Newsgroups: talk.politics.libertarian,alt.society.anarchy,alt.activism,alt.politics.radical-left,alt.politics.socialism From: jos boersema Subject: Re: Socialism and Capitalism References: <487C3F80.3050903@columbia-center.org> <05bd90bd-11d4-4750-86a0-eb5d1fd056f3@m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com> <0e1c647e-5e9a-4628-895b-4ef0562f09af@o40g2000prn.googlegroups.com> Organization: www.socialism.nl Reply-To: jos boersema Followup-To: alt.politics.socialism ["Followup-To:" header set to alt.politics.socialism.] On 2009-01-03, Fred wrote: > Alex Russell wrote: >> Fred wrote: >>> Michael Price wrote: >>>> On Jul 17, 6:24 pm, jetgraphics wrote: >>>>> If one can separate the evil usurer from the individual who >>>>> absolutely owns himself, his labor and fruits of his labor, it >>>>> will be clearer. >>>> >>>> What evil? People voluntarily agree to pay, are they doing evil >>>> to themselves? >>> >>> Then all con men, (persons), are innocent? >>> >> Con men lie about what they are doing. Lenders tell you your rate of >> interest etc... up front and you make an informed decision. Apples >> and oranges. >> > People voluntarily agree to what the con man wants. Are they not > making an informed decision? Lenders can be honest, but they are not > the ones we were talking about. Lenders, especially usurers, are > likely to be dishonest. In the recent mortgage scandal for instance, > the contracts were far to complex for the borrowers to understand. > The lenders knew this and hoped to reclaim the houses after the > borrowers defaulted and the lenders foreclosed, keeping the payments > and getting the house back. They did this often, it was a scam. It > was a con. Only when the value of the properties in question fell > and they didn't get the profits they expected, did the lenders cry > loudly enough to get government to throw more money at them. > In an economy that is in trouble because so much of the wealth is > controlled by so few people, giving more money to the rich is not > going to solve the problem. It's like trying to put out a fire by > throwing gasoline of it. > The money doesn't circulate and the economy grinds slowly to a halt. > Plentiful money systems are more healthy in this respect. The money > circulates and there is no advantage to hoarding it. It's a much > more stable system and it's also egalitarian. What makes understanding money and investment, lending, usury, so difficult is that there is no "evil" being committed if one person has money, gives it to someone else on the free and known condition that it will be payed back with interest (profit). Both persons agree to this activity, both expect to profit from it and often will, nobody is lying to anyone (usually, though that does happen). It looks just like any normal trade. An activity benefitting both, done in clarity and freedom. Still: it is what feeds most/all evil in the world. For people who do not think beyond the obvious this will never become clear. One might assume that less then 1 in a thousand people thinks clearly, and perhaps less then 1 in a million ever applies that thinking to economics. Therefore the world continues to be in misery for several thousands of years of organized society allowing the lending for profit practice. To make it more complicated still: lending on interest to gain access to objects earlier is not the problem. Lending on high interest is something that should die out on its own because it is unattractive, so that neither is the problem. These forms of lending will probably always at best have a marginal effect on society as a whole, which can be a positive effect. When these types of lending become a real pain, it is probably because there are other problems that cause a painful wealth disparity, which problems get carried into the area of lending for goods. So what's the problem ? Business investment. To supply a would-be business dictator to start or expand an operation that attracts labor, with a view to keep the share of profit from that labor as low as possible, and the share of profits of the business dictator and its financier as high as possible. If you think precisely about it, you will see it is a run-away cycle. It becomes bigger and bigger, until it swallows indeed the entire world, the entire solar system for that matter ... (should humanity colonize it). But isn't it true that these "workerslaves" also agree freely to work in that business ? Isn't this another form of free and profitable trade for all sides ? Can't these workerslaves set up their own free companies instead ? What reason do they have for needing to work for the business dictator that is going to extort and abuse them ? Apparently there is neither any "evil" in this, because the workerslaves are not forced. They are free to do something else, like ... ... like ... uhm ... The workerslaves really aren't as free as they appear to be. First of all they have no land, meaning they are not independent. If they had land they could shut society out and live off of it, trade the surplus, break out of the business money lenders influence. Mind you the banks, the greatest money lenders, they typically acquire more and more land, as an investment vehicle. But can't they just start their own businesses: work for a workerslave farm for some time, put funds to the side, start up their own business in which they are free. If they work well and get costumers: they are in business. That can and does happen. It is, however, not the type of industry that is most profitable for the financiers. So guess who will get the expansion and start-up credits most: workerslave farms. Guess with whom the other workerslave farms prefer to do business with: collegue worker slave farms. Not only are the bosses of other workerslave farms the same type of people as the bosses of the other workerslave farms, and they share the same type of investors - perhaps even the exact some investors - all workerslave bosses have an interest in seeing their way of doing things replicated and ruling the day. The more workerslave farms dominate the economy, the more opportunity and so on there is for the workerslave farm bosses, and the workerslave farm financiers. There is both a naturally social, a prudent economic, and a prudent political reason to try to dominate this type of business venture, and to choke off free more egalitarian business ventures. Remember that business investment is a self-enforcing loop that runs out of control ? The reason is that business dictator and workerslave financiers do get richer then their fairer counterparts, who spread money around between those that worked for it. This additional profit compared to fair people can be invested in the same way, yielding yet more more profits, who can be invested in the same way, yielding yet moer more more profits, who can be invested in the same way, ... Until the whole world is in the clutches of the financiers who funded workerslave farms. business profit = revenue - costs In any decent company the income of all is on the profit side. But not so for workerslave farms: the income of the workerslaves is on the costs side of the business, because the business dictator does not identify with the workerslaves. For a business dictatorship and its financier the workers are cost-factors, who block their goal of becoming richer. The workerslaves are sometimes unruly animals of burden or machines that have a nasty habbit of demanding more fuel then they strictly need to run at maximum effeciency for the business. Then there is a nasty effect which is the same as the mentioned run away effect that make workerslave farm investers richer until they dominate: those few people who turn around from these evil - they are eventually quite evil, even when it starts out innocent - ways, every good deed they do costs them money. They start losing wealth: fair trade costs money. Those good people that turn around lose their ground in the investment game, after having played this for profit business investment carrousel to fund workerslave farms - the more abusive the more profits (why are factories ofshored to more abusive workerslave farms?). They lose ground, become weak players, and can eventually disappear, until they start re-investing in workerslave farms. business profit = revenue - costs Since a long time there have been people who believed that they could win at this game by playing nice. By investing in good causes, by setting up businesses that behaved nice, etc etc. It does eventually never work out. Could it work: absolutely it could. But you need a strong and concerted effort, and a loyal costumer base. In practice that rarely exists, and costumers are too self centered to notice that if others suffer weak wages, then they too could eventually suffer these weak wages if they buy at those workerslave farms, which stimulates there existence even more. People are usually not willing to pay a premium to a business with higher prices. In part this is because it is not apparent where the higher prices go to: is it just even worse high income for the business dictators, or does it go to the workerslaves ? How can the costumers know. They could be made to know, but that rarely happens, and if it does it is at the fringes. The for profit money power effectively rules society. Not just because of several ill effects and the evil people that will come to rule it, also because of the weakness in the population to search for justice. Note how the labor market does in fact stimulate well behaving companies, because workerslaves will prefer to work under higher shares of profit and good conditions. Conclusion: the whole thing is rather fluid and guilt does not only lie with the money lenders or the law. However in practice, as is evidenced by reality, the for profit money power rules the world. Since they are succeeding, this rule has to be a rule of evil, because evil is profitable. It is evil to invest in the largest most abusive workerslave farms, but it is profitable. The evil starts out as an innocent business investment deal. It ends after centuries or millenia with a world dictatorship run by the most devious and evil people we have. Not only because of the ill natural effects of for profit business investment, also because of the general lazyness of the common people to effectively fight it and sacrifice money to stimulate better businesses. And because of the lazyness of the public to understand economics and resolve the problem through law enforcement: prohibiting for profit business investment credit outright. That would cut off the problem. All that would be needed is an alternative investment system. Then the public doesn't have to fight as hard the unfair trade by being a consious consumer. That political alternative seems the easiest way out of the problem. It means prohibiting the apparently innocent free trade in business investment money, which is apparently done in the best interest of both parties making a known trade. It means outlawing as evil what appears to be an innocent and profitable act of freedom.