4 ms·
> the art of this game is to extract value which you did not create in common parlance, theft
by enriquto 3mo ago
> the art of this game is to extract value which you did not create
in common parlance, theft
- mannanj 3mo agoEverything is a rich man’s trick. - Documentary
- csallen 3mo agoAccepting money from willing customers, who are paying you for access to some technology you created that they find valuable, is not theft. Quite the opposite, it's almost always two happy parties engaging in an exchange that each of them finds advantageous.
- ceejayoz 3mo ago> Quite the opposite, it's almost always two very happy parties engaging in an exchange that each of them finds advantageous. When I buy an iPhone from Apple, I suspect quite a few folks in the mines, factories, shipping, and retail chain that gets those "two happy parties" connected aren't so happy. They are, however, deeply important to the transaction.
- satvikpendem 3mo agoThey are working for money, often in jobs paying more than others in their local economy, when they otherwise wouldn't be.
- ceejayoz 3mo agoArbeit macht frei!
- satvikpendem 3mo agoAh yes, people working for money, often more than they could make in other jobs in the local economy, is now slavery or concentration camp level conditions. I wish people here would actually live in a second or third world country before saying things like this from the comfort of their air conditioned house.
- ceejayoz 3mo agoSlavery would still be slavery if you got paid $0.01/day, so there's clearly some kind of threshold we all have for "good, fairly compensated work".
- satvikpendem 3mo agoIf your local economy pays you $0.001/day instead, then congratulations, you now make 10x more than everyone else. It doesn't matter how much a dollar is worth elsewhere in the world, because purchasing power parity exists. It's like me being mad that on a hypothetical Mars people make a million dollars a day, that does not affect me whatsoever.
- ceejayoz 3mo ago> If your local economy pays you $0.001/day instead, then congratulations, you now make 10x more than everyone else. Sure. The kapos at concentration camps got better food and treatment, too. That doesn't make it a fair, happy, or good arrangement.
- satvikpendem 3mo agoI'm not going to continue with someone like you who'd equate concentration camp contidions to working in a factory. It is simply highly disrespectful to those who've actually lived through or died in them. Have a good day.
- ceejayoz 3mo ago> equate concentration camp contidions to working in a factory Oh no, not accurately stating history! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rule_during_World_War_II https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labour_under_German_rul... > The use of slave and forced labour in Nazi Germany (German: Zwangsarbeit) and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in occupied Europe. Titrating the nastiness of it from "will definitely kill you" to "will make you die miserable, broke, and broken" isn't, IMO, a great fix. People are not required to be satisfied with a tiny pittance just because it's more than their neighbor has.
- zeroonetwothree 3mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3mo agoSay Nazi shit, get compared to Nazis. Per Godwin himself! Call it his second law. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-law-trump-hitler-00132427 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/19/godwins-la...
- sophrosyne42 3mo ago[flagged]
- ceejayoz 3mo agoI will accept that, in context (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531429 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531429), as high praise.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- lkjdsklf 3mo agoIt’s still exploitative. The point is that the “gains” are overwhelmingly absorbed by the top. There’s no reason they couldn’t pay them a much bigger share of the profits and raise up that entire part of the world. But yet, they don’t. Because that would cost them some of their own wealth. I’m not even saying it should be equally distributed. The disparity is insane right now though.
- csallen 3mo ago> There’s no reason they couldn’t pay them a much bigger share... Why should they pay more than market worth? When you go shop at a store, do you pay double the price tag just because you can? No, you don't, because that would cost you more of your wealth. Does the average person in a first-world country donate half their wealth to the average person in a second-world countries? Does the average person in a second world country donate half their wealth to the average person in a third world country? No, and no. It's not really a common thing in human nature to give up a lot of what we have in order to support those who are less fortunate. You might say that's sad, but imo it's still a fact. What is curious about human nature is how, despite this lack of behavior on our own part, we expect those who have more than us to give us what they have. Market wages and prices are fairly set, largely due to supply and demand. > The disparity is insane right now though The disparity is better than ever imo. I'd rather live in this time period than any other, thanks to technology, which is a great equalizer. It provides amazing quality of life improvements across so many areas, from education and healthcare to entertainment and food; then capitalistic competition absolutely demolishes the costs of this tech, to the point where prohibitively expensive tech becomes affordable to billions. Today, a middle class person can eat a cheeseburger that's just as good as what Bill Gates is eating, drive a car that's 99% as good as his, travel to the same places he travels to, wear clothes that are just as good as his, read the same books, watch movies, listen to the same music, go to the same plays, etc. The rich sit in slightly bigger chairs, enjoy slightly shorter waits, and many other improvements that historically would've been considered negligible compared to the gaps between kings and peasants, nobility and servants, owners and slaves, rich and poor. In fact, the richest are having to resort to paying insane prices for useless luxury goods and brand names just to differentiate themselves. Or paying outrageous sums for luxury toys like yachts and planes that most wouldn't even want.
- csallen 3mo ago> I suspect quite a few folks in the mines, factories, shipping, and retail chain that gets those "two happy parties" connected aren't so happy. Okay, if you're going to make such a claim and trust in it, then can I presume you have answers to these two questions? 1. In a world without Apple, what would these people be doing that would make them happier? 2. What exactly is stopping them from doing that now?
- ceejayoz 3mo ago> What exactly is stopping them from doing that now? I think the rise of China demonstrates they're certainly trying.
- esarbe 3mo ago1. Not being forced to work in the cobalt mines, I suspect. 2. Economic coercion. The people are forced by the capitalist system - that was shaped by capitalist interests - to participate in a system they don't have any say in. They cannot even opt out.
- csallen 3mo ago1. You didn't answer the question. You said what they wouldn't be doing. What would they be doing that would be making them happier? 2. You didn't answer this question either. What specifically is stopping them from opting out? Who is putting a gun to their head and saying they can't live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle or be a subsistence farmer? The answer is nothing. People are largely making these choices themselves, because they're better options, for reasons that are obvious to anyone who's read a bit of history.
- inigyou 3mo agoUm, the police will put a gun to your head if you're homeless. To not be homeless you can build on your land or someone else's land. If you build on someone else's land the police puts a gun to your head. To own land you need to participate in the system, and then after a whole lifetime working the cobalt mines the system might just let you get a section of property by the time you die if you're lucky.
- inigyou 3mo agoBefore the chokepoint capitalist: you go to a store and pay $20 for an average-quality product. The value chain benefits by getting $20, you benefit by getting the product. Mutual exchange of value. After the chokepoint capitalist: the store has closed so you go to a website and pay $30 to receive the crappiest version of the product in 6 to 10 business days. The website gets $20, the value chain that does 100% of the work (the website didn't add value, just stuck itself in the middle of your transaction) gets $7, the post office gets $3, you get the product. Mutual exchange of value. This "mutual beneficial exchange" stuff is like that xkcd alt text on free speech: it's as if the best argument you can make to support a political position position is that it's not literally illegal to express support for it. "It's a mutually beneficial exchange" is saying the best thing about a transaction is that it's not literally a scam. Seems we should aim a bit higher than that if we want a society that works, yeah?
- stouset 3mo agoThis is the key insight. Chant “mutually beneficial exchange” all you want but the system and its players have done everything possible to ensure that everyone at the bottom has as little leverage and as few alternatives as humanly possible.
- csallen 3mo agoEvery time my mom comes to visit me, she insists on going to the store to buy things just like she always did. There are plenty of stores. In most cases, these brick-and-mortar stores have significantly fewer options than online stores, for obvious reasons -- because they're physical and have limited space. The online stores are often competitively priced, often cheaper, even with shipping, because they have the benefit of scale. I can get an incredible amount of high-quality goods off Amazon at blazing speeds, often the same day, without having to leave my desk, drive my car, burn any fuel, or clog any roads. It provides tons of value. Not only that, but I have an incredible amount of competition. Thousands of alternative products, listings, websites, etc. I went to buy a standing desk last week, and there were literally thousands of choices all over the internet: solid wood standing desks, aluminum standing desks, tall ones, short ones, mid-century modern ones, futuristic ones, etc. I have no idea what planet y'all are living on to say that people now have no leverage, few alternatives, no stores, slow delivery, and get no value.
- ToValueFunfetti 3mo agoI don't think most people would use this definition. It covers gambling/lottery winnings, finding buried treasure or a gold mine, and paying someone to file your taxes and splitting the extra deductions they found. Really, it includes employment at large- the only 'non-theft' employment would be that which provides no net benefit to the employer. There are parlances where these are included intentionally and they share a starting syllable, but to the common people this is not a definition of theft.
- inigyou 3mo agoWhy do people keep assuming that employers don't do any work? Management is work. Is an employee stealing if they receive any net benefit from their employment?