Caramel's Ideal Society

1a. Con calls my interpretation of wage labor "superficial" because "capital owners do not order others around as their slaves." While we are not technically slaves, it is certainly arguable that we endure slave-like conditions. In the middle ages, half of a serf's wage went to his landlord, and half to himself. It was a lot more flagrant in those days, but really what has changed? "Capitalism is restricted to negative rights of exclusion, not positive rights of control." That's great, but if we make a system where only negative rights of exclusion includes excluding someone from basic needs, then what does it matter? 1b. Con did a poor job rebutting my points. He does not address how easily people are used and controlled under capitalism other than to say they "gave permission..." 2. Con says that "you can't rape me" is based on his capitalistic principle, but is unwilling to argue how this problem pans out. 3a. "...Pro... doesn't explain why [exclusion is bad]" The words "horde" and "steal" were your clues. IOWs income disparity and desperation to steal. It's sort of like if you're in the supermarket. There is no incentive for you to steal out of my cart (before we pay) because the items are equally accessible (free). However once you buy goods (assuming I cannot because of lack of purchasing power) I have the motive to steal from you. In this context one can see that much if not the vast majority of crime is actually promoted internally by capitalism. "...but wages are a lot higher if you can use expensive machines over your bare hands... Without [capitalism], there would be much less machinery in society." These statements contradict; you seem to say we use labor because the invisible hand guides us away from expensive machines but then you say capitalism gives us more machines. If resources were more evenly distributed, expensive machines would look a whole lot more inviting since we are necessarily empowering the lower classes who have to make these goods (the people in general want less wage labor while the rich don't mind). Furthermore, doesn't it make some sense that the labor we use instead of the machines could have very well just gone into the machines themselves? 3b. "People can choose to waive their property rights [therefore capitalism is not counter-cooperative]" Explaining why capitalism is counter-cooperative isn't necessary since it is built right into the economic theory of the system. Capitalism's efficiency is directly proportional to the amount of competition within each market. Capitalist economists understand that "perfect competition" is what the market strives for - that is, having enough firms offering enough different competing products in order to give us ample choice and power to choose. 3c. Con cites the tragedy of the commons to attack common ownership. The "tragedy" is not a potent force in cooperative systems; the theory specifically deals with people acting in their own self-interests. When everyone acts in their own interests, they neglect the pool of resources in favor of competing to their fullest abilities (as they must under capitalism less they perish to their competition). In a cooperative system, there is breathing room to coordinate with others sharing the same pool because you are not intensely competing with them. 4. "I think Pro's politics is so useless that he cannot make ANY useful policy recommendations." In regards to what? 5a. "division of labor would suffer drastically" Why? "We could no longer manufacture computer or medicine at such a small scale." Why? Poverty in third world countries is due to inability to compete with rich countries who exploit them. We consume their resources because we cannot provide for ourselves. We have 5% of the world's population but consume 25% of the raw energy. In almost every conceivable category, we consume more than we produce (with the exception of garbage). We are using other countries' resources to keep us fat and rich through capitalistic exploitations by multinationals. 5b. Your Amish example did not "clearly" explain this. Your statistics for charity are interesting; the entire list combines to a little over $100B. The gross world product is over $65T as of 2007. So if the world's economy was $65, then total charities would be one penny. Wow, you really showed us some philanthropy there. Additionally, your chart says the US is 19th in line for % contributed. We get rich by hoarding what we have - this is not cooperation. 5c. Competition can breed innovation, but not as much as cooperation - where information is freely distributed and efforts to invent are combined instead of mutually excluded. 5d. A price mechanism is indeed an efficient way to decide the size of a supermarket, but it isn't a necessary condition for one. Planners can decide the size of a supermarket better than businessmen, in fact, because they take into account more than just costs of production and profit. They can decide the place to build based on environmental factors as well as economic ones. This includes transportation routes (and adjusting them if necessary), impacts to resources and sensitive ecological areas and projections of population growth and consumption. Con will complain about how we will lose the business savvy efficiency but think clearly about how much businessmen waste while creating these minuscule efficiencies: resources spent on profit, marketing, accounting, lawyers, insurance, security, taxes... And of course the fact that these businesses may not contribute to society at all (e.g., a whoopie-cushion factory). 5e. Capitalism underlies the gov't's zoning decisions, and businesses lobby to do whatever they want anyway. Furthermore, zoning is really only necessary to deal with capitalism. 5f. "Walmart is better for the masses" Evidence? 5g. Monopolization is not bad unless it is competitive. 6a. Why don't you just look around. Why do we have 30,000,000 acres of lawns in the US and very few gardens? Why aren't there berries, grapes, and vegetables planted all throughout every single neighborhood in the US? 6b. I don't care about your distinctions between the govt and business. The govt is mostly businessmen and capitalists who are only there to facilitate the private sector in the first place. Capitalism requires police, lawyers, insurance, banks, marketing, profit, security, accountants... All these institutions are moot in my system - we save the resources by not having them. The fact that you have to use an example thousands of miles away to show what the 300,000,000 people in this country "could" be doing under the system we are already using is evidence in itself we cannot do it, is it not? 6c. I know how the economics work but this doesn't stimulate neighborhood gardens. We don't need "investors" to grow a patch of zucchinis. Neighborhood property rights destroy our ability to grow, which prompts the "guerrilla gardening" movement. 7a. Making something illegal doesn't fix the problem. Addressing the underlying motives does. 7b. My argument is theoretical. If a community produces its own goods, it cant have supply chains cut off. Output will be less, of course - we aren't producing all the cheap goods we were before, so we don't need to have output as high. The freedom not to work menial labor is worth the offset in material goods anyway. You are a capitalist and measure your life in the amount of "stuff" you have so you cannot understand my argument. American colonies are moot. They did not have the infrastructure or technology we possess. I might as well compare capitalism to some ancient bartering system... 8. Why do you think we created patents in the first place? Who does most of the lobbying? Blame the capitalist institutions for capitalism's failings... 9. This doesn't address my point at all. 9b. Trade is possible without money...