The problem of Capitalism

so you admit that all asset prices including housing are bid up and down to a point where ROI is equal for all asset classes. See how easy that was??

 

owning land by buying it from an individual or renting it from govt removes the rights of those who don't rent it or own it to rent it own own it. All agree so what???????? Does the liberal ever think about what he writes??

 

why do I care if I make just compensation to a private owner or Nazi govt?? Either way I still pay!! See why we say liberalism is based in pure ignorance??

 

Why not try college? They teach you things there. If one competitor cares about his workers and customers and another cares about profit guess which one goes bankrupt? Republican capitalism is based on love and caring. See why we say liberalism is based in ignorance. Someone told you Marx was correct and you simply bought it without a tiny bit of thinking![/QUOTE]

 

![/QUOTE]

 

This is correct, land prices are limited by extant purchasing power, land prices only keep pace with inflation. Which is why, combined with the costs of owning land, there is no return on investment from the land. One can only hope to maintain value if one is lucky.

Landowners are not greedy or evil as you insist .

At no time in all of the millions of years of human history did you have the natural right to encroach on land that was currently occupied by others, unless you consider violence or the threat of violence to be your natural right. If that is the case then it is understandable why you would demand compensation for the denial of use of land that was never available for your use. This thinking would also be consistent with condoning chattel slavery.

 

Very true there are certain natural laws. Trying getting on a bus and asking someone to get out of their seat merely because you want it.

 

I answered the point.... but it seem you are unwilling to understand it's implications ie in the stone age, access to the shelter of a cave was a necessity (protection from predators and the weather), but now access to the internet is becoming a necessity for individuals' participation and contribution to the community. (And food? Healthy food of course, not processed crap produced - and advertised, as if advertising is necessary - for the sole aim of earning a profit).

On the contrary I have been at pains to show that 'money' has no intrinsic value in a post gold-standard world, and that value resides in the development of resources alone:

National wealth (not money) = resources + labour + education

Money is merely a 'catalyst', or a convenient method of measurement of all the interactions required for the sustainable development of, and distribution of, the wealth created by bringing together the three items on the RHS of the above equation.

[Gold is 'attractive', but like money has no intrinsic value - apart from its use in some technologies].

Zimbabwe ran out of resources not money; food production collapsed because farmers (whose forefathers had stolen the land) were expelled, and those to whom the farms were allotted lacked the necessary skills in farming.

Well let's clear this up.

There are two issues:

1. the matter of global warming, and the apparent associated increase in extreme events (heat waves, floods, frosts, droughts). And is the sea-level rising? (It seems in some places more than others...? )

Now, there is some controversy over whether CO2 (greenhouse gas) emissions are responsible for these phenomena. (and even whether the above phenomena are occurring at all). Nevertheless, most scientists claim AGW is true.

So I presume this is why you claim " they have 'faith' that those who 'misrepresent' the science ….(are correct)".
And we know 'faith' has nothing to do with reality...right?

2. The matter of pollution resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.

This is not a matter of faith; this is health and ecology destroying reality. Hence the numerous regulations re ozone gases, re lead polluting petrol, banning diesel cars in built up areas, smog alert days, acid rain damage. etc.

The fact that the planet has been "hotter in the past and life continued", is totally unrelated to the ecological damage, and damage to health in polluted areas, now being caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

So you need to separate the two issues around the burning of fossil fuels; namely,
(a) global warming - aka (incorrectly) CO2 pollution: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, not a pollutant; and
(b) health and ecology-destroying poisonous pollution and associated environmental degradation.

And now I hope you can bring some clearer thinking to the topic also.
My points above have nothing to do with "faith".

only simple in your mixing of environmental pollution, and global warming (the latter whether man-made or not)...

Disregarding you don't know what you are talking about with your comments re the environment - everyone knows that lead poisoning from petrol reduces IQ in children, and a host of other known effects of pollution from burning fossil fuels (including wood....), and disregarding your nonsense about my "faith" and "knowing so little about" ...what exactly? AGW? Or very real pollution?

(Re AGW, I admit I don't know, though if New York's shoreline begins disappearing at a faster rate than the historical records would predict, I will be convinced...probably too late though....)

….disregarding all this, you do raise an important point about "paying" for the transition from filthy fossil to clean green.

You obviously think part of this 'paying' involves giving up convenient transport, or turning off the lights etc, which is nonsense, because we already have the hydrogen fuel cell technology to convert the transport fleet to clean green. Moreover, we already have the pumped hydro technology required to back up wind and solar energy, to enable the complete closure of the fossil fuel industry on a global cale.

In short, getting back to the 'value' of money - which is intrinsically worthless (as pointed out above):

I urge all nations, to the best of their abilities, ASAP, to develop the above technologies, paying for it by central bank issued money (in their own currencies), and afterwards sending the 'bill' to the IMF... who can then post these bills to the wall in their office and contemplate them for eternity if they wish...

Note: to the "best of the abilities" means very little extra demand on resources, and therefore minimal implications for demand inflation, since the education facilities and labour already exist and are being underutilised at present; and resources and equipment would be made available as coal mines, oil and gas wells are closed, and mining of other necessary resources is increased with minimal extra cost since that infrastructure is often already in place.

1. Look up the mortality rates caused by pollution
2. Ditto for poverty itself … poverty kills.
Any relation to morality?

Maybe you now have some understanding of the issues, nothing to do with morality, but survival of the planet.

OTOH, I now know you are just another apologist for unregulated capitalism, which everyone knows is a fantasy incompatible with sustainable community development....whether you call it moral or not.

 

Before I reply to that, I will say I got a real laugh out of this gem of yours :

Classic...thanks (but do some thereby miss out on accommodation)?

But back to the "love and caring" of republican capitalism....(not sure what "republican" signifies):

You have only identified the individuals competing in a market (and motivated by personal profit) in the production of the desired goods.

But a market needs customers....some of whom are workers. And by the way, need I remind you that in the good ol' days of (less regulated) capitalism, Henry Ford had his thugs murder 4 of his own workers, for the 'crime' of wanting to go back to work to support their families, during the Great depression, just another one of capitalism's periodic spectacular failures.
Notice how the capitalist's 'love' disappears when his self-interest is compromised.....

Eg, anyone for an above poverty minimum wage....?

 

LOL. Reality is real and obviously you’re intellectually lost. Sad. But there’s help. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

https://www.aynrand.org/novels/capitalism-the-unknown-ideal



You can reject, you can deny it, you can ignore, but you can’t escape it—reality is real.

 

Still Swiss Cheese despite your empty protestations.

 

Capitalism: the "unknown ideal", based on the fantasy of self-interested profit seekers interacting in voluntary agreement.... quite an "ideal" (whether "unknown" or not), I agree....

 

Ah, kissing the ass of the collective. No thanks. I don’t exist to serve Man, Mankind, Humanity, the community, the state, society, God, the tribe, the group, the majority, the collective, the Borg. I exist for my own life.

My life is mine to live, not the state’s to own, or society’s to control, or God’s to command—and certainly no one’s to sacrifice for any reason—it’s far too precious.

The holy and the sacred spoken by one who refused to bow.

 

Well, if my freedom depends upon the good will of the community, then freedom’s just another word for slavery. To which I say, to quote Patrick Henry, “Give be Liberty or give me death.”

 

As long as I pay tribute to the masses of asses who claim ownership in name of the collective. Fk that.

You know, it’s not even very good try on your part to smuggle in altruism and collectivism on the premise that because you can’t own the sky you have to pay extortion to leaders of the community in the name of the common good in order to broadcast your wavelength or fly your jet.

It’s the function of government to protect your rights as individual, not to demand tribute in order to obtain permission from a government stooge.

 

Liberty doesn’t, and neither do property rights, but your deification of the “community” certainly does.

 

Of course rights don't exist in nature. Nature is by definition the entire world apart from humans and their creations. That's not the relevant sense of "natural" anyways in the context of "natural rights". It refers to the intrinsic rights we have because of our nature as humans. We have them as soon as we exist, and our laws would ideally be designed in such a way as to best reflect those rights, meaning protecting them or at least taking them into consideration when they are abrogated for practical reasons. The claim that there is no such thing as rights unless secured by the community would mean nobody would ever have any grounds for complaint against institutional injustice, for example. It would mean that slaves didn't have any grounds for complaint because they didn't have more rights than the law endowed them with.

Our claim that there is a natural right to use land doesn't mean that we support a chaotic system where everybody can use every piece of land. It merely means that when we out of practical necessity secure exclusive tenure for somebody on a piece of land to secure the individual's property right to his house or his crops, that we take others' equal rights to the preexisting land into consideration. The legal right to exclusive land tenure doesn't extinguish the natural right of those now deprived of the location, meaning there is a need for just compensation for this abrogation and also a guarantee to have free exclusive tenure to some economically advantageous land without paying anyone for it (universal individual exemption) to make sure they have opportunity to sustain themselves. Everybody in the community would get that exemption. Land nobody else wants would be free anyways.

"Free market" Compare price per gb of storage in 1980 to now. There was innovation and competition between producers, dropping prices from ~$100,000/gb to a just few cents. Meanwhile, land prices keep going up, even though it's the same exact land as centuries ago. Is that truly a "competitive" market?

"The rent of land, therefore, considered as the price paid for the use of the land, is naturally a monopoly price" - Adam Smith

Our system is very free market friendly. We would, for example, eliminate income and sales taxes, which are a burden on production. The bidding process for land would still exist, minus the parasitic speculative element. The payment would be what the market bears, just as it is now. In the current system, the producer has to pay twice: Once to the government for the provision of infrastructure and services, and then once again to the landowner for permission to access the infrastructure and services that were already paid for. In our system, the payment of income, sales, and other taxes on production gets cut completely. And what is currently left to the landowner for doing nothing, acts as a user fee instead:

The benefit principle of taxation is something our system accomplishes:
"Under the benefit principle, taxes are seen as serving a function similar to that of prices in private transactions; that is, they help determine what activities the government will undertake and who will pay for them. If this principle could be implemented, the allocation of resources through the public sector would respond directly to consumer wishes."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/taxation/The-benefit-principle

Right now, in the so-called free market, the landowner simply takes value and is not required to provide anything in return (the land would be there anyways, and nobody can honestly call threatening to withhold it a "contribution"). Government and the community, on the other hand, do provide the infrastructure and services available at that location, making land value taxation a way for the government to respond directly to consumer wishes. Could also be used as a proxy for government waste. If the government messes up, the market will let it/us know. If the government does its job well, the market will let it/us know. Sounds more free market like than he current system.

ps: may respond to rest at a later time.

 

1) Exactly. If we each take care of our own, then no one else is burdened by excess. And FTR, when I say 'those less able', I'm not talking about addicts and gamblers, I'm talking about children, the sick, and the old. OBVIOUSLY, an essential part of taking responsibility is raising kids who will not become addicts and gamblers. And OBVIOUSLY, responsibility means that we ourselves must not become addicts and gamblers, and thereby burdening family/friends/society etc.

2) You literally ask why it's YOUR responsibility to look after YOUR own? O.M.G. And we wonder why the West is in such a mess. People can't help being young, sick, or old you know. Good lord you are cold.

3) The disease is people saying "why should I look after my own, let society do it". The disease is 'nil responsibility'.

4) It IS your slack - if you refuse to take responsibility in the same way you expect others to take responsibility when you're sick and/or old. And of course it's the poor looking after the poor. Just as it's the wealthy looking after the wealthy. Or the middle class looking after the middle class. What's your point?

 

[/QUOTE]

This is an unfortunate reality. It's like a religion. They feel dirty if they even consider considering the other side.

 

Well said.

 

Wrong again. Prices of most consumer assets, for example, are based on production cost, as they have no ROI.

Nope. It can't because it is finite, and future returns may be arbitrarily large. You're just wrong. As usual.

<yawn> I guess that explains why the return on passenger aircraft is consistently negative, and has been for 100 years....

 

Oh, learn to read.

 

If I am interpolating your ungrammatical gibberish correctly, yes: secure, exclusive tenure removes the liberty rights of all who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land. The difference is that a private landowner does not make just -- or any -- compensation to those whom he deprives of their liberty rights, while government's job is to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. IOW, by exercise of our votes, we can hold government democratically accountable for administering possession and use of land for the benefit of all. We have no such recourse with private landowners. They just own our rights to liberty, and we are their slaves unless government rescues us.

This, from you???

 

<sigh> The difference is that if you pay government for access to the desirable services and infrastructure it provides instead of paying a private landowner for them, you don't have to ALSO pay TAXES to fund those desirable services and infrastructure. See how that works?

You just want people to be forced to pay for government twice, so that landowners can pocket one of the payments in return for contributing exactly nothing.

<yawn> Are you even able to comprehend what I just explained?

 

That's just empirically false. Land prices even outstrip GDP, which is inflation + increase in real standard of living + population increase.

<yawn> I guess that explains why most of the rich got that way by owning land.

Such claims are self-evidently false, absurd, and disingenuous. 70 years ago, one could buy a SFD building lot for a year's after-tax wages. Now it is 5-10 years', or even more.

They are definitely greedy and participants in evil, just as slave owners were.

Why are you trying to pretend this is about me personally?

GARBAGE. People always had that right until government forcibly removed it and gave it to landowners. Many societies have even had quite burdensome requirements of hospitality to strangers. Now, if you are talking about EXCLUDING those others from land they currently occupy, as land appropriators have always done, that is a different matter.

That is the resort of land appropriators, not honest people.

It was definitely and indisputably available for use until people's liberty rights to use it were forcibly stripped from them and given to landowners. That was the only way people survived.

Chattel slavery means owning others' rights to liberty, just like landowning. The only difference is that owning slaves forcibly removes others' rights to liberty one person at a time, owning land removes them one right at a time.