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OhforfSake
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Initiate
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posted May 19, 2014 10:05 PM |
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It can't be said persons fault that his love juice is the only thing that keeps people alive.
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Aron
Known Hero
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posted May 19, 2014 10:33 PM |
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Like I said, Xerox gets it but may or may not agree with it.
You two ...I'm seriously still baffled.
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 19, 2014 10:37 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
Imagine an old person fell down - no one in the immediate vicinity except you. Of course you could help her up - but for free? Why pass up a good business opportunity? So you say: I can help you up, but I think my service is worth a tenner...
This is a false equivalency. Helping people is motivated by a desire to help. Selling stuff isn't motivated by that, so if you ban it, people won't get the stuff they need at all.Neraus said:
Well... I condemn the fact that it's exploitation, and also hedonism.
Let me ask you this - why is exploitation bad? And what, exactly, is wrong with hedonism?
____________
Eccentric Opinion
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Fauch
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 19, 2014 11:04 PM |
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Neraus said:
Fauch said:
well, obvious, selling your work for a salary for exemple.
Sorry, I don't understand, selling is exploiting?
Nah forget it, I can't understand, I am driven too much by my ethics, this kind of things just go over my reach.
no, that's the class exploitation. richs exploiting poors. richs have money, poors need it for basic necessities, richs will only give some if you work for them (and if they can make a benefit, that is to say, you receive less than you give them)
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xerox
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posted May 19, 2014 11:26 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 23:40, 19 May 2014.
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The problem with communists is that while they recognize that work exploitation is a sort of oppression, their alternative is even more oppressive. Communists want to outlaw voluntary commercial transactions between individuals because they think its oppression. Sure, go ahead and live a lifestyle where you voluntarily abstain from commercial transactions, but don't force it on the rest of us.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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artu
Promising
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted May 19, 2014 11:37 PM |
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Once again, there is a reason why exploitation and negotiation are two separate words that refer to completely different concepts and there is a reason, one of those words has a stigmata over it. To consider them under the same category, you must be completely ignorant about human nature.
Exploitation is using desperation of people to make them do things they would, under normal circumstances, never agree to do. And usually, once (or if) the conditions turn back to normal, they regret agreeing to it and it haunts them for the rest of their lives.
Free will is not a flawless concept, free will is also not some robotic mechanism that reduces every situation to "yes, I agree to it" or "no, I don't agree to it." The non-aggression principle that libertarians seem to worship and consider the only thing untouchable is also quite open to interpretation. Just as it is silly to say "but he agreed to sign the contract" about someone, if his arm was being twisted or there was a gun to his head while he was signing it, it is also silly and shallow to say "well, she agreed to sleep with me." Not because it is sex or prostitution, because you make someone do something she would normally never do. Aggression and forcing people against their will is not only about ball and chains or beating them with a club. There are much more clever and subtle ways of doing it.
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xerox
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posted May 19, 2014 11:42 PM |
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Yeah, libertarians have a problem dealing with indirect aggression.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 19, 2014 11:44 PM |
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Artu, if a gun is being held to your head, you're being forced to do something - your rights are being violated. But if you're merely hungry, your rights aren't being violated because no one is aggressing against you, threatening you, stealing from you, etc. In the former case, someone is forcing you to do something, in the latter, you're just in a bad situation, but you're not being aggressed against.
And this still doesn't address the point of it making people better off. Is it making people better off if you say, "No, this is exploitation, so you're not allowed to do it. Go starve."?
(Also, I think you mean "stigma", not "stigmata". Stigmata is when you start bleeding.  )
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted May 19, 2014 11:51 PM |
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Edited by artu at 00:40, 20 May 2014.
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xerox said:
The problem with communists is that while they recognize that work exploitation is a sort of oppression, their alternative is even more oppressive. Communists want to outlaw voluntary transactions between individuals because they think its oppression.Sure, go ahead and live a lifestyle where you voluntarily abstain from commercial transactions, but don't force it on the rest of us.
I am not a communist but I must say, for someone who claims to be interested in politics and planning to be in politics, you are quite clueless about what communism actually is. Communism is based on the idea that the so-called free association of the market is an illusion and people are not free to do whatever they want under capitalism to begin with. It postulates that they are limited by the options of the class they are born into and the capitalist system is designed to keep things that way (think 19th century capitalism and social mobility which was much worse than even today). Communism suggests that in this struggle to share wealth and own their means of production, the only advantage the common people have against the capital owners is their ability to organize against them and unite: Basic principle of a strike: if some workers don't play along, strike is meaningless.
Also, communism (well, orthodox version of it) also suggests it is deterministically inevitable that the working-class will take down the bourgeois, just like the bourgeois took down aristocracy. It does not formulate this as a "wish", it formulates it as a "result" of historical progress. That is the part they were completely wrong, but one can understand how things may look that way during the 19th century in Europe.
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mvassilev
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posted May 19, 2014 11:52 PM |
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That and what Xerox said aren't mutually exclusive at all.
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted May 20, 2014 12:01 AM |
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Edited by artu at 00:07, 20 May 2014.
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mvassilev said:
That and what Xerox said aren't mutually exclusive at all.
This part is: Sure, go ahead and live a lifestyle where you voluntarily abstain from commercial transactions, but don't force it on the rest of us.
It's not a life style. It's an ideology aiming to change the system by all means.
mvassilev said:
Artu, if a gun is being held to your head, you're being forced to do something - your rights are being violated. But if you're merely hungry, your rights aren't being violated because no one is aggressing against you, threatening you, stealing from you, etc. In the former case, someone is forcing you to do something, in the latter, you're just in a bad situation, but you're not being aggressed against.
And this still doesn't address the point of it making people better off. Is it making people better off if you say, "No, this is exploitation, so you're not allowed to do it. Go starve."?
(Also, I think you mean "stigma", not "stigmata". Stigmata is when you start bleeding. )
You present a fake duality. It is not necessarily exploitation or starvation.. There are other options. And let me repeat: What counts as aggression is quite open to interpretation if you don't limit yourself to physical aggression.
Etymologically, stigmata is the plural of stigma but yes, it was a lapsus. I know stigmata has a special, terminological meaning in Christianity. I saw the movie too 
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Baklava
Honorable
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Mostly harmless
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posted May 20, 2014 12:04 AM |
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Edited by Baklava at 00:06, 20 May 2014.
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Quote:
That and what Xerox said aren't mutually exclusive at all.
Nor is what Xerox said tied to communist ideals.
If Xerox had said, "communism is forcing people to wear hats" and Artu had said what he said, you could say that these are not mutually exclusive. However, Marxist thought corresponds to what Artu said, while it doesn't require everyone to wear hats any more than it outlaws voluntary transactions.
EDIT
Whoops, Artu swooped in. Fast as lightning, that one.
____________
"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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mvassilev
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 20, 2014 12:17 AM |
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Quote:
You present a fake duality. It is not necessarily exploitation or starvation.
Imagine that there is a welfare state. Would you ban people from making these kinds of exchanges? Not much reason not to let them - they'd only be engaging in them because they want them, as there's a welfare state to provide for them. Having this option makes a few people better off, so it's good, though probably not many would use it. Now suppose there isn't a welfare state. Then some people may benefit greatly from being able to trade stuff in "exploitative" ways, because otherwise they'd starve.
So, regardless of whether there's a welfare state or not, it's better to give people the option to make these trades than not to.
And while not all aggression is physical in the strictest sense, all aggression is a matter of property rights. If I merely refuse to feed you without having made some prior agreement to do so, I'm not aggressing against you. And only people can commit acts of aggression - you can't say that nature is aggressive except metaphorically.
As for the communism thing, Xerox was suggesting that communists should go live in a commune and voluntarily abstain from commercial transactions, rather than force other people to not engage in them - and forcing other people to not engage in mutually beneficial voluntary exchange is a part of communism.
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Eccentric Opinion
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xerox
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posted May 20, 2014 12:22 AM |
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So I don't "get" communism because I'm asking its proponents not to force their system on me?
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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artu
Promising
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted May 20, 2014 12:30 AM |
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In a way. And the way you postulate communists when asking them not to do that shows you don't get it.
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Baklava
Honorable
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Mostly harmless
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posted May 20, 2014 12:31 AM |
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Quote:
forcing other people to not engage in mutually beneficial voluntary exchange is a part of communism.
It's not the idea of communism to force you to not engage in commercial transactions any more than the idea of capitalism is to force you to engage in them. One is simply incompatible with the other. While not the most realistic of ideas, communism is theoretically based on commercialism growing obsolete and needless as a relic of the past, much like yesterday's divine right and aristocratic benefits. Just like you cannot make a small communist paradise in the capitalist world, it works vice versa. You cannot start a private corporation in the communist one.
From wiki (because we're certainly not going to force members to read through Marx's original ramblings): "In accordance with the socialized processes of production, appropriation also becomes socialized as goods and services become consumed on a social basis with free access for the individual. Communism becomes fully realized when the distinction between classes is no longer possible and therefore the state, which has been used as an instrument of class dictatorship, no longer exists.[6][7] In the communist economy, production and consumption are fully socialized, and the processes for which are advanced into maximized automation, efficiency, and recycling. This results in the end of individual money calculation, hence relationships between individuals being based on free association and free access to all goods and services according to need."
____________
"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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xerox
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 20, 2014 12:32 AM |
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Edited by xerox at 00:37, 20 May 2014.
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That makes zero sense, Artu. I know full well that pretty much all communists support revolution. How does me not agreeing with that ambition make me not understand communism?
It's like me telling you that you don't get anarchocapitalism because you don't want to move to a privatized state. Yeah, anarchocapitalists don't mind that anyway (while a communist will oppose opposition towards revolution) but it's still perfectly possible to understand a theory without agreeing with it or (particularly in this case) its implementation.
____________
Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted May 20, 2014 12:35 AM |
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Bak, theoretically you could have voluntary communism in the modern world. Buy some land, move there with a bunch of people, and have a commune run according to communist principles. No one's stopping you.
This would not be the case under communism - some friends and I couldn't have a small free-market group.
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted May 20, 2014 12:43 AM |
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Edited by artu at 00:43, 20 May 2014.
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No Xerox, it is not the same thing at all. Communism is communism, because and only if, it tries to replace capitalism. What you're talking about is a hippy commune, not a communist society.
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Baklava
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Mostly harmless
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posted May 20, 2014 12:44 AM |
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@MVass
Countries tend to be sort of rigorous toward tax evasion, permissions, citizen obligations, ignoring borders etc. Besides, the commune would need to be considerably large in order to support itself excluded from the outside planet. That's like saying you could start your own private firm in a communist utopia using leaves.
To trade mud.
With pigeons.
____________
"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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