And if you opened up a store/shop doing whatever, how are you supposed open up a 2nd store/shop if you don't make any profit?
It's ok to be angry about capitalism
- Thread starter XsjadoBlaydette
- Start date
And how would one "make it" like that?
((Also, still haven't answered the question. You said it worked better before. When?))
Why do you automatically assume you have to open a second? Why isn't one enough?
the value of labor to a capitalist is the revenue it allows the capitalist to acquire minus the non-labor expenses (i.e. not the wage itself) associated with employing that labor. and so we will see that
profit = income - expenses
is mathematically equivalent to "Profit is the difference between the value produced by employees and what those employees are paid."
income = revenue generated by workers using the tools at their disposal (which require maintenance or replacement)
expenses = labor costs + capital costs (the maintenance and replacement of the tools/technology/etc.) + rent on the land or whatever else
so,
profit = revenue generated by workers using the tools at their disposal - labor costs - capital costs - rent and other necessary expenses
the value of the labor to the capitalist = revenue generated by workers using the tools at their disposal - capital costs - rent and other necessary expenses
you can probably see what's coming next
profit = value - labor cost (i.e. wages; compensation to the employees)
or to put it another way, profit is the difference between the value produced by employees and what those employees are paid.
Nope.
You have managed to separate out that there are other factors that determine the cost side of the ledger, but are defining revenue as generated solely by labor. Revenue is all of what people pay you, and there is not just one single factor that gets credited for why.
By this approach, gov departments, charities and non-profits are actually profit-making. And in order to stop qualifying as profit-making, they would need to... stop investing in their gov and charitable work, and put all that money into their own wages.
Additionally, we get some perverse conclusions when a business fails to profit, as Seanchaidh's logic would dictate that if a business loses money, the workers are necessarily being paid more than their labor is worth.
if you can't exploit people, how are you supposed to exploit even more people..?
if you want a big worker-owned cooperative business, you're probably going to get it by agreement with other workers who would be owners. if you need a new location in order to make the best use of all your workers, then you'd democratically decide to set aside funds from the revenue of the worker-owned cooperative business in order to buy that new location. (assuming this all exists in a context in which buying and selling is how the relevant resources are distributed).
labor is absolutely necessary to the process. without labor, none of those other things are worth anything at all to the capitalist; even their value in exchange, closing the business and liquidating all assets, is dependent on the prospect of others doing labor with those assets. think of a copper mine; it is worthless if you never get the copper out of it. you can say the value of the copper comes from the earth, that it is a natural resource, but you get literally none of that value without someone at some time putting forth the effort to haul it out of the ground.
if you own a copper mine and don't sell copper (or use the copper in some other thing to sell), then you make precisely zero money on the income side of the ledger. if you own a bank and don't take deposits or approve loans, you make precisely zero revenue. if you own a game development company with all the computers and software licenses and a handy building for people to do the development in, but don't employ anyone to use it? Zero revenue. Getting the point?
If you don't have dough, you can't make pizza. Doesn't matter how much cheese, or sauce, or toppings you have, you won't have pizza. Therefore, all profit from a sale of a pizza belongs to the dough, and anything the other ingredients take is theft. /s
The labor equally does nothing without the organization, materials, resources, facilities, logistics, location, demand, etc. You could wipe out a wide variety of necessary factors, and rationalize why the labor is worthless without it, and reach the conclusions "Zero revenue. Getting the point?"
not if you've understood the rest of the analysis. "value" stands in for "the value of labor to a capitalist". Where is the capitalist in these scenarios?
the extent to which a non-profit or charity cares about revenue for its own sake-- as a value-- ahead of whatever their mission is supposed to be is the extent to which it is basically corrupt and not a non-profit or charity at all. And the extent to which a government department does this is the extent to which it is better described as a state-owned enterprise rather than a government department. While it is certainly possible for charities and non-profits and government departments whose purpose is not the generation of revenue to be exploitative, the definition of value in their context is different and so the analysis is not applicable; a non-profit does not produce any value for a capitalist and there is no shareholder who will receive more dividends because the non-profit had more revenue. A director might get a higher salary or something, but that is basically corruption.
all of those ingredients were gathered/made with labor.
the capacity to do labor is worth something without any of those things. indeed, using that capacity is how you get all of those things.
This is circular logic.
If a capitalist is defined as one who extracts profit from the labour of others, and profit is defined as the value of that labour minus expenses, then any organisation that doesn't spend all its income on wages or expenses is profit-making and run by a capitalist. You cannot just add a circular addendum, "this only counts as capitalist profit-making if profit-making capitalists are involved".
if you just ignore any clear distinction that is not self-referential, anything is circular. so don't do that. the word 'capitalist' has a meaning and non-profits do not qualify.
Right, but in this instance that clear distinction means that value minus labour cost doesn't always equal profit, though that was your whole definition for it originally.
We can add the qualification of, "when run by a capitalist enterprise" in order to exclude non-profits, that's fine. But then we need a definition for "capitalist" beyond "extracts profit", else we're back to just being self-referential.
Not too hard to come up with. A capitalist could be one who extracts value primarily for personal enrichment or expansion of the enterprise itself, maybe.
With laws and policies. To make any other system work, you'd need to do the same things.
Capitalism was better in say the 80s for example than it is now. Unless you think capitalism is currently the best it's ever been, it's pretty easy to find a time it was better.
So you think it's efficient to have every single local area having to have their own coffee shop or car maker so you have thousands upon thousands of different coffee and car makers all independently trying to improve their products? You think we have enough car engineers to be able to build and design cars to have each city have their own personal car manufacturer? You also lose the cultural significance of everyone's favorite burger joint or whatever.
And constantly integrating companies with completely different systems in place sounds super efficient!!!
Right, so capitalism works when the government ensures they don't act how they want to act.
Why put these people in charge of employment, remuneration, etc if their impulses are ones the government is required to curtail?
Interesting that you say it was working better in the 80s, right after saying that capitalism requires government regulation to prevent exploitation. Can you see why that might be interesting?
Same with any other economic system. Same with anything else, there's a reason you can't have a tall guy in basketball stand by the rim and just catch all the shots.
Was it not working better then or not?
Sure, every government system is improved with hefty regulation.
But capitalism is the one that is focused on making sure all the resources are in the hands of the ones who would act awfully if not regulated.
In some ways. In other ways, no. But that's not what I asked. Why do you think it's interesting to say 1) capitalism requires lots of gov regulation; and 2) capitalism was working better in the 80s?
Every system has to have rules that stop humans from being humans essentially.
There was less exploitation overall via capitalism then than there is now.