I can brook the argument that capitalism is the only system that works, or that it’s the best system yet devised so long as we regulate it. I don’t believe them. But I can understand the argument.
But that it can serve everyone’s benefit? No. No it cannot. The system is, by its nature, contradictory. It will always leave one side with less than the other. Profit is created by paying a worker less than the value of what that worker has produced. If my boss pays me to make clocks, and I make 100 dollars worth of clocks in 1 hour, my boss cannot pay me 100 dollars per hour. There would be no money left for the boss to collect (ignoring all the other costs). In order for the boss to make any money for themselves, they must pay me less than the value of what I have created, after accounting for all the utilities and such that I am also paying for. I’ll get 20 bucks if I’m lucky, the boss will get 50, and 29.50 will go to utilities, and half a buck will go to a pizza party that will hopefully convince me that unions are evil.
Again, you can say this is fair, or the best yet devised system. But it does not benefit everyone. It benefits the owner of capital, and leaves me with less than I put in.
A worker owned factory could take that 50 that the boss gets paid and give it back to the worker who actually produced it. Or give an additional 20 to the worker, and put 30 in a relief fund for when workers encounter tragedy or unexpected expenses. Or do whatever the fuck they want with it.
The choice isn’t capitalism vs the Soviet model. The choice is capitalism vs literally everything we could possibly imagine. The possibilities are endless. Especially with wide scale computer access like we have now. I cannot imagine the absolutely incredible things Tito or Allende could have done with real access to computer modeling and the Internet like we have today. Or the horrible atrocities that would have come out of the USSR having that much information on each citizen. Major double edged sword there.
You making 100 dollars worth of clocks in an hour aren’t valued at 100 because that’s not how any of this works out. You have costs, including of other labor as part of your supply chain (sales, back office support, maintenance, etc.)
It’s delusional to think that you assembling the clock are more valued than any of the other parts of this supply chain.
Now, if you want to talk about risk vs reward or pay ratios of workers to CEO, that’s a more reasonable take.
Yes capitalism is just another imperfect economic engine with inefficiencies made up by imperfect beings. Like any engine however it can be tuned to optimize certain metrics. Executives get paid exponentially more than the floor workers? Cap their pay as a multiplier relative to entry level pay and tax the rest if they still receive too much. Use the tax money to provide free healthcare, childcare, basic food assistance, public transportation, housing, social security, and infrastructure.
Even if the pay the average worker receives may not be high their standard of living would be noticeably improved. It’s the same reason why Americans receive higher pay than Europeans but Europeans still have a much better standard of living. I’d love to see a better economic model emerge but for the meanwhile, capitalism is one of the few things driving technological and scientific innovation in a lot of fields.
I can brook the argument that capitalism is the only system that works, or that it’s the best system yet devised so long as we regulate it. I don’t believe them. But I can understand the argument.
But that it can serve everyone’s benefit? No. No it cannot. The system is, by its nature, contradictory. It will always leave one side with less than the other. Profit is created by paying a worker less than the value of what that worker has produced. If my boss pays me to make clocks, and I make 100 dollars worth of clocks in 1 hour, my boss cannot pay me 100 dollars per hour. There would be no money left for the boss to collect (ignoring all the other costs). In order for the boss to make any money for themselves, they must pay me less than the value of what I have created, after accounting for all the utilities and such that I am also paying for. I’ll get 20 bucks if I’m lucky, the boss will get 50, and 29.50 will go to utilities, and half a buck will go to a pizza party that will hopefully convince me that unions are evil.
Again, you can say this is fair, or the best yet devised system. But it does not benefit everyone. It benefits the owner of capital, and leaves me with less than I put in.
A worker owned factory could take that 50 that the boss gets paid and give it back to the worker who actually produced it. Or give an additional 20 to the worker, and put 30 in a relief fund for when workers encounter tragedy or unexpected expenses. Or do whatever the fuck they want with it.
The choice isn’t capitalism vs the Soviet model. The choice is capitalism vs literally everything we could possibly imagine. The possibilities are endless. Especially with wide scale computer access like we have now. I cannot imagine the absolutely incredible things Tito or Allende could have done with real access to computer modeling and the Internet like we have today. Or the horrible atrocities that would have come out of the USSR having that much information on each citizen. Major double edged sword there.
You making 100 dollars worth of clocks in an hour aren’t valued at 100 because that’s not how any of this works out. You have costs, including of other labor as part of your supply chain (sales, back office support, maintenance, etc.)
It’s delusional to think that you assembling the clock are more valued than any of the other parts of this supply chain.
Now, if you want to talk about risk vs reward or pay ratios of workers to CEO, that’s a more reasonable take.
Yes capitalism is just another imperfect economic engine with inefficiencies made up by imperfect beings. Like any engine however it can be tuned to optimize certain metrics. Executives get paid exponentially more than the floor workers? Cap their pay as a multiplier relative to entry level pay and tax the rest if they still receive too much. Use the tax money to provide free healthcare, childcare, basic food assistance, public transportation, housing, social security, and infrastructure.
Even if the pay the average worker receives may not be high their standard of living would be noticeably improved. It’s the same reason why Americans receive higher pay than Europeans but Europeans still have a much better standard of living. I’d love to see a better economic model emerge but for the meanwhile, capitalism is one of the few things driving technological and scientific innovation in a lot of fields.