The Minimalist
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There is a moment in Forrest Gump in which a lucky storm destroys every shrimp boat save our simple protagonist's, which he'd bought with money from a ping pong endorsement, giving him a shrimp monopoly lasting enough to ultimately make him filthy rich. Perhaps I've erred in choosing a beloved character to represent injustice, but what's done is done. The question: should this feeb's fortune be seized? My answer, as I'll explain, is yes.
It's not about uncompetitive markets
Monopoly pricing is unnecessary to explain Gump's windfall. The storm multiplied the number of shrimp (and thus the profit) Gump netted per haul (and thus per contribution of labor) by the factor by which it reduced the number of shrimp boats. That would be a bonanza even if price didn't change and indeed even if some other boats remained.
It's not about incomplete markets
As the storm did not increase the rate of shrimp depletion, it didn't increase the marginal social cost of shrimping, meaning the factor by which Gump's profits increased would be no lesser if he were made to pay that cost.
It's about volatile markets
Every shrimp boat, for all we know, was bought with the wages of labor, perhaps even labor as noble as ping pong, and had the same expected value. Far from predicting the storm and thus the true value, Gump was retarded. And yet he reaped it, while his unfortunate competitors received less than the expected value, despite presumably being of normal intelligence. Furthermore, the storm did not change the value of Gump's past, ping pong labor or present, shrimping labor. It thus increased the value of Gump's capital, relative to the value of his labor, however defined, while decreasing the value of his competitors' capital, relative to the value their labor.
The Galt test
In my view, no entitlement is stable unless it passes the Galt test, which is to say that the entitled can force it by threatening to withdraw what he's entitled to or whatever is supposed to have earned it. An entitlement to one's living labor, though perhaps redundant, passes the test, because one's living labor is integral to oneself and thus it itself can be withheld at will. But when one converts that labor into capital, one is no longer integral to it and thus no longer more capable of withdrawing it from the industrial process than others. One can perhaps threaten to withhold future labor if one isn't entitled to past labor's wages in the form of capital, but that threat only has weight to the extent that one's labor retains its value relative to one's capital. To the extent that the value of one's capital loses its relation to the value of one's labor, like Gump's shrimp company did, one's threat to go Galt if one isn't entitled to it is no more credible than any threat by any madman who makes demands disproportionate to his contributions.
The remedy
Rather than remunerate labor with capital and wait for their values to diverge until capital is seized suddenly, collectivize the means of production once and for all, and remunerate consumable labor with consumable goods. That is the crux of collectivism, and this has been the Forrest Gump argument.
For goodness sakes, it was just a movie! Why must you Communists try to ruin everything of even the slightest value?
Everyone has a right to their own labor, but when you trade that labor the question isn't that you have a right to your labor, but what that labor is worth. The answer isn't collectivism because in a collective you don't own your own labor to begin with, but instead the collective owns your labor. In short, If you want to be in control you can't give that control that you're after to the collective.
Furthermore, Forest Gump earned his way to riches with his labor on the shrimp boat. He not join up with some collective and reach his goals. Forest Gump is an absolutely terrible example to use towards collectivist goals since it pretty much expresses the power of individualism and capitalism.
Did you even see the movie? Before the storm, Gump's "labor" (his labor plus his shrimp boat) was worth one dead shrimp and some scattered debris. After the storm, his nets were teeming with the little guys. It was thus the storm's labor, an act of random destruction that decreased the quantity and thus increased the value of shrimp boats, of which Gump had the only one left. The other shrimpers did not fail because they suddenly became lazy, they failed because they suddenly became shrimp boat-less.
in communism, everything is a monopoly. that's part of why it doesn't work.
i think we allow corporations to get far too large. it's akin to someone building a rickety skyscraper right next to your house. the fall is inevitable, and it's going to take out your house with it. we don't allow that in the construction world; i don't see why we should allow it in banking / financial, either.
but in the specific case listed in the OP, no, i wouldn't take his windfall. his monopoly was remedied by the market. plus, he's Forrest ****ing Gump, ya big meanie.
Monopoly's only relationship to inefficiency is its ability to increase price without losing customers to competitors. Without the incentive to do so, that ability is irrelevant. When the monopoly is owned by its customers, the incentive isn't there.
The risk systemic to capitalism has nothing to do with the size of the firms. It has to do their herd-following behavior in the absence of antecedent planning. There was boom and bust long before the extreme centralization we see today.
His monopoly was remedied by the market the way a kidnapping is remedied by the ransom. The question is whether his entitlement to monopoly's wages should be observed--that is, whether we should be mean to Gump or mean to those we would redistribute them to.
they don't raise the price. they just don't make enough of the product, because there is no potential competitor. hence, toilet paper shortages and waiting ten years for a Trabant.
it has everything to do with the size of the firms. the end result of underregulated capitalism is fewer and fewer winners. this results in ****tier, more expensive goods and services.
i'm for breaking up anticompetitive companies that get too large, but not for seizing the earnings of companies that happen onto some once in a lifetime windfall before the market restores competition. however, if a company suddenly becomes the sole source of a much needed commodity after a disaster and then starts price gouging, i'm fine with preventing them from doing that. i see no evidence that shrimp is an essential commodity or that Forrest price gouged. if the shrimp market was reduced to one player and he or she increased the price to $1,000 a pound, i just wouldn't eat shrimp. and neither would anyone else, other than the very rich, who would do it as a status symbol. water and gasoline are essential; shrimp is not.
So, before Communism, everyone rode around in Cadillacs? You're essentially using the same waiting times argument conservatives use against socialized medicine. Yes, when goods are rationed according to wealth instead of need, one does not wait, because unless one is wealthy one never gets. As for toilet paper shortages, there was one right here in America in 1973, apparently caused by Johnny Carson. I'm not saying that the criticism that the Soviet Union had a calculation problem isn't valid, rather that their problem was the same as capitalism's, which is that consumers weren't participant to planning.
That's certainly one problem with laissez-faire capitalism, but it's clearly not the cause of boom and bust, because there was boom and bust before the rise of monopoly capital. As long as the winners, whatever their number, behave as a herd, which they do, the risk consequent to unplanned economics is bound to be fully realized in crises such as the Great Recession.
Again, it's not about the effect on shrimp prices, it's about the effect on those who don't have Gump's money as a result of Gump having it. You may consider shrimp a luxury (on the contrary, lean protein is essential to good health), but what makes the price of essentials oppressive is the lack of money to pay for them, which lack is as attributable to non-ownership of the means of producing luxuries as it is non-ownership of the means of producing essentials.
i'm not sure how you don't see that having only one producer of consumer goods is a monopoly, and that the potential consequences of that are the same as a capitalist monopoly. the Soviet system was a failure. that doesn't mean that there isn't a public role for essential services like health care, though.
the problem is that they don't just behave as a herd. they actively consolidate unless prevented from doing so. my opinion is that we should ensure competition through regulation.
but the good part of capitalism is that someone with very little money can get work hard, get lucky, and pull themselves out of poverty. i have no problem with that. i have a problem with them using that wealth to prevent others from doing the same, though. i'm for ensuring long term competition. i don't support retroactively taking their earnings from them when the market has solved the problem.
The Soviet Union ceased to exist, like other empires. To draw general conclusions about communism from that is an insult to reason. And how do you explain the difference in the treatment of essential and non-essential services? Does capitalism work or doesn't it? Or is it that, while it doesn't work at all, its few beneficiaries would rather throw a dry crust of bread to its most miserable victims than witness its full effect? As for my not seeing that one producer equals a monopoly, that's untrue; I granted that one producer is a monopoly, and left it to you to explain what the incentive is to withhold supply when that one producer is identical to the consumers.
I'm certainly open to the proposition that, if we're too timid to nationalize the banks, the next best think might be to break them up, but my point remains. Even in competition, investors behave as a herd, as the record shows, so anti-trust is an insufficient remedy of boom and bust.
But as I explained, it hasn't solved the problem, it's only solved one problem. The problem of the poverty of the unlucky remains, the possibility of future luck notwithstanding. As any investor knows, wealth is a fine substitute for luck. Risk, indeed, is often defined in terms of the amount of wealth necessary to cover it. And though you prefer to imagine the penniless receiving it, luck is in fact equally available to all, as is its polar opposite. It is luck's money multiplier that is unfairly distributed, so if luck alone is as generous as you say then let the luckily wealthy give up their money and try their luck again. Better yet, remove luck from the equation by remunerating consumable labor with consumable goods.
i'm fine with some form of regulated capitalism, but at this point in human and societal evolution, anything resembling communism only works in small tribes in which every member is immediately accountable.
If so, that would be a good argument for tribalism, but I'm not convinced. Resources are already collectivized, after all, in the form of corporations. Now, I know you're an anti-trust guy, but am to infer that you want to break corporations up until they're the size of small tribes?
as for corporations, i've already explained that i want regulation to ensure competition.
Far from predicting the storm and thus the true value, Gump was retarded.
There is a moment in Forrest Gump in which a lucky storm destroys every shrimp boat save our simple protagonist's, which he'd bought with money from a ping pong endorsement, giving him a shrimp monopoly lasting enough to ultimately make him filthy rich. Perhaps I've erred in choosing a beloved character to represent injustice, but what's done is done. The question: should this feeb's fortune be seized? My answer, as I'll explain, is yes.
It's not about uncompetitive markets
Monopoly pricing is unnecessary to explain Gump's windfall. The storm multiplied the number of shrimp (and thus the profit) Gump netted per haul (and thus per contribution of labor) by the factor by which it reduced the number of shrimp boats. That would be a bonanza even if price didn't change and indeed even if some other boats remained.
It's not about incomplete markets
As the storm did not increase the rate of shrimp depletion, it didn't increase the marginal social cost of shrimping, meaning the factor by which Gump's profits increased would be no lesser if he were made to pay that cost.
It's about volatile markets
Every shrimp boat, for all we know, was bought with the wages of labor, perhaps even labor as noble as ping pong, and had the same expected value. Far from predicting the storm and thus the true value, Gump was retarded. And yet he reaped it, while his unfortunate competitors received less than the expected value, despite presumably being of normal intelligence. Furthermore, the storm did not change the value of Gump's past, ping pong labor or present, shrimping labor. It thus increased the value of Gump's capital, relative to the value of his labor, however defined, while decreasing the value of his competitors' capital, relative to the value their labor.
The Galt test
In my view, no entitlement is stable unless it passes the Galt test, which is to say that the entitled can force it by threatening to withdraw what he's entitled to or whatever is supposed to have earned it. An entitlement to one's living labor, though perhaps redundant, passes the test, because one's living labor is integral to oneself and thus it itself can be withheld at will. But when one converts that labor into capital, one is no longer integral to it and thus no longer more capable of withdrawing it from the industrial process than others. One can perhaps threaten to withhold future labor if one isn't entitled to past labor's wages in the form of capital, but that threat only has weight to the extent that one's labor retains its value relative to one's capital. To the extent that the value of one's capital loses its relation to the value of one's labor, like Gump's shrimp company did, one's threat to go Galt if one isn't entitled to it is no more credible than any threat by any madman who makes demands disproportionate to his contributions.
The remedy
Rather than remunerate labor with capital and wait for their values to diverge until capital is seized suddenly, collectivize the means of production once and for all, and remunerate consumable labor with consumable goods. That is the crux of collectivism, and this has been the Forrest Gump argument.
Yes, but you also said anything resembling communism (by which you presumably meant collectivism, not communism, as it was collectivism, not communism, that I'd advocated) could only work in small tribes. Well, a corporation is a collective, differing from other collectives only in its distribution of shares, not in the immediate accountability of its members as you suggested. And a corporation doesn't have to be a monopoly in order to be larger than a small tribe.
in communism, everything is a monopoly. that's part of why it doesn't work.
yes, but in a corporate model, profit is the motivation. in a communal system, the common good is the motivation. if one is not immediately accountable to others in the tribe, it doesn't work.
Never mind the corporate model; I'm talking about actually-existing corporations, in which work is paid in wages and profits go to absentee shareholders and thus motivate only investment, the ransomed release of the hostage Industry. And never mind communism; again, I'm talking about collectivism, in which wages are work's motivation, same as in a corporation, only ownership is democratic. [If you're confused by my lean, I take full responsibility for that; I'm what Kropotkin referred to in Conquest of Bread as a "Spanish collectivist", a communist internally to the basic social unit (your "small tribe") and a collectivist externally.]
so map out your system, and we can discuss it. i'm not convinced that a large scale communist or collectivist system can work at this point in societal evolution. the reason is that it has not worked yet up to this point except in small tribes in which every member was immediately accountable to the rest of the tribe.
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