Kapitalizam 101

Gargantua wrote:
Meni je tu najzanimljivije pitanje da li bi računari mogli da reše pitanje ponude/potražnje, kreativno, bez privatnog upravljanja kapitalom ili sa nekim demokratskim principima odlučivanja u privredi.

"Over the last 40 or 50 years, we've portrayed work differently and we reward some forms of education far more passionately than others," says Mike Rowe, host of Somebody's Gotta Do It and Dirty Jobs. After working blue-collar jobs across the country for his show, Rowe started a foundation, mikeroweWORKS, to address the image problem.

"Higher education is in one column and everything else is called alternative. And those kinds of pursuits are reserved for people who are somehow deficient or somehow not cut out for the desirable path."

Rowe worries there are too many young people going to four-year colleges, racking up huge amounts of debt and ultimately ending up unemployed, when they could've taken a less-expensive path and ended up with a good-paying job.

Rowe also points out that language matters.

"What's aspirational about 'middle skill'?" says Rowe. "It's going to take a generation to get people to really challenge the stereotypes that come along with skilled-labor type jobs."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/30/job-economy-middle-skill-growth-wage-blue-collar/14797413/

The conflict between labor and capital has shifted in capital’s favor. But there are some ways labor could fight back.

by Ryan Avent June 27, 2018

...

The AIs that promise to displace millions of workers are just clever aggregations of countless human actions and communications. Across most of the workforce, capital is learning from labor in order to mimic labor and, eventually, replace labor—all without compensating labor for its enabling role in this process.

Having lost their leverage in the workplace, workers might instead use the ballot box to secure more of the capitalists’ wealth, whether through tax reforms that give fewer breaks to owners and shareholders, and make it cheaper to invest in people, or in the more radical form of a basic income or government--provided make-work. But while such strategies might save people from poverty, it would not recognize workers’ earned right to the economy’s bounty—only the state’s responsibility to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves.

In a new book, Radical Markets, Eric Posner and Glen Weyl describe a very different way to give people control of, and a right to the value of, their contribution to capital. The proposal: treat the data we generate while talking to Alexa or liking things on Facebook as the output of a job of sorts, for which the big tech companies ought to pay us a wage. In other words, treat the data these firms amass as labor, not capital.

In such a world we might, on liking a friend’s photo, be asked by the social network of our choice to provide some contextual data in exchange for payment. Getting paid for our data, Posner and Weyl suggest, could mitigate the harm of mass unemployment, recognize what people contribute to production even if they don’t work at a company, and perhaps give the economy a productivity boost too, since companies would find it easier to obtain high-quality data. Perhaps, they say, the data generators of the world could unite and form a data union, the better to negotiate with big tech companies on fair terms.

But this might all prove too clunky or difficult to organize. Do we really want to spend our days providing metadata to big companies in exchange for micropayments? And would those payments be enough?

Instead, society might settle on a different, collective approach. Data itself could be considered a public resource. The companies that gather data might be required to provide open access to anonymized versions of it (perhaps after the expiration of a short “data patent,” which would reward the company that took the trouble to collect it with a brief period of exclusive use). In exchange for the right to access the data, firms could pay the government an annual royalty, which it might distribute across the population.

Or the government might begin taking ownership in firms itself. Giant sovereign wealth funds might buy shares on behalf of the data-generating public. Dividend payments would enrich the fund, which could in turn pay dividends to the public: the just reward for their contribution to production.

...

Napoleon said something interesting: that to understand a person, you must understand what the world looked like when he was twenty. I think there’s a lot in that. When I was twenty, it was 1982, right in the middle of the Cold War and the Thatcher/Reagan years. Interest rates were well into double digits, inflation was over 8 per cent, there were three million unemployed, and we thought the world might end in nuclear holocaust at any moment. At the same time, the underlying premise of capitalism was that it was morally superior to the alternatives. Mrs Thatcher was a philosophical conservative for whom the ideas of Hayek and Friedman were paramount: capitalism was practically superior to the alternatives, but that was intimately tied to the fact that it was morally better. It’s a claim that ultimately goes back to Adam Smith in the third book of The Wealth of Nations. In one sense it is the climactic claim of his whole argument: ‘Commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them, the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours and of servile dependency on their superiors. This, though that has been the least observed, is by far the most important of all their effects.’ So according to the godfather of economics, ‘by far the most important of all the effects’ of commerce is its benign impact on wider society.
I know that the plural of anecdote is not data, but I feel that there has been a shift here. In recent decades, elites seem to have moved from defending capitalism on moral grounds to defending it on the grounds of realism. They say: this is just the way the world works. This is the reality of modern markets. We have to have a competitive economy. We are competing with China, we are competing with India, we have hungry rivals and we have to be realistic about how hard we have to work, how well we can pay ourselves, how lavish we can afford our welfare states to be, and face facts about what’s going to happen to the jobs that are currently done by a local workforce but could be outsourced to a cheaper international one. These are not moral justifications. The ethical defence of capitalism is an important thing to have inadvertently conceded. The moral basis of a society, its sense of its own ethical identity, can’t just be: ‘This is the way the world is, deal with it.’
I notice, talking to younger people, people who hit that Napoleonic moment of turning twenty since the crisis, that the idea of capitalism being thought of as morally superior elicits something between an eye roll and a hollow laugh. Their view of capitalism has been formed by austerity, increasing inequality, the impunity and imperviousness of finance and big technology companies, and the widespread spectacle of increasing corporate profits and a rocketing stock market combined with declining real pay and a huge growth in the new phenomenon of in-work poverty. That last is very important. For decades, the basic promise was that if you didn’t work the state would support you, but you would be poor. If you worked, you wouldn’t be. That’s no longer true: most people on benefits are in work too, it’s just that the work doesn’t pay enough to live on. That’s a fundamental breach of what used to be the social contract. So is the fact that the living standards of young people are likely not to be as high as they are for their parents. That idea stings just as much for parents as it does for their children.

Prihodi čuvenog “jednog procenta” na vrhu (tzv. stotog percentila) počinju već od 914 evra, što i pored toga što su za većinu građana Srbije nezamisliva primanja, nisu nikakve vrtoglavo visoke cifre. Ovaj prihod je zapravo ono što bi svakom stanovniku i stanovnici Srbije bilo potrebno za dostojanstven život, kako bi mogli sebi da priušte ono što je pre tridesetak godina bilo uobičajeno makar u urbanim sredinama u SFRJ – da ne brinu o tome čime će kupiti hranu i platiti stan, da mogu da otputuju na odmor, da se leče, školuju decu, zamene pokvareni frižider (ili danas računar) bez uzimanja kredita koji će godinama otplaćivati uz stezanje kaiša. Dostojanstven život je trenutno privilegija 1-3 procenta stanovništva Srbije.

https://twitter.com/atroyn/status/1014974099930714115

Anton Troynikov‏ @atroyn

Things that happen in Silicon Valley and also the Soviet Union:

- waiting years to receive a car you ordered, to find that it's of poor workmanship and quality
- promises of colonizing the solar system while you toil in drudgery day in, day out

- living five adults to a two room apartment
- being told you are constructing utopia while the system crumbles around you

- 'totally not illegal taxi' taxis by private citizens moonlighting to make ends meet
- everything slaved to the needs of the military-industrial complex

- mandatory workplace political education
- productivity largely falsified to satisfy appearance of sponsoring elites

- deviation from mainstream narrative carries heavy social and political consequences
- networked computers exist but they're really bad

- Henry Kissinger visits sometimes for some reason

- elite power struggles result in massive collateral damage, sometimes purges
- failures are bizarrely upheld as triumphs

- otherwise extremely intelligent people just turning the crank because it's the only way to get ahead

- the plight of the working class is discussed mainly by people who do no work

- the United States as a whole is depicted as evil by default

- the currency most people are talking about is fake and worthless

One myth that needs to die though is that Capitalism is somehow a system predicated on rewarding labor. It's not, it's a system predicated on rewarding allocation of capital.

https://www.resetera.com/posts/4058862/

Prosvetiteljski mit o tome kako je moderni sistem robne proizvodnje proizašao iz „civilizujućeg procesa“ (Norbert Elias) kao proizvod miroljubive trgovine i razvoja, buržoaske industrije, naučne radoznalosti, izuma koji su poboljšali životni standard i smelih otkrića suprotstavljenih surovoj kulturi takozvanog srednjeg veka, pokazao se istrajnim. Za nosioca svih ovih divnih stvari naimenovan je moderni „autonomni subjekt“, koji se navodno oslobodio feudalno-agrarnih stega u korist „slobode pojedinca“. Prava je šteta, stoga, što oblik proizvodnje koji se uzdigao iz ovog mnoštva čistih vrlina i progresa odlikuju masovno siromaštvo, globalna pauperizacija, svetski ratovi, krize i uništenje.

Istinski razorni i ubilački rezultati modernizacije ukazuju na poreklo drugačije od onog na koje upućuje zvanična ideološka bajka. Od kada je Maks Veber (Max Weber) ukazao na ideološku vezu između protestantizma i kapitalizma, istorija porekla modernosti je klasifikovana samo ugrubo i nimalo kritički.

Uz izvestan stepen „buržoaske lukavosti“ motivi i razvoj događaja koji su doveli do modernog sveta su uglavnom prikriveni, kako bi ružičasta zora buržoaske slobode i oslobođenja sistema robne proizvodnje osvanula u svojoj lažnoj nevinosti.

Međutim, postoji i pristup suprotan zvaničnom istorijskom narativu, pristup koji otkriva da poreklo kapitalizma u ranom modernom periodu ni na koji način nije posledica mirne ekspanizije tržišta, već pre da je po svojoj prirodi militarističko-ekonomskog karaktera. Istina je da su već u antičkom periodu postojali novac i robni odnosi, trgovinske rute i manja i veća tržišta, ali sve ovo bez mogućnosti da se ikada razvije sistem poput modernog totalitarnog monetarnog/tržišnog sistema. Kao što je to Marks primetio, uvek su postojale ekonomske „niše“ smeštene na rubovima agrarnih ekonomija. Ideja da se poreklo sistema, u kojem se novac kao „automatski subjekt“ (Marks) hrani samim sobom, ne nalazi samo u protestantskoj revoluciji, već i u pronalasku vatrenog oružja u vojskama rane modernosti, javlja se čak i u istraživanjima Maksa Vebera.

Ali Veber, kao ozloglašeni ideolog starog nemačkog imperijalizma, očigledno nije imao interesa za dalje praćenje i sistematizaciju tih misli. Već je socijalni i ekonomski istoričar Verner Zombart (Werner Sombart) eksplicitno ukazao na vojno-ekonomske korene modernosti u svom delu Rat i kapitalizam iz 1913. Ali ni on nije dalje sledio taj trag, pošto se ubrzo nakon toga priključio redovima vodećih ratnohuškača, te ga je na kraju njegov antisemitizam odveo ka pristupanju nacistima. Više od pola veka je prošlo pre nego što se ekonomista Karl Georg Cin (Zinn) (Topovi i kuga, 1989.) u Nemačkoj ponovo prihvatio istraživanja veze između geneze kapitalizma i „političke ekonomije vatrenog oružja“, kao i istoričar moderne Džefri Parker (Geoffrey Parker) (Vojna revolucija, 1990) u anglofonom svetu. Iako su ove studije sadržale optužujuće dokaze, one nisu lišene apologetskih elemenata. Ružičastoj slici modernosti, nasleđenoj od prosvetiteljstva, dozvoljeno je da nam i dalje zamućuje vid.

Dobra narav je, od svih moralnih kvaliteta, ono što svijetu najviše treba, a dobra je narav posljedica lagodnosti i sigurnosti, a ne života u grčevitoj borbi. Moderne metode proizvodnje dale su nam mogućnost za lagodnost i sigurnost za sve; mi smo, umjesto toga, odabrali da jedni previše rade, a da drugi gladuju. Dosad smo nastavljali energično kao što smo to radili i prije strojeva; u tome smo bili nerazumni, ali nema razloga da nastavimo s nerazumnošću zauvijek.

ontheotherhand wrote:Veliki prasak modernosti - Inovacija kroz vatreno oružje, ekspanzija kroz rat: pogled unazad ka poreklu apstraktnog rada

Prosvetiteljski mit o tome kako je moderni sistem robne proizvodnje proizašao iz „civilizujućeg procesa“ (Norbert Elias) kao proizvod miroljubive trgovine i razvoja, buržoaske industrije, naučne radoznalosti, izuma koji su poboljšali životni standard i smelih otkrića suprotstavljenih surovoj kulturi takozvanog srednjeg veka, pokazao se istrajnim. Za nosioca svih ovih divnih stvari naimenovan je moderni „autonomni subjekt“, koji se navodno oslobodio feudalno-agrarnih stega u korist „slobode pojedinca“. Prava je šteta, stoga, što oblik proizvodnje koji se uzdigao iz ovog mnoštva čistih vrlina i progresa odlikuju masovno siromaštvo, globalna pauperizacija, svetski ratovi, krize i uništenje.

Istinski razorni i ubilački rezultati modernizacije ukazuju na poreklo drugačije od onog na koje upućuje zvanična ideološka bajka. Od kada je Maks Veber (Max Weber) ukazao na ideološku vezu između protestantizma i kapitalizma, istorija porekla modernosti je klasifikovana samo ugrubo i nimalo kritički.
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http://kontra-punkt.info/lektira/veliki-prasak-modernosti