/liberty/ - Liberty

>>83677

Not reading this one.

It disturbs me how far-left the Independent online is. I suspect the print paper might be less radical, but even so, yikes.

>>83677

>The world is finally ready for Marxism as capitalism reaches the tipping point

You faggots are about as bad as the climate change doomsayers. It's a new "end to Capitalism" every fucking ten to twenty years and the result is always "oh look, fucking nothing happened and they figured out how to solve the problem we emphasized so much. Well shit, must be imperialist policy or something." At least when we predict a crash there's a strong market dip or a crash happens within a year or two of the prediction.

>>83681

t. never worked a day in his life

>>83680

Not really, Peter Schiff has been warning of another crisis pretty much constantly since '08

tfw european union leader was celebrating the anniversary

>>83708

Marx is a very important figure in European history, whether you like him or not.

>>83721

Yes, important in getting a shitload of people killed, or at best, making them poor.

>>83721

So was Hitler :o

>>83729

There's like 5 or 7 occasions a year where Europeans remember something connected to Hitler.

>>83683

>Not really, Peter Schiff has been warning of another crisis pretty much constantly since '08

There are no time-tables in austrian economics, just long term predictions. Peter schiff is doing it wrong.

>>83677

You better not be the same poster as the last gotcha thread.

>The philosopher predicted that centralisation would lead to revolution and give birth to a post-capitalist society

He didn't predict anything. He made unfalsifiable assertions. You can neither prove, nor disprove it as it goes on to near infinity.

>The world’s most populous state and rising superpower, China, is officially communist, albeit nominally

So it's not.

>he resurgence of socialism could be seen in the Chavismo new left wave of Latin American politics (admittedly now in the process of being rolled back).

Disproving his own statements before we do does not save the article from being a shitpost.

The whole article does nothing else but remind that people still talk about Socialism and that it keeps failing, but isn't going away. There's no "BTFO"ing of anything or anybody here. The title is clickbait. Bait that you took and probably didn't even read it.

>>83739

>He didn't predict anything. He made unfalsifiable assertions.

Marx's economic laws are all falsifiable. What the fuck are you talking about? Specify your claims. Funny that this is coming from someone who believes in marginal ultility which is pretty much unfalsifisble.

200 years of Marx!

200 million dead!

>>83742

>Marx's economic laws are all falsifiable

He's not making an economic prediction. His theory never comes off the ground as an exchange of equal value is meaningless and nobody engages in it. Just like Smith intentionally did before him based purely on his religious views, Marx completely disregards entrepreneurship. Also never could explain away human capital and substantiate what the fuck exactly is his unit of labor and why should anyone care at all to accept it. Instead he engages in the same asinine attempts at convoluted mathematics based on faulty assumption that leave to nowhere, which is no different than what he opposes.

Marx's end of what he defines as Capitalism is a product of his unfalsifiable theory of history. He weaseled out of having to answer what would bring about perfect information, which no market actor can possess. It's all just "critique" and no blueprints for the future allowed. His only and highest achievement was redundant pointing out of the impossible. He does not prove and can not prove that the market will or has to be replaced. He merely states it's inevitable and you have to wait indefinitely for it to happen.

You can't falsify possible future preferences. The whole Homo Economicus bullshit leftists recently brought up a few hundred years late behind Böhm Bawerk and every other Austrian?

>marginal ultility which is pretty much unfalsifiable

You don't need to go out and observe a logical deduction by experience. You know better than that. You test it logically, which is the only way you could possibly falsify it and marginal utility passes that test.

>>83742

>Marx's economic laws are all falsifiable

examples?

>>83742

>marginal ultility which is pretty much unfalsifisble.

You can test this empirically by feeding yourself doughnuts, you chubby cummie, and rating the pleasure you receive from each one. Eventually you reach a point where you become satiated and pleasure of consumption of another is zero.

2/2

>Marx completely disregards entrepreneurship

What does that even mean? That Marx didn't consider people founding new companies? He talks about that in Capital Vol. 3.

>Also never could explain away human capital

What do you mean? Literally all he talks about is the human relationship to capital.

>substantiate what the fuck exactly is his unit of labor

He calculates unskilled, generally reproducible labor in time.

>Marx's end of what he defines as Capitalism is a product of his unfalsifiable theory of history

He describes some very clear differences between capitalism and feudalism and has a pretty consistent theory of history.

>He weaseled out of having to answer what would bring about perfect information, which no market actor can possess

Information about what? Marx's theories are not microeconomic theories, he doesn't tell you how to run your business. The libertarian view on economics, which is shared by neoliberals, is that society as a whole should be a run like a business, which makes no sense. That's why you get stupid privatization of infrastructure and austerity politics.

>It's all just "critique" and no blueprints for the future allowed.

As a future he suggests communism which he doesn't lay out in detail because that would be utopian. He roughly describes a communist mode of production in Critique of the Gotha Program. He also died before finishing his work. If you want blueprints of socialism, check out the works of later contributors to Marxism but that's a whole other can of worms. Planned economy for example was an innovation that came about through the Soviet experience.

>You can't falsify possible future preferences.

You can easily look if any of those tendencies Marx predicted that I mentioned above still hold truth to it. If they are true, the downfall of capitalism is indeed a question of time, maybe in 25 years, maybe in 200 years, it's just that it's inevitable and it's also not guaranteed that we will have communism, maybe we will have something completely different. We can say tho that things are probably going to hit the fan way before all the indicators hit zero, considering how things already ramp up.

>You don't need to go out and observe a logical deduction by experience. You know better than that. You test it logically, which is the only way you could possibly falsify it and marginal utility passes that test.

Also >>83756

>You can test this empirically by feeding yourself doughnuts

See, that's either a stupid truism (I want something so I want it) or it incorporates so many variables that determine your human desire that it's simply not a scientific theory. Marx was not interested in the use value of things, because that's totally subjective. He was interested in the relations of exchange and production which are observable and which are dislodged from use value. If you imagine a scenario happening in the equilibrium, when supply and demand is canceled out and other things like marketing, brand value, etc. are removed, you still have definite value relations such as 10 kg of linen equal one coat or whatever, three coats equal one table, etc. - these relations are independent from human desire.

>>83787

>Capitalism kills around 25 million per year

Proof?

>>83786

>that's either a stupid truism (I want something so I want it

Poor reasoning. It is more: "You voluntary consume something, therefrom you want it."

>it incorporates so many variables that determine your human desire that it's simply not a scientific theory

Just because there are multiple variables does not mean a theory is unfalsifiable. That is why in economics regressions and meta-analyses are often used. And how is it nonscientific? I am not sure what you are getting at with Marx, since he never even mentioned marginal utility.

>>83809

>Well that's the number of excessive deaths every year through hunger, lack of clean water and lack of vaccination

And how is this the result of capitalism?

>Where is the difference?

What you posited was a circular rteasoning. What I stated was a cause and effect.

Differences in wealth do not equate to an unfair market. Sowell mentioned this in how consumers of different wealth brackets have different preferences to goods. I do not see how an agora is any different compared to other markets. You had metes that did common labor, artisan classes, and the wealthy, and the use of currency.

>but haven't really much to do with "voluntary association" or "equal competition"

How so?

>Another problem for the theory of marginal utility is that every single economic act that generates a profit is considered useful

It is useful because it signals producers to increase supply to meet the increase in demand.

>I find that to be utopian and disconnected from the real, material life of people.

This is an assertion that you have not provided any evidence for.

>Again, this is why formerly public infrastructural institutions such as trains are considered more "effective" once privatized

Roads were far more effective and maintained when privately funded. USually they go to shit once they are under control of a public entity or utlity (e,g, Amtrak).

>If we ought to describe marginal utility in Marxist terms

And how is Marx relevant? He believed utility was Boolean despite the fact it has been quantified.

1/2

>>83824

>Are you seriously implying that there is a fixed relationship between the value of every single coat produced and a unit quantity of the material used to produce said article? WTF am I reading?

It's the labor theory of value, not the labor theory of materials. Goods attain value in capitalism through the element of abstract human labor. That means that there is no way a bunch of linen could relate to a coat in the sphere of exchange except through the amount of labor put into it. Both the abstract amount of labor as well as the commodity itself attains a social relation once the work is finished, the exchange value. Once commodity exchanges becomes the generalized, rapidly sequenced form of exchange, such as in capitalism, every commodity becomes valorized arround the same exchange value (price in equilibrium). That's why a standard amount of 100g table salt costs arround the same everywhere in Europe, for example, give or take the purchasing power of each country, supply costs, etc.

>It is amazing to me how these people have reproduced themselves. Wait, actually I know exactly how it happens, self-serving academics with a high aptitude to adopting epistemologically arbitrary frameworks and zero willingness to think outside said framework. Thank god the institutions that spawned this garbage are dying.

You are not actually arguing anything, you are just throwing a tantrum.

>>83826

>And how is this the result of capitalism?

Capitalism is a global system established everywhere in the world except Cuba and the DPRK, and maybe some indigenous communites. Obviously the allocation of food, water and vaccines suffers from defects causing human deaths - the same you would claim that the misallocation of food during the famine '32 and'33 was the direct result of socialism. Unless you are using double standards, because after 1945, nobody starved in the USSR or wasn't properly vaccined.

>Differences in wealth do not equate to an unfair market. Sowell mentioned this in how consumers of different wealth brackets have different preferences to goods. I do not see how an agora is any different compared to other markets. You had metes that did common labor, artisan classes, and the wealthy, and the use of currency.

"Fair" and "unfair" are moral terms and Marxists want nothing to do with those. Even if we assume every powerful market participant "earned" all his money (by whatever moralistic metric you are using), it's simply a social fact that they can manipulate the market by whatever means necessary, buying up competitors, driving prices down through lower production costs, expanding his capital stock exponentionally, etc. - for the consumer, such things make little differences as long as he gets his cheap consumer goods, that's why I said "free market" is a bit of an ideological word (if you interpret it as mere "no government intervention in capitalism") but rather it's just interlinked consumer-producer relationships. There is also the fact that the state protects private property by force and prohibits the free association of producers.

>How so?

Because these things don't really matter. We are talking about the reproduction of economic life of all participants, not just a selected class of producers. I already criticized the concept of voluntaryism by saying that food, shelter, clothes, and healthcare are all things people need to afford, and even in the West those things eat up more than 50% of their paycheck. Of the average citizen.

2/2

>It is useful because it signals producers to increase supply to meet the increase in demand.

Does it do it unconditionally? It signals profitable demand. There are homeless, but there are empty houses. Supply and demand in capitalism is based on value indicators, consisting of many different variables, such as labor cost, capital cost, taxes, shipping cost, cost of accumulation, private profits, etc. - this is what prices signal. not just a naked "demand".

>This is an assertion that you have not provided any evidence for.

Well, Marx says that these things work but there are inherent contradictions within the capitalist mode of production itself, which I've listed above, which are predictions of the LTV and falsifiable. I'm willing to talk about any of these. Capitalism does produce great riches, but it has contradictions and therefore can not last forever, and at some point, even inhibits human development and causes misery.

>Roads were far more effective and maintained when privately funded. USually they go to shit once they are under control of a public entity or utlity

There is a difference between building roads and maintaining roads, I guess you talk about this model about people "buying" a piece of road and then demand a toll for it? The reason public roads go to shit is because of austerity, which is neoliberalism and pretends that the state needs to be run like a private business. I would not like to defend SocDem shit because that's not what I advocate.

>He believed utility was Boolean despite the fact it has been quantified.

How do you quantify it? And once you do, how does that not make you a central planner?

>>83822

> Public trains get subsidized from the government which means they offer services cheaper.

Apparently you have not heard of Amtrak. Hell, it is faster and cheaper to drive from Philly to New York, than to use a train.

>British train privatization was a disaster, and even when the state transforms the SoE into a private company where the state holds the most shares (like in Germany) service gets significantly worse

Utility != Privatization. If they really wanted privatization, they should not have created state-chartered monopolies.

>national train network, the national electricity grid, etc. require planning, this is why they all historically came about through state intervention.

That is because the state either owned the land or prevented private landowners from building their own networks.

>Private businesses usually don't plan long-term because they have to immediately make profits to satisfy their shareholders or investors

Then why so many tech companies such as Google and Amazon incorporate long-term R&D funding? Why do so many NGOs, even ones without government funding, exist for this reason?

>which isn't possible with long-term projects such as nuclear fusion (which was pioneered in the USSR).

Controlled thermonuclear fusion energy has yet to be achieved. Maybe they should have diverted resources to more immdeiate concerns.

>This is also why China beats the West in terms of infrastructural expansion, renewable energy and overall poverty reduction

China is fueling a housing bubble to fuel its growth. It is not a very efficient distribution of resources when you build ghost cities.

>>83829

>Apparently you have not heard of Amtrak. Hell, it is faster and cheaper to drive from Philly to New York, than to use a train.

I was referring to the UK, but a quick read about Amtrak reveals that they get heavily subsidized by the government, run on many government-owned rails and have government institutions blocking other trains to favor Amtrak trains (before they did that there were constant crashes).

>Utility != Privatization. If they really wanted privatization, they should not have created state-chartered monopolies.

Well have such things in terms of nation-wide infrastructure ever existed? How do you coordinate this?

>That is because the state either owned the land or prevented private landowners from building their own networks.

Usually heavy industry and heavy infrastructure isn't that profitable, so whether or not private businesses would have build all this is speculation. I mean, it did work just fine with the state doing it, did it not?

>Then why so many tech companies such as Google and Amazon incorporate long-term R&D funding?

Because by monopolizing new innovative sectors such as robotics they secure their own future as one of the most powerful corporations in the world. Many innovations still come out of the state sector.

>China is fueling a housing bubble to fuel its growth. It is not a very efficient distribution of resources when you build ghost cities.

People have been saying that China is going to have it's crisis for decades and we are all still waiting. Meanwhile the West has crashed 2008.

>It is not a very efficient distribution of resources when you build ghost cities.

Can you give an example of that? It's better than those dystopian walled cities they had in the 90s which are basically one giant building. Take out China from the global poverty reduction statistic though and see what happens.

>>83827

>>83828

>Capitalism is a global system established everywhere in the world except Cuba and the DPRK,

This does not explain how capitalism caused said deaths.

>There is also the fact that the state protects private property by force and prohibits the free association of producers.

It is true that the state prevents free association, but this does not a free market make, nor does the state protect private property (e.g. warrantless search & seizures, imminent domain, civil forfeiture).

>Because these things don't really matter.

This does not answer the question.

>I already criticized the concept of voluntaryism by saying that food, shelter, clothes, and healthcare are all things people need to afford,

I do not see how this is a criticism. Necessities exist and voluntary actions (unless you believe in determinism) have been demonstrated to satiate these despite state hindrance.

>labor cost, capital cost, taxes, shipping cost, cost of accumulation, private profits

Actually, these factors are dependent upon supply and demand. For example, labor cost is determined by the labor supply of a specific skill/experience and the demand for this skill in the production line. Whether it is conditional or not is irrelevant. If profit exists in a specific product/industry, competitors will increase the supply, lower cost, improve quality, etc. until the market reaches equilibrium.

>There are homeless, but there are empty houses.

The homeless problem has more to do with drug illegalization, zoning, building codes, and other state hindrances, but this is getting off topic.

>Marx says that these things work but there are inherent contradictions within the capitalist mode of production itself, which I've listed above, which are predictions of the LTV and falsifiable.

You have not listed any contradictions.

>capitalism even inhibits human development and causes misery.

Proof?

>There is a difference between building roads and maintaining roads, I guess you talk about this model about people "buying" a piece of road and then demand a toll for it?

No, I am talking about the construction and maintenance of private roads, the dopminant form of transportation in the US prior to the Highway Act Tolls are not required on private roads as there are other sources of funding.

>How do you quantify it? And once you do, how does that not make you a central planner?

You can quantify it in relation to other goods. Some break it down to base unit utils or group it ordinally. If you are referring to the individual consumer as “centrally planning” his consumption, then I guess you can call that individual a central planner in his own little “economy”.

>>83830

>I was referring to the UK

Yes, I know, but that was not privatization but the establishment of utilities, just like Amrtrakin the US.

>before they did that there were constant crashes

There are constant crashes now due to Amtrak and other utilities that defer their damage settlements to Amtrak (which are ultimately funded via taxes).

>Well have such things in terms of nation-wide infrastructure ever existed?

Yes, private road systems prior to the US Highway Act,

>Usually heavy industry and heavy infrastructure isn't that profitable, so whether or not private businesses would have build all this is speculation.

Baseless assertion and contradicted by my example regarding private roads.

> Because by monopolizing new innovative sectors such as robotics they secure their own future as one of the most powerful corporations in the world.

But this contradicts your earlier statement: “Private businesses usually don't plan long-term”

> People have been saying that China is going to have it's crisis for decades and we are all still waiting. Meanwhile the West has crashed 2008.

Ignoring the fact that China lost 6% GDP per capita according to the World Bank in 2009, it is a developing nation and one with an increasing population, two factors that help mitigate a crisis But these things cannot continue ad infinitum.

>Every one of Marx's predictions for the arc of history towards a post-capitalist society failed and often even manifested in the exact opposite terms among those who tried to fulfill them.

>Surely this time will be different. It's current century.

Omg we are done for xD

>>83731

but they generally don't celebrate him or his doings. Hitler is today's most hated historical person.