The Partisan Divide on Issues

[pbrower2a]

(02-03-2021, 02:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(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.

The virtue of small business is that it cannot oppress as can monopolistic or cartelized, vertically-integrated entities with bureaucracies capable of regulating the customer. A small business that treats its customers badly typically goes under rather fast. A giant enterprise can stay such even with a bare profit or simply living off assets (depreciation expense is not a monetary outflow). Big businesses can corner market without trying; they can bribe politicians through campaign contributions so that those businesses get special tax breaks, sweetheart deals with the government, or special breaks in regulation. Small business can do none of that. 

Another virtue of small business, which you relate, is that people in them can see more of the picture. In a giant enterprise like the manufacturing plant in Modern Times, an ordinary worker (Charlie Chaplin's "tramp") can become a machine subordinate to a machine, which is the inverse of what one expects in the relationship between Man and machine. Small business is more likely to do craftsmanship which I find much more individual and thus human.  

Quote: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.

So why are diamonds expensive and is water cheap? Because, useful as water is, it is usually easy to get. OK, fresh water is much easier to get in Ireland than in Namibia, which explains why Ireland is very different from Namibia in its economic character. Namibia has diamonds, but those are difficult enough to get that only those willing to give up something quite valuable can buy them ultimately from the deBeers trust that owns the diamond-mining business in Namibia. Nature is a source of much of the bounty of our world, and it is often a stopgap against unrelieved ugliness. I am not so sure about druid-like qualities being necessary for the appreciation of nature, but it is certainly appreciable much of the time. That's not to say that I want to be at the summit of Mount Washington or in Death Valley if I can instead be in almost-completely-artificial New York City. This said, much that is both precious and human has inspiration in nature, and much that is life is natural in origin. Much of what we are is a consequence of nature.         

Quote: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.

I need tell Einzige that I have read Capital. I am not fully sure that I fully understand what the Communist dream is and how it will be realized. I am not sure that Marx said how it would be achieved except through miracles of productivity (he underestimated the value of technology in forcing social change), but the Communist world would be one of ease because the production of all human needs would be itself easy. Commodity fetishes would become silly and irrelevant indicators of someone living in a discreditable past.  People would be doing things for their own purpose, and not for exchange in lopsided deals in which people toil greatly to give minor bliss to someone who has everything. The Communist world would be an creative person's paradise, and make predatory behavior toward other persons irrelevant and unwelcome. From the age of slave-owning, agrarian societies to early capitalism, the harsh economic reality of the time has required either murderous brutality or grinding poverty to ensure that the common man subordinate himself to some people more powerful than themselves. 

Paradoxically it may be the more market-oriented societies that have done more to approach Communism than 'socialist' regimes under Communist parties that sought to direct all economic activity.