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> Only through class consciousness can we build a new society in which the fruits of labor are enjoyed by us all. They've done this a few times already, and it

> Only through class consciousness can we build a new society in which the fruits of labor are enjoyed by us all. They've done this a few times already, and it's very violent each time. And this isn't an inherent contradiction of capidalism. Capitalism only makes people rich if they provide loads of value to others. Lower prices are good for every one. Raising everyone's wages out of proportion to the value they create only raises all the prices.

regularization 1y ago
> Capitalism only makes people rich if they provide loads of value to others. Heirs are made rich every day by being born.
- philipallstar 1y ago
  Of course some[0] don't earn their wealth, but their wealth was earned by someone else still providing value. They got the output for nothing, but it was still earned. There are some people, such as Vladimir Putin, who just drain their country of its resources, enabled by the force of the state. But capitalism is about free exchange of value. So if someone gets rich; lots of other people got value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_billionaires#2023_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_billionaires#20...
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    This is only true sometimes. You can, in many cases, create a functional monopoly and force people to pay you for their essentials. You can provide them a useful product, but deny them a better alternative that would make you less money (the old super strong drinking glass example). You can make use of the fact that value doesn’t mean “rationally determined to be of utility” to sell people things that are damaging to them for huge amounts of money. “Value provision” just means “you give me money for any reason,” and there’s a lot of shitty reasons people have to fork over their money in capitalism.
  - regularization 1y ago
    This is all tangential to the idea that "capitalism only makes people rich if they provide loads of value to others". The heir who doess not work, and who has never worked, often the same being true of their parents, and their parent's parents, is eating food grown by the labor of others and so on. There are those that work, and there is also a parasitic rentier class who does not work.
- busterarm 1y ago
  That's not a feature of capitalism though, and pretty much exists regardless of system.
  - BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
    If heirs get money by virtue of birth and not value provision under most any system, and capitalism is among them, then capitalism isn’t a system which distributes money purely by value production.
    - busterarm 1y ago
      One of the motivations that a lot of people have for working really hard is so that their children don't also have to work just as hard. That anyone is floating the idea that "a better future for our children" is a bad thing is mentally deranged.
      - saubeidl 1y ago
        "A better future for some rich person's children" is not the same as "a better future for our children"
        philipallstar 1y ago
        Yes it is.
        saubeidl 1y ago
        Only if you lucked out in the capitalist casino.
        busterarm 1y ago
        So in your ideal scenario, rich people lose the privilege of being able to provide opportunities for their children? Purely because they are rich? Even if you can walk it back from the edge of that cliff by saying they should have to provide for everyones' children, they can only do that by being rich...
saubeidl 1y ago
> They've done this a few times already, and it's very violent each time. It's very violent because it gets violently repressed by capitalist forces. See the democratically elected Allende being couped by the CIA. > Capitalism only makes people rich if they provide loads of value to others. That is straight up not true. What value do people inheriting wealth provide? What value do high frequency traders provide? What value do speculators of all sorts provide? It's a casino that's rigged for the already rich, on the back of the poor.
- philipallstar 1y ago
  > It's very violent because it gets violently repressed by capitalist forces Millions of Soviet deaths; millions of Chinese deaths; deaths from the Khmer Rouge....these are not "violent capitalist repression". Capitalism isn't a total system. It's a voluntary exchange system, where people who provide the most get the most. > What value do people inheriting wealth provide? That money was earned by providing value. > What value do high frequency traders provide? If listing a company on a stock exchange isn't valuable for companies, then they wouldn't do it. But it is. So they do. > What value do speculators of all sorts provide? It depends on your other examples of speculators. If you see how they make money, then you'll probably have your answer.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    > Millions of Soviet deaths; millions of Chinese deaths; deaths from the Khmer Rouge We could count the dead of capitalist imperialist oppression and come to similar conclusions, but I don't think that's a productive converation. > It's a voluntary exchange system, where people who provide the most get the most. That is not true. You either participate or you starve and are denied housing and health care. It is "voluntary" on paper only. > That money was earned by providing value. That money was earned by exploiting labor. > If listing a company on a stock exchange isn't valuable for companies, then they wouldn't do it. But it is. So they do. I'm not talking about profits for companies - which are the very source of the ills described in the article we're commenting on. I'm talking about value to society.
int_19h 1y ago
For the most part, capitalism makes people rich if they have capital to begin with and can invest this capital somewhere (i.e. have someone else do the actual productive work and then collect part of the wealth that they have produced as economic rent). That is, the "value" is in giving others access to resources that you have hoarded from them in the first place. As for violent revolutions - very true, but notice how every time that happens in one country, the others tend to swing left economically because it's either that to placate the workers, or face the possibility of revolt. The primary beneficiaries of the Russian revolution wasn't the Russians - it was Western workers who managed to get a lot of concessions from their employers riding that wave.
- peterfirefly 1y ago
  Those workers generally paid with lower growth, though. Redistribution isn't much of a solution if growth is possible.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Elon Musk didn't provide anything of value. He's a grifter. He almost destroyed PayPal with inappropriate Windows-based shit. He didn't come up with Tesla, that was founded by others. Being CEO of SpaceX, a celebrity figurehead, might be his claim to fame. I think it's fairly safe to assert that one can be a total asshole and become a billionaire as long as you're able to get others to do with work, buy your wares, and/or give you money. Maybe that has "value", but only indirectly and it's rarely or never your "special" effort alone.
- disgruntledphd2 1y ago
  > He didn't come up with Tesla, He didn't, but I find it hard to believe that Tesla would be "worth" what it is now without him. More generally, I don't think we'd live in a world with as many electric cars without him, so that was definitely good for the world.
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    Like a celebrity politician, installing a CEO who has achieved celebrity infamy or fame adds hype to whatever they touch, orthogonal to if they deserve celebrity or not. But also, how many other serious EV companies were there in 2006? Basically none. So said engineers and celebrity guy got to define a category for a while. But then he jumped the shark with a double "Roman" Nazi salute and customers fled to the myriad of other competitors that since developed and arguably surpassed (like BYD super fast charging, that one can't buy in America).
    - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
      > how many other serious EV companies were there in 2006? Basically none Yeah, thats my point. I'm reasonably confident that without Musk, the answer would still be none (or at least the transformation would have been way slower). I'm not a fan of Musk, but this notion that he's never done anything worthwhile is also clearly wrong.
      - 1y ago

regularization 1y ago

> Capitalism only makes people rich if they provide loads of value to others. Heirs are made rich every day by being born.

philipallstar 1y ago
Of course some[0] don't earn their wealth, but their wealth was earned by someone else still providing value. They got the output for nothing, but it was still earned. There are some people, such as Vladimir Putin, who just drain their country of its resources, enabled by the force of the state. But capitalism is about free exchange of value. So if someone gets rich; lots of other people got value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_billionaires#2023_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_billionaires#20...
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  This is only true sometimes. You can, in many cases, create a functional monopoly and force people to pay you for their essentials. You can provide them a useful product, but deny them a better alternative that would make you less money (the old super strong drinking glass example). You can make use of the fact that value doesn’t mean “rationally determined to be of utility” to sell people things that are damaging to them for huge amounts of money. “Value provision” just means “you give me money for any reason,” and there’s a lot of shitty reasons people have to fork over their money in capitalism.
- regularization 1y ago
  This is all tangential to the idea that "capitalism only makes people rich if they provide loads of value to others". The heir who doess not work, and who has never worked, often the same being true of their parents, and their parent's parents, is eating food grown by the labor of others and so on. There are those that work, and there is also a parasitic rentier class who does not work.
busterarm 1y ago
That's not a feature of capitalism though, and pretty much exists regardless of system.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
  If heirs get money by virtue of birth and not value provision under most any system, and capitalism is among them, then capitalism isn’t a system which distributes money purely by value production.
  - busterarm 1y ago
    One of the motivations that a lot of people have for working really hard is so that their children don't also have to work just as hard. That anyone is floating the idea that "a better future for our children" is a bad thing is mentally deranged.
    - saubeidl 1y ago
      "A better future for some rich person's children" is not the same as "a better future for our children"
      - philipallstar 1y ago
        Yes it is.
        saubeidl 1y ago
        Only if you lucked out in the capitalist casino.
        busterarm 1y ago
        So in your ideal scenario, rich people lose the privilege of being able to provide opportunities for their children? Purely because they are rich? Even if you can walk it back from the edge of that cliff by saying they should have to provide for everyones' children, they can only do that by being rich...

saubeidl 1y ago

> They've done this a few times already, and it's very violent each time. It's very violent because it gets violently repressed by capitalist forces. See the democratically elected Allende being couped by the CIA. > Capitalism only makes people rich if they provide loads of value to others. That is straight up not true. What value do people inheriting wealth provide? What value do high frequency traders provide? What value do speculators of all sorts provide? It's a casino that's rigged for the already rich, on the back of the poor.

philipallstar 1y ago
> It's very violent because it gets violently repressed by capitalist forces Millions of Soviet deaths; millions of Chinese deaths; deaths from the Khmer Rouge....these are not "violent capitalist repression". Capitalism isn't a total system. It's a voluntary exchange system, where people who provide the most get the most. > What value do people inheriting wealth provide? That money was earned by providing value. > What value do high frequency traders provide? If listing a company on a stock exchange isn't valuable for companies, then they wouldn't do it. But it is. So they do. > What value do speculators of all sorts provide? It depends on your other examples of speculators. If you see how they make money, then you'll probably have your answer.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  > Millions of Soviet deaths; millions of Chinese deaths; deaths from the Khmer Rouge We could count the dead of capitalist imperialist oppression and come to similar conclusions, but I don't think that's a productive converation. > It's a voluntary exchange system, where people who provide the most get the most. That is not true. You either participate or you starve and are denied housing and health care. It is "voluntary" on paper only. > That money was earned by providing value. That money was earned by exploiting labor. > If listing a company on a stock exchange isn't valuable for companies, then they wouldn't do it. But it is. So they do. I'm not talking about profits for companies - which are the very source of the ills described in the article we're commenting on. I'm talking about value to society.

int_19h 1y ago

For the most part, capitalism makes people rich if they have capital to begin with and can invest this capital somewhere (i.e. have someone else do the actual productive work and then collect part of the wealth that they have produced as economic rent). That is, the "value" is in giving others access to resources that you have hoarded from them in the first place. As for violent revolutions - very true, but notice how every time that happens in one country, the others tend to swing left economically because it's either that to placate the workers, or face the possibility of revolt. The primary beneficiaries of the Russian revolution wasn't the Russians - it was Western workers who managed to get a lot of concessions from their employers riding that wave.

peterfirefly 1y ago
Those workers generally paid with lower growth, though. Redistribution isn't much of a solution if growth is possible.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Elon Musk didn't provide anything of value. He's a grifter. He almost destroyed PayPal with inappropriate Windows-based shit. He didn't come up with Tesla, that was founded by others. Being CEO of SpaceX, a celebrity figurehead, might be his claim to fame. I think it's fairly safe to assert that one can be a total asshole and become a billionaire as long as you're able to get others to do with work, buy your wares, and/or give you money. Maybe that has "value", but only indirectly and it's rarely or never your "special" effort alone.

disgruntledphd2 1y ago
> He didn't come up with Tesla, He didn't, but I find it hard to believe that Tesla would be "worth" what it is now without him. More generally, I don't think we'd live in a world with as many electric cars without him, so that was definitely good for the world.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  Like a celebrity politician, installing a CEO who has achieved celebrity infamy or fame adds hype to whatever they touch, orthogonal to if they deserve celebrity or not. But also, how many other serious EV companies were there in 2006? Basically none. So said engineers and celebrity guy got to define a category for a while. But then he jumped the shark with a double "Roman" Nazi salute and customers fled to the myriad of other competitors that since developed and arguably surpassed (like BYD super fast charging, that one can't buy in America).
  - disgruntledphd2 1y ago
    > how many other serious EV companies were there in 2006? Basically none Yeah, thats my point. I'm reasonably confident that without Musk, the answer would still be none (or at least the transformation would have been way slower). I'm not a fan of Musk, but this notion that he's never done anything worthwhile is also clearly wrong.
    - 1y ago