Thank god for capitalism

[expat]

I give up

I wish!

[Cirrus]

I give up

Good call, Dodgy.

Capitalism is a concept very relevant to contractors. As an employee you are definitely not a capitalist. You have to wait for someone with control of the means of production to give you a job. As a contractor you may or may not have means of production ie you may just be invited to do a job created by a client. Or you may offer some service that the client had not thought off or had not designed. You could say being a capitalist or not is the same as being IR35 or not.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Good call, Dodgy.

Capitalism is a concept very relevant to contractors. As an employee you are definitely not a capitalist. You have to wait for someone with control of the means of production to give you a job. As a contractor you may or may not have means of production ie you may just be invited to do a job created by a client. Or you may offer some service that the client had not thought off or had not designed. You could say being a capitalist or not is the same as being IR35 or not.

Permies are contractors who engage in contracts where the terms are tailored to a longer-term relationship. That's all.


The means of production are a pair of hands and some grey stuff between your ears.

Anti-capitalist ideologies like Communism, while ostensibly claiming to be all about (or at least in very large part about) the means of production, have absolutely nothing to do with the means of production. They are all about jealousy and anti-human uniformity.

They talk as if the means of production were in limited supply, which is absurd. It's a feign.

In the Communist Manifesto they claim that the Bourgeois mistakenly bemaon the restriction of freedom to trade, because freedom can only be restricted where freedom exists - and that because they will abolish the concept of freedom to buy and sell, then they are not guilty of restricting freedom!

It's all nihilistic claptrap from a lazy loser who never worked a day in his life, & treated his own family & indentured servant / **ck-doll worse than his own hated bourgeoise supposedly treated the proles.

[Cirrus]

Permies are contractors who engage in contracts where the terms are tailored to a longer-term relationship. That's all.

Everyone around here thinks they're mini-IBMs so you won't make many friends saying that.

The means of production are a pair of hands and some grey stuff between your ears.

Think about it: that doesn't work. Means of production are very specifically the contexts that allow you to use your hands and grey stuff to earn a living.

They talk as if the means of production were in limited supply,

No. Capitalism was largely about the industrial revolution which of course massively increased the means of production.

If you're right-wing it is easy to dismiss these kinds of analysis because basically they try to limit your desires to do whatever you like without considering whether a purely selfish existence is a good thing. I'm not saying it is or it isn't but whichever, it's a philosophical point not a given.

Personally I think Anglo-Saxon capitalism is questionable. The UK, America etc have developed a disturbing chasm between the well-off and the low wage earners.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Think about it: that doesn't work. Means of production are very specifically the contexts that allow you to use your hands and grey stuff to earn a living.

And where do those contexts come from? They don't grow on trees which are entirely owned by nasty capitalists. They are made - by anyone with the savvy and will to make them.

No. Capitalism was largely about the industrial revolution which of course massively increased the means of production.

For everyone! as it happens.

If you're right-wing it is easy to dismiss these kinds of analysis because basically they try to limit your desires to do whatever you like without considering whether a purely selfish existence is a good thing. I'm not saying it is or it isn't but whichever, it's a philosophical point not a given.

Well it's a empirically demonstrable thing.

"purely selfish" is entirely besides the point - unless you suppose that the means of production come from a fixed pool and some people are hogging it all.

We can see in retrospect, and logic would have followed at the time too, that that kind of industrialisation increased the means of production, rather than using it all up - and life expectancies rocket & child mortality plummeted.

What they saw as selfish is really jealousy that some had more, even while their own lot improved. "class antagonism" !

Personally I think Anglo-Saxon capitalism is questionable. The UK, America etc have developed a disturbing chasm between the well-off and the low wage earners.

I think it's a mistake to label capitalism like that - unless the label implies that it's not really capitalism, such as Crony Capitalism. It's like saying Gary Glitter love is questionable.

It's either Capitalism or it's not. The concept is so simple (property rights & freedom of trade) that there is no need to tar Capitalism with something else masquerading as Capitalism (like the mix of Crony Capitalism and Fascism we see in the Anglo-American world).

It's important to be clear about what we mean when we talk of 'chasm[s]' too. The low earners are richer than they've ever been thanks to those high earners. A chasm due to different rates of growth is very different to a chasm due to direct or indirect expropriation from one class to the other.

[Cirrus]

Capitalism has been good to me. I ordered a 1000 page Wrox book on C# that will be delivered to my door by a very polite Polish chap, for one penny (plus delivery).

The Polish chap is probably quite happy even though he has to work 10+ hours for less than the minimum wage. But I worked for chicken feed when I was young and it didn't bother me.

However I'm not happy about the millions of underclass who are marginalised because they are lazy,scummy wastes of space. In the old days they would have got some sort of job. Now, employers can choose a Lithuanian or Bangladeshi etc. Doesn't seem right to me.

[SpontaneousOrder]

Capitalism has been good to me. I ordered a 1000 page Wrox book on C# that will be delivered to my door by a very polite Polish chap, for one penny (plus delivery).

The Polish chap is probably quite happy even though he has to work 10+ hours for less than the minimum wage. But I worked for chicken feed when I was young and it didn't bother me.

However I'm not happy about the millions of underclass who are marginalised because they are lazy,scummy wastes of space. In the old days they would have got some sort of job. Now, employers can choose a Lithuanian or Bangladeshi etc. Doesn't seem right to me.

It's a big ask to expect a whole class of people who are - in sweeping general terms - typically just about bright enough to keep themselves alive, to understand that it will actually be better for them to work for their money even if they could get the same in welfare without needing to get out of bed.

[EternalOptimist]

everyone is redefining the fckng English language these days. so I am going to have a go

a socialist is someone who fights for a bigger slice of the cake for his group and pays no attention to where the cake came from.

a capitalist is someone who fights for a bigger cake and doesn't care where it goes to, as long as his slice grows proportionately

[Flashman]

Mark Zuckerberg plans to build his own AI personal assistant - 04 Jan 2016 - Computing News

Ava? Is that you? Has the dude not seen Ex Machina?

[DodgyAgent]

Everyone around here thinks they're mini-IBMs so you won't make many friends saying that.

Think about it: that doesn't work. Means of production are very specifically the contexts that allow you to use your hands and grey stuff to earn a living.

No. Capitalism was largely about the industrial revolution which of course massively increased the means of production.

If you're right-wing it is easy to dismiss these kinds of analysis because basically they try to limit your desires to do whatever you like without considering whether a purely selfish existence is a good thing. I'm not saying it is or it isn't but whichever, it's a philosophical point not a given.

Personally I think Anglo-Saxon capitalism is questionable. The UK, America etc have developed a disturbing chasm between the well-off and the low wage earners.

Perhaps yoo would care to proffer an alternative to capitalism. I find it interesting that like a true leftie hypocrite manipulator you equate individual freedom and responsibilty with selfishness. Perhaps you would care to show me some system that is not selfish with some examples. A point that is missed by your ilk is that the freedoms endowed on people within a capitalist system create the wealth that would otherwise not exist. The problem (again with people like you) is that you see redistribution as a punishment for being rich. redistribution should be a means of helping all to aspire to being free and independent. Instead it is used to squander vast sums on people and institutions that fail day in day out to support the people who need to be supported.