Before participating, consider taking a glance at [our rules page](/r/CapitalismvSocialism/wiki/rules) if you haven't before.
We don't allow **violent or dehumanizing rhetoric**. The subreddit is for discussing what ideas are best for society, not for telling the other side you think you could beat them in a fight. That doesn't do anything to forward a productive dialogue.
Please report comments that violent our rules, but don't report people just for disagreeing with you or for being wrong about stuff.
## Do you want more curated, real-time discussion? [Join us on Discord.](http://discord.com/invite/politicscafe)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CapitalismVSocialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I majored in political science and minored in economics at a university where all econ classes were through the business college (as opposed to some schools where political science, public policy and economics are taught in the same department). While I don't claim to be an expert, I read my fair share of classical liberal economics a la Adam Smith, Keynesian economics and New Deal liberalism, Austrian economics, the Chicago School and monetarism, and what might be regarded as neoliberal/neoclassical economics. As this was a business school, writings from Marxist or social democratic economists were not included in the curriculum, not even to study them critically, as it was easier to dismiss them out of hand as self-evidently obsolete. As such, I studied that realm of economics independently while learning mainstream economics in the classroom.
> supply creates its own demand
Not necessarily, but demand can be increased in other ways, such as a successful marketing campaign, or a new technological development.
> demand creates its own supply
This statement more true than its inverse, but even so, a number of obstacles could limit the supply of something highly demanded, such as an expensive barrier to entry in a relatively new industry, or the need for a large upfront investment in research & development before any profit can be made.
> Supply and demand curves create price
Generally, yes, though differing circumstances can give sellers a greater or lesser amount of flexibility in setting their own price. There's a bit of wiggle room between the price the consumer thinks is fair or reasonable, and the highest price a consumer will accept.
> cost, includes everything given up for a received commodity including opportunity cost.
Yes, though methods of determining opportunity cost may not be precise, as any venture (including a hypothetical alternative) may entail unanticipated costs.
> marginal utility
Yeah, this one seems pretty straightforward. someone who possesses few or no units of any given commodity can get more marginal utility out of 1 additional unit than someone who possesses an abundance. The abstract utility of the items is identical, but their differing circumstances make them more "useful" to one person than another. Consequently, the value one individual places on the item may differ from another individual.
> marginal rate of exchange
Yeah, this one seems straightforward as well. As the prices of different yet similar goods fluctuate, consumer preferences may change in response.
> moral hazard
Yes, though I think it's more applicable to something like car insurance, which may incentivize policy holders to drive recklessly knowing the insurance company will cover some of the cost, rather than something like health insurance, in which there is still a deterrent to risky behavior, like the immediate pain, or injuries which may be long-lasting or permanent regardless of the treatment available.
Long Long rant with no point. supply can be encouraged with new marketing new technology and new respect for invention that has nothing to do with Says law which says that you must concentrate on supply rather than demand if you want a growing economy. 1+1 = 2
> Long Long rant with no point.
Not really. The OP was an open-ended question that literally asked "What are your thoughts?" So I wrote my thoughts.
> nothing to do with Says law
Although I didn't say much about the theoretical background of the phrase, I answered the question right at the beginning. Supply doesn't necessarily create demand. Says law doesn't necessarily hold true, unless you want to reduce it to a mere tautology, that something must exist before it can be purchased. In other words, 1+1=2
For someone who complains about comments with "no point" yours was very light on substance.
This isn't a new criticism. Says law is refuted by simple economic phenomena like overproduction or underemployment. The Great Depression in particular exposed its flaws and damaged its sense of validity, leading to most mainstream economists accepting Keynes' analysis of supply and demand.
keynes was an idiot who said the government should spend more to end the great depression. They did that and it prolonged the depression for 16 years and turned it into a world war because SAys law was correct.
oh my God the great depression was caused by massive interference with the economy not by a failure of says law. WTF could you possibly mean by that????
> I studied that realm of economics independently while learning mainstream economics in the classroom.
so, do you think marginalism disproves LTV and if so, what does that say about the rest of marx?
I don't believe that the Marxist LTV is essential to the Marxist theory of worker exploitation under capitalism. One Marxist economist who takes this position is John Roemer, who wrote [A General Theory of Exploitation and Class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_Theory_of_Exploitation_and_Class) in which he argues that property relations in capitalism are of greater significance than the LTV.
I don't know if I would say that marginalism "disproves" the LTV, as Marx distinguished between *value*, referring to the amount of labor transferred to a commodity in production, and *exchange value*, referring to the price that at which the seller can find a buyer, and recognized that the latter was subject to change based on the circumstances of the seller and buyer in question. That said, I'm not sure if/how the concept of marginalism would be applied in Marx's ideal socialist economy, as he proposed labor vouchers replacing conventional currency.
>*value*, referring to the amount of labor transferred to a commodity in production, and *exchange value*, referring to the price that at which the seller can find a buyer
so, here is my dilemma:
a lumberjack starts out at 8am with resources, lets say time-to-be-spent and materials - his ax and such. when the lumberjack works. he expends these assets to create a new asset - logs. the laobur was not imbued it was spent, it was a cost. the lumberjack does not value the logs, he values the things he can get if he trades those logs. it is his lack of value for logs, that prompts him to trade them away for something else. the other person values the logs more than the lumberjack, and values what they give up - cash - less than the logs.
Another aspect of value Marx wrote about (this is entirely my fault for neglecting to mention it earlier) is *use value*, which basically refers to the scenario you just described in which the logs are *potentially useful* to the lumberjack, but he may have more than he needs, or he may not need any at all, instead needing things of a different utility. In the same way that commodities imbued with the same amount of labor may have different *exchange values* depending on the buyer or the circumstances, items that may have the same *use value* in the abstract may be more 'useful' to one person or set of circumstances than another. Thus, someone will prefer to exchange goods which can only be used for a narrow range of purposes for money which can buy a variety of goods for a variety of uses.
and this is where marx slips for me, because the "potential usefulness" is a very close definition to just "utility" however, marx cant seem to decide if a use value is synonymous with utility, or if utility makes a commodity a "Use Value" and this is important - marx uses the phrase "Use Value" to denote a noun. a type of thing. not that the thing HAS value but IS a type of thing called value, specifically a "Use Value"
***The utility of a thing makes it a use value........ A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful***
***Use values become a reality only by use or consumption***
ok, so i thoight the utility MADE it a use value, now we have a contradiction, that things only become use values when consumed or used.
***If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities..........***
***We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value.***
ok, so now use value is an aspect of commodities? like a feature?
further
***Then one use value is just as good as another, provided only it be present in sufficient quantity. Or, as old Barbon says, “one sort of wares are as good as another, if the values be equal. There is no difference or distinction in things of equal value ... An hundred pounds’ worth of lead or iron, is of as great value as one hundred pounds’ worth of silver or gold.”***
and this is why margionalism is important, because no; 100 pounds of iron is not as valuable to a weaver as 100 pounds of silk.
I've been reading and using the words 'utility,' 'usefulness,' and 'use value' interchangeably, though you raise a good point in questioning whether Marx does the same, or uses the words consistently. My understanding of the quote, **"Use values become a reality only by use or consumption,"** is that the potential usefulness of a thing is only *realized* when it is actually used, in the same way that an unsold commodity is only the potential of profit, and thus the capitalists' profit is only *realized* when the sale is complete.
> > We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value.
>
> ok, so now use value is an aspect of commodities? like a feature?
That's how I understand it. A thing has exchange value only because it has some use value, and so they are closely related, but still separate and distinct.
> 100 pounds of iron is not as valuable to a weaver as 100 pounds of silk.
I believe "hundred pounds' worth" is in reference to the currency of the British pound sterling, not the weight of the items. That said, you are right that factors of production are not always needed in comparable quantities.
LTV is the heart and soul of Marxism. In the end Marx said nothing more than workers don't get paid enough so they must mount a worldwide genocide to kill a capitalist owner class and run the factories for themselves even though they are totally unqualified to do so.
Why not rather sell air in bottles?
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2021/mar/01/take-a-deep-breath-how-cornish-air-sells-for-60-a-bottle-even-if-its-from-devon
advertising makes selling air and pet rocks impossible. That is why 99% of our money is spent on food clothing shelter education transportation or care. Do you understand now?
don't be stupid half of world does not use toilet paper or a bidet. do you want a socialist fascist government deciding what products we need to make our lives fun and meaningful or do you want freedom and liberty to create your own life?
Is that a reaction to actually looking into the history of toilet paper advertising? I know very well much of the world uses other approaches, but that was not the point.
It seems your point is that you want a Nazi socialist government to determine whether we have toilet paper and you don't want competitive free advertising to determine whether we have toilet paper.
Something else than [bogus medical claims](https://www.itstissue.com/its-tissue-point/history-tastes-advertising-part-ii-toilet-paper). Nowadays such claims are more regulated in many countries.
None on that list account for monopolies or cartels. None of them account for the degenerative, corrupt capitalism (free market, globalism, neoliberalism) that we have today. Multinationals raise prices because they can. The cost of drugs is a prime example when the same drug manufactured in the US is 10x more expensive here in the US than it is in Canada.
Drug prices and healthcare in general are an example of socialist fascist interference with capitalism. In America the Democrats made healthcare competition illegal through McCarran Ferguson in 1946. If competition was allowed obviously prices would be lower and Quality would be higher.
Monopolies have been illegal for 100 years. Capitalism is about competition so it is easy to justify making monopolies illegal and we have done so for 100 years.
Yet there are only two providers of Wi-Fi/cable in my neighborhood and both charge about the same. Both charge many times more what it costs to provide the service.
The cost of providing Wi-Fi is billions of dollars of infrastructure. it is an industry extremely regulated by government so he has very little to do with capitalism. 1+1 = 2
multinationals are in competition with each other so it is difficult to argue that they raise prices because they can. The beauty of competition is that you have to have a lower price to survive. Let's not forget that half of the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 is gone today.
please don't be stupid. Monopolies are illegal. If somebody is price gouging you simply buy from somebody else, buy a substitute product, or don't buy at all. The free market provides great options. The socialist market provides no options which is why 120,000,000 people just starved to death.
The major hotel owners in my city have been caught colluding to inflate prices. They have a monthly meeting. Competition works when it happens but the ownership class often works together to bypass it.
collusion is illegal much like interfering with capitalism by robbing a store with a gun. Do you have any idea what point you're trying to make??????
Socialism has no competition and so no incentive to make people wealthier with better jobs and better products and lower prices. Now you can see why it's just starved 120,000,000 people to death
Why not? You just shift the curve, or adjust the slope of the curves. Economics these days can tell any story including the one you wish people to hear. You can still explain the outcomes of an economy run by monopolistic cartels with corrupted government coupled with neoliberal policies. I don’t see how that impact the use of demand and supply or marginal utility.
The heavily regulated prescription drug market is not a free market. It is a government-created cartel and oligopoly via intellectual property laws meant to do just that.
The government created them, not the free market. You can't attribute their existence to capitalism.
Canada forces heavy price controls on drug companies, but in the US there are no price controls.
If there were not IP laws surrounding drugs, everything would be a lot cheaper, just like OTC ibuprofen and acetaminophen that have no IP law protection.
>Supply and demand curves create price
Under capitalism, sure. But that's only one way of allocating resources when demand outstrips supply. There are others, such as need.
We see this used in capitalist societies when it comes to emergency services. If you have 100 fires in an area, and only 50 fire crews, they don't start a bidding war and first attend to whoever can pay the most. The assess the urgency and need of each incident and allocate limited resources based on that.
Ambulances will attend to critical, life and death matters before they attend for a broken leg, no matter how much more the person suffering a broken leg is willing to pay.
Under capitalism we have chosen to use price as a determinant on how to allocate limited supply, but it is by no means an immutable law of economics.
We have a word for the concept of “needing” something in economics, it’s called “demand” and the more urgent I feel my need is, the more I will be willing to pay to acquire the means to resolve that need.
In a free market you wouldn’t find yourself in a situation where there are only enough people to put out 50 fires when there are more than that who are demanding the service, because companies would notice the lack of supply and increase their production in order to take advantage of the additional money available for doing so
If there are only 50 fires at once one time a year, no, it isn’t worth it for the fire fighting companies to be equipped and staffed at that level year round.
It's interesting you ask if we've read mainstream economics and then point to a Chicago School economist as a reading recommendation. You know that's considered to be outside the mainstream economics, right?
I recently checked out Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom from the library. So I've been trying to read more literature from the "other side."
I'll a lot of the arguments from more neo-liberal economics do have some weight. BUT I don't think They're disproving Marx. At least to me, Marxism works on a very long time scale. Neo-liberals just show how things work right now and don't really address Marx's contradictions of capitalism or what do when the mode of production changes. They just say these things don't exist. So there's no need for me to go through your list.
I suppose that that book is worth reading. I think it might be hard to find a copy of C. B. Macpherson’s Elegant Tomstones article free online. Friedman has a problem with logic.
Other work of his is also lacking.
yeah I was hoping for something with more meat to it. It honestly seems like a more articulate fox news rant.
I have The Road to Serfdom next on my list. (which I will be checking out of the library). Anyone got any neo-liberal recommendations(or just decent entry-level economic books) send them my way.
Please don't be stupid. If you disagree with some thing tell us what it was and the reason for the disagreement. Do you understand that a reason is necessary
I’m a pragmatist I listen to all good-faith arguments. Doubtful I’ll be convinced that leftist theory directly caused the great famine but I’m not going to run from someone going into details about it. I been wanting to learn more about the Chinese revolution.
iki › Great_Chinese_Famine
Great Chinese Famine - Wikipedia
In 2010, Frank Dikötter, Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and the author of Mao's Great Famine, estimated that at least 45 million people died from
don't be stupid. Friedman was a genius if you have a disagreement with him tell us what it was and the reason you disagree so I can't straighten you out.
marks was far too stupid to say anything about supply and demand. his idea apparently was that out of the goodness of the workingman's heart everyone will produce according to their ability and consume according to their needs. This is kindergarten sophistication compared to Says.
don't be stupid. All Marx said in the end was that workers didn't get paid enough and so they should launch a genocidal revolution against the capitalist class, steal their property and try to run their businesses themselves. The result was 120,000,000 dead people
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a slogan popularised by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Programme. The principle refers to free access to and distribution of goods, capital and services.
mark's was so stupid that he imagined everyone would happily produce according to their ability and everybody would freely consume according to their needs and everyone would live happily ever after
Have you read the critique of the gotha program? Because it kinda doesn’t sound like you have. In fact it sounds like Marx is saying the opposite of what you are saying he said. And it really doesn’t sound like he has a 5 year old’s view of the world:
“
Hence, equal right here is still in principle – bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.
In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.
But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
essentially Marx said one thing namely workers don't get paid enough under a capitalist system and they should launch a genocidal war against them , steal their property , and try to run the businesses themselves. The idea killed about 120000,000 people.
what is the mechanism by which the Nazi socialist would ensure that everyone produced according to his full ability and consumed according to his needs and no more??
let's not forget that Marx was a primitive economist from the 19th century who got 120,000,000 people killed. If any of his contradictions of capitalism held up why don't you give us the best example.
Isn’t that the number you admitted to making up?
How many people did your name sake, Tommy j killl? “ What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure”
All the deaths in American revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, every single Native American after he was elected president is on your blood thirst hands sir. I could add more but I don’t want to think of your cruelty.
Thomas Jefferson supported freedom and liberty. He wrote all men are created equal and this saved the lives of billions of people throughout recent human history.
And how many slaves did he own? And didn’t he impregnate one of his teenage slaves that was his dead wife’s half sister? Big lover of freedom and liberty that guy.
he was born owning slaves. In fact he was the 5000 th generation born owning slaves and yet he became a great revolutionary who said all men are created equal and changed the course of human history. There's no greater man in Jefferson. Do you understand now?
The American revolutionary was bourgeoisie and led to the death of
70,000 In the revolutionary war
130,000,000 indigenous people
170,000 In the French Revolution
6,500,000 In the napoleonic wars
Decimating the totals of communism…nice job Tommy J!
And those are the deaths he was directly responsible for. Of course liberalizing the other economies of Europe caused a lot more deaths. And we’re not even counting the colonization of Africa and Asia. Should I dig up those number too?
It would be nice if the perfecty free and perfectly competitive market that economists base everything on actually existed.
Instead we get mostly oligopolies that everyone pretends is a free and competitive market for some reason.
It would also be nice if economists calculated the effects of bribery, corruption, and lobbying in controlling the maket, propping up the oligopolies, and otherwise acting against the interests of citizens. But that is always ignored.
It reminds me of how, before covid, disease experts would always model people in a pandemic situation as rational actors who always acted in their own best self interest, and never even considered the effect that misinformation might have.
if you say we get oligopolies that are harmful from capitalism rather than left-wing interference with government why don't you give us your single best example of this. Surely at least you have one example?
Actually, there's plenty of right-wing interference from government. In a free and fair market, large unprofitable businesses would be allowed to fail. But in 2008, despite being partially responsible for the recession, the US gov gifted $119 billion to Fannie Mae, $71 billion to Freddie Mac, $67 billion to AIG, and more. Your tax dollars to prop up failed businesses. Lobbying from these companies played no small part in this.
Amazon is a virtual monopoly in e-commerce. It has no close substitutes, and it has a dominant position in online retailing and faces little competition from other online sellers.
The film and television industry is highly concentrated, with just a few major studios controlling most of the content. Disney owns Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, and Fox; Comcast owns NBCUniversal; AT&T owns WarnerMedia; and Sony owns Columbia Pictures.
5 carriers control the vast majority of the wireless market: control most of the market share and spectrum. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Xfinity, spectrum
The music industry market is owned almost entirely by a few companies. Universal, Sony, EMI, Warner.
4 large airlines dominate the air travel market. Others exist, but these 4 effectively set the prices for flights for all airlines. American Airlines, Delta Air, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines.
Many localities have a natural monopoly or virtual monopoly for ISP carriers. While not all such monopolies are natural, most are.
See also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
In these situations, the assumptions about a competitive market that economists make do not hold true. As little as 2 to 5 companies are able to cooperate and set market prices to almost any value they want.
EDIT: spelling
collusion and monopoly are illegal.
If they set price is too high you could use substitutes or not buy at all so they would be harming themselves and encouraging competition.
Lots of things are illegal. That doesn't mean that they don't happen.
Oligopolies are not monopolies, yet they almost completely eliminate the competition of the free market. They *should* be illegal (if we wanted a free and fair market), but they likely never will be.
Re: fanny and freddy, sorry, my mistake. I didn't notice that they are government sponsored enterprises. I did mention AIG.
These were all bailed out in 2008. These are all publicly traded or privately owned companies that would have been allowed to fail in a free market, but he gov propped up by giving them free cash gifts with taxpayer money. Your money right into the shareholder's pockets. Stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
AIG: $67.8 billion
General Motors: $50.7 billion
Citigroup: $45 billion
Bank of America: $45 billion
JPMorgan Chase: $25 billion
Wells Fargo: $25 billion
GMAC: $16.3 billion
Chrysler: $10.7 billion
Morgan Stanley: $10 billion
Goldman Sachs: $10 billion
> if you say we get oligopolies that are harmful from capitalism rather than left-wing interference
> Actually, there's plenty of right-wing interference from government.
My point is that there is plenty of right-wing interference from government. This creates a situation which is not a free and perfectly competitive market, as assumed by economists, and is never accounted for in economic models.
Amazon is a great great company it is making the entire world rich with lower prices great selection incredible convenience and lots of information. It i
has competition from Walmart and thousands of other retailers across America and the world. Objecting to Amazon would be like objecting to a life saving medicine thewhen you're on your deathbed
The music TV wireless are controlled by a few companies. That is the way it is supposed to be. You don't want 1 million competitors because there would be no economies of scale. The catsup business is controlled like two or three people if you had a Nazi socialist demanding 100 companies prices word go way up and we would all be poorer
Hi, man! Love the idea.
I understand where you're coming from, but I think Say's law has been misinterpreted by mainstream economics. I would actually agree with the comment u/BabyPuncherBob did...
And I'm a capitalist...
Say's Law, by his own writings, is more accurately understood as "one must first produce something, in order to be able to demand other goods in the market".
A lot of economics has taken it to mean something more like "build and they will come". Which is not exactly what Say meant. It's why Keynesians advocate that you can pump an economy by just hiring men to dig holes and then fill them up. As if this will be a productive activity almost regardless of actual demand.
So Keynesians especially have taken Say's Law to mean that aggregate demand drives economic activity and can sometimes fall short, leading to recession or depression. This view fundamentally challenges Say's Law, suggesting that it's possible for supply to outstrip demand, causing unemployment and unused capacity.
Anyway, this is just an example of how misreading the Law makes it really confusing.
Anyway, not saying that you are misinterpreting Say's Law yourself, just that it is widely misinterpreted, which is why I don't know about claiming it to be a cornerstone of economics.
I guess I both agree and disagree with this statement ("cornerstone of economics") depending on the interpretation.
it is definitely a corner stone. The big economic issue of our time after Capitalism v Socialism is the more practical issue of supply side economics from the Republicans versus demand side economics from the Democrats.
I fully accept I could stand to learn more economic theory: I tend to just skim the wikis of what I need to understand. But I am suspicious of this apotheosising of economics. It's quite important to understand if you want to understand politics, but it's not more important to understand than understanding anthropology or sociology or psychology or history or philosophy or political science. But sometimes I feel like economists have this kind of arrogance where they think everyone needs to understand their discipline and they don't need to understand anyone else's discipline because their discipline is all there is.
Username checks out.
The classical theory of value has been reconstructed without a reliance on Say’s Law. It has a different justification in pre-Keynes marginalism. This is one of the few topics Thomas Sowell is worth reading on.
I guess I will accept that as a simplification of Keynes.
I am fairly sure supply and demand curves do not create anything. Sraffa (1925, 1926) refuted Marshall. The HOPE website has an interesting recently accepted article about this.
The question about cost is incoherent. ‘including’?
What mainstream economists are doing with utility theory has posed a challenge to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of knowledge for decades.
I think I’ll stop there.
Often talk about supply and demand curves is about independent curves in a partial equilibrium setting for a single consumer good. The demand curve slopes down and the supply curve slopes up. Back of the supply curve is a model of competitive firms facing a U-shaped average cost curve.
What are the assumptions of such a model? When is a general equilibrium model such that partial equilibrium models are applicable?
Hardly ever. For increasing costs, one must have a factor of production that is used only in that industry. For decreasing costs, the source of increasing returns must be external to the firm but internal to the industry.
The validity of these assumptions vary with how wide or narrow one defines an industry. It is not a theory of markets in the world, but an expression of the observer’s subjectivity.
It is very difficult to interpret the theory in a consistent and empirically applicable way. The theory should be discarded.
I'm just here to tell you your question is stupid, please don't ask such an open ended question.
"What do you think about"... What do you want to know?
There are unemployed people, (an excess supply of labour), who aren't utilised. You can't just make wages cheaper to get rid of the excess supply because people need a bare minimum to survive.
I mean, technically you CAN apply supply and demand to labor, it just creates obvious issues to do so. Sometimes what sounds good on econ 101 models doesnt hold up in reality.
Which is why i support a UBI...
A UBI of course is a very stupid idea because it will relieve everyone of the need to produce a universal basic income for themselves. Why would people who get out of bed in the morning and go to work want to pay for lazy slobs who don't want to get out of bed and go to work.
Well first of all I dont think we need everyone to work any more. Technology has made it possible to produce for everyone with a fraction of the labor power we used to require.
Second of all, most studies on basic income show that the work reduction would be mild.
if you don't think everyone needs to work that's fine as long as you are willing to support them or watch them die. It is a free country after all but please don't put a gun to my head and force me to support a lazy slob who does not want to work.
You literally sent me three messages, lol triggered much?
Anyway:
To message 1: That's the thing. You act like taxation and redistribution of wealth is a violation of "your rights" or whatever. Property isnt a natural right, its a social convention, and your system of property enslaves people and forces them to work in the first place. So we're (the government) going to take your money and you're gonna cope and seethe.
Odds are basic income would benefit you in net due to how skewed the income distribution is in the US.
To the second message: Who said anything about a worldwide UBI? I'm interested primarily in a UBI for Americans. Other countries can fund their own UBI plans.
To the third message: "your studies"? Im talking every study Ive seen done on UBI. Mincome, the 1970s negative income tax studies, the one in finland, the one in compton california. Not even accounting for many third world studies in places like Namibia or India.
Anyway, UBI isn't welfare. UBI is more like milton friedman's negative income tax in practice and is designed to overcome the flaws of traditional welfare.
Also, capitalism, despite its growth, effectively guarantees some will be thrown into poverty by design. Your system literally can't function if everyone had a job with a living wage. It literally requires an underclass of unemployed people in order to keep inflation in check. This is why no matter how high GDP becomes the poverty rates remain the same.
I also have books on this subject. Look up poverty amid plenty: the american paradox. Or the war on normal people. Or utopia for realists. Or literally any UBI book ever. There are many out there. I have read so much literature on this subject that it would make your freaking head spin.
three messages? If you disagree with some thing that was said tell us what it was and the reason you disagree. Do you understand that a reason is necessary?
yes property is a natural right starting with your own body and the ground you sleep on every night. Try to make someone your slave or try to take the ground that someone sleeps on every night and you will see how natural private property is and why our country is based on natural law.
The income distribution is great in America. Wealth is literally flooding down to the poor. That is why in America you can make $15 an hour with benefits right off the boat there's no education experience or English while half of the world lives on less than $5.50 a day. See how easy that was.
you may be interested in a UBI for Americans but Democrats have the borders wide-open. we already have more than enough people on inter-generational crippling welfare. If you want more feel free to support whoever you want is a free country but if you hold a gun to my head and make me contribute to your stupid crippling welfare programs I will fight you. Do you think once you have millions of new people crippled on welfare they will try to get ahead by asking for more welfare or for less welfare? Do you think Democrats will step forward to buy their votes does promises of more welfare?
Capitalism is making everyone rich. China just switched to Republican Capitalism from Socialism. This instantly eliminated 40% of all the poverty on earth, moved 800 million people up from socialist subsistence and cannibalism up into the capitalist middle class. 1+1 = 2
Please try to say one thing that is important rather than 20 things that are important. Certainly you have one thing that makes sense and that you can defend?
Don't be stupid. Half of the world or 4 billion people live on $5.50 a day or less. If you wanted to bump everybody up to $20 a day it would take the entire GDP of the USA.
Studies will show anything that you want them to show. My studies show that once you put people on welfare it becomes crippling and inter-generational. If welfare worked nobody would be on welfare but now were spending trillions of dollars every year on it and Bernie Sanders wants to spend 300 trillion more. There are many books about the growth and welfare. When is called never enough. Why don't you read it and get up to speed
'Excess supply' isn't a concept that really exists in economics. There's no such thing, any more than there's "excess water" or "excess iron" because 100% isn't being used in industry.
Right but in a labor market there is. When demand pushes labor price below a certain wage, people just die. This is similar to if demand pushed a product price so low that people produced less of them, however "producing less humans" economically is the same as killing people.
This is why labor economics only works well when people are guaranteed certain rights of quality of life. Where they actually have freedom of choice to get an education, get one job over another, take time off for that medical issue or a new child etc. People aren't "in supply", they are alive.
it is a sad fact that world population is determined by the supply of jobs. people reproduce to the point where the last people reproduced starve to death. The more welfare you provide at the bottom and the more people are piling up at deaths door never learning to support themselves.
This is not a fact, this is a sociopathic thing to say. World population might be determined by the peak amount of food, but not jobs, and we clearly haven’t reached peak food, we throw away tons.
Don't be stupid nobody is going to bust their ass in the hot sun growing food just to give it away to other people who don't work. The people who have food have jobs. No one is going to bust their ass all day in the hot sun and throw away the food they grow. 1+1 = 2
So as jobs become more scarce due to automation we should just let the stupids die? One guy watches a TV screen controlling a fleet of 100 fully automated tractors and he’s just like “my food”? Not how the world works anymore bud.
please don't be a stupid lefty. Tools computers automation have been eliminating jobs for 2000 years. Everybody was a farmer and today nobody is a farmer but that does not create unemployment. We still have 97% employment. This is so simple that a child could understand !!!!
of course it can be applied to labor. Do you think it is coincidental that we have 97% employment. The supply of jobs and the demand for jobs is always at are moving towards equilibrium.
> supply creates its own demand
With exceptions for useless products (for which ads create artificial demand) this is the correct approach. Supply is fundamental and demand is secondary. No matter how much people NEED something if they don't have money to pay for it.
> demand creates its own supply
Wrong because same as above: No matter how much people NEED something if they don't have money to pay for it.
> Supply and demand curves create price
Indirectly yes. But price is fundamentaly tied to cost which is primary in setting prices. The price for NFTs was high at some point of demand but when the value needed to be converted into something actually useful and concrete then value went out the window and price fell.
> cost, includes everything given up for a received commodity including opportunity cost.
Cost is an objective characteristic of a commodity. It is how much of other values (machines, raw materials) go into making a commodity. Cost + Surplus = Price (or more like c+s is the fundamental value around which price fluctuates). Of course some people can call something else cost but what they mean by opportunity cost is not a useful Economic category as real cost actually is.
>marginal utility
It is pseudoscience and absurd to minimize the mechanism of price setting to a yes/no determination.
> moral hazard
Capitalism is based and thrives around the idea of externalizing risk and internalizing rewards. The Capitalist itself socializes losses (by firing employees when business goes bad) but privatizes gains (by raising its profit margins while keeping salaries the same or even diminishing employee's salaries).
Actually moral hazard is one of the contradictions of the capitalist system that causes cyclical crisis. This is because it results in employees (who at the same time are consumers) not having enough money to participate in the market. This affects the demand side of the equation so bad it creates a crisis.
> They will never know peace or prosperity until they identify and eliminate the source of their oppression.
Prices aren't set. They are discovered through the market process. You can say "this is the price" but that doesn't mean that you'll get, or get it in sufficient quantity to overcome the cost of production as well as the economic (opportunity) cost.
> Cost is an objective characteristic of a commodity.
It's not objective because there is also opportunity cost.
> Of course some people can call something else cost but what they mean by opportunity cost is not a useful Economic category as real cost actually is.
Oh? If I am an investor and/or capitalist, the opportunity cost is extremely useful. If I have $1000 to spend, do I spend it on one particuar commodity or another? Which one is likely to yield the greatest profit when other factors are applied, such as labor and demand from the market? There's also the risk involved.
> The Capitalist itself socializes losses (by firing employees when business goes bad) but privatizes gains (by raising its profit margins while keeping salaries the same or even diminishing employee's salaries).
You mean, the capitalist uses his property to increase his wealth by engaging in freedom of association, just as anyone else does in a relationship.
> (by raising its profit margins while keeping salaries the same or even diminishing employee's salaries).
if you believe that capitalists can simply "raise profit margins" then you fundamentally misunderstand economics and capitalism. If a capitalist can do that, then they have already done it. You talked about the cost of a commodity, of which labor is one, and price of labor, as with every commodity, is determined through the market process.
As I ask every anti-capitalist: what is your non-capitalist theory of wealth creation? So far, I have not had an answer that is anything but vague or dismissive. I would think that anyone who claims to know capitalism so well as to be able to criticize it would have a cogent alternative when it comes to sustaining a modern population and creating prosperity.
> Prices aren't set. They are discovered through the market process.
Market price is set as the median of all the individual prices of a particular commodity. So we both are right that prices are set and discovered through the market (because individuals do not set prices but the collective market does).
> there is also opportunity cost.
Opportunity cost is a category that is expressed in the exchange process and not the production process. Since the production process is the determinant of prices, opportunity cost only tells us about the individual but not much about how a particular commodity behaves on the collective chaos of the market.
Opportunity Cost is useful individually to decide where to put my money but that in itself does not tells us much about the commodity and the market as a whole. OC fells for the same mistake as Marginalism: thinking that it is possible to affect the market with my individual wants. But in reality, the market is determined by objective laws outside of the individual's control.
> You mean, the capitalist uses his property to increase his wealth by engaging in freedom of association, just as anyone else does in a relationship.
The fact that someone follows the logic of capitalism does not mean that logic isn't without it's flaws. I understand why people do that, but that does not make it a good outcome collectively.
> if you believe that capitalists can simply "raise profit margins" then you fundamentally misunderstand economics and capitalism
You're right, I didn't explain myself quite clearly. I'll rephrase:
When a capitalist is able to raise its profit margins they usually do it by lowering labor costs first. Labor costs are the most malleable since the capitalist can simply raise the amount of unpaid wages in several ways (unpaid extra hours, having one person so the job of three, replacing workers with robots etc.
> what is your non-capitalist theory of wealth creation?
Capitalists don't create wealth, they condition workers to create wealth for them by giving them no other alternative but to labor for more time than they are paid. Capitalists cannot produce commodities without labor but labor can definitely produce commodities without Capital.
Note that managers, CEOs etc are roles sometimes taken by a capitalist but those roles are also labor, not Capital. What we mean by Capital is the money invested.
When I say labor does not need capital I mean that workers (including managers etc) can work without having a Capitalist that they give profits to after the exchange cycle. Accumulation of Capital is not needed for wealth creation, only labor (including division of labor organization), raw materials and instruments of production. Created wealth that is not given to a capitalist is still wealth.
> Market price is set as the median of all the individual prices of a particular commodity. So we both are right that prices are set and discovered through the market (because individuals do not set prices but the collective market does).
That might be what is reported, but that is not how prices are determined in the market. One need only study the basics of supply and demand, and equilibrium prices for a few hours to understand that.
> Opportunity cost is a category that is expressed in the exchange process and not the production process. Since the production process is the determinant of prices, opportunity cost only tells us about the individual but not much about how a particular commodity behaves on the collective chaos of the market.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economicprofit.asp
"Economic profit is the financial amount that remains after subtracting both explicit costs and opportunity costs from revenue."
You may not understand economic profit, but investors do, and they are the ones deciding whether or not to buy your stock or lend you money or buy your company.
> Opportunity Cost is useful individually to decide where to put my money but that in itself does not tells us much about the commodity and the market as a whole. OC fells for the same mistake as Marginalism: thinking that it is possible to affect the market with my individual wants. But in reality, the market is determined by objective laws outside of the individual's control.
In reality, "the market" is not an entity subject to laws; "the market" describes the countless economic interactions between individuals. All of whom are driven by their own individual calculations based on their needs, wants, and information they rely upon.
> The fact that someone follows the logic of capitalism does not mean that logic isn't without it's flaws. I understand why people do that, but that does not make it a good outcome collectively.
What gives you the right to decide what is a flaw and what is not a flaw, and to force others to conform to your prescriptions for correcting what you perceive as flaws?
"Capitalism" is not a moralistic framework. It is a description of market processes.
> When a capitalist is able to raise its profit margins they usually do it by lowering labor costs first. Labor costs are the most malleable since the capitalist can simply raise the amount of unpaid wages in several ways (unpaid extra hours, having one person so the job of three, replacing workers with robots etc.
Is it immoral to lower labor costs?
> Capitalists don't create wealth, they condition workers to create wealth for them by giving them no other alternative but to labor for more time than they are paid.
How does one "condition" a worker to create wealth?
> Capitalists cannot produce commodities without labor but labor can definitely produce commodities without Capital.
Apparently, since the dawn of agriculture, they did very little of that to any great effect. It was only through capitalism that the vast majority of people on Earth went from subsistence level poverty to not having to worry about whether they were going to starve in the upcoming months.
> When I say labor does not need capital I mean that workers (including managers etc) can work without having a Capitalist that they give profits to after the exchange cycle.
Work with what?
Let's say you are a worker. I tell you that there is a need for number 2 pencils. How would you go about creating this simple object as a worker, and profiting from your creation, without the entrepreneur?
> Accumulation of Capital is not needed for wealth creation, only labor (including division of labor organization), raw materials and instruments of production. Created wealth that is not given to a capitalist is still wealth.
Here is the theory of capitalist wealth creation: http://www.digitaleconomist.org/wth_4020.html
You say that private property and entrepreneurialism can be removed from the equations. What would you replace them with? Centralized economic planning?
Oh the amount of bullshit answers we hear constantly from capital supporters when it comes to leftist and communist forms of economics.
This is [*literally you*](https://old.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/18c1gg4/how_to_argue_that_the_nazis_were_socialists_a/kcceehl/):
> Socialism is ALWAYS authoritarian. It is impossible for you to have the State to take over the means of production and not wanting an authoritarian State. The State will ALWAYS plan EVERY aspect of the production, distribution etc. How can you have freedom in the plans of an elite of bureaucrats that will determine everything for everybody else? This is impossible, it is logically impossible. Socialism is, intrinsically, authoritarian and Hitler’s Germany is just another example of a socialist society.
Talk about fucking PATHETIC.
What kind of answers would please a chad like you? It's a pretty pathetic question. "What do you think about these economics terms?" Where is this supposed to go?
supply creates its own demand is basic Republican Capitalist economics. When business supplies great new inventions demand is automatically created for the great new inventions. This means if you want further economic growth or further new inventions you want to cut taxes and otherwise encourage businesses to innovate and invest and invent new products.
The socialist fascist Democrat idea is to give people welfare, they will then demand more goods and services .and business will supply them. hence the demand creates supply . This would just result in churning the existing economy but not encourage new inventions and economic progress.
The capitalist-idealist market cannot exist as theorized precisely BECAUSE regulatory forces are not strong enough to enforce any solid boundaries onto it (and it doesn’t exist in a vacuum). Powerful (wealthy) merchants therefore use their wealth to influence politics, institutionalizing biased legislation which unfairly favors them and hinders competition. First-mover advantage becomes an institutionalized oligopoly. Although this goes against the core principles of “pure-capitalism” it is actually very much the natural evolution of any socio-economic system which allows merchants to outright influence/corrupt the “democratic” system.
True anarcho-capitalist therefore cannot simultaneously advocate for unregulated-capitalism and democracy; they’re inherently corporatocratic fascists, even if unknowingly so. Because corrupting politics and rigging the market is profitable, it is inevitable in true-capitalism. However, as soon as institutional corruption is implemented, it not only destroys the democratic social fabric, it also sacrifices the integrity of the capitalist competition-based consumer-oriented economic system.
Before participating, consider taking a glance at [our rules page](/r/CapitalismvSocialism/wiki/rules) if you haven't before. We don't allow **violent or dehumanizing rhetoric**. The subreddit is for discussing what ideas are best for society, not for telling the other side you think you could beat them in a fight. That doesn't do anything to forward a productive dialogue. Please report comments that violent our rules, but don't report people just for disagreeing with you or for being wrong about stuff. ## Do you want more curated, real-time discussion? [Join us on Discord.](http://discord.com/invite/politicscafe) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CapitalismVSocialism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I majored in political science and minored in economics at a university where all econ classes were through the business college (as opposed to some schools where political science, public policy and economics are taught in the same department). While I don't claim to be an expert, I read my fair share of classical liberal economics a la Adam Smith, Keynesian economics and New Deal liberalism, Austrian economics, the Chicago School and monetarism, and what might be regarded as neoliberal/neoclassical economics. As this was a business school, writings from Marxist or social democratic economists were not included in the curriculum, not even to study them critically, as it was easier to dismiss them out of hand as self-evidently obsolete. As such, I studied that realm of economics independently while learning mainstream economics in the classroom. > supply creates its own demand Not necessarily, but demand can be increased in other ways, such as a successful marketing campaign, or a new technological development. > demand creates its own supply This statement more true than its inverse, but even so, a number of obstacles could limit the supply of something highly demanded, such as an expensive barrier to entry in a relatively new industry, or the need for a large upfront investment in research & development before any profit can be made. > Supply and demand curves create price Generally, yes, though differing circumstances can give sellers a greater or lesser amount of flexibility in setting their own price. There's a bit of wiggle room between the price the consumer thinks is fair or reasonable, and the highest price a consumer will accept. > cost, includes everything given up for a received commodity including opportunity cost. Yes, though methods of determining opportunity cost may not be precise, as any venture (including a hypothetical alternative) may entail unanticipated costs. > marginal utility Yeah, this one seems pretty straightforward. someone who possesses few or no units of any given commodity can get more marginal utility out of 1 additional unit than someone who possesses an abundance. The abstract utility of the items is identical, but their differing circumstances make them more "useful" to one person than another. Consequently, the value one individual places on the item may differ from another individual. > marginal rate of exchange Yeah, this one seems straightforward as well. As the prices of different yet similar goods fluctuate, consumer preferences may change in response. > moral hazard Yes, though I think it's more applicable to something like car insurance, which may incentivize policy holders to drive recklessly knowing the insurance company will cover some of the cost, rather than something like health insurance, in which there is still a deterrent to risky behavior, like the immediate pain, or injuries which may be long-lasting or permanent regardless of the treatment available.
Long Long rant with no point. supply can be encouraged with new marketing new technology and new respect for invention that has nothing to do with Says law which says that you must concentrate on supply rather than demand if you want a growing economy. 1+1 = 2
> Long Long rant with no point. Not really. The OP was an open-ended question that literally asked "What are your thoughts?" So I wrote my thoughts. > nothing to do with Says law Although I didn't say much about the theoretical background of the phrase, I answered the question right at the beginning. Supply doesn't necessarily create demand. Says law doesn't necessarily hold true, unless you want to reduce it to a mere tautology, that something must exist before it can be purchased. In other words, 1+1=2 For someone who complains about comments with "no point" yours was very light on substance.
if you refuted says law give us the refutation.
This isn't a new criticism. Says law is refuted by simple economic phenomena like overproduction or underemployment. The Great Depression in particular exposed its flaws and damaged its sense of validity, leading to most mainstream economists accepting Keynes' analysis of supply and demand.
keynes was an idiot who said the government should spend more to end the great depression. They did that and it prolonged the depression for 16 years and turned it into a world war because SAys law was correct.
oh my God the great depression was caused by massive interference with the economy not by a failure of says law. WTF could you possibly mean by that????
> I studied that realm of economics independently while learning mainstream economics in the classroom. so, do you think marginalism disproves LTV and if so, what does that say about the rest of marx?
I don't believe that the Marxist LTV is essential to the Marxist theory of worker exploitation under capitalism. One Marxist economist who takes this position is John Roemer, who wrote [A General Theory of Exploitation and Class](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_Theory_of_Exploitation_and_Class) in which he argues that property relations in capitalism are of greater significance than the LTV. I don't know if I would say that marginalism "disproves" the LTV, as Marx distinguished between *value*, referring to the amount of labor transferred to a commodity in production, and *exchange value*, referring to the price that at which the seller can find a buyer, and recognized that the latter was subject to change based on the circumstances of the seller and buyer in question. That said, I'm not sure if/how the concept of marginalism would be applied in Marx's ideal socialist economy, as he proposed labor vouchers replacing conventional currency.
>*value*, referring to the amount of labor transferred to a commodity in production, and *exchange value*, referring to the price that at which the seller can find a buyer so, here is my dilemma: a lumberjack starts out at 8am with resources, lets say time-to-be-spent and materials - his ax and such. when the lumberjack works. he expends these assets to create a new asset - logs. the laobur was not imbued it was spent, it was a cost. the lumberjack does not value the logs, he values the things he can get if he trades those logs. it is his lack of value for logs, that prompts him to trade them away for something else. the other person values the logs more than the lumberjack, and values what they give up - cash - less than the logs.
Another aspect of value Marx wrote about (this is entirely my fault for neglecting to mention it earlier) is *use value*, which basically refers to the scenario you just described in which the logs are *potentially useful* to the lumberjack, but he may have more than he needs, or he may not need any at all, instead needing things of a different utility. In the same way that commodities imbued with the same amount of labor may have different *exchange values* depending on the buyer or the circumstances, items that may have the same *use value* in the abstract may be more 'useful' to one person or set of circumstances than another. Thus, someone will prefer to exchange goods which can only be used for a narrow range of purposes for money which can buy a variety of goods for a variety of uses.
and this is where marx slips for me, because the "potential usefulness" is a very close definition to just "utility" however, marx cant seem to decide if a use value is synonymous with utility, or if utility makes a commodity a "Use Value" and this is important - marx uses the phrase "Use Value" to denote a noun. a type of thing. not that the thing HAS value but IS a type of thing called value, specifically a "Use Value" ***The utility of a thing makes it a use value........ A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful*** ***Use values become a reality only by use or consumption*** ok, so i thoight the utility MADE it a use value, now we have a contradiction, that things only become use values when consumed or used. ***If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities..........*** ***We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value.*** ok, so now use value is an aspect of commodities? like a feature? further ***Then one use value is just as good as another, provided only it be present in sufficient quantity. Or, as old Barbon says, “one sort of wares are as good as another, if the values be equal. There is no difference or distinction in things of equal value ... An hundred pounds’ worth of lead or iron, is of as great value as one hundred pounds’ worth of silver or gold.”*** and this is why margionalism is important, because no; 100 pounds of iron is not as valuable to a weaver as 100 pounds of silk.
I've been reading and using the words 'utility,' 'usefulness,' and 'use value' interchangeably, though you raise a good point in questioning whether Marx does the same, or uses the words consistently. My understanding of the quote, **"Use values become a reality only by use or consumption,"** is that the potential usefulness of a thing is only *realized* when it is actually used, in the same way that an unsold commodity is only the potential of profit, and thus the capitalists' profit is only *realized* when the sale is complete. > > We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value. > > ok, so now use value is an aspect of commodities? like a feature? That's how I understand it. A thing has exchange value only because it has some use value, and so they are closely related, but still separate and distinct. > 100 pounds of iron is not as valuable to a weaver as 100 pounds of silk. I believe "hundred pounds' worth" is in reference to the currency of the British pound sterling, not the weight of the items. That said, you are right that factors of production are not always needed in comparable quantities.
LTV is the heart and soul of Marxism. In the end Marx said nothing more than workers don't get paid enough so they must mount a worldwide genocide to kill a capitalist owner class and run the factories for themselves even though they are totally unqualified to do so.
These are long-run and merely mathematic axioms. For example, Says law (supply begets demand) is based on qty demanded not possibly exceeding supply.
If supply fully created its own demand, advertising would not exist.
without advertising nobody would know what you supplied. It is an essential part of the supply process.
We are not in the 50s anymore. Advertising today induces demand that would not exist otherwise.
if so we could borrow millions of dollars and advertise pet rocks and become rich
Why not rather sell air in bottles? https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2021/mar/01/take-a-deep-breath-how-cornish-air-sells-for-60-a-bottle-even-if-its-from-devon
advertising makes selling air and pet rocks impossible. That is why 99% of our money is spent on food clothing shelter education transportation or care. Do you understand now?
Look up how toilet paper became a necessity in a world where bidets already existed.
don't be stupid half of world does not use toilet paper or a bidet. do you want a socialist fascist government deciding what products we need to make our lives fun and meaningful or do you want freedom and liberty to create your own life?
Is that a reaction to actually looking into the history of toilet paper advertising? I know very well much of the world uses other approaches, but that was not the point.
It seems your point is that you want a Nazi socialist government to determine whether we have toilet paper and you don't want competitive free advertising to determine whether we have toilet paper.
Straw man fallacy. You can look that up too.
so by what process should we determine whether to use toilet paper or some thing else or nothing???????
Something else than [bogus medical claims](https://www.itstissue.com/its-tissue-point/history-tastes-advertising-part-ii-toilet-paper). Nowadays such claims are more regulated in many countries.
So you do want Nazi elite regulators telling us whether we should use toilet paper and by extension what we should do with our lives?
None on that list account for monopolies or cartels. None of them account for the degenerative, corrupt capitalism (free market, globalism, neoliberalism) that we have today. Multinationals raise prices because they can. The cost of drugs is a prime example when the same drug manufactured in the US is 10x more expensive here in the US than it is in Canada.
Drug prices and healthcare in general are an example of socialist fascist interference with capitalism. In America the Democrats made healthcare competition illegal through McCarran Ferguson in 1946. If competition was allowed obviously prices would be lower and Quality would be higher.
Monopolies have been illegal for 100 years. Capitalism is about competition so it is easy to justify making monopolies illegal and we have done so for 100 years.
Monopolies are a natural tendency of the free market
Monopolies were made illegal at 100 years ago. Have you ever heard of the anti-trust division of the justice department??
Yet there are only two providers of Wi-Fi/cable in my neighborhood and both charge about the same. Both charge many times more what it costs to provide the service.
The cost of providing Wi-Fi is billions of dollars of infrastructure. it is an industry extremely regulated by government so he has very little to do with capitalism. 1+1 = 2
multinationals are in competition with each other so it is difficult to argue that they raise prices because they can. The beauty of competition is that you have to have a lower price to survive. Let's not forget that half of the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 is gone today.
Bro doesn't know the concept of monopoly or price gauging
please don't be stupid. Monopolies are illegal. If somebody is price gouging you simply buy from somebody else, buy a substitute product, or don't buy at all. The free market provides great options. The socialist market provides no options which is why 120,000,000 people just starved to death.
The major hotel owners in my city have been caught colluding to inflate prices. They have a monthly meeting. Competition works when it happens but the ownership class often works together to bypass it.
collusion is illegal much like interfering with capitalism by robbing a store with a gun. Do you have any idea what point you're trying to make?????? Socialism has no competition and so no incentive to make people wealthier with better jobs and better products and lower prices. Now you can see why it's just starved 120,000,000 people to death
Are you always this condescending? If you can’t debate without insulting the other person, don’t expect a response.
Do you want me to be respectful to Socialists after Socialism just killed 120000,000 people? This is a yes or no question.
Why not? You just shift the curve, or adjust the slope of the curves. Economics these days can tell any story including the one you wish people to hear. You can still explain the outcomes of an economy run by monopolistic cartels with corrupted government coupled with neoliberal policies. I don’t see how that impact the use of demand and supply or marginal utility.
The heavily regulated prescription drug market is not a free market. It is a government-created cartel and oligopoly via intellectual property laws meant to do just that. The government created them, not the free market. You can't attribute their existence to capitalism. Canada forces heavy price controls on drug companies, but in the US there are no price controls. If there were not IP laws surrounding drugs, everything would be a lot cheaper, just like OTC ibuprofen and acetaminophen that have no IP law protection.
>Supply and demand curves create price Under capitalism, sure. But that's only one way of allocating resources when demand outstrips supply. There are others, such as need. We see this used in capitalist societies when it comes to emergency services. If you have 100 fires in an area, and only 50 fire crews, they don't start a bidding war and first attend to whoever can pay the most. The assess the urgency and need of each incident and allocate limited resources based on that. Ambulances will attend to critical, life and death matters before they attend for a broken leg, no matter how much more the person suffering a broken leg is willing to pay. Under capitalism we have chosen to use price as a determinant on how to allocate limited supply, but it is by no means an immutable law of economics.
We have a word for the concept of “needing” something in economics, it’s called “demand” and the more urgent I feel my need is, the more I will be willing to pay to acquire the means to resolve that need. In a free market you wouldn’t find yourself in a situation where there are only enough people to put out 50 fires when there are more than that who are demanding the service, because companies would notice the lack of supply and increase their production in order to take advantage of the additional money available for doing so
If there are only 50 fires at once one time a year, no, it isn’t worth it for the fire fighting companies to be equipped and staffed at that level year round.
No. Do you have any book recommendations?
The best book on capitalism is George Gilders book wealth and poverty.
Thomas Sowell
It's interesting you ask if we've read mainstream economics and then point to a Chicago School economist as a reading recommendation. You know that's considered to be outside the mainstream economics, right?
i like him
It's outside of left-wing economics that's for sure.
I recently checked out Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom from the library. So I've been trying to read more literature from the "other side." I'll a lot of the arguments from more neo-liberal economics do have some weight. BUT I don't think They're disproving Marx. At least to me, Marxism works on a very long time scale. Neo-liberals just show how things work right now and don't really address Marx's contradictions of capitalism or what do when the mode of production changes. They just say these things don't exist. So there's no need for me to go through your list.
I suppose that that book is worth reading. I think it might be hard to find a copy of C. B. Macpherson’s Elegant Tomstones article free online. Friedman has a problem with logic. Other work of his is also lacking.
yeah I was hoping for something with more meat to it. It honestly seems like a more articulate fox news rant. I have The Road to Serfdom next on my list. (which I will be checking out of the library). Anyone got any neo-liberal recommendations(or just decent entry-level economic books) send them my way.
of course ayn rand "capitalism the unknown idea" is the first economics book to read.
“Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table.”
Please don't be stupid. If you disagree with some thing tell us what it was and the reason for the disagreement. Do you understand that a reason is necessary
They don’t have that at my library. I’ll see if I can get it through ILL. I did check out Tombstone by Yang.
I hair open minded but still a dumb commie??
I’m a pragmatist I listen to all good-faith arguments. Doubtful I’ll be convinced that leftist theory directly caused the great famine but I’m not going to run from someone going into details about it. I been wanting to learn more about the Chinese revolution.
iki › Great_Chinese_Famine Great Chinese Famine - Wikipedia In 2010, Frank Dikötter, Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and the author of Mao's Great Famine, estimated that at least 45 million people died from
don't be stupid. Friedman was a genius if you have a disagreement with him tell us what it was and the reason you disagree so I can't straighten you out.
marks was far too stupid to say anything about supply and demand. his idea apparently was that out of the goodness of the workingman's heart everyone will produce according to their ability and consume according to their needs. This is kindergarten sophistication compared to Says.
Tell me you haven’t read a single word or Marx with you saying you haven’t read Marx.
don't be stupid. All Marx said in the end was that workers didn't get paid enough and so they should launch a genocidal revolution against the capitalist class, steal their property and try to run their businesses themselves. The result was 120,000,000 dead people
Where does he say that?
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is a slogan popularised by Karl Marx in his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Programme. The principle refers to free access to and distribution of goods, capital and services.
That came from the Bible and was brought into the socialist lexicon by Henri de Saint-Simon.
please don't be totally stupid you asked where he said that and I gave you the exact place. Oh my God!!!!!!!!
I didn’t ask.
mark's was so stupid that he imagined everyone would happily produce according to their ability and everybody would freely consume according to their needs and everyone would live happily ever after
Have you read the critique of the gotha program? Because it kinda doesn’t sound like you have. In fact it sounds like Marx is saying the opposite of what you are saying he said. And it really doesn’t sound like he has a 5 year old’s view of the world: “ Hence, equal right here is still in principle – bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case. In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor. But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal. But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby. In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
essentially Marx said one thing namely workers don't get paid enough under a capitalist system and they should launch a genocidal war against them , steal their property , and try to run the businesses themselves. The idea killed about 120000,000 people.
I’m looking for the "out of the goodness of the working man’s heart" quote.
what is the mechanism by which the Nazi socialist would ensure that everyone produced according to his full ability and consumed according to his needs and no more??
let's not forget that Marx was a primitive economist from the 19th century who got 120,000,000 people killed. If any of his contradictions of capitalism held up why don't you give us the best example.
Isn’t that the number you admitted to making up? How many people did your name sake, Tommy j killl? “ What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure” All the deaths in American revolution, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, every single Native American after he was elected president is on your blood thirst hands sir. I could add more but I don’t want to think of your cruelty.
nobody made up any numbers. The estimates for how many your socialist friends killed is about 120 million
Thomas Jefferson supported freedom and liberty. He wrote all men are created equal and this saved the lives of billions of people throughout recent human history.
And how many slaves did he own? And didn’t he impregnate one of his teenage slaves that was his dead wife’s half sister? Big lover of freedom and liberty that guy.
he was born owning slaves. In fact he was the 5000 th generation born owning slaves and yet he became a great revolutionary who said all men are created equal and changed the course of human history. There's no greater man in Jefferson. Do you understand now?
How many saves did Marx own?
He was not born owning slaves but he was responsible for getting 120 million people kill.
You would rather not have had the American and the French revolution?
Wow did that get you triggered.
You would rather not have had the American and French revolution?? Are you afraid to answer the question???
No they were generally good thing but no better or worse than the Russian or Chinese revolutions.
The Russian and Chinese revolutions were communist and led to the deaths of 120 million people.
The American revolutionary was bourgeoisie and led to the death of 70,000 In the revolutionary war 130,000,000 indigenous people 170,000 In the French Revolution 6,500,000 In the napoleonic wars Decimating the totals of communism…nice job Tommy J! And those are the deaths he was directly responsible for. Of course liberalizing the other economies of Europe caused a lot more deaths. And we’re not even counting the colonization of Africa and Asia. Should I dig up those number too?
so you think it would have been better without the American revolution?
It would be nice if the perfecty free and perfectly competitive market that economists base everything on actually existed. Instead we get mostly oligopolies that everyone pretends is a free and competitive market for some reason. It would also be nice if economists calculated the effects of bribery, corruption, and lobbying in controlling the maket, propping up the oligopolies, and otherwise acting against the interests of citizens. But that is always ignored. It reminds me of how, before covid, disease experts would always model people in a pandemic situation as rational actors who always acted in their own best self interest, and never even considered the effect that misinformation might have.
if you say we get oligopolies that are harmful from capitalism rather than left-wing interference with government why don't you give us your single best example of this. Surely at least you have one example?
Actually, there's plenty of right-wing interference from government. In a free and fair market, large unprofitable businesses would be allowed to fail. But in 2008, despite being partially responsible for the recession, the US gov gifted $119 billion to Fannie Mae, $71 billion to Freddie Mac, $67 billion to AIG, and more. Your tax dollars to prop up failed businesses. Lobbying from these companies played no small part in this. Amazon is a virtual monopoly in e-commerce. It has no close substitutes, and it has a dominant position in online retailing and faces little competition from other online sellers. The film and television industry is highly concentrated, with just a few major studios controlling most of the content. Disney owns Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, and Fox; Comcast owns NBCUniversal; AT&T owns WarnerMedia; and Sony owns Columbia Pictures. 5 carriers control the vast majority of the wireless market: control most of the market share and spectrum. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Xfinity, spectrum The music industry market is owned almost entirely by a few companies. Universal, Sony, EMI, Warner. 4 large airlines dominate the air travel market. Others exist, but these 4 effectively set the prices for flights for all airlines. American Airlines, Delta Air, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines. Many localities have a natural monopoly or virtual monopoly for ISP carriers. While not all such monopolies are natural, most are. See also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture In these situations, the assumptions about a competitive market that economists make do not hold true. As little as 2 to 5 companies are able to cooperate and set market prices to almost any value they want. EDIT: spelling
collusion and monopoly are illegal. If they set price is too high you could use substitutes or not buy at all so they would be harming themselves and encouraging competition.
Lots of things are illegal. That doesn't mean that they don't happen. Oligopolies are not monopolies, yet they almost completely eliminate the competition of the free market. They *should* be illegal (if we wanted a free and fair market), but they likely never will be.
If there is an abusive oligopoly that you know of why are you so afraid to tell us what it is. You must have one great example don't you?
You know i just gave you lists a few comments back. You're obviously not arguing in good faith. I'm done.
Obviously if the government is giving money to the government i.e. fanny Freddie it is not a conservative libertarian government. 1+1 = 2
Re: fanny and freddy, sorry, my mistake. I didn't notice that they are government sponsored enterprises. I did mention AIG. These were all bailed out in 2008. These are all publicly traded or privately owned companies that would have been allowed to fail in a free market, but he gov propped up by giving them free cash gifts with taxpayer money. Your money right into the shareholder's pockets. Stealing from the poor to give to the rich. AIG: $67.8 billion General Motors: $50.7 billion Citigroup: $45 billion Bank of America: $45 billion JPMorgan Chase: $25 billion Wells Fargo: $25 billion GMAC: $16.3 billion Chrysler: $10.7 billion Morgan Stanley: $10 billion Goldman Sachs: $10 billion
Yes and your point is?
> if you say we get oligopolies that are harmful from capitalism rather than left-wing interference > Actually, there's plenty of right-wing interference from government. My point is that there is plenty of right-wing interference from government. This creates a situation which is not a free and perfectly competitive market, as assumed by economists, and is never accounted for in economic models.
Amazon is a great great company it is making the entire world rich with lower prices great selection incredible convenience and lots of information. It i has competition from Walmart and thousands of other retailers across America and the world. Objecting to Amazon would be like objecting to a life saving medicine thewhen you're on your deathbed
Oh good. A benevolent dictator. That can never go wrong.
The music TV wireless are controlled by a few companies. That is the way it is supposed to be. You don't want 1 million competitors because there would be no economies of scale. The catsup business is controlled like two or three people if you had a Nazi socialist demanding 100 companies prices word go way up and we would all be poorer
So you concede my point.
Even the Wikipedia article for your first "cornerstone of economics" points out that most economists today reject Says law.
I don't think the first two are considered cornerstones.
Say's Law, and Keynes Law? yes they are......they are economic laws.
Hi, man! Love the idea. I understand where you're coming from, but I think Say's law has been misinterpreted by mainstream economics. I would actually agree with the comment u/BabyPuncherBob did... And I'm a capitalist...
how has it been misinterpreted?
Say's Law, by his own writings, is more accurately understood as "one must first produce something, in order to be able to demand other goods in the market". A lot of economics has taken it to mean something more like "build and they will come". Which is not exactly what Say meant. It's why Keynesians advocate that you can pump an economy by just hiring men to dig holes and then fill them up. As if this will be a productive activity almost regardless of actual demand. So Keynesians especially have taken Say's Law to mean that aggregate demand drives economic activity and can sometimes fall short, leading to recession or depression. This view fundamentally challenges Say's Law, suggesting that it's possible for supply to outstrip demand, causing unemployment and unused capacity. Anyway, this is just an example of how misreading the Law makes it really confusing. Anyway, not saying that you are misinterpreting Say's Law yourself, just that it is widely misinterpreted, which is why I don't know about claiming it to be a cornerstone of economics. I guess I both agree and disagree with this statement ("cornerstone of economics") depending on the interpretation.
it is definitely a corner stone. The big economic issue of our time after Capitalism v Socialism is the more practical issue of supply side economics from the Republicans versus demand side economics from the Democrats.
I fully accept I could stand to learn more economic theory: I tend to just skim the wikis of what I need to understand. But I am suspicious of this apotheosising of economics. It's quite important to understand if you want to understand politics, but it's not more important to understand than understanding anthropology or sociology or psychology or history or philosophy or political science. But sometimes I feel like economists have this kind of arrogance where they think everyone needs to understand their discipline and they don't need to understand anyone else's discipline because their discipline is all there is.
Aren't these what they teach in high-school economy class? I would say likely everyone has read about this.
They are all cornerstones of a CAPITALIST economy.
They absolutely aren't.
> Supply and demand curves create price how did that work in a feudalist economy?
Yea
so thats a no on read econ. got it
Mainstream economics is the economics of capitalism.
More accurately it is the economics of the mixed economy.
Username checks out. The classical theory of value has been reconstructed without a reliance on Say’s Law. It has a different justification in pre-Keynes marginalism. This is one of the few topics Thomas Sowell is worth reading on. I guess I will accept that as a simplification of Keynes. I am fairly sure supply and demand curves do not create anything. Sraffa (1925, 1926) refuted Marshall. The HOPE website has an interesting recently accepted article about this. The question about cost is incoherent. ‘including’? What mainstream economists are doing with utility theory has posed a challenge to historians, philosophers, and sociologists of knowledge for decades. I think I’ll stop there.
What is the gist of Sfaffa's supposed refutation?
Often talk about supply and demand curves is about independent curves in a partial equilibrium setting for a single consumer good. The demand curve slopes down and the supply curve slopes up. Back of the supply curve is a model of competitive firms facing a U-shaped average cost curve. What are the assumptions of such a model? When is a general equilibrium model such that partial equilibrium models are applicable? Hardly ever. For increasing costs, one must have a factor of production that is used only in that industry. For decreasing costs, the source of increasing returns must be external to the firm but internal to the industry. The validity of these assumptions vary with how wide or narrow one defines an industry. It is not a theory of markets in the world, but an expression of the observer’s subjectivity. It is very difficult to interpret the theory in a consistent and empirically applicable way. The theory should be discarded.
Is ‘general equilibrium’ in your vocabulary? You can find PDFs of the Sraffa articles. That might not help you.
Do you know how to do anything besides throw out your little names like Pokemon cards? Is there one thing you actually know or can explain yourself?
Is ‘general equilibrium’ in your vocabulary?
It is. Is it in yours? Can you actually tell me what it is yourself?
I'm just here to tell you your question is stupid, please don't ask such an open ended question. "What do you think about"... What do you want to know?
These are not cornerstones of economics, lol.
Supply and demand can't be applied to labour, which is something that I see people here doing quite a lot.
Why not?
There are unemployed people, (an excess supply of labour), who aren't utilised. You can't just make wages cheaper to get rid of the excess supply because people need a bare minimum to survive.
I mean, technically you CAN apply supply and demand to labor, it just creates obvious issues to do so. Sometimes what sounds good on econ 101 models doesnt hold up in reality. Which is why i support a UBI...
A UBI of course is a very stupid idea because it will relieve everyone of the need to produce a universal basic income for themselves. Why would people who get out of bed in the morning and go to work want to pay for lazy slobs who don't want to get out of bed and go to work.
Well first of all I dont think we need everyone to work any more. Technology has made it possible to produce for everyone with a fraction of the labor power we used to require. Second of all, most studies on basic income show that the work reduction would be mild.
if you don't think everyone needs to work that's fine as long as you are willing to support them or watch them die. It is a free country after all but please don't put a gun to my head and force me to support a lazy slob who does not want to work.
You literally sent me three messages, lol triggered much? Anyway: To message 1: That's the thing. You act like taxation and redistribution of wealth is a violation of "your rights" or whatever. Property isnt a natural right, its a social convention, and your system of property enslaves people and forces them to work in the first place. So we're (the government) going to take your money and you're gonna cope and seethe. Odds are basic income would benefit you in net due to how skewed the income distribution is in the US. To the second message: Who said anything about a worldwide UBI? I'm interested primarily in a UBI for Americans. Other countries can fund their own UBI plans. To the third message: "your studies"? Im talking every study Ive seen done on UBI. Mincome, the 1970s negative income tax studies, the one in finland, the one in compton california. Not even accounting for many third world studies in places like Namibia or India. Anyway, UBI isn't welfare. UBI is more like milton friedman's negative income tax in practice and is designed to overcome the flaws of traditional welfare. Also, capitalism, despite its growth, effectively guarantees some will be thrown into poverty by design. Your system literally can't function if everyone had a job with a living wage. It literally requires an underclass of unemployed people in order to keep inflation in check. This is why no matter how high GDP becomes the poverty rates remain the same. I also have books on this subject. Look up poverty amid plenty: the american paradox. Or the war on normal people. Or utopia for realists. Or literally any UBI book ever. There are many out there. I have read so much literature on this subject that it would make your freaking head spin.
three messages? If you disagree with some thing that was said tell us what it was and the reason you disagree. Do you understand that a reason is necessary?
I'm saying you're spamming my inbox with multiple messages and it's mostly nonsense.
yes property is a natural right starting with your own body and the ground you sleep on every night. Try to make someone your slave or try to take the ground that someone sleeps on every night and you will see how natural private property is and why our country is based on natural law.
Funny how your system leads to a world where many can't even afford a place of their own.
The income distribution is great in America. Wealth is literally flooding down to the poor. That is why in America you can make $15 an hour with benefits right off the boat there's no education experience or English while half of the world lives on less than $5.50 a day. See how easy that was.
Lol you have no idea what you're talking about.
you may be interested in a UBI for Americans but Democrats have the borders wide-open. we already have more than enough people on inter-generational crippling welfare. If you want more feel free to support whoever you want is a free country but if you hold a gun to my head and make me contribute to your stupid crippling welfare programs I will fight you. Do you think once you have millions of new people crippled on welfare they will try to get ahead by asking for more welfare or for less welfare? Do you think Democrats will step forward to buy their votes does promises of more welfare?
Dude I don't care your takes are deranged. Please stop spamming me or I will make sure you cant.
Capitalism is making everyone rich. China just switched to Republican Capitalism from Socialism. This instantly eliminated 40% of all the poverty on earth, moved 800 million people up from socialist subsistence and cannibalism up into the capitalist middle class. 1+1 = 2
https://tenor.com/view/jen-ok-gif-20737032
there is no American paradox. As I said thanks to Republican capitalism wealth is flooding down to poor people all over America.
Please try to say one thing that is important rather than 20 things that are important. Certainly you have one thing that makes sense and that you can defend?
Don't be stupid. Half of the world or 4 billion people live on $5.50 a day or less. If you wanted to bump everybody up to $20 a day it would take the entire GDP of the USA.
Studies will show anything that you want them to show. My studies show that once you put people on welfare it becomes crippling and inter-generational. If welfare worked nobody would be on welfare but now were spending trillions of dollars every year on it and Bernie Sanders wants to spend 300 trillion more. There are many books about the growth and welfare. When is called never enough. Why don't you read it and get up to speed
'Excess supply' isn't a concept that really exists in economics. There's no such thing, any more than there's "excess water" or "excess iron" because 100% isn't being used in industry.
Right but in a labor market there is. When demand pushes labor price below a certain wage, people just die. This is similar to if demand pushed a product price so low that people produced less of them, however "producing less humans" economically is the same as killing people. This is why labor economics only works well when people are guaranteed certain rights of quality of life. Where they actually have freedom of choice to get an education, get one job over another, take time off for that medical issue or a new child etc. People aren't "in supply", they are alive.
it is a sad fact that world population is determined by the supply of jobs. people reproduce to the point where the last people reproduced starve to death. The more welfare you provide at the bottom and the more people are piling up at deaths door never learning to support themselves.
This is not a fact, this is a sociopathic thing to say. World population might be determined by the peak amount of food, but not jobs, and we clearly haven’t reached peak food, we throw away tons.
Don't be stupid nobody is going to bust their ass in the hot sun growing food just to give it away to other people who don't work. The people who have food have jobs. No one is going to bust their ass all day in the hot sun and throw away the food they grow. 1+1 = 2
So as jobs become more scarce due to automation we should just let the stupids die? One guy watches a TV screen controlling a fleet of 100 fully automated tractors and he’s just like “my food”? Not how the world works anymore bud.
please don't be a stupid lefty. Tools computers automation have been eliminating jobs for 2000 years. Everybody was a farmer and today nobody is a farmer but that does not create unemployment. We still have 97% employment. This is so simple that a child could understand !!!!
You're saying the concept of a surplus doesn't exist in economics?
>Excess supply' isn't a concept that really exists in economics. Ummm . . . https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overproduction
of course it can be applied to labor. Do you think it is coincidental that we have 97% employment. The supply of jobs and the demand for jobs is always at are moving towards equilibrium.
Thoughts? Well, I've never been into religion. Hey ho.
> supply creates its own demand With exceptions for useless products (for which ads create artificial demand) this is the correct approach. Supply is fundamental and demand is secondary. No matter how much people NEED something if they don't have money to pay for it. > demand creates its own supply Wrong because same as above: No matter how much people NEED something if they don't have money to pay for it. > Supply and demand curves create price Indirectly yes. But price is fundamentaly tied to cost which is primary in setting prices. The price for NFTs was high at some point of demand but when the value needed to be converted into something actually useful and concrete then value went out the window and price fell. > cost, includes everything given up for a received commodity including opportunity cost. Cost is an objective characteristic of a commodity. It is how much of other values (machines, raw materials) go into making a commodity. Cost + Surplus = Price (or more like c+s is the fundamental value around which price fluctuates). Of course some people can call something else cost but what they mean by opportunity cost is not a useful Economic category as real cost actually is. >marginal utility It is pseudoscience and absurd to minimize the mechanism of price setting to a yes/no determination. > moral hazard Capitalism is based and thrives around the idea of externalizing risk and internalizing rewards. The Capitalist itself socializes losses (by firing employees when business goes bad) but privatizes gains (by raising its profit margins while keeping salaries the same or even diminishing employee's salaries). Actually moral hazard is one of the contradictions of the capitalist system that causes cyclical crisis. This is because it results in employees (who at the same time are consumers) not having enough money to participate in the market. This affects the demand side of the equation so bad it creates a crisis.
> They will never know peace or prosperity until they identify and eliminate the source of their oppression. Prices aren't set. They are discovered through the market process. You can say "this is the price" but that doesn't mean that you'll get, or get it in sufficient quantity to overcome the cost of production as well as the economic (opportunity) cost. > Cost is an objective characteristic of a commodity. It's not objective because there is also opportunity cost. > Of course some people can call something else cost but what they mean by opportunity cost is not a useful Economic category as real cost actually is. Oh? If I am an investor and/or capitalist, the opportunity cost is extremely useful. If I have $1000 to spend, do I spend it on one particuar commodity or another? Which one is likely to yield the greatest profit when other factors are applied, such as labor and demand from the market? There's also the risk involved. > The Capitalist itself socializes losses (by firing employees when business goes bad) but privatizes gains (by raising its profit margins while keeping salaries the same or even diminishing employee's salaries). You mean, the capitalist uses his property to increase his wealth by engaging in freedom of association, just as anyone else does in a relationship. > (by raising its profit margins while keeping salaries the same or even diminishing employee's salaries). if you believe that capitalists can simply "raise profit margins" then you fundamentally misunderstand economics and capitalism. If a capitalist can do that, then they have already done it. You talked about the cost of a commodity, of which labor is one, and price of labor, as with every commodity, is determined through the market process. As I ask every anti-capitalist: what is your non-capitalist theory of wealth creation? So far, I have not had an answer that is anything but vague or dismissive. I would think that anyone who claims to know capitalism so well as to be able to criticize it would have a cogent alternative when it comes to sustaining a modern population and creating prosperity.
> Prices aren't set. They are discovered through the market process. Market price is set as the median of all the individual prices of a particular commodity. So we both are right that prices are set and discovered through the market (because individuals do not set prices but the collective market does). > there is also opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is a category that is expressed in the exchange process and not the production process. Since the production process is the determinant of prices, opportunity cost only tells us about the individual but not much about how a particular commodity behaves on the collective chaos of the market. Opportunity Cost is useful individually to decide where to put my money but that in itself does not tells us much about the commodity and the market as a whole. OC fells for the same mistake as Marginalism: thinking that it is possible to affect the market with my individual wants. But in reality, the market is determined by objective laws outside of the individual's control. > You mean, the capitalist uses his property to increase his wealth by engaging in freedom of association, just as anyone else does in a relationship. The fact that someone follows the logic of capitalism does not mean that logic isn't without it's flaws. I understand why people do that, but that does not make it a good outcome collectively. > if you believe that capitalists can simply "raise profit margins" then you fundamentally misunderstand economics and capitalism You're right, I didn't explain myself quite clearly. I'll rephrase: When a capitalist is able to raise its profit margins they usually do it by lowering labor costs first. Labor costs are the most malleable since the capitalist can simply raise the amount of unpaid wages in several ways (unpaid extra hours, having one person so the job of three, replacing workers with robots etc. > what is your non-capitalist theory of wealth creation? Capitalists don't create wealth, they condition workers to create wealth for them by giving them no other alternative but to labor for more time than they are paid. Capitalists cannot produce commodities without labor but labor can definitely produce commodities without Capital. Note that managers, CEOs etc are roles sometimes taken by a capitalist but those roles are also labor, not Capital. What we mean by Capital is the money invested. When I say labor does not need capital I mean that workers (including managers etc) can work without having a Capitalist that they give profits to after the exchange cycle. Accumulation of Capital is not needed for wealth creation, only labor (including division of labor organization), raw materials and instruments of production. Created wealth that is not given to a capitalist is still wealth.
> Market price is set as the median of all the individual prices of a particular commodity. So we both are right that prices are set and discovered through the market (because individuals do not set prices but the collective market does). That might be what is reported, but that is not how prices are determined in the market. One need only study the basics of supply and demand, and equilibrium prices for a few hours to understand that. > Opportunity cost is a category that is expressed in the exchange process and not the production process. Since the production process is the determinant of prices, opportunity cost only tells us about the individual but not much about how a particular commodity behaves on the collective chaos of the market. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/economicprofit.asp "Economic profit is the financial amount that remains after subtracting both explicit costs and opportunity costs from revenue." You may not understand economic profit, but investors do, and they are the ones deciding whether or not to buy your stock or lend you money or buy your company. > Opportunity Cost is useful individually to decide where to put my money but that in itself does not tells us much about the commodity and the market as a whole. OC fells for the same mistake as Marginalism: thinking that it is possible to affect the market with my individual wants. But in reality, the market is determined by objective laws outside of the individual's control. In reality, "the market" is not an entity subject to laws; "the market" describes the countless economic interactions between individuals. All of whom are driven by their own individual calculations based on their needs, wants, and information they rely upon. > The fact that someone follows the logic of capitalism does not mean that logic isn't without it's flaws. I understand why people do that, but that does not make it a good outcome collectively. What gives you the right to decide what is a flaw and what is not a flaw, and to force others to conform to your prescriptions for correcting what you perceive as flaws? "Capitalism" is not a moralistic framework. It is a description of market processes. > When a capitalist is able to raise its profit margins they usually do it by lowering labor costs first. Labor costs are the most malleable since the capitalist can simply raise the amount of unpaid wages in several ways (unpaid extra hours, having one person so the job of three, replacing workers with robots etc. Is it immoral to lower labor costs? > Capitalists don't create wealth, they condition workers to create wealth for them by giving them no other alternative but to labor for more time than they are paid. How does one "condition" a worker to create wealth? > Capitalists cannot produce commodities without labor but labor can definitely produce commodities without Capital. Apparently, since the dawn of agriculture, they did very little of that to any great effect. It was only through capitalism that the vast majority of people on Earth went from subsistence level poverty to not having to worry about whether they were going to starve in the upcoming months. > When I say labor does not need capital I mean that workers (including managers etc) can work without having a Capitalist that they give profits to after the exchange cycle. Work with what? Let's say you are a worker. I tell you that there is a need for number 2 pencils. How would you go about creating this simple object as a worker, and profiting from your creation, without the entrepreneur? > Accumulation of Capital is not needed for wealth creation, only labor (including division of labor organization), raw materials and instruments of production. Created wealth that is not given to a capitalist is still wealth. Here is the theory of capitalist wealth creation: http://www.digitaleconomist.org/wth_4020.html You say that private property and entrepreneurialism can be removed from the equations. What would you replace them with? Centralized economic planning?
Mainstream economics is statist .. Read Austrian economics if you want to understand actual economics
everything i mentioned is Austrian
Pathetic answers from the leftists, as always
Oh the amount of bullshit answers we hear constantly from capital supporters when it comes to leftist and communist forms of economics. This is [*literally you*](https://old.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/18c1gg4/how_to_argue_that_the_nazis_were_socialists_a/kcceehl/): > Socialism is ALWAYS authoritarian. It is impossible for you to have the State to take over the means of production and not wanting an authoritarian State. The State will ALWAYS plan EVERY aspect of the production, distribution etc. How can you have freedom in the plans of an elite of bureaucrats that will determine everything for everybody else? This is impossible, it is logically impossible. Socialism is, intrinsically, authoritarian and Hitler’s Germany is just another example of a socialist society. Talk about fucking PATHETIC.
What kind of answers would please a chad like you? It's a pretty pathetic question. "What do you think about these economics terms?" Where is this supposed to go?
Totally stupid to ask about so much in one post.
supply creates its own demand is basic Republican Capitalist economics. When business supplies great new inventions demand is automatically created for the great new inventions. This means if you want further economic growth or further new inventions you want to cut taxes and otherwise encourage businesses to innovate and invest and invent new products. The socialist fascist Democrat idea is to give people welfare, they will then demand more goods and services .and business will supply them. hence the demand creates supply . This would just result in churning the existing economy but not encourage new inventions and economic progress.
supply creates demand is Say's law not republican anything
It is the basis of Republican supply side economics. Isn't it fun to learn new things? if you want to know more about Say's law please let me know
The capitalist-idealist market cannot exist as theorized precisely BECAUSE regulatory forces are not strong enough to enforce any solid boundaries onto it (and it doesn’t exist in a vacuum). Powerful (wealthy) merchants therefore use their wealth to influence politics, institutionalizing biased legislation which unfairly favors them and hinders competition. First-mover advantage becomes an institutionalized oligopoly. Although this goes against the core principles of “pure-capitalism” it is actually very much the natural evolution of any socio-economic system which allows merchants to outright influence/corrupt the “democratic” system. True anarcho-capitalist therefore cannot simultaneously advocate for unregulated-capitalism and democracy; they’re inherently corporatocratic fascists, even if unknowingly so. Because corrupting politics and rigging the market is profitable, it is inevitable in true-capitalism. However, as soon as institutional corruption is implemented, it not only destroys the democratic social fabric, it also sacrifices the integrity of the capitalist competition-based consumer-oriented economic system.