Re: Take Back Your Time Day

"chris.holt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]: 

> 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.  

That's because we usually don't talk about them. I don't even know what they 
were like. Personally I would call them capitalist if that's what they were.

> 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?  

The king got his money through taxes, not trade.

> Most people
> wouldn't.

It's state funding of the arts. It is not capitalism, it's tax-and-spend. Did 
you really need to dig into ancient history to find *this* example? If this 
is really your example, why didn't you bring up the National Endowment for 
the Arts? And the fact that tax-and-spend is not capitalism, does not rest on 
your idea that capitalism is the accumulation of money. In fact, the king 
does accumulate money, and he does invest it (in armor and castles). So your 
example is doubly confused. Your definition fails to explain why the king's 
funding of the arts is not capitalism; in contrast my definition explains it, 
since my definition excludes taxation, since taxes are not trade.

>> 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.

I have never heard any of them do that. Show me a proponent of capitalism who 
claims that cooperative societies should be banned by the state.

>> 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; 

I didn't say anything about capitalists. I was talking about proponents of 
capitalism. And I was talking about their stated views, not about what we can 
infer from their actions. For the record, I believe that stealing is wrong, 
but I also would steal if I thought it were easy and safe to do. Power 
corrupts, and it would corrupt me too. You can call me a hypocrite if you 
like, but the fact remains that I claim, and I think, that no-stealing is a 
fundamental rule of capitalism.

> 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.  

Again, a capitalist is not not an advocate of capitalism. It's amazing how 
consistently people mix up these things.

> The point is that there isn't
> agreement about what the rules *are*.

Sure there is. All you're observing with the Enron case is that people are 
generally tempted to make exceptions for themselves; that's why judges and 
juries mustn't be connected with parties to a dispute.

>> 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; 

A trade is merely a change in ownership.

> 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?  

That's not an externality, since the buyer is hurt.

> If I sell you high sulfur coal
> to be burned in a city, isn't there a problem?

That's not an externality either; the burning of the coal is what produces 
the externalities. And those externalities should be dealt with directly.

>> 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"?

In my post I was characterizing socialist attitudes; here you are not denying 
my characterization but defending the view that I say socialists have.