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Vast-Material4857 t1_irn2yaq wrote

Reply to comment by ValyrianJedi in “Scientific progress is thwarted by the ownership of knowledge.” How Karl Popper’s philosophy of science can overcome clinical corruption. by IAI_Admin

>You're acting like labor is the only thing of value to a company or to the production of something.

Precisely. There is dead labor which includes the machines and the factories and the roads, all products of active labor-- live labor. We mix both forms of labor when we produce. We don't need to be privately owned to be productive. If we cooperated it would be magnitudes cheaper.

>It isn't. If one buy spends $10 million on factory equipment then hires people to run it, then he has contributed just as much (if not significantly more) than the people working the machines

Contributing? In what way? The act of paying? That's trivial. Build a house.

>More things consumed or used by definitely requires more work to create.

Are we talking iphones? Having more technology should mean less labor and that according to Keynes.

And besides that the biggest issue is how we are leveraging people to trade hours of their lives and for less and less. Ignore money. Housing is the biggest most important metric for necessities which is burning a bigger hole in people's pockets than the new 80 different types of ketchup. Focus on the relationship between our labor and the way it's relatively valued against those main necessities to see is what's becoming diluted. That trend is not stopping, that's the issue. These are people's lives and we're taking more and more of it away from them for less and less. Food, housing, healthcare are all non-optional expenses and they're getting more and more expensive despite better technology.

And, again, as we established earlier, we've had greater contributions from publicly funded institutions, you can't really attribute every sparkly thing we have today to purely capitalism. We had to fight tooth and nail for s lot of this, even just banking insurance. There was a literal attempted coup against FDR called the business plot.

This system is run by mafiosos. It's horribly ineffecient at distributing resources, it concentrates so much wealth and it's literally posing an existential threat to us. There's no way to justify .001% of the population should have that much power. It's corrupting democracy, science, public health and what are we getting for it? Walmart? McDonalds? It's not science. It's not culture. What more do we have to sacrifice to the Moloch for it to be the 1960s again? 99%?

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ValyrianJedi t1_irn4sfi wrote

What do you mean contribute in what way? They literally directly provide the money without which the company can't exist. Acting like capital isn't just as important as labor to a company is either painfully misinformed or just plain silly... And I don't thunk you need me to describe the things we have today that serfs didn't have. Keynesian economics saying that productivity increases with technology doesn't mean that it doesn't still require more labor to create more things...

The more you say the more it sounds like you don't really unset this topic as well as you seem to think you do, and that you're one of those people who thinks that watching some YouTube videos and reading a few articles makes you an economics expert.

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Vast-Material4857 t1_irn78vz wrote

>What do you mean contribute in what way? They literally directly provide the money without which the company can't exist. Acting like capital isn't just as important as labor to a company is either painfully misinformed or just plain silly

A company to do what? Produce something? Do you need private ownership to do that? What are these owners exactly providing to everyone? Permission to work? Financial judgement? Do they not have fiduciaries to do that for them? If they have that, what is exactly is the labor of owning if the management of it can outsourced? Please, explain to me how that's worth 90% of the profit?

>Keynesian economics saying that productivity increases with technology doesn't mean that it doesn't still require more labor to create more things

Keynes literally said we would have a 15 hr work week.

>YouTube videos and reading a few articles makes you an economics expert.

What type of economics? We don't operate by one economic theory. All we can do is react and attempt to manage a system that crashes every 7-8 years.

Are you familiar with the philosophy of science? Economics claims to be a science correct so it should be within its purview. You should check out Thomas Kuhn so you could see how politically motivated even our hardest sciences could be. I'd also suggest a history of economics, Michael Hudson has written plenty on this.

Finally, do you not have any answers to my points about capitalism corrupting science, democracy, or public health? Do you believe it's responsible for global warming? Do you even believe in global warming?

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ValyrianJedi t1_irn8z4k wrote

You have to just be being purposefully dense at this point. Or a troll. I refuse to believe that someone can make all of these comments that you're making while genuinely trying to argue in good faith... Think that's my cue to stop trying to have a conversation with you.

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Vast-Material4857 t1_irnc7dg wrote

Again, i keep asking you questions but you just keep ignoring literally all of them. How exactly are the owners of capital providing 90% equity? Is it permission? Their special blessing? Is it the act of saying, "yes, i well spend my wealth here" that you believe is comparable to the act hard labor?

Secondly, even if you believe the owner's labor is just it's just the act of investing, don't they hire people for that too? So it isn't just that either. Its just the decision to invest at all and not even what to invest in and is that a really that much harder of a decision? Does that require so much brain power to the point it deserves 90% of the pie to you?

What is it? You keep evading this very basic question and ignoring everything and you want to accuse me of engaging in bad faith? What do they do? Even if you believe in "economics" why cant you tell me why Keynes was wrong about the efficiency of technology making it so we have to work less?

You have no answers to any of this. I already know. You're a victim of decades and decades of propaganda. All you can offer is the same talking points people were giving in the 70s except we have the conclusion of those policies already. It didn't work. Keynes was wrong and so was Reagan and so was Clinton.

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ValyrianJedi t1_irndod0 wrote

And I have answered the question repeatedly. What they provide is money. If you don't see how that warrants equity then you don't understand what equity is... Labor has nothing to do with it. They aren't providing labor, they are providing capital. They have equity because they bought the equity...

What you are saying is equivalent to "why does the guy who paid to have a house built for his family have all the equity in the house? He didn't do any labor to build it. It should be the construction workers' house."

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Vast-Material4857 t1_irnfq7s wrote

So it's just permission. That's it. That's what you believe is equal to ~90% of the work?

>don't understand what equity is... Labor has nothing to do with it.

Equity is value. Who has it? The value of an enterprise is it's productivity. How can you say labor has nothing to do with equity if they're the ones that are creating the productivity that makes it all valuable in the first place? Even the management is labor. That makes no sense.

>What you are saying is equivalent to "why does the guy who paid to have a house built for his family have all the equity in the house? He didn't do any labor to build it. It should be the construction workers' house."

No, it should belong to public which the construction workers would be part of. That's what it means to have public ownership. That's called socialism. It builds houses and creates science.

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ValyrianJedi t1_irnglxz wrote

Jesus Christ... No. It isn't. I can't tell if you are being purposefully dense or are genuinely incapable of following, but it's pretty clear that you just plain aren't going to understand at this point, so this is where I stop responding.

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Vast-Material4857 t1_irnhfwa wrote

What are you specifically contradicting? My use of the word equity? Me saying labor provides all the value? If it's that one, can you show me how it doesn't and what the owners do that that therefore deserves 90%? You keep ignoring that question.

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Vast-Material4857 t1_irnhri2 wrote

Equity is the value you have of something, the share of it. Am I wrong on that? I don't think so.

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Vast-Material4857 t1_irniexn wrote

Also, never got an answer as to why Keynes was wrong about that 15 hr work week. Seems like a glaring hole in your "just study economics" argument when you can't be bothered to even recognize the contradictions by those same economists.

A lot of unanswered questions.

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