FL Gov. Ron DeSantis Signs Civics Bill Requiring Students to Learn Evils of ‘Communism, Totalitarian Ideologies’
- Thread starter windriverrange
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Please allow me to edit this reply. What you should have written is: “Reading anything written by @07pilt is hard because it is intentionally filled with nuance and double entendre so as to obfuscate the hidden meaning, which cleverly allows @07pilt to have plausible deniability when the harsh truth of what he advocates is exposed.” There. That’s better!
So the government will/will not expropriate small law firms? If not, what is pilt's "socialism" cutoff for what the government expropriates and what it doesn't?
What do you think will happen to a small town lawyer's income if they no longer are the owner of the means of production?
They make a salary from the government just like people that work for Amazon, right?
You keep getting caught up on the idea of business. You can own anything besides the means of production
Can you explain with precision what you mean by the “means of production?”
What he is saying is you can own your business to sell what they produce at the prices they tell you sell them at.
Yeah, think land, plant, and equipment.
So for a lawyer, not much changes. Maybe they lease their IT assets and office furniture instead of owning them. An actual lawyer can correct me if I am wrong, but most of what a lawyer bills goes to salaries and not to getting a return on capital investments.
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Okay, so I can work on a farm, but I can’t own it. I can punch cattle on a ranch, but I can’t own the ranch. I can invent a new product, but I can’t build or own the plant that will produce it. I can drive a forklift, but I can’t own it. Have I got it right?
You can build the plant that produces it. But yeah for the most part this is right.
You do realize the impact that will have on innovators, inventors and self motivated entrepreneurs, do you not?
A lawyer doing work for a client isn't his/her/their means of production?
How about an artist? A painter or sculptor? Does he get to sell his product, or does he have to share profits from his creation with the workers at the paint factory or easel factory or paintbrush factory or the clay or bronze people?
When you say I can build the plant that produces my invention does that mean I can own it? And if I can own it what precisely does that mean?
You do realize how many innovations and inventions are developed within organizations that limit the upside of the individual innovator or inventor, do you not?
Or a writer? Does he have to share the profits from his creation with the paper mill, the ink producers, the book binders, etc.
We are getting far off into the weeds, but yes, you have the right to the fruits of your labor, so if you build a plant yourself it is your personal property.
Yes. And they are free to shop their talents around if they find current conditions unsatisfactory. That doesn’t sound feasible in your society.
he has to buy his material and he might have to rent the easel and paintbrush, but that is getting really close to the line between expenses or personal property and the means of production.
But I have no say in hiring, firing, wage structure, company organization, production policies, etc., right? That is determined by an umbrella board that had nothing to do with my creation or my vision on how to produce my product, market it or sell it. I am required to report to them and they can alter any decision I make as the owner on their whim. Right? So what exactly is meant by me “owning” the plant?
The point is it is up to someone (Who? You?). to say precisely - precisely! - where that point lies. And there will be infinite arguments over where that point exists. I don’t think you comprehend the cluster**** you are envisioning,
You own the plant means your are entitled to what it produces when it is combined with your labor. When you combine it with someone else's labor, it becomes the means of production and you have to cross your fingers that the board keeps you on as management.
But you see an artist, an innovator, an inventor, a self motivated entrepreneur is not a laborer. But you’re insisting they must be put in that category. Eventually (actually sooner rather than later) they’ll go all John Galt on you and your society will mimic China before it reformed, progress will come to a halt. My mother-in-law, God rest her soul, used to have a sign in her office at the plant she and her husband owned because he invented a revolutionary product (which you would take away from them and tell them to “work” for a living), that said “But We’ve Always Done It This Way!). She meant it ironically, obviously, but that’s exactly the ultimate system your method will produce. It shocks me that a person as intelligent as you are cannot see it,
I've already told you most innovators, inventors are in fact laborers. Artists, already pay for their supplies.
Why? And where will they go?
Why? Explain your logic. (Also that is a strange anecdote to use for defending the status quo)
Please first grapple with the fact that most inventions are owned by organizations not the inventors. A good portion of my professional network is listed as an inventor on one or more US patents. Most got nothing but a "good job" as reward. Some got a bonus. Only one got to personally reap the rewards of his/her invention and that was only because of the largesse of his/her employer and when the employer had 100% legal right to keep the rewards to itself.
I read all that and had only one reaction: you think I’m defending the status quo?
Man, this socialism stuff is fascinating and sounds like a good deal. Why has it not been successful in previous implementations?
Yeah, just to keep things clean, your options are status quo or pilt's socialism. We can do status quo versus Dan's anarchy in a different thread if you like.
1). You and I will disagree vehemently over your notion that an innovator, inventor, entrepreneur is a laborer. They are creators, people that make something that never existed before, or improve an existing product dramatically. For you to insist they take to the floor of the manufacturing facility to produce their invention, or lose it to an arbitrary “board” is to insist you want to stifle all innovation and creation and keep things like they’ve always been, because that’s exactly what will happen,
2). Where will they go? They’ll go to ground. Either suppress their innovative personality or seek a black market.
3). Explain my logic? Sure, happy to oblige. Truly creative people, the spellbinding geniuses that drive society forward are a different breed from you or me (or the mind-numbed engineers in large corporations you point out). They are outliers of society, and they will not use their genius if your “board” is going to confiscate it.
I used China for a reason. According to Sunburnt Indian the average IQ of Asians is near the top of the genetic list. China has about 4 times the population of America, for example. Logic would dictate that China, an Asian country, would have 4 times the geniuses:innovators/inventors than America. And yet they could never figure out how to get a rocket off the ground. It makes no sense. They had to persuade Bill Clinton to give them the appropriate technology. Even though Mao had made a concerted mass murdering effort to force the population into cities (at which he succeeded) to turn them from a peasant society into an urban population. And even though China enacted a vigorous educational campaign to bring them into the 20th Century, they still couldn’t get a rocket off the ground. In spite of having higher IQ’s, 4 times the geniuses, massively better education, a thoroughly modern population, they still had to get the advanced technology from outside. Why do you suppose that is? I say it’s because socialism stifles creativity and drives it’s creative people underground. Those that never rock the boat are the ones that move up. And no “board member” will ever gamble his place in society on a product he doesn’t know or understand. They play it safe. Creativity comes to a halt.
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To argue against Pilt’s socialism is not to argue for the status quo. You’re trying to turn the argument away from Pilt’s socialism. I’ll be happy to defend Dan’s anarchism at an appropriate time. But this is not an appropriate time. Stick to the subject at hand. You’ve staked out a position and defended it as best you can. Continue on course. Don’t deflect!
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Damn I am glad I am not one of your laborers. Sounds like you don't have a high opinion of them.
Dan please grapple with the fact that is how thing work today, yet we have plenty of invention and innovation. Until you can acknowledge or dispute this fact we are at an impasse.
Again this is at odds with how things work now. There are millions of patents you can search through that have a different assignee than inventor. As far as I can tell there isn't a black market in any of them.
You are mistaken about me and you are mistaken about what drives society. Society is driven forward by armies of " mind numbed engineers." What is the most important invention of the 21st century that was invented independent of an organization?
Geniuses don't do it for the money Dan, they do it to create.
That's hokum Dan.
They didn't know the right nazis.
Listen to yourself Dan. Mao Zedong ruled from 1949 to 1976 and that means China was a peasant society as recently as the 1950s and you expect them to have a rocket?
Peasant society in 1950. 20% urbanized in 1980. Those are 1870s numbers for the US. Massively better education? China only had less than an 80% literacy rate as late as 1990!
The lesson of course is the development happens in stages and you can't go from peasants to rocket scientists in a generation. You have to industrialize before you can excel at knowledge work.
And yet almost all the products you know and love (and even more of the B2B products that enable all of that) came from a company under the supervision of board members.
