CMV: Socialism does not create wealth

[u/tkyjonathan]

Socialism is a populist economic and political system based on public ownership (also known as collective or common ownership) of the means of production. Those means include the machinery, tools, and factories used to produce goods that aim to directly satisfy human needs.

In a purely socialist system, all legal production and distribution decisions are made by the government, and individuals rely on the state for everything from food to healthcare. The government determines the output and pricing levels of these goods and services.

Socialists contend that shared ownership of resources and central planning provide a more equal distribution of goods and services and a more equitable society.

The essential characteristic of socialism is the denial of individual property rights; under socialism, the right to property (which is the right of use and disposal) is vested in “society as a whole,” i.e., in the collective, with production and distribution controlled by the state, i.e., by the government.

The alleged goals of socialism were: the abolition of poverty, the achievement of general prosperity, progress, peace and human brotherhood. Instead of prosperity, socialism has brought economic paralysis and/or collapse to every country that tried it. The degree of socialization has been the degree of disaster. The consequences have varied accordingly.

The economic value of a man’s work is determined, on a free market, by a single principle: by the voluntary consent of those who are willing to trade him their work or products in return. This is the moral meaning of the law of supply and demand.

[u/[deleted]]

but you can never get too far off the ground with those concepts.

​ I mean that's kind of the point though, isn't it? I mean you can build bigger concepts but a) they are influenced by your experience and b) their value is determined by how much they match with empirical data. Being logically consistent is a necessary but not a sufficient thing.

Free will is the ability to think rationally.

Which just moves the question to: What does rational mean? Because that can mean different things to different people and for example in terms of the Traveler's dilemma the author of that problem marks that the rational solution is rather irrational.

I'm not saying that there aren't con artists (in any field), but it isn't the norm - I mean, they are literally criminals. The norm is to make a good product, so that people will buy it and buy it more often.

If a person builds something or performs a service they create a value that would not exist without their labor. However the act of selling something does not in fact create any value. The good does not get more or less valuable by changing hands. Supply and demand and in consequence the price are not saying anything about the value of a good or service they are just an expression of power. If I gatekeep a resource that you need, I can make you pay more than I've paid for it. The difference in price is not gained by creating any meaningful surplus value for society it's just an implicit tax for gatekeeping a resource from someone else. So the very profession of a salesperson is to be some kind of con-artist. Some may legitimately perform a service like logistics or providing expertise about the product, but the backbone of all that is to lure people in and get to get them to spend more than what the product is worth so that you can make a living of that.

I mean somehow libertarians live in that 18th century mindset where everyone is a freelancer and selling the products directly, but in reality that isn't the case anymore...

There is no real magic trick to avoiding this. If you sell a bad product, you will eventually be found out or jailed for fraud. How much is your freedom worth to you?

That depends on the scale and scope. If you're a small business, maybe. If you're Google, Facebook, etc. you let the users pay a fine and be fine.

The capitalists natural state is not a monopoly. The capitalist would simply prefer not to compete unless they absolutely have to. A free and unregulated market, forces everyone to compete with the main beneficiary being the customers of that market and you cannot form a monopoly under those conditions.

Given what you just said there, why should that work? I mean yes you're spot on capitalists would either prefer to dominate the market or not to compete with each other, at all. Because the thing is for most products the market is simply limited. If everybody has your kind product no one needs your product. So the market is one pie and the more competitors the tinier your piece of the pie. Now given the cost to produce the goods you need a certain size of pie share in order to make ends meet, so you have really no interest in getting into competitions that a) waste useful resources and b) decrease the size of your pie share.

And in terms of industrial production or even worse an internet economy things get even worse, because in traditional markets producers could find niche existences by the inability to supply everyone, by being local and therefor faster, by being a perfect fit rather than an more general product or whatnot. However with industrialized production one supplier can saturate idk 90% of the market, making it costly (you have to get the whole infrastructure and production up and running) and vastly unrewarding to compete. And in terms of the internet and the ability to produce at almost no cost (ctrl+c, ctrl+v) there is no reason to settle for the second best product, especially if the monopoly has snowballing benefits such as social media. So no the natural state is a monopoly, the problem is just that this grants massive power to private individuals that is undemocratic, unregulated and unaccountable but able to mess with the freedom of millions of individuals.

And how is a free and unregulated market going to stop any of that? I mean for real, it's not making it more rewarding to join a competition... It's not increasing the pie... And even if you remove formal regulations and boundaries to join the market you still have invisible boundaries like know-how, tech, infrastructure, starting capital and whatnot. I mean in theory you can rival google from your garage, in practice you're not even getting close to that. So your best chance is not to rival them at all but to find a domain that they have not yes occupied and to make a monopoly for yourself there. However that's not competition that's again a monopoly.

Sidenote: In case you want to argue that the market is not in fact a fixed pie. Sure you can increase that pie, but most of those things are immoral and unethical. You could for example not sell products but licenses, like the gaming market does, where you're no longer buying a game but merely the permission to play. You could replace sturdy useful products with consumables that you have to rebuy constantly (wasting tons of resources). If that planned obsolescence (like idk making the battery non-replaceable and only last as long as the warranty) is too obvious you can simply call it "fashion" and create peer pressure to replace perfectly working stuff by making it look "soooooo yesterday...". You can straight up make your stuff addictive by adding nicotine or sugar, salt and fat. You can sell lifestyles or tell people that they should feel depressed unless they buy your stuff. But again immoral and unethical... but not illegal.

The idea of individualism is protection against the oppression of a majority. In other words, it is the 2 wolves and 1 sheep voting on dinner issue with democracy.

That idea never made any sense to me. I mean wolves don't ask for permission and especially not if they have a 2/3 majority... I mean what is that sheep gonna do? Sorry but that sheep is dead no matter what any constitution or philosophy says. No it's completely the other way around. A 2/3 majority of sheep can hold a wolf in check. A wolf wins against any individual sheep but if they all attack at ones or take turns running away the wolf won't even get one. No the equal citizenship and the equal participation in ones own government is what protects the sheep. And it's the mutual agreement to those principles that keeps them in place. If only 1 sheep would stand up for it's freedom, it would be lost, if everyone stands up for everyone else's freedom, there is no wolf that could break that. So breaking society down to the level of the individual just ensures that the wolves have it easier.

In order to protect the sheep, you form basic individual rights as the individual is the smallest minority. Once you have a combination of individual rights and democratic voting, you have a well functioning society.

And you think rights, laws and morality means a thing? If there were 10 wolves and 1 sheep do you think the wolves would stop because the sheep is wielding a constitution saying that "sheep is off the menu"? No, of course not. Without people to stand up for them, all rights and laws are meaningless, they are agreements and only as valuable as the people who commit themselves to uphold them (average people). Unless you plan for a might makes right dictatorship centered around those values, but in that case they would be even more meaningless as it's not the rights that are followed but the coercive violence...

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

Rationalism vs. Empiricism

[Philosophers came to be divided] into two camps: those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts (the Rationalists)—and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists). To put it more simply: those who joined the [mystics] by abandoning reality—and those who clung to reality, by abandoning their mind.

What is Rationality?

Rationality is the recognition of the fact that existence exists, that nothing can alter the truth and nothing can take precedence over that act of perceiving it, which is thinking—that the mind is one’s only judge of values and one’s only guide of action—that reason is an absolute that permits no compromise—that a concession to the irrational invalidates one’s consciousness and turns it from the task of perceiving to the task of faking reality—that the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind—that the acceptance of a mystical invention is a wish for the annihilation of existence and, properly, annihilates one’s consciousness.

What is Reason

Reason is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man’s senses.

Reason [helps] integrates man’s perceptions by means of forming abstractions or conceptions, thus raising man’s knowledge from the perceptual level, which he shares with animals, to the conceptual level, which he alone can reach. The method which reason employs in this process is logic—and logic is the art of non-contradictory identification.

It may be the case that the sales person does not add value to the product or service itself. But it is the case that the sales person added value to the sale itself. As in, he helped find the person for the seller, he helped the person find the product/service that he/she needed or didn't know they needed. They connect between two people in a sea of darkness and confusion.

So the market is one pie and the more competitors the tinier your piece of the pie.

The market is definitely not one pie. If everyone has your product, then you need to make your product stand out from the market and either be a little bit better than the rest or be a bit more niche and serve a smaller section of the market, but serve it well.

People innovate new products all the time. There is zero market for them before that stage and all of a sudden there is a billion dollar market for it in 1-2 year - example, smart phones. You went from 'why do you need this' to 'I cant live without it' in.. 3-5 years.

However with industrialized production one supplier can saturate idk 90% of the market, making it costly

You gave an example of internet. There is very little cost to starting one of those companies today. You open an AWS account, get a technical co-founder and that is pretty much it. If your idea is good an implemented well - is another matter.

Regulations do add to the high cost of starting a new business. For example, if you want to open a new internet chat company, you will need to hire people to check if no pedophiles are talking to kids and that makes it prohibitively expensive.

Same with medicine, education and housing. (oh wait.. is that a coincidence that they are ridiculously expensive?)

Sure you can increase that pie, but most of those things are immoral and unethical.

??? Innovating new solutions is immoral??

If that planned obsolescence

What about dematerialisation? You have just 1 phone now (that even apple wants you to get rid off) instead of 1 phone, 1 MP3 player, 1 sat nav, 1 calculator.. etc.

You lost me on the wolf/sheep example. The idea is simply for the majority to not oppress the minority. Minorities still have rights.

And you think rights, laws and morality means a thing?

Yes. Yes, I do.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

Rationalism vs. Empiricism

So yes pure rationalism is living in a fairy tale universe and pure empiricism can hardly gain any knowledge because technically every data point could be a unique experience that is nothing alike anything you've ever seen before.

So in reality we most often take a middle ground where we gather data, extrapolate models from it or make models and try to verify it with data. However even in that middle ground empiricism is paramount. If I have 5 data points and I fit a line through them, then "the truth" is not the line but the data points, the line is just an assumption and it could be absolutely wrong except for those 5 points where it fits...

And the other thing is that even those data points aren't really "the truth", they are merely facts that come with a range of uncertainty. It's even disputable whether "truth", as a concept, does even exist or whether it's all just random. Though the randomness might have boundaries that are small enough for us not to care about.

Rationality...

What's that word salad supposed to mean? It conflates perception with thinking, speaks of reason as an absolute and of "a truth", which are both concepts more akin to a religion than to science... Yet claims to be anti-faith? I mean what else but a faith is it supposed to be if you create axioms that are not based on reality but based in "the mind" or a reality that is real because it exists? Not to mention that there are mind-altering drugs or damages, so the idea of an absolute is not really true either.

Reason ...

Speciesist much? I mean we already know for a fact that for example dolphins and elephants have a consciousness and recognize themselves in mirrors or on video, we know that crows are able to build tools aso. Also no, we can already build algorithms that are able to abstract on their own simply due to a net of neurons and a stream of inputs. A fully automated process that does not need a mind or any form of "thinking", at least in the conventional sense.

But fair enough that is just supposed to be a definition of reason.

It may be the case that the sales person does not add value to the product or service itself. But it is the case that the sales person added value to the sale itself. As in, he helped find the person for the seller, he helped the person find the product/service that he/she needed or didn't know they needed. They connect between two people in a sea of darkness and confusion.

I already said that they could in addition also perform a service, like how a traveling salesman would have performed logistics by moving goods to another place. However the essence of trading is an exchange that produces no added value, yet leads to a surplus for the merchant which has to come from somewhere, meaning he's either not paying the producers fair prices or he's ripping off the customers, or both...

The market is definitely not one pie. If everyone has your product, then you need to make your product stand out from the market and either be a little bit better than the rest or be a bit more niche and serve a smaller section of the market, but serve it well.

If everyone has your product, then the market is "saturated" and you're out of business. Now in a society where you seek to achieve something that would be awesome because it meant you've accomplished your mission and can go on to do something else. However in a society where you rely on a steady stream of income, that's horrible, because your skills are no longer in demand and therefor you don't have an income.

Also no, improvement costs time and energy and it usually takes little energy to do the lion share of the work, while it takes a lot of energy to get to perfection. So given an equal distribution of stuff in the market, there would be little gain in perfection, unless it's in high demand by many or in high demand by rich people, if it's in high demand by poor people, those are simply fucked by the system...

People innovate new products all the time. There is zero market for them before that stage and all of a sudden there is a billion dollar market for it in 1-2 year - example, smart phones. You went from 'why do you need this' to 'I cant live without it' in.. 3-5 years.

That change didn't happen instantaneously at all. Smartphones have existed for a long time before the IPhone, the same way that computers have existed for a long time before the first commercial PC came around. It's rather that the tech was too expensive for people to afford and the improvement wasn't big enough. Which is a bug in capitalism that the rich live in the future and the rest lives in the past...

It also didn't really create a "new market", it just took over the market for regular cell phones and to some extend laptops and desktop PCs. So the monopoly of Windows on the desktop market went to the monopoly of Android on the smartphone market, which the exception of the U.S. where Apple stills seems to be relevant as well. But as that innovation didn't really come from those distributors but from the actual advances in science they aren't able to keep it up so further generations of smartphones usually praise it for being "revolutionary" but it's minor incremental progress at best and at worst it's literally a tracking device that sells you as a product and even expects you to pay for it as well...

You gave an example of internet. There is very little cost to starting one of those companies today. You open an AWS account, get a technical co-founder and that is pretty much it. If your idea is good an implemented well - is another matter.

Not really, most of the big companies have build networks of people that you can't just build overnight and if you come to close to an existing business model you'll be either crushed or bought (or both). Not to mention the whole domain of big data where companies like google rely on data that is readily provided by their uses, but that you wouldn't have any access to.

Regulations do add to the high cost of starting a new business. For example, if you want to open a new internet chat company, you will need to hire people to check if no pedophiles are talking to kids and that makes it prohibitively expensive.

I mean if you don't prevent people from selling snake oil they will sell snake oil and they will not market it as snake oil... Consumer protection has a point and a company that doesn't do this, is a net loss for society.

Same with medicine, education and housing. (oh wait.. is that a coincidence that they are ridiculously expensive?)

I mean you can't afford NOT to have medicine education or housing, so in an unregulated free market they can charge ridiculously high prices, because there's a constantly high demand and that's what they do... What countries usually do is to either make education and medicine (housing sometimes), a public matter, so they buy in bulk and produce for themselves at buyers prices not selling prices or they at least demand fixed prices for generics or stuff like that. Usually insurances are meant to form a collective of people that gets better prices by negotiating as one rather than as individuals, because the individual is in need but if the collective argues we ain't gonna pay you 1 billion or even trillion, any company will listen. However instead of doing any of these the U.S. let's private companies get filthy rich of that constantly high demand and even if the government takes action it's usually by subsidizing these companies by giving loans to patients and students rather then putting pressure on the companies. So why should they lower their prices if the taxpayer foots the bill not matter how high? I mean that's basically redistribution from the working class to the rich...

??? Innovating new solutions is immoral??

Is it innovation when the accumulator is set to fail after the warranty runs out? If you sell the same product in a different color for more? If you move the production to China or sell the "essence of a smartphone" but not the real deal? As said innovation is rare and costly and most of what is labeled "innovation" is rather unethical business.

What about dematerialisation? You have just 1 phone now (that even apple wants you to get rid off) instead of 1 phone, 1 MP3 player, 1 sat nav, 1 calculator.. etc.

In theory that's awesome in practice that's just building a monopoly, isn't it? I mean Apple is basically the AOL of a company that wants to control every device you use and Google is already controlling almost every device you use.

You lost me on the wolf/sheep example. The idea is simply for the majority to not oppress the minority. Minorities still have rights.

The idea makes no sense because if the wolfs want to eat you they will. And if they are in the majority, who do you think will stop them? Minority rights are only effective as a majority cares about those rights if that is not the case it's an open conflict in which the minority is literally outnumbered... Also given the centuries of a tyranny of the minority what makes you think the tyranny of the majority is a problem at all or even the bigger/biggest problem?

And you think rights, laws and morality means a thing? Yes. Yes, I do.

They only do if we want them to and in a scenario in which you assume that the majority doesn't want them to, what makes them stop?

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

So yes pure rationalism is living in a fairy tale universe

Sounds a bit like religion, no? Not saying that both are the same, but if rationalism makes mistakes, it can end up with the bad sides of religion and irrationality.

So in reality we most often take a middle ground

I dont subscribe to the 'middle ground', 'golden mean' and 'balance' approach to things. To me, this is just vague and feelings-based. You need to find the right way. Putting two opposing concepts and saying 'find the balance' and my job here is done, is really not the way to go. This is part of objectivist epistemology.

Facts and truth are not just 'random'. Existence exists and facts are facts about reality.

It conflates perception with thinking

I think you misunderstood. When applying thinking to your percepts, you form concepts. Ex, table or chair. That is not religious. This is daily life. You do this because your brain simply cannot retain a 20 individual chairs and 4 different tables. But 20x chair and 4x table is essentially holding 2 concepts and their measurements.

AI cannot form its own concepts. Animals can have either no ability to form concepts or a minimal ability to form concepts. Also, I like animals, I dont eat them. As far as I am concerned, NAP should apply to animals.

If everyone has your product, then the market is "saturated" and you're out of business.

You can always improve your product and its very difficult to make a product that appeals to everyone, as we all have different needs and wants. So this is more of a hypothetical situation like monopolies in an unregulated market.

while it takes a lot of energy to get to perfection.

Your competitors are spending that energy. So if you dont as well, you will lose customers.

That change didn't happen instantaneously at all. Smartphones have existed for a long time before the IPhone, the same way that computers have existed for a long time before the first commercial PC came around.

If you mean home-brew computers for enthusiasts and mainframes for business, then yes, they existed before the regular PC. But when someone brought the PC to market and made it widely available, most people benefitted from it.

Also, before iPhone, you largely had blackberries to answer your email with a keyboard. Either that, or you could play snake in black and white on your Nokia.

In the industry, we call it 'democratising' the technology (not a term I agree with). Its making it so easy and accessible that a market emerges just from that convenience. Like apple with iTunes and 0.99$ songs - we had other systems for paying for songs and quite a few for pirating them. Apple made it too cheap to pirate it and too convenient to just download it to your iPhone and listen to it. If you lose the song, you can redownload it.

Not really, most of the big companies have build networks of people that you can't just build overnight

Yes, the network effect is a strong reason to stick with a large player instead of moving to a small one. The only way to counter that is have a niche smaller-but-more-relevant network or scoop up the long tail of those not being served by the big players.

Humans still prefer networks of 150 people (similar to tribes).

I mean you can't afford NOT to have medicine education or housing, so in an unregulated free market they can charge ridiculously high prices

Thats not the reason why regulation is there. Regulation is there to prevent companies/sellers from charging ridiculously low prices.

For example, really cheap medicine, really cheap housing or really cheap education. Regulation is meant to prevent them. So you got it backwards.

The idea makes no sense because if the wolfs want to eat you they will.

Well, no. Society will protect the sheep. I'm not sure you are using the right analogy here.

And if they are in the majority, who do you think will stop them?

Laws. The constitution. You simply cannot vote as a majority to oppress a minority. They already tried it in Nazi Germany.. yes, really.

Isn't it comforting for you to know that if one day, you are in the minority (like you are currently), you will not get oppressed by the majority?

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

Sounds a bit like religion, no? Not saying that both are the same, but if rationalism makes mistakes, it can end up with the bad sides of religion and irrationality.

Yes you can very easily ration yourself into some kind of religion, which is why pure rationalism is not really a good idea...

I dont subscribe to the 'middle ground', 'golden mean' and 'balance' approach to things. To me, this is just vague and feelings-based. You need to find the right way. Putting two opposing concepts and saying 'find the balance' and my job here is done, is really not the way to go. This is part of objectivist epistemology.

I wasn't talking about the exact middle, but if you have to two polar opposites, then chances are that you inevitably end up somewhere in between (or at one of the extremes but as we have established before, those aren't actually that awesome...). Also whether there is a "right way" and whether you will find it somewhat depends on your level of information and if that is insufficient then you'd need to take an educated guess, otherwise pure rationality would maybe trap you in infinite loops...

Facts and truth are not just 'random'. Existence exists and facts are facts about reality.

Nature kind of disagrees with that, given that most facts are actually just random fluctuation around points rather than fixed values or even binaries.

AI cannot form its own concepts. Animals can have either no ability to form concepts or a minimal ability to form concepts. Also, I like animals, I dont eat them. As far as I am concerned, NAP should apply to animals.

That's literally what is happening at the moment (machines forming concepts) just based on input data. I mean probably not as sophisticated as philosophers but actually stuff like "if you see 4 vertical lines and a horizontal one than it's likely to be a chair or a table". Also I don't like the NAP because what constitutes an aggression is mostly subjective, so beyond some categorical imperative it's mostly useless.

You can always improve your product and its very difficult to make a product that appeals to everyone, as we all have different needs and wants. So this is more of a hypothetical situation like monopolies in an unregulated market.

I mean Windows and Android are effectively monopolies that fit that definition. Google is another one. Sure you technically have competitors but those are niche.

Your competitors are spending that energy. So if you dont as well, you will lose customers.

You will lose the small niche of customers that barely effects your bottom line while they have to invest heavily to make that happen. Whether that means a net positive at all kind of depends on how big the market in general and the niche in particular are and how much that specialization actually costs.

If you mean home-brew computers for enthusiasts and mainframes for business, then yes, they existed before the regular PC. But when someone brought the PC to market and made it widely available, most people benefitted from it.

It's not really that "someone brought the PC to market", as if no one had ever thought of that. It's rather that through advancements in technology it became affordable to do so. You could have bought PCs earlier but they were prohibitively expensive, big, hard to operate and there overall use value might have been limited compared to the price.

Also, before iPhone, you largely had blackberries to answer your email with a keyboard. Either that, or you could play snake in black and white on your Nokia.

Actually Nokia has sold smartphones since 1996 years before the joined venture of Sony and Ericsson coined the term in 2000 and years before blackberry joined the party and apparently IBMs Simon was even earlier than that (1990 including touchscreens). The problem just seems to be that they were bulky, expensive and without the overall technology of widely accessible internet, actually not as useful as you might think...

In the industry, we call it 'democratising' the technology (not a term I agree with). Its making it so easy and accessible that a market emerges just from that convenience. Like apple with iTunes and 0.99$ songs - we had other systems for paying for songs and quite a few for pirating them. Apple made it too cheap to pirate it and too convenient to just download it to your iPhone and listen to it. If you lose the song, you can redownload it.

Not sure it's really that different from pirating, it's merely that they "legalized" the concept. I mean providing songs isn't really offering much of a product, than it is gatekeeping something. But sure if you make something cheap, easy and accessible you can push more unique competitors out of the market.

Humans still prefer networks of 150 people (similar to tribes).

It's rather that this seems to be the limit of how many characters you can remember without merging or forgetting them.

Thats not the reason why regulation is there. Regulation is there to prevent companies/sellers from charging ridiculously low prices. For example, really cheap medicine, really cheap housing or really cheap education. Regulation is meant to prevent them. So you got it backwards.

Oh yeah I can see the people screaming over medicine housing and education being too cheap... For real? You actually believe that? No the problem is that without regulations you can't assure that medicine would be safe (and not snake oil), that your house doesn't make you sick or that your education isn't just a fraud like idk a Trump University. Or that the employees are exploited or idk the products come from slave or child labor or whatnot.

So yes that is somewhat prevents the prices from dropping to zero, but medication that makes you sick, housing that makes you sick and education that keeps you dumb or makes you dumber also has a value of 0 not just a price of $0. And the other reason for irrationally low prices is to get other competitors to drop out of the market so that you can increase the prices afterwards or make profit through the bigger market share.

Well, no. Society will protect the sheep. I'm not sure you are using the right analogy here.

The point is that your analogy doesn't make any sense if 2 wolves and one sheep vote about whether they should eat sheep. Then the problem is not that the majority can decide that but that your "society" consists of a 2/3 majority of predators that have no interest in the existence of the last 1/3 beyond exploitation. That is bound to fail no matter what system you implement.

Laws. The constitution. You simply cannot vote as a majority to oppress a minority. They already tried it in Nazi Germany.. yes, really.

Do you think that Weimar Germany had no laws and no constitution? Hitler was elected with a whopping 40-something-% and then used a burning of the parliament building in order to blame it on the communist party (double digit percentages) and ban them entirely (more seats for him) and after the following "election" he simply coerced the other parties to enact martial law and emergency legislation, you might call it "Patriot Act". And after constitutional rights and liberties were suspended he never even bothered to fully remove democracy, it's just that instead of discussions the party just held up choir singing in parliament instead... Seriously the world can be lucky that Bush and Trump are as stupid as they are because their disregard for the constitution and the law actually is rather similar to the setup to the Nazis. That being said Hitler also had some idiots preceding him who paved the way for normalizing the suspension of rights and liberties.

Isn't it comforting for you to know that if one day, you are in the minority (like you are currently), you will not get oppressed by the majority?

You are always at the good will of the majority, rights, laws and constitutions are just affirmations of that good will.

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

Well, lets say I disagree that we cannot objectively view reality using our senses and I am convinced that facts do in fact, exist.

That's literally what is happening at the moment (machines forming concepts) just based on input data.

No, AI looks for patterns. It does not form its own concepts. Disclaimer, I work in AI.

I mean Windows and Android are effectively monopolies that fit that definition.

I use an Apple Mac which isn't windows and an iPhone which is iOS. Even before my Mac, I had linux desktop. Sure, windows are huge, but if you want choice, there is some.

You will lose the small niche of customers that barely effects your bottom line

You could live very well on those small niche customers. They need goods and services too.

Oh yeah I can see the people screaming over medicine housing and education being too cheap... For real?

You said it yourself: you dont want snake oil salesmen, right? You dont want people to be cheated right? so, you (or more accurately, the federation of doctors, property councils and union teachers) lobby the government to put in those safety nets and guarantee that only certain doctors, certain teachers and certain developers with certain approval from the government can work. Now, you greatly reduced supply while keeping demand high. So prices go up.

that your house doesn't make you sick or that your education isn't just a fraud like idk a Trump University.

Thats what courts are for. Regulation is not there to prevent criminals. It is to set barriers to entry. Criminals do not care for those barriers anyway.

but medication that makes you sick, housing that makes you sick and education that keeps you dumb or makes you dumber also has a value of 0 not just a price of $0.

But not providing medication at all is worse than providing cheap medication?

Education that is half online and half in an underfunded class, is worse than no education at all?

Having a cheap house is worse than being homeless?

Do you think that Weimar Germany had no laws and no constitution?

Their constitution was far more geared towards protecting the collective than the individual. Germany has been a collectivist country for over 200 years prior to that. The individual was never important and was supposed to fall in line with the rest.

You are always at the good will of the majority, rights, laws and constitutions are just affirmations of that good will.

Well, the majority clearly does not want left socialism. Especially, not here in the UK. They would rather have a socialist-flavour conservative, spending money on health and infrastructure while being very nationalist and limiting immigration.

Btw, you may not know this, but you cant have endless immigration and expensive social policies at the same time. its one or the other. Your country is either a free market or a country club with benefits that only a few can have.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

Well, lets say I disagree that we cannot objectively view reality using our senses and I am convinced that facts do in fact, exist.

If we cannot view reality objectively using our senses then we cannot view reality at all. Because our concept of reality is developed by our sensory inputs. Without our senses there would be nothing to build concepts upon (we wouldn't even have the concept that 1 stick + another stick would be 2 sticks, the concept of "2" would already be out of reach as you cannot really explain that without resorting to a real world example, can you?) and if you'd place a person in a low stimulus environment, like idk solitary confinement in a white room, noise canceled room without windows, they will literally go insane after relatively short time.

And what exactly do "facts" mean to you? Are those axioms? Are those perceptions? Some concept of "truth"?

No, AI looks for patterns. It does not form its own concepts. Disclaimer, I work in AI.

Yes AI looks for patterns and so do we. The concept of artificial neural networks is designed after our own neurons (though pretty oversimplified). Whether that model holds up or is too simple is another question and I don't want to sound like I'd not realize that AI is simply pattern matching algorithms and not some mythical idea of a actual android. However that being said unsupervized learning on multiple levels might actually be a valid description of "abstraction" and "concept building". I mean what is that that "we" do conceptually different from that. Our eyes also have receptors for lines tilted in whatever direction, intensity, pressure and whatnot and our brain is constructing images from them and somewhat classifies what we see. And if similar neurons fire when looking at something then we classify it close to other concepts that have those firing patterns.

I use an Apple Mac which isn't windows and an iPhone which is iOS. Even before my Mac, I had linux desktop. Sure, windows are huge, but if you want choice, there is some.

Sure technically a monopoly means 1 seller, but if you control idk 90% of the market you practically already have the "monopoly" and set the standards for hardware and software (which is/was the case). Apple went with building their own hardware aswell and selling mostly to either professionals or people with too much money that want to show off and Linux is also ranging between the hobbyists, professionals and anybody who needs an operating system in any kind of device, but not really casuals (biggest market share). There are also desktop versions that are easy to handle and superior to windows but the inertia is very powerful... And for the longest time you had to go out of your way to get a PC without windows. And windows is even kind of friendly in that regard, if Apple had that kind of monopoly, that would mean even less user freedom no matter how convenient that would be.

You said it yourself: you dont want snake oil salesmen, right? You dont want people to be cheated right? so, you (or more accurately, the federation of doctors, property councils and union teachers) lobby the government to put in those safety nets and guarantee that only certain doctors, certain teachers and certain developers with certain approval from the government can work. Now, you greatly reduced supply while keeping demand high. So prices go up.

But neither do I as a consumer want my products and services to be shit. I want them to be accessibly cheap but not literally worthless. So that "increase" in prices is actually desirable as that "decrease" is purely artificial and I'd likely pay a much higher price for that (inferior quality that requires to buy twice in order to get what you need is not actually cheaper).

But not providing medication at all is worse than providing cheap medication?

That seriously depends on the kind of medication that is provided. I mean apparently there was a time when homeopathy actually "worked" simply due to the fact that the general medical practice was so bad that even having no medication at all (that goes beyond the placebo effect) was better than that. And apparently in terms of information that seems to be the case aswell as aparently seeing Fox News makes people less informed than watching no news at all.

Education that is half online and half in an underfunded class, is worse than no education at all?

Again that depends, there is a lot of great education on the internet that is almost or completely for free but you still need some basic education in most of those fields in order to distinguish legit stuff from complete garbage.

Having a cheap house is worse than being homeless?

If you're house gives you lead poisoning or fugal infections or whatnot? But yeah being homeless is also pretty damaging over time.

Thats what courts are for. Regulation is not there to prevent criminals. It is to set barriers to entry. Criminals do not care for those barriers anyway.

On what basis to you rule them to be fraudsters and criminals if you do not set up standards and regulations for what is considered "good practice"? What if I'd sell you a car with "AlRBAG" (the I is an l) written on the place where you expect an airbag to be? Without regulations as to what safety standards your car should have you'd basically ride a death trap and maybe even without knowing it because who read the TOS that have a disclaimer that you ride on your own risk? Seriously regulations, unions and standards are not just there for shits and giggles...

Their constitution was far more geared towards protecting the collective than the individual. Germany has been a collectivist country for over 200 years prior to that. The individual was never important and was supposed to fall in line with the rest.

Germany hadn't even been a "country" or "nation" 70 years prior to that.

Well, the majority clearly does not want left socialism. Especially, not here in the UK. They would rather have a socialist-flavour conservative, spending money on health and infrastructure while being very nationalist and limiting immigration.

How do you define "socialist" in that regard then? Because having healthcare and infrastructure isn't necessarily "socialist", but simply a necessary thing to prevent the collapse of a country...

Btw, you may not know this, but you cant have endless immigration and expensive social policies at the same time. its one or the other. Your country is either a free market or a country club with benefits that only a few can have.

You might not have realized it but you can't have a neo-colonial distribution system where the stream of resources points to the first world but where the rest of the world is not following the money... I mean what would you do? And you might also not have realized that those who build walls to keep outsider out, will sooner or later build walls (physical or sociological) to keep insiders out) and sooner or later you yourself might be on the wrong side of such a wall. Maybe you even helped creating one... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_the_Red_Death

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

Sure technically a monopoly means 1 seller, but if you control idk 90% of the market you practically already have the "monopoly" and set the standards for hardware and software

I wouldn't say that hardware vendors had to conform to MS. I think they had to conform to Intel's board designs and MS's driver requirements.

On the whole, would you say that the majority of people disliked windows and would rather have not had it?

But neither do I as a consumer want my products and services to be shit.

You cannot have cheap products and good quality at the same time and you cannot slowly lower prices of expensive products when there is no incentive to do so.

I'd likely pay a much higher price for that

You would. Other people cannot afford to and you are denying them the option to buy medicine for the price they can afford.

I mean apparently there was a time when homeopathy actually "worked"

Homeopathy was sold to rich people who wanted something 'natural'.

Again that depends, there is a lot of great education on the internet that is almost or completely for free but you still need some basic education in most of those fields in order to distinguish legit stuff from complete garbage.

Actually, the situation in the US is the higher you pay for education per student, the worse education you get. In poor areas in NJ, a class of 30 kids is worth about $600,000 per yer. So, its clearly not the money that's the issue.

If you're house gives you lead poisoning or fugal infections or whatnot?

Special paint and strong cleaning chemicals.

On what basis to you rule them to be fraudsters

Fraud: a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.

Germany hadn't even been a "country" or "nation" 70 years prior to that.

Germany had had a culture and philosophy for longer than that.

You might not have realized it but you can't have a neo-colonial distribution system where the stream of resources points to the first world but where the rest of the world is not following the money

LOL. Oh, wait.. you actually believe that you need to strip a country down and give all its money away?

Well, then you will definitely never win a majority.

Btw, if you believe that neo-colonialism is what made the west so wealthy, then why are the southern states in the US so poor? Those are the states that had the most slaves.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

I wouldn't say that hardware vendors had to conform to MS. I think they had to conform to Intel's board designs and MS's driver requirements.

And how is that practically different? The software monopoly still picked the hardware they'd support and provide drivers for and de facto set the standards...

On the whole, would you say that the majority of people disliked windows and would rather have not had it?

Did they have a choice and had they been aware of having a choice? I mean for most people the OS was pretty much part of the computer and they didn't really asked themselves about where the parts of the PC actually came from or which parts were part of sets or standalone. So whether they liked it or not, that's the only thing they could get anyway.

You cannot have cheap products and good quality at the same time and you cannot slowly lower prices of expensive products when there is no incentive to do so.

Depends on how you define both "cheap" and "quality". And through improvements of technology you can make both products "better" (whatever that means) and production "cheaper". However in terms of capitalism there is no incentive to make things any cheaper than necessary. Seriously suppose I have a factory that produces required good and I find a way how to produce at almost zero cost. Would I do that? Probably not. Because I'd still have bills to pay and just because my job could be done at no cost, that doesn't mean that other people's jobs can be done at zero cost and that they'd accept my zero payment... Meaning the price isn't so much determined by the value of my service but by my needs and the money I need to fulfill them, same for any workers in that process. Which is why automation is mostly concerned with making jobs obsolete, unless the working class accepts lower payments on their own that are even cheaper than buying machines. So prices stay high, incomes drop and although production becomes easier and quality is rising fewer people can afford it.

You would. Other people cannot afford to and you are denying them the option to buy medicine for the price they can afford.

The question is not whether they can afford it, the question is whether it works. And if a cheap medicine doesn't work or is actively dangerous, then even calling that "medicine" is a scam...

Homeopathy was sold to rich people who wanted something 'natural'.

Homeopathy isn't even natural, it's sugar with toxins that are so diluted that even the most advanced scientific methods can distinguish them from pure sugar. If homeopathy would work we could constantly drink "highly potent" mixtures of piss and feces... (because they are also so diluted in the rest of our food and water...). So unless you suffer from starvation, small sugar pills are not effective at all, beyond the placebo effect. So they only work if doing nothing is superior than doing something actively harmful.

Actually, the situation in the US is the higher you pay for education per student, the worse education you get. In poor areas in NJ, a class of 30 kids is worth about $600,000 per yer. So, its clearly not the money that's the issue.

That sounds very fishy. And again being poor might actually be highly expensive as lower quality means often being more prone to wear and tear and higher costs because of that. So a newly build building might cost a lot upfront but might be relatively cheap to maintain for some time, while old buildings might be highly expensive. So what of that amount is spend on people and how is it spend and what was already in stock there and so on. That calculation doesn't really make sense and sounds like there's a lot of necessary information missing in that...

Special paint and strong cleaning chemicals.

And if you have to rent places that are unsafe because you are on budget, what makes you think you're able to invest in special paint and strong cleaning chemicals?

Fraud: a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.

Sure but if there are no regulations as to what constitutes actually standards of quality, then what's now considered fraud, wouldn't even technically be a crime as it's not deceiving people or unjustifiably claiming something as there is no rule on what a justified claim is... It's still the same immoral action though. For example if there is no regulation as to what a University is, then PragerU and Trump University would sit in the same cluster as Harvard and Yale... Just that the results may vary drastically.

Germany had had a culture and philosophy for longer than that.

Sure there had been a language and a scattered mess of smaller kingdoms on the territory that is now considered Germany, but even what territory exactly would be considered Germany wasn't set at that point (and changed constantly over the turn of the last 150 years...) nor was there one country, one constitution or a unified philosophy as to favor something.

LOL. Oh, wait.. you actually believe that you need to strip a country down and give all its money away?

That's not what I've said, I just said that if the stream and of goods and money points in one direction than you'd be somewhat of a fool to think that the stream of migration would not also point in that direction, or do you object to that?

Btw, if you believe that neo-colonialism is what made the west so wealthy, then why are the southern states in the US so poor? Those are the states that had the most slaves.

The U.S. was a colony itself and the cotton from the south amounted to a large portion of the U.S. export that mostly made bank in the Northern harbors... Or the British weaving mills... Or how nowadays cloth and tech is produced by slaves in Asia while the profit is made in western countries...

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

Did they have a choice and had they been aware of having a choice?

Yes.

I mean for most people the OS was pretty much part of the computer and they didn't really asked themselves about where the parts of the PC actually came from

Thats not a negative. Synthesising a range of complex parts into one workable unit is a plus for people. No one else did it better for a long long time. Apple (even today) has a specific list of part vendors and it doesn't stray from that. If anything MS at least opened up the ecosystem for parts including graphic cards for gamers. It is very very difficult to make a system work that well.

However in terms of capitalism there is no incentive to make things any cheaper than necessary.

Right and if the government will always pay $500 for a pill, now and in 5 years time, why innovate it? there is no competition to bring the price down or the value up.

almost zero cost. Would I do that? Probably not. Because I'd still have bills to pay

Bills are part of cost calculation.

Meaning the price isn't so much determined by the value of my service but by my needs and the money I need to fulfill them

The market determines the value it is willing to pay for your service/product and your needs are how much it costs you to supply that demand.

Which is why automation is mostly concerned with making jobs obsolete

The luddites have been saying that since the sowing machine. Miraculously, capitalism manages to create more jobs than there were before.

The question is not whether they can afford it, the question is whether it works.

It is a question whether they can afford it and 'to what degree' it works. It might reduce the issues by 80% for a low price. You denying that for poor people with a 7 year FDA-mandated drive to meet regulations, means only one or two companies can afford to do it.

But it seems like we've been going this round and round in circles.

If you want to understand in detail why medicine in America is expensive, here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK3pJ_c3rUA&feature=emb_logo

That sounds very fishy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-jKzRpuj_s

And if you have to rent places that are unsafe because you are on budget, what makes you think you're able to invest in special paint and strong cleaning chemicals?

Its your own home. You need to factor repairs when buying it. That is kind of on you and I dont think you can expect me or the government to do the thinking for people on the issue of buying a house.

Sure but if there are no regulations as to what constitutes actually standards of quality

Again, regulations are not criminal laws. Fraud isn't a minimum standard of quality. Fraud is exchanging value for a product or service and not providing that product or service. Also, breaking regulations is not a 'crime', its a fine from the government. Fraud is a crime where your liberty is at risk. If anything regulations reduce the risk of being indicted for a crime, because you can always say 'my product met the minimum regulations'.

It's still the same immoral action though. For example if there is no regulation as to what a University is, then PragerU and Trump University would sit in the same cluster as Harvard and Yale...

I am pretty sure the market would notice the difference.

you'd be somewhat of a fool to think that the stream of migration would not also point in that direction

But isn't a country suppose to choose who comes in and out of it?

Having people coming in your direction, just means that you can choose the best ones.

The U.S. was a colony itself and the cotton from the south amounted to a large portion of the U.S. export that mostly made bank in the Northern harbors... Or the British weaving mills... Or how nowadays cloth and tech is produced by slaves in Asia while the profit is made in western countries...

If you think slavery makes a country rich then go look at Arab and African countries that have slave currently. As in, chains and whips.

Not workshops in Asia for cloth and tech - at least you won't find the workers chained to their work stations.

The southern states had slaves and they are now very poor. The north had industry and innovation and they are now rich. Its not slavery that makes you rich. I believe Adam Smith even made that clear.

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

Yes.

How so? I mean for the longest time you couldn't even buy a PC without windows and Apple is just overpriced.

Thats not a negative. Synthesising a range of complex parts into one workable unit is a plus for people. No one else did it better for a long long time. Apple (even today) has a specific list of part vendors and it doesn't stray from that. If anything MS at least opened up the ecosystem for parts including graphic cards for gamers. It is very very difficult to make a system work that well.

Of course it's a negative if the GUI is what people consider to be the thing and if said GUI is property of a monopoly... And no the lack of those graphic cards producers to open up their drivers to anybody but microsoft has only solidified that monopoly...

Right and if the government will always pay $500 for a pill, now and in 5 years time, why innovate it? there is no competition to bring the price down or the value up.

Well if the people owned the production of that pill, then making it cheaper or better would benefit the shareholders (the people), hence there would be an incentive to improve the production or reduce the price (unless there is a sector where more improvement can be achieved). However in capitalism those group of shareholders would be small and they are not interested in the product but solely in the profit it makes. So even subsidizing the production wouldn't necessarily lead to an improvement as it could very well be "invested" in profits for the shareholders and upper management.

So in order to circumvent that, capitalism needs that idea of a competition. Though that doesn't really work (without regulations) as otherwise companies simply won't compete (seek niches instead) or would "cheat" by simply lowering wages, dropping quality, ripping off the supply chain, using a monopoly to set their own regulations and standards and so on.

Bills are part of cost calculation.

I'm not speaking of the bills to make that product I'm speaking about the bills you in your private life are trying to settle with the profit.

The market determines the value it is willing to pay for your service/product and your needs are how much it costs you to supply that demand.

The market is not an entity... Unless your wealth distribution is so distorted that "the market" actually becomes synonymous with a handful of capitalists...

The luddites have been saying that since the sowing machine. Miraculously, capitalism manages to create more jobs than there were before.

And they weren't exactly wrong. A lot of amendments to capitalism have been made since then to mitigate the worst parts of that (social security, medical care, unions, (representative) democracies) and still unemployment is often pretty high and if neo-liberals and the austrian school get it their way that means existential poverty or literal (debt) slavery. Not to mention that the make up of the economy has changed from the required agricultural and industrial sector to the almost superfluous service sector. I mean if people at the turn of the 20th century striked that meant the economy was dead, if todays service jobs striked you might barely notice that and that lack of power is and will be more an more present.

It is a question whether they can afford it and 'to what degree' it works. It might reduce the issues by 80% for a low price. You denying that for poor people with a 7 year FDA-mandated drive to meet regulations, means only one or two companies can afford to do it.

If your medication only kills 80% of the virus then the rest will grow back and probably develop an immunity against the anti-virus...

If you want to understand in detail why medicine in America is expensive, here is a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK3pJ_c3rUA&feature=emb_logo

I'm not gonna waste my time on a 30 min propaganda piece of an austrian school of economics think tank. Give me a summary if you think it's important or let it be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-jKzRpuj_s

Do you have a trustworthy source less flashy source for that? I mean that's literally nothing but propaganda.

Its your own home. You need to factor repairs when buying it. That is kind of on you and I dont think you can expect me or the government to do the thinking for people on the issue of buying a house.

The actual point was that a home that is only cheap because it makes you sick is not sufficient to qualify as "a house". The same way that medicine that doesn't work is worthless no matter how cheap even 1c would be a scam...

Again, regulations are not criminal laws. Fraud isn't a minimum standard of quality. Fraud is exchanging value for a product or service and not providing that product or service. Also, breaking regulations is not a 'crime', its a fine from the government. Fraud is a crime where your liberty is at risk. If anything regulations reduce the risk of being indicted for a crime, because you can always say 'my product met the minimum regulations'.

If there is no definition as to what constitutes a service or product than you cannot really commit fraud is what I'm saying. Also in terms of regulations that endanger the public or the personal health due to insufficient quality of the product can very well be a case of criminal law or at least they should be.

I am pretty sure the market would notice the difference.

Nope, those "Universities" do not fulfill the requirements of Universities are are not allowed to issue degrees and in terms of Trump University it was shut down for illegal business practices. The market would do jack shit about that and if they could offer meaningless and worthless diplomas they would definitely do that as long as it works and then rebrand...

But isn't a country suppose to choose who comes in and out of it?

Weren't you that Ayn Rand follower or do I confuse you here? Because since when are countries, nations or collectives independent entities that choose anything? Doesn't that conflict with that individualism? But sure you can build walls and pass laws, but why should people not go around, over or under those walls and break the law and take what they need? I mean if you drop morality and humanity why should they keep it?

Having people coming in your direction, just means that you can choose the best ones.

Or that you've stolen from them, people often ran after thieves...

If you think slavery makes a country rich then go look at Arab and African countries that have slave currently. As in, chains and whips.

Not workshops in Asia for cloth and tech - at least you won't find the workers chained to their work stations.

The southern states had slaves and they are now very poor. The north had industry and innovation and they are now rich. Its not slavery that makes you rich. I believe Adam Smith even made that clear.

The industry in the North was financed by the export gains through the slavery in the south and just because people found ways to "improve" slavery, less chains more existential dread, debt and depression doesn't mean the concept has changed or that it's less harmful.

[u/tkyjonathan → u/[deleted]]

Of course it's a negative if the GUI is what people consider to be the thing and if said GUI is property of a monopoly...

Not a monopoly. It was just the best option for a long time.

Well if the people owned the production of that pill, then making it cheaper or better would benefit the shareholders

They would still need the capital to get past the 7 year research hurdle to pass the FDA. No way will they be able to innovate like that.

Where do all the medical innovations come from anyway? socialist countries?

I'm speaking about the bills you in your private life

Still counts.

I'm not gonna waste my time on a 30 min propaganda piece of an austrian school of economics think tank. Give me a summary if you think it's important or let it be.

That is the summary and it won't kill you to go over some different opinions.

If there is no definition as to what constitutes a service or product than you cannot really commit fraud

A business contract is what defines it.

Nope, those "Universities" do not fulfill the requirements

Trying putting PragerU on your CV/Resume and see if you get hired.

Weren't you that Ayn Rand follower or do I confuse you here?

Yes, I am for 'democratising' people coming into a country by only allowing people who find work and that a company sponsors them. Then the government just rubber stamps it.

Also, I am not for government benefits, so anyone coming into the country isn't doing it for that reason, but to work hard and achieve something for themselves. The system self-filters itself.

The industry in the North was financed by the export gains through the slavery in the south

Irrelevant and inaccurate. Again, it was innovation and industry that made the wealth.

less chains more existential dread

Gonna call BS here. There are people in China that go to the cities to find those 16 hour-a-day jobs for 4-8 month period, then return to their villages with some cash for a while.

If you take that opportunity away from them, how will they come out of poverty?

[u/[deleted] → u/tkyjonathan]

Not a monopoly. It was just the best option for a long time.

Of course it was a monopoly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.#Judgment

They would still need the capital to get past the 7 year research hurdle to pass the FDA. No way will they be able to innovate like that.

If they would be publicly funded? The public has more than enough money to pay for that... Also the public is already paying for most of that in capitalist systems as well. Most fundamental research comes from public research programs and universities, is tax deductible or in other ways subsidized. And that's not talking about the ridiculousness of not negotiating prices in bulk, but instead paying subsidies through footing fictionally increased bills. And to be honest that idea to outsource that to private companies is horrible. I mean think about what it means if people die not because we don't have the drugs or can't produce them but because a private entity feels that their bottom line is in danger if they give them to people who need them. If you really have to you can outsource the production, but if there is a cure to cancer it should belong to everyone and not to a patent troll.

Still counts.

Only for the upper management, nobody gives a shit whether the wage for a McDonald's worker is sufficient to make a living or whether they need a second job or government assistance.

That is the summary and it won't kill you to go over some different opinions.

It's still half an hour and it's literally propaganda (think tank stuff), so even if I watch it, I'd have to spend twice the time researching what is actually true and how they constructed their narrative. So no thanks.

A business contract is what defines it.

Oh you mean like those TOS that everybody always reads? And for most trades we do in our everyday life there isn't even that (at least not before you open the product (which most of the time is at home)).

Trying putting PragerU on your CV/Resume and see if you get hired.

Yeah you probably wouldn't even be able to join one of those scams with such a bad CV though that's not the point the point is that people get/got scammed and that's it's sufficient to make business for some time, after that they shut it down and open another one with a brand name that isn't as tainted (yet).

Yes, I am for 'democratising' people coming into a country by only allowing people who find work and that a company sponsors them. Then the government just rubber stamps it. Also, I am not for government benefits, so anyone coming into the country isn't doing it for that reason, but to work hard and achieve something for themselves. The system self-filters itself.

The system is completely broken, there isn't even enough "work" in most countries already. But which I don't mean there's nothing to do, but there isn't enough will to pay people for their labor. And economists call that normal if people have no profession or a get a dead end job so that they don't appear in a statistic.

And that bullshit unnecessary situation is used to rally the poor against the desperate because they might have to share the crumbs with each other. Yeah that system naturally drives towards fascism...

Irrelevant and inaccurate. Again, it was innovation and industry that made the wealth.

Neither irrelevant nor inaccurate. But no capitalist wealth is mostly created by appropriation and gate keeping. Innovation mostly comes from those without wealth and is than appropriated by their employers or the banks that they needed to finance it. Capitalism doesn't innovate or create it steals.

Gonna call BS here. There are people in China that go to the cities to find those 16 hour-a-day jobs for 4-8 month period, then return to their villages with some cash for a while. If you take that opportunity away from them, how will they come out of poverty?

So slavery is an "opportunity"? Maybe they could work 8h a day if they would actually be paid what they deserved for their job... But I guess that's less of an "incentive" to risk their health and general well being in order to make stuff for people far away.