A lot of comments here along the lines of "why doesn't Kate start her own business?". Think about the bigger picture for a moment. How many people could sustainably run their own business in our current society? It's hardly 100% is it? Business owners need labour obviously. Whatever it is, 5%, 10%, 1%, the point is that just because say 5% of people can join the capitalist class.that doesn't mean it's all OK. Everyone else is still having their labour value stolen. And as pointed out, that 5% isn't necessarily the most able, committed or innovative people, it's very strongly affected by who has or can borrow the capital needed to start. The other point I'd like to address is "You just want something for nothing". No. The goal is a society where everyone can have their basic needs met in exchange for the minimum of work required to support the community. You can still own property. You just can't own anything that people had to work 60 hours a week in terrible conditions to produce.
Great comment, I just want to add some statistics: -The avereage US citizen has about $1,000 or less, including checking and savings -The average US citizen has about $6,000 in credit card debt -The average US citizen makes about $30,000 per year -The average US citzen lives paycheck-to-paycheck, meaning that after they pay all their monthly expenses they have no money to contribute to savings -The average cost to start a business in the US is about $30,000
Yup. These are the same morons who will insist that if they've flipped a coin tails nine times, the "universe owes" them a heads - if not explicitly they will do so implicitly.
@@ExPwner Unstated major premise: value obtains independent of conscious beings who produce. It doesn't. That's incoherent. Next... Your stance is a rationalization for parasites. Learn physics and biology... economics is a soft science entirely contingent upon those.
But this is just looking at the supply side of the economy. Can we talk about the cost of buying a bike? Does a capitalist system not allow people to start successful co-operatives? Is the problem not that the government subsidizes monopolies? Is the problem not that Greed has taken over competition? What about microfinance?
@Vote for the Conservatives Bob represents the 1%, the rich elite,, .....think about this, 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, in the richest country in the world. Like George Carlin said, "it's a BIG CLUB, and you ain't in it!"
*To those of you saying "why doesn't Kate start her own business?"* Let me explain to you that this video shows an oversimplified example, where kate knew all the process of building a bike Most of actual workers will know stuff that is only a fraction of the whole building process, so that they can't do it all by their selves and start to sell their own stuff. That's called "alienation".
Yeah. Ross Scott had a great example of that when talking about how the world would devolve into medieval age in case of a collapse. "Could you built the device you are watching this video on from scratch?"
What do you mean they can't do it all by them selves? How do you think successful people get to where they are? They worked their butt off and used their innovation to outsmart you and I. I dont know about you but instead of complaining about where I am and how I got here or where they are and how they got there, I'm gonna study successful people and try to copy what works. I'm gonna stop complaining and actually start doing something.
@@sethary9698 I'd rather have a system that empowers and provides for workers, the majority, than one that pits us all against each other in a "no guarantees" race to the bottom. Your best recommendation is to work for free for 10,000 hours to perfect your knowledge in a skill set best oriented to stealing the labor value of others, be it factory workers in a third world country or that of a laborer, business partner, etc.
@@sethary9698 more like they were born into wealth, got a lot of money and connections and opportunities from their family, signed the inheritance check. "They worked their butt off" is a right wing trope to continue the myth of meritocracy by highlighting the exception to the rule. As if rich people were more virtuous than the rest of us.
@@AnthonyChinaski I would argue that wealth and virtue are two completely separate things. I think that bad men with large wealth do large evils to society. And more vertruis men with large wealth do large services to society.
I know this comment is a year old, but someone like me might stumble along and see it. The largest issue with leadership and management now is that it's appointed instead of elected. If anyone is interested in socialism, the easiest way to steer them towards it is to talk with them about a democratic workplace and having a management and leadership elected by the employees.
@@fantsepants1747I think the difference in salary and perks is important too. Hard to defend ceos getting like even twice the salary IMO but its often like 50 times
Can you name me a society or system that doesn’t have a hierarchy? If having authority over someone creates an oppressor/ oppressed relationship. How are we then to have a functioning government/nation?
@@apastasauce5905by popular democracy under a constitution, for example if 51/100 people vote to ban non organic food then non organic food is banned unless that would go against constitutional rights or harmed someone else’s personal property, liberty, or life/health. it’s a very simple solution and if you disagree with that than your personal interests go against the majority of society ie the working class meaning you are either a capitalist/business owner or in the management class/white collar, hierarchical structures are oppressive and outdated and focus on individuals over the collective, meanwhile all collectivist ideologies from national socialism and fascism to communism have one thing in common which is; the good of the many outweighs the good of the individual. which is a true statement, socialism in particular also ensures that every registered citizen gets all of their basic life needs provided for, free of charge other than non wage taxes. as well as collective ownership of everything without a spirit by everyone as a whole through a government ran by a constitution and popular democracy ie majority vote. capitalism has also caused the preventable deaths of billions too, compared to even if the holocaust was 6 million which would be impossible literally or the 100 million under communism doesn’t even come close to capitalisms death toll, really socialism simplified is just rule by majority for the interests and well being of the majority, fascism and national socialism is exactly the same except it limits that to a certain group of people wether it be by race or religion or whatever, meanwhile capitalism is all about the individual which is basically selfishness at it’s extreme
@@apastasauce5905 Communism. He destroys the class war, by taking private property (not personal, its different) from richest people, and using this resource to make life of poverty better. Now, its not a pyramide, but a sphere, where fron any angle - you have always good life.
@@ieatlemons288 USSR ≠ Communism, USSR is a failed state from his beggining, because: any feudal country - like Russian empire - cannot reach Communism before tasting a capitalism. Its impossible to jump over 1 human era. Its sad, but its true.
I never really liked capitalism since I was always afraid of all the foreign corporations that comes to my country to basically exploit my people and my land natural sources.
I build bikes. The reasons many people buy bikes new from the shop rather than wholesale are 1. Most large brands don't sell direct. They have a mutually beneficial relationship with bike shops. A few new websites (Bikesdirect etc.) offer good variety but the stuff on Amazon is not generally very good. 2. Most customers don't know how to do it and if they did, wouldn't trust their own work. Many customers also don't have a good understanding of the market and product landscape. Recommendations are valuable. 3. Cultivating a relationship with the bike shop grants you access to their tools and supplies. In the medium run, this is worth it to avoid buying your own *means of maintenance* In cities, bike shops are very common and almost all independent. Even the big brands around here are cooperatives. It's one of the more hippie like industries in existence.
6:42 "Stealing the value of the employees' labor value." You get paid $250 a week and ride the bus to work. Your boss meanwhile makes $3,000 a week and arrives at work in his Lexus. But the real horror is you leave high school at age 18 and wander into this system with no feasible way of escaping it. Your ability to "climb the social ladder" is slim and none.
You are thinking of businesses in a very linear fashion. Successful businesses almost never run linearly, that is making profits by cutting costs and undercutting their competition. Rather successful companies increase customer service value, and increase prices. Companies that only undercut other companies always fail at some point or the other. Edit: also, no companies are not exploiting their workers ,they are paying their value. Businesses cannot cut down wages of their employees below their value, as they can better off start their own business if they do that. Why do you think software developers make more than coal miners? Because they are valued more. No not in terms of how much profits they can provide, but in terms of how much value they can provide for their customers. Just because people work harder, they don't deserve more pay, because we only require so many low skilled workers. Capitalist economies pay more for skills that are scarce regardless of how much work they put in. Your 'Capitalist' takes in more profit, because he has the skill to get customers buying from him, and pay his workers. That skill is a hard skill, and hence he can pay himself more. But in a real startups, CEO's pay themselves the least, and give everything to their business.
1:45 the labour value of new joined is not the same as Bob opened the sop where new employee joins .he invested more time to maintain the shop. and he own the shop.
This doesn't hold up. If you work at a company as an employee for a year and I work there for three years doing the same job you won't make hundreds of times more than me like many CEOs, you won't be entitled to taking a cut of my labor value like a capitalist. The "I was there first" argument only applies to the privileged, ruling class of capitalists, which is an unjust power structure.
Interesting and educating video... although not necessarily for the reasons you think. So Bob started his own bike business. He organised the supplies, made the bikes himself, then contacted with clients, all by himself. For his effort he earns 10$ per hour. Now he hires kate to make the bikes twice as fast. Kate does the bikes, while Bob still deal with the clients, provides the materials, etc, while also making the bikes himself. Bob does the same managing job he did before, but now he does this for two people and not one. Meanwhile Kate does all the biking job but none of the managing. So Bob earlier earned 5$ for the work he did on bikes and 5$ on the management, now he earns 10$ on management and 5$ on bikes. Kate only does the bike job, so she only gets 5$. Kate has a great idea on improving the work. what a great worker! put a pin on that. Bob then invests a ton of money and effort into improving his business. He creates a factory that works like a well-oiled machine, while giving a ton of jobs for a ton of workers. Bob then reaps the fruit of his labor while jet skiing. Apparently, some ealous people who don't have Bob's management skills think his efforts should not be rewarded. Then the competition comes and can makes bikes that cost half as much. Thanks to them I can now buy a bike for 50$ instead of 100$. Thanks for explaining why competition is a good thing when you're a customer. Remember what a great employee Kate was for improving the production? Bob knows this, but since he's an idiot he laid her off instead of promoting her to the R&D department. Apparently, keeping the best workers and starting the layouts for the worst ones does not improve your company, as explained by no one, ever. Poor workers now lose the jobs that Bob gave them in the first place. Now they're back at square one and are in the same position they would be if it wasn't for capitalism. That's a problem with capitalism apparenlty. Bob hires workers from China because they're cheaper. That of course says more about China than it says about capitalism, so let's move on. Thanks for telling me I'm at war with the baker lady who sells me bread. She wants to maximize profit so she wants the price as high as possible, while I want to pay as little as possible, which means we're in the class conflict. We're buddies outside of that, but how is that possible if we're at war? How do we reconcile our irreconcilable differences? I know! Maybe she just sets the price that satisfies us both? Of course if she sets the price too high, I can just go to the competition. Hey! It's a free market! Problem solved! But for some reason anti-capitalists refuse to apply this logic to job market. The same rules apply here, it's just the the product being sold here is the worker's labor. Highly skilled workers are rarer, which means they can demand higher pays and the competition on the job market means that if the employer pays too little or kicks the worker out, the worker can just find a new job. Hey! the job market is ALSO a free market! Who would've thought! So what does poor Kate do now that she's out of job thanks to Bob not recognising a good employee when he sees one? Simple, she goes to the competition. Maye even the same competition that forced Bob to cut the costs. The competition recognises her for her skills and get her into the R&D, maybe even employ the same method she used for Bob's business and now they cut down costs further, screwing over Bob, who now regrets his stupidity. Of course she has other options, she can, for example, acquire new skills to get a different job. She might've even consider it while still working for Bob. Thanks for sharing but where is the part where capitalism actually sucks?
You are only offering bandaids and not addressing the key problem, which is theft of labor value. You still seem to think that Kate owes capitalists an infinite debt because they had more money than her at the start. She helped Bob get rich, he discarded her, and your solution is for her to go get a job somewhere else - losing all the sweat equity she invested in Bob's company forever - and then get paid less than what she produces as some other capitalist steals the value of her labor. And I guess just keep doing this until every manufacturer along with R&D have all been shipped overseas because that's how imperialism (an intrinsic component of capitalism) functions. Then I guess she can be a Door Dash driver and not be able to afford the cheapest rent in town like most full time employees in the US right now? Maybe spend her weekends in line at the food bank since her children are part of the 1 in 5 kids in the USA who are food insecure? Your hypotheticals about what an individual might do when capitalism inevitably does them significant harm do not address the systemic failures and injustices of capitalism. It's really a rather pathetic response to the core issues and contradictions presented here.
@@NonCompeteyou literally chose to ignore that fact that they pointed out that Bob had to do managerial work and customer service, in addition to providing captial and an established reputation, which Kate didn’t do. Yet you’re still hung up on her earning the same as Bob.
@@will506 i didn't ignore that at all. Because he put some work in at the beginning, kate now owes him an infinite debt for as long as she works "for" him? It's an absurd notion.
@@will506 not necessarily? And workers contribution of labor (and time, intellect, etc) is also ongoing? If a company has 100 employees and 1 owner, you really think the capitalist is contributing the lion's share? If they're continuing to make THAT much or a fiscal contribution and not taking profits it's a hobby, not a business, and that's not how the vast majority of capitalist enterprise works. In most cases a corporation, once stabilized, is siphoning value from workers in the form of labor and sending it to capitalists in the form of profit. You know that. Btw, I am tired of people acting like the reputation of the business only matters for the owner. You think Enron employees didn't have the reputation of their employer (for example) follow them around and cause problems for years to come? Employees have a stake in their companies and also take risks in working for them. Silly to say otherwise. Also, the way most capitalism operates (public shareholder system) the reputation doesn't even affect the majority of owners. If I own stock in Google nobody is going to blame me if the company does something reprehensible for owning shares. Employees, on the other hand, can and do have real impacts on their lives when their boss does something shitty. See, you're just spouting idealistic talking points about the function and role of capitalists and workers that don't line up with reality. Capitalists don't metaphysically take all the risk while workers metaphysically contribute very little. That is really silly when you look at how actual capitalism functions in the real world in the vast majority of cases.
What is the best argument against supporters of capitalism that say business owners should be wealthier than the workers because they have more stake in the company and will lose more if the enterprise fails? What about those that argue that the workers can just quit a job and find a new one if they don’t like the way it’s run?
The owner's only risk, at least one who forms any type of separate legal business entity, such an LLC or corporation, is that they will become a worker if the business fails. No debt would be levied upon them concerning the business. If a worker changes jobs, the power structure and company's motives will tend to generally equivalent, so the overall experience of subjugation will be very similar.
Why does Kate not receive all of her real labor value? Because she has not put in any enterprise, a key factor of production. She has not risked any money or time on a potentially unprofitable venture. If Kate wanted to make sure she couldn't be fired she should've used some of her own money to invest in Bob's bike company, just as Bob did.
Ok? So what? You can set aside wages from everyone working to expand the business and if you make the business something like an LLC you don't really have to personally hoof a bill if you go under.
@@Fulldre Are you arguing that there's not risk in creating a business? My point is that she knew she would benefit from her work at the end of the day, no matter the fate of the business, so of course she does not benefit as largely as the business owner if the business becomes successful.
You're assuming she could "just buy her own factory" when she's having a considerable amount of her labor value expropriated. It takes *capital* to become a capitalist. Furthermore, if she did buy her own factory, she can only keep it going as long as she exploits her workers as ruthlessly or more so than Bob does, otherwise he can undercut her prices and put her out of business. As for "risk," she risks losing her livelihood every day as a worker, since Bob can fire her or lay her off at will, and *will* do so as soon as it's profitable for him to do so. She can also lose her livelihood if Bob makes bad business decisions (decisions she has no say in making) and goes out of business. She not only shares the same "risks" Bob does (if he loses his job, she loses hers too), she also faces the risk of being fired, while Bob can't be fired--he's a better class of people, you see. Of course the Free Market (profits be upon its Invisible Hand) is a god of perfect, infallible justice, so systematic injustices like racism, sexism, etc. are metaphysically impossible, right?
I would rather live in a capitalistic society, where I have a chance to get profits than a communistic society where everyone is forced to be poor. By paying Kate half of what her labour is worth is just the way the world works. She at least has the freedom to found her own business, to get the full cost of her labour. And Bob earned his lazy days in Malibu, he founded a business, worked hard and had to lead what 50 people who depends on him? It is also a really hard job to lead. I really have seen this series, and I still don't get your point to why capitalism sucks. Capitalism is freedom.
Still working on the script for part 3, it's a doozy! If you're opposed to capitalism I think the first thing to do is find other anti-capitalists and start talking to them. There are a lot of great communities on Facebook, Twitter, and Discord. You can direct message me if you'd like me to share some with you!
Capitalist: Bob deserves to be paid more because he took the risk and did the work to start the business Anti-capitalist: Kate deserves to be paid the same because she does the same work Capitalist: If she wants the same pay she should start her own business Anti-capitalist: But starting a business is hard work Capitalist: Yes, it is.
It's not "hard work," it's prohibitively expensive. I'm a former capitalist and I know this very well. Average small business startup cost is ~$30,000. Average worker makes about $30,000 per year, lives paycheck to paycheck, has less than $1,000, and $6,000 in credit card debt, not even counting medical debt, student loan debt, etc. Worker pay has stagnated since the early 70s (see Pay-Productivity Gap) and debt has skyrocketed. And the number one reason startups fail is under-capitalization. When I started my business I worked hard. When I was an employee I worked hard. When I was a freelancer I worked hard. When I was a construction subcontractor I worked hard. Hard work isn't the key to being a capitalist... It's having capital.
@@NonCompete capital that is gained by working hard. Not just in your current job, but also working hard to find opportunities to better your job/situation in life. Im not saying that it's easy, but I will say that people are under-educated in what's available to them in this country, and hardly educated at all in how to manage their money. This is a big problem I have with public schools, they fail to prepare kids to succeed in the system they'll grow up to live in.
@@irlShively "hard work", just another phrase for "slavery". Working hard means 8-16 hours a day, at awful conditions, under fear of being fired for one tiny mistake. 8-16 hours, not counting the time it takes to reach the workplace. In other words this "working hard" takes all of your time and energy, thus in the end is just another form of slavery.
Also, people are disposed to treat bikes as luxury goods. Nobody is seriously trying to undercut because cheap bikes are shitty and people who care enough to own a bike want something nice. It's also a somewhat low information environment where most people are driven by marketing hype and don't have the knowledge needed to evaluate actual performance gains. A lot of people end up spending way more money than they probably should because they either think they really benefit from 400g of weight savings or as a simple status symbol.
No one is stopping you to become better? Capitalism offers opportunity. To put it simple. If there is freedom, there isn’t equality. If there is equality, there isn’t freedom. So which do u choose. I choose the first tbh. Coz at least there is a chance.
M419 Music Ah yes, the whole, “Pull yourself up by bootstraps!” arguement... Tell me, do you think I enjoy having my hard work go for someone elses enjoyment? Wages fundamently are a form of servatude, and no matter what “job” you use you are fundamently enslaved to someone who leaches off of your hard work. “So make a business,” and, yet, I would be fallowing the same trend of wage slavery...its a fundamental disconnect between us friend...
@@HolyEweh Oh so if we make all races equal we loose freedom? Just an example. Equality (not some turbo-imagined-total-equality) is for freedom, inequality - not. As we can see in the history and behind our windows ;)
@@kyokyoniizukyo7171soon our work system will be obsolete (there will be no more work to be done and people will live on universal wages). When this day comes, kids will be taught at history classes of how todays system works. They will have a hard time to understand how people accepted such conditions, all the exploitation and how could everybody considered that to be normal.
Their work is efficient for capital but is pretty much bullshit from the standpoint of society. Capitalists waging war among each others in the marketplace is pretty much like politicians shouting at each other in the political arena, no one is really concerned by their fight, as long as we can provide for our needs.
They're the unproductive labour. They add no value, but they provide "conditions of existence". As such, most of them are specific to capitalism and do not need to exist.
@@Ronni3no2 is that so? Why don't you try to get people to work for a common cause, let's see how that goes for you. You require managers to get peoples attention and focus on a task. You have no idea how difficult it is to get just 5 strangers work for a single cause, they require to be managed and given incentive to get together to work.
Ok and the solution to this is? There is to many people, there will always be ppl left out or being paid less. It will always resort back to this system
This is particularly bad in publicly traded companies. The pressure to cut costs is particularly strong from shareholders; people who are not directly involved in the production, but have a stake in the company profits.
Great video! Only you forgot to mention that Bob and his company will probably do anything they can to avoid paying taxes. Which will only further screw over Kate and the other workers he laid off.
I have a question about Bob initially hiring Kate -- what about the labor he's put in by finding customers & developing his reputation? That's something Kate doesn't have, so you could argue she's "paying" him for access to his customer base to sell her bikes, hence her lower wages. I'm not necessarily pro-capitalism btw, just trying to understand these things better.
It depends on how abstract you want to get. If Bob really wanted to compensate himself for his prior work he could work out some kind of gradual contract where Kate slowly builds up her share in the business via sweat equity but that's not really the point, in my opinion. On a grander scale there's quite simply enough material wealth for everyone to have what we need while working way less. Even if Bob has some kind of equity built up from doing a little sales work before Kate came on board it seems like a rubbish excuse for ultimately stealing millions, even billions from workers as the company grows and restricting workplace democracy and having our entire society harnessed to the greed motivation of capitalists like him. But as a former capitalist I can say, the amount of work most capitalists do before hiring employees to take over the shit work is pretty negligent and most of their "luck" comes from having a wealthy family or something. Obviously not every capitalist ever (my family was pretty poor) but if capitalism is supposed to be a meritocracy that's clearly not what we've got going on. I recommend if you really want to consider more about this stuff you consider reading or listening to The Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin, it's free online and audible anarchist has an audio version on TH-cam
@@NonCompete Yeah, I definitely agree with your points about wealth and exploitation at large scales and over long time periods. That point just caught me because, if Kate's lower wages were compensating for something she received from Bob that was backed up by Bob's labor, then that arguably fair exchange could be extrapolated to different scales as well. But the difference, I see now, is that Bob's startup labor is finite, while the leverage it gives him over Kate can go on forever. Once they're working together, they both are contributing to the company's reputation and doing equal labor. He's getting an indefinitely increasing return on a small, fixed labor amount. Which is not fair. Thanks for responding!
> _what about the labor he's put in by finding customers & developing his reputation?_ That doesn't entitle him to Kate's labour. He is only entitled to that which Kate takes from him, say by consuming it in the production process. Kate and only Kate gets to appropriate what she creates. After she creates *her* bike, Bob is free to negotiate with her a fee for providing her with the service of "access to his customer base" if she wants it (which she might not). The bike is hers.
You know, I would have disagreed with you from the liberal capitalist side but I find you to be incredibly credible, intellectually honest, and your presentation of facts is absolutely wonderful. I think this is a really interesting argument that we should be having more often.
I do hope we can have the discussion more. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but I hope the disagreement at least comes after an honest and sober look at what we mostly take for granted in modern society! Thanks for the kind words :)
Agreed! Political philosophy is fascinating and I think your approach to it has definitely changed my mind on capitalism. From the Millennial perspective, I consider myself a social democrat and I've always been considered "far left" even though I have no idea what that term actually means since I don't condone violence or extremism. I'm tired of being taken advantage of and forced to work in a system that isn't benefiting the greater good and I think you have a really good grasp on the feelings of our generation towards capitalism and the American Empire. I'd love to know how you think an effective and humane economy would work and the outcome of that system!
Workers should receive a fraction of the profits of their company. The more successful the company, the more any worker from bottom to top will receive. Nowadays the most expensive, luxury brands are made by the poorest on earth. That's demonic.
The best way to control capitalism in my opinion is through democratic socialism. I have no problem with people making more than I do I just don't like them controlling half of the worlds wealth. If we force companies to pay workers better wages, tax the rich higher and provide more services for the public, it can stabilize society.
I was a demsoc at one point, and then I realized that there was no difference between marxism other than it's lean towards reform rather than revolution.
okay, by the 2 minute mark the argument broke down just as I anticipated. People like this always fail to identify ALL the other “labor value” performed by business owners like Bob which their employees like Kate do not perform, things like accounting, marketing, customer relations, shipping, personnel management, etc etc. All these labors and their respective values are never factored into these classical misrepresentations of “capitalism”. In reality a great number of other “labor values” are baked/rolled into what is presented here as Bob’s “assembly labor value.” Products actually ARE stored “labor value”. Bob’s labor value takes physical form, that of a bicycle. Branding (name recognition, reputation, customer base = “Bob’s Reputation”) is another stored “labor value”. Bob brings a schitt ton of stored labor value to the business table; the tools, the shop, the land, the branding, etc etc. Kate JUST brings assembly labor. Then there’s Bob’s living expenses, another factor never considered by these misrepresentations. Of Bob’s $50 assembly labor value, also called his “income”, how much is “wages” and how much is “profit”? What constitutes “profit” to the self employed sole proprietor like Bob? From his “labor value” income he’s got to feed, clothe, and house himself. But what if he wants a soccer ball too? Is that greedy? In this misrepresentation Bob gets a Jet Ski. Is that greedy? By 3:20 the most famous misrepresentation of them all occurs, Bob the evil capitalist just plays all day while everybody else runs his business. This never happens. Businesses go down the tubes. Instead business owners sell their companies when they choose not to work them anymore; sometimes to another person, sometimes another company, or… wait for it… to shareholders! There is sooooo much more wrong with this video, oh well
The origin of class divide, when the original employee whom is now the owner, is paying the workers whom do the same as he used to, he's paying them less.
For me the important thing raised is this starts at the beginning when its a small business. Its ironic that small businesses are almost sacred cows and somehow not really capitalist yet dish out the same nonsense and sometimes worse than big business
There are a couple nuances here that aren't stated, and a lot of the flip side is just as bad, but it really comes down to the fact that even those aren't bad enough to justify a lot of the choices of capitalism, if you care at all about your community. Capitalism is about competition, and the self, instead of working together and building a strong community. That's what most people do not understand when arguing the flip side of these choices.
I've read excerpts but no full texts, yet. I like his sardonic snarkiness, seems quite ahead of his time. What are your thoughts of him? Any suggestions for a first read?
As I said in the video, Kate doesn't have any money. Starting a business is very expensive. I have a whole video on this topic: th-cam.com/video/yvirpCAbGSY/w-d-xo.html
I did, I escaped to Vietnam where covid is completely contained and there have been fewer than 35 deaths and things are great! But the USA is still a threat to the rest of the world, and nobody is free until everyone is free.
So here is a little something. My mum works for an electrical company and works all day, she does 2 people’s work. Hers and her co workers, her co worker might put in a total of 2 hours of work and get paid for 10. My mum might work 15 hours and get paid for 10. It doesn’t seem fair to me but I’m young and don’t know how business works but I see her in a lot of stress and she is always mad at the smallest things. I get so sad whenever I hear the phone ringing because she has 3 phones. The car wash phone, the electrical company phone, and her phone. She always gets calls and never has time to have fun with us. + she has us 3 to look after. But my dad (my parents are divorced) helps her with child support. So as I say again I do not think it’s fair she works tirelessly for us while her co worker can slack off and still provide just for herself! And also the co worker doesn’t even pay for her fuel, she lives in her dads house rent free and didn’t have to pay for her phone until now. I am upstart that my mum has to work for this long. And also her boss uses the company’s money to but trucks for himself putting the company’s profit at an all time low. I think that’s all and I really hope things get better for her I try and help but I feel like I’m making things worse. I hope you all have a good day, night, evening or morning.
I understand this type of situation, I have been in it myself. Something to consider: the owner of the company almost certainly steals WAY MORE labor value from your mother than her coworker, and presumably benefits for providing obviously non-existent "leadership" which should prevent unfair work balance like you've described. So it seems the boss is getting rich from your mom's labor while failing to provide a democratic and fair workplace for her. Wouldn't your mother owning her own labor be a better situation?
Ignored risk in the first video, why would the 2nd be any different? Why does Bob earn more? RISK! It’s his name on the sign, his garage, his tools, his livelihood and home, etc. Why does Bob make more than Kate, despite the same amount of work? RISK! easy to say labor value is being stolen when you ignore one of the biggest dynamics.
This video covered risk pretty well actually. When Bob's profits plunged, he wasn't at any risk because he could just fire other people. The workers were at risk because it was their jobs on the line. Thanks for further proving the point that capitalism sucks.
Why should the reward for taking "risk" in creating a business be infinite? If Bob "risked" say, $10,000 to set up his one-man bike building operation, why does that entitle him to become a billionaire by giving his workers the Amazon treatment?
I like your videos as simple introductory critique of capitalism. But here are my critiques to such a simple framework of exploitation of workers. 1) Capital has multiplicative effect on labor. Allowing the same labor to produce more wealth. How is capital suppose to be paid in an economic system that transfers all production to the laborer as a wage? If a piece of capital doubles the amount stuff produced a worker, wouldn't we all (worker, consumer, owner of capital, and some small tea cup poodles) be better off to give the worker only a portion of the increased stuff than to not create the capital and he receive all of what he produces. 2) Doesn't capitalism allow for more economies of scale? Like for example 10 artisans each making bikes needs their own set of tools and work space, but a group of 10 factory workers can share space and tools. Should the resulting savings go to the person who organized the factory or be considered exploitative? They would not exist without his organizing 3) Doesn't capitalism allow for the transfer of risk? Not everyone is single young adult ready to poor 10 hours a day into making bikes and selling them. Taking the chance they will lose their home and savings in the process. Some people just want a steady income and the ability to walk away easily. Capitalism allows those that are willing to take risks on good ideas to do so, while allowing those who need stability to give up income in return for stability. Do you think that everyone should have to be a producer owner who lives at the whims of market fluctuations? 4) Doesn't capitalism promote specialization (the bedrock of all increases in productivity)? In your example 10 artisans making bikes have to be good at all parts of bike building, customer relations, and promoting their business. 10 workers can divvy up tasks. Each getting very good at their assigned task and thus producing more than if they worked as individual owner producers. Should the resulting savings go to the person who organized the factory or being exploitative? They would not exist without his organizing 5) Suppose you had a group of artisans come together to communally do everything a capitalist factory would do. Capturing all the increase in productivity resulting from investing in capital, economies of scale, communally sharing risk, and specialization for themselves. Someone is going to have devote time to coordinating their activities but not necessarily producing anything. And because of the benefits of specialization, it is likely to remain the same person for a long time. Let the best person at coordinating do the coordinating. Are his actions exploitative since he takes a portion of the value generated on the labor of others for his income? And if they are not, how is that income any different than a capitalist coordinating the actions of workers for his benefit?
So there shouldn't be a company in the first place? Who would make the products if there wasn't a (profit motivated) company? If Bob didn't make profit from other worker's labor, how would expansion take place?
Hi, I have a question. Even if Kate and all the employees were paid the full value of their labor, would that solve everything? Imagine a world where everyone works for himself, no employers, no employees. Since not many people can make bikes, people like Kate will charge the highest price, because well... she can! She will most likely succeed because the competition is somewhat low. However, every body can pick up garbage, so a load of people will offer the service and the competition will be high since there will be a lot of people who can pickup garbage, so those people will have no choice but to sell their service for the cheapest price, and since customers want to pay the least possible, they will find the cheapest ones. You end up with a mass of poor people, a few average, and a very few rich. I have always agreed with ''From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs''. Basically, if you can't perform surgery, it's fine, do the job you enjoy and that you're good at, but no matter the job, your income should be enough to sustain you and your family. But how would we do that? People will say, I EARNED my money, it's theirs cause it's the value of their labor. If you take it from them and distribute it, they will say it's theft. Please tell me what you think. Thanks.
As an anarchocommunist, I believe all people deserve complete equality and freedom from any form of oppression. We find the markets to be incredibly inefficient and unfair means of distribution and we believe everyone should have equal access to training and education and other such opportunities. From my perspective, "incomes" shouldn't even be necessary. Problems of scarcity of basic needs for survival were solved a long, long time ago. We have the means to produce enough food, clothing, and shelter for everyone to live very comfortably, even if everyone works a very short work-week. 10 to 20 hours should be fine to cover the basic necessities of life. The rest of our week can be used to pursue arts, sciences, and producing goods that would be considered more of a luxury. This is a really simple explanation, for more comprehensive explanation of these ideas I encourage you to check out The Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin. It's available for free, and I'll link below. Basically, anarchists think that capitalists have overly complicated everything to create artificial barriers and myths of scarcity to keep certain groups (wealthy capitalists) more privileged and advantaged than the rest of society (the working class). Thanks so much for watching, I hope you'll stick around! Links: The Conquest of Bread: theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread A Brief Article I Wrote About Scarcity: www.non-compete.com/the-capitalist-myth-of-scarcity/
PS: it's important to remember that we as anarchists don't want a state to "distribute" resources. We want everyone to actively and openly participate in government and distribution through open democratic processes and hierarchies that are as flat as possible. This all sounds really complicated on the surface because it flies in the face of what we're taught about society -- that we need complicated systems and states to manage and allocate things like taxes and social welfare and the like. But really, it's quite simple, and can be managed by the workers themselves at local levels through mechanisms like mutual aid contracts and simple democratic systems.
Thank you! It's crazy that every time I hear an answer, part of it seems to already be known in my subconscious. And finally someone who's not afraid to call himself a communist! I am one too! Thanks again!
Kate is paying that $5 to access bob's reputation, if she started a new buisness across the roads people might not buy her things since they have brand loyalty to bob so the profit bob is making is ensuring that kate's bikes will sell. Although I do agree that outsourcing is bad
Well I am of course not a communist but we actually especially in this world should embrace socialism. The non communist countries fought against socialists because they knew what would happen with their wealth and I think we should have at least social democracy or just socialism with democracy
Being a worker vs "capitalist" is an arbitrary distinction. Bob is merely buying labour the same way you buy a plumber or like Disney contracting animation studios. Remove the distinction, what we title work is just a low risk business model with no focus on future growth with the expectations that those buying your labour will magically raise your wages for you.
Ok I guess everyone should just have tens of thousands of dollars so we can all have access to better business models to solve the problems of capitalism, lol
@@NonCompete Often times this money appears in the form of loans and sometimes it involves getting collective with other people. Some amount of government doesn't hurt either of people want to enact actual strategies to get out of poverty such as education. It's not all about buying factories, but is about making certain choices that actually improve your quality of life at certain concessions. This is all bonus though, it's pointless to argue if capitalism has these benefits because economics is about 3 questions. How to distribute, for whom to distribute, and what to distribute. Without market forces, how do we know what to make? How will we innovate to come up with things people never knew they wanted? Then not all labour is equal, so how do we decide what's fair when it comes to distribution when this notion of "fair" is so vague to begin with? Such a mess! That's why most ideas of socialism involve having a market that still answers these questions (tough for a bureaucracy to manage things down to the scale of how many pilons should be made this year), and then selectively regulating the victors after the risk is all but gone.
wow, people really hate the fact that you can start your own business and use the profits to hire people to work for you while also promoting your business... I guess it sucks to be a wealthy entrepreneur who dared to live your dreams!
Why would your dream be to exploit a bunch of desperate people and profit from their labor? I am a former capitalist. I stole from my employees for ten years and I know exactly how the system works. What excuse can there be for restricting workplace democracy?
@@NonCompete Actually, I wouldn't hire desperate people, I would hire motivated and enthusiastic people who have the potential to actually help me grow my company and who will start their own companies for me to invest in... the people you describe as desperate seem like they would rather an authority figure to carry them along in life taking care of their needs because they're afraid of being different
NonCompete I support workers voting on important decisions and I think collective ownership is fair enough, but I believe: profits should not be equally distributed and instead legislature should gradually be implemented to ensure high wages for workers and install a smoother, more equal but still incentivising wealth distribution. Either that or: workplace democracy, no enforcement of equality within the workplace but instead considerably higher taxes. But also lower spending in lots of areas, I’m a Keynesian so I disagree with all this high government spending, there’s no point in taxing billionaires 60-70% if you’re just going to spend it all in a day.
The Peace Report, It's too simplistic, and it includes the fallacy "us vs them". This is a much clearer explanation: Origins and Adaptations II, Peter Joseph, March 15th 2014 | TZMOfficialChannel th-cam.com/video/zf64WzgJrvY/w-d-xo.html From 37:06 to 48:33 Better yet from 30:28 Better yet from 26:28 Better yet to watch the whole presentation, obviously.
@NonCompete I remember watching your Why Capitalism Sucks Part 1 and 2 many years ago and it's one of the best videos you have ever made. 🙂👌 I'm not even a Socialist and I have great respect for you. What bothers me the most about Capitalism is that it's known to rip people off and it's grinds my gears quite a lot. 😰
I work at an appliance Store in California. When I started I was one of two employees and I worked in the warehouse. A few months later the other employee quit. in the past year I've had the opportunity to work alongside The owner of the store on a daily basis as his only employee. The way I see it i'm developing a skill (sales and management) that would be transferable into other fields in the event I loose my position. My ability to work is versatile were as he takes a risk and gets a higher reward because his entire life revolves around the business but I just work here and choose where to spend my free time no one is putting a gun to either of our heads and telling us to do this and he definitely doesn't get to be in Malibu while I stay here and manage the store. We both work our asses off but The compensation I received is based on the amount of risk I'm willing to take. He is a lot more involved in the appliance industry and in keeping the store afloat then I would like to be and the amount of money that each of us make at the end of the day Will reflect that. Great video otherwise loved the animation. I just thought my situation was kind of similar to the bike shop
Ok, if you enjoy being exploited and having no workplace democracy working side by side with your cherry picked "kindly capitalist," that's fine. Still doesn't excuse the non-consensual exploitation and restriction of workplace democracy the rest of us suffer, nor the destruction of our planet, nor the much more severe suffering capitalism causes to billions of people in extreme poverty around the world. Thanks otherwise :)
@@NonCompete Listen, I grew up in east Germany My father died of asbestos related cancer because he couldn’t quit the job and we were very poor, so was everyone else back then It breaks my heart seeing people really think communism is good
well bob started the company and he feels like kate's employment is actually because of him so its more of a favor and so he feels he has done good and so to reward himself he takes more money
I response to starting business, it's VERY easy and requires no capital investment, aside from say $100 business license fee depending on local laws, haha. Pick an area of knowledge or learn one, where there's little to no competition in your area, like fixing computers, or focus on the nearby rural sector where this will be even easier. Everything you need to know can be learned online for free, often even while on the job. Work as much or as little as you want and put on a big grin as you pay almost 1/4 of all the income to the US government for self employment tax, yippee! (That sucks but it's still worth it of course) You don't need to go to school and get into debt. You can charge as high of a price as the market will support, but usually far beyond minimum wage. You can make enough money for yourself or hire more people, train and expand. Then diversify into other tech fields, like VR entertainment. I also saw a woman start a DOG WALKING business! Seriously, how much more simple can it get, guys? I made my own ice cream once and it was more delicious than any commercial ice cream I've ever had. There's infinite business ideas and those that put in the time to set it up do deserve to take all the money as the owner. Why arbitrarily pay all employees exactly equal splits of the profits as the business grows? Sounds very unfair to me. Anyways, then put up a small amount of your own capital to buy the gear, have 0 competition for a long time almost surely but even then - imagine how many coffee shops there are everywhere and they all can share in the profits of serving the community at at the same time.
In such a simple example yea, it's unfair but let's take a more complex example. broken into 4 steps 1) Bob is a mechanic who builds cars, he can build a car in 1000 hours and sells them for $20,000, it costs him $10,000 in parts. $10 per hour profit. 2)He is a good all-around mechanic, one day decides to hire another mechanic called Kate who specializes in the creation of engines. She can make an engine in 100 hours compared to Bob's time of 500 hours. Now he can make a car in 500 hours instead of 1000, but he pays her $5 so he gets $11.12 per hour. Now the company booms creating more cars. So he hires another engine worker, 2 welders for the chassis and a leather worker and a carpenter for the interior. The extra engine worker takes the time to build an engine down to 50, the welders take the time to make the chassis from 300 by Bob to 40 by the workers, and the interior took 200 by Bob and takes 40 Bob takes 20 hours to do final assembly. A new car can now be pushed out every 150 hours which means $66.67 an hour. He has six workers and gives them a raise to $7 an hour which means he spends $42 on labour and gets $24.67 per hour. 3) 10 year down the line these original 6 are now managers of 6 different assembly lines with 100 people on each, plus a final assembly line with 50 people and also hired 50 people for marketing, sales etc. They have reduced the time to make a car down to only 1 hour, he decides to reduce the cars price to $16,000 to appeal to a wider audience. He pays the average worker $7 per hour and the 8 department managers $50 per hour so total labour cost is $5,300 giving the company $700 per hour profit. 4) 5 years after that the company has exploded, its assembly lines now hold 3,000 men each and the final assembly line and the marketing sales rep's etc departments holds 1000 each. They have opened a new factory in Europe the same size as the American one holding an extra 20,000 jobs. They have transport systems of shipping and rail transport of 2,000 people and showrooms also holding 2,000 people, the transport and showrooms cost $5,000 each in non-labour expenditures. Let's now give the people a raise and then ad 50% for middle management positions on top of the total expenditures. 44,016 people work for the company by the end with a car turnout of 10 seconds per factory so 720 per hour in total, so if the price was drastically smaller such as $1,000 they would still produce enough to make a profit off of. So one question arises 1) whats the value of labour on each step a) Kate labour value is low since she is a skilled mechanic but only on engines, her labour has no value if the engine doesn't have a use b) someone in stage 3 could be a high school graduate with basic mechanic training, but without the other 650 factory floor workers he has no value c) someone in stage 4 could be anyone smart enough to use a screwdriver and needs no training, without the other 19,000 people has no value Labour value argument only works with something one person can do on there own. Maths: 1) 10,000/1000 = $10 per hour 2) 10,000/600 = $16.67 per hour 10,000/150 = $66.67 per hour 7x6 = $42 3) 10,000/1 = $10,000 per hour $17,000 new price (700x7)+(50x8) = $5,300 per hour cost 7,000-5,300 = 1,700 per hour 4) (44,000x10)+(16x50)+5,000 = $455,800 per hour cost 455,800x1.5 = $668,700 720x1,000 = $720,000 income 720,000-668,700 = $51,300 per hour
There is so many arguments against this… What is the quality of bikes being produced by Kate compared to Bob, no person can create the exact same quality of goods so to say that Kate is producing the same amount of value as Bob is silly. Secondly, what is stopping Kate from starting her own bike shop? Absolutely nothing. So to say she is being exploited when she can simply leave is ridiculous. Why then is Kate working for Bob? Maybe there is no better job out there, maybe Bob is paying Kate more than what she would get at any other job which would mean Kate is exploiting Bob. In the end Kate agrees to the amount that she is paid so she is agreeing to not earn as much. Lastly, what is stopping Kate from opening a bike shop now that she was fired? She has the expertise and she has fellow employees she can work with to start her bike shop? Why not take a loan from the bank? Many small businesses that are starting out do it and succeed, why can’t Kate?
Your first point is pedantic. Anyway, let's say Kate is better at building bikes, then what? What's stopping Kate? -Average startup cost for a business in America is $30,000 -Average worker in US makes $30,000 per year -Average person has less than $1,000 -Average person lives paycheck to paycheck -Average person has $6,000 in credit card debt People can't become capitalists because we don't have capital.
This video(best youtube's video ever) have to be translated to every languages and put everywhere... thx i'm hoping you can do this. It's very important for workers to know they are chained and exploited by captalist for profit.
"You don't vote for kings!" In other words, Bob deserves to rule by divine right of the Free Market (profits be upon its Invisible Hand) because he started out as a landowner with a house, i.e., he owns the means of production, just like a feudal lord own the land the peasants worked on.
Ok, I'm new to the capitalism/socialism/communism debate, so bear with me. I'm getting hung up at the point where Bob hires Kate. Why does he only pay her $5/hour? It seems like all the problems hinge on that one thing. If Kate was paif $10/hour...would that solve all the problems? Would that be a sustainable business practice, assuming we don't need to "sustain" Bob's jet ski habits? (I guess I'm asking, if greed was taken out of the equation by regulation, would capitalism work?)
@@DiThi That's a lot of BS. The system does not forces Bob to pay Kate less than what he earns for his work. He only does it because his a prick and a greedy bastard.
I'm an anarchist, but there are many different solutions that might be workable. Here's a series that introduces some of my personal views and ideas: th-cam.com/video/ZzEl5RIMp7M/w-d-xo.html
kate should’ve built her credit score and just got a loan from the bank, kate could’ve started a whole shopify store, kate might just be an idiot actually. this really not a good argument
Oh yeah, because anyone can just get a bank loan for thousands of dollars without collateral and small online businesses are well known for their success rate. You are a real Business Understander.
Imagine if everyone quit their jobs tomorrow, ran out and started a business of their own. What would the economy look like? All entrepreneurs, no workers. How well do you think that would work? There's always going to be a Kate. There has to be. Capitalism literally cannot work if everyone was a capitalist. There needs to be a working class, a sizeable one, and they need to be exploited for the surplus value of their labor in order for capitalists to profit. A Kate will always exist in capitalism, and blaming the Kates of the world for being necessarily exploited by the system that requires their labor to exist is...kinda fucked up, don't you think?
And show us an alternative, b/c it is good to say capitalism is wrong but show us an alternative that works. B/c capitalism's best selling point is that it actually works. Is it fair-- NO! is it good-- NO! Life is not good anyway. But Kate did get a job, how about a FAIR system where less people are employed, how will that work out? It would not. So we are stuck with a bad system because the others just do not work.
Good vid. Just finished watching some of your other ones with my mom, she also likes you. I was wondering if eventually you could make a video on alt-right nationalism/fascism, perhaps even how it’s connected to toxic masculinity or your own spin on it, so long as it’s negative(pretty sure you would do that anyways). I think before you do make one though, check out vids on these topics by these peeps: Hbomberguy, Three Arrows, ContraPoints, Shaun, eternal Albion. Talking about them, I think that you should put up a list of the peeps I left a list of in another video on your channel when you get the chance so others can find other leftist channels(was that confusing? I think I made it confusing). Also wanted to say that I really liked your blog, particularly your article on gangsters throughout history, still need to get through them all though. Alright, have a nice day, and Kate shall lead the revolution!
Your comment got buried as "likely spam" by Google for some reason, so I only just saw this. I will definitely do some videos on fascists and the modern far-right movement in the coming weeks... Thanks for reading my blog, I've been neglecting it lately. Should be a new article up tomorrowish!!! Thanks so much for the kind words and encouragement, sorry it took so long for me to see and reply!!
Yes it could be nice, considering the fact that fascism is a alt-centrist ideology, it's called national-socialist not for nothing, and not for nothing their most famous leaders where socialist, that isn't a right ideology but ok, think what ever you want about that, im not with your same idea, but still you have right in some regards, you have to consider globalism and free market capitalism, that is the part of the capitalism that you have been mention in this video, and the worst case scenario is an anarcho capitalist "state" or government where everything about the state is in private control, that as you said makes monopoly, that's ruin the society or the sector, but mate I like you as a person and even when I'm mostly against your ideas it's nice to see an anti-capitalist with a brain :)
Can someone explain how socialism works in practice. If I’m a midwife will I get the same amount of money as a doctor or hospital manager under socialism? If someone works in a factory how will they get paid? Who will be their manager and who will pay them? How will people choose their job? I have a lot of questions.
Callum No you won’t necessarily earn the same as a doctor if you’re a midwife. Marxist socialism as I understand it (I’m no expert and nor am I a socialist) just means that the means of production are owned collectively usually this means the government. Socialism doesn’t mean there is no market so if your labour is more valuable due to higher demand or lower supple you could still theoretically earn more than a midwife. Not sure how good an explanation this is but that’s my interpretation anyway
You are thinking of a centrally planned economy. There´s a quite popular alternative: what if we just had the workers of each business democraticly decide about (mostly) everything? This way you have basicly the same system you have right now, just without anyone who doesn`t work at a place controlling that place, resulting in a system where people get as much of their labours value as possible( because why would people vote for getting less than they produce). If you fear the business decisionmaking might be too complex the workers can just elect their "manager", and pay him for management instead of his usual work. And 3rd: in this system people choose their job the exact same way as in our current system.
The principles of exploitation remain the same, covid-19 has made this very clear, especially when it comes to starvation wages workers who do NOT want to work without proper healthcare coverage and PPE and sick pay but have to anyway, or else they'll starve or become homeless during a pandemic.
You arguing with Adam Smith there buddy? If you are, then you are a shitty libertarian and capitalist. If not, then you also disagree with Marx, so pick your stupid.
1. Labour value theory is wrong - Marx base his work on it therefore it's completely wrong (in cannot explain value of labour itself and how it should be reward if labour gives value to stuff). Subjective theory of value is the working one. Crated by Carl Menger in 1870ies. So, this means that there is no "every dollar of profit should be given to the employees". 2. if capitalists move production ti china they give lot of money to Chineses people (more people than they had employed in US) - yes at the expense of americans. They essentialy transfer wealth from American consumers to Chinese people which have disadvantage of being them so many therefore lowering wages to one and another.f 3. And that guy also did not have enough money to start his own business and yet he made it and that's why he gets profit (which is normalized to the level of profit of any other company, therefore its fair). She could have started a company making bikes thanks to capitalism and profit through banks which enable transfering of free capital to the entrepreneurs without cash seemlessly. 4. it is classical notion of calss warfare but interests of workers and owners are the same - to make business as profitable as possible. And it's not capitalists who rule, it's the customers which capitalists depend on completely. 5. if the costs are lower prices must go down too thanks to competition and market prices which increases real standards of living to all the people. 6. as stated above. Labour theory of value is wrong and no explotation exists because wages are set in the free market (which is complicated, true) which means that every worker gets fair wages which is set by the market and (thats important) profits in the industry are also under competition and are set to the market normalized levels ensuring fair spreding among businesses.
"Stolen". You know Kate could have said " I know how to decrease the time it takes to build a bike, Ill implement the system if I get 50% of the costs savings. I don't think you should use the term warfare. The us vs them mentality just makes things worse. A good example of "class cooperation" is Germany, where workers elect a board member. Or the Dutch Polder model, where "capitalists" and workers unions worked together to improve their countries economy, to great success. 80% of the Dutch population are in the middle class! The ideal that capitalism is only about profits is changing. Look up Impact Investing. The best way workers could improve their working conditions is to use their power as consumers. If they refuse to buy products that are made in China then the profit motive would force the capitalists to stay in the US. You see, capitalism isn't bad or good in itself, it just amplifies human nature. Consumers want cheap 10$ bikes made in China more than they want 100$ made in the USA. We have to reform the capitalists and the consumers they serve, not the system itself. Sorry, I haven't had time to read your responses to my other comments. I will try to do so tomorrow Cheers, Your Capitalist pig subscriber from Portugal
Interesting take. There is also this consideration - Bob as a lone entrepreneur traded his time for money; as little time for as much money as he could get away with. When he needed more time than his body could provide to trade for more money, he traded some of the money he made for time - as little money for as much time as he could get away with. This seems inobjectionable so far - this is simply Bob acting as a consumer, paying for a service. Kate as an employee traded her time for money - as little time for as much money as she could get away with. She further traded Bob an innovation - an efficiency saving - for as much money as she could get away with; that innovation allowed Bob as a business owner to trade less time, summed over his workers, for the same money. Again, this seems inobjectionable - Kate has sold something she has produced to Bob. His competitors had a better efficiency saving - machines that allowed them to generate more time (in man-hours) to convert into more money, at a lower per-unit cost. At this point Bob decides he no longer wishes to buy time from half his workers - is the suggestion that Bob should now be forced to continue to accept their time? He purchases another efficiency saving - no doubt for as little as he could get away with paying. At this point it seems to me all parties are in more or less the same position; that of trading time for money or vice versa. The workers trade their money for time when they purchase goods from other capitalists and are looking to get the most time (i.e. most valuable product, or most quantity) for the least money; so even at the same time the same individual may appear to have different 'class' interests. The only substantial argument which can be made is one of coercion - is Bob in an unfairly superior situation to those he bargains with, because he can afford to hire someone else while those he hires cannot choose to work elsewhere - and is this really an honest argument? This particular case is made weaker because our hypothetical Bob started in the position of a worker; it seems to allow that any of his workers could choose to start their own business exactly as he did - but don't, because they don't want to go to the trouble of putting a business together. Ah - the transaction emerges. Bob's workers settle for less than the labour value of their work because they are also trading some of their money for Bob's time, managing the business, approaching clients, sourcing parts which are cheap but still meet consumer demand, etc. And of course, Bob probably trades some of his money for time of people who are trained to do that - accountants, middle-managers, HR professionals, marketers. None of this seems improper - it is simply trade between individuals. Bob, of course, ultimately decides not to trade with any workers in the United States. This, on its own, again seems harmless; he is not required to do this any more than he is required to sell his products in the United States, and in theory his workers could go to another capitalist who did wish to hire in the US. What's questionable is that he then chooses to trade with citizens in another country - a country which is not a democracy, and where the citizens have no input into laws such as minimum wage, working conditions, etc. - he specifically chooses this country because its government allows its citizens to work for less, and in worse conditions. Now, China is not completely totalitarian - workers have the choice of where to work and can (usually) leave a company if they dislike it. However, taking two workers in identical financial situations, the one in the US is prevented by law (quite rightly) from selling his labour at a value which demeans him, which also prevents another worker in a more comfortable situation from undercutting him. The one in China is 'free' to sell his labour at a pittance, and must if he wishes to survive. My take is this - Bob is now complicit with the government of this country - namely, the Communist Party of China. He is, now, to some extent, stealing labour-value, because if China were to adopt US labour laws, Bob could not buy time for so little money there. The difference between the labour value of the most desperate applicant (i.e. an applicant who is in such dire straits that they are willing to accept the lowest possible payment for their time) in China and the US is stolen both by Bob and the CCP, through taxation of Bob's China-side business. I hope part 3 addresses the question of coercion and makes a case for the capitalist class only able to make inherently unequal treaties, as this seems vital to the case; and what implications this question has for the correct mode of government.
TL;DR: you both have good and valid points that I will address in future videos. Obviously these power structures and systems are incredibly complex so I am trying to focus on one facet of capitalism at a time in this series. I was definitely walking a tightrope, I tried to make an example that was as simple as possible and, frankly, as fair and "understanding" of the capitalist position as possible. The goal is not to demonize capitalists but to explain how the power structures and mechanisms of capitalism are inherently exploitative whether it's intentional or not. Bob in this "parable" is very much myself when I started my business. I started as a worker, doing everything myself, before slowly building my business one new worker at a time. The key difference is I was never as successful as Bob (lol) but I definitely thought I was serving my employees and my community by running my business and "creating jobs." Indeed, my employees always made more money than I did because I was always investing back into the business. But ultimately my business failed and I honestly believe it was largely because I was never ruthless enough. There were many instances where I could have made a lot more money and built the business more if I exploited my workers more or laid people off during hard times but I was too "weak" (from a capitalist perspective) to really succeed. All that said, my goal really was to steal as much labor value from my workers as I could and if I became more successful the exploitation would have only increased the more successful I became. It was mentioned that Kate could have negotiated a bigger cut of the business profits in exchange for her ideas. In reality this is just not the way employee/employer relations work out in most cases. Most workers are never in a position to negotiate with their bosses and most of the improvements employees make to systems and products never get fairly compensated by any means. Just look at how engineering and tech companies get to keep all the patents of their employees during the tenure of their employment. The point is that the workers' labor creates most of the value of the company and the owners take far more than their fair share in terms of profits, and this unfairness/exploitation is compounded the larger a company grows. There really is a LOT more to discuss, here. I'm trying to do things in bite-sized and easy to digest chunks, primarily because that's what I wish I had when I was first starting out with investigating leftism. I felt like a simple story where the capitalist is basically a decent and hard-working person (initially) would be the best place to start, if I jump right in with a complex megacorporation there are just too many factors at play to really break down in an under-10-minute video... I'm hoping the series will build up to a lot of the more advanced stuff over time in more of a slow burn. Thanks for the comments, really good discussion, I'll try to address all of your points in videos to come!
The Dutch polder model lead to capitalists slowly gaining a huge advantage over the unions and workers, because it's too conflict-avoiding. The idea that conflict is bad is exactly how capitalists keep their advantage. Every time workers get angry due to being exploited, the response is "now now don't be so violent", even though exploitation of the workers is violence itself. Also, 80% *considers* themselves middle class. That doesn't mean that 80% *is* middle class. These days it's not trendy to be working class, so people don't put that label on themselves, and call themselves middle class instead.
João Vaz Guedes, 1. "Us vs them"/"parasites" mentality is not a good idea, you are correct. 2. Capitalism is *fundamentally* wrong and corrupt (and inefficient at progress), changes to it without dropping completely capitalist premises will do exactly nothing. The answer is changing the very principles of our socio-economic system, make money sequence of value to again work for the life sequence of value. 3. Human Nature has nothing to do with capitalism. Human Nature is not fixed, it's adaptable, that's why humans are competitive and "bad" put in a system that is based on premises of competition. And that's why if/when we will change those premises to 100% collaboration, the humans will adapt to that new system and become collaborative and "good" to each other.
Brien Patch, That's exactly why it's the system to blame, not single humans or groups of humans put in it. In the end, there is nobody really to blame, and the only group that we could actually blame (but "blaming" the system is enough) - would be human collective consciousness/ourselves as collective.
Full on disclosure I am an Anarcho-Capitalist Bob hiring people in his own country was a mistake in the first cause nearly half the world survives on less than $5 a day a simple google search would reveal that(my ideology calls for open borders and free trade). I mean you are doing a favor to all these people who are earning less than $5 a day by providing this job which in turn improves their quality of life(not always by a significant margin). There's a huge supply of this unskilled labor and cause of this huge supply it makes sense to pay less but when you consider jobs which require technical knowledge and are in short supply the company would sign a contract with them with good benefits and other stuff so they can retain this employee which is in short supply.
@@Baker.Matthew I will elaborate, Matthew. In the scenario Bob lays off workers because he encounters a factory who is producing twice as much and for less. The question should be "How did this happen?" What actually caused Bob to lay off workers? Maybe just maybe the big bike factory corporation decided they are losing money to the Bob's out there initially so they thought, "let's go to government and have them enact regulation that requires bike factories to have certain fittings on their conveyor belts, in addition to that, let's force all bike makers to have a license third party give certification to the bikes for "safety", and also only certain bike chains can be used. Lastly let's have it where bike makers with 500+ more employees get a tax break. What say you Mr. Politician, are you up for some more campaign donations?" So the congressman with the help of the other congressman pass these new measures which makes Bob and others like him to comply or face hefty fines. So in order to adhere to the compliance COST, he has to lay off workers. You see the big bike factory already had all of this in place so it didn't hurt them, but they knew it would hurt all of their Bob competitors out there. When the big bike corporation has to go to the state for help, that my friend is NOT Capitalism.
@babecolate I'm always amazed when people say that companies sell dangerous products with no regulation. For a moment imagine a free market where there is no government regulation. Would these "evil smoking cigar capitalist" decide to make faulty products that ends up killing people? Let's say this company whatever it is cuts corners and makes a product resulting in the death of a thousand people. Knowing that, are you going to buy the product? No? Why not? Because you care about your safety right? Don't you think there are other babecolate consumers out there that also care about their safety too and also won't buy the products? What happens when enough babecolat's stop buying their products? They go under right? Do you see now, why it is in the company's financial interest to create good quality safe products in a free market?
@babecolate My goodness you guys drank way too much of the Bernie Sanders cool-aid. Alot of false claims to respond to, so let me just choose a couple to prevent a text wall. The fact that you mention that fossil fuel companies lobby to get favorable results is NOT Capitalism, so what is the complaint? Against Cronyism? Sure, I'm against cronyism too, but let's not kid ourselves, the government (not the free market) created the rules for which a company can lobby. If a company doesn't engage in lobbying efforts and decides to stand on true moral principals and real Capitalism of a fair free market they will get crushed because their competitors will go to government and get the club of government to after them. So yes I'm against lobbying efforts (not Capitalism), but I understand why they do it out of necessity, a problem of government not free market Capitalism. You mentioned machines to replace workers, well did you know in New York in the 1980s much of the car washing places disassembled their machines and hired more people to wash cars? Yes, the price of labor was actually cheaper then the price of the machines. Well that worked out great until the unions got involved earlier this decade. They said the same ol Bernie mantra "you need to fight for fair wages, you are being exploited..." and the unions went to government to increase wages and introduce regulations. Well as a result they brought the machines back and many workers layed off (thanks uncle sam). What is worse is some of these layed off workers started to illegally wash cars on the street at the risk of being thrown in jail. Thanks Bernie Sanders type of policies for threatening to put poor people in jail.
An economic system without morality at the heart of it always leads to greed and exploitation. So building a house for appearance and size to sell at a high profit is more concerned with short term profit to a negative long term expense--higher costs in utilities is just one part. The moral approach realizes the world has limited resources and "misusing" them on building things for profit rather than to last or provide the greatest service is a disservice to the world and everyone in it. The moral approach allows people to feel good about what they do and fully respected by everyone in society.
@@benjaminr8961 yes, autonomous relationships and no illegitimate authority is such a stupid awful thing, isn't it? And you people honestly think you have the moral high ground or are somehow more intellectually endowed for supporting oppressive systems of violence and suffering.
The problem is that his employees weren't forced to work there thats the problem that most people don't realize if you want more money go work somewhere else you arent forced to work anywhere
Tell that to the millions of people who didn't want to work without PPE or proper healthcare during COVID but have to because if they quit they'll be evicted (~50% of renters in most states now facing eviction) or starve (1 in 7 Americans relied on food banks BEFORE covid)
Check out my "How Anarchism Works" video and my partner Luna's channel at th-cam.com/users/lunaoi for some different perspectives! And let us know if you have any questions!
A lot of comments here along the lines of "why doesn't Kate start her own business?". Think about the bigger picture for a moment. How many people could sustainably run their own business in our current society? It's hardly 100% is it? Business owners need labour obviously. Whatever it is, 5%, 10%, 1%, the point is that just because say 5% of people can join the capitalist class.that doesn't mean it's all OK. Everyone else is still having their labour value stolen. And as pointed out, that 5% isn't necessarily the most able, committed or innovative people, it's very strongly affected by who has or can borrow the capital needed to start.
The other point I'd like to address is "You just want something for nothing". No. The goal is a society where everyone can have their basic needs met in exchange for the minimum of work required to support the community. You can still own property. You just can't own anything that people had to work 60 hours a week in terrible conditions to produce.
Great comment, I just want to add some statistics:
-The avereage US citizen has about $1,000 or less, including checking and savings
-The average US citizen has about $6,000 in credit card debt
-The average US citizen makes about $30,000 per year
-The average US citzen lives paycheck-to-paycheck, meaning that after they pay all their monthly expenses they have no money to contribute to savings
-The average cost to start a business in the US is about $30,000
Yup.
These are the same morons who will insist that if they've flipped a coin tails nine times, the "universe owes" them a heads - if not explicitly they will do so implicitly.
@@ExPwner
Unstated major premise: value obtains independent of conscious beings who produce.
It doesn't. That's incoherent. Next...
Your stance is a rationalization for parasites. Learn physics and biology... economics is a soft science entirely contingent upon those.
But this is just looking at the supply side of the economy. Can we talk about the cost of buying a bike? Does a capitalist system not allow people to start successful co-operatives? Is the problem not that the government subsidizes monopolies? Is the problem not that Greed has taken over competition? What about microfinance?
@@Noah.Freud74 Why do you hate children so much?
Like George Carlin said, it's called the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.
@Vote for the Conservatives Bob represents the 1%, the rich elite,, .....think about this, 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, in the richest country in the world. Like George Carlin said, "it's a BIG CLUB, and you ain't in it!"
@Vote for the Conservatives but how did you make it to the 1 precent?
"There is no ethical consumption under capitalism."
-Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic the RED hedgehog
@@t4ky0n The red hog
I hate Sonic. But i don't disagree.
@@rodrigoappendino Brazilian spelling
That statement couldn’t be more true.
*To those of you saying "why doesn't Kate start her own business?"*
Let me explain to you that this video shows an oversimplified example, where kate knew all the process of building a bike
Most of actual workers will know stuff that is only a fraction of the whole building process, so that they can't do it all by their selves and start to sell their own stuff. That's called "alienation".
Yeah. Ross Scott had a great example of that when talking about how the world would devolve into medieval age in case of a collapse. "Could you built the device you are watching this video on from scratch?"
What do you mean they can't do it all by them selves? How do you think successful people get to where they are? They worked their butt off and used their innovation to outsmart you and I. I dont know about you but instead of complaining about where I am and how I got here or where they are and how they got there, I'm gonna study successful people and try to copy what works. I'm gonna stop complaining and actually start doing something.
@@sethary9698 I'd rather have a system that empowers and provides for workers, the majority, than one that pits us all against each other in a "no guarantees" race to the bottom. Your best recommendation is to work for free for 10,000 hours to perfect your knowledge in a skill set best oriented to stealing the labor value of others, be it factory workers in a third world country or that of a laborer, business partner, etc.
@@sethary9698 more like they were born into wealth, got a lot of money and connections and opportunities from their family, signed the inheritance check. "They worked their butt off" is a right wing trope to continue the myth of meritocracy by highlighting the exception to the rule. As if rich people were more virtuous than the rest of us.
@@AnthonyChinaski I would argue that wealth and virtue are two completely separate things. I think that bad men with large wealth do large evils to society. And more vertruis men with large wealth do large services to society.
While I think management and leadership is a needed job, it’s ludicrous how much that job earns compared to the other one
I know this comment is a year old, but someone like me might stumble along and see it.
The largest issue with leadership and management now is that it's appointed instead of elected. If anyone is interested in socialism, the easiest way to steer them towards it is to talk with them about a democratic workplace and having a management and leadership elected by the employees.
@@fantsepants1747 I understand democracy in the workplace a bit more, thank you comrade
@@fantsepants1747 Also, that's not the only way. A lot of decisions can be made by a direct vote.
@@fantsepants1747I think the difference in salary and perks is important too. Hard to defend ceos getting like even twice the salary IMO but its often like 50 times
@@keithparker1346I just looked it up, it’s around 344x the pay of a average worker
Capitalism is like a pyramid scheme no matter how perfect the economy is you will always need someone on the bottom
Can you name me a society or system that doesn’t have a hierarchy? If having authority over someone creates an oppressor/ oppressed relationship. How are we then to have a functioning government/nation?
@@apastasauce5905by popular democracy under a constitution, for example if 51/100 people vote to ban non organic food then non organic food is banned unless that would go against constitutional rights or harmed someone else’s personal property, liberty, or life/health. it’s a very simple solution and if you disagree with that than your personal interests go against the majority of society ie the working class meaning you are either a capitalist/business owner or in the management class/white collar, hierarchical structures are oppressive and outdated and focus on individuals over the collective, meanwhile all collectivist ideologies from national socialism and fascism to communism have one thing in common which is; the good of the many outweighs the good of the individual. which is a true statement, socialism in particular also ensures that every registered citizen gets all of their basic life needs provided for, free of charge other than non wage taxes. as well as collective ownership of everything without a spirit by everyone as a whole through a government ran by a constitution and popular democracy ie majority vote. capitalism has also caused the preventable deaths of billions too, compared to even if the holocaust was 6 million which would be impossible literally or the 100 million under communism doesn’t even come close to capitalisms death toll, really socialism simplified is just rule by majority for the interests and well being of the majority, fascism and national socialism is exactly the same except it limits that to a certain group of people wether it be by race or religion or whatever, meanwhile capitalism is all about the individual which is basically selfishness at it’s extreme
@@apastasauce5905 Communism.
He destroys the class war, by taking private property (not personal, its different) from richest people, and using this resource to make life of poverty better. Now, its not a pyramide, but a sphere, where fron any angle - you have always good life.
as long as we keep the 240 year old status quo strong, we can maintain mercantilism forever.
Please! I love poverty, famine, war, and death!
At least I’m not on a fucking bread line working in a shitty factory and waiting 10 years to get my hands on a car
@@ieatlemons288 USSR ≠ Communism, USSR is a failed state from his beggining, because: any feudal country - like Russian empire - cannot reach Communism before tasting a capitalism. Its impossible to jump over 1 human era. Its sad, but its true.
These are really high quality videos!
Thanks so much, comrade!
Who pays for them.???
@@Riqrob bob
I never really liked capitalism since I was always afraid of all the foreign corporations that comes to my country to basically exploit my people and my land natural sources.
@@newerest1 Yeah?
One word: Disney
Capitalism does love imperialism and colonialism, god I hate capitalism
I build bikes. The reasons many people buy bikes new from the shop rather than wholesale are
1. Most large brands don't sell direct. They have a mutually beneficial relationship with bike shops. A few new websites (Bikesdirect etc.) offer good variety but the stuff on Amazon is not generally very good.
2. Most customers don't know how to do it and if they did, wouldn't trust their own work. Many customers also don't have a good understanding of the market and product landscape. Recommendations are valuable.
3. Cultivating a relationship with the bike shop grants you access to their tools and supplies. In the medium run, this is worth it to avoid buying your own *means of maintenance*
In cities, bike shops are very common and almost all independent. Even the big brands around here are cooperatives. It's one of the more hippie like industries in existence.
what country do you live in?
Unlawful_Falafel Canada. My comments are mostly applicable to America at least in big cities.
Man well, even if capitalism isn’t as great as it seems
Sure beats being on a bread line and working in a dirty factory for the rest of my life
@@ieatlemons288 Why do you think that's the only alternative?
@@nasonaso8356 Yes
It's almost as if profit is a perverse incentive or something...
Only men of culture use when johnny comes marching home(kaiserreich version) again in their videos.
6:42 "Stealing the value of the employees' labor value." You get paid $250 a week and ride the bus to work. Your boss meanwhile makes $3,000 a week and arrives at work in his Lexus. But the real horror is you leave high school at age 18 and wander into this system with no feasible way of escaping it. Your ability to "climb the social ladder" is slim and none.
You are thinking of businesses in a very linear fashion. Successful businesses almost never run linearly, that is making profits by cutting costs and undercutting their competition. Rather successful companies increase customer service value, and increase prices. Companies that only undercut other companies always fail at some point or the other.
Edit: also, no companies are not exploiting their workers ,they are paying their value. Businesses cannot cut down wages of their employees below their value, as they can better off start their own business if they do that. Why do you think software developers make more than coal miners? Because they are valued more. No not in terms of how much profits they can provide, but in terms of how much value they can provide for their customers.
Just because people work harder, they don't deserve more pay, because we only require so many low skilled workers.
Capitalist economies pay more for skills that are scarce regardless of how much work they put in.
Your 'Capitalist' takes in more profit, because he has the skill to get customers buying from him, and pay his workers. That skill is a hard skill, and hence he can pay himself more.
But in a real startups, CEO's pay themselves the least, and give everything to their business.
Finally! Someone who understands the game.
1:45 the labour value of new joined is not the same as Bob opened the sop where new employee joins .he invested more time to maintain the shop. and he own the shop.
This doesn't hold up. If you work at a company as an employee for a year and I work there for three years doing the same job you won't make hundreds of times more than me like many CEOs, you won't be entitled to taking a cut of my labor value like a capitalist. The "I was there first" argument only applies to the privileged, ruling class of capitalists, which is an unjust power structure.
Great video! Thank You...
Glad you liked it!
Interesting and educating video... although not necessarily for the reasons you think.
So Bob started his own bike business. He organised the supplies, made the bikes himself, then contacted with clients, all by himself. For his effort he earns 10$ per hour.
Now he hires kate to make the bikes twice as fast. Kate does the bikes, while Bob still deal with the clients, provides the materials, etc, while also making the bikes himself. Bob does the same managing job he did before, but now he does this for two people and not one. Meanwhile Kate does all the biking job but none of the managing. So Bob earlier earned 5$ for the work he did on bikes and 5$ on the management, now he earns 10$ on management and 5$ on bikes. Kate only does the bike job, so she only gets 5$.
Kate has a great idea on improving the work. what a great worker! put a pin on that.
Bob then invests a ton of money and effort into improving his business. He creates a factory that works like a well-oiled machine, while giving a ton of jobs for a ton of workers. Bob then reaps the fruit of his labor while jet skiing. Apparently, some ealous people who don't have Bob's management skills think his efforts should not be rewarded.
Then the competition comes and can makes bikes that cost half as much. Thanks to them I can now buy a bike for 50$ instead of 100$. Thanks for explaining why competition is a good thing when you're a customer.
Remember what a great employee Kate was for improving the production? Bob knows this, but since he's an idiot he laid her off instead of promoting her to the R&D department. Apparently, keeping the best workers and starting the layouts for the worst ones does not improve your company, as explained by no one, ever.
Poor workers now lose the jobs that Bob gave them in the first place. Now they're back at square one and are in the same position they would be if it wasn't for capitalism. That's a problem with capitalism apparenlty.
Bob hires workers from China because they're cheaper. That of course says more about China than it says about capitalism, so let's move on.
Thanks for telling me I'm at war with the baker lady who sells me bread. She wants to maximize profit so she wants the price as high as possible, while I want to pay as little as possible, which means we're in the class conflict. We're buddies outside of that, but how is that possible if we're at war? How do we reconcile our irreconcilable differences? I know! Maybe she just sets the price that satisfies us both? Of course if she sets the price too high, I can just go to the competition. Hey! It's a free market! Problem solved!
But for some reason anti-capitalists refuse to apply this logic to job market. The same rules apply here, it's just the the product being sold here is the worker's labor. Highly skilled workers are rarer, which means they can demand higher pays and the competition on the job market means that if the employer pays too little or kicks the worker out, the worker can just find a new job. Hey! the job market is ALSO a free market! Who would've thought!
So what does poor Kate do now that she's out of job thanks to Bob not recognising a good employee when he sees one? Simple, she goes to the competition. Maye even the same competition that forced Bob to cut the costs. The competition recognises her for her skills and get her into the R&D, maybe even employ the same method she used for Bob's business and now they cut down costs further, screwing over Bob, who now regrets his stupidity. Of course she has other options, she can, for example, acquire new skills to get a different job. She might've even consider it while still working for Bob.
Thanks for sharing but where is the part where capitalism actually sucks?
You are only offering bandaids and not addressing the key problem, which is theft of labor value. You still seem to think that Kate owes capitalists an infinite debt because they had more money than her at the start. She helped Bob get rich, he discarded her, and your solution is for her to go get a job somewhere else - losing all the sweat equity she invested in Bob's company forever - and then get paid less than what she produces as some other capitalist steals the value of her labor. And I guess just keep doing this until every manufacturer along with R&D have all been shipped overseas because that's how imperialism (an intrinsic component of capitalism) functions. Then I guess she can be a Door Dash driver and not be able to afford the cheapest rent in town like most full time employees in the US right now? Maybe spend her weekends in line at the food bank since her children are part of the 1 in 5 kids in the USA who are food insecure?
Your hypotheticals about what an individual might do when capitalism inevitably does them significant harm do not address the systemic failures and injustices of capitalism. It's really a rather pathetic response to the core issues and contradictions presented here.
@@NonCompeteyou literally chose to ignore that fact that they pointed out that Bob had to do managerial work and customer service, in addition to providing captial and an established reputation, which Kate didn’t do. Yet you’re still hung up on her earning the same as Bob.
@@will506 i didn't ignore that at all. Because he put some work in at the beginning, kate now owes him an infinite debt for as long as she works "for" him? It's an absurd notion.
@@NonCompetethe reputation of the business, and his fiscal contribution, is ongoing, though?
@@will506 not necessarily? And workers contribution of labor (and time, intellect, etc) is also ongoing? If a company has 100 employees and 1 owner, you really think the capitalist is contributing the lion's share? If they're continuing to make THAT much or a fiscal contribution and not taking profits it's a hobby, not a business, and that's not how the vast majority of capitalist enterprise works. In most cases a corporation, once stabilized, is siphoning value from workers in the form of labor and sending it to capitalists in the form of profit. You know that.
Btw, I am tired of people acting like the reputation of the business only matters for the owner. You think Enron employees didn't have the reputation of their employer (for example) follow them around and cause problems for years to come? Employees have a stake in their companies and also take risks in working for them. Silly to say otherwise. Also, the way most capitalism operates (public shareholder system) the reputation doesn't even affect the majority of owners. If I own stock in Google nobody is going to blame me if the company does something reprehensible for owning shares. Employees, on the other hand, can and do have real impacts on their lives when their boss does something shitty.
See, you're just spouting idealistic talking points about the function and role of capitalists and workers that don't line up with reality.
Capitalists don't metaphysically take all the risk while workers metaphysically contribute very little. That is really silly when you look at how actual capitalism functions in the real world in the vast majority of cases.
6:31 I think your capitalist class is to ethnically diverse.
Fair tbh
@slovene ball Oh fuck off nazi
CheeseAndRice listen we extremists must unite put aside our differences you can kill this NazBol after the centricide understood?
@@callummurrayofficialyoutub1369 jreg would be proud of you
Lmao too diverse? Everyone can be a fucking asshole. Shut the fuck up
What is the best argument against supporters of capitalism that say business owners should be wealthier than the workers because they have more stake in the company and will lose more if the enterprise fails?
What about those that argue that the workers can just quit a job and find a new one if they don’t like the way it’s run?
The owner's only risk, at least one who forms any type of separate legal business entity, such an LLC or corporation, is that they will become a worker if the business fails. No debt would be levied upon them concerning the business. If a worker changes jobs, the power structure and company's motives will tend to generally equivalent, so the overall experience of subjugation will be very similar.
Why does Kate not receive all of her real labor value? Because she has not put in any enterprise, a key factor of production. She has not risked any money or time on a potentially unprofitable venture. If Kate wanted to make sure she couldn't be fired she should've used some of her own money to invest in Bob's bike company, just as Bob did.
Her labor helped fund the venture. That's both time and money.
@@Fulldre "risked any money or time"
Ok? So what? You can set aside wages from everyone working to expand the business and if you make the business something like an LLC you don't really have to personally hoof a bill if you go under.
@@Fulldre Are you arguing that there's not risk in creating a business? My point is that she knew she would benefit from her work at the end of the day, no matter the fate of the business, so of course she does not benefit as largely as the business owner if the business becomes successful.
You're assuming she could "just buy her own factory" when she's having a considerable amount of her labor value expropriated. It takes *capital* to become a capitalist. Furthermore, if she did buy her own factory, she can only keep it going as long as she exploits her workers as ruthlessly or more so than Bob does, otherwise he can undercut her prices and put her out of business.
As for "risk," she risks losing her livelihood every day as a worker, since Bob can fire her or lay her off at will, and *will* do so as soon as it's profitable for him to do so. She can also lose her livelihood if Bob makes bad business decisions (decisions she has no say in making) and goes out of business. She not only shares the same "risks" Bob does (if he loses his job, she loses hers too), she also faces the risk of being fired, while Bob can't be fired--he's a better class of people, you see. Of course the Free Market (profits be upon its Invisible Hand) is a god of perfect, infallible justice, so systematic injustices like racism, sexism, etc. are metaphysically impossible, right?
I would rather live in a capitalistic society, where I have a chance to get profits than a communistic society where everyone is forced to be poor.
By paying Kate half of what her labour is worth is just the way the world works. She at least has the freedom to found her own business, to get the full cost of her labour.
And Bob earned his lazy days in Malibu, he founded a business, worked hard and had to lead what 50 people who depends on him? It is also a really hard job to lead. I really have seen this series, and I still don't get your point to why capitalism sucks. Capitalism is freedom.
Anarchy is freedom.
capitalism is exploitation, that was the main point in the video and it was explained well how it works.
I like these videos... did part 3 come out yet? Also, what can any one do if you do not agree with capitalism?
Still working on the script for part 3, it's a doozy! If you're opposed to capitalism I think the first thing to do is find other anti-capitalists and start talking to them. There are a lot of great communities on Facebook, Twitter, and Discord. You can direct message me if you'd like me to share some with you!
@@NonCompete It’s been three years. Did you give up on part 3?
When is part 3 coming out?
Capitalist: Bob deserves to be paid more because he took the risk and did the work to start the business
Anti-capitalist: Kate deserves to be paid the same because she does the same work
Capitalist: If she wants the same pay she should start her own business
Anti-capitalist: But starting a business is hard work
Capitalist: Yes, it is.
It's not "hard work," it's prohibitively expensive. I'm a former capitalist and I know this very well. Average small business startup cost is ~$30,000. Average worker makes about $30,000 per year, lives paycheck to paycheck, has less than $1,000, and $6,000 in credit card debt, not even counting medical debt, student loan debt, etc. Worker pay has stagnated since the early 70s (see Pay-Productivity Gap) and debt has skyrocketed. And the number one reason startups fail is under-capitalization.
When I started my business I worked hard. When I was an employee I worked hard. When I was a freelancer I worked hard. When I was a construction subcontractor I worked hard. Hard work isn't the key to being a capitalist... It's having capital.
@@NonCompete capital that is gained by working hard. Not just in your current job, but also working hard to find opportunities to better your job/situation in life.
Im not saying that it's easy, but I will say that people are under-educated in what's available to them in this country, and hardly educated at all in how to manage their money. This is a big problem I have with public schools, they fail to prepare kids to succeed in the system they'll grow up to live in.
@@irlShivelynonsense. You are aware that the vast majority of the super rich inherited their wealth
@@irlShively "hard work", just another phrase for "slavery". Working hard means 8-16 hours a day, at awful conditions, under fear of being fired for one tiny mistake. 8-16 hours, not counting the time it takes to reach the workplace. In other words this "working hard" takes all of your time and energy, thus in the end is just another form of slavery.
Also, people are disposed to treat bikes as luxury goods. Nobody is seriously trying to undercut because cheap bikes are shitty and people who care enough to own a bike want something nice. It's also a somewhat low information environment where most people are driven by marketing hype and don't have the knowledge needed to evaluate actual performance gains. A lot of people end up spending way more money than they probably should because they either think they really benefit from 400g of weight savings or as a simple status symbol.
This makes me sad to work a minimum wage job
No one is stopping you to become better? Capitalism offers opportunity. To put it simple.
If there is freedom, there isn’t equality. If there is equality, there isn’t freedom. So which do u choose. I choose the first tbh. Coz at least there is a chance.
M419 Music
Ah yes, the whole, “Pull yourself up by bootstraps!” arguement...
Tell me, do you think I enjoy having my hard work go for someone elses enjoyment? Wages fundamently are a form of servatude, and no matter what “job” you use you are fundamently enslaved to someone who leaches off of your hard work.
“So make a business,” and, yet, I would be fallowing the same trend of wage slavery...its a fundamental disconnect between us friend...
@@HolyEweh Oh so if we make all races equal we loose freedom? Just an example. Equality (not some turbo-imagined-total-equality) is for freedom, inequality - not. As we can see in the history and behind our windows ;)
@@kyokyoniizukyo7171soon our work system will be obsolete (there will be no more work to be done and people will live on universal wages). When this day comes, kids will be taught at history classes of how todays system works. They will have a hard time to understand how people accepted such conditions, all the exploitation and how could everybody considered that to be normal.
How do you judge the value of people who are not producing or transporting a product eg, managers, cashiers, salespeople etc?
Their work is efficient for capital but is pretty much bullshit from the standpoint of society. Capitalists waging war among each others in the marketplace is pretty much like politicians shouting at each other in the political arena, no one is really concerned by their fight, as long as we can provide for our needs.
They're the unproductive labour. They add no value, but they provide "conditions of existence". As such, most of them are specific to capitalism and do not need to exist.
@@Ronni3no2 is that so? Why don't you try to get people to work for a common cause, let's see how that goes for you. You require managers to get peoples attention and focus on a task.
You have no idea how difficult it is to get just 5 strangers work for a single cause, they require to be managed and given incentive to get together to work.
If he paid Kate her full labor value, there would be no point in hiring her. The same goes for any employee. That's kind of the whole point of "jobs".
Exactly! Go up two comments I talk further.
Have I found the capitalist resistance? Please say yes
*cough* worker *cough* owned *cough* cooperatives
They would both be getting the same decent pay while still providing the community with built bikes, that would be the point.
@@jonathanOschlaepfer To the Gulags xD
Ok and the solution to this is? There is to many people, there will always be ppl left out or being paid less. It will always resort back to this system
Scarcity is a capitalist myth, look into anarchocommunism. I have a few videos about it here.
This is really well made. Should have more views and stuff.
Type "Yugoslav self managnent"
I think it is the best factory sytem.
This is particularly bad in publicly traded companies. The pressure to cut costs is particularly strong from shareholders; people who are not directly involved in the production, but have a stake in the company profits.
Great video! Only you forgot to mention that Bob and his company will probably do anything they can to avoid paying taxes. Which will only further screw over Kate and the other workers he laid off.
I have a question about Bob initially hiring Kate -- what about the labor he's put in by finding customers & developing his reputation? That's something Kate doesn't have, so you could argue she's "paying" him for access to his customer base to sell her bikes, hence her lower wages.
I'm not necessarily pro-capitalism btw, just trying to understand these things better.
It depends on how abstract you want to get. If Bob really wanted to compensate himself for his prior work he could work out some kind of gradual contract where Kate slowly builds up her share in the business via sweat equity but that's not really the point, in my opinion.
On a grander scale there's quite simply enough material wealth for everyone to have what we need while working way less. Even if Bob has some kind of equity built up from doing a little sales work before Kate came on board it seems like a rubbish excuse for ultimately stealing millions, even billions from workers as the company grows and restricting workplace democracy and having our entire society harnessed to the greed motivation of capitalists like him.
But as a former capitalist I can say, the amount of work most capitalists do before hiring employees to take over the shit work is pretty negligent and most of their "luck" comes from having a wealthy family or something. Obviously not every capitalist ever (my family was pretty poor) but if capitalism is supposed to be a meritocracy that's clearly not what we've got going on.
I recommend if you really want to consider more about this stuff you consider reading or listening to The Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin, it's free online and audible anarchist has an audio version on TH-cam
@@NonCompete Yeah, I definitely agree with your points about wealth and exploitation at large scales and over long time periods. That point just caught me because, if Kate's lower wages were compensating for something she received from Bob that was backed up by Bob's labor, then that arguably fair exchange could be extrapolated to different scales as well.
But the difference, I see now, is that Bob's startup labor is finite, while the leverage it gives him over Kate can go on forever. Once they're working together, they both are contributing to the company's reputation and doing equal labor. He's getting an indefinitely increasing return on a small, fixed labor amount. Which is not fair.
Thanks for responding!
> _what about the labor he's put in by finding customers & developing his reputation?_
That doesn't entitle him to Kate's labour. He is only entitled to that which Kate takes from him, say by consuming it in the production process. Kate and only Kate gets to appropriate what she creates. After she creates *her* bike, Bob is free to negotiate with her a fee for providing her with the service of "access to his customer base" if she wants it (which she might not). The bike is hers.
You know, I would have disagreed with you from the liberal capitalist side but I find you to be incredibly credible, intellectually honest, and your presentation of facts is absolutely wonderful. I think this is a really interesting argument that we should be having more often.
I do hope we can have the discussion more. I don't mind people disagreeing with me, but I hope the disagreement at least comes after an honest and sober look at what we mostly take for granted in modern society! Thanks for the kind words :)
Agreed! Political philosophy is fascinating and I think your approach to it has definitely changed my mind on capitalism. From the Millennial perspective, I consider myself a social democrat and I've always been considered "far left" even though I have no idea what that term actually means since I don't condone violence or extremism. I'm tired of being taken advantage of and forced to work in a system that isn't benefiting the greater good and I think you have a really good grasp on the feelings of our generation towards capitalism and the American Empire. I'd love to know how you think an effective and humane economy would work and the outcome of that system!
Workers should receive a fraction of the profits of their company. The more successful the company, the more any worker from bottom to top will receive. Nowadays the most expensive, luxury brands are made by the poorest on earth. That's demonic.
@@YourCapyFrenBigly_3DPipes1999 thanks man! keep on dishing out the realness
oh my god. Bob's Bikes just explained how Capitalism is one giant Pyramid Sceme!
The best way to control capitalism in my opinion is through democratic socialism. I have no problem with people making more than I do I just don't like them controlling half of the worlds wealth. If we force companies to pay workers better wages, tax the rich higher and provide more services for the public, it can stabilize society.
But do we need the system at all
I was a demsoc at one point, and then I realized that there was no difference between marxism other than it's lean towards reform rather than revolution.
6:27 any innovation is simply a byproduct of the main goal which is to maximize profits.
Thank you.
Thank YOU, comrade!
Classic American misusing word “comrade”
okay, by the 2 minute mark the argument broke down
just as I anticipated. People like this always fail to identify ALL the other “labor
value” performed by business owners like Bob which their employees like Kate do
not perform, things like accounting, marketing, customer relations, shipping, personnel
management, etc etc. All these labors and their respective values are never
factored into these classical misrepresentations of “capitalism”. In reality a
great number of other “labor values” are baked/rolled into what is presented
here as Bob’s “assembly labor value.” Products actually ARE stored “labor value”.
Bob’s labor value takes physical form, that of a bicycle. Branding (name
recognition, reputation, customer base = “Bob’s Reputation”) is another stored “labor
value”. Bob brings a schitt ton of stored labor value to the business table;
the tools, the shop, the land, the branding, etc etc. Kate JUST brings assembly
labor. Then there’s Bob’s living expenses, another factor never considered by
these misrepresentations. Of Bob’s $50 assembly labor value, also called his “income”,
how much is “wages” and how much is “profit”? What constitutes “profit” to the
self employed sole proprietor like Bob? From his “labor value” income he’s got
to feed, clothe, and house himself. But what if he wants a soccer ball too? Is
that greedy? In this misrepresentation Bob gets a Jet Ski. Is that greedy? By
3:20 the most famous misrepresentation of them all occurs, Bob the evil
capitalist just plays all day while everybody else runs his business. This
never happens. Businesses go down the tubes. Instead business owners sell their
companies when they choose not to work them anymore; sometimes to another
person, sometimes another company, or… wait for it… to shareholders! There is
sooooo much more wrong with this video, oh well
Paragraph. Look it up.
Proletarians rise up and revolt!!!
The origin of class divide, when the original employee whom is now the owner, is paying the workers whom do the same as he used to, he's paying them less.
For me the important thing raised is this starts at the beginning when its a small business. Its ironic that small businesses are almost sacred cows and somehow not really capitalist yet dish out the same nonsense and sometimes worse than big business
I feel for Kate. Capitalism is ruthless.
Socialism is ruthless when government does what Stalin and the Bolsheviks did in implementing it
There are a couple nuances here that aren't stated, and a lot of the flip side is just as bad, but it really comes down to the fact that even those aren't bad enough to justify a lot of the choices of capitalism, if you care at all about your community. Capitalism is about competition, and the self, instead of working together and building a strong community. That's what most people do not understand when arguing the flip side of these choices.
Such a good boy making such good videos for his such good fans.
Such a good ghost making spooky comments and smashing that like button frequently and zealously
I've read excerpts but no full texts, yet. I like his sardonic snarkiness, seems quite ahead of his time. What are your thoughts of him? Any suggestions for a first read?
Not Fans *Comrades*
Just one question: Why didn't Kate start her own company from the very beginning instead of joining Bob's?
As I said in the video, Kate doesn't have any money. Starting a business is very expensive. I have a whole video on this topic:
th-cam.com/video/yvirpCAbGSY/w-d-xo.html
@@NonCompete so if Bob invested his personal money, why shouldn't he make more?
@EnglishCCPBot Why didn't she invest her money like Bob did? She could have.
@EnglishCCPBot she can't hobble together $50? That's all Bob started with in this story.
@EnglishCCPBot lol he was building bikes in his garage. Something Kate could have done too.
Just remember... none of these people were probably forced to work with Bob.
They were just forced to be exploited by some capitalist somewhere because if they don't they'll starve
I'm a capitalist, and I am gonna use this video to persuade others into capitalism.
WHAT
If it sucks so much, then leave
I did, I escaped to Vietnam where covid is completely contained and there have been fewer than 35 deaths and things are great! But the USA is still a threat to the rest of the world, and nobody is free until everyone is free.
@@NonCompete mk good for you bub
So here is a little something.
My mum works for an electrical company and works all day, she does 2 people’s work. Hers and her co workers, her co worker might put in a total of 2 hours of work and get paid for 10. My mum might work 15 hours and get paid for 10. It doesn’t seem fair to me but I’m young and don’t know how business works but I see her in a lot of stress and she is always mad at the smallest things. I get so sad whenever I hear the phone ringing because she has 3 phones. The car wash phone, the electrical company phone, and her phone. She always gets calls and never has time to have fun with us. + she has us 3 to look after. But my dad (my parents are divorced) helps her with child support. So as I say again I do not think it’s fair she works tirelessly for us while her co worker can slack off and still provide just for herself! And also the co worker doesn’t even pay for her fuel, she lives in her dads house rent free and didn’t have to pay for her phone until now. I am upstart that my mum has to work for this long. And also her boss uses the company’s money to but trucks for himself putting the company’s profit at an all time low. I think that’s all and I really hope things get better for her I try and help but I feel like I’m making things worse. I hope you all have a good day, night, evening or morning.
I understand this type of situation, I have been in it myself. Something to consider: the owner of the company almost certainly steals WAY MORE labor value from your mother than her coworker, and presumably benefits for providing obviously non-existent "leadership" which should prevent unfair work balance like you've described. So it seems the boss is getting rich from your mom's labor while failing to provide a democratic and fair workplace for her. Wouldn't your mother owning her own labor be a better situation?
Ignored risk in the first video, why would the 2nd be any different?
Why does Bob earn more? RISK! It’s his name on the sign, his garage, his tools, his livelihood and home, etc.
Why does Bob make more than Kate, despite the same amount of work? RISK!
easy to say labor value is being stolen when you ignore one of the biggest dynamics.
This video covered risk pretty well actually. When Bob's profits plunged, he wasn't at any risk because he could just fire other people. The workers were at risk because it was their jobs on the line. Thanks for further proving the point that capitalism sucks.
Why should the reward for taking "risk" in creating a business be infinite? If Bob "risked" say, $10,000 to set up his one-man bike building operation, why does that entitle him to become a billionaire by giving his workers the Amazon treatment?
Thats why workers must struggle and fight against expluatators
I like your videos as simple introductory critique of capitalism. But here are my critiques to such a simple framework of exploitation of workers.
1) Capital has multiplicative effect on labor. Allowing the same labor to produce more wealth. How is capital suppose to be paid in an economic system that transfers all production to the laborer as a wage? If a piece of capital doubles the amount stuff produced a worker, wouldn't we all (worker, consumer, owner of capital, and some small tea cup poodles) be better off to give the worker only a portion of the increased stuff than to not create the capital and he receive all of what he produces.
2) Doesn't capitalism allow for more economies of scale? Like for example 10 artisans each making bikes needs their own set of tools and work space, but a group of 10 factory workers can share space and tools. Should the resulting savings go to the person who organized the factory or be considered exploitative? They would not exist without his organizing
3) Doesn't capitalism allow for the transfer of risk? Not everyone is single young adult ready to poor 10 hours a day into making bikes and selling them. Taking the chance they will lose their home and savings in the process. Some people just want a steady income and the ability to walk away easily. Capitalism allows those that are willing to take risks on good ideas to do so, while allowing those who need stability to give up income in return for stability. Do you think that everyone should have to be a producer owner who lives at the whims of market fluctuations?
4) Doesn't capitalism promote specialization (the bedrock of all increases in productivity)? In your example 10 artisans making bikes have to be good at all parts of bike building, customer relations, and promoting their business. 10 workers can divvy up tasks. Each getting very good at their assigned task and thus producing more than if they worked as individual owner producers. Should the resulting savings go to the person who organized the factory or being exploitative? They would not exist without his organizing
5) Suppose you had a group of artisans come together to communally do everything a capitalist factory would do. Capturing all the increase in productivity resulting from investing in capital, economies of scale, communally sharing risk, and specialization for themselves. Someone is going to have devote time to coordinating their activities but not necessarily producing anything. And because of the benefits of specialization, it is likely to remain the same person for a long time. Let the best person at coordinating do the coordinating. Are his actions exploitative since he takes a portion of the value generated on the labor of others for his income? And if they are not, how is that income any different than a capitalist coordinating the actions of workers for his benefit?
So there shouldn't be a company in the first place? Who would make the products if there wasn't a (profit motivated) company?
If Bob didn't make profit from other worker's labor, how would expansion take place?
The workers would own the factory and would manage and govern themselves democratically. Why would that prohibit expansion?
Sorry for another late video, comrades! This one took a lot longer to edit than I expected.......! Enjoy!
Hi, I have a question.
Even if Kate and all the employees were paid the full value of their labor, would that solve everything? Imagine a world where everyone works for himself, no employers, no employees. Since not many people can make bikes, people like Kate will charge the highest price, because well... she can! She will most likely succeed because the competition is somewhat low. However, every body can pick up garbage, so a load of people will offer the service and the competition will be high since there will be a lot of people who can pickup garbage, so those people will have no choice but to sell their service for the cheapest price, and since customers want to pay the least possible, they will find the cheapest ones. You end up with a mass of poor people, a few average, and a very few rich.
I have always agreed with ''From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs''. Basically, if you can't perform surgery, it's fine, do the job you enjoy and that you're good at, but no matter the job, your income should be enough to sustain you and your family. But how would we do that? People will say, I EARNED my money, it's theirs cause it's the value of their labor. If you take it from them and distribute it, they will say it's theft.
Please tell me what you think.
Thanks.
As an anarchocommunist, I believe all people deserve complete equality and freedom from any form of oppression. We find the markets to be incredibly inefficient and unfair means of distribution and we believe everyone should have equal access to training and education and other such opportunities.
From my perspective, "incomes" shouldn't even be necessary. Problems of scarcity of basic needs for survival were solved a long, long time ago. We have the means to produce enough food, clothing, and shelter for everyone to live very comfortably, even if everyone works a very short work-week. 10 to 20 hours should be fine to cover the basic necessities of life. The rest of our week can be used to pursue arts, sciences, and producing goods that would be considered more of a luxury.
This is a really simple explanation, for more comprehensive explanation of these ideas I encourage you to check out The Conquest of Bread by Pyotr Kropotkin. It's available for free, and I'll link below.
Basically, anarchists think that capitalists have overly complicated everything to create artificial barriers and myths of scarcity to keep certain groups (wealthy capitalists) more privileged and advantaged than the rest of society (the working class).
Thanks so much for watching, I hope you'll stick around!
Links:
The Conquest of Bread:
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread
A Brief Article I Wrote About Scarcity:
www.non-compete.com/the-capitalist-myth-of-scarcity/
PS: it's important to remember that we as anarchists don't want a state to "distribute" resources. We want everyone to actively and openly participate in government and distribution through open democratic processes and hierarchies that are as flat as possible.
This all sounds really complicated on the surface because it flies in the face of what we're taught about society -- that we need complicated systems and states to manage and allocate things like taxes and social welfare and the like. But really, it's quite simple, and can be managed by the workers themselves at local levels through mechanisms like mutual aid contracts and simple democratic systems.
Thank you! It's crazy that every time I hear an answer, part of it seems to already be known in my subconscious. And finally someone who's not afraid to call himself a communist! I am one too!
Thanks again!
Don't worry, it accurately represents production standards in non-capitalist societies.
Kate is paying that $5 to access bob's reputation, if she started a new buisness across the roads people might not buy her things since they have brand loyalty to bob so the profit bob is making is ensuring that kate's bikes will sell. Although I do agree that outsourcing is bad
Thanks for what you do
What laws or changes could realistically be made in America to solve this problem? Without causing major inflation.
Well I am of course not a communist but we actually especially in this world should embrace socialism. The non communist countries fought against socialists because they knew what would happen with their wealth and I think we should have at least social democracy or just socialism with democracy
Being a worker vs "capitalist" is an arbitrary distinction. Bob is merely buying labour the same way you buy a plumber or like Disney contracting animation studios. Remove the distinction, what we title work is just a low risk business model with no focus on future growth with the expectations that those buying your labour will magically raise your wages for you.
Ok I guess everyone should just have tens of thousands of dollars so we can all have access to better business models to solve the problems of capitalism, lol
@@NonCompete Often times this money appears in the form of loans and sometimes it involves getting collective with other people. Some amount of government doesn't hurt either of people want to enact actual strategies to get out of poverty such as education. It's not all about buying factories, but is about making certain choices that actually improve your quality of life at certain concessions. This is all bonus though, it's pointless to argue if capitalism has these benefits because economics is about 3 questions. How to distribute, for whom to distribute, and what to distribute. Without market forces, how do we know what to make? How will we innovate to come up with things people never knew they wanted? Then not all labour is equal, so how do we decide what's fair when it comes to distribution when this notion of "fair" is so vague to begin with? Such a mess! That's why most ideas of socialism involve having a market that still answers these questions (tough for a bureaucracy to manage things down to the scale of how many pilons should be made this year), and then selectively regulating the victors after the risk is all but gone.
I cant believe some people look at this and think yes I want this
Those pigs are called ANCAPS
wow, people really hate the fact that you can start your own business and use the profits to hire people to work for you while also promoting your business...
I guess it sucks to be a wealthy entrepreneur who dared to live your dreams!
Why would your dream be to exploit a bunch of desperate people and profit from their labor? I am a former capitalist. I stole from my employees for ten years and I know exactly how the system works. What excuse can there be for restricting workplace democracy?
@@NonCompete Actually, I wouldn't hire desperate people, I would hire motivated and enthusiastic people who have the potential to actually help me grow my company and who will start their own companies for me to invest in...
the people you describe as desperate seem like they would rather an authority figure to carry them along in life taking care of their needs because they're afraid of being different
NonCompete I support workers voting on important decisions and I think collective ownership is fair enough, but I believe: profits should not be equally distributed and instead legislature should gradually be implemented to ensure high wages for workers and install a smoother, more equal but still incentivising wealth distribution. Either that or: workplace democracy, no enforcement of equality within the workplace but instead considerably higher taxes. But also lower spending in lots of areas, I’m a Keynesian so I disagree with all this high government spending, there’s no point in taxing billionaires 60-70% if you’re just going to spend it all in a day.
This is by far the best explanation of capi... I mean exploitation that I've ever seen. So easy to understand. Thank you Non-Compete.
The Peace Report,
There are much better explanations.
Of course, but try teaching it to the general public.
The Peace Report,
It's too simplistic, and it includes the fallacy "us vs them".
This is a much clearer explanation:
Origins and Adaptations II, Peter Joseph, March 15th 2014 | TZMOfficialChannel
th-cam.com/video/zf64WzgJrvY/w-d-xo.html
From 37:06 to 48:33
Better yet from 30:28
Better yet from 26:28
Better yet to watch the whole presentation, obviously.
@NonCompete
I remember watching your Why Capitalism Sucks Part 1 and 2 many years ago and it's one of the best videos you have ever made. 🙂👌 I'm not even a Socialist and I have great respect for you. What bothers me the most about Capitalism is that it's known to rip people off and it's grinds my gears quite a lot. 😰
I work at an appliance Store in California. When I started I was one of two employees and I worked in the warehouse. A few months later the other employee quit. in the past year I've had the opportunity to work alongside The owner of the store on a daily basis as his only employee. The way I see it i'm developing a skill (sales and management) that would be transferable into other fields in the event I loose my position. My ability to work is versatile were as he takes a risk and gets a higher reward because his entire life revolves around the business but I just work here and choose where to spend my free time no one is putting a gun to either of our heads and telling us to do this and he definitely doesn't get to be in Malibu while I stay here and manage the store. We both work our asses off but The compensation I received is based on the amount of risk I'm willing to take. He is a lot more involved in the appliance industry and in keeping the store afloat then I would like to be and the amount of money that each of us make at the end of the day Will reflect that.
Great video otherwise loved the animation. I just thought my situation was kind of similar to the bike shop
Ok, if you enjoy being exploited and having no workplace democracy working side by side with your cherry picked "kindly capitalist," that's fine. Still doesn't excuse the non-consensual exploitation and restriction of workplace democracy the rest of us suffer, nor the destruction of our planet, nor the much more severe suffering capitalism causes to billions of people in extreme poverty around the world.
Thanks otherwise :)
@@NonCompete Listen, I grew up in east Germany
My father died of asbestos related cancer because he couldn’t quit the job and we were very poor, so was everyone else back then
It breaks my heart seeing people really think communism is good
@@ieatlemons288 You grew up in East Germany?
@@nasonaso8356 Yes
@@ieatlemons288 When were you born?
well bob started the company and he feels like kate's employment is actually because of him so its more of a favor and so he feels he has done good and so to reward himself he takes more money
Anyone else here in 2021 finally realizing the class war of America has started in 2020 and by 2023 or 2025 the class war should be in full effect
Can’t have class war when everyone has a shitty life and is starving
Communism very smart
I response to starting business, it's VERY easy and requires no capital investment, aside from say $100 business license fee depending on local laws, haha. Pick an area of knowledge or learn one, where there's little to no competition in your area, like fixing computers, or focus on the nearby rural sector where this will be even easier. Everything you need to know can be learned online for free, often even while on the job. Work as much or as little as you want and put on a big grin as you pay almost 1/4 of all the income to the US government for self employment tax, yippee! (That sucks but it's still worth it of course) You don't need to go to school and get into debt. You can charge as high of a price as the market will support, but usually far beyond minimum wage. You can make enough money for yourself or hire more people, train and expand. Then diversify into other tech fields, like VR entertainment. I also saw a woman start a DOG WALKING business! Seriously, how much more simple can it get, guys? I made my own ice cream once and it was more delicious than any commercial ice cream I've ever had. There's infinite business ideas and those that put in the time to set it up do deserve to take all the money as the owner. Why arbitrarily pay all employees exactly equal splits of the profits as the business grows? Sounds very unfair to me. Anyways, then put up a small amount of your own capital to buy the gear, have 0 competition for a long time almost surely but even then - imagine how many coffee shops there are everywhere and they all can share in the profits of serving the community at at the same time.
In such a simple example yea, it's unfair but let's take a more complex example. broken into 4 steps
1) Bob is a mechanic who builds cars, he can build a car in 1000 hours and sells them for $20,000, it costs him $10,000 in parts. $10 per hour profit.
2)He is a good all-around mechanic, one day decides to hire another mechanic called Kate who specializes in the creation of engines. She can make an engine in 100 hours compared to Bob's time of 500 hours. Now he can make a car in 500 hours instead of 1000, but he pays her $5 so he gets $11.12 per hour. Now the company booms creating more cars. So he hires another engine worker, 2 welders for the chassis and a leather worker and a carpenter for the interior. The extra engine worker takes the time to build an engine down to 50, the welders take the time to make the chassis from 300 by Bob to 40 by the workers, and the interior took 200 by Bob and takes 40 Bob takes 20 hours to do final assembly. A new car can now be pushed out every 150 hours which means $66.67 an hour. He has six workers and gives them a raise to $7 an hour which means he spends $42 on labour and gets $24.67 per hour.
3) 10 year down the line these original 6 are now managers of 6 different assembly lines with 100 people on each, plus a final assembly line with 50 people and also hired 50 people for marketing, sales etc. They have reduced the time to make a car down to only 1 hour, he decides to reduce the cars price to $16,000 to appeal to a wider audience. He pays the average worker $7 per hour and the 8 department managers $50 per hour so total labour cost is $5,300 giving the company $700 per hour profit.
4) 5 years after that the company has exploded, its assembly lines now hold 3,000 men each and the final assembly line and the marketing sales rep's etc departments holds 1000 each. They have opened a new factory in Europe the same size as the American one holding an extra 20,000 jobs. They have transport systems of shipping and rail transport of 2,000 people and showrooms also holding 2,000 people, the transport and showrooms cost $5,000 each in non-labour expenditures. Let's now give the people a raise and then ad 50% for middle management positions on top of the total expenditures. 44,016 people work for the company by the end with a car turnout of 10 seconds per factory so 720 per hour in total, so if the price was drastically smaller such as $1,000 they would still produce enough to make a profit off of.
So one question arises
1) whats the value of labour on each step
a) Kate labour value is low since she is a skilled mechanic but only on engines, her labour has no value if the engine doesn't have a use
b) someone in stage 3 could be a high school graduate with basic mechanic training, but without the other 650 factory floor workers he has no value
c) someone in stage 4 could be anyone smart enough to use a screwdriver and needs no training, without the other 19,000 people has no value
Labour value argument only works with something one person can do on there own.
Maths:
1)
10,000/1000 = $10 per hour
2)
10,000/600 = $16.67 per hour
10,000/150 = $66.67 per hour
7x6 = $42
3)
10,000/1 = $10,000 per hour
$17,000 new price
(700x7)+(50x8) = $5,300 per hour cost
7,000-5,300 = 1,700 per hour
4)
(44,000x10)+(16x50)+5,000 = $455,800 per hour cost
455,800x1.5 = $668,700
720x1,000 = $720,000 income
720,000-668,700 = $51,300 per hour
There is so many arguments against this…
What is the quality of bikes being produced by Kate compared to Bob, no person can create the exact same quality of goods so to say that Kate is producing the same amount of value as Bob is silly.
Secondly, what is stopping Kate from starting her own bike shop? Absolutely nothing. So to say she is being exploited when she can simply leave is ridiculous. Why then is Kate working for Bob? Maybe there is no better job out there, maybe Bob is paying Kate more than what she would get at any other job which would mean Kate is exploiting Bob. In the end Kate agrees to the amount that she is paid so she is agreeing to not earn as much.
Lastly, what is stopping Kate from opening a bike shop now that she was fired? She has the expertise and she has fellow employees she can work with to start her bike shop? Why not take a loan from the bank? Many small businesses that are starting out do it and succeed, why can’t Kate?
Your first point is pedantic. Anyway, let's say Kate is better at building bikes, then what?
What's stopping Kate?
-Average startup cost for a business in America is $30,000
-Average worker in US makes $30,000 per year
-Average person has less than $1,000
-Average person lives paycheck to paycheck
-Average person has $6,000 in credit card debt
People can't become capitalists because we don't have capital.
@@NonCompete
You didn't read my post, otherwise you would know that I already answered that problem. Two words bank & loan.
This video(best youtube's video ever) have to be translated to every languages and put everywhere... thx i'm hoping you can do this. It's very important for workers to know they are chained and exploited by captalist for profit.
Under socialism Kate would be a slave
Bob's Bikes sounds like a multi level marketing scheme
That's capitalism!
Bob gets more money cause its his house and his reputation that brings costumers in. Plus he is the boss.
"You don't vote for kings!" In other words, Bob deserves to rule by divine right of the Free Market (profits be upon its Invisible Hand) because he started out as a landowner with a house, i.e., he owns the means of production, just like a feudal lord own the land the peasants worked on.
Learning a ton
Gotta have you on the Dialectic soon!! Hope you're doing well, Alex!
I just came across this channel & love it!
Well done, comrade!
As the economy grows you have to specialize more.
God this is so sad to see, it's very disheartening that people actually buy into this
Ok, I'm new to the capitalism/socialism/communism debate, so bear with me. I'm getting hung up at the point where Bob hires Kate. Why does he only pay her $5/hour? It seems like all the problems hinge on that one thing. If Kate was paif $10/hour...would that solve all the problems? Would that be a sustainable business practice, assuming we don't need to "sustain" Bob's jet ski habits? (I guess I'm asking, if greed was taken out of the equation by regulation, would capitalism work?)
@@DiThi That's a lot of BS. The system does not forces Bob to pay Kate less than what he earns for his work. He only does it because his a prick and a greedy bastard.
One like is one more gun/tank/plane for the revolution
So what solution do you propose?
I'm an anarchist, but there are many different solutions that might be workable. Here's a series that introduces some of my personal views and ideas:
th-cam.com/video/ZzEl5RIMp7M/w-d-xo.html
Dude, this is outstanding. Thank you.
Thank you for the kind encouragement :D
Speaking of Adam Smith, this is literally Adam Smith’s ‘Pin Maker’ analogy.
kate should’ve built her credit score and just got a loan from the bank, kate could’ve started a whole shopify store, kate might just be an idiot actually. this really not a good argument
Oh yeah, because anyone can just get a bank loan for thousands of dollars without collateral and small online businesses are well known for their success rate. You are a real Business Understander.
@@NonCompete a man can do whatever he put his mind too y’all weak minded with no persistence
Imagine if everyone quit their jobs tomorrow, ran out and started a business of their own.
What would the economy look like? All entrepreneurs, no workers. How well do you think that would work?
There's always going to be a Kate. There has to be. Capitalism literally cannot work if everyone was a capitalist. There needs to be a working class, a sizeable one, and they need to be exploited for the surplus value of their labor in order for capitalists to profit.
A Kate will always exist in capitalism, and blaming the Kates of the world for being necessarily exploited by the system that requires their labor to exist is...kinda fucked up, don't you think?
And show us an alternative, b/c it is good to say capitalism is wrong but show us an alternative that works. B/c capitalism's best selling point is that it actually works. Is it fair-- NO! is it good-- NO! Life is not good anyway. But Kate did get a job, how about a FAIR system where less people are employed, how will that work out? It would not. So we are stuck with a bad system because the others just do not work.
Good vid. Just finished watching some of your other ones with my mom, she also likes you. I was wondering if eventually you could make a video on alt-right nationalism/fascism, perhaps even how it’s connected to toxic masculinity or your own spin on it, so long as it’s negative(pretty sure you would do that anyways). I think before you do make one though, check out vids on these topics by these peeps: Hbomberguy, Three Arrows, ContraPoints, Shaun, eternal Albion. Talking about them, I think that you should put up a list of the peeps I left a list of in another video on your channel when you get the chance so others can find other leftist channels(was that confusing? I think I made it confusing). Also wanted to say that I really liked your blog, particularly your article on gangsters throughout history, still need to get through them all though. Alright, have a nice day, and Kate shall lead the revolution!
Your comment got buried as "likely spam" by Google for some reason, so I only just saw this. I will definitely do some videos on fascists and the modern far-right movement in the coming weeks... Thanks for reading my blog, I've been neglecting it lately. Should be a new article up tomorrowish!!! Thanks so much for the kind words and encouragement, sorry it took so long for me to see and reply!!
Yes it could be nice, considering the fact that fascism is a alt-centrist ideology, it's called national-socialist not for nothing, and not for nothing their most famous leaders where socialist, that isn't a right ideology but ok, think what ever you want about that, im not with your same idea, but still you have right in some regards, you have to consider globalism and free market capitalism, that is the part of the capitalism that you have been mention in this video, and the worst case scenario is an anarcho capitalist "state" or government where everything about the state is in private control, that as you said makes monopoly, that's ruin the society or the sector, but mate I like you as a person and even when I'm mostly against your ideas it's nice to see an anti-capitalist with a brain :)
Can someone explain how socialism works in practice. If I’m a midwife will I get the same amount of money as a doctor or hospital manager under socialism?
If someone works in a factory how will they get paid? Who will be their manager and who will pay them?
How will people choose their job?
I have a lot of questions.
Callum No you won’t necessarily earn the same as a doctor if you’re a midwife. Marxist socialism as I understand it (I’m no expert and nor am I a socialist) just means that the means of production are owned collectively usually this means the government. Socialism doesn’t mean there is no market so if your labour is more valuable due to higher demand or lower supple you could still theoretically earn more than a midwife. Not sure how good an explanation this is but that’s my interpretation anyway
You are thinking of a centrally planned economy. There´s a quite popular alternative: what if we just had the workers of each business democraticly decide about (mostly) everything? This way you have basicly the same system you have right now, just without anyone who doesn`t work at a place controlling that place, resulting in a system where people get as much of their labours value as possible( because why would people vote for getting less than they produce). If you fear the business decisionmaking might be too complex the workers can just elect their "manager", and pay him for management instead of his usual work. And 3rd: in this system people choose their job the exact same way as in our current system.
Only Question I’m pretty sure there’s a company in Spain that operates similarly to this.
oooof. a labour of love ! kudos
Simplicity aside trade and labor negotiations are much more complex than this video indicates
The principles of exploitation remain the same, covid-19 has made this very clear, especially when it comes to starvation wages workers who do NOT want to work without proper healthcare coverage and PPE and sick pay but have to anyway, or else they'll starve or become homeless during a pandemic.
Labor theory of value. Lol. Great sand foundation to build a house constructed out of bullshit.
clarify please
You arguing with Adam Smith there buddy? If you are, then you are a shitty libertarian and capitalist. If not, then you also disagree with Marx, so pick your stupid.
He considered labor value without any consideration of risk.
Risk is WHY labor value appears to be stolen, but’s its actually a reflection of risk.
Makes me want to destroy anything that isn't govorment or individual property
1. Labour value theory is wrong - Marx base his work on it therefore it's completely wrong (in cannot explain value of labour itself and how it should be reward if labour gives value to stuff).
Subjective theory of value is the working one. Crated by Carl Menger in 1870ies. So, this means that there is no "every dollar of profit should be given to the employees".
2. if capitalists move production ti china they give lot of money to Chineses people (more people than they had employed in US) - yes at the expense of americans. They essentialy transfer wealth from American consumers to Chinese people which have disadvantage of being them so many therefore lowering wages to one and another.f
3. And that guy also did not have enough money to start his own business and yet he made it and that's why he gets profit (which is normalized to the level of profit of any other company, therefore its fair). She could have started a company making bikes thanks to capitalism and profit through banks which enable transfering of free capital to the entrepreneurs without cash seemlessly.
4. it is classical notion of calss warfare but interests of workers and owners are the same - to make business as profitable as possible. And it's not capitalists who rule, it's the customers which capitalists depend on completely.
5. if the costs are lower prices must go down too thanks to competition and market prices which increases real standards of living to all the people.
6. as stated above. Labour theory of value is wrong and no explotation exists because wages are set in the free market (which is complicated, true) which means that every worker gets fair wages which is set by the market and (thats important) profits in the industry are also under competition and are set to the market normalized levels ensuring fair spreding among businesses.
I build vehicles at a Ford Factory, this makes me depressed.
"Stolen".
You know Kate could have said " I know how to decrease the time it takes to build a bike, Ill implement the system if I get 50% of the costs savings.
I don't think you should use the term warfare. The us vs them mentality just makes things worse. A good example of "class cooperation" is Germany, where workers elect a board member. Or the Dutch Polder model, where "capitalists" and workers unions worked together to improve their countries economy, to great success. 80% of the Dutch population are in the middle class!
The ideal that capitalism is only about profits is changing. Look up Impact Investing.
The best way workers could improve their working conditions is to use their power as consumers. If they refuse to buy products that are made in China then the profit motive would force the capitalists to stay in the US. You see, capitalism isn't bad or good in itself, it just amplifies human nature. Consumers want cheap 10$ bikes made in China more than they want 100$ made in the USA. We have to reform the capitalists and the consumers they serve, not the system itself.
Sorry, I haven't had time to read your responses to my other comments. I will try to do so tomorrow
Cheers,
Your Capitalist pig subscriber from Portugal
Interesting take. There is also this consideration - Bob as a lone entrepreneur traded his time for money; as little time for as much money as he could get away with. When he needed more time than his body could provide to trade for more money, he traded some of the money he made for time - as little money for as much time as he could get away with. This seems inobjectionable so far - this is simply Bob acting as a consumer, paying for a service.
Kate as an employee traded her time for money - as little time for as much money as she could get away with. She further traded Bob an innovation - an efficiency saving - for as much money as she could get away with; that innovation allowed Bob as a business owner to trade less time, summed over his workers, for the same money. Again, this seems inobjectionable - Kate has sold something she has produced to Bob.
His competitors had a better efficiency saving - machines that allowed them to generate more time (in man-hours) to convert into more money, at a lower per-unit cost. At this point Bob decides he no longer wishes to buy time from half his workers - is the suggestion that Bob should now be forced to continue to accept their time? He purchases another efficiency saving - no doubt for as little as he could get away with paying.
At this point it seems to me all parties are in more or less the same position; that of trading time for money or vice versa. The workers trade their money for time when they purchase goods from other capitalists and are looking to get the most time (i.e. most valuable product, or most quantity) for the least money; so even at the same time the same individual may appear to have different 'class' interests. The only substantial argument which can be made is one of coercion - is Bob in an unfairly superior situation to those he bargains with, because he can afford to hire someone else while those he hires cannot choose to work elsewhere - and is this really an honest argument?
This particular case is made weaker because our hypothetical Bob started in the position of a worker; it seems to allow that any of his workers could choose to start their own business exactly as he did - but don't, because they don't want to go to the trouble of putting a business together. Ah - the transaction emerges. Bob's workers settle for less than the labour value of their work because they are also trading some of their money for Bob's time, managing the business, approaching clients, sourcing parts which are cheap but still meet consumer demand, etc. And of course, Bob probably trades some of his money for time of people who are trained to do that - accountants, middle-managers, HR professionals, marketers. None of this seems improper - it is simply trade between individuals.
Bob, of course, ultimately decides not to trade with any workers in the United States. This, on its own, again seems harmless; he is not required to do this any more than he is required to sell his products in the United States, and in theory his workers could go to another capitalist who did wish to hire in the US. What's questionable is that he then chooses to trade with citizens in another country - a country which is not a democracy, and where the citizens have no input into laws such as minimum wage, working conditions, etc. - he specifically chooses this country because its government allows its citizens to work for less, and in worse conditions. Now, China is not completely totalitarian - workers have the choice of where to work and can (usually) leave a company if they dislike it. However, taking two workers in identical financial situations, the one in the US is prevented by law (quite rightly) from selling his labour at a value which demeans him, which also prevents another worker in a more comfortable situation from undercutting him. The one in China is 'free' to sell his labour at a pittance, and must if he wishes to survive.
My take is this - Bob is now complicit with the government of this country - namely, the Communist Party of China. He is, now, to some extent, stealing labour-value, because if China were to adopt US labour laws, Bob could not buy time for so little money there. The difference between the labour value of the most desperate applicant (i.e. an applicant who is in such dire straits that they are willing to accept the lowest possible payment for their time) in China and the US is stolen both by Bob and the CCP, through taxation of Bob's China-side business.
I hope part 3 addresses the question of coercion and makes a case for the capitalist class only able to make inherently unequal treaties, as this seems vital to the case; and what implications this question has for the correct mode of government.
TL;DR: you both have good and valid points that I will address in future videos. Obviously these power structures and systems are incredibly complex so I am trying to focus on one facet of capitalism at a time in this series.
I was definitely walking a tightrope, I tried to make an example that was as simple as possible and, frankly, as fair and "understanding" of the capitalist position as possible. The goal is not to demonize capitalists but to explain how the power structures and mechanisms of capitalism are inherently exploitative whether it's intentional or not.
Bob in this "parable" is very much myself when I started my business. I started as a worker, doing everything myself, before slowly building my business one new worker at a time. The key difference is I was never as successful as Bob (lol) but I definitely thought I was serving my employees and my community by running my business and "creating jobs."
Indeed, my employees always made more money than I did because I was always investing back into the business. But ultimately my business failed and I honestly believe it was largely because I was never ruthless enough. There were many instances where I could have made a lot more money and built the business more if I exploited my workers more or laid people off during hard times but I was too "weak" (from a capitalist perspective) to really succeed.
All that said, my goal really was to steal as much labor value from my workers as I could and if I became more successful the exploitation would have only increased the more successful I became.
It was mentioned that Kate could have negotiated a bigger cut of the business profits in exchange for her ideas. In reality this is just not the way employee/employer relations work out in most cases. Most workers are never in a position to negotiate with their bosses and most of the improvements employees make to systems and products never get fairly compensated by any means. Just look at how engineering and tech companies get to keep all the patents of their employees during the tenure of their employment. The point is that the workers' labor creates most of the value of the company and the owners take far more than their fair share in terms of profits, and this unfairness/exploitation is compounded the larger a company grows.
There really is a LOT more to discuss, here. I'm trying to do things in bite-sized and easy to digest chunks, primarily because that's what I wish I had when I was first starting out with investigating leftism. I felt like a simple story where the capitalist is basically a decent and hard-working person (initially) would be the best place to start, if I jump right in with a complex megacorporation there are just too many factors at play to really break down in an under-10-minute video... I'm hoping the series will build up to a lot of the more advanced stuff over time in more of a slow burn.
Thanks for the comments, really good discussion, I'll try to address all of your points in videos to come!
The Dutch polder model lead to capitalists slowly gaining a huge advantage over the unions and workers, because it's too conflict-avoiding. The idea that conflict is bad is exactly how capitalists keep their advantage. Every time workers get angry due to being exploited, the response is "now now don't be so violent", even though exploitation of the workers is violence itself.
Also, 80% *considers* themselves middle class. That doesn't mean that 80% *is* middle class. These days it's not trendy to be working class, so people don't put that label on themselves, and call themselves middle class instead.
João Vaz Guedes,
1. "Us vs them"/"parasites" mentality is not a good idea, you are correct.
2. Capitalism is *fundamentally* wrong and corrupt (and inefficient at progress), changes to it without dropping completely capitalist premises will do exactly nothing. The answer is changing the very principles of our socio-economic system, make money sequence of value to again work for the life sequence of value.
3. Human Nature has nothing to do with capitalism. Human Nature is not fixed, it's adaptable, that's why humans are competitive and "bad" put in a system that is based on premises of competition. And that's why if/when we will change those premises to 100% collaboration, the humans will adapt to that new system and become collaborative and "good" to each other.
Brien Patch,
That's exactly why it's the system to blame, not single humans or groups of humans put in it. In the end, there is nobody really to blame, and the only group that we could actually blame (but "blaming" the system is enough) - would be human collective consciousness/ourselves as collective.
Full on disclosure I am an Anarcho-Capitalist
Bob hiring people in his own country was a mistake in the first cause nearly half the world survives on less than $5 a day a simple google search would reveal that(my ideology calls for open borders and free trade). I mean you are doing a favor to all these people who are earning less than $5 a day by providing this job which in turn improves their quality of life(not always by a significant margin). There's a huge supply of this unskilled labor and cause of this huge supply it makes sense to pay less but when you consider jobs which require technical knowledge and are in short supply the company would sign a contract with them with good benefits and other stuff so they can retain this employee which is in short supply.
Such a simplistic world view
Can you elaborate?
@@Baker.Matthew I will elaborate, Matthew. In the scenario Bob lays off workers because he encounters a factory who is producing twice as much and for less. The question should be "How did this happen?" What actually caused Bob to lay off workers?
Maybe just maybe the big bike factory corporation decided they are losing money to the Bob's out there initially so they thought, "let's go to government and have them enact regulation that requires bike factories to have certain fittings on their conveyor belts, in addition to that, let's force all bike makers to have a license third party give certification to the bikes for "safety", and also only certain bike chains can be used. Lastly let's have it where bike makers with 500+ more employees get a tax break. What say you Mr. Politician, are you up for some more campaign donations?"
So the congressman with the help of the other congressman pass these new measures which makes Bob and others like him to comply or face hefty fines. So in order to adhere to the compliance COST, he has to lay off workers. You see the big bike factory already had all of this in place so it didn't hurt them, but they knew it would hurt all of their Bob competitors out there. When the big bike corporation has to go to the state for help, that my friend is NOT Capitalism.
@babecolate No, if you read my comment it is under the guise of safety.
@babecolate I'm always amazed when people say that companies sell dangerous products with no regulation. For a moment imagine a free market where there is no government regulation. Would these "evil smoking cigar capitalist" decide to make faulty products that ends up killing people? Let's say this company whatever it is cuts corners and makes a product resulting in the death of a thousand people. Knowing that, are you going to buy the product? No? Why not? Because you care about your safety right? Don't you think there are other babecolate consumers out there that also care about their safety too and also won't buy the products? What happens when enough babecolat's stop buying their products? They go under right? Do you see now, why it is in the company's financial interest to create good quality safe products in a free market?
@babecolate My goodness you guys drank way too much of the Bernie Sanders cool-aid. Alot of false claims to respond to, so let me just choose a couple to prevent a text wall.
The fact that you mention that fossil fuel companies lobby to get favorable results is NOT Capitalism, so what is the complaint? Against Cronyism? Sure, I'm against cronyism too, but let's not kid ourselves, the government (not the free market) created the rules for which a company can lobby. If a company doesn't engage in lobbying efforts and decides to stand on true moral principals and real Capitalism of a fair free market they will get crushed because their competitors will go to government and get the club of government to after them. So yes I'm against lobbying efforts (not Capitalism), but I understand why they do it out of necessity, a problem of government not free market Capitalism.
You mentioned machines to replace workers, well did you know in New York in the 1980s much of the car washing places disassembled their machines and hired more people to wash cars? Yes, the price of labor was actually cheaper then the price of the machines. Well that worked out great until the unions got involved earlier this decade. They said the same ol Bernie mantra "you need to fight for fair wages, you are being exploited..." and the unions went to government to increase wages and introduce regulations. Well as a result they brought the machines back and many workers layed off (thanks uncle sam). What is worse is some of these layed off workers started to illegally wash cars on the street at the risk of being thrown in jail. Thanks Bernie Sanders type of policies for threatening to put poor people in jail.
An economic system without morality at the heart of it always leads to greed and exploitation. So building a house for appearance and size to sell at a high profit is more concerned with short term profit to a negative long term expense--higher costs in utilities is just one part. The moral approach realizes the world has limited resources and "misusing" them on building things for profit rather than to last or provide the greatest service is a disservice to the world and everyone in it. The moral approach allows people to feel good about what they do and fully respected by everyone in society.
Video sponsored by communism: we own you but at least bob isnt richer than you :)
I'm an anarchist, at least figure out what you're attacking, lol
"we own you" *Defends a system that was fine with slavery until a couple of decades ago and still is fine with wage slavery*
@@benjaminr8961 yes, autonomous relationships and no illegitimate authority is such a stupid awful thing, isn't it?
And you people honestly think you have the moral high ground or are somehow more intellectually endowed for supporting oppressive systems of violence and suffering.
@@benjaminr8961 That's a lot of bold assertions you're making. Do you have any evidence for your claims?
@@benjaminr8961 Do you even know the slightest about human history you pseudointellectual fuckstain? Still haven't substantiated your claims.
it really depends a more regulated capitalism is to me the solution
The problem is that his employees weren't forced to work there thats the problem that most people don't realize if you want more money go work somewhere else you arent forced to work anywhere
Tell that to the millions of people who didn't want to work without PPE or proper healthcare during COVID but have to because if they quit they'll be evicted (~50% of renters in most states now facing eviction) or starve (1 in 7 Americans relied on food banks BEFORE covid)
Can you please make a video about socialism, I want to learn more about socialism. I really like the format of your video
Check out my "How Anarchism Works" video and my partner Luna's channel at th-cam.com/users/lunaoi for some different perspectives! And let us know if you have any questions!