Well I hope I’m not just having a knee jerk reaction as I have thought on a lot of this over the years. I’m certainly no apologist for the current status quo in any case. It’s embarrassingly deficient.
I think if you looked back over the smoldering wreckage of this thread above, and you are honest with yourself, you’ll notice that you got things entirely 180 here.
Perhaps the bulk of the thread so far has been peeps annoying me with “In your fantasy Communist paradise…” Qs, and me annoying them back by refusing to to write any fantasy for them. Reread the OPs posts in this thread, there’s only a few… none of which contain any fantasy either. I think if you are honest, you’ll see that all the fantasy ITT was injected by those who were trying very-very-very hard to project their own personal and fantastically silly fantasies into the chat.
That’s why I’m going to once again suggest that we just set all this crap aside. Because that’s all it is: crap. Instead, and again, I’m going yo suggest we look at the 180 opposite of fantasy… which is history.
Despite this lowering of the fare, the worker-run transit system operated at a profit. A sizeable part of this profit was donated to the anti-fascist war effort. Workers also donated their time on Sundays to work in factories set up in transit system workshops to make munitions for the People’s Army.
A large amount of French and American machine tools were purchased, to make the transit operation largely self-sufficient in spare parts. This included an automated American machine tool that could make multiple copies of identical parts — the only machine of its kind in Spain. A furnace for melting down used bearings was acquired. The new equipment meant that the system had an enhanced ability to build its own streetcars. Before the revolution, the private company had only made about 2 percent of the repairs through its own workshops and were set up only to deal with the most urgent repairs. But within a year under workers management, the workshops were manufacturing 98 percent of the parts used. They were able to do this and still make a profit, despite a 150 percent increase in prices of raw materials.
https://www.workerscontrol.net/authors/worker-management-barcelona-public-transit-system-1936-1939
1 Like
I’m pretty much 100% convinced you don’t even understand what capitalism is.
You have an idea about it, that you read about, with some catch words attached to that idea. And it pretty much ends there.
Profit? Well then what happens when the people who need streetcars decide that the streetcar producers (aka owners) don’t deserve a profit and decide to just seize the streetcars from the dirty pigs?
When the capitalist writes a check for a few million dollars to buy the land he becomes quite necessary.
The capitalist/landlord is a rent seeking middle man between the producers of the goods or services, and the end user.
Again, (for now) you are convinced that rent seeking is a necessary. It is not.
Are you saying this happened in Spain during the revolution? Or are you instead actively trying to interject your own fantasy into the chat?
I’ll say it for like the 100x ITT: to compare thingees you need to (a) have an agreed metric, and (b) be able to evaluate different things in a stand alone manner.
For you to be able to do (b) with what you seem to keenly so want to ‘viciously debate’ is better/worse/whatever against, you’d really need to go to school. A whole lot of school. All before the ‘vigorous debate’ could even begin. Right now I don’t feel you are in a learning mood.
So some profit is ok is I think what you’re saying?
There’s a difference between worker owned and managed vs a capitalist for profit enterprise.
Imagine you have the option to work for two different companies:
A) you participate in the decision making process, and mutually agree upon how to allocate revenue: compensation, capital improvements, etc.
B) you may or may not participate in decision making process. And 20% of the revenue is given to a private equity firm that decides how the remaining 80% of revenue is allocated.
Your job as a pro capitalist would be to explain why anyone should choose option B.
To qualify as rent seeking, the capitalist would have needed to increase his wealth without creating new wealth.
So the capitalist spent millions buying the land I am hovering above.
The capitalist spent millions more in architectural / engineering / permits / sales office and initial construction of project.
The capitalist pooled together the money of hundreds of buyers in order to build this project.
The contractor got paid $100 million to build this project. Half of that $100M went into labour cost. The other half went into materials. Literally $50M+ dollars was directly deposited into the bank accounts of actual workers.
You actually have no idea how to apply rent seeking as a term. First you need to actually understand what it means factually. You think you can just throw around words here and win arguments?
Mostly because A is a fantasy. I mean just look at this site trying to make rules with group consensus. Try running a business like that.
1 Like
What’s ok is in the eye of the beholder. Some peeps think backing the Yankees is ok. As as Red Sox fan, I disagree. I’m not deflecting when I keep answering Qs this way. I’m pointing out that what’s being discussed here isn’t some kinda childish so-called morality play.
Of course, in revolutionary Barcelona, at the restaurants that G.Orwell and his wife ate at, they were making a profit. Otherwise, they’d have gone out of business. And then G.Orwell and his wife would have eaten elsewhere.
Inb4… did they use silverware? SMH ZOMG.
Without doing any reading on that I’m gonna make a wild guess and say that most of the 74k employees don’t have dick to say in how things are run.
None of these things create value. The work done by the people hired does but just putting up the money doesn’t.
Proudly proclaiming you’d rather “wild guess” than “know”.
Because reading a wiki is too much work. Bizarre. SMH.
ETA: I’m doing it to myself again. I’ve googled like 3-4 things for you in the last ~hour. Things you easily could, and obviously would, google yourself if you actually cared to learn. Man I suck at the interwebs !!!1!
Jeez you made me feel bad. So I looked. And I was correct.
They have more to say about it than you have to say about how the USA or the state of Massachusetts is run. I know that’s not saying much at all, but 1/74000 is a pretty small number. 
Ya I’m going to guess the decision makers pay absolutely zero attention whether it’s 1/74000 or 1/7400000000000000000000 so in practicality it doesn’t matter.
I agree. We both know what the definition of rent seeking is.
The Capitalist has convinced you that he is a necessary middleman in the process.
He’s simply standing between the workers/producers and the consumers.
Your argument seems to be boiling down to, “Well you can’t have wealth creation without the Capitalist getting his totally-not-rent-seeking share, because that’s what Capitalism teaches.”
2 Likes