Agna ... one more try ...

[KittenKoder]

Alright then, tell me why Capitalism is wrong ... just any one reason that I can't shoot down, and NO arguing or I will just flame you again.

 

[JBeukema]

Kitty, you must clarify. Do you mean capitalism in general, or a specific form?

 

[KittenKoder]

Kitty, you must clarify. Do you mean capitalism in general, or a specific form?

He's suppose to be such a great debater, he can choose ...

 

[KittenKoder]

 

[JBeukema]

you try too hard, KK

 

[Gunny]

Kitty, you must clarify. Do you mean capitalism in general, or a specific form?

He's suppose to be such a great debater, he can choose ...

What've YOU been smoking?

 

[Amanda]

 

[JBeukema]

Kitty, you must clarify. Do you mean capitalism in general, or a specific form?

He's suppose to be such a great debater, he can choose ...

What've YOU been smoking?

More importantly, when is she going to break off and kick down?

Come on, KK.. sharing is caring....

 

[Agnapostate]

Lord, what simplicity these mortals bring!

It's not difficult to condemn capitalism. There are two major grounds on which it could be condemned: its immorality and its inefficiency. Now, since I'm a principled libertarian and my formal training is technically in ethics, I often focus on immorality. But since I also prefer to simply address things in terms of bottom-line sense, speaking of capitalism's blatant inefficiency is also fun. I'll first offer some brief insights into its immorality, followed by several further insights into its inefficiency that are augmented by empirical research.

Let's examine the immorality of capitalism first. We could first examine its authoritarian nature. For example, consider wage labor. The economic framework of capitalism involves a scheme in which the private ownership of the means of production (acquired through a coercive process of "primitive accumulation") and consequent hierarchical subordination of labor under capital enables the extraction of surplus value from the working class in the production process through the use of wage labor and subsequent utilization in the circulation process in order to perpetuate a vicious cycle of capital accumulation. Remember this purdy picture?

Continuing to examine wage labor, we can next note that the hierarchical organization of the capitalist firm (a necessary demand of the financial and coordinator classes), necessitates the subordination of workers under bosses and higher-level employers, depriving them of the right to democratically manage a major aspect of their own lives. For example, consider Bob Black's comments on this:

The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phoneys and hypocrites. . . You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. . . A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called 'insubordination,' just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. . .The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are 'free' is lying or stupid.

Now, answering "you can simply change jobs" is frankly not a sufficient response to this criticism, because just as the right to migrate between an island chain of kingdoms but not outside of them would not free one from monarchy, neither can the right to select specific masters in a capitalist economy free one from that tyranny.

Nor are external economic conditions based on freedom, so long as privileged and elite segments of the population (namely the financial class, as they have more dominance than the coordinator class outside of the internal structure of the firm), to make decisions that affect the rest of the population without their democratic input. After the unjust consolidation of the means of production and the resulting power that comes as a result of it during a stage of primitive accumulation (the state had a major role in class creation), the financial class, characterized by a small and elite segment of the population is thereby able to use their control over the means of production to drastically affect the vast majority of the population in whatever way they please, which is obviously a significant rationale for collectivizing the means of production, decentralizing them, and subjecting them to direct democratic management.

In our present state of affairs, this private ownership of the means of production permits the aforementioned utilization of wage labor, which is a critical element in the coercive nature of capitalism. Since the means of production are privately owned, large components of the public have no alternative but to subordinate themselves under an employer. The best way to illustrate this form of authoritarianism is to use the "robbery analogy." If a person were to be violently tackled by an assailant and have his/her valuables torn out of his/her pockets, we would accurately call this a robbery. Now, if the assailant were to instead point a gun at the victim and demand that the valuables be surrendered, we would still call this a robbery, as coercion was used to gain the valuables, if not outright physical violence. The fact that the victim technically "consented" to surrender his/her valuables is not pertinent, since it was consent yielded while under duress.

The former example represents the direct tyranny of statism, often blunt, direct, and brutal, whereas the latter represents the more subtle tyranny of capitalism, specifically wage labor, in which a person technically "consents" to work for an employer, but does this only because he/she has no other alternative for sustenance. Now, as to that, we're certainly aware that physical force is not the only means sufficient to constitute an authoritarian imposition. The political scientist Robert Dahl has spoken of a spectrum of influence terms that involve rational persuasion, manipulative persuasion, inducement, power, coercion, and physical force. Only the first is technically a morally acceptable influence term; however, the rest are not of equivalent immorality, but instead grow progressively worse. It seems reasonable to me to define the latter three as unacceptable authoritarian impositions that act contrary to the principles of liberty, and that because of the critical role that capital plays in modern society, the deprivation of such at least constitutes an application of "power," if not "coercion."

Now, there is also significant criticism of capitalism that can be advanced on account of its inefficiency. Let's examine several trade-offs between different types of efficiency that occur in the capitalist economy. Firstly, consider the argument that unemployment is a necessary condition in the prevention of underemployment, as put by Shapiro and Stiglitz's Equilibrium Unemployment as a Worker Discipline Device. Consider this quotation:

[T]o induce its workers not to shirk, the firm attempt to pay more than the going wage; then, if a worker is caught shirking and he is fired, he will pay a penalty. If it pays one firm to raise its wage, however, it will pay all firms to raise their wages. When they all raise their wages, the incentive not to shirk again disappears. But as all firms raise their wages, their demand for labor decreases, and unemployment results. With unemployment, even if all firms pay the same wages, a worker has an incentive not to shirk. For, if he is fired, an individual will not immediately obtain another job. The equilibrium unemployment rate must be sufficiently high that it pays workers to work rather than to take the risk of being caught shirking.

Now, unemployment constitutes a form of static inefficiency. But since a sufficiently high rate of equilibrium unemployment is necessary to prevent workers from shirking, it's a necessary form of static inefficiency, because were it not present, underemployment would exist in the internal firm. External inefficiency thus becomes a necessary form of internal efficiency in the capitalist economy. Now, aside from that, we could also consider the trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency that occurs in the capitalist economy. For example, consider Jon Elster and Karl Ove Moene's explanation.

Two well-known examples of the trade-off between static and dynamic efficiency are the patent system and the role of the entrepreneur. The paradox of the patent system is that by slowing down the diffusion of knowledge it ensures that there is more knowledge to diffuse. The paradox of the entrepreneur stems from his identification with the firm (his role as the 'residual claimaint'). On the one hand, the intensity of his search for new methods and markets will be greater than that of a salaried manager; on the other hand, his criteria for accepting or rejecting the outcome of the search will be inefficient, because of his risk aversion.

We can derive the respective portions of that explanation from Joan Robinson's The Accumulation of Capital and Kenneth Arrow's Essays in the Theory of Risk-Bearing. Next, we can focus on the conflict between stimulus to innovation and the rapid spread of innovations, as noted by Robin Hahnel in In Defense of Democratic Planning:

Sometimes it is presumed that innovating capitalist enterprises capture the full benefit of their successes, while it is also assumed that innovations spread instantaneously to all enterprises in an industry. When made explicit it is obvious that these assumptions are contradictory. Yet only if both assumptions hold can one conclude that capitalism provides maximum material stimulus to innovation and achieves technological efficiency throughout the economy. In reality innovatinve capitalist enterprises temporarily capture "super profits" which are competed away more or less rapidly depending on a host of circumstances, including patent laws and the efficacy of enforcement of intellectual property rights. This means that in reality there is a trade-off in capitalist economies between stimulus to innovation and the rapid spread of innovations, or a trade-off between dynamic and static efficiency.

Now, I personally advocate libertarian socialism, which is based around the worker-owned enterprise and labor cooperative, which is not only the means of maximizing productivity and general efficiency (for example, principal-agent problems are eliminated through the unification of ownership and control in the hands of the workers themselves), but also the means of bypassing information problems in a socialist economy, and thus partially bypassing the socialist calculation debate. Regardless, let's first examine these methods of firm organization and the manner in which the capitalist economy obstructs their formation. The empirical literature almost unanimously indicates the superior efficiency of workers' ownership and management; as put by Paul B. Lumberg, "[t]here is scarcely a study in the entire literature which fails to demonstrate that satisfaction in work is enhanced or. . .productivity increases occur from a genuine increase in worker's decision-making power. Findings of such consistency, I submit, are rare in social research." For example, consider Doucouliagos's Worker participation and productivity in labor-managed and participatory capitalist firms: A meta-analysis. As he notes in the abstract:

Using meta-analytic techniques, the author synthesizes the results of 43 published studies to investigate the effects on productivity of various forms of worker participation: worker participation in decision making; mandated codetermination; profit sharing; worker ownership (employee stock ownership or individual worker ownership of the firm's assets); and collective ownership of assets (workers' collective ownership of reserves over which they have no individual claim). He finds that codetermination laws are negatively associated with productivity, but profit sharing, worker ownership, and worker participation in decision making are all positively associated with productivity. All the observed correlations are stronger among labor-managed firms (firms owned and controlled by workers) than among participatory capitalist firms (firms adopting one or more participation schemes involving employees, such as ESOPs or quality circles).

Doucouliagos's meta-analysis is useful not only because of its status as such (thus incorporating the results of many studies into its analysis), but also because of its indication of different efficiency levels between the worker-owned enterprise and the labor cooperative, which indicate that full-fledged democracy and worker input results in efficiency gains above and beyond mere ownership schemes. However, the most critical point here is that these organizational structures cannot be implemented en masse in the capitalist economy. Capitalism is of course not at all centered around a "free market"; it's based on largely imperfect markets with high rates of failure. Hence, market and wealth concentration create forms of power such as monopolistic and more broadly oligopolistic conditions that prevent the entry of new firms into a labor market characterized by the presence of more powerful and well established firms, regardless of the ability of the more productive firms to utilize resources more efficiently. First, consider negative externalities generated by the capitalist financial system, as well as conscious efforts to not aid cooperatives and related entities because they constitute abnormalities in the labor market. As put by Jaroslav Vanek:

If you go to a bank and ask for a loan to start a co-op, they will throw you out. Co-ops in the West are a bit like sea water fish in a freshwater pond. The capitalist world in the last 200 years has evolved its own institutions, instruments, political frameworks etc. There is no guarantee that another species could function if it had to depend on the same institutions. In capitalism, the power is embedded in the shares of common stock, a voting share. This has no meaning in economic democracy. Economic democracy needs its own institutions for one simple reason. Workers are not rich. Let's face it, most working people in the world today are either poor or unemployed. They do not have the necessary capital to finance democratic enterprises.

It's the critical factor of the latter firms' sheerly greater access to financial capital and greater productive resources that endows them with the ability to defeat all competition, not their greater efficiency levels. This is why capitalism is antithetical to legitimately competitive market competition where market socialism, for example, would not be. And that's merely the consequence of an interest of the financial class in maintaining conditions that will benefit them even if they are unproductive, and illustrates the conflicts between profit and productivity that arise in the capitalist economy. As put by Herbert Gintis:

[G]iven that profits depend on the integrity of the labor exchange, a strongly centralised structure of control not only serves the interests of the employer, but dictates a minute division of labor irrespective of considerations of productivity. For this reason, the evidence for the superior productivity of 'workers control' represents the most dramatic of anomalies to the neo-classical theory of the firm: worker control increases the effective amount of work elicited from each worker and improves the co-ordination of work activities, while increasing the solidarity and delegitimizing the hierarchical structure of ultimate authority at its root; hence it threatens to increase the power of workers in the struggle over the share of total value.

Hence, aside from mere negative externalities and unintentional consequences of market concentration that worker-owned enterprises and labor cooperatives (particularly the latter) are faced with, we also have to confront the reality of consciously unscrupulous business practices that more powerful competitors will be prone to engage in. Just as a quick example, underselling by local competitors can be considered a form of this, which any consistent libertarian or supporter of legitimately competitive market exchange should oppose. Consider this letter of the 19th century libertarian social theorist and philosopher John Stuart Mill:

Sir, I beg to enclose a subscription of [10 pounds] to aid, as far as such a sum can do it, in the struggle which the Co-operative Plate-Lock Makers of Wolverhampton are maintaining against unfair competition on the part of the masters in the trade. Against fair competition I have no desire to shield them. Co-operative production carried on by persons whose hearts are in the cause, and who are capable of the energy and self-denial always necessary in its early stages, ought to be able to hold its ground against private establishments and persons who have not those qualities had better not attempt it.

But to carry on business at a loss in order to ruin competitors is not fair competition. In such a contest, if prolonged, the competitors who have the smallest means, though they may have every other element of success, must necessarily be crushed through no fault of their own. Having the strongest sympathy with your vigorous attempt to make head against what in such a case may justly be called the tyranny of capital, I beg you to send me a dozen copies of your printed appeal, to assist me in making the case known to such persons as it may interest in your favor.

This simply scores to illustrate Vanek's point that "[t]he capitalist economy is not a true market economy because in western capitalism, as in Soviet state capitalism, there is a tendency towards monopoly. Economic democracy tends toward a competitive market." The consolidation of the private ownership of the means of production by the financial class prevents fair market competition and maximization of efficiency.

 

[Toro]

Capitalism is the greatest creator of wealth and increased living standards ever.

 

[JBeukema]

Lord, what simplicity these mortals bring!

It's not difficult to condemn capitalism. There are two major grounds on which it could be condemned: its immorality and its inefficiency.

What immorality? Whose morals?

Let's examine the immorality of capitalism first. We could first examine its authoritarian nature

.

demonstrate that authoritarianism is 'immoral'

For example, consider wage labor. The economic framework of capitalism involves a scheme in which the private ownership of the means of production (acquired through a coercive process of "primitive accumulation") and consequent hierarchical subordination of labor under capital enables the extraction of surplus value from the working class in the production process through the use of wage labor and subsequent utilization in the circulation process in order to perpetuate a vicious cycle of capital accumulation. Remember this purdy picture?

Members of the 'working class' can become entrepreneurs and, if successful, improve their standard of living. In your socialist pipedream, the individual is a slave to the masses and a victim tot he tyranny of the majority. Protections for the individual worker in the form of working standards, safety standards, limited work hours, and job security cannot be guaranteed, as there exists no authority to enforce any such things or to be challanged should conditions be unsatisfactory.

Your picture might be cute, but it overlooks the reality that the business managers have their own obligations and responsibilities. Maintaining the fiscal records, contacting suppliers and customers, and tending to other administrative that must be taken care of keeps the operation runnning so that all can remain employed. Take, for example, an automotive plant. The worker who makes the seat cannot be reasonably expected to also weld the vehicle together, drive the trucks, act as a liason between engineers and construction crew, ensure that the bills get paid, and supervise the whole operation. As one reacher the 'higher' tiers of administration, duties oft get more complex. As a result, one is generally paid more. Also, you forget another important aspect. If i own the building and the tools and I made the initial investment to start the company, I'm going to expect my cut. This is the motivation for entrepreneurship, investment, and innovation. No great nation have ever existed and achieved any technological advancement that did not allow individuals to benefit from their innovations, labors, and investments.

Continuing to examine wage labor, we can next note that the hierarchical organization of the capitalist firm (a necessary demand of the financial and coordinator classes), necessitates the subordination of workers under bosses and higher-level employers, depriving them of the right to democratically manage a major aspect of their own lives.

They have that right and the means to exercise it. It's called unionizing, and it is possible because of market regulations and legislation that recognizes that right. A true 'free market' with o such government influence would deny them that right and leave the individual and his coworkers victims to the whims of the masses. This Tyranny of the Majority is the same reasonthat Democracy was rejected.

For example, consider Bob Black's comments on this:

The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phoneys and hypocrites. . . You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. . . A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called 'insubordination,' just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. . .The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are 'free' is lying or stupid.

Now, answering "you can simply change jobs" is frankly not a sufficient response to this criticism, because just as the right to migrate between an island chain of kingdoms but not outside of them would not free one from monarchy, neither can the right to select specific masters in a capitalist economy free one from that tyranny.

It's called entrepreneurship, or ning your own damn boss and rewarding those with the drive to invest their time and money into their own business. It's at the heart capitalism.


One more moronic argument and IO'm not even wasting te time to finish your foolish propoganda.

Nor are external economic conditions based on freedom, so long as privileged and elite segments of the population (namely the financial class, as they have more dominance than the coordinator class outside of the internal structure of the firm), to make decisions that affect the rest of the population without their democratic input.

Again, unions and entrepreneurship. You are advocating nothing more than class warfare and the theft of the wealth from the successful at the hands of people like you who don't want to work and are too lazy to create their own wealth. You're trying to be the next Mao, but you fail to understand that this is not China and the conditions are not the same.

After the unjust consolidation of the means of production and the resulting power that comes as a result of it during a stage of primitive accumulation (the state had a major role in class creation), t

Not really. The upper social classes were preexisting and played a massive role in government- inf act, the elites pretty much made the government while the poor were the footsoldiers, as is usually the case. All social systems that emerge from within any given population are inherently elitist. Yours is no different.

he financial class, characterized by a small and elite segment of the population is thereby able to use their control over the means of production to drastically affect the vast majority of the population in whatever way they please, which is obviously a significant rationale for collectivizing the means of production, decentralizing them, and subjecting them to direct democratic management.

In other words, take their stuff and give it over to a clusterfuck and the ineffectiveness of Democracy.

and now, I tire of bothering with such meaningless drivel and propaganda. Maybe I'll feel like laughing at the rest of it after breakfast.

 

[Oddball]

Capitalism is the greatest creator of wealth and increased living standards ever.

Too pithy and easily understood to con the gullible into accepting authoritarian central planning.

 

[KittenKoder]

Lord, what simplicity these mortals bring!

It's not difficult to condemn capitalism. There are two major grounds on which it could be condemned: its immorality and its inefficiency. Now, since I'm a principled libertarian and my formal training is technically in ethics, I often focus on immorality. But since I also prefer to simply address things in terms of bottom-line sense, speaking of capitalism's blatant inefficiency is also fun. I'll first offer some brief insights into its immorality, followed by several further insights into its inefficiency that are augmented by empirical research.

Let's examine the immorality of capitalism first. We could first examine its authoritarian nature. For example, consider wage labor. The economic framework of capitalism involves a scheme in which the private ownership of the means of production (acquired through a coercive process of "primitive accumulation") and consequent hierarchical subordination of labor under capital enables the extraction of surplus value from the working class in the production process through the use of wage labor and subsequent utilization in the circulation process in order to perpetuate a vicious cycle of capital accumulation. Remember this purdy picture?
....

Wall of copy/paste text itself shows you don't know how to debate ... the fact that you had to use a "cute cartoon" as well.

This isn't a talking point, it's just rambling. Thought you could do better, but you never cease to disappoint me. So here, let's filter through all that and go with this little analogy:

Two companies appear, one makes a great product but pays it's workers poorly, the other makes a poor product but pays well. No one buys the poorly made product, so the company doesn't make enough to keep paying it's workers and has to fire them, the other one makes a fortune selling the product but soon all the workers quit, thus they all go broke. There, now we see the "dark side" of capitalism at work.

However that's not what happens, if there are not too many regulations in place then a third company with the best of both worlds will appear, hiring up all those laid off and those who quit, while putting out a decent but not perfect product. Consumers want the perfect product but since that company is no longer producing they settle on the mid level product instead, thus the third company makes money, enough to pay for all their employees and turn a mediocre profit. The price stays low because they don't want someone who can make it cheaper coming along and taking over their client base, often offering a wider range or quality.

This however is not what's happening in the US lately, instead we have regulation, a LOT of it actually, which costs a fortune to cut through. Only one or two companies with a product can pay these expenses, which range from licensing fees (which should be free or "at cost" instead of inflated) to outright bribes. The companies have to make up for those losses as well, inflating the prices of their products to accomplish this. Then they have to pay their employees minimum wages at least, again increasing the product prices. They don't have to pay them more because let's face it, there just isn't anywhere else these employees can go for better wages. Then those at the top want a raise, so they inflate the product cost more, which the consumer has to pay simply because there are no other choices. You with me still? Okay ... another company decides to try to gain a foothold in the same industry, after paying the outrageous fees for starting up (licensing and/or bribes to the regulation agencies involved) then they have to sell the product for much less than the company that is already there, meaning a few years of no profits.

Alright, now, unless the new company was started by a billionaire it will not survive, period. Even if it was since the established company has already greased palms all they have to do is turn to the regulation agencies and ask that the competition be eliminated (yes very mobbish sounding I know), so the agencies then start saying that the new company is committing some violation of regulation. They are forced to pay fines and even more fees, or grease more palms, to make it go away. However sometimes the agencies just revoke their licenses. This does not mean the product was bad for the consumers, it just means someone else has more weight and money to throw around.

If you don't think this is happening, look at the medical industry, as well as media. There are many more examples, practically every industry in the US is influenced this way and has been for quite some time. Regulation is bad, it puts all the power into the hands of only a few for entire industries. Information is good though, so investigations are the answer. Simply put the information on what products are safe, and people should be smart enough to make informed choices on their own, if not, survival of the fittest and all.

 

[JBeukema]

Too pithy and easily understood

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&s=pithiness&i=0&h=0#c

S: (n) conciseness, concision, pithiness, succinctness (terseness and economy in writing and speaking achieved by expressing a great deal in just a few words)

How is succinctness bad, if one is 'expressing a great deal'?

to con the gullible into accepting authoritarian central planning.

Seeing as authoritarian planning is found in both an over-regulated capitalist economy and a socialist system, It's unclear whether you're intending to agree or disagree with Dude's statement. Could you clarify your position, please?

 

[Oddball]

Seeing as authoritarian planning is found in both an over-regulated capitalist economy and a socialist system, It's unclear whether you're intending to agree or disagree with Dude's statement. Could you clarify your position, please?

You mean Toro??

I agree with the statement, along with its unambiguous directness.

It's my experience that, for the most part, those who use excessive verbiage and relatively obscure references to make points about relatively elementary concepts are being willfully deceptive, if but to nobody else but themselves.

 

[JBeukema]

yes, I meant Toro.

Sometimes, I can't read very well, apparently >.<;

That's the thing w/ Agana's propaganda. He tries to hard and has to track down obscure theorists and writers- only to have the simplest concepts directly contradict and refute his pipedream fantasies. Sometimes, simpler is better

 

[Oddball]

If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance......

 

[del]

If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance......

well don't leave me hanging here...

 

[Coloradomtnman]

Lyrics from the Art Bears:

The Song Of The Dignity Of Labour Under Capital

As I stood at my
Bench
And the job hurried
By-
While my hands did
Their work
A tear fell from my
Eye,
And another, and soon
Though I couldn't say
Why,
I felt such a sorrow
I wanted to
Die

My hands went on
Working
The work hurried by,
My life like a
Desert,
I empty inside,
And I shook at my bench,
And I cried and I cried
And my hands went on
Working
And the work
Hurried by.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdt6wtuDDpg]YouTube - Art Bears- Freedom[/ame]

Its very avant garde (meaning hard to listen to you), but any socialist or anyone with true understanding of freedom and capitalism will get it.

 

[manu1959]

its immorality and its inefficiency.....both subjective and relative