this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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The bias is justified. The left is correct. Markets don't create wealth without necessarily simultaneously creating poverty
For more information, research "surplus army of labor", "primitive accumulation", and "accumulation by dispossession".
Primitive accumulation is a bad term. It works if you've read the theory behind it, but otherwise it sounds like someone saving up a bunch of money then starting a successful business compared to what it is which was colonial genocide, enclosure of the commons, and mass starvation as people were ripped from agricultural labor and cast into the factories and mines to work for feudal lords turned industrial capitalists.
I agree but in this context I'm literally telling them to read about it.
I was just summarizing for the people who are too lazy to go read anything and will just stop here
Well that's just bullshit. Markets have brought more people out of poverty than anything.
Capitalism literally requires poverty to even function.
Lib - "Markets make everything cheaper, which is good."
Leftist - "But if there is a labor market, won't that make labor cheaper?"
Lib - "Yes, and that is good."
Leftist - "How is that good?"
Lib - "It leads to more profits."
Leftist - "But why is it good to have more profits?"
Lib - "Because a good country is when corporations make profits, and the more profits the corporations make, the gooder the country is."
Love to spend insane amounts of resources on creating a phone that has the same tech and capabilities as all the other phones, but I can't just get access to their research and they can't just get access to mine.
Love to spend insane amount of time working up a cure to covid, but I can't share my research with others and they can't share it with me, yay this is awesome.
Love to spend insane amount of resources working out how to make people want to buy a sugary drink and then spend even more to make them want to buy my drink specifically.
Love to build empty houses and love to create 1.21 times more food than we need.
Love to do all this as the world is burning and people are starving.
Capitalism is the most efficient distribution of resources
Kid: "Mommy, what's a strawman?"
Mother: "Take a look a this post here. See how they speak for both sides of the argument?"
Kid: "Yes, they're arguing with themselves."
Mother: "Exactly, and they can make their opponent say what they want."
Kid: "That seems like an easy way to make your argument look good"
Mother: "Yes. It's like fighting someone who can't put up any resistance. They could be made of straw. A strawman. "
Kid: "Oh, I see."
You didn't engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It's nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
There is no point in engaging with someone playing such games. They're not going to be convinced when they're already putting words in the opposition's mouth.
A good faith discussion is not about convincing another, but instead about having an open exchange of information.
They're illustrating a point which you failed to engage with. In no way did it put words in your mouth. The fact that you choose to be insulted by the way they decided to illustrate that point rather than engage with them in good faith says a lot more about you.
To reiterate: You didn't engage with their argument, but good try nonetheless. It's nice to see you cling to a fallacy rather than engage in good-faith discussion of an argument clearly illustrated for you to relate to.
Do better.
A third person - "Not necessarily. If the demand for labor is bigger than the supply then markets make labor more expensive.
Leftist - " How is that possible? "
A third person - " There are various ways. Workers could start more cooperatives or invest their savings in new companies"
Leftist - "But why should I care about markets when it is easier to change the political system?"
A third person - "Is it easier?"
Damn this third person never heard about the reserve army of labor, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, and like all of American history showing the hollowing out of working class power. JUST INVEST YOUR NON-EXISTENT SAVINGS INTO NEW COMPANIES ITS SO EASY. And please how will your worker coop survive in this hellscape with a bourgeois state over it? It will be outcompeted and swallowed immediately by corporations who have no qualms over worker or environmental rights. This isn't china, Huawei (a worker coop) is villified and attacked at every turn here.
You know maybe you have a point, let's be more like China.
No it hasn't, socialist agitation in the teeth of capitalist opposition did that
Without it westerners would still be working 16 hour days seven days a week without any safety nets while dying of lead poisoning
Anything?
Yeah, but please don't say that too much, we don't want to carry water for the CCP
*CPC
I don't think you got the joke
Yeah it completely wooshed over my head, I thought you were serious
Wrong, that would be China, under the direction of the CPC
Yes, just like the Irish people who were "helped" by the free market in the 1840s. Or the Indian people who were "helped" by the free market in the late 1800s. You might be interested in this book by the late, great Mike Davis which completely refutes your ideas with hard evidence that the free market can be used (and has been used) as a tool of genocide: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/7859