If you are a white leftist and you talk “both parties are the same they are both capitalist” you will loose most of your black audience. I think it ought to be obvious that this isn’t because blackfolks love Democrats (in most cases, there is always someone being simple in any group) —no. it’s because the difference between the parties is material and obvious and these are unstable times.

When I hear such talk I wonder if the speaker is working on voter suppression.

@futurebird capitalism just means allowing people to trade things voluntarily for mutual benefit. it doesn't mean you can't have pigovian taxes, etc. I think people criticizing capitalism don't understand what the word means.

@cshentrup @futurebird
Capitalism and the free market are not the same thing. Two definitions of it came up in Marx's time, one being Marx himself and both are equally legitimate. They both involve someone with money using that money to invest by buying the means of production then almost always using that money to strip excess labor off of the employees though imbalanced bargaining power. Marx's version did not include the free Market as essential which is why Mutualists like Proudhon believed in a form of free market worker owned socialist cooperatives. Now add capitalism to the free market where Not only corporations have to compete with each other to survive, they also have to compete for investment from the haves, they are even more likely to steal from the have not workers just to survive, and certainly more likely to dump externalities like pollution on the rest of us..

@anubis2814 @futurebird there's no such thing as "excess labor", except in the case of monopolies. marx didn't understand basic economic concepts like subjective value. I mean he was utterly clueless about everything economic.

and yes they are the same thing, effectively. to have a market you have to have private ownership.

@anubis2814 @futurebird it is irrational to enforce worker ownership. allowing workers to sell their ownership if they feel it is to their benefit can only help them. to prevent them from doing this is harmful. I beg of marxists to take econ 101 out of bare minimum. it is an ideology totally bereft of evidence.

@anubis2814 @futurebird like I just got a bunch of equity in my company, and I sold it because the cash is more useful to me at this point in time. I'm currently doing remodeling to prevent leaking in our basement. If I couldn't sell that equity, that would be detrimental to me. why do you hate workers?

@cshentrup @futurebird Why do YOU hate workers? Marx was about pre-distribution not redistribution (other than the stuff robbed from us (mostly but the nobles in his case) The ability to have a say in your business would mean you would have more money in the long run as things would be more likely to be air and less exploitative. Meaning you would have enough money to not have to sell that equity in the first place. You would own your own labor, not have to sell it at a reduced price to some faceless person who already had enough money and was just using that money to make more money by exploiting you.

@anubis2814 @futurebird there is no such thing as exploiting you. it's a voluntary transaction. You are a perfect example of the economic illiteracy of Marxism.

@cshentrup @futurebird Exploitation doesn't exist? Hmmm, if a corporation isn't exploiting labor its exploiting foreign labor, if its not exploiting foreign labor its exploiting the environment aka robbing the commons via externalities. We wouldn't have this climate crisis if all interactions were fair and just. Most laws against them are never enforced. When you have the power of the state over the power of the worker or just people living on the planet there is nothing voluntary about it. You pick between two shitty choices or starve and die. A company store with more steps.

@anubis2814 @futurebird if they are emitting negative externalities then you need Pigovian taxes to internalize that. That's different than a VOLUNTARY agreement with a worker, that the worker is only agreeing to because it makes them better off than they otherwise would have been. You're deeply confused like all marxists.

laws not being enforced is a political problem not a problem with the economic system. to fix this you need voting reform, something I'm an expert on

https://www.rangevoting.org/LivesSaved

@cshentrup @futurebird Insulting me makes neither of us smarter. I haven;'t learned anything from you I didn't already know, and you certainly learned jack squat from me because you already know everything. I was lied to about Marx from childhood. Many Marxists translated his ideas badly using cherry picked Ideas. Most capitalists took his ideas and simplified them down to sound bite straw man ideas that of course sound stupid and unreasonable. Money is power, the more you have the more power and influence you have. The less you have the less bargaining power you have. the more balance you have in that the more bargaining power everyone has at getting what they want. Pigovian taxes will not fix that and exploitation will occur no matter what. The belief that those with out have way more fair power to bargain than they do is a big misunderstanding on your part, a just-world fallacy, unless you believe hierarchy is good and natural.

@anubis2814 @futurebird I've told you numerous things you demonstrably didn't already know. whether you've learned them is another matter. now you again demonstrate another misunderstanding. bargaining power is about supply and demand, not about how much money you have.

https://open.lib.umn.edu/principleseconomics/chapter/3-3-demand-supply-and-equilibrium/

> Pigovian taxes will not fix that and exploitation will occur no matter what.

You've cited no evidence that there's any such thing as "exploitation".

@anubis2814 @futurebird The way to fix inequality is to redistribute wealth. But to do it without dead weight loss so you don't shrink the pie while redistributing it. this is literally econ 101 and you marxists never understand it.

https://medium.com/@clayshentrup/market-equitism-d98565eeb845

@anubis2814 @futurebird

> The belief that those with out have way more fair power to bargain than they do is a big misunderstanding on your part, a just-world fallacy, unless you believe hierarchy is good and natural.

the statement proves you don't understand how equilibrium prices work. One of the most basic issues in the whole economics. You have utterly no clue what you're talking about.

@anubis2814 @futurebird

> unless you believe hierarchy is good and natural.

"hierarchy" is irrelevant. your welfare is affected by goods and services you have available to consume. the wealth of people you transact with is utterly irrelevant to your welfare. You are profoundly confused.

@cshentrup @futurebird No, you are confused. i can do that too.

@anubis2814 @futurebird but you can't do the crucial part of making a coherent argument that is actually correct.

talking about hierarchy is empirical proof of your confusion. how much food you have in your belly, or the abundance of medicine for diseases, these are things that actually affect human welfare. the wealth disparity between you and someone you trade with does not directly affect your welfare. You are talking nonsense, and I can prove it.

@cshentrup @futurebird
I'm a scientists and I understand what empirical means. You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means. And instead of trying to get to a mutual understanding or at least closer to understanding my point of view you want to throw insults that I'm stupid. Which does nothing to make someone smarter or more likely to listen. Its not how the human brain takes in information. You can't prove anything. Like I said, nothing you have said is anything I didn't know. Much of it, in the system you are discussing is as correct as it can be. You sound like a Ron Pauler (which I was in 2007-2009) who watched a youtube video on economics 101 and acting like you know everything. Economics is much closer to philosophy than science, and there are a lot of different economic philosophies you just flat our ignore or are ignorant to that the biased colleges have suppressed to get donations. .

@anubis2814 @futurebird microeconomics is more than a science, it's mostly just provable mathematics. for instance if we spend $100 buying you a benefit that you value at $70, that is $30 of dead weight loss. That is an empirical fact. so by calling economics closer to philosophy than science, you again prove that you don't understand. You cited absolutely no evidence to support anything you're saying, including this hand wavy assertion that I don't know what empirical means. try using evidence.

@anubis2814 @futurebird and again you try to use ad hominem and labeling by connecting me with Ron Paul, rather than trying to make an actual argument about something. "you sound like somebody who just read economics 101 and nothing else" is not an argument, and it certainly doesn't excuse you for not understanding basic econ 101 concepts.

@anubis2814 @futurebird it is also trivially logically provable that paying someone above the market rate for their labor is equivalent to charity. which you can be mad about, but it's equivalent to being mad that someone isn't giving away all their wealth until they are as poor as the poorest person in the universe. this isn't "philosophy", it's logically provable.

@cshentrup @futurebird Why is there a market rate? In a fair system it would be because that is what people were willing to work for, but since the 80s when unions were crushed wages all stagnated and the rich colluded to keep the market rate artificially low. We are all being underpaid because of this suppression including you.

@anubis2814 @futurebird asking why there is a market rate again proves that you don't understand basic economics. Unions don't make rates fair, they distort market rates above what they would naturally be. You demonstrably understand nothing about economics.

@cshentrup @anubis2814 @futurebird
Yup. Got it. Billionaires that can buy politicians, judges, media and PR/Lobby firms are natural and unions are unnatural. Cool. I'm here to tell you to stop digging but you don't look like you will. You seem to bet on becoming a billionaire. Good luck.

@alper @anubis2814 @futurebird i never said political corruption is good. i literally co-founded one of the most prominent election reform non-profits in the usa. you're not making contact with my argument. you are confused.

@cshentrup @anubis2814 @futurebird where did i say you are saying it is "good"? it is a part of the tug of War which the other side you called unnatural. By the way, why did you cofound that unnatural nonprofit? It doesn't add up.
See? Probably not. Anyways, keep digging. Good luck. I'll stay "confused"

@alper @anubis2814 @futurebird i never used the term "unnatural". you are definitely confused.

@cshentrup @anubis2814 @futurebird "...they distort market rates above what they would naturally be."

@alper @anubis2814 @futurebird ah, you were paraphrasing. my point was correct tho. unions act like a monopoly and distort prices.