What, exactly, is socialism? Again this discussion seems necessary.

Discussion in 'Economics & Trade' started by Kode, Aug 19, 2018.

  1. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Title deeds stop people choosing to pursue land ownership? Please explain precisely how that works. What legal mechanism prevents a young adult deciding that they would one day like to own land, and working towards that end?
     
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  2. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    Since no one is kind enough to explain it to you, I will.

    No. This is about economic rent. The definition as as follows, as so.plified by wiki:

    The usage of the term you are using is certainly derived from the economics applied term.

    Also, notice that the word "coercion" is not anywhere within that generally accepted definition, so by default it isn't "coercion by definition" as claimed. That application is only applied by a very small, idealogically driven school of economists.

    People like to change the definition of things to suit their idealogie.
     
    Last edited: Jan 20, 2020
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  3. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    The existence of a super yacht is almost certainly evidence of rent. You ignore the labour market and therefore ensure a limited understanding. Take someone like Phillip Green and his $175 million yacht. Note the charges of sweatshop labour and asset stripping (and pension fund consequences)
     
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  4. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    You haven't understood that land ownership can be treated, even if you're terribly orthodox, in the exact same way as market power. There is necessarily unfair redistribution.

    I noticed that recently fake libertarians have decided to ignore this reality and pretend such rent isnt coercive. Hayek would be spinning in his grave :) Reminds me how you pretended to be a collectivist and then completely ignored the economic destruction from the anti-commons.

    It is necessarily coercive as the market is supposed to eliminate all abnormal profits or loss, ensuring a distinction between the short run and long run. It does that through entry and exit. This doesn't happen with land (or monopoly), obviously. We instead have land barons guaranteed long term rent. Those ignoring that reality are certainly supporters of coercion and force.
     
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  5. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Life isn't 'fair' anywhere but Disneyland (and even then, not so much).

    And none of what you say amounts to a hill of beans as long as we live in democracies, where anyone can freely choose to pursue land ownership without legal obstacle. Want a thousand acres? Do what whatever it is you need to do to pay for it, then buy it. NO ONE can stop you.
     
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  6. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Thank you.

    And yes, the addition of the word 'coercion' is naughty .. and patently very humanity denying. In order for coercion (whatever that means to the poster, since no definition is given) to have any power, there must be no return force from those it's applied to. That can only happen if humans are identical lemmings. That supports my submission that this is a failure on the part of the poster to accept the realities of human nature. His actual beef is with our nature, not the system.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2020
  7. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    You are welcome.

    Let's examine that naughty word:

    co·er·cion
    noun
    noun: coercion; plural noun: coercions
    the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats.

    I have yet to see how economic rent is, by default, coercion.

    That said, there is in theory a practice called "rent seeking" which is when an economic entity seeks to use a resource to gain added wealth without any increase in the contribution to productivity. However, it is specious to state that this can ever occur. For example:

    My neighbor is a Senior VP for Johnson and Johnson. She lives in a large house on 150 acres. Her actual house an and land to house her horses is only about 10 of those acres. Some of the rest is wooded area, but much of it she rents to a farmer to plant crops. In turn the farmer harvests the crops and sells it to make money, provides my family and I with a paid steak dinner (as he has to access the field from my property) and pays my neighbor to use the field.

    My neighbor takes the money to improve her land, because she houses horses yearly for one of the Triple Crown races every year. This race swells our smallish city by tens of thousands of people every year, there by contributing to the economy.

    So you see, "rent seeking" isn't so cut and dry and most certainly in the vast majority of incidents not coercive.

    Now, if you get deeper into the woods with our psuedo-Marxist friend, undoubtedly he will bring up a supposed monopsony (not to be confused with monopoly) of labor markets. However, if you think it through you will soon discover that this rarely (if ever, today) occurs in a free market economy. But we can address thatt later, if you like.

    Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to be a Democratic-Socialist or hover there about (sorry if this is incorrect). I am an anarchist
    (something our friend has yet to realize) and really think the very existence of government is coercive. However, as opposite as you and I are on the political spectrum, doesn't it seem odd how wrong that we both think he is?
     
  8. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    How easily you right wingers tolerate rent...

    This continues to be astoundingly naive. Buying a million acres isnt a choice for all but the rent seekers. That you cant see that only illustrates how right wing attitudes and real world economics are quite incompatible.
     
  9. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Basic ignorance here! Without coercion rent disappears. Its agreed by orthodox and heterodox economists. You cowtowing to the fake libertarian's error makes me laugh mind you.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2020
  10. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Thank you, again! Good thoughts, and I can't argue with any of it. I'm of the same opinion on 'rent seeking'. And yes, it's very interesting that we agree on the error of our friend. Not surprising, but still interesting.

    PS: I'm probably more of a communist-socialist, but entirely for fully voluntary communism/socialism - as practiced in the form of small collective. I'm vehemently opposed to state collectivism, because it removes freedoms the majority would never volunteer to relinquish. IOW, state collectivism can only happen via totalitarianism, and I ain't no fan of that beast. 'Democratic freedom' to live in collective, in a free market, is the ideal.

    Having said that, I'm a supporter of solid welfare (short term, in emergencies), plus universal healthcare and education - because these three foundations stones remove the last remaining obstacles to financial security in a first world democracy. In removing those obstacles we remove excuses for failure, which in turn reveals exactly who's working for the 'collective good' and who isn't. In a world of diminishing resources and growing population, we need to know that. We need to be aware that we're engaging in deep inequity, when we indiscriminately dispense finite largess to anyone who asks. Even the wolf knows not to do that.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2020
  11. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    A thousand (or a million) acres is available to ANYONE who agrees to pay the purchase price.

    Show us the law that says otherwise.
     
  12. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Is the morbidly obese person coerced into eating cheeseburgers?
     
  13. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Yep, monopoly is also available to folk. It's just another rent seeking outcome. It's a real shame that you've managed to show such cheer for extreme inequalities that destroys any notion of collectivism. It means I dont get to gradually demolish your logic. Very naughty of you!
     
  14. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    A rent seeker is after gherkin garnish? You're really not making any sense. Rent certainly cannot exist in the long run without coercion. To suggest that it doesn't involve coercion is therefore particularly insipid and only indicative of right wing grunt.
     
  15. yabberefugee

    yabberefugee Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Let's not split hairs on this subject. It seems Bernie and Pocahontas have handles on it.
     
  16. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Not sure hair splitting with a sledge hammer of right wing ignorance works too well mind you.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2020
  17. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Show us the law preventing people from purchasing as much (or as little) land as they see fit to own.
     
  18. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Sure, and fat people aren't to blame for their size.
     
  19. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Both of your responses are about hiding from your tacit support for rent. Its kind of pathetic :(
     
  20. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    You are welcome, again.

    Interesting how good and civil conversation can be when neither of the parties involved are snarky, isn't it?

    I'd probably place you somewhere between anarcho-communist or anarcho-socialist then. Although I can not agree that such a system will work long term, I do respect the desire to partake upon a fully voluntaryist form of social organization.

    Our pseudo-Marxist friend did mention something pertaining to this topic when he said "Rent certainly cannot exist in the long run without coercion". Earlier he spoke of monopoly as it related to rent-seeking. But once you realize that there has been no monopoly through out history could not have existed without the assistance of a government in some way, then you will understand why our psuedo-Marxist friend likes to camouflage his Marxist bent by ridiculously attempting to associate his belief system with the likes of Hayek. Government is the ultimate enabler of rent-seeking, for without the monopoly of power that government possesses things like monopolies by businesses and virtually impossible to create.

    Such as welfare system is fine, but it must be a voluntary service that can be purchased as a member of society, otherwise it is forced and unjust no matter the outcome.
     
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  21. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Do you actually think you're still a contender, Reivs? Seriously?
     
  22. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    1) That's the good thing about voluntary collectivism - it will only work as long as we want it to, not a minute longer or less. I should probably adjust my original posit of it being 'ideal', though. It's ideal for now and the short term future (stagnant wages and housing affordability etc), giving the largest number a strong platform for survival. It may not be ideal in 50 years.

    2) 100%. It's all just smoke and mirrors. Our pal is a dyed in the wool authoritarian/totalitarian.
     
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  23. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    ALMOST. Like consistently winning at roulette is almost certainly evidence of cheating, or a melody identical to that of another song is almost certainly evidence of plagiarism.

    But NOT NECESSARILY.

    GET IT???
    Garbage. I have explained to you many times how the labor market is rigged against the worker by (especially landowner) privilege. You just spew irrelevant anti-justice cant.
    I have no doubt whatever that effectively all existing super-yachts are owned by rentiers (or outright criminals). That's what the current system rewards. But that doesn't mean a super-yacht could not exist in a system of liberty and justice where a highly productive individual decided to devote his rightly earned purchasing power to acquiring one.
     
  24. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    It doesn't stop them from choosing to pursue landownership, any more than the title deed to a slave stops him from choosing to pursue his liberty. It does stop them from actually achieving landownership, just as the title deed to the slave stops him from actually achieving liberty.
    You disingenuously moved the goalposts from "choosing landownership" to "choosing to pursue landownership." You thought no one would notice your bait-and-switch, but you should have realized you could not get away with that with me.
    The same mechanism that stopped a young slave from deciding that they would one day like to own their rights to liberty, and working towards that end.
     
  25. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    That is just another disingenuous bait-and-switch deceit from you. It is precisely the law ESTABLISHING private ownership of land that prevents those who don't own land from acquiring some without having to pay an existing owner for permission. You KNOW this.
    Nope. Readers are quite able to understand my meaning, as well as the fact that you are disingenuously switching premises in the middle of your argument.
    Another disingenuous bait-and-switch. Being free to choose to pursue something is not at all the same thing as being free to achieve it. As you know perfectly well.
    No, that's just more of your disingenuous, evil, blame-the-victim filth. The refugees who arrive on these shores have ALREADY BEEN PRE-SELECTED by their ordeals for intelligence, courage, persistence, confidence, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and other qualities that help them succeed and attain positions of privilege.
    False, as proved above.
    Nope. That is just more evil, despicable, blame-the-victim filth from you. The fact that someone may be strong enough to run a race while carrying another on their back does not in any way argue that those who are not strong enough are to blame for not being able to. The fact that they didn't "choose" to train hard enough, or "choose" to have a genetic advantage in muscular strength, or "choose" to be robust rather than frail, blah, blah, blah does not justify the burden of having to carry someone else on their back. The fact that someone can overcome unjust hardships does not in any way justify the imposition of those hardships on others.
    Evil, blame-the-victim filth.
    False. Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production (production goods and natural resources).
    Except those who originally stole it.
    Why do you keep trying to pretend, absurdly and disingenuously, that paying a thief for a loaf of bread that he stole from the baker is the same as paying the baker the same amount for the same loaf???
     

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