Related: diary
Feb-18-2009: "'Stadial growth'" posted to Groups.Google.com/group/postscarcity/browse_thread/thread/a2f6200e8064057b/d65c8425b46f3533
> Laibman wrote:
>> Capitalism is a system which cannot structurally
>> solve the problems of nature and equity.
Raoul Victor wrote:
> I agree in the sense that capitalism is a
> system whose goal is profit, and only profit.
Profit occurs when a Consumer pays an Owner
more than Cost for a good or service delivered.
Except when the Consumer
has enough Ownership himself.
When you own a nut tree or a chainsaw or a boat,
you then receive that product or objective at cost.
We must pay all Costs; from that we'll never escape.
But Profit is zero when the Source Owner is the Object User.
Users could gain Freedom and community could grow
if we could ever figure out how to cooperatively co-own.
Accumulation could be diffusion
if we could just learn how share.
We could make a new Mode of Production
whose goal is product and only product.
> When the rate of profit falls too much, when the
> new markets become insufficient, capitalist growth
> declines and becomes negative, independently of
> any subjective factor.
"Capitalist growth" is the perpetuation of profit.
Let's make a new business based on equity.
We'll treat profit as a measure of scarcity.
The next step is working out and writing down
the rules of operation for this Use Value venture.
Then, when that's ready we can begin to co-own
web servers for storage and searching and all that.
We will co-own the equipment for making beer.
We will co-own all the tools to fix and build and do.
We can co-own the Sources of all Objects we need.
After we write the "Rules of Conduct" to evade usury.
Patrick
Feb-17-2009: posted to http://groups.google.com/group/postscarcity/browse_thread/thread/c4292128bc4e288a/87279dfe7673cf21
==The Utilization/Price Ratio for SINGULAR ownership:
Why do people choose to BUY some tools,
while they choose to RENT others?
When a person can make use of (utilize) a machine
to a sufficient degree, it is more efficient for them to
OWN instead of RENT.
But wait, how could that be? The owner (whoever he is) must pay all
costs either way.
A rental agency must pay for the initial
investment, upkeep/repair/maintenance/wear,
insurance, protection/security, storage, taxes,
and any wages to any workers needed to do any
of those things.
A private owner must pay those exact same costs,
so how could it possibly be cheaper to own outright
instead of renting?
The difference is called 'profit'.
Profit is the difference between the costs an owner pays
and the price a consumer is willing to pay.
When the owner and consumer are the same person,
there is no such thing as profit.
That is the savings in ownership over rental.
----
But what about machines that are not "worth it" to
own because that individual owner cannot sufficiently
utilize them?
It must be worth it for SOMEONE to own them,
otherwise the rental agency wouldn't do so.
The difference here is a matter of utilization.
So how can a consumer increase the utilization
of a tool to the point of making ownership "worth it"?
==The Utilization/Price Ratio for CO-ownership:
One way is to buy the machine with a group of
other consumers.
Organizing with your neighbors to OWN a roto-tiller
instead of continuing to RENT is cheaper if that
equipment can be kept sufficiently 'busy'.
These savings are often overlooked as being the result
of not paying Wages to workers, but that work must
be done either way, and we know the Rental agency
or the Capitalist employer enjoys Price above Cost while
calculating Wages as a Cost, so where is the confusion?
For example: Let's say a for-profit business has hired
employees to go door-to-door offering to roto-till a
garden patch.
The business owner offers the service for some fee -
say $1 per square meter while paying the employee
operating the tiller say $10 per hour.
The owner has other costs such as management, initial investment,
gasoline, oil, replacing parts, storage, insurance, and maybe many
others.
But we know he is charging more that these costs if he
is reporting a profit - for that is the definition of profit =
"price above cost".
Now let's look at what happens when the owners of the
Source (the tiller) are also the consumers of the outputs
(the tilled ground): They must pay all the same costs as
the Capitalist, including Wages to the operator and
mechanics, but they wouldn't be paying the extra amount
called Profit - for who could they possibly pay it to?
When the Sources are Consumer-Owned, they could probably pay the
Workers slightly more (say $12 per hour) and *still* pay less since
they wouldn't be paying the unnecessary burden of Profit.
There is real work involved in the act of organization,
but that cost (wages to management) must be paid
either way.
So what is keeping us from organizing and cooperatively
owning machines, buildings, even land?
I think part of the problem is a long-standing belief that
whoever possesses the skills to operate those machines
should be the owners.
But doesn't the above argument show that efficiency
(as in the lowest price) comes when ownership is in
the hands of those that consume the final output?
Another part of the problem is in figuring out how those
resources should be shared among the owners.
It is a difficult, sticky situation that most people would
rather just avoid altogether because of the forecasted
in-fighting they perceive would occur.
It seems such a group could write some 'rules' about
how to schedule access, and how much each individual
must compensate the others for any extra wear or exclusion
they cause.
I see such a contract, if 'properly' written, would be the only
thing our society needs to begin down the road of
peace and abundance.
A single machine can be shared among a finite number
of people. As the number of consumers attempting to
utilize the machine increases, at some point it will be
impossible to fullfill those requests with a single machine.
If the collective owners have the time-sharing of that
machine setup so that anyone wanting to rent it are
bidding against each other, then more time slots will be filled.
People that want to rent close to 'cost', and are willing to lose some
sleep will rent at 2am, while other people will be willing to "fight
it out" for a slot at 12 noon in a bid war.
As the dueling bidders raise their own price for that time
slot, they are *proving* that the current number of machines cannot
fill peak demand, and - since that "price above cost" will be invested
for the winning bidder toward buying ANOTHER machine, the 'system'
should be self-stablizing as those extra payments will be invested
toward another machine until the number of machines is sufficient to
cover the needs of that community.
Furthermore, each sub-community that develops around each of those
machines can then secede from the whole if they decide to treat their
new machine in a different manner (say changing the oil more often).
Cooperative consumer ownership is quite rare today, but there are a
few cases where a group of friends wanting a private airplane make a
"shared investment", and then rent the plane from the collective
others whenever they want to use it. None of those people need the
ability to fly themselves, they can just hire a pilot and pay that
wage as a cost while still saving money by not paying profit.
Another example is shared ownership of a vacation house. The
for-profit "Time Share" industry has grown around that desire, but I'm
referring to the less common case when a private group of people buy a
house that they share amongst themselves in whatever way they see fit.
Feb-17-2009: "'Profit requires an imperfect market'" posted to Groups.Google.com/group/postscarcity/browse_thread/thread/b423dad382da81a5/0e7a37f5a59550f0
Part of http://Wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition reads:
"'... it is impossible for a firm in perfect competition to earn
economic profit in the long run, which is to say that a firm cannot
make any more money than is necessary to cover its economic costs.'"
But, since normal, for-profit business measure success by the amount
they can keep price above cost, truly perfect competition brought
about by Consumer Owned enterprises would spell certain disaster - for
all Capitalist would then close their doors proclaiming failure!
A business must pay it's investors SOMETHING, otherwise, why would
they invest? So, if the investors are expecting profit, then they
require the business they invested in to be able to operate in an
imperfect market. Profit is a measure of this imperfection.
But there is another thing that we could pay investors if those
investors are in a certain set.
If the investors are also CONSUMERS (some could incidentally be
workers too) of the product being produced, then they would be
satisfied with receiving product alone, and would never need the
business to keep price above cost.
When the investors of production are the consumers of the output, the
organization can withstand perfect competition because those that
pre-paid will expect PRODUCT instead of profit.
In contrast, if the all investors are all WORKERS (some could
incidentally be consumers too), and the market has perfect
competition, then the workers would be paid the same wages as any
worker that was not an owner, yet would have the risk of holding the
debt of that incorporation.
If you say "Well, they would be consumers too, so would also be paid
in product" then you are describing why consumers should be the owners
of the Means Of Production and avoiding the issue of whether ownership
should be limited to those that happen to have the skills to operate
it.
If you say "Well, the workers could pay themselves a higher wage than
non-owning workers" then you are talking about how profit would be
'hidden' in those wages since owners can arbitrarily make that
division. But in that case, the organization would be less efficient
than "consumer owned" - since, when many of the owners are not
neccessarily workers, then wages and profit are cleanly and clearly
separated. If a worker tried to collect too high of a wage for the
quality of work he was supplying, then the collective owners would put
that job up for reverse-bid (just as employers do today) until a
worker with a better quality-to-wage ratio was found.
Sincerely,
Patrick
Feb-13-2009: posted to http://groups.google.com/group/postscarcity/browse_thread/thread/c4292128bc4e288a/9405002c0d450888
> Now, I personally am very confused by all this.
I used to be very confused about economics until I went back and
reconsidered our base assumption about the supposed 'need' to
perpetuate profit.
Since profit *requires* scarcity, there is no possible way we can have
both profit AND abundance. They are mutually exclusive.
It may seem that any owner must keep price above cost for it to be
'worth' the investment, but there is actually one case where the
investor can be paid in *product* instead - leaving us to find a new
purpose and destination for that surplus value.
Furthermore, this special Mode of Production I allude to also solves
the supposed 'need' to perpetuate work.
Edward, are you willing to reconsider the treatment of profit for new
businesses we create, or would you say there is no room for movement
there?
Sincerely,
Patrick
Feb-11-2009: Gutenberg.org/etext/16106 >>What Is Free Trade? by Frederic Bastiat
Feb-11-2009: Kvond.WordPress.com/2008/05/22/tools-of-labor-what-it-means-to-produce >>Producing Producers: Interlocking of Oppression Interlocking Divisions of Labor and What it Means to Produce: Notes on Patricia Collins' "Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought"
Feb-09-2009: The Labor Theory of Value(LTV) disincents automation
Feb-09-2009: Praxeology.net/FB-PJP-DOI.htm >>The Bastiat-Proudhon Debate on Interest (1849-1850) Translations by Benjamin R. Tucker, Roderick T. Long, and Anonymous
Feb-04-2009: Email to P2PResearch and Matt Cooperrider
Matt,
Since communities are dynamic* across time, insuring members remain
the "actual and only owners" of the Material Means of Production needs
a non-static solution.
This temporal complexity requires we consider factors that are
traditionally outside the scope of limitations for simple property
ownership. While regular property ownership can be a stepping-stone
toward such an organization, there is also a 'bad' side to ownership
that we must guard against lest we arrive in the typical centralized
configuration...
I have identified the primary factor in need of adjustment, and credit
most of that 'generalizing' the concepts of User Freedom as outlined
by Richard Stallman, and specifically the requirement that Object
Users (Product Consumers) gain "at cost" access to the Sources
(Material Means) of that product even when they do NOT know how to
'operate' those Sources.
Observe that 'Profit' (literally "Consumer Price" - "Owner Costs")
arises only when the Consumer does not yet have enough Ownership. For
example: when you own an apple tree, you might pay workers to tend it,
but those wages are but a cost that any Owner must pay. But every
Owner is able to 'escape' the payment of profit - for who would they
pay it to?
So, when a current Owner/Member sells something to someone else that
has insufficient ownership, that Owner has the 'opportunity' to charge
a price above cost (to profit). [[remember, Wages are not Profit,
Wages are a Cost of production]].
But if such a community allows Profit to be treated as a 'reward' for
that current owner (as Capitalism does), then that current owner will
aquire even *more* property as he invests that profit into more
Material Means of Production, while the Consumer who made that
overpayment will be left with nothing but the product he overpaid for.
Profit can be thought of as a "plea for growth" from the Consumer who
paid it. It is the Consumer's dependence upon the current Owners.
He is saying "look, I'll pay you more than it really cost (costs
include wages) to make this beer because I don't own the equipment,
and am not organized enough to hire those with the skills - otherwise
I could get it "at cost"".
I'm not saying we shouldn't charge Profit (for to do so would stop
growth altogether), but only that profit should be understood as a
measure of consumer dependence that needs to be 'balanced' if we are
to remain "Member Managed" - for otherwise only the originators will
Own (and therefore manage), while the latecomers will be a dependent
group that can only beg for recognition.
In conclusion: While real property ownership appears to be a direct
solution to "Member Managed" problem, it is incomplete unless "price
above cost" (profit) is treated as an investment from the Consumer who
paid it.
----
(*) Some of the dynamism we must consider:
1.) The total number of members grows and shrinks as members join or leave.
2.) Members desire different *types* of "goods and services" which may
require the purchase of different (more) Material Means of Production.
3.) Members desire different quantities of "goods and services" which
requires their ownership rise and fall to match their consumption.
Feb-02-2009: Groups.Google.com/group/post-scarcity-agalmics-journal-launch
Feb-02-2009: RVerzola.Files.WordPress.com/2008/11/studying-abundance-1.pdf
Feb-02-2009: Bandillero.com/peerweb >>Social Production of Social Production