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I think this is a good take- Having things be better for horses was never the point of the economy. In fact horses were probably the main driver for developing

by S_A_P 6y ago

I think this is a good take- Having things be better for horses was never the point of the economy. In fact horses were probably the main driver for developing mechanical solutions since horse ownership is expensive and time consuming. There was no incentive to make life/jobs better for horses, and as soon as a better replacement was available horses were not necessary for most people. So you cant swap out horses for humans as they analogy is completely flawed.

sudosysgen 6y ago
But having things be better for humans was never the point of the economy either. The actual point has always been making things better for a subset of humans, everywhere throughout history. I don't see why an unemployable horse would be considered any differently from an unemployable human to the cold profit motive.
- simonh 6y ago
  Until true modern style democracy yes, but in modern democracies the people get to decide how the country and the economy are run. Yes, really. The fact that the consensus view happens not to align with what some people (perhaps yourself included) seem to think it should doesn't make that not true. Sometimes that leads to really unfortunate outcomes (in my view) like Trump and Brexit, but those things were the result of genuine democratic processes and driven by the choices of individual voters. That's true generally in the democratic world too. It may be convenient to blame the state of the world on shadowy anti-democratic forces running things from the shadows, because that can be used to de-legitimise the current state of the democratic world, but I'm afraid that's self-delusion. This is the world we have chosen through a process of consensus and compromise.
- account42 6y ago
  The difference is that if there are enough unemployable humans they can vote, rebel or otherwise enforce that they get a share of the profit. Horses did not have that option.
alpha_squared 6y ago
What's the incentive to make life/jobs better for humans?
- S_A_P 6y ago
  Incentive? not having to do hard labor? making more money? I think that most technology has made life easier if not measurably better for humans. Medicine, machinery, transportation. Those things dont make life better for people? I suppose the cynical take could be that it is for the 'ruling class' but I think the measured take is that even the lower rungs of society have at least some access to better jobs than they did 100 years ago.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    The lower rungs of society have access to better jobs because they were needed by the ruling class as a workforce, and because technology advanced. As a result of the above two, they were able to negotiate economic power and better working conditions. What is the incentive for "wasting resources on the lower rungs of society" when you don't need them as workers anymore?
Barrin92 6y ago
>Having things be better for horses was never the point of the economy Neither was making things better for humans. The point of the economy is for capital to reproduce itself, humans being taken care of is an accidental side effect because capital doesn't like a torch mob very much.
- themacguffinman 6y ago
  Things only have economic value because humans want those things. Capital doesn't have any desires or drives on its own, owners of capital do. Capital owners are humans. Whatever you might say about capitalism, the idea that it doesn't serve humans or can somehow function without humans is just totally wrong. Capitalist economies aren't just human-centric, they are literally collections of human wants and needs.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >they are literally collections of human wants and needs. And humans are literally just collections of cells, does that mean you have no wants and that your pancreas is running the show? It's very arrogant to think that only humans have desires. Nations have desires, institutions have desires, and capital itself has a lot of desires. Lots of scary entities out there that have desires. When capital is unhappy with capital owners it's prone to fire all of them, reconfigure entire industries, eliminate entire sectors of human activity, redraw nation-states and in the not so distant future probably reconfigure human bodies. Of all the firms in human existence maybe a fraction of a percent are still around. You think the 'owners' of capital wanted that to happen? Capital keeps tagging along, individual actors, not so much. Give it another few decades and you may interact with a lot of firms that have no human working for it at all, and possibly not even one owning it.
    - themacguffinman 6y ago
      Nation-state desires & institutional desires are human desires. Capital can't "fire" capital owners, that's just a non-sequitur, the very concept of capital ownership is both defined and enforced by human beings. Other capital owners and consumers, ie. humans, fire them. Yes, entire industries are reconfigured and nation-states are redrawn because some humans want them to be reconfigured. This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of what people mean when they refer to organizations as entities. One might group together the common interests of an organization as a whole for the sake of simplifying discussion, but that in no way implies that an organization is actually some kind of inhuman entity that functions without humans. When people say "the government wants X" or "Britain doesn't like Y", they don't mean it literally. Government is nothing without the human politicians and officials it's comprised of and/or the human citizens that recognize its authority. A hundred dollar bill is worth nothing without humans to want it and the things it can buy. Suggesting that capitalism can produce non-human economic value contradicts the most basic definition of economic value. And no, I don't think only humans have desires, but the capitalist economy we have created is based on human desires. Horses clearly have desires too, but thus far they have not invented an economy to serve horse desires. It wasn't non-existent horse capitalism that replaced horses, it was human capitalism. > Of all the firms in human existence maybe a fraction of a percent are still around. You think the 'owners' of capital wanted that to happen? Yes actually, I don't know why you think that's somehow undesirable. A lot of firms fail to adapt to human desires & needs so humans drop them. I'm honestly confused at the implication that capital owners want a lot of "firms" to exist when they're only a means to an end.
maxsilver 6y ago
> So you cant swap out horses for humans as they analogy is completely flawed. You kind of can though. The economy cares about no one, it cares only about capital. And as far as capital is concerned, humans are just fancy horses. Humans are expenses that need minimizing to the point of zeroing. In a perfectly efficient capitalist economy, no one pays any humans for anything ever.

by S_A_P 6y ago

sudosysgen 6y ago

But having things be better for humans was never the point of the economy either. The actual point has always been making things better for a subset of humans, everywhere throughout history. I don't see why an unemployable horse would be considered any differently from an unemployable human to the cold profit motive.

simonh 6y ago
Until true modern style democracy yes, but in modern democracies the people get to decide how the country and the economy are run. Yes, really. The fact that the consensus view happens not to align with what some people (perhaps yourself included) seem to think it should doesn't make that not true. Sometimes that leads to really unfortunate outcomes (in my view) like Trump and Brexit, but those things were the result of genuine democratic processes and driven by the choices of individual voters. That's true generally in the democratic world too. It may be convenient to blame the state of the world on shadowy anti-democratic forces running things from the shadows, because that can be used to de-legitimise the current state of the democratic world, but I'm afraid that's self-delusion. This is the world we have chosen through a process of consensus and compromise.
account42 6y ago
The difference is that if there are enough unemployable humans they can vote, rebel or otherwise enforce that they get a share of the profit. Horses did not have that option.

alpha_squared 6y ago

What's the incentive to make life/jobs better for humans?

S_A_P 6y ago
Incentive? not having to do hard labor? making more money? I think that most technology has made life easier if not measurably better for humans. Medicine, machinery, transportation. Those things dont make life better for people? I suppose the cynical take could be that it is for the 'ruling class' but I think the measured take is that even the lower rungs of society have at least some access to better jobs than they did 100 years ago.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  The lower rungs of society have access to better jobs because they were needed by the ruling class as a workforce, and because technology advanced. As a result of the above two, they were able to negotiate economic power and better working conditions. What is the incentive for "wasting resources on the lower rungs of society" when you don't need them as workers anymore?

Barrin92 6y ago

>Having things be better for horses was never the point of the economy Neither was making things better for humans. The point of the economy is for capital to reproduce itself, humans being taken care of is an accidental side effect because capital doesn't like a torch mob very much.

themacguffinman 6y ago
Things only have economic value because humans want those things. Capital doesn't have any desires or drives on its own, owners of capital do. Capital owners are humans. Whatever you might say about capitalism, the idea that it doesn't serve humans or can somehow function without humans is just totally wrong. Capitalist economies aren't just human-centric, they are literally collections of human wants and needs.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >they are literally collections of human wants and needs. And humans are literally just collections of cells, does that mean you have no wants and that your pancreas is running the show? It's very arrogant to think that only humans have desires. Nations have desires, institutions have desires, and capital itself has a lot of desires. Lots of scary entities out there that have desires. When capital is unhappy with capital owners it's prone to fire all of them, reconfigure entire industries, eliminate entire sectors of human activity, redraw nation-states and in the not so distant future probably reconfigure human bodies. Of all the firms in human existence maybe a fraction of a percent are still around. You think the 'owners' of capital wanted that to happen? Capital keeps tagging along, individual actors, not so much. Give it another few decades and you may interact with a lot of firms that have no human working for it at all, and possibly not even one owning it.
  - themacguffinman 6y ago
    Nation-state desires & institutional desires are human desires. Capital can't "fire" capital owners, that's just a non-sequitur, the very concept of capital ownership is both defined and enforced by human beings. Other capital owners and consumers, ie. humans, fire them. Yes, entire industries are reconfigured and nation-states are redrawn because some humans want them to be reconfigured. This seems like a fundamental misunderstanding of what people mean when they refer to organizations as entities. One might group together the common interests of an organization as a whole for the sake of simplifying discussion, but that in no way implies that an organization is actually some kind of inhuman entity that functions without humans. When people say "the government wants X" or "Britain doesn't like Y", they don't mean it literally. Government is nothing without the human politicians and officials it's comprised of and/or the human citizens that recognize its authority. A hundred dollar bill is worth nothing without humans to want it and the things it can buy. Suggesting that capitalism can produce non-human economic value contradicts the most basic definition of economic value. And no, I don't think only humans have desires, but the capitalist economy we have created is based on human desires. Horses clearly have desires too, but thus far they have not invented an economy to serve horse desires. It wasn't non-existent horse capitalism that replaced horses, it was human capitalism. > Of all the firms in human existence maybe a fraction of a percent are still around. You think the 'owners' of capital wanted that to happen? Yes actually, I don't know why you think that's somehow undesirable. A lot of firms fail to adapt to human desires & needs so humans drop them. I'm honestly confused at the implication that capital owners want a lot of "firms" to exist when they're only a means to an end.

maxsilver 6y ago

> So you cant swap out horses for humans as they analogy is completely flawed. You kind of can though. The economy cares about no one, it cares only about capital. And as far as capital is concerned, humans are just fancy horses. Humans are expenses that need minimizing to the point of zeroing. In a perfectly efficient capitalist economy, no one pays any humans for anything ever.