If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
Does not the second comment not indicate that you have clearly decided what is right already?
You clearly beleive this is an issue with only one right answer, hence your arrogance.........
Marx's theory of surplus value makes the most sense to me, yes. However, that comment is more about your refusal to engage in any debate and instead start flinging insults around.
Look - if you're not going to read what I write then why do you bother?
Oh dear.........
I beleive you said that you didn't think it made sense that you could seperate contributions of different people out?
I asked you where you thought it came from. There are indeed many theories, and some almost have credence, and some, well, don't.
Well, you'd start by analysing their value to the company, wouldn't you. Take insurance, the person on £5 an hour selling policies giving huge profit to the company is obviously not earning their value to the company, is he?
I think you'd have to start with the value to the customer. It's the people who buy things that decide how much something is worth.
Labour in itself is quite valueless. If it did have intrinisc value, you could become a millionaire simply by digging a big hole and filling it in over and over again.
The fairest way I can conceive of is to make every employee (and only employees) shareholders, with them getting full equal share in profit, and taking full and equal share of loss.
What I notice a lot of "labour valuers" want to do is to get paid fully but not actually lose out at any point.
Quickly sorted by
1) Make all employees and only employees shareholders.
2) Don't pay wages, pay profits in share.
It would take too long to explaine all the details but Ill make a couple of points.
If I invest in a company and that company makes a profit, then this is a justifiable return on my investment Im giving workers jobs and Im getting profit, If I didnt invest the workers wouldnt have a job but Id be able to get my profit ( a slightly lower one) by buying government bonds instead
If you take the implications of Marx at face value it would appear that all companies should be owned by the government that was the excess value from the worker could be returned to the workers and society as a whole and not to "the owners of the means of production" sounds good dosnt it ?
But firstly someones got an idea for a business theyve got experience, or theyve got an established business that makes profit.
Then the owners of this company are the best placed to make desisions regarding this company in (generally) the most efficient way as opposed to the decisions being made by a burocratt 500 miles away.
The soviet union had this system and spend most of their money on arms and had chronic shortages of all goods, well America didnt did it, why because the goods were produced so much more efficiently because people who actually knew what they were doing regarding their own companies actually took the decisions, they took these decisions because of the profit motive. So in reality the workers of the soviet union produced much less with their work hours than america and didnt benefit atall.
Would Blagsta kindly explain the difference between communism and state capatalism, and how (true) comunism can avoide the mistakes of the Soviet Union.
In my opion the market economy as a economic system is like Winston Churchills description of democracy as a pollitical one
"its the worst form of government except for all the others"
Yeah, because you steal from customers, not workers. Profit IS theft, but from the person who buys, not the person who made. Until an item is bought, it's valueless.
Nah, bullshit. I do this, because I like to look after my self interest, but it's bobbins. You provide bits of paper and in exchange you get people doing things in the real world to provide you with material comforts. Heres a clue - I'll give you a piece of paper with a picture of my head on it and you work 12 hour days in a factory somewhere making me luxuries, while I sit at home doing fuck all. Seem fair?
No? Well tough shit, because my goons will use force to make you buy and sell in those pieces of paper and send you to prison if you don't.
Well, that's what "investment" is.
The rest of your post now falls down.
What your saying is that an economy forces people to work for nothing by threats from goons, no people are offered jobs and if they dont take them they can go on the dole (under our system) or starve (under most others)
I went to a cafe for lunch today paid a fiver, the cafe owners making a profit selling me lunch, Im happy to pay a fiver, could get a cheep sanwidge for a couple of quid, Im not getting ripped off and the cafe owners not exploiting me, I earn X amount a month and quite sensibly I decide to spend a fiver on lunch Problem ?
The baker sells bread to the butcher, and the butcher sells meat to the baker, not form the kindness of their hearts but in order to look after themselves......
Im waiting for the definition of State Capatalism and True comunism the utopian workers paradise,
No, that's how investment works. It's also how our fianancial system works.
You mean apart from the fact that you seem to think that coloured paper is worth material goods? Lucky for you that the owner also thinks so, isn't it?
If you got the sarnie at cost you were dealt with fairly. If the owner made a profit, then you were ripped off. The big problem with profit is that you now have to go and get more than you are worth from someone else to keep the whole thing going. Eventually, when this fails, someone is going to lose, hence unemployment, yadda yadda. They are systemic.
You can be a happy slave too, doesn't mean you aren't a slave. Your emotional position doesn't change facts.
Man your funny I like the uncompromising style,,,still it wouldn’t hurt to let the bright light of reality shine in once in a while would it,
Whats the alternative ?, and suspose the sandwich maker is making just enough profit to make a decent wage is that profit or justifiable return for his time. If the cafe owners not making anything Ill lose out as I wont get a nice lunch and would have to go to
"Room for workers to get sustinance provided at cost by the state"
Two problems with that, the food would be bland and shit I like nice food and would happly pay an extra quid to get it ?
the second problem is that it dosnt exsist
If the sandwich man is self-employed he is getting the full value of his labour.
Profit is not wrong per se. But creaming off money from those who earn it to put it in the pocket of those who don't is wrong.
Exactly a business owner has earnt it as he started the business ansd makes the decisions thats earning it.
Those that invest make their money earn it.
Yes there are occasions where emplies are ripped off, but equally there are occasions where their doing a good job and earning a good wage.
Take the cafe owner a student works part time for him waiting on the tables,
is this student being ripped off, their getting a wage and free lunch the owners making profit of them, but hey whats the alternative he's spent years working on his business, why should a student comealon work for a year and be entitled to his profit he worked hard for.
If you dont like it then whats the alternative ?
>sigh< I never go anywhere else.Call it a personal flaw or something.
I don't beleive in the "state" I don't beleive in money, I don't believe (as you are gathering) in a great deal of that stuff. I don't even think you are in a country at the moment. (Well I know you aren't, but that's a story for another time)
Please explain to me factually, how paper is worth a meal.
Accuracy is tiresome for some I quite agree.
All of them, it's not possible. Again, I am faced with belief, and I can't scale that mountain because it's your problem, not mine.
Of course thats easy its worth a meal, because ,, well see it says on the menue full breakfast with tea £4.50 right following me so far yes, and what i actually did was give the guy abit of paper with a picture of Betty Sax-coburg
you know what he actually said thankyou and then he gave me a few bits of metal with a similer picture.
Then he put the money in the bank or he spent it.
Didnt you say things are only worth what people are prepared to pay for it well there you are then a fiver is worth a meal.
you want the complicated reason, well Ill give you the simple one it works because people beleive in it and the governemnt keep controle to see that people continue to beleive, what else a barter economy trading in silver.
Yeah that's the answer I think of. It's like a religion. And, just like those religions that no longer hold sway over everyone because people "woke up", asking questions about how it all works is (or is going to be) a key to freedom.
How do you think all this got started? First we traded in silver and gold. Then we put that silver and gold into the bank, and the bank gave a paper assurance that they had our silver and gold in it's vaults to show others. Then the banks started to pretend they had gold and silver they didn't have and double issued notes for the same gold and silver.
Then someone went to them and asked for their gold, got it back and the banks went bust. It was so important to the running of everything that those "in power" couldn't let it fail, and said that all taxes must be paid in bankers promises, to shore up those promises and give them an artificial value.
Now there's just paper. The banks have nothing.Look at a note - it says "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of £X".
In what, exactly??
Why do people think these things?
All you have to do is look around at the evidence of the world to see that you are completely wrong....
If people actually related their abstract ideas to the real world in anyway then we would get some of these debates over alot quicker...........
Because they are true?
Look Mr. T. Where do you think inflation comes from? What has a bank lost factually if you take a loan out and don't pay it back?
Paper and ink, that's what. So you should give paper and ink back to them. That's of course assuming that you got the money, and not just some numbers on a screen, in which case you should give them back photons.
All modern banking is fraud.
I agree totally. Please tell me how a hundred or so grammes of paper is equal to a house or forty years at work.
Yes. They can't all be right though, just as I think that even though I think Marx comes closest, it is incomplete.
This doesn't explain anything.
Nor this.
What is "consumer surplus"? How is value created?
This explains nothing.
No, the issue isn't clear cut. However, the labour theory of value and the theory of surplus value explains a lot. How does something gain value? Well yes, its partly market forces, but it also because someone has put some labour in.
Depends what you mean by value. However, answer me this - if someone works in a factory for Mr X producing widgets all day and gets paid £50 yet the amount of widgets produced sell for £100, thats £50 profit, yes? What labour did Mr X put into the widget to make it suddenly gain £50 in value?