Are we slaves to money?

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yes, sadly we are slaves to $$$$.

No it does not. Your claim of "more equality and cooperation" almost invariably involves redistribution, which is (in the absence of charity) a pareto-suboptimal outcome resulting in allocative inefficiency (also known as a dead-weight loss).

There is a reason why wealth and capitalism are intertwined. Capitalism works, because it makes productive use of self-interest.




After carefully reading your post, I noticed that you did not answer my question. As a result, I do not feel compelled to answer yours.


As I have never read anything written by Ayn Rand (I assume that you are not referring to the RAND corporation) except random quotes on the internet, I rightly call that statement a bunch of BS.

Why on earth are you even acting as an apologist for this??

* There is nothing really that much on the line for the set of left-wing ideologies if we dismiss this.
* I've presented sufficient arguments to make my case.
* The use of labor for these other industries is largely justifiable. Leisure, convenience, and entertainment are desires that the majority of people enjoy and strongly desire.


You're talking about the possibility that the cost of sustaining human labor will be greater than that for a machine that can do the same task, correct?

Originally I felt pretty confident in the answer that we would always find uses as well, but the problem being that with advances in AI, it seems quite possible that we could develop a machine alternative to human beings that would leave a number of them obsolete. When this occurs, restructuring may be needed and desirable. It's a difficult issue though, because while this change is disruptive, we'd still need a good substitute system, and we'd still need to get power-brokers on board with the issue.

That being said, with enough advances in AI, we'd also have to start wondering if the human race itself could become obsolete, and if it ever was obsolete, whether or not maintaining the future existence of the human race would be desirable. My opinion is that if we could replace our entire economic and academic structures with AIs and attain greater efficiency through this, we should move towards the voluntary extinction of human life through non-replacement. Human lives are not inherently better than AI lives, and if human lives do not contribute to the welfare of society there is no reason to keep a human life when the resources could be used to make AI lives better. (Although, there are going to be a lot of really complicated issues if this really started to come to pass that may make human lives desirable. Even an AI preprogrammed desire for humans could make humans last longer.) ... but that's just me rambling into posthuman notions.

She's mostly attacking Sandel for not addressing the strongest arguments or recognizing the problems of his position.


So, if technological progress dies, then growth dies, and then capitalism no longer works, correct?

I'm not exactly sure about that, due to the general churning of businesses in society anyway, without even considering technological shifts. A lot of that can continue even if technology is stagnant. And if technology is stagnant, shouldn't expect the same inequity structure? The reason I say that is because shifting in the economy doesn't likely require technology changes. Shifts in the supply and demand for goods, however, probably does. So, while businesses may still die, the workers would probably get many of the same amounts as before. Is this guess wrong?

In any case, I don't think many people are willing to guess that technology is dying.

You can't arrive at that result in general without presupposing all kinds of things. First you need to have perfect competition so that all producers/sellers are price takers. This is bad enough but it's not even the worst of it. The real deathblow to the theory is the fact that you have to assume you can model aggregate demand with a single representative agent. That makes absolutely no sense because you have to assume perfect income equality for that to even work. That's because diminishing marginal utility means it's impossible for low income and high income people to spend their income on the exact same things. By making the assumption that demand can be modeled with a representative agent you're already implicitly sweeping away the possibility of inequality. In other words you just proved that the system is pareto-optimal by assuming income has already been redistributed!

Then there's the second problem that even if you do have an optimal level of production this isn't the same thing as optimal societal welfare in the normal sense. Because the marginal utility of additional goods tends to decrease with wealth accumulation for each individual, it follows that, given the same GDP, lower income inequality is indicative of higher sum of utility across society as a whole.


I accept this as a half-truth but it doesn't tell the whole story.

Because you seem to react to things in a rather closed-minded way without really explaining your dismissal in a logical way. All you do is say that it's obviously absurd and silly but don't do anything to back up your intuition. Also, haven't said anything blatantly untrue. Ever increasing worker productivity is a strong indicator that labor is becoming more and more efficient.


Dismiss what? That technology has created a situation where less work is absolutely necessary?

Not really that I see.

I never said these things are bad so I don't know why you're jumping to that conclusion. The real issue is that societies demand for unessential commodities/services can be highly variable, yet people's need to be compensated in order to pay for their normal basic living expenses is quite fixed. In a society where we primarily producing things for leisure and entertainment, production must be highly flexible to adjust to demands that are constantly in flux due to changes in the latest fad or whatever. If the stock market takes a turn downhill a lot of people might suddenly decide to stop spending on leisure activities like going out to eat, which means restaurants close and the people running and/or working in the restaurant business suddenly don't have a source of income. They in turn decide to forgo certain unnecessary leisure activities and this puts a dent in even more people's income and it spirals downhill to the point where people don't even have enough income to meet their daily needs. There's nothing wrong with leisure spending but it does introduce an element of instability when the majority of personal income is tied to highly elastic leisure markets rather than more inelastic markets.



The thing is you don't have to go that far out to see that there could be a problem. We already have the problem that unskilled factory work is being replaced with automation. There is an increased demand for skilled technicians, but less positions are needed overall. If the skilled technicians demanded such high pay as to completely cancel out the cost savings for getting rid of low skill workers, the factory would have absolutely no incentive to replace the human labor because it wouldn't save anything. Thus the price of automation is less pay overall. The only way this can be a net benefit to society is if the increased value/cost ratio of the product produced is enough to offset the lost income. The neoclassical assumption is that competition prevents to cost savings from going exclusively to executives and owners (in the form of profits) rather than being passed on to consumers (in the form of increased production and lowered costs). But in the real world we have gigantic multinational conglomerates with less-than optimal competition, the amount of benefit that goes to the consumer might not balance out the loss of pay. It's even worse when you consider that markets are global such that the cost benefit is diluted all over the world while the cost of lost income affects only the producing country.

I'm not reacting in any closed-minded way. I provided three lines of argument against a position that needed as much thought to dismiss as "taxation is theft". These arguments contained premises that something was absurd. A conclusion being absurd is a rational terminating point for further consideration. Note: the reductio ad absurdum.

I mean, what more do I really need to do in order to back up claims like:
"A criticism at variance with the fundamental workings of society is absurd "
"In order for harsh criticism to be reasonable, a viable success must exist as justification for gross failure "
"No society ever having choice is absurd." Which I justified by pointing out that we both agreed with the existence of variations in choice and the historical usage of the term dictates that a sensible use of this term, one that isn't a rhetorical sleight of hand, would then have to be applicable to an actual situation.

We can go into all sorts of intricate details, but at this point what I've said is sufficient. He hasn't said anything that deep, and what I've given this is a LOT more thought than it was ever worth. A lot more thought than he ever put into the comment.

I called you "an apologist" because you've harped on this issue beyond the point where it can be considered strategically reasonable to your position, beyond any sense where defending it does you any good, and beyond any reasonable evaluation of it's intellectual value. This is definitely not driven because you've got an important point to add, or because I've done anything worth calling me out on, as I've done MORE than a sufficient job.


No, that a society requiring work and that tries to push people into work is a society without freedom. Are you just arguing for no reason at this point? You somehow forgot what I was rebutting.


Marshall, that is simply incorrect and intellectually dishonest. You have not put forward a serious objection to anything I've said. I've made 3 deductive arguments, that if the premises are accepted the argument would work, and where the three arguments have reasonable premises that deserve widespread acceptance, even where your misreading was an example that proved one of the arguments. (So, you put forward an objection about how "eating isn't absurd", but I said "no, the argument would say CRITICIZING a society for having eating is absurd", and this is the correct conclusion.


I'm not sure what you're trying to start an argument with me about.

The neoclassical framework isn't saying "utility maximization" but rather the most efficient use of inputs for outputs. Profits are not an output. The result of better capital could be more thorough capital-labor substitution, resulting in less pay, and resulting in an allocation of resources that does not maximize utility. However, this change would actually be a technological change". Also, taking it so far as considering the complete substitution of labor by capital is taking it FURTHER than you, rather than not taking it far enough.

That being said, nothing you've said is an argument strictly against efficiency. Frankly, a redistributive policy in this situation would actually be Kaldor-Hicks efficient, which I'm sure you know. So, it's not really an argument strictly against markets, and in this hypothetical situation, we may actually be better off with significant redistributions than by killing off efficiency for all time. However, this redistribution would technically be more of a patch than a fundamental fix. And given that I don't think you know of a fundamental fix or have any idea of a fundamental fix, I don't know what more to say.

As a vehement anti-capitalist, I do not believe self interest is a bad. Its centralized self interest I have a problem with. Coercing other people into following your orders. I believe direct democracy is the only order this world needs. Capitalists think its right to point guns and loot people who cross their made up borders. At least you have influence over the government. Bosses and landlords have the power take how much they want. The government cant tax more than what was agreed upon. Private land ownership is a result of anti-democratic authoritarian initiation of force and is not a productive use of self interest, in the same way Kim Jong Un's reign over "his" land isn't.

Awesomelyglorious:

This is a pointless argument. Clearly you are ideologically biased towards rejecting the concept of positive liberty or positive rights as inherently "absurd". You seem to want to bludgeon me into agreeing that you have logically rebuked something when all you're really doing is quibbling over a definition of liberty that you don't like because it offends your highly concrete view of things.

Awesomelyglorious is extremely, ridiculously stubborn (Orwell noted that in some thread in 2009, I think - but I can't find it's URL). If you're lucky, though, when AG does one of his quarter annual ideological reinventions he might end up agreeing with you.

What the hell?????

Marshall, you're not arguing for positive liberty. You're arguing that it's reasonable to believe that a society that has as a requirement that people work is a society without choice/freedom/etc. The two positions are distinct. And at this point, I actually believe in positive liberty ANYWAY, because a person who is given all of the formal negative rights still may technically not be free, so if all of the property is owned by 1 dude, then he can set the terms of trade such that other people in the society do not have real freedom. BUT THIS IS DISTINCT from thomas81's claim.

So, NO, this isn't a matter of ideologically rejecting the concept of positive liberty as absurd. It may be closest to rejecting the notion of positive rights as absurd, but even then I've kept my case narrowly to exactly what thomas81 said and the coherence of his particular framework, which is NOT actually equivalent to positive rights.

I want to bludgeon you because I *HAVE* logically rebuked it with 3 separate arguments, each of which reasonable and applicable to different concepts. The definition of liberty is offensive, because it's absurd. NOT because of any "concreteness" about it.

STOP *LYING* ABOUT MY CLAIMS, ABOUT MY POSITION, ABOUT ANY OF THIS FOR WHATEVER ABSURD REASON!

And M_P, I don't really understand where the hell you're coming from to proclaim that I'm the stubborn one when I've clearly staked out my position. Marshall has persistently misrepresented it, or tried to quibble around it, or whatever else when I've clearly been more than fair about the issue. Marshall's claim is just as absurd as an extremist right-winger who proclaims that by rejecting "Taxation is theft", a person has rejected all concepts of "negative liberty" or "negative rights" and that this person is really just ideologically biased. I've been consistent in that my position, and that both thomas81's position, and the "taxation is theft" position are BS by the same kinds of metrics. So, no, I don't think I'm going to reinvent myself into marshall's position, and that's because I don't even understand WHY marshall took his own position in this debate! He has nothing really at stake, because even HE can realize that thomas81's position really isn't that good, and HE doesn't HOLD TO IT *HIMSELF*! ! He's definitely not going to go to these lengths for a criticism against any similar conservative idea even though consistency would demand it. He's probably going to be just as critical to a similarly out there conservative idea. So, no, this isn't an issue of my having problems. I've been incredibly fair on this issue.

Trying to make ends meet. You're a slave to the money then you die.

1. Perfect competition is not necessary for capitalism to work. A lot of B2C markets (if not most of them) are based on monopolistic competition, yet this does not diminish the fact that capitalism is an extremely successful model for economics.
2. The aggregate demand argument is irrelevant. Economic prosperity due to capitalism was doing just fine long before the aggregate demand curve was even invented.



"Optimal societal welfare" and interpersonal utility comparison is just opinion. You are substituting something which can be somewhat precisely measured (prices and quantities) with something that cannot.

In response to the human nature argument :

Yes, the Ubuntu philosophy did wonders for Hutu-Tutsi relations in Rwanda.

The Hutsi tutsi conflict came about from ethnic rivalry one group of leaders trying to mislead their people. Whats that got to do with the context of the picture?

Moreover whats it got to do with self preservation and selfishness being an inherent part of human nature as opposed to a learned construct?