Is profit different from unfair tax?

[Velociryx]

1) Tools enhance productivity. They enable you to make more stuff with less effort.

2) Tools do not appear magically out of thin air. Someone has to make and invent them. Think them up if they don't already exist.

3) That process is work. Work should be rewarded.

4) There are many ways such compensation could be rewarded, and one of those ways, commonly used in today's economy, is the Licensing Agreement. That means, you use my tool to enhance your productivity, and I get a small chunk of the gain you realize.

5) Since you could not produce as much pre-tool as post, you are gaining, not losing. Since you are freely electing to use the fruits of my brain, MY labor to enhance your productivity, your productivity is no longer a function of YOUR work alone. It is your work, enhanced by my tool. Thus, it is not exploitative nor treating you unfairly in any way.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
And how does the system "treat you" in this example?

It gives you a clear choice: Continue as you are, with a productive capacity of 10 per day, or double it to 20/day, and give me one for providing you the means of doing so...for turning your work, into our work.

-=Vel=-

What I'm I missing? If I produce 10 a day I want compensation for producing 10 a day and if I produce 20 a day I want compensation for producing 20 a day. If the tool is owned by the community and I get compensated for the full benefit of my work why should I want a system that doesn't compensate me for the full benefit of my work?

[Japher]

Specialization.

Henry Ford's real invention, and the reason why I haven't learned to be a tailor, carpenter, or butcher. Without them I would be naked and hungry living on the streets, and they would be without whatever service I provide. Granted if society wasn't the way it is today I would know how to sew, build, and butcher but then we would be so far behind from where we are now, because instead of people spending time learning chemisty, physics, engineering, etc. to create the inventions that make our lives so much easier and or more comnfortable we would all still be busy being selfish greedy communist doing only for ourselves what it is we know how.

Services.

[Velociryx]

Yes, the tool improves your productivity, but I made the tool. There would BE no improvement to your productivity if not for the tool. Your work is no longer simply Your Work.

It is our work, your labor, enhanced by a tool that's not yours.

[Velociryx]

Kid, because it's not YOUR work.

It's your work, enhanced by a tool provided to you by a third party.

This is not rocket science, but each person is not a self contained island of work. We use tools. We use tools we don't own....which means that we can't take full credit for the work we produce, cos some of that credit is due to those who provided the tools.
Are you really THAT blind?

-=Vel=-

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
2) Tools do not appear magically out of thin air. Someone has to make and invent them. Think them up if they don't already exist.

Of course. I'm not against tools. Let's make what we need. I only oppose you owning the tools that I use.

Originally posted by Velociryx
5) Since you could not produce as much pre-tool as post, you are gaining, not losing. Since you are freely electing to use the fruits of my brain, MY labor to enhance your productivity, your productivity is no longer a function of YOUR work alone. It is your work, enhanced by my tool. Thus, it is not exploitative nor treating you unfairly in any way.

If it's not exploitive than why do you hire me to use the tool?

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Japher
Specialization.

Henry Ford's real invention, and the reason why I haven't learned to be a tailor, carpenter, or butcher. Without them I would be naked and hungry living on the streets, and they would be without whatever service I provide. Granted if society wasn't the way it is today I would know how to sew, build, and butcher but then we would be so far behind from where we are now, because instead of people spending time learning chemisty, physics, engineering, etc. to create the inventions that make our lives so much easier and or more comnfortable we would all still be busy being selfish greedy communist doing only for ourselves what it is we know how.

Services.

True. Point?

[Velociryx]

Nothing kid. we have no point. obviously.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Yes, the tool improves your productivity, but I made the tool. There would BE no improvement to your productivity if not for the tool. Your work is no longer simply Your Work.

It is our work, your labor, enhanced by a tool that's not yours.

We are going in circles.

If you have built the tool and someone else uses it you should be compensated for your labor. No problem there. The problem is when you profit from my labor. That is different from simply being compensated for your labor.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
which means that we can't take full credit for the work we produce, cos some of that credit is due to those who provided the tools.
Are you really THAT blind?

-=Vel=-

This is my argument.

[Velociryx]

Not true. My tool that I built is useless until it enhances someone else's producitivty. It just takes up space till then.

So when YOU use my tool to enhance your productivity, it's not just a matter of your labor anymore. Your labor isn't what allows you to produce 20/day, that's a function of your labor + my tool.

So I get a slice of the pie and we're even. You're getting the lion's share of the increase you enjoy thanks to our joint efforts, and I get a tiny bit.

-=Vel=-

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
The only way for Kidicious to reach his ideal not exploitive economic system is the individual absolute autarky. No more labour contractual agreement, no more sales at pseudo agreed prices ; I grow the corn with which I make my bread, I carve my sabots in the wood of the tree I cut myself, and nobody can even try to benefit from my (hard) work. Commerce and cooperation are evil traps invented to exploit me, and I much prefer the hardship of absolute autarky which provides hardly enough food, let alone healthcare and comfort, with a life expectancy not exceeding 30 years.

I'm not really an idealist. I just try to keep my argument consistant.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Not true. My tool that I built is useless until it enhances someone else's producitivty. It just takes up space till then.

So when YOU use my tool to enhance your productivity, it's not just a matter of your labor anymore. Your labor isn't what allows you to produce 20/day, that's a function of your labor + my tool.

So I get a slice of the pie and we're even. You're getting the lion's share of the increase you enjoy thanks to our joint efforts, and I get a tiny bit.

-=Vel=-

The community should compensate you for your labor in making the tool. That should be the end of it. You shouldn't profit after that. You have been compensated for your labor.

[Kidicious]

Vel,

Am I missing something in your argument? Are you proposing that people who make tools should be compensated more than people who don't.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Kidicious

There should be community owned computers, yes.

I am also strongly in favor of community owned brains.

[rah]

Originally posted by Kidicious


We are going in circles.

If you have built the tool and someone else uses it you should be compensated for your labor. No problem there. The problem is when you profit from my labor. That is different from simply being compensated for your labor.

Hmmm what's the difference of paying x amount for a tool vs a % of labor.

Assume a tractor. Most farmers can not afford the full cost of a tractor and pay it off a little bit at a time. Which can actually be computed as a % of their labor. What's the difference?

What am I missing?

[Japher]

Supply and Demand

People are compensated on what the buyer/user feels to be the worth of the service/good supplied by that the specialist...

In some cases a share of the pie is what it is worth. If a patented invention to increase production is worth paying the cost of 2/units per 20/units made when the invention increase the units made by 10/day than that is what they are compenstated. In cases in which this happens there is generally a time limit (life of patent) and yearly cap on earnings. Also, the person using the tool to increase production does, in some cases, pass the cost on to the consumer/public in the cost of the good produced, though ussually the increase in earings due to the increase in production generally offsets this costs and owes to the reason the producer bought the tool in the first place. Thus, society does compensate both the inventor and the producer based on the quality and need for that service.

In other cases, tools are just sold for a flat cost. Leaving it to the producer to determine if the need or use of the tool is worth the cost and can lead to an increase in productivity and yield higher gains.

Specialist are compensated in many ways, in either case the inventor will always profit off the producer who wishes to use the tool whether it is an upfront compensation package or a long-term compensation package. Either way, it is society and the consuming public that winds up paying for it, at a cost that they determine based on demand.

[Velociryx]

Kid....never mind.

If you haven't gotten it yet, you just won't.

Ever. and I won't be able to chat for much longer anyway....new job starts on Monday of next week. Total unemployment time = one month, and back in the ol' exploitative saddle so I can improve myself.

-=Vel=-

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by Kidicious


I'm not really an idealist. I just try to keep my argument consistant.

So you agree that the absolute individual autarky is the way to go.

[Illyrien]

exactly why is it that a worker is entitled to a part of the profit (if one exist), afterall he accepted and aggrement with the boss, that the boss would pay the worker a wage ever day if the worker would sell some of his time to the boss.

[The Andy-Man]

i think that kid should read adam smiths wealth of nations, even only the first few chapters. He might understand things a bit better

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by The Andy-Man
i think that kid should read adam smiths wealth of nations, even only the first few chapters. He might understand things a bit better

You rock head. I read that years ago. I understand it 10 times better than you.

[Ned]

I thought the following passage from Mein Kampf illustrates that nothing has changed in the argument with Marxists for nearly 100 years and possibly more. On page 62 in my softback version, in the chapter entitled "Study of the foundation to Marxism," Hitler has the following to say:

"At that time I was still childish enough to try to make the madness of their doctrine cleared of them; in my little circle I talked my tongue sore and my throat horse, thinking I would inevitably succeed convincing and how ruinous to Marxist madness was; but what I accomplished was often the opposite. It seemed as though their increased understanding of the destructive effects of Social Democratic theories and their results only reinforced their determination.

The more I argued with them the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there's no way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they neatly related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what what you were talking about. When you try to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed down on a jellylike slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows a telling a below that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The Jew had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off the same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, effected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day.

Sometimes I stood there thunderstruck.

I didn't know what to be more amazed at: the agility of their tongues or the virtuosity of their lying.

Gradually I began the hate them."

Just one point here, at that time, as he relates earlier in this chapter, virtually the entire leadership of the Social Democratic newspaper with whom Hitler was having these debates was Jewish. It appears that this passage is key to understanding why Hitler so hated both Jews and Marxism. But if you look back on arguments of Kidicious and others defending Marxism, you'll see the same pattern of argument as Hitler describes.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by rah
Hmmm what's the difference of paying x amount for a tool vs a % of labor.

Assume a tractor. Most farmers can not afford the full cost of a tractor and pay it off a little bit at a time. Which can actually be computed as a % of their labor. What's the difference?

What am I missing?

The difference is that they have to pay rent for it. Rent is exploitive. The ability to pay should not be a factor. The system allows those with the ability to pay to exploit those who do not. Get it?

[Velociryx]

I understand it 10 times better than you.

Apparently not.

[Velociryx]

The difference is that they have to pay rent for it. Rent is exploitive. The ability to pay should not be a factor. The system allows those with the ability to pay to exploit those who do not. Get it?

No contract willingly entered into is exploitative. If you freely CHOOSE to accept the terms of the contract, then you have made your choice.

-=Vel=-

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Kid....never mind.

If you haven't gotten it yet, you just won't.

Ever. and I won't be able to chat for much longer anyway....new job starts on Monday of next week. Total unemployment time = one month, and back in the ol' exploitative saddle so I can improve myself.

-=Vel=-

Nevermind? Don't like the question?

Should people who build tools be paid more than the people who use them? Why?

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
I understand it 10 times better than you.

Apparently not.

No, apparently you don't.

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by DAVOUT


So you agree that the absolute individual autarky is the way to go.

What is autarky?

[Kidicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
No contract willingly entered into is exploitative. If you freely CHOOSE to accept the terms of the contract, then you have made your choice.

-=Vel=-

Choice has nothing to do with it. It's a matter of collecting benefits that you didn't earn and someone else losing the benefits of thier work.