Why Capitalists are Capitalists...

[GePap]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Know how you feel, Imran, we've been doing that same thing for DAYS now (and now that GePap is here questioning things that should be bedrocks "but daddy, why is stealing wrong") we'll prolly see a lot more. Stock up on Tylenol....

-=Vel=-

We are nearing 500 quick, so this will only go on for a few more hours (minutes more likely)


And as for questioning things "that should be bedrock" NOTHING is ever bedrock. You stated your belief theft was wrong is based on Judeo-Christian valus. As I said, capitalism is not a great fit with that set of values. What then do you use to justify the beliefes you have stated, becuase Judeo-Chritian values are not enough, period.

You have no basis to make assumptions at all. You called this "capitalism" a game, and I agree. Are the rules of games ever "bedrock"? On what basis would the rules of games ever have some sort of absolute verity you want to give the injunction vs theft? God? Christ? Those are fine for theft, but not capitalism.

So can you give us your bedrock Vel? The set of beliefs you base this hodgepot of things you say on?

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by JohnT
The answer lies within your question... because you speculated* with it.

*Also defined as "gambling."

So you should not get a return on your property then? You get the return for taking the risk.

[Velociryx]

And fair warning, if your vision of the communist utopia ever comes to pass, put me on the list as being one of the people you will simply have to kill to make it work (since might makes right and all), because I will resist it with my last breath.



-=Vel=-

[GePap]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Your basic point is that you have no right to keep your property, and backed it by saying that you can lose money on a bad investment. However, theft is forbidden, indicating that people believe that there is a right to keep property, and the only way property can legally be taken from you is if you consentually give it up in legally defined ways.

And my question has alway been what is the basis for that belief you speak of: so no, your claim does not answer the question.

[Velociryx]

Maybe if you'd stop topic jumping, yes I could, GePap.

Christianity has BEANS to do with capitalism, and you said so yourself earlier (in your comment that it has no particular morality associated with it).

But when you bring thievery into the picture (something that is not, by the way, an economic activity) then yes, being that we were founded by people of a certain belief system, and being that IN that belief system is the notion that thievery is wrong, yes, it comes up.

If you'd pick a topic and stick with it, perhaps?

-=Vel=-

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Because, Kid, in a free society you "have enough rope to hang yourself." If you make bad choices, you can lose your property, it's true.

Likewise, if you sell it, you lose your rights to it.

You can't change your mind later and demand it back....



-=Vel=-

I know you can't demand it back, but the point is that whether you get it back or not is due to luck. Someone ends up getting wealthy and ends up with the money that someone else worked for. Now that they have that money they can start to get return on it for not working. How do you justify this, assuming that all wealth is the result of producitivity. Keep in mind that this transfer is legal.

[Velociryx]

Oh, and I would beg to differ. Societies are built on foundations. Those foundations are oft referred to as the "bedrock." If you don't like the term, pick another one, and we'll use that (cos the term is not entirely accurate, given that over the course of time, societal foundations can and do change....verrry slowly as a rule, but they do).

Nonetheless, they exist whether you acknowledge them, or pay any particular credence to them or not. They serve as the basis for the overall structure of our society.

-=Vel=-

[DAVOUT]

There is no possible freedom without the right to private ownership. Under democratic regims, there is no limitation to that right except public services. Under communists systems, at least the property of production means is forbidden, and often much more.

But the right of private ownership is of no value if it is not protected by the state (which must ensure the security of persons AND properties). This is why thief is outlawed, it is for making the freedom effective.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Kidicious


So you should not get a return on your property then? You get the return for taking the risk.

Not too sure what you mean by this... most all returns are based upon risk. You know, that's why they call it the risk/reward ratio, not the property/reward ratio.

If you go into Finance, I'm sure they'll be glad to teach you this stuff.

[Velociryx]

No! It's not luck, any more than picking stocks is "lucky". If you take the time to learn about what you're doing and do some freakin' research, you won't have terribly many surprises investing. Sure, if you use the dartboard method to pick your stocks, and make money, you got "lucky" but if you study a company's fundamentals and pick investments based on what you learn, that's not luck at all!

So...KNOWLEDGE (not luck) leads to good investments.

A string of good investments leads to increasingly more profits that may one day let you ::gasp!:: live without having to work. So?

What's wrong with that?

-=Vel=-

[GePap]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Maybe if you'd stop topic jumping, yes I could, GePap.

Christianity has BEANS to do with capitalism, and you said so yourself earlier (in your comment that it has no particular morality associated with it).

But when you bring thievery into the picture (something that is not, by the way, an economic activity) then yes, being that we were founded by people of a certain belief system, and being that IN that belief system is the notion that thievery is wrong, yes, it comes up.

If you'd pick a topic and stick with it, perhaps?

-=Vel=-

You called communism thievery, hence you bring the topic of theft into this discussion Vel.

If economic systems have no morality assigned to them, words liek theft have no place in a dscussion of resource allocation. BUt you used the word theft to reffer to communism, so deal with the consequences of your arguements.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by JohnT
Not too sure what you mean by this... most all returns are based upon risk. You know, that's why they call it the risk/reward ratio, not the property/reward ratio.

If you go into Finance, I'm sure they'll be glad to teach you this stuff.

You missed the question mark.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Bubbles are another matter.

A fraud (or more correctly, willful group delusion) driven bubble is the whole matter in Japan. The house of cards finally came down.

The point is that the productivity was so high in Japan that the system couldn't maintain itself especially after the US starting coying their methods.

(a) The US only superficially copied some Japanese methods in some industries on a limited scale, because it was fashionable in books. Real copying of Japanese methods would have violated US labor laws, cultural norms (workers would quit), securities laws, banking laws and antitrust laws.

To fully copy Japanese methods, GM would have to found GM bank, open up a GM mining division for raw materials, GM tires, GM appliances, GM aluminimum foil, GM computers, GM semiconductors, GM aircraft, then interdeal between these companies so much, financed by Federally guaranteed loans from GM bank, that nobody could ever see what the real financial condition was. Oh, and GM would own major shares of department stores where customers could never open a door or push an elevator button on their own, and where the salesperson to customer ratio was almost 1 to 1. To encourage worker loyalty (and immobility), GM bank would give shorter term, below market interest rates to employees (of any unit) who bought a GM car.

GM would promise employees lifetime employment, and a pension so high that an aging workforce led to pension costs for retirees approaching half of payroll costs for current employees. Why? Because the employee pension funds were deposited with GM bank, which then used them to finance capital projects at other GM units.

Meanwhile, because shareholders, managers and government ministers all wanted to see growth and improved efficiency, you had hundreds of people who did nothing but figure out how to restate the numbers and exclude costs in order to make sure this year's numbers looked better than last years. In the rare event they couldn't cook that, the managers would apologize to their shareholders for their employees failures to cook the books enough and offer to resign. The shareholders would accept the apology, and dropped the issue, so as not to embarass the managers, and make them humiliate the poor accounting employees who had failed everyone by not adequately cooking the books to get the desired result. After all, harmonious relationships are more important than a little underlying unpleasantry.

Oh, and because GM would disguise it's real costs from itself and everyone else, it would sell at too low a price (or incur too much cost per sales volume, however you'd like to look at it), because it needed to do so in order to compete - and gaining market share in foreign markets in an export driven economy is what it's about, isn't it?


(b) As I've pointed out repeatedly, and as I know firsthand from living there and doing work there, (I've also met people who worked for all of the major enterprises, and in government and in the financial/economic press, productivity was not high at all, when you included all real costs and inputs.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Oh, and I would beg to differ. Societies are built on foundations. Those foundations are oft referred to as the "bedrock." If you don't like the term, pick another one, and we'll use that (cos the term is not entirely accurate, given that over the course of time, societal foundations can and do change....verrry slowly as a rule, but they do).

Nonetheless, they exist whether you acknowledge them, or pay any particular credence to them or not. They serve as the basis for the overall structure of our society.

-=Vel=-

And in any discussion about the very structure of society (as any discussion of capitalism and communism must envoke), arguing about the bedrock is vital sicne if the assumptions of the bedrock are wrong, or if there are inherent contradictions within the bedrock then the strcuture of soceity should change.

[Velociryx]

So...how does referring to communism as "thievery" (which from the capitalist viewpoint it certainly is) have ANYTHING to do with your question (of why, under our current--capitalist--system, thievery is illegal?

You're making LESS than no sense now, GePap.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

To that I would say:

One of the systems we're talking about is currently working and thriving (sugessting that the bedrock foundation it rests upon is solid).

One of them is not.

Care to guess which is which??

-=Vel=-

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
No! It's not luck, any more than picking stocks is "lucky".

Man, you need to seriously get a reality check. When you invest your money in the market you better realize that there is a risk to it. If you are unlucky you lose. Is this just another absurd statement to impress all the AECCs here so 10 of them can come in here and tell you what a good debater you are and how stupid I am for claiming that a thing called luck actually exists?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Velociryx
So...how does referring to communism as "thievery" (which from the capitalist viewpoint it certainly is) have ANYTHING to do with your question (of why, under our current--capitalist--system, thievery is illegal?

You're making LESS than no sense now, GePap.

-=Vel=-

Christianity has BEANS to do with capitalism, and you said so yourself earlier (in your comment that it has no particular morality associated with it).

What is the meaning of theft in a capitalist viewpoint if capitalism has beans to do with judeo-Crhsitian values?

[Velociryx]

*sigh*

Yes. I chose to invest in Microsoft because despite recent court rulings against them, all the fundamentals were strong, and though the stock price took a bit of a beating during the trials, there was nothing about their numbers that sugessted they'd stay down.

Boy did I ever get lucky!

-=Vel=-

[GePap]

Originally posted by Velociryx
To that I would say:

One of the systems we're talking about is currently working and thriving (sugessting that the bedrock foundation it rests upon is solid).

One of them is not.

Care to guess which is which??

-=Vel=-

And since you seem to base your definition of communism on that caricature you gave Kid, I would have to seriously question what the basis of your arguements were.

[Velociryx]

I base my caracature of communism on the arguments I got from your fellow Comrades right here in this thread....if it's wrong, put your heads together and come up with a more coherent debate....

-=Vel=-

[GePap]

I would like an answer to the theft question Vel.

[Velociryx]

I've given you several.....since nothing is bedrock, just pick the one you like best....

-=Vel=-

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by GePap
I would like an answer to the theft question Vel.

What do you think of mine above ?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by GePap
If economic systems have no morality assigned to them, words liek theft have no place in a dscussion of resource allocation. BUt you used the word theft to reffer to communism, so deal with the consequences of your arguements.

You don't need to refer to moral arguments. Capital markets function most efficiently when risks are known and mitigated. If you've ever dealt with large capital finance documents (let's say 7 figures up as a threshhold, even though that's pretty damn small), most of the verbage and conditions aren't about the finance mechanism itself, they're about different forms of risk and the required steps to mitigate that risk.

If I buy something, but have no reasonable assurance against arbitrary seizure, I'm pretty stupid to buy something visible. I either hide my money in fence post banks, or I hire a bunch of mercenary bastards to guard it for me (perhaps I call them knights and squires, with a little levy of footsoldiers to fill out the ranks).

The risk of arbitrary seizure creates an inefficiency, simply because it hinders capital purchases, and hinders all acquisition of assets, not just "excess" acquisition.

Capitalist models of taxation and valuation amount to a partial seizure of capital, but at least the means and the amounts can be predicted beforehand, so the investor / purchaser can easily work with net assets and net after tax returns, and make decisions on that basis.

Asset seizure by the state is effectively a 100% tax, and it was long clear before Marx was ever born that such tax levels were folly.

No "morals" need enter into the issue, just the efficient function of the marketplace.

[GePap]

DAVOUT:

You answered a previous incarnation of the theft question, and from a political point of view (which i would agree with), not an eocnomic one, which is what I am asking Vel now.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
*sigh*

Yes. I chose to invest in Microsoft because despite recent court rulings against them, all the fundamentals were strong, and though the stock price took a bit of a beating during the trials, there was nothing about their numbers that sugessted they'd stay down.

Boy did I ever get lucky!

-=Vel=-

Here we go again. Hey everyone Vel made a successfull investment. That means that there is no luck involved in making an investment.

Please Vel. Bring a real argument to the table. Improve the debate.l

[GePap]

Thank you MtG for an answer Vel was not comming up with.

What about other "inefficiencies", and hoiw do you calculate them?

or example, is $500 a bottle hand lotion an "inefficiency", or just "an irrational choice"?

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by GePap
DAVOUT:

You answered a previous incarnation of the theft question, and from a political point of view (which i would agree with), not an eocnomic one, which is what I am asking Vel now.

In your thread about question you would like answers, I asked a connected question which was never answered : is laundering money bad or good for the economy.

[Velociryx]

From a purely economic standpoint then, thievery adds nothing to the economic process.

It's not a service. It does not create or add value to any factor of production, and as such, has no place in the economic equation.

And Kid, I'll not deny that there IS an element of luck involved in some investments. That's true because of the presence of risk, but as MtG mentioned earlier, risk can be mitigated. Risk is not the driving factor that determines failure or success.

-=Vel=-