
The end of capitalism has begun (2015) - rpeden
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun
======
AndrewKemendo
TL;DR: The author conflates "capitalism" with state controlled economic
systems.

The author commits the cardinal philosophical sin of not defining his terms.
What exactly is "postcapitalism?"

"Capitalism" is simply the description of who owns the means of production
(regardless of the good). Namely that individuals without legal means of
physical coercion control production rather than a state with the legal means
for physical coercion. So anything that is post-capitalism by definition means
that production isn't held by individuals - which is the opposite of what the
author seems to be advocating for.

Markets exist irrespective of whatever the formal mechanism of trade is
sanctioned by the state. So even in the most socialist/communist of systems,
there exist markets. It just happens that in those systems the state has the
plurality of pricing controls (ie. controlling supply and demand). In fact the
more top-down controls there are in a market the more there are non-
sanctioned, non-connected markets (black & grey markets as an example).

The author seems to be saying primarily that there is an increasing number of
grey and black markets that are forming and being utilized because the
official sanctioned markets are "failing." Ok, nothing new here really other
than speed and scale.

This is how capitalism works. Markets will clear eventually, and it will
probably be really bad for a lot of people. There isn't a "solution" to this.
People will need to adapt to the demands of the people around them, as has
always been the case.

~~~
rpeden
I think you assessment of the article is fair. It's not the best piece I've
read on this topic, but I found it interesting enough to share on HN.

Do you think it's possible we'll get to the point where technology makes
labour so cheap that capitalism and markets as we know them now will no longer
make sense?

With software that already replaces a lot of human labour, and things like 3D
printing continually improving, it seems like it's at least possible for us to
reach a point where the means of production are so easily available and so
dispersed throughout the population that the current system as we know it
won't really make sense anymore.

So I'm not even sure "postcapitalism" would be the right word to describe it.
Things will still be produced, and the idea of markets won't go away. But this
new system might not be recognizable to us at all. I often wonder if we can
even envision how the transition could happen, because we're so used to
reality as it exists for us now.

I don't mean to sound like a naive technological utopian. I suspect that
something better than what we have now is possible, but the transition, if it
happens, will be messy and painful.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Do you think it 's possible we'll get to the point where technology makes
labour so cheap that capitalism and markets as we know them now will no longer
make sense?_

The short answer is yes I do - in fact I'm betting on it.

The functional problem however is distribution of resource production/demand.
A functional market requires that some Agent A has some resource X that they
can trade with Agent B for resource Y for some exchange rate. The medium of
exchange (currency) is an important aspect to the efficiency of this but is
too complicated to factor in to this discussion.

If the plurality of Agents do not have a resource that is in demand then they
have nothing to trade and thus their optionality is severely limited.

For all periods of time individual labor was the default resource that people
traded. Either they traded it to themselves in the form of time for output of
land (farming for ones self), they traded it for goods from someone with those
goods, or they traded it for a medium of exchange (currency).

If the "market" effectively drives the price of labor to 0 then the productive
input for any Actor basically evaporates. That doesn't mean the market
evaporates, it simply means that individuals have no pricing power inside of
it. So the idea of your average individual controlling the means of production
is put into jeopardy - which I think is what the Author meant to say.

Ok, so then what? Well that's when you see projects to redistribute resources
to Actors with no pricing power introduced - such as UBI. Such schemes however
rely on an increasingly small number of Actors to provide the resources which
are then redistributed into the system. The libertarian proponents of such
systems assume that the small groups will voluntarily redistribute these
resources, which could be the case. Pro-state proponents suggest making the
state redistribute the resources - essentially ending the "capitalism" \-
though the author doesn't suggest this.

I think functionally this redistribution at scale is impossible with the human
animal. IMO the human desire for unfettered agency is too strong to accept
such a construct.

I'm not sure what the answer is but I think it's gonna get nastier before it
gets better.

~~~
marvin
How do you bet on a future like this occurring? It's hard for me to see how to
ensure that you get a positive payout if this happens. Owning machines
(stocks?) would seem like a sensible bet, but how do you ensure that your part
of the capital won't be obsoleted?

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_How do you bet on a future like this occurring?_

You build it.

 _how do you ensure that your part of the capital won 't be obsoleted?_

Best as I can figure is be the one that builds the machines taking over.

------
whack
_" Second, information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices
correctly. That is because markets are based on scarcity while information is
abundant. The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies – the giant
tech companies – on a scale not seen in the past 200 years, yet they cannot
last. By building business models and share valuations based on the capture
and privatisation of all socially produced information, such firms are
constructing a fragile corporate edifice at odds with the most basic need of
humanity, which is to use ideas freely."_

Can anyone explain what the heck the above paragraph is supposed to mean? Can
anyone translate the above into a logical or evidence backed argument? It's
hard for me to take anything in the article seriously when it contains
unsubstantiated indecipherable mumbo-jumbo like the above.

Edit: After much thought, I think the author is claiming that corporations are
building their entire business models around the artificial scarcity of goods
(information) that are in fact abundant. Maybe this argument holds water in
the case of some technology companies like Facebook, and maybe those companies
will one day be disrupted by free, open-source alternatives. But that still
leaves the vast majority of the marketplace, such as cars, electronic devices,
food, furniture, clothes etc etc which are indeed scarce. Just because some
goods in the economy are becoming cheap & abundant, doesn't mean that the
entire marketplace is going to collapse.

~~~
clavalle
I cannot because the author is simply wrong.

"information is corroding the market’s ability to form prices correctly."

Information is essential for the market's ability to set prices.

"markets are based on scarcity while information is abundant"

That's only part of the story. They are also based on value. Information may
be abundant but valuable information is scarce and the creators of valuable
information are scarcer still.

"The system’s defence mechanism is to form monopolies"

Here the author contradicts himself. Just like you cannot form an 'air
monopoly' since it is so abundant. If the author is arguing that information
cannot be intrinsically valuable because it is so abundant, you cannot create
a monopoly on top of it.

"By building business models and share valuations based on the capture and
privatisation of all socially produced information"

That is not what these companies are doing. They are creating platforms that
enable the creation of valuable information or finding valuable information
out of a sea of worthless information.

"most basic need of humanity, which is to use ideas freely."

Information and data are not ideas. And, while it is useful to use valuable
ideas, it is also useful to create them which means it is useful to
incentivize the creation of valuable ideas which is difficult when they are
used freely.

In short, the author is wrong at almost every turn.

~~~
majewsky
> valuable information is scarce

His point is that valuable information is only scarce because of monopolies on
that information. If it were allowed to move freely, it would not be scarce
anymore because of zero-cost lossless reproduction.

> Just like you cannot form an 'air monopoly' since it is so abundant.

Information monopolies only work because they were established _before_
information became abundant. And even then, only with government intervention.
See, for example, the history of book printing prior and up to the invention
of copyright.

> They are creating platforms that enable the creation of valuable information
> or finding valuable information out of a sea of worthless information.

That doesn't mean their business model can't (or won't) be disrupted. 30 (or
even 20) years ago, no one could've imagined a free encyclopedia written by
enthusiasts.

> it is useful to incentivize the creation of valuable ideas which is
> difficult when they are used freely.

There are a lot of people who create valuable ideas which are then used
freely. They're called scientists.

~~~
clavalle
Most impactful scientists are paid. Either they work for a university, hold
patents, sell books, speak, consult, or work for private industry.

If we expect them to create to the level we currently enjoy, we would be wise
not to cut their legs out from under them. In fact, it may be a good idea to
figure out how to reward scientists more efficiently so the good ones aren't
globe trotting to their consulting or speaking gigs, spending inordinate
amount of time writing popular science books, or getting sucked into the trade
secret black hole of private industry.

------
rpeden
As a developer who writes software that does work that replaces the work of
people, I've often wondered if my work is somehow pushing us toward the end of
capitalism. I've also wondered what that end of capitalism and post capitalism
will look like if and when it happens.

My hypothesis has been that while it would be nice to live in a world where
we're free to spend more time with friends and family doing things that
actually, actually getting there will be a long, messy, and painful process.
Perhaps some of the upheaval we've seen in the Western world lately is part of
that?

A lot of the recent anger and anti-establishment sentiment seems to be
centered around jobs disappearing. That collective anger is easy to exploit -
savvy leaders and politicians can direct it toward things like immigrants and
outsourcing, because I think it is easier for people to conceptualize their
job disappearing because another person took it, rather than disappearing
because it was automated.

And I don't mean that as political criticism, or as criticism of people who
are angry about lost jobs. I think it's rational to be angry about it, and
it's rational and smart for politicians to address it.

It seems to me that the desire for cheaper labour is the ultimate cause of all
of this, and that immigration and outsourcing are just transient proximate
causes - hiring less expensive immigrants (legal or otherwise) or outsourcing
to a low cost country are contributing factors _right now_ , but they're
becoming less so as technology becomes less expensive. I expect that trend to
continue.

What I wonder is whether eventually, the collective anger about job loss will
be increasingly directed at those of us (both people and companies) who are
creating the technology that replaces human labour.

~~~
VLM
There are tail wagging dog problems.

Is the purpose of an economic system to generate the largest pile of capital
and damn those obnoxious humans for getting in the way or expecting a quality
life or even expecting to survive? Whats important is the piles of money in
themselves.

Or is the purpose of an economic system to make people happy... or happy
enough, anyway?

The French Revolution can be looked at on a large scale of trying to run a
sem-industrial pre-industrial nation using an agricultural medieval economic
operating system. It simply didn't work anymore and the population was
suffering horribly from it. Trying to do the wrong, old fashioned thing
harder, mostly resulted in making people even unhappier and more guillotine
chops in the end. Likewise if the capitalist system means almost everyone is
going to be very poor, very angry, and very desperate, then trying to do more
of the same old thing that screwed everything up is just going to result in
the guillotines being busier sooner this time around.

Not so much OPs post, but I see a lot of free floating condescension on HN
along the lines of, well, I guess people with an IQ below 120 just won't be
participating in the economy anymore. Oh they had the misfortune of being born
in the wrong geographic area? Their parents weren't rich, too bad. Should have
pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. Won't happen to me. As for them,
well all thats certain is it sure sucks to be them! However realize that
historically "it sucks to be them" for only a certain integrated quantity of
suck and time, before heads start filling baskets and things are much worse in
the short term and staggeringly better in the long term.

No man has ever watched his child starve and die, thinking to himself, well,
it was for the maximal efficient allocation of capital, so its OK, in fact
here's my other kid, if it'll only help boost the DJIA some more.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Or is the purpose of an economic system to make people happy... or happy
enough, anyway?_

There is no purpose.

Markets arise out of aggregated self interest eg. I need to eat and I can work
on something that someone else wants that they will give me food for; or I
want to play sports, people will pay to watch me play sports.

The history of humanity is that we build technologies that optimize for most
efficiently satisfying human needs and wants and we are doing amazingly well
at it. Worldwide poverty is at an all time low, violent deaths are at an all
time low etc...

Currently the majority of humanity choose not to produce their basic food
needs, so about 2% of people do that work.

Ok, now extend that to everything, both need and want.

In such a system if an individual wants to build their own X and company Y
produces it more efficiently, and the plurality of others choose that more
efficient one, then they will not be able to compete and there is nothing for
them to do.

It's not a value proposition it's a math problem. It's also not condescension,
it's reality. Do you feel bad for horse carriage makers?

------
major505
Capitalism is not dyying. Capitalism without state intervention, one person to
another, is the most pure form of capitalism.

~~~
posterboy
> the most pure form of capitalism.

purer than pure, so to speak

------
V-2
The inevitable and imminent demise of capitalism, it's been "beginning" for
nearly 200 years now.

~~~
Bombthecat
Exactly, and, in my own humble opinion. The capitalism thing just started.

~~~
V-2
The left-wing critique of capitalism has its roots in the dated, 19th century
mindset of an Engineer. It has never really moved on from the _" era of the
telegraph and the steam engine"_, as the author puts it. The core of it is the
belief that social world has to be set up like a precise mechanism.

The direct outcome of that was the idea of central planning, of course, but in
principle this school of thought values categorizing, configuring and
arranging _everything_ , even humans. Case in point - Fourier's phalanstères
(influential early socialist who _" believed that there were twelve common
passions which resulted in 810 types of character, so the ideal phalanx would
have exactly 1620 people"_, and so forth).

Today's musings are less naive, but the common utopian theme is still that
once we arrive at the ideal order of things, we're "liberated" and all that's
left is maintenance work, winding the great clock up so it never stops
ticking.

They conceal this sentiment better these days, but it still comes out in
perceiving every system that's everchanging and highly adaptive as
"corroding", "collapsing" etc. If there's no Big Project behind it, it's
flawed in their eyes.

Is capitalism _as we know it_ living its days out? Of course - _always_.

------
clavalle
The author sees abundant, cheap data and information as eroding Capitalism...I
see it as lubricating Capitalism and re-invigorating it with the efficiency
gains into areas that may, according to very old labels, might superficially
look like collectivism. But the old capitalist incentives still fuel the
machine. We don't have to declare a collectivist utopia and force everything
to fit in that mold. We can let the market decide where it works.

------
grandalf
I think the core premise of this article is flawed.

The trend we've actually seen is increasingly socialized risk. This applies to
all areas of the economy, from the artificial demand for high risk mortgages
to the allowance of a bank's arbitrary assets to be used as risk capital.

Also, congress has gutted the PBGC to the point where it is far from being
actuarially sound. Social security and medicare are budgeted such that cuts
are guaranteed, etc.

None of these are capitalist enterprises whatsoever. They are state-run
markets with various ministers and officials dictating the prices and claiming
to understand supply and demand better than markets, and allocating "welfare"
to various interest groups (individuals and firms).

Note that nearly all justifications for the overreach in the wake of the 2008
financial crisis were welfare oriented. Prices stopped being an indication of
supply and demand but were considered "good" or "bad" and government was
called upon to help make prices "more good". This is profoundly dangerous, and
has had significant consequences.

More recently, the ACA was passed which codified a massive redistribution of
wealth from young to old.

The trends we're seeing emerge are things like credit being a right rather
than a function of supply and demand for risk capital.

So soon we'll find that a job is a right, credit is a right, healthcare is a
right, etc. The tough question about healthcare is not whether we should care
for the sick and indigent, but what are the proper incentives for a healthcare
system to have. Rather than addressing the real questions we got a simple
wealth redistribution from young to old and from consumers to incumbent firms,
an emerging class of Halliburtons of healthcare.

Both political parties lack any desire to exist in a capitalist society; both
would rather make big promises and undertake massive projects that have no
counterfactual data with which to judge their success or failure.

Trump has promised to continue the work done by Clinton and Bush and Obama to
remove regulatory barriers to risk aggregation, which appeals strongly to
firms now that we all know that regardless of whatever (arbitrary)
underwriting requirements the law sets, the government will underwrite any
losses that could result in insolvency. Employees of those firms stand to
collect performance bonuses each quarter until the firm turns out (oops) to be
over-leveraged.

The nice thing about socialism is that it is a simple ideology of preventing
class power from emerging. What we have in the US today is a highly corrupt
form of crony capitalism and public/private schemes designed to enrich
specific firms and cronies. That there still exists any rhetoric that talks
about capitalism, individualism, etc., is simply due to some politicians
finding it useful to rally a small number of constituents, but it means
nothing and has zero impact, other than to fuel articles like this that
disparage it.

~~~
rpeden
Do you think that technology has the potential to take the power away from
politicians and companies and put it back in the hands of the people?

I'm by no means a technological utopian. But it would be nice if we could
develop to the point where technology helps make things like health care
inexpensive enough that we don't have to ask questions about whether it is a
right. It'll just be something that everyone has access to, and it would seem
weird to think otherwise. Of course, right now the primary reason for people
and companies have for developing that kind of technology is the potential for
a financial return. I'd personally work for less money for an organization
with a goal like making health care, or clean water, etc. available to
everyone at low cost. But I'm not sure how such an organization would compete
against the massive corporate incumbents in those fields.

Along those lines, cheap and powerful technology can also be used be groups
who are already powerful (mainly large corporations and governments) to
consolidate their power. I think we're already seeing that happen.

~~~
collyw
"But it would be nice if we could develop to the point where technology helps
make things like health care inexpensive enough that we don't have to ask
questions about whether it is a right."

Its worked like that in Europe for years.

~~~
majewsky
I don't know. I think it was more like an agreement from most parties that it
is better (more efficient, more moral, etc.) to have affordable healthcare for
everybody, rather than dealing with a grossly sick underclass.

~~~
collyw
Different means to the same end.

------
unicornporn
This is strange, I watched Paul Mason's presentation at Google yesterday[1]. I
recommend it.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQyr9l22fLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQyr9l22fLE)

------
HillaryBriss
> _individualism replaced collectivism and solidarity_

If the risk of fighting for the expansion of individual rights is that it
reduces collectivism and solidarity then the progressive left has a
fundamental inner conflict to resolve.

------
norea-armozel
I think at the heart of the 2016 US elections is this panic over the decline
of capitalism. It'll be interesting to see what the alt-right does when the
world doesn't need the old systems of manufacturing and military to sustain
societies.

~~~
rpeden
Maybe just the decline of capitalism as we know it?

As others have pointed out, if people are still making things and providing
services, and there are markets in which people exchanges those goods and
services, that's still capitalism.

But not capitalism as we know it right now. Our current system puts a lot of
power in the hands of big corporations and governments. That's worked pretty
well (for the Western world, at least) for a long time, in terms of quality of
life.

So I understand the widespead desire to maintain what we've got right now. I
just wonder how long it'll be possible to do that for. Technology that enables
people and small groups to create things for themselves offers the opportunity
to put more power back in the hands on individuals. But technology also
enables groups that are currently powerful to consolidate their power.

I suspect that we'll _eventually_ reach a point where individuals have more
control over their circumstances, but not before we go through a period where
powerful governments and companies becomes even more powerful.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>As others have point it out, if people are still making things and providing
services, and there are markets in which people exchanges those goods and
services, that's still capitalism.

Capitalism: the means of production are controlled by private individuals, and
operated by wage-laborers, to accumulate profit.

Anything other than that _is not capitalism_. Personal trade and markets in
goods preexisted capitalism by thousands of years. They will probably survive
well after capitalism is dead and gone, if anyone at all is alive at that
point.

Capitalism itself, though, is teetering now as it did in 1930. There were ways
to save it then: break up overlarge firms, enforce competition with the hand
of the state, use the welfare state to prop up the working class's standard of
living. Frankly, I think those can still work, but it's also much more
desirable to shift to codetermination, socialized finance, and worker
cooperatives in the first place.

~~~
norea-armozel
The problem with that solution is that it's kicking the can down the road for
another generation to reset the system once it returns to the gigantism of
old. The best solution, the hardest one because it will hurt the most, is to
place all ownership of capital in a common trust. No more Bill Gateses. No
more George Soroses. Just everyone having a common share in the same pool of
capital from which to subsist. This doesn't mean you can't have personal
property, it just means you can't plant a flag on some land and declare "I am
the king of my own kingdom" as it were.

~~~
snrplfth
But capital is dynamic and ever-changing. Also, a huge amount of it, quite
possibly a majority in how you measure it, is in human skills and knowledge.

Capital is not a pool of objects that, once made, forever provide a return.
All machines wear out or are obsoleted, buildings require maintenance or
become badly located, people change throughout their lives, products and
preferences change, making old capital lose value and new capital emerge.
Making a "common trust" of capital changes none of this, and it cannot be
comprehensibly divided into shares.

And the personal-property/capital distinction is flawed. Is a car personal
property? Does it matter if I use it to commute to work, or to deliver pizzas?
There's essentially no comprehensible criteria to distinguish personal
property from capital property.

And I really don't see how "placing all ownership of capital in a common
trust" is not gigantism. It's the most total gigantism, the ultimate monopoly.
Whosoever operates that trust really is the king of all.

~~~
norea-armozel
>But capital is dynamic and ever-changing. Also, a huge amount of it, quite
possibly a majority in how you measure it, is in human skills and knowledge.

Again, this doesn't reflect the historicity of the ownership of capital.
Today's equivalent to land monopoly would be intellectual property where
individuals and firms have effectively monopolized lawful use of labor to
produce a wide variety of products. This is especially disastrous when it
comes to patents since there's no reasonable justification for such
monopolization since it is by definition rent seeking. Therefore, I ask why do
you feel it's logical to continue down the path of further monopolizations
which inevitably harm the economy as a whole and individuals in their pursuit
of material betterment?

>And the personal-property/capital distinction is flawed. Is a car personal
property? Does it matter if I use it to commute to work, or to deliver pizzas?
There's essentially no comprehensible criteria to distinguish personal
property from capital property.

No it's not flawed because capital is the means of production itself. Your car
isn't a means for production that can be naturally monopolized. But if you
demanded a toll for a stretch of road that happens to be out front of your
house that would be capital and it would be rent seeking since the act of
ambulation isn't improved by the mere act of crossing your part of the road.
The act of demanding a toll for the road crossing is what capitalism does as a
whole. It says "I will use force to extract rents on things which clearly are
a necessary component to life without adding value in said transaction nor pay
for the socialization of the costs/risks of my ventures."

>And I really don't see how "placing all ownership of capital in a common
trust" is not gigantism.

It's not gigantism because it's not done at a national level. I support
radical localism.

~~~
snrplfth
> Therefore, I ask why do you feel it's logical to continue down the path of
> further monopolizations which inevitably harm the economy as a whole and
> individuals in their pursuit of material betterment?

Why do you assume I'm in favour of a particular form of patent law? (Let alone
any patent law?) I'm not (though it's not a super-strongly held prior), and I
think that this is perfectly consistent with supporting a very market-based
system. I think a no-patents system would probably be more innovative and
competitive than what we have now.

>But if you demanded a toll for a stretch of road that happens to be out front
of your house that would be capital and it would be rent seeking since the act
of ambulation isn't improved by the mere act of crossing your part of the
road.

Are you talking about somebody charging a toll on a road they don't own and
don't maintain? Because that's not what I'm talking about or proposing.

I mean, who built the road? Someone has to build it and maintain it. It must
be refreshed constantly with new investment. It's also not a monopoly on
anything - no more than the door in a house is a monopoly on entry into that
house. And "ambulation isn't improved by the mere act of crossing a road"? I
think roads (and sidewalks, and boardwalks) very much improve ambulation and
transportation of all kinds. Building a road and then tolling it is not
rentiership in any sense.

Capital is not a fixed pool of items or goods. Owners of capital are not
inherently rentiers. They can be, in many cases, but that's not because they
own capital.

> It's not gigantism because it's not done at a national level. I support
> radical localism.

Well, now you're back to, essentially, private property. Some "radically
local" entities are going to be more successful than others, and become more
prosperous, making membership in them more valuable. They will have to trade
between themselves, making prices and property (even if collective) necessary.
And unless you're prepared to keep people in their locality permanently,
you're going to see localities that change size radically. And if you're going
to keep localities of a similar size, who enforces that? And if they do,
you're back to gigantism.

~~~
norea-armozel
>I think a no-patents system would probably be more innovative and competitive
than what we have now.

Glad we agree at least on this point

>Are you talking about somebody charging a toll on a road they don't own and
don't maintain? Because that's not what I'm talking about or proposing. >I
mean, who built the road? Someone has to build it and maintain it.

The road analogy is specifically dealing with the idea that land itself can be
an exclusive good and thus individuals who naturally exclude others (someone's
home, factory, farm, etc are the property on the land but not the land itself)
should cover for the loss through the exclusion. Allowing people to exclude
others but also to extract rents through mere passage or occupancy without
actually producing any value (land speculation and slum lords are an example
of this). This ultimately leads to a social order where those who own title to
land can reign supreme over others who rent the land.

>Capital is not a fixed pool of items or goods. Owners of capital are not
inherently rentiers.

If you have a monopoly on the capital goods in question then you are a
rentier. There's no way around it and it needs to be addressed if you want to
fix the fundamental problems that plague society.

>Well, now you're back to, essentially, private property.

Property is a necessary but not sufficient condition of capital. And property
isn't the issue (read Proudhon) but rather the title acting as impersonal
property over personal property as use. Meaning that one with title can
exclude others from its use even if they're not using it or even care to use
it ever (again land speculators and patent trolls are a great example of
this).

>Some "radically local" entities are going to be more successful than others,
and become more prosperous, making membership in them more valuable.

Cooperatives in themselves are a union among workers thus you can't elevate
yourself above fellow workers in the cooperative in terms of economic primacy.
All have their say in equal capacity (as in shares != more votes).

>They will have to trade between themselves, making prices and property (even
if collective) necessary.

And none of this is capitalism. I think the onus is on you to show me how a
market needs a capital owner and not the other way around. Because at it's
heart two individuals free of exclusivity that comes with capitalism trading
among themselves is no more a capitalist than is a musician a capitalist just
because they're paid big bucks to sing at concerts. You're not a capitalist
either just because you decide to use your car to drive Uber fares part time
because the act of work itself isn't excluding others from working (i.e. being
Uber drivers themselves). A capitalist by definition can and will extract
rents from capital and exclude others from its use (be it labor, machines,
factories, ideas, or land) via the State or equivalent institutions. None of
this in any form is necessary to the definition of a market system. A market
system is merely free exchange of goods at some price (social credit, barter,
money, etc). That's it, nothing else defines a market. And as such it takes a
capitalist to make capitalism; no ands, ifs, or buts.

~~~
snrplfth
> The road analogy is specifically dealing with the idea that land itself can
> be an exclusive good and thus individuals who naturally exclude others
> (someone's home, factory, farm, etc are the property on the land but not the
> land itself) should cover for the loss through the exclusion. Allowing
> people to exclude others but also to extract rents through mere passage or
> occupancy without actually producing any value (land speculation and slum
> lords are an example of this).

I don't see why land is special. Sure, it has a few peculiar properties, but
it's not that different. Land has value for all sorts of reasons - perhaps it
has fertile soil (which must be stewarded), perhaps it has valuable buildings
or infrastructures near or on it (which must be built and maintained), perhaps
it has certain climactic advantages - but this doesn't mean that anybody who
owns some has a "monopoly" on it, any more than the owner of any other thing
has a "monopoly" on that particular object. There's a limited number of, say,
aluminum atoms on earth, does that mean that anyone who owns some aluminum is
a monopolist?

I mean, I can go buy a swathe of desert and put a fence around it, it doesn't
mean I've got a monopoly on anything. Land ownership - especially urban land
ownership, where most of the value is - is hugely fragmented, there's no
monopoly to be found.

I exclude others from my home, and the land it's on. Why should I be able to
exclude people from my house legitimately, but not the attached land
components?

>If you have a monopoly on the capital goods in question then you are a
rentier.

What capital goods do people actually have a monopoly on, though, which has
not been granted to them by special law? Any capital good you can think of
(outside patent or copyright) can be, and usually is, owned by many people.

> Meaning that one with title can exclude others from its use even if they're
> not using it or even care to use it ever (again land speculators and patent
> trolls are a great example of this).

How do you define use, though? (Patent trolls we've covered.) What if I leave
land fallow for the pure enjoyment of it, or for natural restoration? What if
I use it in a way that others don't like? Who decides? A "land speculator" is
investing in the possibility of future returns - what if the "speculator"
intends to build houses on a lot, but is still trying to raise money to do so?
What's the difference between a land buyer employed by a homebuilder, and a
freelance one? Is it only speculation if a profit is returned? (I can
speculate on land for years and make no money.) Speculation is nearly
impossible to clearly define.

> Cooperatives in themselves are a union among workers thus you can't elevate
> yourself above fellow workers in the cooperative in terms of economic
> primacy. All have their say in equal capacity (as in shares != more votes).

Great, what if a cooperative fails, as they will? Those people will have to go
find new or other cooperatives to work for. Will all cooperatives be required
to take those people in and give them an equal say, even though they've not
contributed the same amount of time and may have helped cause a failure? Can
you fire people from a cooperative if they're no good? If everyone else in
your cooperative besides you leaves, can you still have a single-person
cooperative?

> I think the onus is on you to show me how a market needs a capital owner and
> not the other way around.....You're not a capitalist either just because you
> decide to use your car to drive Uber fares part time because the act of work
> itself isn't excluding others from working (i.e. being Uber drivers
> themselves). A capitalist by definition can and will extract rents from
> capital and exclude others from its use (be it labor, machines, factories,
> ideas, or land) via the State or equivalent institutions.

Because all goods are essentially capital - or rather, all capital is
essentially just goods. There's no obvious distinction. Let me recast your
example: "You're not a capitalist either just because you decide to use your
garage workshop to build chairs part time because the act of work isn't
excluding others from working (i.e. making chairs themselves.)" And you can
expand that - "You're not a capitalist because you decide to use your factory
to create steel...."

If you own a car you're excluding others from using _that car_ \- but you're
not inherently a monopolist rentier, because others can make and own cars. If
you own a factory you're excluding others from using _that factory_ \- but
you're not inherently a monopolist rentier, because others can make and own
factories.

~~~
norea-armozel
>Land has value for all sorts of reasons... Land is only valuable due to
scarcity. You really can't make more of it even if you dig up parts of another
bit of land to dump into a bay (like how they made the airport in Tokyo).

And the infrastructure on it doesn't make land any more valuable because those
things (buildings, roads, farms, etc) are property in the sense they can be
put just about anywhere and require labor to make them all. Land doesn't
require any labor to exist. It's just a given like air and fresh water. It's
the baseline from which all economic transactions can operate.

>but this doesn't mean that anybody who owns some has a "monopoly" on it

If you own the land in an area by definition you got a monopoly there. And it
becomes a problem the ownership of land becomes centralized to the point that
corporations like what you see with slums not improving the property on the
land (due to property tax as one significant factor) and still extracting
rents above market level from tenants. But that's a special case and it's one
that really suggest you read up on when you have free time.

>What capital goods do people actually have a monopoly on, though, which has
not been granted to them by special law? Any capital good you can think of
(outside patent or copyright) can be, and usually is, owned by many people.

1\. There's no such thing as a "special" law. There's just laws of certain
types. Sorry for the pedantry but I think trying to sequester a significant
social and legal trend as "special" hides the deeper problem attached to the
fact that those laws exist (see Enclosure Act from 19th century England as an
example of this).

2\. And of those people, does it seem logical to allow them impede the
utilization their capital when they leave it fallow or otherwise try to
depress wages while utilizing it as a practice of employment? Again, this the
point that I think you're missing or otherwise discounting. Specifically, that
the ownership of capital should be held in common so that everyone can have
equal access (not necessarily equal opportunity as achievement) to the means
to sustain themselves. This doesn't need something as rigid as a Five Year
Plan or any Soviet-era bureaucracies. It can be as simple as a cooperative
shared among members of the neighborhood or the city.

>What if I leave land fallow for the pure enjoyment of it, or for natural
restoration?

Then you should have no issues with paying for a land value tax (which would
be lower than a property tax in most cases) for that use.

>Great, what if a cooperative fails, as they will?

What if publicly traded corporations fails, as they will? A cooperative isn't
some radically new concept or institution. Your local credit unions are a form
of cooperative in the current legal framework. You have also utility
cooperatives, farming cooperatives, and so on. None of these fail any more or
less than a private/public corporation. I think you need to study this part of
the matter on your own because honestly HN isn't the place to go indepth with
alternative incorporation schemes and laws. Best to ask someone who's done
this sort of thing. Best bet is to look for someone who's in a diary
cooperative. Lots of food fanatics use them to get unpasteurized milk.

>Because all goods are essentially capital...

No. Just, no. The burger I'll eat today for lunch is no more capital than the
notebook I use to write my notes on. Capital are goods which can directly make
more goods. Think ore, timber, machines, patents, corporate assets (money,
stocks, etc). These are capital. Individual's personal cars, homes, and skills
aren't capital by any definition from any school of economics that I'm at
least aware of (there might one but I seriously doubt it's considered
orthodox).

~~~
snrplfth
> Land is only valuable due to scarcity. You really can't make more of it even
> if you dig up parts of another bit of land to dump into a bay (like how they
> made the airport in Tokyo).

Well, the majority of the land extensions in Tokyo (and elsewhere) have
generally been created by using the spoils from tunneling. So in this sense,
the total land area has indeed been increased with no reduction _in area_
elsewhere.

Secondly, I would say that land isn't valuable "only due to scarcity". Demand
matters too. Lots of land on Earth is not in demand for much of anything,
because it's not near anything useful to anybody, or has nothing useful upon
it. The overwhelming majority of land value is due to the proximity of
economically useful things (the aforementioned buildings and infrastructure
and so on.)

The reason to have private property in land is _because_ many things are
necessarily tied to specific parcels of land. If you don't have private land
ownership, then all land-attached investments are insecure. (UPDATE: That is
to say, _private_ land-attached investments are insecure.)

> If you own the land in an area by definition you got a monopoly
> there.[...cut for length...] But that's a special case and it's one that
> really suggest you read up on when you have free time.

Firstly, this salty suggestion of yours that I need to "read up on" land
economics "when I have free time" is pretty unnecessary. I did my reading, six
years of it, in the process of two degrees in urban geography/economics. I
have been through literally thousands of pages of reading on this subject.
Now, you may disagree with me and that's totally fine! But maybe stash the
assumptions about what I have and have not done, alright?

To say that someone has a monopoly on land because they own _some small
amount_ is to excessively broaden the meaning of the word. A monopoly doesn't
exist in a situation where there is a wide range of substitutable goods
available from multiple owners/suppliers. The fact that a good is limited in
supply does not make any owner of a small fragment of the total supply a
monopolist. And _people_ are mobile - the fact that land is generally immobile
doesn't mean that people are unable to exercise choice, since they can do so
through movements, even quite small ones.

Centralized land ownership is almost never a case of corporations or private
individuals - indeed, it's usually the case that the largest land ownership
centralizers are municipalities and other governments. Many of the reasons
that slums exist is due not to the private ownership of land, but other
factors: rent controls drive down returns from buildings, making upkeep
uneconomic, high taxes overconsume the returns in a similar way, insecure
property rights lead to underinvestment (this last one is most common in low-
income countries.) The private land owners of most cities are usually huge in
number - competition does exist, and monopoly, at least due to private owners,
typically does not.

I'll further note that while land is, in a sense, limited in supply, the
_services provided by land_ are much less so. This is the whole reason behind
urban density and building upwards (and down). Land ownership is just a
prerequisite to these investments.

> 1\. There's no such thing as a "special" law. There's just laws of certain
> types.

I was referring, apparently too obliquely, to things like patent law, which I
agree are different. (Since by _copying_ an idea, one does not seize or
destroy the original.)

>2\. And of those people, does it seem logical to allow them impede the
utilization their capital when they leave it fallow or otherwise try to
depress wages while utilizing it as a practice of employment?[...cut for
length...] It can be as simple as a cooperative shared among members of the
neighborhood or the city.

Firstly, I don't think "leaving fallow" is something easily defined or
decided. Of course, the original "fallow" was to let the land rest after a
harvest - indeed, it was an investment (foregone consumption in expectation of
future returns.) But even land owned "speculatively" and _appearing_ to be
fallow may be serving an important purpose. For example, let's say I might be
building out a large area one piece at a time. So first, I'll be extending and
improving infrastructure. I'd like to get the maximum benefit of that
investment, though, so I'll buy up a large amount of land around it ahead of
time, even though I'll not be building anything on it for a while. Or, to give
another example, let's say I'm an investor hoping that housing demand will
cause land in an area to become more valuable. So I'll buy it up and wait,
hoping to build on it later - what the sellers get is _money now_ , which is
more valuable to them than their expected money later. What I'm doing is
taking a risk - it might pan out, it might not - but by selling to me, the
previous owners transferred that risk to me in exchange for a known upfront
payout. These are perfectly reasonable things to do, even if they look like
"land speculation".

And "equal access" is of course not guaranteed by collective ownership.
There's nothing about a collective that ensures that its capital will give
good returns. And if you've got things on the scale of a neighbourhood or a
city, then naturally some neighbourhoods or cities will have much better
capital than others. Then all that happens is that some localities are wealthy
and some are not - "equality" is only within the cooperative. Yet if
cooperatives aren't fixed and mandatory, the failing ones will just evaporate
and be bought out. And you're back to inequality.

>Then you should have no issues with paying for a land value tax (which would
be lower than a property tax in most cases) for that use.

And I'm not objecting in principle to a land value tax. It's perfectly
compatible with private land ownership, although I'm a bit skeptical of it
being a particularly effective or progressive tax. But that's neither here nor
there.

>What if publicly traded corporations fails, as they will? [...cut for
length...] I think you need to study this part of the matter on your own
because honestly HN isn't the place to go indepth with alternative
incorporation schemes and laws.

I have nothing against cooperatives at all, they're a perfectly reasonable
ownership structure, albeit one disadvantaged by a number of tax and liability
laws. I have been a _member_ of a number of cooperatives, and have done a
reasonable amount of research on them. (Again - your assertion that I "need to
study this on my own" is rude and a non-argument.)

What I was referring to was _your_ argument that land and "capital" should all
be owned by cooperatives. (Perhaps I should have said "Norea-Armozel-model
cooperatives" or something.) What I was arguing is that, if people in these
cooperatives are free to leave them, free to start them, free to exclude non-
current-members, and free to be in a one-person cooperative, then you're right
back at private ownership of land and capital. The only way you can ensure
continued collective ownership of capital is by blocking off these avenues of
choice.

>No. Just, no. The burger I'll eat today for lunch is no more capital than the
notebook I use to write my notes on. Capital are goods which can directly make
more goods. Think ore, timber, machines, patents, corporate assets (money,
stocks, etc). These are capital. Individual's personal cars, homes, and skills
aren't capital by any definition from any school of economics that I'm at
least aware of (there might one but I seriously doubt it's considered
orthodox).

The capital/consumption distinction is not one inherent to the good itself,
though. It's a useful economic concept but is different from the
public/private/club/common distinction. What I was saying is that this
distinction is not a hard-and-fast one, but more like the distinction between
a tropical storm and a hurricane - a line you draw somewhere for the purposes
of analysis.

You say, "capital are goods which can directly make more goods". Well, take
that private vehicle for example. Now, transportation is needed somehow to get
the workers to a factory - it is essential to the production process. So at
first the employees drive their own vehicles. Then, let's imagine that the
factory owners have the bright idea of starting a company carpool van service,
to cut down on parking needed. They buy a bunch of vans and start bringing
employees to work in them. The service of transportation is still rendered,
but now the vans are "capital goods" because they are used to make the
factory's operation possible. It's still a vehicle - did anything change about
the _good itself_? Not really, no.

I mean, are kitchenwares capital goods or not? They certainly directly make
more goods - but does that mean that all kitchenwares should be collectively
owned? What if somebody starts making and selling food in their own home? A
dentist owns many tools which produce a good/service - clean and healthy
teeth. They seem to be capital. But many of these same tools, providing quite
similar services, in people's homes, are not capital? (As the old question
goes, "do I get to own my own toothbrush?") Beds, walls, and bathrooms, when
in a hotel, produce a good/service. But those same goods in the home are not
capital? (And what about BnBs?) Capital is distinguished from consumption
goods just as a helpful measurement category; the goods - and their potential
to be owned - do not change.

