Show newer

@ppng So you have no interest in knowing what the fuck you're talking about. Good to know.

@fediverse I think it assumes it's symmetric; measures round-trip latency and divides by 2. One of many reasons to fix bufferbloat!

@ppng Okay, so explain to me how Adam Smith's book is a "defense[sic] against" a critique that wasn't written until a century later.
I'm not "quibbling" anything, I'm just explaining that economics does not match your intuitions.
Go and read a textbook on Price Theory. When you understand what I mean by "price = marginal value = marginal cost", then you'll be equipped to critique capitalism. Until then, you're just embarrassing yourself.

@ppng The investor isn't 'appropriating' anything, just receiving the rewards due to him for having produced without consuming (and thus contributed more *to* society than he took *from* it. Money & equity are just tools we use to account the difference between the two).

@ppng OK, simple example for you. A man can chop down a lot more trees with an axe than with his bare hands. Thus, whoever made the axe played a role in the production of those logs. The reason they were able to make an axe is that someone, somewhere, chose to not immediately consume all the wealth they produced, but set some of it aside (capital formation) so it could be used to create 'produced means of production'.

@ppng A curious addendum: the same amount of extra production would be created if instead of investing the money I just stuffed it in my mattress. lesswrong.com/posts/ANYrRYWZ4K
The importance of investment is that it allows capitalists to capture the value they create & thus incentivises capital formation.

@ppng There's nothing parasitic about it. Capital goods increase productivity, and they are created by the process of capital formation, whereby someone _defers their consumption_ into the future. I.e. let's say I produce a loaf of bread, but instead of eating it now I sell it, invest the money & later buy two loaves. That second loaf (approx) equals _the extra production_ that the original wealth I had created produced during the period I didn't consume it.

@ppng Your error here is to consider capital as a single monolithic interest. In fact the many holders of capital (contra Marx) do *not* act as a unified class; rather, each pursues his own profit without regard to the others. Consequently capitalists compete *with each other* for labour, driving up the price to the point where marginal cost equals marginal value. The only way they could 'exploit' workers is if they had monopsony power, which in general they don't.

@Catsandcatsandcats Someone has to work in order for there to be roofs. And capitalism's system for arranging this — where employers must to some extent compete for labour — is far more just than communism, where the power is placed in the hands of the State, an organisation which faces *no* competition.
I strongly recommend you read _Time Will Run Back_ by Henry Hazlitt, to understand where power *truly* lies under capitalism (hint: it's not with your boss, nor 'the rich').

@Catsandcatsandcats Maybe 401ks are fucked-up in ways that the British equivalent isn't. I must concede that I am not an expert on US investment markets or law.
But I agree that defined-benefit plans are a bad idea, precisely because of their risk profile. A defined-contribution plan would have just lost some value (and perhaps not that much if it'd been bond-heavy late in life) rather than collapsing entirely.

@Catsandcatsandcats dude, Marx's whole schtick was that the capitalist class, defined by receiving income from capital, were exploiting the proletarian class, defined by receiving income from labour. How does that work when the proletariat own capital too? And what do you think long-term pension funds are investing in, if not the means of production?

@georgespolitzer You know, if you had actual arguments, you wouldn't need to (a) throw playground insults (b) accuse me of racism on zero evidence (c) accuse me of purposely misgendering you, rather than *not caring about your fucking gender because the only people for whom the contents of your pants are relevant are your lover and your doctor*.

@georgespolitzer I didn't mention climate. But since you bring it up: economic estimates of the likely net impact of the level of warming predicted by the latest IPCC report *have confidence intervals that cross zero*. That is, we can't even reliably determine whether the warming across the 21st century will be a good or a bad thing for humanity.

@georgespolitzer In my native dialect, 'he' has a secondary use as a gender-neutral pronoun, correctly used when gender is unknown and irrelevant (a situation in which some other dialects would use singular 'they'). I didn't know and don't care what your pronoun is. If you want to call that a 'microaggression' then you do you, but I'll keep speaking my language.
I was using the third person *for rhetorical effect*, to frame that remark as an aside to the audience rather than directed at you.

@georgespolitzer I never even at any point *suspected* you were coloured, nor even considered whether you might me. So please explain to me how your race could have — hah — coloured my opinion of you?

@georgespolitzer Oh great, he's brought out the racism card. Here's a hint: you're not stupid 'cos you're coloured. You're stupid 'cos you're *you*. Until you just mentioned it I had no idea what colour your skin was, so how could anything I say about you be racist?

@georgespolitzer Chileans who studied at Chicago are not "basically everyone in the chicago school of economics".

@georgespolitzer OK, we've reached the "you ascribing beliefs to me that I do not hold" phase of this. I do not in fact "think class is purely how much income you make". Rather, income is one of the factors that determines your ability to enter some classes, but is generally neither necessary or sufficient.
You are essentialising and oversimplifying.

@georgespolitzer Not euphemistic, no; just historically illiterate. Goes well with your economic illiteracy tbh.
(1) Pinochet's règime, while totalitarian, was not fascist.
(2) Chile following the writings of the Chicago school does not equal them being 'recruited' by Pinochet. (Where are you getting this notion from, Nancy bloody McLean?)

@georgespolitzer So you're saying I'm saying a thing that I'm not saying 'cos it's the opposite of what I'm saying, and when I say that's not what I'm saying you say I'm wrong to say that because you weren't saying I was saying that you were just saying that was basically what I was saying? WTH are you trying to say?

Show older
Mastodon

a Schelling point for those who seek one