9 Responses to “Ok quick quiz…”

1. snaars Says:
   February 21st, 2005 at 4:44 pm

   Interesting game. What would I get if I shot the other contestants? Would I still get a refrigerator for being the last one standing? Given your cynical outlook I take it you have no interest in immortality.

2. arglor Says:
   February 21st, 2005 at 5:53 pm

   I’m not cynical.. i’m just thinking that the majority of individuals who succeed in their dreams in today’s world number in the low thousands if even that high. My argument? Capitalism wouldn’t work if everyone succeeded in their dreams. Since Capitalism seems to be succeeding, i take it that there are a great deal of people with broken/changed dreams. (this is all based on the pyramid structure of capitalism, Assuming the people at the top actually succeed in meeting their dreams, you can assume as you go down the pyramid the amount of people who have met their dreams begin to dwindle. This is working off of a major assumption of course, which is that everyone dreams of moving up in the pyramid structure. Think about third world countries? We build our capitalist structure’s on their backs. Their dreams are the ones we crush.) As soon as you succeed what would motivate you to continue production? (argument #2) Our society seems to be very motivated, so there doesn’t appear to be a lack of motivation for production. Ergo Capitalism must be successful right? Ok enough arguments by the fly… I have no clue whether or not people meet their dreams or not, i would hope they would meet their dreams…

3. snaars Says:
   February 21st, 2005 at 6:39 pm

   Every society has a pyramidal structure, not just capitalism. If everyone’s hopes and dreams are all tied up with money, then you are correct about most people being set up for failure. The kind of corruption and exploitation we see today can happen in non-capitalist systems. The problem with our society as I see it is not capitalism in and of itself. It is the fact that we equate success with money and power, to the extent that morals are pushed aside. I could be wrong but I think that in principle the two things – capitalism and our culture’s view of success – are separable. We could have all the benefits of a capitalist system in terms of building wealth without the negatives side of exploitation. It would entail compromises on the part of those at the top of the pyramid [i:777dc90440]and[/i:777dc90440] from the consumers however.

4. arglor Says:
   February 21st, 2005 at 8:02 pm

   how can you build wealth without another losing wealth? arn’t those two ideas contrary? unless your redefining wealth as something other then money.. as for the other parts i will just say this… as i wrote that whole argument i knew it was a horrible argument… that is why my last statement pointed that out.. your right i’m assuming dreams equate success in monetary ventures which is a horribl definition of success, but i think i could successfully argue that in our current society you would have to extricate yourself before making such a redefinition… for instance you have to pay rent + food + electricty for begining. -=Will finish this later class is begining..=-

5. snaars Says:
   February 21st, 2005 at 10:09 pm

   It’s not the case that in order for one person to gain wealth, someone else has to lose it. It’s not like each person is born with a quantity of wealth to use over their lifetime, and they either obtain extra wealth or lose the wealth they have. That’s not it at all. Forgive me if I get some of my terminology wrong, because it’s been a while since I read any economic theory. But our currency basically represents labor. Wealth is what is created by combining labor with natural resources. For instance, say I own a cherry tree. The cherries are free for me because I own the tree. I pick the cherries. I sell them to you. I ask for money in exchange – not for the cherries which were free but for the time and energy I put into picking them. (In the real world the cherries probably are not free because I would have to fertilize and tend the tree, but you get the idea.) Therefore, two ways to increase wealth are to do more labor and reap the rewards, or to labor more efficiently such that more work is done with less time and energy. Exploitation does not really increase overall wealth, it just transfers wealth away from those that deserve it. Reading over what I just wrote … another way to increase wealth would be to create more natural resources or use them more efficiently. Agriculture is a good example. In theory, if we could create cheap and durable robots that could do all the work of human beings, every human on the planet could be deliriously wealthy without having to work. (But if you’ve seen the movie ‘I, Robot’ you can see one way this could backfire.)

6. mayfly Says:
   February 22nd, 2005 at 6:33 am

   [quote:a80d709f1e]It’s not the case that in order for one person to gain wealth, someone else has to lose it. It’s not like each person is born with a quantity of wealth to use over their lifetime, and they either obtain extra wealth or lose the wealth they have. That’s not it at all. [/quote:a80d709f1e] You are, of course, absolutely correct that it isn’t the case that each person is born with a quantity of wealth to use over their lifetime. However, just because that isn?t the case doesn?t mean that one person can gain wealth without another losing it. America only makes a limited amount of currency. Even counterfeiting doesn’t create wealth because it devalues the currency we have. And even if you redefine wealth to be something other than money, there is still a limited supply of resources available for trading hands on this planet. [quote:a80d709f1e] But our currency basically represents labor. Wealth is what is created by combining labor with natural resources. For instance, say I own a cherry tree. The cherries are free for me because I own the tree. I pick the cherries. I sell them to you. I ask for money in exchange – not for the cherries which were free but for the time and energy I put into picking them. (In the real world the cherries probably are not free because I would have to fertilize and tend the tree, but you get the idea.)[/quote:a80d709f1e] I think there is a real problem in the fact that the cherries are not really free. And I don’t think currency represents labor. Rather, I think, it is tied to resources. The dollar may no longer be backed by gold, but the planet still has a limited amount of nonrenewable resources, and most of the economy runs off of those. Labor is only valuable when it discovers new nonrenewable resources (oil mining), creates products from those resources (manufacturing), or falls somewhere after manufacturing on the supply chain to sell an already-created product for more than it cost to manufacture, distribute, store, and market (distribution, sales, etc.) I don?t think this argument necessarily holds for renewable resources. Getting rich off of renewable resources might, I think, be equivalent to creating your own wealth (more on that in a sec). However, if you make thingabops out of nonrenewables, even if you work really hard making your millions selling thingabops, every penny you make is a penny someone else can?t have. If it took non-renewable resources to make your thingabops, and nonrenewable resources to distribute, store, and market them, then those were all resources other people will never be able to use to make money themselves. Of course, all the people you hire to create, distribute, store, and market thingabops will get rich off of your thingabops too, but the question is how rich, and isn?t it true that in order to pay your employees more, you will have to decrease your profits as king of the thingabop empire? This, I think, is why the dollar goes down when our export to import ratio decreases. Because America is losing net resources, and as such our currency is becoming less valuable. The only exception to this is like you said: when the wealth is gained by the creation or [b:a80d709f1e]discovery[/b:a80d709f1e] of [b:a80d709f1e]new[/b:a80d709f1e] products/resources. You actually create wealth if you get rich discovering or creating new resources (e.g., mining gold, inventing totally solar-powered cars made from recycled metal, etc.). But… other than that, labor does not create resources, and all other wealth gained is basically wealth lost by another. Right? Hmmm? What about what I do for a living? I’m a writer. Not that I think this is terribly likely, but hypothetically speaking, if I got filthy rich, would I be stealing wealth or creating it? By the above logic, I would be creating it. However, I am also in competition with similar writers to fulfill what may be a limited amount of demand. Unless I can argue that I have [b:a80d709f1e]created[/b:a80d709f1e] my own market, every penny I earn off of my work is a penny that cannot be earned by my competition. So, even if you create the product out of thin air, you’re still taking wealth from someone else… right? Unless you can [b:a80d709f1e]create[/b:a80d709f1e] both supply and demand, every penny you earn is a penny that can?t be earned by another. And if anything you make over and above what you need to survive is, in effect, taken from someone else, the question we should all be asking, ethically speaking, is: do I really need this extra penny? Does that make sense? I used to be on your side actually, but D- and I argued about this a lot when we first started dating and he won me over.

7. snaars Says:
   February 22nd, 2005 at 3:27 pm

   Hi S_D_P. Good post. Most of what you write makes sense to me and I am trying to figure out exactly wherein the disagreement lies. The question is whether one person’s earning wealth entails that someone else loses wealth. I did not say that currency is equivalent to wealth. I avoided the subject of inflation to prevent its clouding the core issue, which is where wealth comes from. My thesis is that wealth is what happens when natural resources are worked by labor. So, I completely agree with you that natural resources are tied up with it. If the resources are gone, so is the wealth. I don’t quite get why you place importance on the cherries not being free. As the owner of the tree, I factor in the cost of materials and labor spent, both directly and indirectly, and set a price on the cherries accordingly. Likewise, if I own some oil property the oil is not really free – because of the labor needed to draw it from the ground. Think of it this way. The air we breathe is a prescious resource – but we don’t have to pay for it because there is no labor associated with getting it. If someone had to work it or process it beforehand, they would expect payment for their time and energy spent. You make a very good point about non-renewable resources. Once they are gone, that’s it. No more wealth being produced. Should we leave it in the ground then? [quote:53b02740ed]isn?t it true that in order to pay your employees more, you will have to decrease your profits as king of the thingabop empire?[/quote:53b02740ed] That’s one good way, and that’s what I had in mind when I mentioned compromises in my second post in this thread. Some other ways are the ones I listed in my post previous to this one – those are healthy ways that wealth is created. Capitalism works by giving producers incentive to create wealth, by allowing them to keep some of the wealth they create. Any system that doesn’t offer these kinds of incentives are likely to suffer from inefficiency. It’s human nature – if we’re not rewarded, we won’t perform. I agree that some people are ridiculously and undeservedly wealthy. And certainly it is a problem that a few people get rich while ignoring important consequnces of production, like the health and well-being of the environment, the society, and their employees. In my mind, what it boils down to is this: No matter what economic system you have – capitalism, communism, socialism, whatever – someone is going to control the resources. Safeguards should be put in place to protect the people and the environment.

8. arglor Says:
   February 22nd, 2005 at 7:49 pm

   You are all wrong and right simultaneously i believe. I actually came up with the strict reason of disagreement, the definition of wealth. Where i might look at wealth as co-relating with monetary value, Michael argues that Wealth is actually just an excess of product produced. He is literally correct, but i believe in common parlance (using an appeal to populace) we are correct. And what is language? honestly? Come on… it is simply a the medium of information we use to translate ideas to each other. So what is Value now? Wealth is the accumulation of items that have value. But money is extrinsically valuable so there has to be regulation systems in place to make sure the value doesn’t drop to low or raise to high. Value theory. I argue that if Joe creates an excess of logs by working with Jim the amount of their product might grow but the wealth inherent in each individual product will decrease. The more numerous the items the less valuable they are. I am of course appealing to supply and demand. –BTW Joe is a excellent chopper and Jim is an excellent stacker and so when they are both doing the jobs they are best at, the amount of logs produced and stacked raises. Michael would say their wealth also grows.– So value diminishes as products grow in number is my major thesis at this point. How does this translate into wealth? not sure yet. I want to say overall wealth remains because i want to argue that overall wealth can’t change at all. I guess i look at wealth similarly as to language. Overall language might alter but the language doesn’t grow, it just gets more specific. An objection to my argument on the fly. We called everything outside of the earth the heavens, but we didn’t know about jupiter. Now we know about jupiter. Did the phrase heavens really have the understanding of jupiter built within? If So, then the language didn’t grow it just got more specific. If not, the language did in fact grow numerically speaking. Why? Because we have a new work that wasn’t in the language to begin with, i.e. jupiter. damnit again… i run out of steam… i will work on this later..

9. snaars Says:
   February 22nd, 2005 at 9:50 pm

   Da-, er, Arglor is correct, I think, if he is saying that our disagreement has to do with our differing concepts of wealth. After our conversation over lunch this afternoon I would like to put in a few more words of clarification to see if that helps. I do not want to equate wealth with money, because as has been pointed out money fluctuates in value. Money is certainly correlated with wealth, but they are not the same thing (according to my thesis). We live in the wealthiest society the planet has yet seen. Nevertheless, being college students and/or teachers we are poorer, comparatively speaking, than some of our neighbors. We are poor because we have less money than them. Nevertheless we are very wealthy in comparison to some of the poor in other nations, because we have access to a lot of goods and services that they lack, such as clean water, sewage, roads, modern electronics, new cars, etc., etc. We also get those goods and services cheaply. In Arglor’s Joe and Jim example, Joe and Jim produce more together than they would working alone, and so yes they do create more wealth. When the price of the product comes down, it is because Joe and Jim are already making enough money. They can sell the excess cheaply. Joe and Jim are happy because they get extra money, and the community is more wealthy because everyone pays less for the logs and more people have access to good lumber. Everyone wins. No one loses. Non-renewable resources are different only in that they will run out. They would run out anyway, whether they were used in a capitalist system or not.