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I'm not following your example on the homebuilding company. It all seems nebulous to me. Could you help clarify? Where is the 10% profit coming from, and how a

I'm not following your example on the homebuilding company. It all seems nebulous to me. Could you help clarify? Where is the 10% profit coming from, and how are you able to afford a home for yourself from the ten that you built? Are you using the profit off the other 9 homes to fund your own home? (i.e. the profit is the 10th home?) Maybe the root question to all that is: What do you mean by "the amount of wealth in the world actually increased?" I don't truly understand that. The only way you have profit is by not paying the laborers their worth who built the homes. If you have a profit margin of 10% then you're paying your workers 10% less than what they should be getting paid. Now, taxes and wealth redistribution sounds like a huge caveat to me. You tax the profits from the home building and redistribute it. Why bother with the whole home building thing in the first place? It seems like extra steps Why not just build and give people homes and skip the the intermediary step of money? Another question for your homebuilding example: Why do you think you deserve a house for essentially free using your "profits" while other people have to pay for the house? What makes you better than them? (This is not directed at you, but the hypothetical homebuilder. If it's reading as adversarial, I don't mean for it to be.) Your home building scenario with profit margins is a great example of how profit totally distorts motives so that the problem you're solving isn't meeting people's needs, but instead meeting the need of making more money. In the US, we have a housing problem. We have lots of homeless. We have the technology to build people homes (even efficient, dense housing), but since it's not profitable, it doesn't get done. For anything like that to get done in our society, it must be profitable. You can see this in action with how much of our public services are struggling.

shajznnckfke 6y ago
> Maybe the root question to all that is: What do you mean by "the amount of wealth in the world actually increased?" I don't truly understand that. Simple: a home is worth more than the wood that was used to build it, and me and the laborers are better off working than sitting on our asses, if the government allows us all to get paid for our work. The amount of wealth in the world actually increases when somebody has the impetus to make things happen. > The only way you have profit is by not paying the laborers their worth who built the homes. If you have a profit margin of 10% then you're paying your workers 10% less than what they should be getting paid. If I don’t get paid for running the homebuilding company, nobody is going to bother building the home, so the home doesn’t get built. If we “skip the step” of paying me for organizing things, you just have a bunch of unused inputs. My organizing effort is also labor, and if there’s a mismatch in the supply of managers and hammerers, competitive pressures will adjust how much we each get paid. The role of money here is to balance supply and demand, so the things that get done are the things that other people need to get done. With money, the needs of society at large drive planning (there are externalities that should be corrected by the government through taxation to keep this functioning smoothly). Without money, only the desires of people with guns who can force others to work for free are taken into account. As a whole, the US has plenty of homes for everyone, but in some regions densely building new homes is mostly illegal, so not enough homes are built. These are the regions where there is a homelessness crisis. Unfortunately the government is terrible at things like deciding how many homes there should be and getting them built, so when it controls the planning process, not enough homes get built where they are needed. Better to just let the developers build as many homes as there is demand for, and tax them to pay for housing for the homeless.
- EarthIsHome 6y ago
  > a home is worth more than the wood that was used to build it I agree with this part, but it doesn't address why, though. The house is worth more than its material costs because of labor costs. > The role of money here is to balance supply and demand I don't think the role of money is to balance supply and demand, it is to facilitate exchange between items of different exchange values. It is a tool that exists outside of capitalism. > so the things that get done are the things that other people need to get done I respectfully disagree here. I don't know where you live, but I guarantee you there's plenty of things that people need that need to get done that doesn't get done. I argue that in a capitalist system, what is most profitable gets done. In some cases, what gets done aligns with the needs of the people, but in many cases, the needs of the people are not met. I think it should be obvious that a capitalist system cannot distribute resources effectively if you look at this pandemic. I agree that our governments are mishandling everything, but that doesn't have to be the case. A government has the most resources to determine how many homes get built... they just don't do it, because ultimately, it's not profitable. Look at any city budget and see where most of the money is spent: it's spent on the police budget, not on things that need to get done for the people, like building homes, or providng healthcare, etc. Here is a simple scenario to illustrate that extra money is not created. We are at a market, and you are selling wine to me, but sell it for more than the cost it took you to make it. I'm selling books, but also want to make a sell them for more than their cost tome, so I sell it to you for more than I paid for it. If everyone does this, then you can imagine all prices rising and falling together. If the extra money we received goes back into the market for other necessities, then we didn't really make a profit. Profit is created when money is removed from the system and accumulates and is hoarded. I'm going to be logging off for now, but I've enjoyed this discussion.

shajznnckfke 6y ago

> Maybe the root question to all that is: What do you mean by "the amount of wealth in the world actually increased?" I don't truly understand that. Simple: a home is worth more than the wood that was used to build it, and me and the laborers are better off working than sitting on our asses, if the government allows us all to get paid for our work. The amount of wealth in the world actually increases when somebody has the impetus to make things happen. > The only way you have profit is by not paying the laborers their worth who built the homes. If you have a profit margin of 10% then you're paying your workers 10% less than what they should be getting paid. If I don’t get paid for running the homebuilding company, nobody is going to bother building the home, so the home doesn’t get built. If we “skip the step” of paying me for organizing things, you just have a bunch of unused inputs. My organizing effort is also labor, and if there’s a mismatch in the supply of managers and hammerers, competitive pressures will adjust how much we each get paid. The role of money here is to balance supply and demand, so the things that get done are the things that other people need to get done. With money, the needs of society at large drive planning (there are externalities that should be corrected by the government through taxation to keep this functioning smoothly). Without money, only the desires of people with guns who can force others to work for free are taken into account. As a whole, the US has plenty of homes for everyone, but in some regions densely building new homes is mostly illegal, so not enough homes are built. These are the regions where there is a homelessness crisis. Unfortunately the government is terrible at things like deciding how many homes there should be and getting them built, so when it controls the planning process, not enough homes get built where they are needed. Better to just let the developers build as many homes as there is demand for, and tax them to pay for housing for the homeless.

EarthIsHome 6y ago
> a home is worth more than the wood that was used to build it I agree with this part, but it doesn't address why, though. The house is worth more than its material costs because of labor costs. > The role of money here is to balance supply and demand I don't think the role of money is to balance supply and demand, it is to facilitate exchange between items of different exchange values. It is a tool that exists outside of capitalism. > so the things that get done are the things that other people need to get done I respectfully disagree here. I don't know where you live, but I guarantee you there's plenty of things that people need that need to get done that doesn't get done. I argue that in a capitalist system, what is most profitable gets done. In some cases, what gets done aligns with the needs of the people, but in many cases, the needs of the people are not met. I think it should be obvious that a capitalist system cannot distribute resources effectively if you look at this pandemic. I agree that our governments are mishandling everything, but that doesn't have to be the case. A government has the most resources to determine how many homes get built... they just don't do it, because ultimately, it's not profitable. Look at any city budget and see where most of the money is spent: it's spent on the police budget, not on things that need to get done for the people, like building homes, or providng healthcare, etc. Here is a simple scenario to illustrate that extra money is not created. We are at a market, and you are selling wine to me, but sell it for more than the cost it took you to make it. I'm selling books, but also want to make a sell them for more than their cost tome, so I sell it to you for more than I paid for it. If everyone does this, then you can imagine all prices rising and falling together. If the extra money we received goes back into the market for other necessities, then we didn't really make a profit. Profit is created when money is removed from the system and accumulates and is hoarded. I'm going to be logging off for now, but I've enjoyed this discussion.