Attraction

[thirdform]

I'd rather optimize the fabric of human existence. More people with more free time, less people with more money than they know what to do with.

They need do nothing with it already. If they luxuriated in it they would go bankrupt. As long as it is value set in motion the anarchy of contemporary production will take care of it.

 

[woops]

I think finance has a role to play, but not the sort of orgiastic and juvenile finance we've seen so far.

excuse my political and economic naiveté but the problem seems to be that the billionaires are always going to be opposed to any policy that makes them less billionaires whatsoever. plus they have the money to stop that policy, 'cos they're billionaires. whether that's government or finance or whatever trying to improve matters. I just read this D Rushkoff essay about how we don't need UBI we need worker-owned businesses etc. what billionaire (or investor of any kind) wants to see worker-owned businesses? none, of course

I've just read Procopius' Secret History which is a mad whirl of people betraying each other over and over ad infinitum to gain money and favour with the emperor, only to be betrayed themselves. so it goes

 

[Clinamenic]

dont be a child

I may insist on being a child in precisely the way you are using it now, assuming you mean idealist, in the common sense.

 

[WashYourHands]

sadmanbarty said:
grotesque sexuality. working class english sex as body horror. vagina as axe wound.

the catholic world view. hellraiser.

it's why leathery bondage is actually all about covering the flesh. the notion of sin internalised and fetishised.

No catholic, lapsed or otherwise, has worn a gimp suit

Strictly for Englishy Protestant public school types, eh @craner



the Puma top is part of the disguise

 

[woops]

I may insist on being a child in precisely the way you are using it now, assuming you mean idealist, in the common sense.

i'd love to be an idealist too and see the free creative people you mention but i don't see a realistic way for it to happen

 

[Clinamenic]

excuse my political and economic naiveté but the problem seems to be that the billionaires are always going to be opposed to any policy that makes them less billionaires whatsoever. plus they have the money to stop that policy, 'cos they're billionaires. whether that's government or finance or whatever trying to improve matters. I just read this D Rushkoff essay about how we don't need UBI we need worker-owned businesses etc. what billionaire (or investor of any kind) wants to see worker-owned businesses? none, of course

I've just read Procopius' Secret History which is a mad whirl of people betraying each other over and over ad infinitum to gain money and favour with the emperor, only to be betrayed themselves. so it goes

Yeah, and I see this as the glaring issue against arguments, like some I myself have made and may make yet, that involve changing the system in ways that the 0.1% are compliant with, seeing as any system changes that they are compliant with would obviously involve their remaining in the 0.1%

 

[thirdform]

you need to think of capitalism as no longer about individual appropriation.

the key lies here. Bourgeois economics calculates profit in relation to the constant capital which lies still and doesn’t move: in fact it would go to the devil if the labour of the worker did not “preserve” it. Marxist economics, on the contrary, places profit in relation only to variable capital and demonstrates how the active labour of the proletarian a) preserves constant capital (dead labour), and b) increases variable capital (living labour). This increase, surplus value, is gained by the entrepreneur. This process, as Marx explains, of establishing the rate without taking into account constant capital is like making it equal to zero: an operation current in mathematical analysis where variable quantities are concerned.
Once constant capital is set at zero, gigantic development of profit occurs. This is the same as saying that the enterprise’s profit remains if the disadvantage of maintaining constant capital is removed from the capitalist’s shoulders.
This hypothesis is none other than state capitalism’s present reality.
Transferring capital to the state means that constant capital equals zero. Nothing of the relationship between entrepreneurs and workers is changed, since this depends solely on the magnitude of variable capital and surplus-value.
Are analyses of state capitalism something new? Without any haughtiness we use what we have known since 1867 at the latest. It is very short: Cc = 0.
Let us not leave Marx without this ardent passage after the cold formula: “Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks."
Modern capital, which needs consumers as it needs to produce ever more, has a great interest in letting the products of dead labour fall into disuse as soon as possible so as to impose their renewal with living labour, the only type from which it “sucks” profit. That is why it is in seventh heaven when war breaks out and that is why it is so well trained for the practice of disasters."

Mobb Deep - Murda Muzik.

Murder of the Dead by Amadeo Bordiga 1951

www.marxists.org

 

[woops]

Yeah, and I see this as the glaring issue against arguments, like some I myself have made and may make yet, that involve changing the system in ways that the 0.1% are compliant with, seeing as any system changes that they are compliant with would obviously involve their remaining in the 0.1%

yes and any changes they aren't compliant with they have the riches to stop in whatever way

 

[luka]

I may insist on being a child in precisely the way you are using it now, assuming you mean idealist, in the common sense.

no i dont mean idealist

 

[Clinamenic]

i'd love to be an idealist too and see the free creative people you mention but i don't see a realistic way for it to happen

I think it may happen, to imperfect degrees, in certain backhanded ways, like freedom of expression and creativity under certain data-feudalism parameters, or some such arrangement. In any case, I would like to have a more definitive understanding of how life conditions have changed across systems of society, to better gauge my hypothesis that the world can improve for the 99% while improving faster for the 1%.

 

[woops]

again i don't really have the political or economical intelligence to really comment

 

[Clinamenic]

I think it may happen, to imperfect degrees, in certain backhanded ways, like freedom of expression and creativity under certain data-feudalism parameters, or some such arrangement. In any case, I would like to have a more definitive understanding of how life conditions have changed across systems of society, to better gauge my hypothesis that the world can improve for the 99% while improving faster for the 1%.

Perhaps by outsourcing value creation to robots and algorithms, even if these things primarily benefit those who already possessed the wealth of a small nation, but again I have major doubts and major hopes about these things.

 

[woops]

anyway interesting direction for the thread to take

 

[woops]

Perhaps by outsourcing value creation to robots and algorithms, even if these things primarily benefit those who already possessed the wealth of a small nation, but again I have major doubts and major hopes about these things.

right, which suggests the possibility of a utopia where robots work and humans chill, but like i've said before, UBI is not utopia but a world of people trying to steal each other's UBI

 

[Leo]

again i don't really have the political or economical intelligence to really comment

that doesn't stop anyone else.

 

[Clinamenic]

Job guarantee may be a plausible alternative, or maybe even supplement, to UBI, but again this is a program I know little about.

 

[woops]

that doesn't stop anyone else.

it's not stopping me either but trying to be a voice of reason at least, just saying "i know i'm wrong but" to be polite

 

[WashYourHands]

@Clinamenic

 

[Clinamenic]

that doesn't stop anyone else.

I don't think a lack of understanding should preclude commentary, just preclude authority. How better to learn than putting yourself at stake in your comments and positions, especially in the naive ones, where you stand to learn more?

 

[woops]

i've wondered before why we don't remove the empty buildings vs homeless people dilemma by introducing Compulsory Occupancy, making it more expensive to own an empty property than an inhabited one, but i think the answer is simply that it's bad for business