 25 cents/hr, probably because they were caught with a drug, which was a result of their dire predicament in the first place, which is: being forced to purchase the things that they no longer get paid to produce.