The best government is...?

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Permalink Reply by Father Infidel on June 7, 2010 at 2:55pm

i'm with you on pissing on that labor theory. marx was good at finding flaws in the capitalist theory, but a number of his theories are just as nuts, worse even. human time and energy is, in my opinion, a valuable thing, but so is education for specialized work (human time and energy AND money and risk was spent and should be rewarded, else only bored rich and the hardcore would go to college), capital brought in, skill/reputation (like the top CEOs, the way they are able to bid for absurd salaries), past performance and seniority (raises), and any thing else that makes you more or less desirable as a participant in an operation.
The value of each factor seems to be relative to supply demand as i understand, but maybe could be calculated; the final arbiter to value though, would come down to what people are willing and able to pay, i imagine.
These factors can be weaponized in the class struggles. for example by investing capital into automation or other tech to reduce man-hours needed to get er done, by importing non-citizens that are willing to work for less, or by exporting the jobs to non-citizens in other countries, for example, the "capitalist" class is able to, with simple unemployment, increase the supply (and desperation) of available labor, thus devaluing human time and energy as a commodity.

But for good or bad, if there's twice as many people looking for work, i don't see how they can help but be devalued. not enough jobs to go around when jobs are needed to survive simply HAS to reduce the value of a job-seeker, right?
So i think the time value theory fits with my world-view. Capital has value, just like consumed goods. the only problem is when people use it to control or enslave each other, or when they deliberately manipulate the system to hurt other people. methinks one of the roots of evil seems to be the corruption of important middle-man roles in our system, one of which be the banks, and perhaps even credit unions, any group that pushes their CEO to be bloodthirsty; when we pool our money for investing we have traditionally let private bankers handle it all, in exchange for a piece of the action (interest). they then take the money and loan it to other private capitalists and the like; it is not loaned back to the workers to start their own businesses, unless they can prove they don't need it, as the saying. can't blame em either, normal workers don't have collateral.

if workers pooled their money together non-profit style like a credit union, and let it be loaned to a non-profit co-operative company, the problem of start-up costs and collateral could be solved. by default, since nobody owns the place, everyone seems to have equal rights of ownership, none. this is where the ol' "one worker one vote" seems natural but i'm suspicious of it's crudeness and simplicity, but within one shop, one group of people seems to require one set of rules, with minority members just being SOL, so maybe it's just the way it's gotta be. also, most folk would want to delegate decision-making power (especially over stuff that requires education to understand) to someone better suited, ie. a board of directors and the like.
The workers could likely do a better job at most companies than the stock holders anyways i bet, but even if they can't, the morale of basically team "self-employment" and being able to reap what was sown (or voluntarily take a mutual reduction in pay to protect THEIR{not the man's} company), would get a significant kick, and even if not, they would have solid profit motive to produce more and to motivate their fellow workers to do the same. And then there's the fear to whip them, the fear of not being able to pay the loan, which would mean returning to the heavy yoke of the capitalist exploiter, to be robbed, spied upon, and degraded by these hostile, often foreign, conquistadors and their vassals on a daily basis. also it is probably important to take note from the commies- they showed that people can be worked to near religious fervor over this shit.
if self-interest, profit motive, greed, fear, loyalty, territoriality, and the higher human factors, mental and spiritual, are not enough to compensate for the big smarts of our marsters, then i, for one, would prefer a drop in GDP compared to almost everybody being owned by someone else for massive portions of their waking life, often the bigger share.

self-management economically seems closer on the horizon to me; the political system seems even more deeply infected. The main barrier the powers that be have put in our way to stop this angle of attack is them bloody bans on credit union loaning. They see that we have figured out how to pool money (onoz non-monopolized credit!) and to protect the class-war battleship of traditional banking they banned us from loaning hardly any out. well they have to keep a reserve of 87.5 fucking % of their capital in the vault; establishment financial institutions, like the ones that killed our economy, can loan out nearly all of their money, only needing to keep 3-12ish % in the vault. even while they pissed and moaned about no credit, the credit crunch, credit crisis, they still, last i heard, have not relaxed this outrageous death grip on us, forcing us by gun barrels to deal with sick sociopathic fucks like the rockefellers and morgans to bankroll all our stuffs, even though we can see the kind of sick monstrosities that rise from their foul, rotten seed, and the backroom breeding with our law makers that inevitable when we let small groups suck so much blood from the great masses that they swell and swell until we all stand in their shadow, wishing that WE had a lobby, too, so's we might get a taste of this whole representation that they seem to be monopolizing up. So few representatives, so many millions of private moneys burning holes in pockets, just a volatile combination- 2 little minorities, the govt representatives and captains of industry, with mutual interests, being in charge of us all, like its a great idea. er, no offense if you like being exploited by some lazy jackasses, i know it's in vogue.
the fox and the chicken raper in charge of the hen house.
Blessings,
~Father Dave

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