Americas Middle Class Massacre *sobs*

[GreyICE]

All labor requires some skill.

The distinction of the PMC is not their knowledge but their credential. An artist, chef, or musician might have a greater volume of knowledge about their field than someone with a certification in auto repair or web design, but the certification is what is changing their relationship to production, not the knowledge. This means institutions of certification control entry into the PMC, not the flow of information.

Bezos, an owner, is in the same class as a programmer, a worker.

I am pointing you to the surgeon and the hospital owner example. They both could make the same income, but while the owner merely possess; the doctor produces. We need workers, we do not need owners.

I certainly agree with the general sentiment in some ways (although your objections to certification are a bit spurious, but that's minor) but I feel the line has blurred in certain ways.

First, you're ignoring a special class of parasite, the investor. The class that owns nothing, does no work, produces nothing, and yet generates money. The ultimate demonstration that money is a very distinct concept from wealth or capital, that it is merely a number, and the most efficient way to increase a number isn't to "own things that workers use" but to simply increase the number. Something Marx didn't particularly foresee, and the root cause of much of our problems. A hospital owner at least owns a hospital - this is a useful thing. An investor owns pieces of paper that aren't even paper anymore, just digital figments that float here and there generating numbers, and those numbers give them access to more money than the hospital owner. And while a hospital owner must at least follow certain standards and own a hospital that is doing something, the investor can drain wealth from workers directly, by converting owners into workers and becoming super-owners that own nothing. It truly is an impressive concept. Marx never envisioned a landlord so efficient as the credit card, or of the scope and power of a bank's ability to create money once banks realized that creation could be untethered from basic economic concepts.

It's this class of parasite that causes the most damage, and is most easily identified by wealth, not function. For whatever job title they have, they are far from the "old money" of Marx's time that sat on their declining fortunes drinking tea and being useless. Now they've morphed into something with teeth.

The 25 people that are designing the factory are still providing labor in a way that say a land lord is not.

Not in Marxian terms. A landlord is someone who does something once, and thereafter collects a stipend from workers, one that they can control and raise. A worker is someone who does something on an ongoing basis. A designer is a weird ground that is essentially a "landlord enabler" or "owner enabler" in many respects. It's the same way Marx's model doesn't have any place for an entertainer. It just wasn't complete in ways that have become extremely important to our economy.

[TulipQulqu]

All labor requires some skill.

The distinction of the PMC is not their knowledge but their credential. An artist, chef, or musician might have a greater volume of knowledge about their field than someone with a certification in auto repair or web design, but the certification is what is changing their relationship to production, not the knowledge. This means institutions of certification control entry into the PMC, not the flow of information.

Bezos, an owner, is in the same class as a programmer, a worker.

I am pointing you to the surgeon and the hospital owner example. They both could make the same income, but while the owner merely possess; the doctor produces. We need workers, we do not need owners.

I certainly agree with the general sentiment in some ways (although your objections to certification are a bit spurious, but that's minor) but I feel the line has blurred in certain ways.

First, you're ignoring a special class of parasite, the investor. The class that owns nothing, does no work, produces nothing, and yet generates money. The ultimate demonstration that money is a very distinct concept from wealth or capital, that it is merely a number, and the most efficient way to increase a number isn't to "own things that workers use" but to simply increase the number. Something Marx didn't particularly foresee, and the root cause of much of our problems. A hospital owner at least owns a hospital - this is a useful thing. An investor owns pieces of paper that aren't even paper anymore, just digital figments that float here and there generating numbers, and those numbers give them access to more money than the hospital owner. And while a hospital owner must at least follow certain standards and own a hospital that is doing something, the investor can drain wealth from workers directly, by converting owners into workers and becoming super-owners that own nothing. It truly is an impressive concept. Marx never envisioned a landlord so efficient as the credit card, or of the scope and power of a bank's ability to create money once banks realized that creation could be untethered from basic economic concepts.

It's this class of parasite that causes the most damage, and is most easily identified by wealth, not function. For whatever job title they have, they are far from the "old money" of Marx's time that sat on their declining fortunes drinking tea and being useless. Now they've morphed into something with teeth.

Investors do own things. They might have abstracted which things in particular they own by the way of modern finance, but that is still ownership of the productive materials.

The move away from obvious and explicit ownership to this covert and obsequious model is best understood by the lens of Foucault's Discipline and Punish. The first couple chapters are all about how punishment used to be applied both in public and in the name of kings who would view crime as an offense against their person. Thus an unjust punishment was prone to drawing direct responses from the population against the ruler's own authority. By moving away from this and towards a system where the offense is against some abstraction of law, where it is meted out in the name of a court judge, and where it is done in the seclusion of a prison this response is prevented.

Also, ghouls like Bezos and Musk still have a clear ownership of physical capital and they are among the most wildly engorged leeches who know that their exploitation of workers depends on preventing union formation. This is classic stuff that Marx would have seen in his own time.

[GreyICE]

Investors do own things. They might have abstracted which things in particular they own by the way of modern finance, but that is still ownership of the productive materials.

If you examine it closely, it's really not. The ownership of bonds? Maybe, sure. Bonds are an alternative bank loan. But the rest? Stocks? Futures? Derivatives? It grows increasingly abstract. If a company's stock price increases by a factor of 20, nothing changes. If a company's stock is sold a million times, nothing happens.

These are not productive, and thus they create a very weird phenomena, where a bank can create money to buy paper that represents money that can be leveraged into more paper that represents more money, but no capital or wealth is being created.

The move away from obvious and explicit ownership to this covert and obsequious model is best understood by the lens of Foucault's Discipline and Punish. The first couple chapters are all about how punishment used to be applied both in public and in the name of kings who would view crime as an offense against their person. Thus an unjust punishment was prone to drawing direct responses from the population against the ruler's own authority. By moving away from this and towards a system where the offense is against some abstraction of law, where it is meted out in the name of a court judge, and where it is done in the seclusion of a prison this response is prevented.

Also, ghouls like Bezos and Musk still have a clear ownership of physical capital and they are among the most wildly engorged leeches who know that their exploitation of workers depends on preventing union formation. This is classic stuff that Marx would have seen in his own time.

Ah, but are they?

See, Musk and Bezos have both been empowered by this system. Musk got his wealth from his stock sales of a company named "EBay". The stock, being magical paper, had little relationship to what the company was actually making in profits, and like any magical paper it bred more magical paper.

Bezos was even worse. He ran his company at a tremendous loss for over a decade. This was enabled by the investment class dumping vast sums of paper into his company. His company didn't produce anything - it creates no capital, and little wealth. It just moves stuff around. It claims to do it efficiently, but even that is partially a lie. Mostly, it just uses the size to leverage other companies into unfavorable deals. This robs them of their wealth.

Nowadays, if you have an innovative cool product, you have two options. The first is you sell it on Amazon. Then Amazon takes some of it, sends it to China, has it copied, and lists it as "Amazon's Choice". Then it leeches profit from the Chinese manufacturer, and profit from your company, into itself. The second is you don't sell it on Amazon. Then Amazon does the same thing, but you're also not selling on Amazon.

As I said, a vast bloated parasite that draws the wealth of countless thousands into it.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The 25 people that are designing the factory are still providing labor in a way that say a land lord is not.

The idea of labor being the predominant source of commercial value makes much more sense for the factory economy, or it's much more attractive at least, much for the reasoning that GreyICE is saying there, imo. Factory work isn't that essentially different from service work, but when you have people putting almost raw materials together to make a car and the collective conscious of your workforce handles step a to z, then one starts wondering the difference is that drives wealth the way it does. Now in days administration is much more comprehensive, and a lot of the workforce that goes into operating a company is largely in factions, with production workers aside from HR, finance, and the international marketing team. Also, service work comprises much more of the population now.

Otherwise though, investment has practical value imo.

[Draco Dracul]

The 25 people that are designing the factory are still providing labor in a way that say a land lord is not.

Not in Marxian terms. A landlord is someone who does something once, and thereafter collects a stipend from workers, one that they can control and raise. A worker is someone who does something on an ongoing basis. A designer is a weird ground that is essentially a "landlord enabler" or "owner enabler" in many respects. It's the same way Marx's model doesn't have any place for an entertainer. It just wasn't complete in ways that have become extremely important to our economy.

Unless your firm only makes the one factor and then the twenty five people that made it money from it in perpetuity they are workers because they are only making money when they continue to design factories. This can be contrasted with a landlord who need not even do anything as they can buy existing infrastructure and then renting it back to people.

[GreyICE]

The 25 people that are designing the factory are still providing labor in a way that say a land lord is not.

The idea of labor being the predominant source of commercial value makes much more sense for the factory economy, or it's much more attractive at least, much for the reasoning that GreyICE is saying there, imo. Factory work isn't that essentially different from service work, but when you have people putting almost raw materials together to make a car and the collective conscious of your workforce handles step a to z, then one starts wondering the difference is that drives wealth the way it does. Now in days administration is much more comprehensive, and a lot of the workforce that goes into operating a company is largely in factions, with production workers aside from HR, finance, and the international marketing team. Also, service work comprises much more of the population now.

Otherwise though, investment has practical value imo.

Does it? If I buy Gamestop stock, what practical value did that create? Hell, if I buy Amazon stock, what practical value did that create?

It's a lie that's been fed to you, but when you examine the roots of that lie, there's nothing there.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The 25 people that are designing the factory are still providing labor in a way that say a land lord is not.

The idea of labor being the predominant source of commercial value makes much more sense for the factory economy, or it's much more attractive at least, much for the reasoning that GreyICE is saying there, imo. Factory work isn't that essentially different from service work, but when you have people putting almost raw materials together to make a car and the collective conscious of your workforce handles step a to z, then one starts wondering the difference is that drives wealth the way it does. Now in days administration is much more comprehensive, and a lot of the workforce that goes into operating a company is largely in factions, with production workers aside from HR, finance, and the international marketing team. Also, service work comprises much more of the population now.

Otherwise though, investment has practical value imo.

Does it? If I buy Gamestop stock, what practical value did that create? Hell, if I buy Amazon stock, what practical value did that create?

It's a lie that's been fed to you, but when you examine the roots of that lie, there's nothing there.

That's like saying "if I drop my money in the gutter and it streams down the sewage drain, then where is the value in that as a commodity." Gamestop is recognized as a bubble and the stock market is going to patch some holes in the form of more efficient trading provision via the SEC policy etc.

In the case of Amazon, their capital funds probably aren't particularly bottlenecked. So other than your own personal investment, trying to make a difference in the world by investing in them would be very negligible just based on that. Nonetheless of course they could need more capital for whatever they're doing, and $20 is $20 + i.

In the case of you and Robinhood traders, investing your money in the stock market is actually a practical short, mid, or long term personal financial regimen, given interest has been at the floor since the meltdown.

[Draco Dracul]

The idea of labor being the predominant source of commercial value makes much more sense for the factory economy, or it's much more attractive at least, much for the reasoning that GreyICE is saying there, imo. Factory work isn't that essentially different from service work, but when you have people putting almost raw materials together to make a car and the collective conscious of your workforce handles step a to z, then one starts wondering the difference is that drives wealth the way it does. Now in days administration is much more comprehensive, and a lot of the workforce that goes into operating a company is largely in factions, with production workers aside from HR, finance, and the international marketing team. Also, service work comprises much more of the population now.

I don't see how service work is significantly different from factory work in the sense of labor. It's still the people that actually provide the service generating the value while the people that own the business that make the money.

Otherwise though, investment has practical value imo.

How? The realities of capitalism requires starting capital, but beyond providing that investors don't do anything, but they both get massive say over the company, and can profit immensely from it's activity without lifting a finger. Inverters are a strong example of people that make their money by owning things rather than by doing things.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The idea of labor being the predominant source of commercial value makes much more sense for the factory economy, or it's much more attractive at least, much for the reasoning that GreyICE is saying there, imo. Factory work isn't that essentially different from service work, but when you have people putting almost raw materials together to make a car and the collective conscious of your workforce handles step a to z, then one starts wondering the difference is that drives wealth the way it does. Now in days administration is much more comprehensive, and a lot of the workforce that goes into operating a company is largely in factions, with production workers aside from HR, finance, and the international marketing team. Also, service work comprises much more of the population now.

I don't see how service work is significantly different from factory work in the sense of labor. It's still the people that actually provide the service generating the value while the people that own the business that make the money.

Well I was saying that they are essentially similar, just that factory work can be considerably more industrious, and I just imagine the work might have been more holistically representative of a company's overall workforce, not to mention by terms of assessing all the overhead that goes into the end product. Labor in the form of factory work was probably more so the only character between a product and the investor.

Otherwise though, investment has practical value imo.

How? The realities of capitalism requires starting capital, but beyond providing that investors don't do anything, but they both get massive say over the company, and can profit immensely from it's activity without lifting a finger. Inverters are a strong example of people that make their money by owning things rather than by doing things.

The financial market is practically speaking an advanced multiverse in which time and physical space are no longer binding forces of nature nor a constraint on activity.

[TGLS]

Otherwise though, investment has practical value imo.

How? The realities of capitalism requires starting capital, but beyond providing that investors don't do anything, but they both get massive say over the company, and can profit immensely from it's activity without lifting a finger.

That's the point. The business does well, investor does well. Business does badly, well, investor does badly (limited liability complicates this a little, capping how much each investor can lose). The amount they gain is uncapped because unlike a bank, they may not see any of their money back if the business does badly enough.

The question I have, if you eliminate investors, where does capital come from?