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| Thread: War on the Somali pirates? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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mvassilev
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posted May 22, 2011 08:48 PM |
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angelito:
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You can't get rich without taking money from others. The more money you take, the more people lose theirs. So for every person who become very rich, many others become very poor. Otherwise capitalism wouldn't work.
Nonsense. You can get rich from mutually beneficial voluntary exchange. If wealth was zero-sum, we'd still be living in caves.
Elodin:
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Most poor people are not criminals. Poverty does not cause crime.
No, poverty alone doesn't cause crime, but extreme poverty and the desire to live do. If someone's only options are "steal" and "starve", don't be surprised when they steal. Of course, you can say that's not a realistic hypothetical - there's also the "get a job" option. But that's not always an option. What if the person is too mentally ill to hold a job? Or, even more likely, they live in a third-world country where there really are no jobs available to those at the very bottom? Also, while poverty doesn't cause crime, often the same personal characteristics that cause one also cause the other.
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del_diablo
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posted May 22, 2011 09:07 PM |
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Quote:
angelito:
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You can't get rich without taking money from others. The more money you take, the more people lose theirs. So for every person who become very rich, many others become very poor. Otherwise capitalism wouldn't work.
Nonsense. You can get rich from mutually beneficial voluntary exchange. If wealth was zero-sum, we'd still be living in caves.
Then, if everybody had the same amount of money as everyone else in USA, what would everyone have then? [total number of dollars divided on number of US people]
Every single dollar a person has more than somebody else has to come from somewhere, and mutual exchange got nothing to do with it.
The thing is, it would not surprise me if the "cost of living decent" is 1/5000 of what the arveage dollar each person in theory could hold is.
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mvassilev
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posted May 22, 2011 11:10 PM |
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US GDP per capita is $47,284. source.
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Every single dollar a person has more than somebody else has to come from somewhere, and mutual exchange got nothing to do with it.
There are only three ways to get money - theft (including theft by the government), charity, and voluntary exchange. With voluntary exchange, you exchange money with someone if you value their goods/services more highly than you value your money, and if they value your money more highly than they value their goods/services. As a result, both participants are better off.
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
Knowledge Reaper
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posted May 23, 2011 02:02 AM |
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@ Duke Falcon
Nukes...
Its about damn time to use em.
Heck,they would not even affect the population there since there is nobody to check for radiation levels... Like they do with the junk dumpig in Africa.
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angelito
Honorable
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proud father of a princess
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posted May 23, 2011 11:06 AM |
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Mvass, you're a typical example for someone who lives just in a theoretically world.
If live would be so easy like you describe it, we wouldn't have so big problems regarding poverty and crime.
Exchange of money with services/goods is exactly how in THEORY stuff works. But in real life, not everyone is possible to either produce goods (no money) or to offer services (handicap? no money for studying?...).
The problem is, you can work 23 hours a day in a rice field and "produce" rice. This won't help you a dime as long as 100 broker in Wall Street gamble with rice prices. So if those guys with black suits determine the price of the rice, you as a rice farmer can do NOTHING but become more poor and poor every year.
And this counts for more than just rice....
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DagothGares
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No gods or kings
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posted May 23, 2011 11:11 AM |
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Well, if the transaction is not beneficial for both parties, then you can just... Not do the transaction.
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JoonasTo
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What if Elvin was female?
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posted May 23, 2011 11:24 AM |
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And happily enjoy the whole harvest of sugarcane rotting in your hands! 
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del_diablo
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posted May 23, 2011 04:25 PM |
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US GDP per capita is $47,284. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita]source[/ur].
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Every single dollar a person has more than somebody else has to come from somewhere, and mutual exchange got nothing to do with it.
There are only three ways to get money - theft (including theft by the government), charity, and voluntary exchange. With voluntary exchange, you exchange money with someone if you value their goods/services more highly than you value your money, and if they value your money more highly than they value their goods/services. As a result, both participants are better off.
Then answer me this: Why does not every single US citizen have $47.000 each?
Because as you claim: Mutual exchange 
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mvassilev
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posted May 23, 2011 05:07 PM |
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angelito and del_diablo:
No, of course not everyone is equally productive. The more productive produce stuff that is in higher demand and thus become wealthier. There's no reason why everyone would have an equal amount of money when what they do isn't equally valuable. As for your brokers, Angelito, guess what determines the price of rice - ultimately, you and other rice farmers.
Also, angelito, little of what you said contradicts what I said. I said, there are only three ways to get money. Those are the three ways.
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Corribus
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posted May 23, 2011 05:33 PM |
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As for your brokers, Angelito, guess what determines the price of rice - ultimately, you and other rice farmers.
Other rice farmers ultimately determine whether rice is produced, but they have no say on whether rice gets to consumers because for the most part they do not sell directly to consumers. A whole host of other people in the supply chain can easily artificially inflate the price of rice by controlling how much gets to supermarkets. Look at the diamond trade! Besides which, growers can only really exercise power over the markets when they act as a monolith, which usually isn't the case with farmers because food production is so globalized.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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mvassilev
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posted May 23, 2011 05:36 PM |
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But the farmers do sell to someone at the agreed price - and, assuming they sell, they derive a benefit from it.
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Corribus
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posted May 23, 2011 05:49 PM |
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But the farmers do sell to someone at the agreed price - and, assuming they sell, they derive a benefit from it.
Right, they sell at an agreed price (because it's not compulsory to sell) - but not at a price they necessarily control. In some cases they may be at the mercy of whatever their buyer says is the price. They technically have a "choice" not to sell, but if they don't sell, then they're stuck with a lot of worthless rice, and they have no means of income, so really they have no choice at all. They must sell, and they must take whatever price the buyer is offering. (Remember, foods are also perishable, which means that value drops very quickly - so farmers don't have the luxury of shopping around for another buyer. Especially because there are a very few number of buyers.)
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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mvassilev
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posted May 23, 2011 06:00 PM |
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Yes, but that's not the point I'm making. First, the price of rice is determined by supply and demand. As the farmers control supply, they determine the price. Second, angelito claimed that rice farmers get poorer and poorer every year, which is untrue, because they can find a different buyer next year.
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Corribus
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posted May 23, 2011 06:44 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 18:47, 23 May 2011.
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Well Angelito is right about one thing - you're entirely too theoretical. This MAY be how it's supposed to work in theory but it certainly does not take into account the reality of today's food industry.
Besides which, price is based on supply AND demand. At best price is determined via a bidding/negotiation between farmers and food manufacturers, and typically the farmers are in a poor negotation position because they are dealing primarily with large multinational corporations and because their product won't last forever. Many farmers these days hardly even have a say over WHAT THEY GROW, let alone how much it sells for. Individual farmers must compete with megafarms and they must sell for prices set by these megafarms. Moreover since most seed grown these days is proprietary property (think Monsanto), farmers are also at the mercy of how much they are allowed to grow and for how long - so they don't even really control the supply. Companies that own the seed - the very genetic information in the seed - control every aspect of what farmers do, and probably to a large extent what the going price is. Add in a whole other host of factors that go into food prices - government subsidies, dieting fads, gas prices, public perceptions, political climate, weather, etc., - and which the farmers cannot control at all, and it's pretty easy to see that the rice farmer has very little to say over the price of his goods, even if they supposedly control the supply (which they don't, not really). Moreover, most agricultural food produces these days are "component goods", by which I mean that only a small percentage of end-consumers actually buy plain rice or plain wheat or plain corn. Most foods are purchased by processing facilities where they get combined with other foods to make the things that consumers buy - thus the price of one agricultural product is really heavilty influenced also by the supply and demand of other agricultural goods. In the end, the rice farmer pretty much has to sell his rice at whatever price the megacorporation says it is willing to pay - and since there are only a tiny handful of buyers, it's not so easy to just find a different buyer the next year. A banana farmer, for instance, has like what - two options? Dole and Chiquita? When there are only a small handful of buyers and thousands upon thousands of sellers - who do you think really controls the prices? Much easier for a food multinational to find another seller than for a farmer to find another buyer.
Really, mvass, I get where you're going but I think you'll have to recognize that it's hard to explain all the workings of an industry as complex as the modern food industry with what you learn in econ 101. Yeah, rice farmers might have had a bigger say over setting their price at a local market in the middle ages, back before the days of corporations, genetic engineering, patent law and a globalized economy - back when things were simple, in other words, when simple theories could be used to explain simple, isolated systems. But these days industries are anything but simple and while basic economic theories may be useful to explain general observations or make general predictions, they pretty much fail to incorporate all the complexities that exist and explain every little bit of what is going on. I mean - it's a little bit like trying to use basic chemistry theories to explain how a biological cell works. It's really too complex, too many reactions going on that depend on each other, and you can speak of generalities only, with an understanding that for every rule there are billions of exceptions. Theories are only useful if they are contextualized by the realities of the system to which they're being applied. Narrowly applying a simple theory to a complex system will irrevocably lead to a failure.
Wait, what does rice farming have to do with Somali pirates again?
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mvassilev
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posted May 23, 2011 07:29 PM |
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However, the farmers do control whether they buy from Monsanto, and these genetic companies don't control what the price is - they just offer the seeds, and the farms buy them if they think they're a good deal. It's true that there are many factors that control prices (including government price floors, subsidies, and import restrictions), and that there is an oligopoly when it comes to buyers, but even so, if there is competition and the goods are homogeneous (and rice probably is), the price will reach an equilibrium determined by the market forces of supply and demand - and farms and farmers do control supply. If they want to produce less (because of a change in preferences or weather conditions), they will, and there's little the buyers can do about that (unless the farmers signed a multi-year contract). An individual farmer doesn't have much market power, but farms are one half of what determines what the price will be. And none of this invalidates mutually beneficial voluntary exchange. If the farmers think the money is worth more than the rice, they'll exchange, and both be made better off by the transaction. It's not just theoretical, but also very much descriptive of how the real world works.
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Wait, what does rice farming have to do with Somali pirates again?
Poverty and crime, and angelito making the zero-sum wealth fallacy.
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Corribus
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posted May 23, 2011 07:56 PM |
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You're missing the point.
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del_diablo
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posted May 23, 2011 10:41 PM |
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Mvass is making a few fallancies.
First of he thinks certain end of the marked can not block farmers or impose embargo.
Secondly he thinks trade is equal exchange.
Third, he completely forgets game theory.
1. There is being more food produced than what is required, and farmer is extremely decentralized. However, to sell food, you need to find a vendor willing to purchase.
A vendor will not buy it locally, and in most cases he can't even do that legally. And that is 1 nail in the coffin.
A megacorporation or a large corporation got the advantage of having a large enough area to compete in, to the point where a block from their side is a effective death judment to roughly anything.
And if you get enough farmers together to start hoarding food, they can effectivly blackmail an entire society, but luckly todays tradechains has but a stop to that.... for the most. It can still happen, if a large natural disaster severs a tradechain, and that is so rare and easy to get around it is no longer a issue.
So it is a weird issue both ways.
2. Trade is under no circumstances "equal exchange", if I pay for something and that thing loses value due circumstances I have still lost money. And in order for someone to gain money somewhere, someone has to lose money.
We are of course lucky that the amount you need to live is a bit above 2.5x times what each individual could have, but that does not change the grim realities.
In order to me to gain 1 million of a currency, I have to acquire that, and that means perhaps that 1 million people has 1 less of that currency.
However, there is a fallacy here: The word "zero sum system" does not imply the system is so large that any effect is not noticeable, even if everything changes places. 1 dollar is not money, and thus losing 1 dollar is not even noticeable. Even a 100 dollars would not be noticeable for me, and 1 million other people.
350*10^9 people, and 47*10^6 amount of money, and you only need somewhere around 20*10^6 to life nice enough.
That means we have 27*10^6 times 350*10^9 in roughly free allocation.
Which is 9.45x10^18. Roughly 10 quintillion that can be freely moved around without anybody noticing it.
Lets say I acquire 10.000 as a surplus, how can I lose it?
Either I get more, but that means that someone out there is losing 1-2 dollars each, or I lose that, and that means it is spread over quite the bit of area.
Money IS a zero sum game.
(nevermind the entire money is perceived value of perceived value against perceived cost, which is no longer valid in any fiat system)
IF money where equal exchange, everyone would have roughly $47*10^6 EACH. They do not, and hence money is unequal exchange, it is just that you lose 1-2 dollars over a long period of time, and thus creating the illusion that it is equal trade.
3. Game theory is important in regard to both former mentioned points.
You will under no circumstances agree to a deal you think you will lose anything on(be it short term or long term).
However, if you have enough marked power, you can and will attempt to blackmail or undercut every single person you are involved with. This is how we work as humans, it is just that we are culturally taught that we are suppose to deny this fine triviality.
If you have large enough power, it means that you get the idea that you are less accountable(be it more scapegoats, more paperwork to hide behind or something else), and you will attempt to earn 1 dollar more than you lose on each transaction.
And we do not aim to earn 47.000 each year, we aim at somewhere above 20.000, which means we ignorantly undercut ourselves because we do not know what we are suppose to aim at.
Never mind that we as consumers are not willing to pay for anything, unless we have to. That means that we either will instantly outsource any food production to a cheaper place, even if it will cause us harm(that harm is something a normal person do not perceive).
And then lets get back to a mega corp: A megacorp has a really large chain setup, to handle transportation of good, and to earn profit of that. If a farmer demands reasonable price, the megacorp can just say no, because there are more food than what is needed. If a area demands reasonable wage, the megacorp can just lock them out, and let them have their fun at eating their own food and be unable to pay for anything else.
A mega corporation is under no circumstances accountable under free marked mechanisms, because it is too large.
A sufficiently large corporation will also border the same area, except they may not be able to afford the farmers doing a proper lockout.
And then lets back to the price of rice:
If I demand the rice to cost X, or else I will do a trade embargo on a area, I will get the rice to that cost.
I can setup stores in that area to reacquire every single dime I spend, and even reacquire every single dime I spent to reacquire too!
I can acquire large parts of the seed production too, and hence create a monopoly and hence control prices.
If the tech is there, I can also create a full trade embargo via GMO seeds, IF they produce a large enough volume for me to need a less area of farmers to get the food quota I need.
tlr
1. The farmers in the world is producing more food than needed
2. Mega corporation is under no circumstances realistically accountable on short hand
3. Meaning that any sufficiently large corporation can create a lockout, meaning in reality they control prices
4. Any sufficiantly large corporation will undercut the farmers given the chance. 3rd world farmers are actually kept afloat by the minimum living wage needed by a farmer + logistic costs to that area.
The same applies in any line of work, providing there is a entry barrier to the marked. Even growing bananas have a marked entry barrier due transportation and volume.
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mvassilev
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posted May 24, 2011 12:21 AM |
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A megacorporation or a large corporation got the advantage of having a large enough area to compete in, to the point where a block from their side is a effective death judment to roughly anything.
However, they want to make money - which will not happen if they embargo. Even more dangerously (for the company), it invites competitors to come in and steal their market share.
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Trade is under no circumstances "equal exchange", if I pay for something and that thing loses value due circumstances I have still lost money. And in order for someone to gain money somewhere, someone has to lose money.
None of this (and the following paragraphs) is relevant, and some of it is incomprehensible. Mutually beneficial voluntary exchange occurs when both parties value the other party's goods more than their own. If they trade, both are made better off. That is the key point. If you pay someone for something, it means you value what you bought more highly than what you paid for it. The opposite is true for the seller. I don't see why you're bringing money into this when we're talking about value. If you don't like money, replace it with "tables, cows, and refrigerators". None of what I said implies that everyone would have the same amount of money.
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If a area demands reasonable wage, the megacorp can just lock them out, and let them have their fun at eating their own food and be unable to pay for anything else.
Perhaps, but that has nothing to do with my main point.
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del_diablo
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posted May 24, 2011 12:38 PM |
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Mvass: You just deliberatly ignored what I defined a mega corporation as. Congratulations on losing the debate on that fine point.
Lets say I know something you do not know, and I trade with you taking advantage of that information. I have just made someone lose potential money, and I have have undercut them.
Problems mvass?
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Elodin
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Free Thinker
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posted May 24, 2011 03:15 PM |
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Quote:
Then answer me this: Why does not every single US citizen have $47.000 each?
Because as you claim: Mutual exchange
1) Not everyone is equally productive.
2) Not everyone spends their money and time equally wisely.
3) Not everyone has the same values. Some people give away much of what they make, others hoard everything they can.
4) Life does not deal everyone the same hand. One person may never have their car break down and never get sick. Another may have severe health problems and a car that constantly breaks down even though well maintained.
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