Robots providing better shareholder value than CdM

[grumbler]

What is a complex capitalist system if a basic capitalist system is complex.

Are you under the impression that "basic" and "complex" are antonyms?  If you are not, then this question is gibberish.

[crazy canuck]

CC, you seem to be under the impression that I think revolutionary class war is inevitable.  What I said was that unless wealth is nationalized, people will be forced to revolt because people will starve and be homeless otherwise. 

So unless we adopt Communism (state control of the means of production) there will be class warfare.  Gotcha.  You dont think it is inevitable at all.

[crazy canuck]

What is a complex capitalist system if a basic capitalist system is complex.

Are you under the impression that "basic" and "complex" are antonyms?  If you are not, then this question is gibberish.

I was wondering what he meant by the word "basic" in his term "basic capitalist system".  He later said that he meant the capitalist system we now have with all its complexity.  So what does "basic" mean in that context.  As usual you prefer not to understand the point to make a silly argument.

Carry on.

[grumbler]

I was wondering what he meant by the word "basic" in his term "basic capitalist system".  He later said that he meant the capitalist system we now have with all its complexity.  So what does "basic" mean in that context.  As usual you prefer not to understand the point to make a silly argument.

Carry on.

I understood perfectly what he meant:  there is a basic capitalist system that pretty much the entire world uses, and then there are the additional tweaks that various societies add to that basic system.  By adding the adjective "basic" Berkut was (vainly) trying to avoid the kind of nitnoid arguments you specialize in.

"Basic" is a pretty common word in the English language.  I'm kinda surprised that someone who claims to be a lawyer doesn't know what it means.  But, at least you are belligerent in your ignorance, and that's always funny.

Carry on.

[Berkut]

I was wondering what he meant by the word "basic" in his term "basic capitalist system".  He later said that he meant the capitalist system we now have with all its complexity.  So what does "basic" mean in that context.  As usual you prefer not to understand the point to make a silly argument.

Carry on.

I understood perfectly what he meant:  there is a basic capitalist system that pretty much the entire world uses, and then there are the additional tweaks that various societies add to that basic system.  By adding the adjective "basic" Berkut was (vainly) trying to avoid the kind of nitnoid arguments you specialize in.

"Basic" is a pretty common word in the English language.  I'm kinda surprised that someone who claims to be a lawyer doesn't know what it means.  But, at least you are belligerent in your ignorance, and that's always funny.

Carry on.

I actually wrote up a post explaining just this, but realized it was pointless. What I meant was obvious, even to canuck.

[Jacob]

Or settle for grammers.

Yeah, it's time to give semi-programmers, or even amateurgrammers, a chance.

[Ideologue]

CC, you seem to be under the impression that I think revolutionary class war is inevitable.  What I said was that unless wealth is nationalized, people will be forced to revolt because people will starve and be homeless otherwise. 

So unless we adopt Communism (state control of the means of production) there will be class warfare.  Gotcha.  You dont think it is inevitable at all.

Wealth can be nationalized without nationalizing capital.  Perhaps this is a confusion of terms.  Wealth is nationalized in every country that exists, even this one; but communism is the confiscation of capital, not wealth.

[Admiral Yi]

wut?

[Ideologue]

Capital is means of production.  Wealth includes capital but also includes income.  Am I using the terminology wrong?

Anyway, fuck: I meant higher taxes and more redistribution.  JEEZ.

[Admiral Yi]

I would say so.  Means of production is fixed capital or capital goods.  Income is a flow, wealth is a stock.

[The Brain]

I am shocked that Ide wants America to go all Pol Potty and didn't even bother to get basic facts right.

[The Minsky Moment]

I bet that is not true at all - I suspect that since the 1800s the number of labor hours out of total available hours of labor that are spent producing food are a small fraction of what they used to be population wide.

Depends what you mean by "labor hours."
Certainly people in the early 1800s had to spend a lot of hours producing, moving, storing and preparing food, but the vast bulk of this was uncompensated.

This thread is about effects on paid employment in a market economy.
As of now there are about 17 million or so people employed in food service and production, not including distribution and ancillary services.
There weren't even 17 million human beings in the US until about 1840.
A lot of those people probably were spending a lot of time on food prep but as a subsistence activity, not as a way of earning a living.

Historically, technology transforms the nature of work - while the raw amount of labor (drudgery) may decrease relatively, the absolute amount of opportunities for market-based employment tends to rise.

[Ideologue]

OK, check this.  Consider automation not as capital, but as labor.  Labor is, after all, only distinct from other inputs because it is human.

Imagine if you introduced a labor force into the American economy, over the course of fifty years, a hundred million strong, that worked for a buck an hour and was ten to a hundred times as productive.

Consider that the cost of bringing someone from this new labor force into any given labor market was ten times less than the cost of bringing someone from the old labor force into any given labor market, and took a tenth the time.  Consider that, as a result, the superior labor force is multiplying more quickly.

Forgive the crude placefiller numbers, but what do you expect the results to be for the old labor force?

[Berkut]

I bet that is not true at all - I suspect that since the 1800s the number of labor hours out of total available hours of labor that are spent producing food are a small fraction of what they used to be population wide.

Depends what you mean by "labor hours."
Certainly people in the early 1800s had to spend a lot of hours producing, moving, storing and preparing food, but the vast bulk of this was uncompensated.

This thread is about effects on paid employment in a market economy.
As of now there are about 17 million or so people employed in food service and production, not including distribution and ancillary services.
There weren't even 17 million human beings in the US until about 1840.
A lot of those people probably were spending a lot of time on food prep but as a subsistence activity, not as a way of earning a living.

Historically, technology transforms the nature of work - while the raw amount of labor (drudgery) may decrease relatively, the absolute amount of opportunities for market-based employment tends to rise.

You don't consider earning a subsistence to keep yourself alive earning a living?

I don't think that is a meaningful distinction in respects to what we are talking about.

[Admiral Yi]

OK, check this.  Consider automation not as capital, but as labor.  Labor is, after all, only distinct from other inputs because it is human.

Imagine if you introduced a labor force into the American economy, over the course of fifty years, a hundred million strong, that worked for a buck an hour and was ten to a hundred times as productive.

Consider that the cost of bringing someone from this new labor force into any given labor market was ten times less than the cost of bringing someone from the old labor force into any given labor market, and took a tenth the time.  Consider that, as a result, the superior labor force is multiplying more quickly.

Forgive the crude placefiller numbers, but what do you expect the results to be for the old labor force?

I expect they would be out of a job.

Now what?