> _“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.
> _“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 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.
political economy & traffic violence
“Have you had a car go up in value as you used it?”
You: 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.
Me: Your quality of life goes up now that you have a car. My quality of life goes down as traffic noise drowns out bird song, and neighborhood conversation, and never meeting my great grandmother because she was killed crossing the street. Quality of life measurements are hard to describe, but it would take a pretty big improvement to outweigh the costs.. When a kid dies it hurts a lot of people - not just immediate family but parents of kids similar aged feel it, the kids friends, other members of the community, etc. Your claim of net benefit is unsupported.
political economy
@tripu
"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 used California indigenous peoples - Chumash and Karuk - as examples because this has been really well documented. California indigenous peoples had systems of healthy fire (among other practices) which created what was described as a paradise by arriving colonizers. The colonizers stopped those practices and the forests and other ecosystems became less healthy - megafires, clogged underbrush, pest prevalence, etc. Now we are currently working to begin those healthy practices again with guidance of the Karuk who kept that traditional knowledge alive.
political economy
@tripu
You: 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.
Me: they've been colonized and pushed off their traditional lands - historically they were doing way better on all those measures than the colonists who pushed them off. This is one of the reasons I keep mentioning Chevron & oil companies - they are making the people who still live in these sustainable communities sick and killing them directly.
Saying 'oh the people who are not acting like capitalists aren't as healthy as capitalists', when they're actually being poisoned by capitalists... And that's happening in the developed world too - here in the USA with oil pipelines through reservations for example.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/sep/16/amazon-pollution-chevron-money
political economy
@tripu
Me: “If people have died and species have gone extinct from my investment choices…”
You: 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?
Me: It's not black and white, it's life and death. Like literally people are dying. As far as I know there's no attempts to save lives or mission to help people or anything positive here. If those 44,000 didn't work for Chevron they'd almost definitely be doing something that would be better for the world and the people around them. Things don't have to be absolute evil to be a bad use of time and resources. Drug cartels employ a lot of people, make a lot of people happy, and make a lot of people money and have been around a long time - that doesn't mean they're a net good. And I think drug cartels are better for the world than oil companies, but that's another tangent.
political economy
You: 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)
Me: The world would absolutely be a better place if those companies vanished tonight. I don't think working at a company is an effective way to influence companies like these. Consumer action and regulation are failing in letting these companies continue.
> _“‘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?”_
Imagine someone who owns shares of the most sustainable and ethical company possible. They manage to live off of those dividends (after paying all taxes). They are 100% a capitalist.
What negative externalities is that person causing merely by having helped launch that company and by contributing to keeping it afloat?
Or: imagine someone who owns a plot of land. They pay their taxes and keep the property well maintained. They rent it at a very reasonable price, and the land is being used for the most edifying and innocuous activities you can dream of. The tenants are happy with the deal, and so is the wider community. The owner manages to live off of that business (because they're making a profit). They are 110% a capitalist.
What negative externalities is the owner causing (not the tenants, not their employees, not their customers: _the owner_) that they're not roughly paying for already?
> _“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.”_
So what? I'm not confusing those ideas. And they're not mutually exclusive. Didn't feudal lords own _stuff_ (and yes, perhaps also people) and lived off of that property? Aren't rich members of royal families (ie, the monarchy) today also “capitalists”?
> _“The ownership of land was passed through war so that's a big distinction”_
How so? Nowhere in our definition we mentioned the origin of that property as relevant. When a country nowadays conquests new land by war, and an autocrat doles out the spoils to the oligarchy or to businessmen, aren't those new owners, and their heirs, “capitalists” just because their assets happened to be “passed through war”?
> _“They're a family business - that's collectively owned”_
Again: nowhere in our definition we excluded groups of relatives from the definition of “capitalists”. Someone who owns a company is a capitalist, but three siblings who collectively own a similar company are not?
The richest person on Earth is not a single person, but [a father and his five children (and previously also a grandfather)](https://www.forbes.com/profile/bernard-arnault/?list=billionaires). Ditto about [the 8th richest ~~person~~ family](https://www.forbes.com/profile/carlos-slim-helu/?list=billionaires). They're definitely “family businesses”. Aren't they capitalists?
> _“I never said work/labor had to be manual labor. Running a business is working.”_
Most of the richest capitalists in people's minds are running their own businesses. ie, they are “working” for them. They're being “paid” for that “labour” in shares (that go up in value). Are they not capitalists?
You see? That's why I was so obsessive about honing the definition of “capitalist” and about giving you every opportunity to fine-tune it to your liking. But even after agreeing on a definition you have to carve out strange caveats about “land obtained through war”, “family businesses” and owners who also “work running the business” to argue against my arguments — which has the side-effect of excluding from the definition of “capitalist” a lot of definitely-capitalist people such as Nazi and Russian businessmen, rich family sagas, and rich founders who are still running the businesses they created.
> _“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.”_
Too many cars and bad road planning is the result of coordination problems and bad incentives. Like so many other issues. That doesn't mean that people who decide to own a car don't benefit from owning one. Once the situation is what it is, of course owning a car is a net benefit for the vast majority of people who make that decision. Two or three billion people don't opt in _voluntarily_ to a tax or a toll — unless they deem the benefits will outweigh those costs. Thus, a net benefit for them.
> _“Your quality of life goes up now that you have a car. My quality of life goes down as traffic noise drowns out bird song, and neighborhood conversation, and never meeting my great grandmother because she was killed crossing the street. Quality of life measurements are hard to describe.”_
I think the best measure of quality (and quantity) of life we have is [QALY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year). I propose we use that.
> _“When a kid dies it hurts a lot of people - not just immediate family but parents of kids similar aged feel it, the kids friends, other members of the community, etc.”_
Again, I think you lack the imagination to list _all_ (positive) impacts of cars.
You evoke very touching scenes (grandmothers and kids being killed) to argue against cars, but fail to imagine how many people would be dead, sick, or never born in the first place if not for cars. Ambulances are cars and they save lives. Private cars work as ambulances, too. Many people get an education, access distant jobs, date other people, spend time with friends, travel to other countries, go to meetings — using cars. Many people are simply happier because their car enables them to do X, and that _also_ is “quality of life”.
> _“Your claim of net benefit is unsupported”_
Then so is your claim of a net bad.
This is what I (and most people) see: a) most families in the world who can afford a car decide to own one; b) society values cars as a whole; c) no government ever _dreamt_ of banning cars or even suggesting to do so; d) there's a positive correlation between time (History progressing) and development and prosperity indices on the one hand, and rate of car ownership on the other (ie, more cars per capita ↔ higher average QALY). What you suggest flies against all these observations.
> _“I used California indigenous peoples - Chumash and Karuk - as examples because this has been really well documented. California indigenous peoples had systems of healthy fire (among other practices) which created what was described as a paradise by arriving colonizers. The colonizers stopped those practices and the forests and other ecosystems became less healthy - megafires, clogged underbrush, pest prevalence, etc. Now we are currently working to begin those healthy practices again with guidance of the Karuk who kept that traditional knowledge alive.”_
“Healthy fires” sound great, and I agree it's probably something they did (do) better. But it's telling that that's the one thing you can cite to support your claim that those people live better than we do in developed countries. When discussing human well-being (measuring QALYs), what weigh should we give to the section “better management of wildfires”?
Much more than “healthy fires”, I'm interested in trivial and inconsequential indicators such as: do the Chumash and Karuk know what an appendicitis is and how to treat it, or do people die of that? (Remember: _“when a kid dies it hurts a lot of people - not just immediate family but…”_. Do Chumash and Karuk children die less, or more often than children in Switzerland? Shouldn't that be METRIC NUMBER ONE?) Or: can they all read and write, and are they keeping a record of their knowledge that any member can access? Are they democratic? Do both sexes have the same rights under the law? Antibiotics? Anaesthesia? Birth control?
> _“Historically they were doing way better on all those measures than the colonists who pushed them off.”_
I very much doubt that. Almost by definition, peoples who have technology, wealth, and institutions good enough _to travel to another continent, explore unknown lands and use those new resources_ are definitely “doing way better” than peoples who are stuck in the same patch of land for centuries and who don't stand a chance against those “colonisers”.
But admitting that was so, for the sake of the argument: what about _now_? Do you think that if the native Americans had never seen a European person, they would be by now sending probes out of the galaxy, screening human embryos for diseases, and organised in liberal democracies?
> _“They are making the people who still live in these sustainable communities sick and killing them directly. Saying 'oh the people who are not acting like capitalists aren't as healthy as capitalists', when they're actually being poisoned by capitalists.”_
The miserable conditions I mentioned (a child dying of a disease that is routinely cured in the West, illiteracy, etc) are mostly orthogonal to Western companies polluting their environment. Again: if Chevron hadn't ever set foot in there, do you really think those people would be by now living on average well into their eighties like we do?
> _“Like literally people are dying”_
Yes. Also literally, people are saving their lives.
> _“As far as I know there's no attempts to save lives or mission to help people or anything positive here”_
You're wrong. Chevron's stated mission is [“to develop the affordable, reliable, ever-cleaner energy that enables human progress”](https://www.chevron.com/who-we-are/culture/the-chevron-way) because [“access to energy helps improve lives by driving human progress and enabling the benefits of modern society”](https://www.chevron.com/who-we-are). We can be as cynical about that as we want, and of course I don't take that at face value. But even if their energy is not remotely as “clean” as we would wish, it's true that _not having their energy at all_ would be worse than the current situation.
> _“The world would absolutely be a better place if [companies like Chevron] vanished tonight”_
With all due respect: I think you lack the imagination to visualise how your life would become a nightmare if fossil-fuel companies vanished tonight. [Fossil fuel accounts for 84% of the energy produced in the world](https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix#how-much-of-global-energy-comes-from-low-carbon-sources). Eighty-four percent. Imagine living with _less than a fifth_ of the energy you have today, and make sure you account for all the products and services you consume, either directly or indirectly. And you and I would be among the lucky ones: [the energy mix in poor countries is even more skewed towards fossil fuels](https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix#which-countries-get-the-most-energy-from-low-carbon-sources). It would take _decades_ to get renewables up to the task of making up for that, our lives would be miserable in the meantime, and the whole process would be further delayed by immense humanitarian crises and wars that would surely happen as a consequence. As it is today, [fuel prices rising leads to famine](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/20/global-energy-crisis-famine-production); just imagine if there were _no fossil fuel at all_ (ie, if Chevron and the like didn't even exist).
political economics
@tripu I'll answer the primary thing, and if you want to respond iis a microblog service - please limit to microblog sized posts & conventions.
Capitalism removes property from the control of local users, sending profits to remote, often anonymized, owners. Even in the best case you describe it incentivizes neglect and raises prices. It further fosters race to the bottom treatment of workers and communities in a race for shareholder value. A person managing a business can go to jail or get personal fines for how they manage a business. A shareholder gets profits while the management gets jail time - this is why I make the distinction between working for an owning a business.
In your terms capitalism, communism, and feudalism are indistinguishable.
Colonists were persecuted refugees from Europe, fleeing starvation, not fortunate explorers.
Pre-colonial Americans were better fed, healthier, etc than Europeans - explorer accounts agree on that.
Car/gas doesn't fit. Drop topic or split convo.
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.