Is "wage slavery" actually "slavery"? And is "capitalism" really "voluntary exchange"?

[Stevicus]

Huh?

Care to expand on the reasoning behind this bizar statement?

I've been doing so in this thread. The point stands.

 

[Stevicus]

You have just proven to yourself the work that "capitalists" do.

There are people who wear more than one hat. That doesn't refute what I've said.

Yeah sure. Money falls out of the sky for governments.

No, it's printed by governments.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Thats just it, y

Thats the problem, you guys don't get it! Its not the basic taxes for necessary infrastructure, its excessive taxes imposed by a greedy totalitarian state.

Such as?

You spoke of student loans as an example
Over here in western Europe, it's not even a loan. It's instead just paid for.
And I wouldn't want it any other way.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

There are people who wear more than one hat. That doesn't refute what I've said.

Not sure what you are talking about.
Are you talking about the filthy rich who don't "work"-work anymore and instead make money by investing in companies?
How do you think they became rich in the first place?

No, it's printed by governments.

So why have people pay taxes, if they can "just print money"?
The US state has quite a lot of debt. Do you think they can solve that by "just printing money" and then use that to pay for it and all will be well?

 

[Revoltingest]

Such as?

You spoke of student loans as an example
Over here in western Europe, it's not even a loan. It's instead just paid for.
And I wouldn't want it any other way.

A problem with free money is the tendency
to value it based upon personal cost. If they
have to pay back a loan, more will see that
they need to be in a field paying enuf to
accomplish that.
Problem is that students weren't properly
informed of the liability they took on. They
were sold a false bill of goods, ie, that any
degree is worthwhile just because it's a degree.

 

[Colt]

Such as?

You spoke of student loans as an example
Over here in western Europe, it's not even a loan. It's instead just paid for.
And I wouldn't want it any other way.

K-12 is paid for in America but around 3,000,000 kids quite that free school each year without ever graduating.

 

[PureX]

Thats just it, y

Thats the problem, you guys don't get it! Its not the basic taxes for necessary infrastructure, its excessive taxes imposed by a greedy totalitarian state.

Taxes are necessary in any organized society. The problem is taxation without representation. In theory we are livening under a representational government, but in actual practice we are not. We are living under a plutocracy, in which the wealthy elites control all the mechanisms of social control, and use them to pervert all decision-making to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else.

The problem is not taxation, or even government over-reach. It's the wholesale corruption of both our government and our own values by the bottomless greed of these wealthy criminal elites.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

K-12 is paid for in America but around 3,000,000 kids quite that free school each year without ever graduating.

I have no idea what K-12 is nor how the american school system works.

Drop-out rate of "higher learning" (=college, university,..) over here is around 12%

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Huh?

Care to expand on the reasoning behind this bizar statement?

I hope that you aren't offended by a little help. Your English is excellent, and since you're Belgian, I assume it's not your first language, but I've seen some unusual spellings from you of late. "Bizar" is spelled bizarre (not to be confused with bazaar). A few days ago, I saw you write "matras" for mattress, but didn't comment then.

 

[Revoltingest]

I have no idea what K-12 is nor how the american school system works.

Drop-out rate of "higher learning" (=college, university,..) over here is around 12%

College is over-rated. Sure, it's useful & even
necessary for some professions. But the common
pressure to "get a degree" often afflicts people
who don't need it, & even suffer from the money
& time wasted.
I had an employee who was a couple courses short
of his degree in sociology. He loathed taking the
remaining required courses, but family was pressuring
him to "get a degree". I asked him if it mattered to
him or if he'd earn more money. His answer: He quit.
He never regretted it.
He now owns his own construction company.

 

[Stevicus]

This would be detrimental for competition, which in turn would kill innovation and disruptive tech.

Someone just posted a quote by Kropotkin the other day: "Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization." Do you have any comment on that?

But apart from that, when left to its own devices, capitalist competition has the presumptive goal of eliminating all other competition and forming a monopoly. Governments passing laws against it have been the only way to prevent it, as capitalists simply can't agree on fair competition on their own.

So, this supposed commitment and devotion to "fair competition" that capitalists claim was never really true. Just as with slavery, child labor, sweatshops, and other abuses, capitalists had to be forced by law to end these practices. They never do so voluntarily.

Starting a company, especially in spaces where companies are already operating, is very risky business. The state wouldn't just hand out money to anyone with an idea. This money is taxpayer's money and the state is expected to handle that with care. They would not just hand it out to any person with some risky idea. Especially not if they face an uphill battle in terms of competition.

Wouldn't that be just as true with banks or any other investor? What's your point?

If you want to start a new car manufacturing brand, the state would consider that too risky + they'll say "we already have tesla, ford, general motors..."
But if you have a billionaire investor, or are a billionaire yourself, you can go ahead anyway with your private funds and enter that competition and innovate.
That in turn, if you do a good job, keep tesla and the others on their toes as well... Because they'll need to make sure they stay ahead in whatever innovation you can come up with and be sure to stay competitive.

This is how capitalism drives innovation and progress.

It wasn't always this way in every country. A large driver of capitalism and industrialism has been governments' desire to make war.

Government might even favor private capitalists and work to make them more competitive as a source of national pride. The Zaibatsu of Japan might be an example of this. Government supports a few key families who become very powerful and control the economy, yet also with industrial, technological, and other improvements in society. It's still capitalism, but with more governmental involvement, with no pretense of "non-interference" or "free and fair competition."

In the U.S., the government helped to facilitate the opening up of vast new territories and lands, offering landless peasants the opportunity to go out and stake their claim, build a farm or some other enterprise.

Of course, this process led to great abuses which has left longstanding scars and shame upon our nation which still persist today. However, the bottom line is that these historical examples demonstrate that government interference in business is clearly not detrimental to the overall economy and standard of living in a society. The whole idea that government is detrimental to capitalism is mostly a myth when viewed against the reality of historical fact.

 

[Stevicus]

If your starting and operating capital comes from the taxpayers, the state isn't going to be very forthcoming to take such risks.
It would be a conflict of interest also. Because when they hand out money, they become a stakeholder in that company. Now a competitor comes along and ... the state becomes a stakeholder there also? So if one outcompetes the other, no matter which one, either way the state loses money...

This is why things are not practical and detrimental to competition and innovation.
This is why the free market and private funding is so important.

The only reason the US won the tech race to the soviets, is precisely because the economic system of capitalism motivates competition and innovation, while more communist style systems tend to prefer the status quo, or at least move a lot slower in terms of progress - they don't have this drive to make sure to stay ahead of competition, because there is no competition.

The US won the tech race? I think that might need more elaboration.

It is true that, historically, the Russian Empire under the tsarist autocracy had lagged behind the West in terms of industrial and technological development. When the Soviets gained power in Russia, the U.S. and other Western industrialized countries already had flourishing industries and a 100-year head start. The Soviets had a great deal of catching up to do, and in fact, they did just that, albeit hobbled under greater hardships and the devastation of world wars and a civil war, which the U.S. didn't have to face in the 20th century. Nevertheless, the Soviet regime did make astounding improvements, as well as being the first country into outer space. Not too shabby.

We simply had the good fortune of existing with a two-ocean buffer. As Bismarck put it: “The Americans are truly a lucky people. They are bordered to the north and south by weak neighbors and to the east and west by fish.” If the U.S. "won" anything, that's the most likely factor, not because of any magical "system."

Moreover, if the U.S. actually "won" something, why do we have nothing to show for it? Our government is facing insurmountable debt, and our trade deficit is tremendously lopsided because we seemingly have to import just about everything these days. We don't really make much of anything in America these days. Our once great industrial infrastructure has withered and rusted away, leaving a depressed economy and millions of disgruntled people in its wake.

This is not an issue to be taken lightly, as the U.S. has been teetering on the brink of political upheaval in the past few years because of this.

And risk taker and financer.

Ah yes, the famous "risk" we hear so much about. Gamblers take risks. That's the competition of which you speak, which implies some sort of "game" is in process, implying that there's some sort of rules and enforcement mechanism to ensure fairness. The government's role then becomes that of a referee on the playing field, but forbidden from playing in the game themselves. The role of politicians and lawyers seems to bicker and argue over what the rules should actually be, since there's much disagreement and debate over that.

In that kind of system, it's not about who makes the better product, but who has the better lawyers and greater political pull.

In practice, I don't think it's really possible or even practical for government to always act as some kind of disinterested referee in the private sector. Unlike religion, there can be no wall of separation between government and business. Business is not religion (although religion can be a business).

The owner would first require good amounts of money to do that.
And even then, the owner would not just let everyone do their thing without being involved.
He'ld still keep an eye on everything and steer the direction and whatnot.

I didn't say that it would be a smart idea, but theoretically, the owner could just step aside and not take an active role in running the company. The option does exist. Just like in some countries, the monarch's job is to just sit and look pretty, while the actual work of running the country is done by the prime minister or some other equivalent post.

If you would start a company and burn through a bunch of cash to do so, would you then just step aside and just assume the people you hired will keep it afloat and profitable? I sure wouldn't.

I can see that. Although, I've read stories of investors getting bilked by certain unscrupulous types who make wild promises, take the investors' money, and then abscond with it. Things like that do happen. "Caveat Emptor," as the capitalists always say. Among the hoi polloi, we might say "Don't take any wooden nickels" as a warning to be careful of the multitude of dishonest and unscrupulous people out there.

So, one has to be careful in matters like this.

But it's also why government exists and why their interference in the private sector might be warranted, mainly due to the plethora of dishonest and unscrupulous people who tend to foul things up - at all levels of society. It becomes even worse when we find that government, law enforcement, law, and politics become inundated with these types of people.

That's really where the rubber meets the road in terms of a capitalist system, as opposed to the abstract theories behind it. My primary beef with capitalism in recent times is that, all too often, even the "good" capitalists will run interference and help enable the mischief of "bad" capitalists because they seemingly have more of an ideological devotion to the idea that government must never interfere in the private sector.

A perfect example of this is the U.S. healthcare industry. It's a broken system not because we don't have the means and know-how to be able to fix it, but more due to an abstract, ideological, theoretical, quasi-religious tenet that people are better off when goods and services are available through the private sector and not by government.

Another aspect of all this is that, over time, it gets wearisome to have to navigate a society where the buyer has to constantly "beware," as there are con artists and wise guys around every corner looking to slip 'em a few wooden nickels. Why does it have to be like this? Why is there no protection for honest people who simply want to do their jobs honestly and not get scammed in the process? One has to be careful of all the chiselers, hustlers, and wheeler-dealers out there - especially in politics.

I mean, overall, I get what you're saying. I've been familiar with the general arguments in support of capitalism and how many perceive it as better than socialism. I think many of those arguments are oversimplifications which involve a great deal of glossing over and ignorance of history, but also irrelevant to any discussions of how to improve our political and economic situation in the West today, whether in America or in your country. Nobody is advocating any kind of Stalinist or Maoist system anymore, and many hybrid ideas have come about through the meshing of capitalism, liberalism, and socialism which might be workable.

As far as I can tell, socialists are quite flexible and open to new ways of thinking. It's the capitalists who are inflexible, unwilling to move forward. (I'm not saying that it's all capitalists, but it's clearly a critical mass, enough to stand in the way of any real change or reform.)

Another good example is the resistance to environmental reform or anything truly substantial to deal with climate change. Capitalists in the fossil fuel industries could lose money, and they don't want to lose money.

Ultimately, I think we're facing a crossroads where we're struggling to choose what kind of world we want to live in. We could try to compete with each other, as if we're all playing a game of cricket and hope that everyone plays fairly and by the rules (good luck with that). Or, we could learn to cooperate with each other, put aside our old rivalries, and work together for a better planet for all of humanity.

Yeah, I know, it's all idealistic "imaginings," but seriously, what's the alternative? We're not really going to have any real kind of "Dudley Do-Right" style of capitalism either, so it's going to end up being "caveat emptor" on a global scale, as it typically has been. There are consequences either way you look at it.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I hope that you aren't offended by a little help. Your English is excellent, and since you're Belgian, I assume it's not your first language, but I've seen some unusual spellings from you of late. "Bizar" is spelled bizarre (not to be confused with bazaar). A few days ago, I saw you write "matras" for mattress, but didn't comment then.

Both words are how it's spelled in flemish

I've also caught myself writing "of" instead of "or" - also the flemish spelling.
Once a christian reported me because I wrote "jezus" instead "jesus" and he thought I was being insulting on purpose.
But there also I mistakenly used the flemish way to write the name.

It happens at times when my hands type faster then my brain is thinking

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

College is over-rated. Sure, it's useful & even
necessary for some professions. But the common
pressure to "get a degree" often afflicts people
who don't need it, & even suffer from the money
& time wasted.
I had an employee who was a couple courses short
of his degree in sociology. He loathed taking the
remaining required courses, but family was pressuring
him to "get a degree". I asked him if it mattered to
him or if he'd earn more money. His answer: He quit.
He never regretted it.
He now owns his own construction company.

Sure. But I think that's a whole other argument.

Obviously if you are going to get an education and degree only to then do something completely different professionally, both the education and degree was somewhat of a waste.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Someone just posted a quote by Kropotkin the other day: "Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization." Do you have any comment on that?

Not specifically, no. I don't see how it applies to the subject at hand.

But apart from that, when left to its own devices, capitalist competition has the presumptive goal of eliminating all other competition and forming a monopoly. Governments passing laws against it have been the only way to prevent it, as capitalists simply can't agree on fair competition on their own.

Sure. I don't think I said anything about being against fair competition or anti-monopoly laws.
Au contraire, in fact. If a company has a monopoly and utilizes practices that make fair competition impossible, then we would end up in exactly the space I said is detrimental to innovation. If you are the only one in town, you don't really have an incentive to "do better".

This is in fact how msft for example got away with sub-par quality products during all those years. There was no serious competition. Nobody to challenge them and "keep them on their toes". Today that exists in companies like Apple and Google. And the effect of it was immediately noticeable in msft products. In both the consumer space as well as the business space, and in cloud services especially so.

Competition is a good thing. It drives innovation and progress. Monopolies, or general lack of competition, tends to favor the status quo or slow progress at best. There's no urge to get to market with the "next best thing" or to try and provide the best possible quality, because there is no risk of losing business to someone else.

So, this supposed commitment and devotion to "fair competition" that capitalists claim was never really true. Just as with slavery, child labor, sweatshops, and other abuses, capitalists had to be forced by law to end these practices. They never do so voluntarily.

As above, this has nothing to do with my argument. Nor have I advocated for a "wild wild west"-style capitalism where "anything goes".
Au contraire. You need a free, open and fair market where you have pathways to enter and compete and challenge.
And sure, depending on the space that might require enormous budgets. But that's exactly the point.... if "starting a business" is done with government funds, then such big risky projects or challenges of market leaders would simply never happen.

You need rich "capitalists" for that.... people who either start such businesses themselves, or who invest in such projects. This is absolutely imperative.

In some other cases, the starting "capital" required can be obtained through labour instead of liquid. Like in our case. We entered a market which was dominated by what we call "dinosaurs". We develop and distribute a software for a specific niche sector. The market was dominated by 2 products which literally escaped from 1996. 2 Old companies that didn't have any drive to push the products forward, because there were no challengers and it's a pain in the behind (and a costly endeavour) to develop a new product, get your customer base to switch over, train them in using it, etc...

So me and my partner worked for +5 years on it after our dayjob hours. And when it was "ready enough", we quit our day job and went to market. After a few years of slowly but surely making a name for ourselves and nibbling away market share of the dino's, they started to finally move. One sold his business to some foreign investor (who's breaking it up in several parts and might ditch our sector all together). The other started working on a new version of their app after 30(!) years and meanwhile we have a serious head start over them.

This is what I mean.... without challenging competitors, nothing much moves. There's no incentive.

Would a government have given us the required funds to build this program and start a company? I say it is unlikely.

Wouldn't that be just as true with banks or any other investor? What's your point?

No.
An investor plays with his own money. Not with the money of other people.
Same for someone who starts his own company using his own funding. He puts his own money at risk, not the money of other people.

Next to that, getting a loan is much harder then getting investment.
A loan for example requires collateral. They will require some guarantee of getting their money back even if the business fails.
Starting a business with a bank loan is near impossible for that reason. Usually investment capital is the only option.

And even later on also. Say the company has existed for a few years. The product is a fantastic idea, but there are some design issues that need to be solved and it requires a bunch of money to solve them. Due to the design issues, sales aren't going very well and you are accumulating losses.
No bank is going to give you a loan. You don't have enough collateral and your company currently burns money instead of making money.

But investors might be lining up to get a piece of that promising pie. And they will fully understand that there is also that possibility that if the issues don't get resolved, their investment will evaporate and they will not see any returns.

 

[Revoltingest]

Sure. But I think that's a whole other argument.

It relates to providing it free though, in which
case it encourages studying material that
has costs, but no material benefit to society.
Advocates like to tout intangible benefits,
ie, they become better people. But this is
unevidenced.

Obviously if you are going to get an education and degree only to then do something completely different professionally, both the education and degree was somewhat of a waste.

Sometimes. One might get a degree in
psychology, & apply research & writing
skills in an unrelated field. (Daughter
did just that.) But the point is to give
thought to earning enuf to live well
while repaying loans.

 

[Stevicus]

Not specifically, no. I don't see how it applies to the subject at hand.

A number of your points have mentioned competition and how it's indispensable to innovation. The quote applies to the general concept of competition. I take issue with certain notions that capitalist competition is like some parlor game or a game of cricket.

Sure. I don't think I said anything about being against fair competition or anti-monopoly laws.
Au contraire, in fact. If a company has a monopoly and utilizes practices that make fair competition impossible, then we would end up in exactly the space I said is detrimental to innovation. If you are the only one in town, you don't really have an incentive to "do better".

This is in fact how msft for example got away with sub-par quality products during all those years. There was no serious competition. Nobody to challenge them and "keep them on their toes". Today that exists in companies like Apple and Google. And the effect of it was immediately noticeable in msft products. In both the consumer space as well as the business space, and in cloud services especially so.

Competition is a good thing. It drives innovation and progress. Monopolies, or general lack of competition, tends to favor the status quo or slow progress at best. There's no urge to get to market with the "next best thing" or to try and provide the best possible quality, because there is no risk of losing business to someone else.

I can see your point here, and I think it's generally agreed in society that monopolies can be detrimental. But the point is, it takes active government intervention to be able to prevent it. It's not something that happens automatically under "laissez-faire" conditions.

As above, this has nothing to do with my argument. Nor have I advocated for a "wild wild west"-style capitalism where "anything goes".
Au contraire. You need a free, open and fair market where you have pathways to enter and compete and challenge.
And sure, depending on the space that might require enormous budgets. But that's exactly the point.... if "starting a business" is done with government funds, then such big risky projects or challenges of market leaders would simply never happen.

You need rich "capitalists" for that.... people who either start such businesses themselves, or who invest in such projects. This is absolutely imperative.

In some other cases, the starting "capital" required can be obtained through labour instead of liquid. Like in our case. We entered a market which was dominated by what we call "dinosaurs". We develop and distribute a software for a specific niche sector. The market was dominated by 2 products which literally escaped from 1996. 2 Old companies that didn't have any drive to push the products forward, because there were no challengers and it's a pain in the behind (and a costly endeavour) to develop a new product, get your customer base to switch over, train them in using it, etc...

So me and my partner worked for +5 years on it after our dayjob hours. And when it was "ready enough", we quit our day job and went to market. After a few years of slowly but surely making a name for ourselves and nibbling away market share of the dino's, they started to finally move. One sold his business to some foreign investor (who's breaking it up in several parts and might ditch our sector all together). The other started working on a new version of their app after 30(!) years and meanwhile we have a serious head start over them.

This is what I mean.... without challenging competitors, nothing much moves. There's no incentive.

Would a government have given us the required funds to build this program and start a company? I say it is unlikely.

When it comes to tech companies and software, it seems there's a great deal of competition already. You mentioned above that Microsoft "got away" with sub-par quality products, but I don't recall that the government did much to prevent anyone from coming up with something better. My dad worked for IBM and got an IBM PC back in the 80s, which ran on DOS, although I believe DOS had already been purchased by Microsoft, which built upon that. I recall back in those days, IBM dominated the market and dwarfed the competition, although their best customer was the government. Apple also had a PC which may have been considered more user friendly.

Computers were still kind of klunky back in those days and were difficult for a lot of people to use. People naturally would gravitate towards that which was easier to use, which was a tall order in an era when most people's VCRs eternally flashed "12:00" because they didn't know how to set the clock on such infernal contraptions. Even something like "WYSIWYG" was difficult with a lot of word processing programs. Talk about sub-par!

As an end user, I can appreciate that it must be very difficult to try to write software that actually works, since I've had to work with a lot of glitchy, buggy, error-prone programs or many that just weren't very user-friendly at all. At that time, this was the market in which Microsoft was able to "get away" with sub-par products, as you say, but how was anyone to know any different?

The competition becomes even more nebulous when it comes to the "dark web" and more underground type situations which deliberately seek to avoid any kind of governmental interference or surveillance. Russians and Chinese always seem to figure prominently when it comes to hacking and other cyber-criminality, ostensibly designing programs and technology which can defeat the security designed by our best experts.

We're talking about people who were educated in socialist societies without any competition or lucrative financial incentives to improve, and yet, their work is somehow superior to those who have made billions from the same "competition." How does that happen?

 

[EconGuy]

I've thought about it since then. I still remain unconvinced that capitalism is not voluntary.

"While the term 'slavery' is indeed hyperbolic in this context, it highlights a crucial point: we must define our terms precisely. 'Capitalism' exists on a spectrum. The idealized form often presented in theoretical discussions masks the practical realities of our current economic system.

When defending capitalism, many resort to the 'No True Scotsman' fallacy, dismissing the very real negative consequences as deviations from 'pure' capitalism. It's essential to acknowledge that oppressive structures can thrive within, and be exacerbated by, our particular implementation of capitalism. These systems may not be the essence of capitalism, but they are intrinsically intertwined with its current manifestation in the US.

Therefore, let's dissect these interconnected complexities to reach a more nuanced understanding of the social and economic pressures felt by those at the bottom of our society."

You don't have to work, you can roll over and die in poverty instead.

"You're conflating the presence of a choice with a meaningful, rational, choice. Reducing complex scenarios to simplistic absolutes negates the reality of socioeconomic pressures and constraints on individual agency. This approach undermines productive discussion by distorting the common understanding of what constitutes a genuine choice."

It is in no way the employers fault that if you don't work you are screwed. That's just the physical nature of reality. And in the end, you don't have to work for the employer. So it's not slavery. You do have a choice. Obviously, you are going to choose to work, but if you don't feel that is fair, blame god, not capitalism.

Capitalism is simply voluntary exchange, nothing more. Certainly not slavery.

While individual employers may not be directly blamed for all hardship, capitalism as a system enables an environment where wealth and power become concentrated. This severely limits options for those on the economic margins, making the 'choice' to work or not a deeply coerced one (not slavery, but not free). Capitalism's emphasis on voluntary exchange obscures the fact that the system itself contributes to the drastic consequences faced by those who cannot participate in that exchange on favorable terms.