Re: Take Back Your Time Day

Constantinople wrote:
> test5254 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:

> > > Socialism and capitalism, as they have usually been actually
> > > proposed and realized, are hardly opposites.

> > and trading in markets using coins and paper money is hardly capitalism.

> That's a market economy with money. I'd call that capitalist, it's what 
> every proponent of capitalism calls capitalist, as far as I can tell.  

I don't see why you would say that.  Economies a couple of
millenia ago used money, but we don't usually call them
capitalist.  Capitalism has to do with particular uses of
money, e.g. accumulating it so that it can be invested in
particular ways.  Would you say that a king paying for
music to be produced counts as capitalism?  Most people
wouldn't.

> Meanwhile, some socialists mean, by capitalism, any situation where the 
> workers don't own their own means of production, including the USSR. 

As I'm sure you know, socialists are all over the map.  :-)

> Proponents of capitalism don't care about whether or not there is worker 
> ownership: if it happens, fine, if it doesn't, also fine. 

I think you're mistaken here; capitalists are all over the
map as well.  I've heard proponents of capitalism condemn
co-ops just because they don't follow the "standard pattern"
that the capitalists are used to.

> What they care about is that the rules are followed. 

I think you're mistaken here as well, depending on who you're
talking about.  The people in charge of Enron considered
themselves to be capitalists; the people in charge of the
S&Ls a couple of decades ago considered themselves to be
capitalists.  Heavens, John D. Rockefeller probably considered
himself to be a capitalist.  The point is that there isn't
agreement about what the rules *are*.

> For example, if people get something 
> in trade, they have to be able to keep it; it can't be confiscated. 
> Otherwise, what was the point of the trade? 

Suppose the trade has negative externalities; should the value
of the trade not be reduced in order to ensure that those
externalities are dealt with?  Remember, trades don't happen
in a vacuum; they have consequences.  If I sell you contaminated
beef, isn't there a problem?  If I sell you high sulfur coal
to be burned in a city, isn't there a problem?

> And the fact is, people build 
> businesses with employees (where the employees are not owners) entirely 
> through trade. So when socialists bemoan this situation, it looks as though 
> they're hankering to expropriate, i.e., rob, the owners, which is a no-no 
> in the eyes of proponents of capitalism. And in fact they praise and 
> celebrate cases where this actually happens.

I'm not sure who the 'they' is; I assume it's the socialists.  But
the obvious response is how do we know that the 'owners' actually
own what they say they do?  It's determined by the law, which is
generally run by the owners.  Can you say "conflict of interest"?

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[EMAIL PROTECTED]           http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/chris.holt