> _“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?
@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.
> _“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.
> _“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?