> _“You want to get into an intellectual throw down?”_
I want to learn. And to inform or educate when I can.
> _“If you throw another lazy logical fallacy out there”_
For being so “seasoned” you're failing the basics. I asked two short and specific questions. None of them included presuppositions or even subordinate clauses that could be used to smuggle implied causality or to take anything from granted. There were no “logical fallacies” there. That's a fact.
> _“Your handle ‘trip you’ -- as in to trip up another's reasoning”_
Failed again. My nickname comes from Spanish (my mother tongue). Long story. It's OK.
> _“Would you like to try again and actually address the substantive issue?”_
I swear that's what I was trying to do. I'll try again, from another angle (but addressing the same issues I honestly see in your reasoning):
I fit the definition you used, to the letter. I (and most people I know) “use money to invest in trade and industry for profit in accordance with the principles of capitalism”. I (and most people I know) are “wealthy” ([my household in particular is in the richest 2% of the global population](https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i)).
My most valuable possesion is a car (the only one my wife and I have). We don't own a house. We are both regular employees at regular companies; not founders or executives. We have two kids.
Most people I know find themselves in similar circumstances.
According to your own definition, we all are capitalists.
Am I right so far?
/cc @thesquirrelfish
@tripu @LeftistLawyer for me the question would be: what profits do you make from your investments? Are they greater than your wages? And whether you're wealthy isn't as much of a factor - waged workers in developed countries are often less capitalist than poorer entrepreneurs in other countries, who are more likely to own (and rent out) their own tools.
(Again: I'm contesting your definition(s) not for the sake of controversy, but because I honestly think that will show that the post that started this thread is wrong.)
> _“What profits do you make from your investments? Are they greater than your wages?”_
OK, so first amendment to the initial definition. After that change, neither I nor most people I know are “capitalists”.
> _“Whether you're wealthy isn't as much of a factor”_
Second amendment: instead of “a wealthy person who…”, let's say “a person, usually wealthy, who…”.
With the amended definition, an executive with a salary of $500K/year is _not_ a capitalist, then. A popular influencer who earns from advertising deals and YouTube monetisation isn't a capitalist either. Airline pilots, top surgeons at private clinics, engineers with salaries above $200K/year, the Vienna Philharmonic's first violin… none of them are “capitalists”.
> _“People who own businesses/land/tools that employ other people where the business owners(capitalists) gets the profits and others get set wages”_
(Yet another definition)
With this definition, my grandparents (relatively poor peasants in a small Spanish village) were all capitalists: they owned (little plots of) land, and some tools, and they (intermittently) employed other people (labourers), eg to plough and during harvesting. My dad, who owned a small driving school, worked on it long hours, and at times employed one other person, was a capitalist, too. Lots of ~~small~~ minuscule business owners who toil day after day are capitalists, too.
Which definition it is, then?
And, are you comfortable with how that definition sorts out people into “capitalists” and “non-capitalists”?
/cc @LeftistLawyer
That works for me, and I think under that definition the original post absolutely rings true.
Which one of the two?
@tripu "capitalists refer to people who own businesses/land/tools that employ other people where the business owners(capitalists) gets the profits and others get set wages."
OK. Thank you for being a good sport, by the way.
Last question (I think) about definitions before focusing on the claim of the original post:
In your opinion, how much of businesses/land/tools does someone need to own to be considered a capitalist?
I'm asking because probably most people own pieces of that, in the form of stock, a private pension plan that invests in private companies, little shops they rent, a taxi that another driver uses during the night shift, a plot of land that other people cultivate, etc. Aren't most of us “capitalists”, then?
> _“I think that's not as true in the US as in other places”_
In the US, the majority of people own some stock: [~60% of families do](https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart/#series:Stock_Holdings;demographic:all;population:1;units:have).
> _“Something like 90% of the stock market is owned by the richest 10%”_
Even if that were true (we don't know the exact figure), that wouldn't necessarily mean that the bottom 90% aren't investing according to the rules of capitalism, too: “the rich” own disproportionately more stock, but all the rest own disproportionately more little shops, industrial vehicles, professional workshops, tiny family businesses, etc. Yes, Fortune 500 companies are much, much bigger than nail saloons, family farms, taxi licence owners or small architecture firms, but the latter are much, much more numerous. It's not like the 10% own 90% of the means of production, at all.
> _“For your specific examples, I would say the person renting out land, shops or their taxi, are part of the old school capitalist class”_
OK, then definitely I think that, according to you, the majority of the population are capitalists.
> _“We're responsible for the actions of the companies we own stock in”_
I agree.
@tripu the number I cited was true:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html
Okay, so we roughly agree on the definitions of capitalists.
So now what's your claim?
> _“The number I cited was true”_
Well, it's quite impressive, how unequally distributed public stock is.
Yes, back to the initial statement:
> _“Capitalism exists on the back of an accounting scam. […] There is no \*profit\* if we force capitalists to account for the negative impacts we allow them subsidize at our collective expense.”_
My issues:
1.
That reads as if Musk and a handful other people are “the capitalists” getting a profit and generating externalities, while more than eight billion people (by implication, the “non-capitalists”) are not getting profits, not generating externalities, and subsidising the externalities of the former.
But I think you agree that roughly half the population are capitalists — according to the definition, I would say way more than half the population. (Statistically speaking, the author of the post, you, and I are more likely capitalists than not.)
And we know many non-capitalists (people who make a living mostly off their labour) make handsome “profits”, too (pilots, surgeons, executives, top actors, top musicians, etc). And almost everyone causes negative externalities in one way or another. The line is very blurry, almost everyone “makes a profit” (how else could they survive?) and almost everyone have some negative impact. It's like pitting “consumers” against “tax-payers”: most people are both consumers and tax-payers — it's not a tiny elite vs. the masses.
So the claim is a dishonest and misleading “them vs us”.
2.
> _“There is no \*profit\* if we force capitalists to account for the negative impacts…”_
But we do already.
There's a ton of regulation, Pigouvian taxes, tax breaks, fines, crimes, sanctions, licences, permits, etc for that. Starting from the most banal and common of externalities (“you can't be noisy after 10PM”) to [regulation affecting SpaceX](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=regulation+affecting+spacex) (among others, the FAA has to certify launches and issue test licences to make sure that everything meets “all safety, environmental, policy and financial responsibility requirements”).
Think how many externalities you are not allowed to cause, or you cause and are paying for, _just by owning a car_: limitations about (or special taxes for) emissions (CO2 and many more), speed, noise, insurance, power, size, type of fuel… It's naive to think that regular folks driving a car are subject to so many measures to try to minimise negative externalities… while the owner of the factory where the car is produced is free to do with it as they please, at no cost. _Of course_ he's “accounting for lots of negative impacts”.
There's a _quantitative_ case to be made, of course. For instance, “we should tax space exploration enterprises more”. Or “we should ban cars weighting more than two tonnes”. Whatever. But that's an entirely different message. And it's true for every policy around every topic: everything can be fine-tuned up or down.
3.
Because there's a lot of regulation already to minimise externalities or to offset them, _there would be profits even if we regulated more harshly_.
If we made more companies pay more for their negative impact, profit margins would shrink. But to the extent those companies are producing goods and services that people ultimately need or want, there's no way we could push all of them entirely out of profit land at once (unless we're talking full-fledged socialism here, in which case I think there would be a whole set of much worse problems than “SpaceX is polluting the atmosphere and adding more debris to low-Earth orbits”).
If we banned more and/or taxed more, economic growth would be slower. Entrepreneurship would be more difficult. Competition would be fiercer. Products would be worse. And yes, perhaps the environment would degrade slower, too. But there would be still some profit to be made somewhere, necessarily, or else nobody would ever start a company at all.
4.
The post, as it's written, is demagoguery. It criticises roughly half the human population (arguably, the richest half) by pointing at an _individual_ who was once _the richest person in the world_, no less. It's facile.
As if all “capitalists” (eg, “poorer entrepreneurs in other countries, who are more likely to own (and rent out) their own tools”) shared _anything at all_ with Elon Musk.
It's like mentioning Osama Bin Laden and criticising his atrocities in the first sentence, to defend in the second one that “we” unite against all people who are religious. A huge leap. Bin Laden is not representative of religious people _at all_. (Musk, who has as much money as a small country, is not representative of capitalists at all.) And “we” would be happen to be a minority of people, since most people in the world are religious.
political economics
@tripu
ok, so we just established that capitalists are not just the richest half of people - they're specifically people who are responsible for something - a piece of land, a piece of a business, whatever - they're a capitalist in as much as they are responsible. We as humans can create negative externalities, but that's not an intrinsic part of being human - there's biodiverse sustainable places where people live without negative externalities. I am a capitalist in this view in as much as I own stock and take responsibility for that ownership. I am also allowed to be self-critical. I am in on the scam, I'm getting profits from it, it doesn't make the statement less true. I would like to change the world to make it less true.
political economics
@tripu
2. We don't even begin to account for the negative impacts through current policy! Your car example is perfect and one I've made before - cars produce tons of waste every year and give kids asthma and force people to clean windows, and poison fish, and literally kill and disable people. Those costs are in no way limited to those who own cars. All of those costs plus highway maintenance etc should be included in car registration and gas taxes - right now Ford & Chevron etc make massive amounts of money through making products that only some people can have, but everybody suffers from. Who is paying for the effects of climate change? Everybody. Who is profiting from causing climate change? Capitalists.
The problem of the quantitative case is that half of the population would lose wealth equivalent to their responsibility - because there would not be excess profits anymore.
political economics
@tripu 3. The claim is not a policy proposal about what we can do re: socialism, but a statement of the conditions of the world.
Another way to put it for ease of understanding
"If we force [the non-working beneficiaries of owning assets] to [pay for] the the negative impacts [environmental degradation, social harms, added costs for other people of those assets] they would not make a profit from those assets".
You're conflating rent with profit. If you are working and people are paying you, that's not impacted in this. So people would be working to make a profit, they could start companies, etc... If someone else wants to get a dividend or rent from that labor/new company, that's where we start getting back into capitalism. There were markets and trade and businesses before there was capitalism.
political economics
@tripu
4. here is where you insisted that everyone is a capitalist if they own even a little bit of capital - I argue that we're as responsible as the proportion of capital we have. This is actually a central problem of capitalist democracy that we as a society are struggling with. Should we hold the richest people in the world responsible for the negative impacts of the investments that made them rich? With the Sackler family fueling the Oxycontin crisis we took away half their wealth - $4 of $8 billion, but taxpayers are still paying for the overdoses on our streets.
I honestly waver on whether we should hold everyone who got an Exxon or Chevron dividend in the last few decades responsible, or just the largest shareholders and executives.
It's the real moral quandary of our times - if I invested with Exxon, and Exxon helped get Trump elected, how much is Trump my fault even if I voted for someone else?
I think about this way too much. Trying to be a pacifist even in my 401k is hard.
Lots of interesting points, I'll reply soon.
Do you happen to have a blog? At this point I'd rather answer with a blog post to avoid splitting the conversation in so many little threads that are difficult to keep track of (Mastodon isn't great at displaying a tree of sub-conversations).
@tripu sorry no blog on these topics right now
> _“We're as responsible as the proportion of capital we have”_
I agree. It's just that I think we all have way more capital than we think, through indirect means if nothing else.
> _“Should we hold the richest people in the world responsible for the negative impacts of the investments that made them rich?”_
For what is worth, I've been thinking for a while that a cap on _extreme_ wealth would be morally justified.
> _“I honestly waver on whether we should hold everyone who got an Exxon or Chevron dividend in the last few decades responsible, or just the largest shareholders and executives.”_
My solution: First, prosecute the people who had the power to make decisions, and make them pay with their own wealth and freedom (the CEO, the board, the other executives). Then, fine the company to make things right (to the extent that's possible, of course). That would hurt _all_ shareholders, but only in proportion to the shares they own. After that, a humble investor should feel OK: the administrators who created the mess (unknowingly to the investor) were punished, and because market cap has depreciated after fines etc, the investor has already taken a hit financially. It doesn't make sense to feel “guilty” after that, I think.
> _“It's the real moral quandary of our times - if I invested with Exxon, and Exxon helped get Trump elected, how much is Trump my fault even if I voted for someone else?”_
It's your responsibility in proportion to the information you could reasonably have, and to the power you had to affect things at the company. But you are also responsible for 62K people having jobs, and for millions of people having electricity, being able to go visit their parents, not dying of cold…
> _“I think about this way too much. Trying to be a pacifist even in my 401k is hard.”_
I feel your pain. I don't call myself a pacifist, but I'd say that “trying to be a moral person is hard” :)
@tripu "It's your responsibility in proportion to the information you could reasonably have..."
so it's the info that makes you responsible not the fact you invested in it and profited from it? So if you give your money to a dude who promises certain profits but doesn't give info, you have less responsibility than if you knowingly invest in Chevron?
If people have died and species have gone extinct from my investment choices I'm not sure the decision-makers losing money, and my shares becoming worthless, is enough to balance that out - particularly if I got years of dividends first. This is a very real thing - people & investment funds right now are making investments that are killing people and driving species extinct. They're getting record-breaking profits from them. Does buying it through an index fund instead of directly change the responsibility of the investor?
> _“The claim is not a policy proposal about what we can do re: socialism, but a statement of the conditions of the world”_
If there's no specific proposal of change, what's the value of the claim? I could make all sorts of claims about reality, all factually true, describing how it seems sub-optimal — but there's little merit in that unless I also point in a specific direction and advocate concrete changes.
(Besides: how is the original claim not implicitly pointing to socialism, broadly defined?)
This is the most common flaw of anti-capitalist discourse, I think. As [Peter Singer says](https://www.goodreads.com/questions/389696-is-capitalism-unethical), _“I'm waiting for someone to, first, describe a better system than capitalism, and second, set out a realistic path for getting from here to there. When that happens, it will be worth thinking harder about the ethical flaws in capitalism. Until then, […] there is a huge amount we can all do, within the current economic system, to make the world a much better place.”_
> _“If we force [the non-working beneficiaries of owning assets] to [pay for] the the negative impacts [environmental degradation, social harms, added costs for other people of those assets] they would not make a profit from those assets”_
Yes, I think that's tautological. If assets are scarce (land, raw materials), just by owning some I am indirectly “adding costs for other people of those assets” because supply shrinks and/or the price raises. But the only way to avoid that is to abolish private property of scarce resources.
Again, it's either socialism (where there's no profit, but also no incentives, slower innovation, and we know how things end up in practice), or the abolition of private property altogether.
> _“There were markets and trade and businesses before there was capitalism”_
Can you mention some concrete examples of what you have in mind, exactly?
@tripu
1/2
"If there’s no specific proposal of change, what’s the value of the claim?"
Why do we want to know about the weather if we can't change it? It's in and of itself good to know the state of the world around us, particularly the parts we are impacting and which will impact us.
"Yes, I think that’s tautological. If assets are scarce (land, raw materials), just by owning some I am indirectly “adding costs for other people of those assets” because supply shrinks and/or the price raises. But the only way to avoid that is to abolish private property of scarce resources."
So your view on OP has moved from 'that's not true', to 'it's a statement of fact about the system which can only be avoided by changes which I don't like.' I don't believe the only answers are the complete abolition of all private property - AFAIK humans have usually had some kind of private property, even if it's only their clothes and personal possession, and it hasn't had the negative impacts of capitalism.
@tripu
2/2
Markets and trade and businesses before capitalism include everything before the 17th Century.
The Silk Road - lots of trade and commerce and riches were made by many people for more than a thousand years. Innovations spread across it including better horses, saddles, stirrups, noodles/pasta, paper, the compass, silk, printing, glass & leather techniques, gunpowder. Roman coins were traded as far as China & Vietnam.
There were trading routes in the Americas that stretched from the Amazon to New York. Corn went back and forth along that route for at least 10,000 years as farmers improved their agricultural technologies. Other goods are also found far from their sources
There are businesses still around that are older than capitalism:
https://www.oldest.org/technology/companies/
There's plenty of ancient cities that existed through trading networks - and plenty of people who died rich without capitalism.
I'm skeptical of the idea that capitalism increases innovation - I think that needs more demonstration.
> _“We don't even begin to account for the negative impacts through current policy!”_
As I said: there's a _quantitative_ argument to be made for (even) higher Pigouvian taxes and (even) more tight regulation. I am probably there with you. But I wouldn't say that “we don't even begin to account” for all that.
> _“Cars produce tons of waste every year and give kids asthma and force people to clean windows, and poison fish, and literally kill and disable people. Those costs are in no way limited to those who own cars. All of those costs plus highway maintenance etc should be included in car registration and gas taxes.”_
Aren't many of those costs included in fuel taxes, carbon taxes, vehicle taxes, road tolls, parking costs, VAT, insurance costs, fines to the industry, etc? In developed countries, we literally treat asthmatic kids, compensate injured pedestrians and dispose of waste with all that public money. Again, I'm not saying the balance is perfect now; probably it isn't. But there is _a lot_ of “accounting for negative impacts” already.
> _“Who is profiting from causing climate change? Capitalists.”_
_…and literally everyone who owns a car, rents cars, or indirectly benefits from their family or their plumber or their kid's teachers using cars all the time to get to places and move goods around._ That's not just “capitalists” — it's everyone.
> _“The problem of the quantitative case is that half of the population would lose wealth equivalent to their responsibility - because there would not be excess profits anymore.”_
Not sure I understand that. Can you elaborate?
@tripu
1/3
"Aren’t many of those costs included in fuel taxes, carbon taxes, vehicle taxes, road tolls, parking costs, VAT, insurance costs, fines to the industry, etc? In developed countries, we literally treat asthmatic kids, compensate injured pedestrians and dispose of waste with all that public money."
USA isn't developed by that standard - asthma & injury costs are the problem of the victim, same as most of the world. No country is disposing of the waste. Tire & brake particulates clog waterways, smog drives climate change. There isn't even technology to clean it up if people wanted to. Taxes pay for some small percent of those costs, but nowhere near the majority, those costs are socialized to all taxpayers including those who can't or don't drive.
@tripu
2/3
“Who is profiting from causing climate change? Capitalists.”
"…and literally everyone who owns a car, rents cars, or indirectly benefits from their family or their plumber or their kid’s teachers using cars all the time to get to places and move goods around. That’s not just “capitalists” — it’s everyone."
Nope! I've owned a car and I lost money on it. Even when I used it for work it was not profitable. For most people cars are expensive luxury items. There are people who make a profit off of them - certain types of professional drivers, truckers but most people lose money on cars. Have you had a car go up in value as you used it?
I don't own a car now but they still cost me time as my bus is delayed by congestion. They cost me money as my taxes subsidize parking and fixing the streets damaged by cars and routes which people walked for thousands of years are now car only so I have to pay a third party for what ancestors did for free.
People who have never driven still suffer.
@tripu 3/3
"The problem of the quantitative case is that half of the population would lose wealth equivalent to their responsibility - because there would not be excess profits anymore.”
Not sure I understand that. Can you elaborate?
As we already established, there are no profits if you have to account for externalities. So people have put retirement funds etc into accounts and investments that become worthless. Right now in California this is a huge issue because people paid for farm land and are used to making money off that farmland, but it depends on unsustainable water use. People are refusing to alter their practice if it ends up costing them money. Similar to the yellow vest protests in France and the dairy farmer protests in the Netherlands and Chevron in Ecuador etc etc. People who have become accustomed to a certain income don't like to stop just because it was harming people.
> _“We as humans can create negative externalities, but that's not an intrinsic part of being human”_
I disagree. Modifying our environment is an intrinsic part of being human. Progress and civilisation are impossible without those externalities.
> _“There's biodiverse sustainable places where people live without negative externalities”_
Name one (that is not a re-enactment of the Stone Age where life is miserable).
> _“I am a capitalist in this view in as much as I own stock and take responsibility for that ownership”_
Personal question, no obligation to answer: where is your wealth, how do you save? Stocks are one way to preserve wealth and move it to the future. But lots of other products and assets work similarly, and are ultimately underpinned by private enterprises and the profit motive. My suspicion is you are more of a capitalist than you think.
> _“I am also allowed to be self-critical. I am in on the scam, I'm getting profits from it, it doesn't make the statement less true. I would like to change the world to make it less true.”_
I am on it too. Only I don't think it's a “scam”.
Again, I can't help getting personal, to better understand your view: what are you doing, specifically, to “change the world” in that way? Moving to one of those “biodiverse sustainable places”? Not having a bank account (so no bank can invest with your money)? Not working for any private company (so your labour doesn't contribute to their profit)? Not consuming any products or services provided by private-capital firms (ie, all of them, save the few produced by a handful of non-profits and cooperatives)…?
@tripu
1/2
me: We as humans can create negative externalities, but that’s not an intrinsic part of being human
you: I disagree. Modifying our environment is an intrinsic part of being human. Progress and civilisation are impossible without those externalities.
Me: Modifying our environment is an intrinsic part of being human. It's up to us whether we do that in positive or negative ways. If it's harming the world in which we live and the prospects for future generations, how is that progress at all? Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and many civilizations have come & gone & some still persist without those negative externalities.
Me: There’s biodiverse sustainable places where people live without negative externalities
You: Name one (that is not a re-enactment of the Stone Age where life is miserable).
Me: The Karuk of Northern California. The Chumash of Southern California. Many other indigenous societies around the world - https://www.theguardian.com/climate-academy/2020/oct/12/indigenous-communities-protect-biodiversity-curb-climate-crisis
@tripu
2/3
Me: I am a capitalist in this view in as much as I own stock and take responsibility for that ownership
You: Personal question, no obligation to answer: where is your wealth, how do you save? Stocks are one way to preserve wealth and move it to the future. But lots of other products and assets work similarly, and are ultimately underpinned by private enterprises and the profit motive. My suspicion is you are more of a capitalist than you think.
Me: Once again private enterprise and the profit motive is not the same as capitalism. I do not mind paying people for their work. I think there's something very satisfying about working and being rewarded for it. Capitalism is getting rent/interests/dividends without having to work.
Traditional ways people saved, and ways I try to save, included literally saving money, buying assets you can use long-term, learning valuable things that one can then teach or use later, providing care that can be reciprocated later, buying tradable goods, etc etc.
@tripu
3/3
You: Again, I can’t help getting personal, to better understand your view: what are you doing, specifically, to “change the world” in that way? Moving to one of those “biodiverse sustainable places”? Not having a bank account (so no bank can invest with your money)? Not working for any private company (so your labour doesn’t contribute to their profit)? Not consuming any products or services provided by private-capital firms (ie, all of them, save the few produced by a handful of non-profits...
Me: Yes. I quit the startup/tech world because spending my life making rich people richer was counterproductive to a better world. Now I mostly work for the public. I currently only invest in ESG funds, and have been investigating switching that $ to sustainable land coops. I work to make where I live more biodiverse and sustainable by learning what works elsewhere & speaking to decisionmakers & voters about it, planting native, bike > car, train > plane, etc. I try to consume less in general.
(Answering it all in a single message, because we're opening too many threads — that's why I'd prefer blog posts or some other format.)
> _“Why do we want to know about the weather if we can't change it?”_
False analogy. We want to know about things we can't control at all (eg, solar flares) to adjust and prepare. But our political organisation and economic system are not like that: we create them. Therefore any criticism is an implicit (or explicit) recipe for change.
You honestly think that [the original post](https://kolektiva.social/@LeftistLawyer/111435265547406276) doesn't contain a prescription for change? If it's not pointing towards some kind of socialism, and “it's in and of itself good to know the state of the world around us” then the original post has the same value as saying, eg, “banknotes are a more efficient way for rich people to stash their money than coins” — ie, not much.
> _“Your view on OP has moved from ‘that's not true’, to ‘it's a statement of fact about the system which can only be avoided by changes which I don't like’.”_
No. OP mentioned _“negative externalities”_ and _“negative impacts”_. There's a definition of “externality” in Economics, and I assumed that. To that I replied that _“if we made more companies pay more for their negative impact, profit margins would shrink. But […] there’s no way we could push all of them entirely out of profit land at once”_, and that _“there would be still some profit to be made”_.
But you mentioned _“added costs for other people of those assets”_, which taken literally would mean that owning _anything_ creates a negative impact because nobody else can own that very thing, and the cost of similar things would increase at the margin. But that's an absurd definition of “externality”, because using that definition everything would cause externalities all the time, and then why use the word at all? To _that_ I replied _“that’s tautological”_ and _“the only way to avoid that is to abolish private property of scarce resources”_.
> _“Markets and trade and businesses before capitalism include everything before the 17th Century”_
Our agreed-upon definition of a “capitalist” is: [_“a person who owns businesses/land/tools that employ other people and who gets the profits while others get set wages”_](https://sfba.social/@thesquirrelfish/111456056081761356), [_“if the majority of their income/wealth is coming from what they own instead of what they do”_](https://sfba.social/@thesquirrelfish/111460747038273056). It's trivial to see that there were capitalists (and therefore capitalism) way before the 17th Century. Anyone who owned way more land that they could work, and who employed a handful labourers or more, was a capitalist: lucky or entrepreneurial individuals, hard-working families, and all the elite (clergy, nobility, etc). The bourgeoisie itself is defined as _“a class of business owners”_ (and merchants) and they emerged before the 17th Century.
You point to ten very old “companies”. Let's examine them in light of our definition. A company _is_ a “business”, and almost all companies _own_ “land/tools”. (Complex enterprises such as wineries, foundries, construction companies and mints _definitely_ own land _and_ tools.) The _only_ way for those companies _not_ to be owned and operated by “capitalists” is that all those assets were the collective property of all their workers; that no-one linked to the company earned more by owning plots of land or machinery and lending them to the company, or by investing their money into the company, than by their manual labour. Do you really think that all the bosses at Nakamura Shaji for more than 700 years earned their living mainly from laying bricks with their own hands, like regular employees? That “the majority of their income/wealth was [not] coming from what they own[ed]”?
> _“Nope! I've owned a car and I lost money on it.”_
Of course you have. That's the norm. Almost every product depreciates with time due to wear and technological progress.
…But that was not the question. You said:
> _“Who is paying for the effects of climate change? Everybody. Who is profiting from causing climate change? Capitalists.”_
Under “paying for the effects” you list things like waste, kids with asthma, and poison fish. ie, we're not paying (only) with money, but also with environmental degradation, sickness, injuries, etc. Yet when you look at the other side of the equation (“profiting”) you can think only of _money_!
Of course you have lost _money_ by owning a car. In a way, everybody does. But then, why do roughly a billion people _choose_ to own cars? Because they reckon they will “profit from [having a car and indirectly contributing to] causing climate change”. Again: it's not just capitalists who benefit. It's virtually everyone — including people who don't own cars themselves.
> _“Have you had a car go up in value as you used it?”_
No. But I have had _my quality of life_ go up in value when I owned a car. Like a billion other people.
None of this is to say that today we account correctly for all the negative externalities of cars, or that current regulation is perfect. But we can't be binary in our assessment of pros and cons, or divide up benefit and cost neatly among people.
> _“Modifying our environment is an intrinsic part of being human. It's up to us whether we do that in positive or negative ways.”_
I personally think it's impossible for humans to modify the environment in a way that is net positive. Humans having never existed in the first place would be a better outcome than whatever we can come up with to “improve” the environment. To me, our collective externalities are necessarily net negative for the planet (that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to keep them as low as possible, of course).
I can't find much information about “the Karuk of Northern California” or “the Chumash of Southern California”. Do you have any information? I bet they rank lower in objective metrics of well-being (life expectancy, physical health, mental health, pain and stress levels, rates of violence, democratic quality, etc) than we do in the developed world.
> _“If you give your money to a dude who promises certain profits but doesn't give info, you have less responsibility than if you knowingly invest in Chevron?”_
I guess I didn't explain myself well. I think there must always be due diligence. Blindly investing in a company or a fund is permissible to the extent we trust regulators and the law, I guess. By “your responsibility in proportion to the information you could reasonably have” I just meant that if you invested honestly and ethically, but were lied to by the managers, you're exonerated from responsibility.
> _“If people have died and species have gone extinct from my investment choices…”_
Man, you're so black-and-white in your analysis. Is something like Chevron, a 144-year-old company with 44K employees, an absolute evil? Didn't they do anything well nor saved any lives?
As I hinted earlier in our conversation: what is the realistic alternative? _Of course_ we have to move to clean energy and to zero violence in the world. In the meantime, Chevron, Exxon, and arms manufacturers are absolutely necessary. If those companies vanished tonight, the world would _not_ be a better place (do I need to convince you of that?). We can perhaps have _less_ of those companies, and we can definitely have them behave better. But right now we _need_ companies like those. Which means _someone_ has to own (a whole lot of tiny pieces of) them. Yes, even if species go extinct and people die. Owning part of a company is one way to steer its course (the other three are working at the company, regulation, and consumer action).
> _“Yes. I quit the startup/tech world because… […] I try to consume less in general.”_
I commend you for acting on your beliefs!
political economy
@tripu I have a smaller character limit, so I have to answer each argument individually.
So 1/?
Me: “Why do we want to know about the weather if we can’t change it?”
You: False analogy. We want to know about things we can’t control at all (eg, solar flares) to adjust and prepare. But our political organisation and economic system are not like that: we create them. Therefore any criticism is an implicit (or explicit) recipe for change.
You honestly think that the original post doesn’t contain a prescription for change? If it’s not pointing towards some kind of socialism, and “it’s in and of itself good to know the state of the world around us” then the original post has the same value as saying, eg, “banknotes are a more efficient way for rich people to stash their money than coins” — ie, not much.
Me: I agree we can change the politics and economy around us. I don't think that a statement of the current conditions implies a specific change.
political economy
@tripu 2/?
Re: definition of externalities vs negative impacts - I'm willing to use the investopedia definition, "An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially incurred or received by that producer. An externality can be both positive or negative and can stem from either the production or consumption of a good or service. The costs and benefits can be both private—to an individual or an organization—or social, meaning it can affect society as a whole."
I was using the negative impacts phrasing in OP as interchangeable with externalities.
I'm convinced the OP claim: "There is no *profit* if we force capitalists to account for the negative impacts we allow them subsidize at our collective expense," is true with either phrasing.
Can you clarify the difference you see here?
political economy
@tripu 3/?
me: “Markets and trade and businesses before capitalism include everything before the 17th Century”
Our agreed-upon definition of a “capitalist” is: “a person who owns businesses/land/tools that employ other people and who gets the profits while others get set wages”, “if the majority of their income/wealth is coming from what they own instead of what they do”. It’s trivial to see that there were capitalists (and therefore capitalism) way before the 17th Century. Anyone who owned way more land that they could work, and who employed a handful labourers or more, was a capitalist: lucky or entrepreneurial individuals, hard-working families, and all the elite (clergy, nobility, etc).
Me: I think you might be confusing feudalism, monarchy, etc with capitalism. Peasants were considered part of the land(ie not allowed to move, had few/no rights), so the majority lived closer to slavery than wage labor. And the ownership of land was passed through war so that's a big distinction.
political economy
@tripu 4/x
you: You point to ten very old “companies”. Let’s examine them in light of our definition. ... The only way for those companies not to be owned and operated by “capitalists” is that all those assets were the collective property of all their workers; that no-one linked to the company earned more by owning plots of land or machinery and lending them to the company, or by investing their money into the company, than by their manual labour. Do you really think that all the bosses at Nakamura Shaji for more than 700 years earned their living mainly from laying bricks with their own hands, like regular employees? That “the majority of their income/wealth was [not] coming from what they own[ed]”?
Me: They're a family business - that's collectively owned. I never said work/labor had to be manual labor. Running a business is working. No I do not think the company made money by renting out their tools or land. I think they were hired to do things and did them and made money from the doing.
political economy
@tripu
“Nope! I’ve owned a car and I lost money on it.”
Of course you have. That’s the norm. Almost every product depreciates with time due to wear and technological progress.
Right - that's why I'm saying cars are not capitalist assets, they're consumer products. Capitalist assets do not generally lose value - you don't expect your stock or land to depreciate with time due to wear and technological progress.
political economy
@tripu
You: Under “paying for the effects” you list things like waste, kids with asthma, and poison fish. ie, we’re not paying (only) with money, but also with environmental degradation, sickness, injuries, etc. Yet when you look at the other side of the equation (“profiting”) you can think only of money!
Of course you have lost money by owning a car. In a way, everybody does. But then, why do roughly a billion people choose to own cars? Because they reckon they will “profit from [having a car and indirectly contributing to] causing climate change”.
Again: it’s not just capitalists who benefit. It’s virtually everyone — including people who don’t own cars themselves.
Me: Disagree. I don't think cars benefit everyone, I think many people only own cars because it's no longer safe or practical for them to get around their communities because so many other people have cars. For those people cars have just become another form of taxation - a toll to use the transportation infrastructure.
@tripu I think that's not as true in the US as in other places, and something like 90% of the stock market is owned by the richest 10%.
I would consider that if the majority of your income/wealth is coming from what you own instead of what you do, you are a capitalist more than a worker. For your specific examples, I would say the person renting out land, shops or their taxi, are part of the old school capitalist class.
Regarding owning stock it depends how forgiving I'm feeling.. I kind of feel like the reason 401k/pension stock plans exist is to spread the blame for actions those companies do on behalf of their mostly rich shareholders. But people have bought into it literally, so I'm willing to say we're responsible for the actions of the companies we own stock in, and therefore capitalists to the degree we give/take that responsibility.