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feotakahariI don’t get anticapitalism, if only because of comparative advantage. I don’t want to live in a world where everyone grows their own food, because every plant I grow dies. Rather, I want to live in a world where someone specializes in growing food, and I specialize in what I’m good at, and I perform services that the food-growing person values.
And when people trade goods and services for other goods and services of equal value, what do you call that?
I want to end slavery, and apparently that’s something anticapitalists want as well. But they also seem to want a society where people do not trade, and aside from the implausibility of how you stop people from doing so, trade is something that makes my life better in a thousand different ways.
And when people trade goods and services for other goods and services of equal value, what do you call that?
I want to end slavery, and apparently that’s something anticapitalists want as well. But they also seem to want a society where people do not trade, and aside from the implausibility of how you stop people from doing so, trade is something that makes my life better in a thousand different ways.
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Date: 2019-02-23 09:41 pm (UTC)e.g. feudalism wasn't capitalism because although the means of production were not owned by those who worked them, the primary goal was the consolidation of political power within the government, not profit.
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Date: 2019-02-25 02:14 pm (UTC)Under capitalism, John Jacob Richman the 6th owns a cell phone factory. He does not work there. In fact, he has never "worked" in a way the average person would recognize. He has hobbies, skills, even education. But he has never submitted himself to the dictatorship of another person for hours and hours, in exchange for food or tokens to buy food with.
The reason he does not work if because his ownership of a factory means he's entitled to take money from the sale of phones made in that factory. However, these are not phones he made.
Instead, he gives a fraction of the money made by selling those phones to the people who make the phones. In exchange for the money, he gets to control their actions and the things they make while at his factory.
However, without those people to make the phones, there would be no sales. John Richman would become John Poorman, because he does not make anything of his own. He just claims ownership of the facilities and tools used by other people to make the phones.
That ownership is what makes him a capitalist. Anticapitalism argues that the people who use those tools and make those phones should not have to give a share of the sales to John Richman, because he hasn't actually done anything. The factory workers can easily make phones without him there, and because he would not be taking the majority of the profits from phone sales, the factory workers would have more money as well.
There are a lot of complications and layers you can add onto it, but the basic-most premise of Anticapitalism is, "if a product or service could be done just as easily--or MORE easily--without you, then you probably shouldn't be getting all the money from it."
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Date: 2019-02-25 05:35 pm (UTC)(Honestly, I’m not against rental properties, because you are never going to convince me that my mother is evil for renting. I recognize that I’m not going to be able to argue this, though.)
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Date: 2019-02-26 06:51 am (UTC)The same thing actually holds true for rentals! Some landlords organize services and maintenance for their renters. For example, one place I lived, I didn't have to independently set up water service, and if my electricity went out, I called the landlord and she had someone come fix it without me having to make the appointments or the electrician directly.
However, a great many landlords (not all, but too many), do not provide such a service.
I'll give another personal example here. When I was 20, I was moved 700 miles away for work. I had 2 days in the middle of the week to find a place to live. There was exactly one place available in town. My choice was lease that place, or sleep on the streets. It was hurricane season, and sleeping on the streets is a great way to die during hurricane season. So I rented the place.
The land lord did absolutely nothing for me, save for conspicuously carry a gun whenever I dropped off my rent. When my heat went out that winter, she both refused to call an hvac tech, and shot at the one I called. It was several degrees below freezing in my home for weeks. When a neighbor--also renting from her--shot bullets through my wall, she turned away the police when they arrived and charged me an extra month's rent for the damage to her property. When the toilet broke, she refused to let a plumber in the property, and had her brother "fix" it. He unhooked the pipe to the sewer line, so the toilet waste dumped directly onto the ground below the house, damaging the foundation and being a severe biohazard. I found out about that months later when she charged me for the repairs and cleaning crew. When I tried to sue for the right to break my lease and leave, she charged me an additional 3 months rent instead.
While I was living there, she actively made my life harder to live, and charged money for it. She provided no service, not even the service of building the home, cause she bought the property at an auction from the state years prior.
And that nightmare of a rental experience is painfully common, though not universal. Many land lords provide the service of keeping a space liveable for their clients.
Many do not.
But, to return to the initial subject : coordination and management, as well as research, are valuable services to provide. They are distinct from sitting in a room hundreds of miles away and receiving money for doing nothing at all.
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Date: 2019-02-26 07:41 am (UTC)