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I agree. I was in agreement with the article when it says that money we earn is a statement of the value we provide to society, so earning money is good, howev

I agree. I was in agreement with the article when it says that money we earn is a statement of the value we provide to society, so earning money is good, however, I don't agree with the statement that spending money and consumption is bad. The example of the yacht is rather contrived as well. They talk about how all of the craftsmen and lumber workers had to chop down, dry, age, cut and polish the wood to make the yacht, however, it's somehow evil for us to buy it? This seems rather ridiculous when you consider that the money used to buy that yacht paid the salaries and income of all the craftsmen and laborers that built it for you, compensating them for the value they provide to society. If there was nobody willing to consume or buy products, how would anyone make income? This article seems to understand capitalism superficially, then demonstrates the authors know little about capitalism in the final paragraphs.

tristor 8y ago
> If there was nobody willing to consume or buy products, how would anyone make income? I don't know what the author's intention was, but my assumption when I read that was their economic world view is one in which people should focus inwardly, striving for sustainability over specialization. It's conceivable to have economic exchange without luxury goods, because that labor can instead be directed into other activities. That said, I had many of the same questions myself. I think specialization in society has been historically important to the betterment of humanity in many ways. As has the ability of markets to enable businesses to invest labor ahead of sales, so whether or not someone purchases something (with the exception of custom projects like a yacht) rarely has any impact on whether or not it will actually be made. Just ask Atari.
yholio 8y ago
> the money used to buy that yacht paid the salaries and income of all the craftsmen and laborers that built it for you, compensating them for the value they provide to society. The point he is making is that they are compensated but no net value is returned to society as a result of their labor and resource expenditure. The yacht "disappears" in your private marina where it will rot away providing you with a purely private satisfaction, whereby the same labor could create houses, a public parc or some other widely shared goods, whilst still compensating the workers the same and having the same overall economic effects. Symbolic, money wealth, thus becomes a force that diverts social physical resources away from social needs and towards private needs of wealthy individuals, making everybody else worse off compared to an alternate more egalitarian social arrangement. I would interpret it that as long as billionaires don't sink their fortunes into megalomaniac wasteful personal consumption, like say building pyramids, the results of capitalism and inequality are not very different from a more egalitarian society, the vast majority of resources are still employed to make most people better off. What's unequal is just the representation of wealth, who owns what and who works for whom. For example, if Warren Buffet would start to liquidate his symbolic wealth to build a giant Warren Buffet statue, this would have a net negative effect on the wealth of the average citizen. Yes, it would provide jobs, but it would also extract available capital from the market that could be invested to create other jobs, so over all it's a wash. No saleable products are generated and a massive amount of resources is required, bidding the prices of these up without putting anything back. The consumption of everybody else would diminish to accommodate for the higher prices and lower overall quantity of products now available. Society has "decided" to shift production from cars and houses towards a giant statue that nobody really needs.
- illumin8 8y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with this. The yacht could get very little use, but so could a house that you build for someone. If the argument is that we should only build public goods that will be widely used like parks, I disagree, because the concept of private property is very entrenched in our society, even in socialist countries. I also disagree that the Warren Buffet statue would have a negative effect on the wealth of the average citizen. Warren Buffet would be taking capital that is locked up inside assets and spending it to build something, directly contributing significant income to the middle class (laborers) in the economy. This would have a positive beneficial effect on the economy in general. Imagine a wealthy billionaire with all of his assets locked up in gold bars in a swiss vault. Outside of a few hired guards that protect the gold, nobody benefits. If he liquidated that gold and used the proceeds to build statues, quite a lot of people would benefit from the income generated.
  - yholio 8y ago
    Buffet owns stocks in productive companies. If he starts selling this stock and gets enough money for his statue, by definition he's absorbing market capital that would otherwise be invested in productive companies. So he's effectively shifting investment from jobs in companies to jobs in giant statue production. The effect on the middle class jobs is largely nil. If a billionaire is entombed in a safe with his symbols of wealth forever, it's as if his symbolic wealth ceases to exist. Effectively, the symbols of everybody else become more valuable to reflect the total quantity of products and services available. It's just like burning money, no wealth is destroyed, just redistributed to everybody else who holds the same currency.
  - Matumio 8y ago
    The argument works even if no public parks are built. The point is that a higher number of people ("society") profits. They can hire more workers for the same money because workers are not busy building the statue. More people are getting their own needs met, versus a single person getting a very expensive need met. Intrinsic value is not created by spending money, it's created by people doing work for that money. The right question to ask is "whom are they creating value for", not "how many papers did they get for it".

tristor 8y ago

> If there was nobody willing to consume or buy products, how would anyone make income? I don't know what the author's intention was, but my assumption when I read that was their economic world view is one in which people should focus inwardly, striving for sustainability over specialization. It's conceivable to have economic exchange without luxury goods, because that labor can instead be directed into other activities. That said, I had many of the same questions myself. I think specialization in society has been historically important to the betterment of humanity in many ways. As has the ability of markets to enable businesses to invest labor ahead of sales, so whether or not someone purchases something (with the exception of custom projects like a yacht) rarely has any impact on whether or not it will actually be made. Just ask Atari.

yholio 8y ago

> the money used to buy that yacht paid the salaries and income of all the craftsmen and laborers that built it for you, compensating them for the value they provide to society. The point he is making is that they are compensated but no net value is returned to society as a result of their labor and resource expenditure. The yacht "disappears" in your private marina where it will rot away providing you with a purely private satisfaction, whereby the same labor could create houses, a public parc or some other widely shared goods, whilst still compensating the workers the same and having the same overall economic effects. Symbolic, money wealth, thus becomes a force that diverts social physical resources away from social needs and towards private needs of wealthy individuals, making everybody else worse off compared to an alternate more egalitarian social arrangement. I would interpret it that as long as billionaires don't sink their fortunes into megalomaniac wasteful personal consumption, like say building pyramids, the results of capitalism and inequality are not very different from a more egalitarian society, the vast majority of resources are still employed to make most people better off. What's unequal is just the representation of wealth, who owns what and who works for whom. For example, if Warren Buffet would start to liquidate his symbolic wealth to build a giant Warren Buffet statue, this would have a net negative effect on the wealth of the average citizen. Yes, it would provide jobs, but it would also extract available capital from the market that could be invested to create other jobs, so over all it's a wash. No saleable products are generated and a massive amount of resources is required, bidding the prices of these up without putting anything back. The consumption of everybody else would diminish to accommodate for the higher prices and lower overall quantity of products now available. Society has "decided" to shift production from cars and houses towards a giant statue that nobody really needs.

illumin8 8y ago
I'm not sure I agree with this. The yacht could get very little use, but so could a house that you build for someone. If the argument is that we should only build public goods that will be widely used like parks, I disagree, because the concept of private property is very entrenched in our society, even in socialist countries. I also disagree that the Warren Buffet statue would have a negative effect on the wealth of the average citizen. Warren Buffet would be taking capital that is locked up inside assets and spending it to build something, directly contributing significant income to the middle class (laborers) in the economy. This would have a positive beneficial effect on the economy in general. Imagine a wealthy billionaire with all of his assets locked up in gold bars in a swiss vault. Outside of a few hired guards that protect the gold, nobody benefits. If he liquidated that gold and used the proceeds to build statues, quite a lot of people would benefit from the income generated.
- yholio 8y ago
  Buffet owns stocks in productive companies. If he starts selling this stock and gets enough money for his statue, by definition he's absorbing market capital that would otherwise be invested in productive companies. So he's effectively shifting investment from jobs in companies to jobs in giant statue production. The effect on the middle class jobs is largely nil. If a billionaire is entombed in a safe with his symbols of wealth forever, it's as if his symbolic wealth ceases to exist. Effectively, the symbols of everybody else become more valuable to reflect the total quantity of products and services available. It's just like burning money, no wealth is destroyed, just redistributed to everybody else who holds the same currency.
- Matumio 8y ago
  The argument works even if no public parks are built. The point is that a higher number of people ("society") profits. They can hire more workers for the same money because workers are not busy building the statue. More people are getting their own needs met, versus a single person getting a very expensive need met. Intrinsic value is not created by spending money, it's created by people doing work for that money. The right question to ask is "whom are they creating value for", not "how many papers did they get for it".