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

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

  1. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Neat summary of how silly you've taken your Georgism. To ignore the various sources of rent, and obsess over just land, ensures that your position is not genuine. Anyone really interested in justice would not take that monist position as they would recognise the blinkers.

    You come across like a boxing parody here. I appreciate that Georgists are rather miffed over their relative irrelevance. Of course the rational thing is not to flounce but to adapt. It's clear, as I've already informed you, that Georgism (or Geoism if they want to sound more current) has a part to play today. Similarly to Malthusian analysis (but of more import), that's focus is on environmentalism.

    This is just a series of rant on rent. To argue that pluralism is not a virtue makes you no different to the Chicago School and the market fundamentalists. Sweet company!

    Let's take an issue such as discrimination. The Chicago School would just adapt the utility function. A 'taste for discrimination' would allow them to pander to their discriminatory urges and sacrifice profit. We can of course here turn around and say that this isnt a coherent model of discrimination. Rather, it is a model of the consequence of monopoly power (with the firm giving up economic rent out of their love of bigotry). But what about classical economics? That necessarily focuses on bargaining power. That focus then ensures an interest in the Marxist approach and how divide & conquer can be fine-tuned through discriminatory practices. Rent increases through discrimination.

    This is just one example of how we must consider Marxism to understand empirical outcome. To just ignore it, through Georgist obsession, is not credible. And that accounts for why Georgism has unfortunately been largely ignored :)
     
  2. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Discrimination? Please do tell.
     
  3. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    Shhhh! Let the pseudo-Marxists fight!
     
  4. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    And there's that VERY CONVENIENT super-villain, taking the fall for you again.

    PS: I'll stop torturing kittens when big cats stop killing gazelles. Which means I get to keep torturing kittens foreva :banana:
     
  5. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    If they're willing enough to meet the price of the land, they can buy it. ANY time.
     
  6. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Thank you for agreeing that they have exactly the same right to their liberty as a slave: they are at "liberty" to pay someone else for permission to exercise it.
     
  7. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    You are just makin' $#!+ up again. I'm simply identifying facts. The fact is, the privileged are to blame for their legalized thieving, not me or any of their other victims, and your relentless attempts to shove the blame onto the victims is despicably evil.
    What on earth do you even incorrectly imagine you think you might be talking about? Our revulsion for people who torture animals has nothing to do with what other animals do: that kitten might well grow up to torture mice. It's just that we know when a person delights in inflicting suffering, it is unlikely that the roster of their victims will be restricted to rightless animals.
     
  8. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    <yawn> You made that up. I do not ignore other sources of rent. I just know what rent is, and that land rent is far the biggest and most important form of rent in modern capitalist economies.
    I don't obsess over just land any more than a music teacher whose pupil can't play scales obsesses over scales: we're stuck on the basics because as long as you can't get that right, it's pointless to focus on anything else.
    You've never encountered anything more genuine.
    The truth is monist; and I do recognize the blinkers you are wearing.
    Contentless filthy.
    Malthusian analysis is trash, and environmentalism is not much better.
    I understand why you have to refuse to know all facts about rent.
    That is self-evidently anti-logical nonsense.
    Obviously: when you know you have been proved wrong, you have to find some way to change the subject.
    Being an employer is not a monopoly. Owning land is a monopoly. You stand refuted.
    Which is determined by options, options that factory owners provide, but landowners remove. Somehow, you have to contrive some means of not knowing that fact.
    Nope. Marx remains irrelevant trash because he refused to know the fact that the factory owner can only offer the worker access to economic opportunity that would not otherwise have been available, and it is the landowner, not the factory owner, who removes the worker's bargaining power.
    If you define rent incorrectly.
    Refuted above.
    But is nevertheless wise and correct, as proved above.
    No, the dishonesty of socialism and the greed of capitalism account for that.
     
  9. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Right: it was not intended to be, because it is an explanation of why you are wrong about rent, not a definition of rent seeking.
    Without reading further, I predict that you will now invalidly substitute for land concepts with crucially different characteristics. Watch:
    See? You did just as I predicted. Rent is a return obtained by depriving others of access to economic opportunity THAT WOULD OTHERWISE BE ACCESSIBLE. The ballpoint pen had to be made by someone, and would therefore not otherwise be accessible. The land, by contrast, was already there, ready to use, with no help from the owner or any previous owner, so it WOULD otherwise be accessible.

    You just have to refuse to know the difference between products of labor and natural resources because you have already realized that the difference proves your beliefs are false and evil.
    As above. You just have to refuse to know the difference between products of labor and natural resources because you have already realized that the difference proves your beliefs are false and evil.
    The penis is immutably usable only by its owner, so it would not otherwise be accessible.
    Yes: you are makin' up silly, absurd, and disingenuous $#!+ to help you avoid knowing self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality that prove your beliefs are false and evil.
     
  10. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Nope. It should be obvious that if you were right, the wealthy would not oppose location subsidy repayment (LSR) with such maniacal ferocity. But they do, because unlike you, the wealthy know they would only be able to control most of the land initially if they wanted to lose money. Yes, they do currently have the means to do so; but if they didn't use the land as productively as the most productive prospective user, they'd start losing their money, and would soon lose their ability to control the land. The wealthy are not as foolish (or disingenuous) as those who contrive absurd objections to justice and economic efficiency in taxation and land tenure.
     
  11. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Yes it does, because it recovers the rent for the government and community that create it instead of giving it away to private landowners in return for nothing, thus internalizing the externalities.
    Obviously that's false. Location subsidy repayment (LSR) makes it necessary and profitable to construct the improvements that will enable the most productive use.
    They have worked beautifully everywhere they have ever been tried, to the extent that they have been tried.
     
  12. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    It is when you are purchasing something stolen, like people's rights to liberty.

    The landowner by definition is constantly stealing the land from all who would otherwise have been at liberty to use it.
     
  13. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Just like the fake libertarians you avoid any economic content. Let's try again. Please don't come across like a trash-talking boxer wannabe this time. You don't have the craft to be a Tyson Fury.

    We know that discrimination exists. We know that it is a terrible injustice. We also know that the Chicago School's (mis)understanding is based on market power, ironically suggesting that this injustice reduces economic rent (as employers tolerate losses from economic inefficiency by pandering to their bigotry). How are you going to explain discrimination and the failure of the invisible hand to eliminate this insidious curse? You can't rely on land, so what's your explanation?
     
  14. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    They can try squatting if they're determined to evade participation, but it's not likely to be long term.
     
  15. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    Cool. Meantime, it's 2020. Get with the program.
     
  16. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    "I'll start walking the walk, only when the world becomes perfect", is seriously pathetic. Just own that you're not prepared to lift a finger.
     
  17. Idahojunebug77

    Idahojunebug77 Well-Known Member

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    Life was great when I was the only person on earth. I could go anywhere, live anywhere, and use anything I found. Then others showed up, they objected to my use of their hut, they objected to me eating their food, and they objected to my intrusion into their space. And so the conflicts began...
     
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  18. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Georgism is certainly taking into account conflict between folk, unlike crank. Are you though? You're rambling somewhat and you've managed no economic content.
     
    Last edited: Jan 28, 2020
  19. Idahojunebug77

    Idahojunebug77 Well-Known Member

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    It was satire in response to bringiton's refusal to recognize others right to liberty--occupy space.
     
  20. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    There's no satire, given crank's denial of the Georgist position. That you didn't see the irony in that regarding liberty raised a smile mind you.
     
  21. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    I don't 'deny' any of these elitist-derived ideas (they're all equally fatuous). My job here is to throw the spotlight on the difference between talk and action. We all know which is cheap and easy, and which isn't.
     
  22. Reiver

    Reiver Well-Known Member

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    Your attitude is akin to someone saying they can ignore poverty because they donated a tin of pilchards to the local food bank...
     
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  23. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    You are just makin' $#!+ up again. You cannot address the economic content in my posts so you pretend it doesn't exist. Simple.
    Still makin' $#!+ up...
    In terms of total harm, it is not remotely in the same league as landowning. That's why I prioritize the real issues instead of getting distracted by what is superficially more dramatic.
    I don't accept that it has anything to do with rent, because I don't accept invalid definitions.
    People aren't very rational. What are you going to do?
    Discrimination is only tangentially related to land: e.g., in apartheid RSA, blacks were prohibited from owning land. In the USA, blacks were denied access to landowning in part through miscegenation laws. Etc. The issue of discrimination is not very important in the overall scheme of things, the explanation is trivially obvious, and you can find it a few lines up.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2020
  24. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Right: that's why you made it up and falsely attributed it to me.
    I'm not prepared to stop doing what could be effective in order to "do something" that is guaranteed to be ineffective. Your exhortations are as uninformed and ill-considered as the project of the idiots who go to Africa and buy slaves in order to free them -- ignoring the fact that they are just increasing the profitability of enslaving more people.
     
  25. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Right back atcha, champ.
     

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