The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Eric the Green]

(02-03-2021, 02:12 PM)Einzige Wrote: I will address what is addressable here. 

Quote:Mom and Pop is better than oligarchy. Small farmers are better than industrial farms.

This is an assumption. Small businesses are of necessity more exploitative of their workers and with fewer benefits than larger ones, whatever the character of their owners.

 

Quote:Nature... is the foundation of value.

Marx concurs.

Quote:I know you want to abolish capital, but this will never fly. Americans are not communists, nor are Europeans, nor are any other people in the world.

Marx does not require them to be.

But you want to abolish capital. I agree that many times small business can be tougher and less beneficial to its workers. That's a good point. But it has more intangible benefits, which Marx even recognized, having to do with being connected to your work instead of alienated from it. A small owner class is a good economic segment. It is fulfilling to own a business. Companies that are too large are alienating. They also gain too much control. They can control the market, resulting in worse products, lower wages, worse working conditions, higher prices. They crush innovation and hurt the environment and the climate. Oligarchy and its wealthy class takes over the government too. It buys politicians and keeps money in politics through its political Party's actions. It concentrates wealth, thus concentrating power.

Nature, conceived as raw material only, is not a source of value; only production. Nature is an intrinsic value because it's beautiful and inspirational, and because it supports all life. It has rights. Humans do not have the right to dominate Nature and submit it only to their needs. Only to tend it. Nature is only valuable if it is recognized as spiritual. Materialism by itself destroys life. Indigenous people understand Nature; western industrial people do not, fully. I don't oppose technology and production, but let's make it eco-friendly.

I forgot to add tourism to my list of economic values (I just added it). Eco-tourism in particular is a rising big business. What physical product does tourism produce? Or are you going to reduce it to souvenirs? Certainly, our economy today is mostly services, and high tech, and fewer workers directly make industrial products. Work is more intellectual and interactive and less routine.