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[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

By enslaving others. Fooling them into working for you, for wages that are grossly inferior to the intrinsic value of their work. Let me explain:

VALUE is created by work. The difference between a tree and furniture is WORK. Of course the furniture can be worth A LOT MORE than the tree, mostly depending on the QUALITY of the work.

Capitalism is a wonderful thing: a capitalist will invest in machinery and other installations and have workers perform their work on his machines inside his installations. As a result of this investment, MORE WORK can be done by the craftsman. Instead of making one table a week, he makes two a DAY.

But wait, now we have a problem: the worker makes 14 times more stuff thanks to the machines. Does that mean that the worker should keep only the value created by making ONE table, and the installation owner keeps the other 13? Doesn't seem fair, does it? Because without the worker, the installation and tools will make precisely ZERO pieces of furniture.

So if you want to be balanced, you would say maybe the worker should keep 7 or 8 tables' value and the owner should keep 6 or 7.

But... You guessed it, that's not what happens. The rich get rich by keeping 12, 13, 13¼, 13½, 13¾ tables' value out of the 14 being produced. Of course by that time the worker has found a way to eke out a 15th table during his week, trying to produce "enough" to pay the bills. Now the tables are probably of lower quality.

That's unchecked capitalism for you. That's how you get really rich. By stealing honest workers' creation of value.

Or you could play the stock market or create a work of art or of science to wow the people into paying you massive sums.

[–]The_philosopher 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Im not a fan of capitalism myself, but this socialist viewpoint of "value" and profit just don't make sense.

First, there is no purely capitalist society. In america there is the stock market, giving access to the employee to invest his own wage back into the company he works for. Giving him more access to the company's profits if they really are at 83% (which they arent).

Second, there are costs/risks associated with business. Just because i invest 20 million to open the best furniture for the lowest price, doesn't mean that people will buy from me. Most small businesses fail within 5 years. My 20 million can basically turn to 0. Then, if i work my ass off and somehow build a customer base, i now have to pay logistics, labor, material costs, utility, rent, insurance and tax. Eating up a large portion of that 83%.

Third, wage slaving has its benefits. You acquire a set of skills and sell your skills for an agreed upon wage. If the skills you CHOSE to acquire do not fetch a "livable" wage, maybe its time to go to some night HVAC training to learn some skill that does. There is also the security of having a constant pay, doesn't matter if business is 1 table or 100.

The problem in america (maybe the world) always comes down to education. School educates children on how to go to college. Not on how to be a functional adult. But that is a debate for a different time.

Basically i can see the appeal of socialist thinking but ultimately, its due to ignorance of how business is actually done. Bill gates will just open an account in Switzerland, move all his money there, outsource all the jobs that are causing him to be taxed more and move on with running microsoft. While your furniture store gets assfucked with wealth taxes, labor taxes and VAT's. Lets focus on improving americas already functional economy, not destroying it.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

No, this is where you are wrong. Of course I oversimplify when I say split 50/50 between the employees and the corporation. That was meant as an illustration. But you have to understand that it doesn't have to "make sense" to you... It just IS where value comes from. Actual value. Not price, not profit, but VALUE. Again, the difference between a tree and furniture is WORK. The furniture has more VALUE thanks to the WORK that was put in processing the tree into furniture. Yes, we value the furniture more, which is the REASON why we work at making furniture out of trees.

Second, you should know that the ONLY market with true competition is the labor market. ALL OTHERS are characterized by more or less absolute anti-competitive measures, strategies and tactics. It's called "the games theory of economics". The labor market being the only one where there is true competition, it means that all employees are essentially pit against all others (within an activity or activity group, obviously) for who will do the most for the least pay. With international trade even came the abolition of borders in the labor market: the dude living in NYC is pit against the dude who lives in a hut in Bangladesh for who will do the most for the least. Guess who wins.

The consequence of this is virtually ALL corporations squeezing the worker base for ever more, giving ever less in compensation and benefits while corporate profits and top management compensation increase continually. Does that sound familiar? If not, look at the inflation-adjusted median household income for the last 60 years in your "western capitalist democracy" of choice. What do you see? It's flat. That's right, no increase. But wait! 60 years ago, most households had ONE worker. Nowadays there are two. So you doubled the number of workers and total income, adjusted for the devaluation of currency, STAYED THE SAME.

So the problem is education? All this time, technology has been increasing the value created per man-hour of work, but overall we're making half as much BECAUSE OF LACK OF EDUCATION? I'm sorry but that's not it.

You seem to feel that everybody having a fair shot at "making it" if they work hard and smart enough and get a good education is a good thing? That's what socialism is all about: Making sure that capitalism does not become SLAVERY.

[–]therium 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Slaves cannot exist without the slaves' consent. Is this capitalism's fault?

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

OH. MY.