The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Eric the Green]

(02-04-2021, 09:58 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

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

Well, you can stick with the service economy and high tech industries and rely on fewer workers and expanding welfare programs and paying people to do nothing other than vote to keep it all going if you like but don't be surprised if a large segment of the country rejects it and watches as your world turns on each other and falls apart.

You are part of the service economy yourself. It is just the way the economy is right now, and I don't see what economic alternatives you propose would arise if my "world" falls apart.