Well, now that we know you were, in fact, looking in a mirror, this is just fun. :-)
pinkballoons:
Nathan T. Freeman:
how is it that D is no longer rightfully controlled by that individual?
Supposing "Thing D" is the means of production, it wouldn't be exchanged in the first place under Socialism. It would be communally owned
Again, I ask -- it is because of it's purpose? What if I want to purchase the factory because I think it would make a great paintball course for me and my 15 closest friends?
supposing there weren't more important uses for the factory, it would be abandoned. It would be free for community use.
So what if I built it myself? Let's say I one day thought "gee, I'd like to wear T-shirt emblazened with the Freedomain Radio emblem!" So I build a silkscreening apparatus in my backyard. They are simple enough to construct from lumber and a bit of fabric. I wear my shirt and people say "hey cool! I want one!" So I start making more. People like them so much, I decide to modify my silkscreen apparatus to support multiple arms. People bring over their blank shirts, we pop them on the stand in the backyard, and spin it around to put the logo on.
Then one day it rains. The fabric on my machine gets wet, and I can't make any more shirts. "Darn!" I think, "if I put this indoors, then I wouldn't have to worry about the weather!"
So I move it to the barn. There under the soft hay, I can print the Freedomain Radio logo on shirts all day and night, regardless of the weather.
But people love them so much, that I find we have a long line of people simpy waiting for their shirts to dry. So I decide "I'll build a dryer!" and I put a big revolving clothesline over a vented fireplace, and everyone is able to get their completed shirts in 1/3rd the time. People love it and keep showing up.
Now the line is so long, and I have both a screener and a dryer, so I realize I need help. My friend from next door volunteers to operate the dryer while I operate the screener.
At what point does all this go from being personal property to a factory? I haven't sold anything, but there's massive demand for the goods coming off what is most definitely an assembly line. Can all those people in line suddenly throw me out and start printing the face of Che Guevera instead of the Freedomain Radio logo on my screening press? They have assumed ownership of the "means of production," but this was something I created entirely for myself and by my own labor and that of other free volunteers. At what point is it no longer personal?
pinkballoons:
A computer is not geared towards profit? Man, I wonder what I've been doing with myself for the last 20 years. Certain Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerburg and Larry Page would point out that a computer is a very effective capital good for producing profits.
Their profits are derived from "Intellectual property" and for profit from advertisements. 2 things that would not exist under socialism
Intellectual property most certainly exists under socialism. One must look only to state-owned media to see that. So does advertising -- it's simply all advertising for the state.
But, I'll grant you that Wozniak, Gates, Page and Zuckerburg would all never exist under socialism. We would never have had Apple, Microsoft, Google or Facebook. Thank you for the wonderful reminder that the first thing the state destroys is entrepreneurial innovation. We should all remember that under communism, a computer is a capital good, so the only thing you can own personally is an abacus.
It's worth noting that Page and Zuckerburg do not, in fact, count on intellectual property protection. Google's search algorithm is a closely-guarded and continually-innovated secret. Zuckerburg has never published the code for Facebook under a copyright or patent protection. In fact, in many ways these organizations fight against IP rules in aggressive ways. So to claim that they are built on the facade of intellectual property is seriously disingenuous.
pinkballoons: An oven isn't "geared towards mass production?" So what if I start a cake shop and sell baked goods? A truck isn't "geared towards profit?" Does that change if I have a local delivery service?
If you can do all of these things without exploiting others' labor, then eat your heart out
I'm not the one proposing cannnibalism here.
pinkballoons: If the PLOW is irrelevant then so are the machines inside the factory.
You can have as fancy of a plow as you want, it won't make you produce more on the same amount of land. With machines, this is different. Manufactured goods aren't grown out of the ground for months, the only limit to production is the amount of raw materials. Both require additional labor power to mass produce
Whoa. You do realize that the plow itself is a fundamental advancement in agricultural technology, right? Of course, there have been 3 fundamental phases of plowing technology: human plows, livestock plows and mechanical plows. Plows now have been replaced by tillers, which replenish soil with a rotational motion rather than a linear one, thus using the much more efficient tooling of the spiral inclined plane rather than the direct wedge.
Certainly a person as learned in the history of economics and society as yourself already knows this.
pinkballoons: So it's the BUILDING that's communal property, but not the tools inside it?
If it were large enough to facilitate mass production and employment, it would be entirely communal property. A simple workshop able to be used by one man would be personal property.
So if it's ONE person, it's personal. But the moment that two people collaborate, it's communal?
pinkballoons: What is the magical inflection point between a personal garden and a field?
There is none. It simplies lie in how much land can you use yourself. If it was big enough that you needed extra workers, it would be a field.
No, you just said that it's the difference between one and two. "Extra" means any more than the individual.
So, to be clear, if it's my brother, my father, my wife or my son in the field or the workshop with me, the building and land themselves become communal property?
It follows, then, that if it takes two people -- a man and a woman -- to produce a child, then the fruits of their labor must be communal property. There was more than one person involved, and therefore it's no longer personal. That's the standard you've defined.
pinkballoons: What if I'm growing enough food to feed my family of 12? What if I also happen to grow enough food to feed my brother who lives next door and his family of 10,
If you can do that singlehandedly, more power to you. But why would you want to considering cooperatives would be more efficient?
Perhaps I hold a certain fondness for self-determination, and I do not wish to sacrifice my volition for the sake of supposed efficiency. What difference does it make if you're willing to acknowledge that it's "personal property?"
I'm still confused about the notion of "singlehanded-ness" though. You're saying that I as a single individual must perform ALL the labor involved by my own personal hand?
I wonder, then, how anything is ever personal property. Even the shirt you're wearing was produced by an incalculable complexity of interwoven transactions. The cotton was harvested by a tractor built in 25 different factories. It was traded on an exchange involving global price bidding across a computer network made possible by millions of people. It was then transported with a truck manufactured by millions on roads constructed by millions to a spinning facility that was constructed out of brick, steel, glass, aluminum and concrete sourced from millions of different people. From there the yarn was again transported to a weaving facility where a loom of unimaginable complexity was used to turn the yarn into a fabric of magnificent thread count. Once complete, the industrial bolts of fabric were again sent to a different facility, where thousands of workers cut and stiched the fabric that was the result of a billion interactions into a t-shirt.
But still, once the shirt was done, it was then sent to a dye facility. You don't want to imagine what went into the dye factory!
Finally, the shirt you're wearing was complete. But still, the work is not done. The shirt was thousands of miles away from you. It had to be folded, and packed in a cardboard box (which again involved millions of people.) and the box placed as one of many inside a shipping container (probably with a forklift -- which involved a number of interactions that would make Stephen Hawking wince at the complexity.)
The container was then put on a truck (hopefully not a ship or a train, because then the number of interactions jumps by an order of magnitude!) and shipped to your local Gap. Once you entered that store in the mall that was constructed using tools and materials coming from all over the planet, you could see this shirt sitting on the shelf and put your personal money on the counter to buy it.
Oh wait... you used a CREDIT CARD!??!?!? Okay, now it really gets goddamn complicated.
Or, to put it another way -- by this standard, YOU DON'T OWN THE SHIRT ON YOUR BACK.
pinkballoons: I leave food in the refrigerator at my office, computers on the conference table, even cash on my desk -- and no one takes my property because we all voluntarily understand the notion of ownership.
Probably because they
A. Would have to accouint for their actions eventually, seeing as that person goes to work with said co-worker almost every day
B.Probably have the ability to bur the food themselves
Entirely different from the real world where there is alienation and poverty
Translation: It's different because I say it's different and I want to stick to my guns (literally.)
pinkballoons: Define "surplus" please.
Surplus value is the value a worker creates, but does not keep. Suppose a worker is paid $25 a day, and makes $100 worth of products. That extra $75 kept by the boss is surplus value.
What if the worked is paid $50/day? So that's $50 that the boss keeps. What if the next best option for the worker is at $25/day, producing $30 worth of products? So the worker can choose between $50/day where the boss keeps another $50/day, or $25/day where the boss keeps $5/day. Doesn't that make the $50/day job provide a surplus of $25/day to the worker?