Basic economics for Democrats/Socialists

[The Sage of Main Street]

Is it possible stockholders are parasites compared to workers?
What's your assessment of this redistribution of income?

The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly

"Nowhere is this more clear than in our financial statements. Here’s the basic formula you’ll find on financial statements:

"Capital Income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Employee income + Cost of materials)

"Kelly uses some simple algebra to show that this formula could just as easily be re-written as:

Employee income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Capital income + Cost of materials)"

Private Enterprise Is Collectivist. The Employees Produce the Revenue and the Owners Collect It All From Them.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

The Reign of Terror Took Place in a Republic

No, ownership by employees only would be even more productive than this present absentee ownership by the stockholders. It is extremely snobbish to think that the employees wouldn't have the same self-interest in helping the company that the stockholders do now. Even more so, since their whole future may depend on keeping the company going.

Equal shares, with salaries voted on by the employees. If you want to continue with your bootlicking of the major stockholders, you could make up a story that the janitors would vote to have the same salary as people in more productive positions, counting on desperate nobodies believing it because they pathetically want to associate themselves with an imaginary Higher Power.


You don't really have any examples of employee-ownership being a disaster; those are just scare stories made up by the plutocratic parasites and believed only because of their control over the media and education. Preaching such hatred of the 99% is no more realistic than pretending that the stockholders would demand that all profits must be turned into dividends.

How is employee owned United Airlines doing?

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Taking Advantage of the Belief in the Impossibility of "Richkids on Our Side"

From its very beginning after the French Revolution, Socialism has always been a scheme by a faction of the surviving hereditary upper class to take over the threat to them of industrial democracy by leading it into a dictatorship of only themselves. It should be called "Socialistism," just as Capitalism is actually Capitalistism.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Because the notion of property rights is born out the notion of moral right. If you read The Law by Frédéric Bastiat you can see how the right to property gets rationalized from an inherent right to independent life and the fruits of your labor granted by God.

Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies that property rights for individuals and groups is a human right. The ancient Greeks recognized private property as a right, not including land ownership.

As far as I know, neither the ancient Greeks nor the modern Universal convention on human rights is based on Christian ideology.

When you see something like that, a claim that capitalism is based on Christian ideology, it's a good idea to ask yourself why someone would say that. Why would an anti-capitalist say that capitalism is based on Christian ideology? To me, the most likely reason is to associate capitalism with superstition and old fashioned religions, that are commonly criticized and marginalized on a college campus. So the person listing will say oh yeah christian, that ain't me!

The Reign of Terror Took Place in a Republic

No, ownership by employees only would be even more productive than this present absentee ownership by the stockholders. It is extremely snobbish to think that the employees wouldn't have the same self-interest in helping the company that the stockholders do now. Even more so, since their whole future may depend on keeping the company going.

I think that that is very sound in theory. I think in practice, in certain industries, it could also work out very well. I work at a company who stock was entirely owned by employees. But it was management employees only. In fact full-time management employees only. So as a part-time supervisor, I don't know how much stock each manager had or what it was worth or any details. But clearly those managers had a strong interest in the profitability of the company.

How would you envision a Company fully owned by line employees coming about? Would it be by employees buying all the stock of an existing corporation, employees forming a corporation of their own each putting in their share to buy the capital, or some other method?

Equal shares, with salaries voted on by the employees. If you want to continue with your bootlicking of the major stockholders, you could make up a story that the janitors would vote to have the same salary as people in more productive positions You can count on desperate nobodies believing such nonsense because they pathetically want to associate themselves with an imaginary Higher Power.

Assuming that the janitors had contributed as much money to the company by buying the stock as anyone else, why would the janitors not expect equal salaries with everyone else? Not only janitors, but think of the workers that specifically make money for the company, the assemblers, the sales staff, the maintenance workers for the machinery. Are they honestly going to say "oh no my job is not nearly as important as the vice president of Human Resources so I'm happy with their triple my salary remuneration?" That money coming from what could have been dividends for the workers?

You don't really have any examples of employee-ownership being a disaster; those are just scare stories made up by the plutocratic parasites and believed only because of their control over the media and education. Preaching such hatred of the 99% is no more realistic than pretending that the stockholders would demand that all profits must be turned into dividends.

I was talking about the revolution that another poster on here is so concerned about preventing. Those have always been a disaster. I don't know of any employee owned an equal shares company such as the one you envision. Are there any examples? Correct that I don't know any examples of there being a disaster. Because I don't know any examples at all.

 

[georgephillip]

will color code the two proposed formulae with blue being gain (for the company) and red being loss (for the company):

"Capital Income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Employee income + Cost of materials)

"Kelly uses some simple algebra to show that this formula could just as easily be re-written as:

Employee income + Retained earnings = Revenue – (Capital income + Cost of materials)"

Perhaps asking the question which cohort contributes more to company productivity, employees or shareholders, would help? By answering "employees" one is taking stand for worker self-directed enterprises and distributing the corporate spoils to those who are most responsible, imho.

"Chapter 2: Lords of the Earth​

The Principle of Privilege:
Stockholders claim wealth they do little to create, much as nobles claimed privilege they did not earn"

The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly

 

[georgephillip]

Private Enterprise Is Collectivist. The Employees Produce the Revenue and the Owners Collect It All From Them.

What role do shareholders play?

The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly

"'If equality under the law is the hallmark of democracy, privilege sanctioned by law is the hallmark of aristocracy.'

"Just as feudal lords extracted wealth from serfs on their lands, today’s aristocracy does the same with corporations.

"Privilege – the right of the aristocracy – is "a right to income detached from productivity.'

"After the fall of the Roman empire, the feudal lords emerged as a source of order.

"They played a valuable role in bringing social stability, but over time this role and its associated responsibilities faded – and the benefits did not.

"The same has happened with stockholders today."

 

[georgephillip]

Taking Advantage of the Belief in the Impossibility of "Richkids on Our Side"

From its very beginning after the French Revolution, Socialism has always been a scheme by a faction of the surviving hereditary upper class to take over the threat to them of industrial democracy by leading it into a dictatorship of only themselves. It should be called "Socialistism," just as Capitalism is actually Capitalistism.

About a century ago working people around the world had a much different opinion of socialism than we have in the US today. Around the end of WWI the state of Oklahoma had the most self-described socialists sitting in its legislature than any state.

Hitler's Nazi party would have been born dead if he hadn't included the word "socialism" in its name.

At the end of the 19th century many were predicting a 10 hour work-week within the next century.

Maybe by 2099?

 

[Seymour Flops]

Perhaps asking the question which cohort contributes more to company productivity, employees or shareholders, would help? By answering "employees" one is taking stand for worker self-directed enterprises and distributing the corporate spoils to those who are most responsible, imho.

"Chapter 2: Lords of the Earth​

The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly

Sure, that is what the stand is about.

Marx's idea was the workers contributed everything to the company productivity and that the capital owner contributed nothing, but merely kept part of the value generated by the worker a what capitalists call "profit," but what Marx called "surplus value." Marx defined "surplus value as the difference between the the revenue from sale of a product, minus material costs, when it was greater than the wages paid to produce the product.

For example (Marx taught), suppose a boot factory can employ ten line workers who can produce one hundred boots per eight hour day, with material costs of two dollars per boot. He can sell them in bulk for ten dollars per unit. Thus, each worker creates eighty dollars per day in value.

Suppose eighty dollars per day is the minimum that a worker will keep returning to work for - which Marx called the "minimum wage." Less that that is just slow starvation, so the workers will not do it. How does the capitalist benefit? He can benefit by increasing the workday to ten hours or twelve hours, with the wages to stay the same. If the workers can make one hundred fifty boot per twelve hour day, then there will they can sell five hundred dollars in boots, with one hundred dollars in material costs, so there is $400 in "surplus value" that the capitalist has, in Marx' view, stolen from the workers.

The truth is that unless a factory (for example) is fully automated and robotic, both are equally necessary, the worker and the capital. There is also management, which Marx also disparages, believing that the workers themselves could manage the factory far better than the owners, who he depicted as absentees who hire managers, often from the ranks of the workers.

Marx's idea was that the "ownership" of the capital was worthless in the economic equation. Capital, in his view, was not different than a natural resource. Marx criticized the idea of the owner thinking that he deserved the capital and therefore the surplus value, because the owner had worked and saved to buy the capital, or an ancestor of the owner had. Marx called this idea "primative accumulation."

What I find striking is that this idea of unearned capital was much more during agricultural times, when land was awarded by kings, and worked by workers under the management of tenannts who paid a large part of the sale of the crops to the owner who had likely not gotten dirt under his fingernails for years, if ever. Marx called that value in excess of the cost of labor "rent" in the cases of farming, instead of "surplus value." But he wrote about it after the industrial revolution.

Why were ideas like these never popularized during the centuries of agricultural capital, but exploded once the industrial revolution was in full swing? I think I know, but I'd be interested in yours and The Sage of Main Street , and Curried Goats answer before I give mine.

 

[Richard-H]

I offer this as a way to help Democrats/Socialists understand what their economic approach really means. I offer it in good faith, with the heart of a teacher.

Democrats and Socialists get much of their economic understanding from Marx or followers of Marx. I actually don't mind that, because Marx was a brilliant economist/didactic. I disagree with his conclusions, but his simplified explanation of what he called "capital" was pretty accurate.

The problem with Marx' teaching is that it starts with an industrialized economy. Humans did not.

To understand the most basic principle underlying economics, let's imagine a hypothetical human society that has no economics. Suppose a small group of people lived on an island with freshwater stream running through it, and a mild climate. Suppose this island had many fruit bearing trees, and many wild edible vegetables, available for the picking. Suppose it also had freshwater fish in the stream and a lagoon in which fish and crabs were easily gathered.

There would be no economics in that society, because there would be no scarcity. Adults can take care of their own needs easily and families take care of those too young or too old to gather food for themselves. There would be no trade, because everyone has enough of everything. There would be little or no theft because it would be as easy to gather food as to steal what another has gathered. There would be no envy or greed.

Economics arises when there is scarcity. All human being experience scarcity for two reasons: There is no island or area in which food is so easy to come by. Even if there was, it is human nature to want and create more than nature provides.

Suppose on that island, fruits and vegetables had to be planted and harvested, fish are not easy to catch near the island and so must be fished for by skilled fisherman, perhaps using boats, and the weather is often cold, requiring clothing. There would arise a division of labor, with some people making cloth, some making the cloth into clothes, some farming, some making farm tools, some fishing, some making boats, and so on. They would not need money, and could barter for all they need. The fishers could trade fish for clothes, fruits and vegetables, with a share of their catch to the person who made the boat.

There would be in impetus to improve the technology in order to have more goods to trade. More occupations would arise.

I used to ask my high school economics students: Imagine three men go out on a boat and fish all day. When they come back, they divide the fish and then sell them at the market on the docks. One man gets two-thirds of the fish to sell and the other two get on sixth each. What is the most likely reason for the uneven division of the product of their labor.

Some of them surprised me by giving the correct answer: The man who gets two thirds owns the boat.

This is where Democrats/Socialists begin to fail to understand the basics. They see all of the goods available in the modern world the same way that those islanders saw the natural resources of their island. They see no reason why anyone should have more than anyone else.

Fish in the ocean are a natural resource available to all. A boat is not. To understand why the boat owner gets the lion's share of the fish, we have to ask ourselves why he owns the boat.

I'll give you some processing time for that, and then continue.

It's a shame that they let someone teach High School economics that was obviously born yesterday!

Your first scenario - the Garden of Eden - would not work like you say. That's because a very large percentage of men feel that they must dominate or be dominated. They have to form a socio-economic hierarchy. Unfortunately, their sex lives depend largely on their place in that hierarchy.

So, in your 'Garden of Eden' scenario, thugs would either steal or take by force other people's food & resources or they would destroy those resources just to establish themselves as superior.

You only need to look at modern day America where greed is insatiable to see how true this is.

Your last scenario is just as bogus. The man owning the boat wouldn't bother fishing. He'd just charge the fisherman 2/3 of their catch in return for using his boat. He'd make sure that none of them could afford to buy their own boat and may even destroy any boat that they bought. WELCOME TO CAPITALISM!!!!

You probably even believe the BIG LIE called the 'Law of Supply and Demand'.

If you've been fooled into believing the textbook economics that exist to hide the realities of economic and human behavior, you have an infantile understanding of economics. You really shouldn't be allowed to teach economic. You did your students a grave disservice.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

How would you envision a Company fully owned by line employees coming about? Would it be by employees buying all the stock of an existing corporation, employees forming a corporation of their own each putting in their share to buy the capital, or some other method?

Assuming that the janitors had contributed as much money to the company by buying the stock as anyone else, why would the janitors not expect equal salaries with everyone else? Not only janitors, but think of the workers that specifically make money for the company, the assemblers, the sales staff, the maintenance workers for the machinery. Are they honestly going to say "oh no my job is not nearly as important as the vice president of Human Resources so I'm happy with their triple my salary remuneration?" That money coming from what could have been dividends for the workers?

Absentee Owners Aren't Earners

Wikki "Mondragon Corporation," though it doesn't say anything about the dividends employees get. That bonus is the reason janitors wouldn't demand to be paid higher wages than the engineers; pretending that they would be foolish enough to demand equality for their equity is a typical strawmen that the Sissies in Suitcoats are empowered to spread to their victims. If Yuppies are that nasty about defending their salaries, they subconsciously realize that they really don't deserve the jobs that slave education gave them. So many of them smugly isolate themselves in their offices, passing ungrammatical memoranda to one another claiming that they are "the motor that makes the company run."

I don't like Mondragon's policy of having non-owner employees. Whatever group starts a company should not have any more equity than new employees. If they are any good, they would be promoted from experience and only have a right to higher pay because of higher positions.

Second, a start-up in which people have different amounts of capital to contribute should not give them more shares. It should be treated like a loan, which would be paid back to them as a business expense, no different from a bank loan. A democratic company might be able to issue bonds and preferred stock, but never equity, which would be iniquity.

Under the present class-biased system, the unions should use union dues to buy stock and re-invest the dividends there, too. It would soon qualify for membership of the Board of Directors and later union members would own the whole company and the union would be dissolved. Politicians should be forced to make union membership and later employee ownership mandatory if a company is incorporated.

The stock market will no longer exist. Employees who retire will not get equity along with their pension. Also, employees who die lose any right to pass on their equity to their heirs. (As an example of the tyranny of inheritance under Birth-Class Supremacy, heirs of Wall Street parasites today don't have to pay capital gains on the price their Daddies originally paid for the stock, only on the price of the stock when they mooched it off the dead).

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

What role do shareholders play?

The Divine Right of Capital by Marjorie Kelly

"'If equality under the law is the hallmark of democracy, privilege sanctioned by law is the hallmark of aristocracy.'

"Just as feudal lords extracted wealth from serfs on their lands, today’s aristocracy does the same with corporations.

"Privilege – the right of the aristocracy – is "a right to income detached from productivity.'

"After the fall of the Roman empire, the feudal lords emerged as a source of order.

"They played a valuable role in bringing social stability, but over time this role and its associated responsibilities faded – and the benefits did not.

"The same has happened with stockholders today."

This Is a Slavish Superstition That God Must Love Them to Make Them Born Rich

Nothing about inheritance as usual, so it misses the point. Heirs are inferior and did nothing to create the property and wealth, so they shouldn't get any of it at all. Dispossess those born in the 1% and America will be re-born. Its very essence is as an enemy of hereditary power, so that social cancer never should have been allowed to take root here.

 

[task0778]

This Is a Slavish Superstition That God Must Love Them to Make Them Born Rich

Nothing about inheritance as usual, so it misses the point. Heirs are inferior and did nothing to create the property and wealth, so they shouldn't get any of it at all. Dispossess those born in the 1% and America will be re-born. Its very essence is as an enemy of hereditary power, so that social cancer never should have been allowed to take root here.

So, you have a problem with people working hard to make a better life for their children? People who build a business, farm, or ranch that could be worth millions cannot leave their assets to their kids? I don't think that is going to be politically popular. I also think it ain't going to solve any of our social problems.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

Sure, that is what the stand is about.

Marx's idea was the workers contributed everything to the company productivity and that the capital owner contributed nothing, but merely kept part of the value generated by the worker a what capitalists call "profit," but what Marx called "surplus value." Marx defined "surplus value as the difference between the the revenue from sale of a product, minus material costs, when it was greater than the wages paid to produce the product.

For example (Marx taught), suppose a boot factory can employ ten line workers who can produce one hundred boots per eight hour day, with material costs of two dollars per boot. He can sell them in bulk for ten dollars per unit. Thus, each worker creates eighty dollars per day in value.

Suppose eighty dollars per day is the minimum that a worker will keep returning to work for - which Marx called the "minimum wage." Less that that is just slow starvation, so the workers will not do it. How does the capitalist benefit? He can benefit by increasing the workday to ten hours or twelve hours, with the wages to stay the same. If the workers can make one hundred fifty boot per twelve hour day, then there will they can sell five hundred dollars in boots, with one hundred dollars in material costs, so there is $400 in "surplus value" that the capitalist has, in Marx' view, stolen from the workers.

The truth is that unless a factory (for example) is fully automated and robotic, both are equally necessary, the worker and the capital. There is also management, which Marx also disparages, believing that the workers themselves could manage the factory far better than the owners, who he depicted as absentees who hire managers, often from the ranks of the workers.

Marx's idea was that the "ownership" of the capital was worthless in the economic equation. Capital, in his view, was not different than a natural resource. Marx criticized the idea of the owner thinking that he deserved the capital and therefore the surplus value, because the owner had worked and saved to buy the capital, or an ancestor of the owner had. Marx called this idea "primative accumulation."

What I find striking is that this idea of unearned capital was much more during agricultural times, when land was awarded by kings, and worked by workers under the management of tenannts who paid a large part of the sale of the crops to the owner who had likely not gotten dirt under his fingernails for years, if ever. Marx called that value in excess of the cost of labor "rent" in the cases of farming, instead of "surplus value." But he wrote about it after the industrial revolution.

Why were ideas like these never popularized during the centuries of agricultural capital, but exploded once the industrial revolution was in full swing? I think I know, but I'd be interested in yours and The Sage of Main Street , and Curried Goats answer before I give mine.

State Capitalism Has No Redeeming Value Whatsoever

Marx was a spoiled richkid snob who pretended to care about those forced into the lower classes only so he and his prep-school classmates could do to them exactly what the Capitalists were doing, but even worse, because the Socialists' economic cannon-fodder had no rights whatsoever.

There were no unions in the Soviet Union. A Communist is the son of a Capitalist. Eliminate the right to get any of Daddy's wealth and these false-flag schemes will end. Otherwise, society will continue to decline in its terminal illness of Birth-Class Supremacy and will collapse into a second Dark Ages.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Your first scenario - the Garden of Eden - would not work like you say. That's because a very large percentage of men feel that they must dominate or be dominated. They have to form a socio-economic hierarchy. Unfortunately, their sex lives depend largely on their place in that hierarchy.

So, in your 'Garden of Eden' scenario, thugs would either steal or take by force other people's food & resources or they would destroy those resources just to establish themselves as superior.

You only need to look at modern day America where greed is insatiable to see how true this is.

Thank you for posting. As a teacher, I'm happy to be able to educate adults such as yourself, who had socialist teachers in the past.

Your mistake (no doubt taught to you by those socialists) is to look at modern day humans to try to guess what pre-agricultural humans would have been like. That is wrong, and there is no need for guess work.

The "discovery" and colonization of Africa and the Americas by industrial-aged humans allowed us to study pre-agricultural society in real time. The stealing, deliberate destruction, and domination of one man over another that you describe was not seen in those tribal hunter-gatherers. So we know that the theory of those ancient people somehow emulating modern Americans is incorrect.

Let me just take a moment to say that I regret that you were taught by supposed members of my profession who acted as indoctrinators instead of educators.

Your last scenario is just as bogus. The man owning the boat wouldn't bother fishing. He'd just charge the fisherman 2/3 of their catch in return for using his boat.

You are not considering the orgin of the boat in the first place. How did he come to be a boat owner instead of a fisherman for hire?

Perhaps the man would lease out his boat in the way you describe, or own multiple boats to lease out. That would not change how he got the boat(s) in the first place. Your indoctrinators taught you that this is irrelevant. All that is relevant is that one man owns a boat while others do not. If boat ownership were truly irrelevant then there would be no incintive to own a boat, so no incentive to build one. So, our ancestors would have sat on the shore with cane poles, not even thinking to design a rod and reel.

He'd make sure that none of them could afford to buy their own boat and may even destroy any boat that they bought. WELCOME TO CAPITALISM!!!!

How would he "make sure" that none of them could affort to buy their own boat? What powers did he have to obtain a boat that they do not?

You probably even believe the BIG LIE called the 'Law of Supply and Demand'.

If you've been fooled into believing the textbook economics that exist to hide the realities of economic and human behavior, you have an infantile understanding of economics. You really shouldn't be allowed to teach economic. You did your students a grave disservice.

No, your indoctrinators did you one.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Absentee Owners Aren't Earners

I don't like Mondragon's policy of having non-owner employees. Whatever group starts a company should not have any more equity than new employees. If they are any good, they would be promoted from experience and only have a right to higher pay because of higher positions.

Who would decide who gets promoted from experience to have higher pay because of higher positions? Is it automatic by seniority? That would be inviting Peter to move into the company, wouldn't it? Or a worse version in which people keep getting promoted, even if they are not competent in their current level.

Second, a start-up in which people have different amounts of capital to contribute should not give them more shares. It should be treated like a loan, which would be paid back to them as a business expense, no different from a bank loan. A democratic company might be able to issue bonds and preferred stock, but never equity, which would be iniquity.

What would be the collateral for the loan? It sounds pretty risky. If the company fails, the loans will never be repaid. Typically, people are willing to invest in risky ventures if there is the possiblity of large returns based on ownership.

Under the present class-biased system, the unions should use union dues to buy stock and re-invest the dividends there, too. It would soon qualify for membership of the Board of Directors and later union members would own the whole company and the union would be dissolved. Politicians should be forced to make union membership and later employee ownership mandatory if a company is incorporated.

Do you envision some financial incentive to prompt the worker/owners to work hard and make the company successful? It sounds like a way for everyone to feel good about themselves right up until the company goes bankrupt.

The stock market will no longer exist. Employees who retire will not get equity along with their pension. Also, employees who die lose any right to pass on their equity to their heirs. (As an example of the tyranny of inheritance under Birth-Class Supremacy, heirs of Wall Street parasites today don't have to pay capital gains on the price their Daddies originally paid for the stock, only on the price of the stock when they mooched it off the dead).

I get the anger at some people being rich because their parent were hard-working and successful, not themselves.

 

[Curried Goats]

Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights specifies that property rights for individuals and groups is a human right. The ancient Greeks recognized private property as a right, not including land ownership.

As far as I know, neither the ancient Greeks nor the modern Universal convention on human rights is based on Christian ideology.

When you see something like that, a claim that capitalism is based on Christian ideology, it's a good idea to ask yourself why someone would say that. Why would an anti-capitalist say that capitalism is based on Christian ideology? To me, the most likely reason is to associate capitalism with superstition and old fashioned religions, that are commonly criticized and marginalized on a college campus. So the person listing will say oh yeah christian, that ain't me!

We aren't Ancient Greeks. They had their own notions of rights and social classes that they derived from their own spiritual beliefs. Our notions of rights including rights to property are based on a philosophy of natural rights and social contract theory developed by European philosophers like John Locke and Adam Smith. Bastiat came later (he first wrote about the parable of the broken window) and was born in the early 1800s but I prefer his prose. These men were all believers in a Christian God and even though the age of enlightment saw the development of physics, the scientific method, empiricism and rationalism that helped push back on some the beliefs of the church, efforts by these men were to find a deeper understanding of God and what they considered the natural order of things according to God. I don't claim these things because I was indoctrinated on college campuses. I never even went to college. I just love to read. If you bothered to read the link I provided or any of Locke, (Adam Smith less so) you'd see how entwined their notions of rights are with notions of a natural order derived from God. Their arguments mirror some of your own such as labor being mixed with natural resources being the source of private property. Here's the beginning of Bastiat's The Law:

"We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."

 

[Seymour Flops]

We aren't Ancient Greeks. They had their own notions of rights and social classes that they derived from their own spiritual beliefs. Our notions of rights including rights to property are based on a philosophy of natural rights and social contract theory developed by European philosophers like John Locke and Adam Smith. Bastiat came later (he first wrote about the parable of the broken window) and was born in the early 1800s but I prefer his prose. These men were all believers in a Christian God and even though the age of enlightment saw the development of physics, the scientific method, empiricism and rationalism that helped push back on some the beliefs of the church, efforts by these men were to find a deeper understanding of God and what they considered the natural order of things according to God. I don't claim these things because I was indoctrinated on college campuses. I never even went to college. I just love to read. If you bothered to read the link I provided or any of Locke, (Adam Smith less so) you'd see how entwined their notions of rights are with notions of a natural order derived from God. Their arguments mirror some of your own such as labor being mixed with natural resources being the source of private property. Here's the beginning of Bastiat's The Law:

"We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life — physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place."

Christianity did not precede the idea of private property, nor is it necessary to be a Christian or even know about Christianity to understand the benefit of private property.

So what is the point of bringing up Christianity?

Communist nations often open their system to a more free markets as a way to avoid mass starvation. They don't become Christian in the process.

 

[Curried Goats]

Christianity did not precede the idea of private property,

No but private property took on many different forms. In Europe under feudalism and the monarchy the property all belonged to the king. It was the philosphical work of Enlighment era thinkers that used Christian ideology to argue the since we were all born equal under Gods eyes we all had an equal individual right to the fruits of our labor and property.

nor is it necessary to be a Christian or even know about Christianity to understand the benefit of private property.

Again agreed. There are benefits to property. What I'm arguing is that it isn't a moral right. It's a construct of government and society.

So what is the point of bringing up Christianity?

Because people understand property as a legal right but they also tend to have a belief in it as their moral right. It's why we get arguments that we shouldn't tax the rich higher, not based on whether or not that would produce better results for our society but because maximizing profit from their investments is their moral right.

Communist nations often open their system to a more free markets as a way to avoid mass starvation. They don't become Christian in the process.

You really have a hang up on Communism. I'd be more concerned with pinning down your own ideology and beliefs which are all over the place. Free market capitalists don't care if someone takes all the fruit and people starve yet you seem to have some issue with the accumulation of resources for accumulation of wealths sake, at least when it comes to the well being of others. Devout libertarians would also call that communist. It's just a pejorative at this point that doesn't mean anything. I'm not a communist, I just don't think property is a moral right and that society should manage outcomes better to secure a better general welfare for all citizens.

 

[Seymour Flops]

No but private property took on many different forms. In Europe under feudalism and the monarchy the property all belonged to the king. It was the philosphical work of Enlighment era thinkers that used Christian ideology to argue the since we were all born equal under Gods eyes we all had an equal individual right to the fruits of our labor and property.

Yes, and I’m sure if you read works by architects, tailors, medical doctors, lawyers of the time, they would all cite the Christian God. It was common to do that. I’m sure in India, China, the Middle East, and anywhere else there was the promulgation of knowledge, they all paid homage to their god. I suppose if the Mayans referenced their god in making their calendars, that invalidates their calendars?

Other than land, property can be owned in the absence of government. If I make clothes that have pockets, and I pick up a pretty rock and put it in my pocket, the rock is mine and so is the pocket.

If someone takes it from me and I want someone else to do something about it, I need government. But the rock and the pocket are mine without a government needed.

Because people understand property as a legal right but they also tend to have a belief in it as their moral right. It's why we get arguments that we shouldn't tax the rich higher, not based on whether or not that would produce better results for our society but because maximizing profit from their investments is their moral right.

Then you must take up your disagreement with them. I can clearly see that taxing the rich higher is a disaster for ordinary people, and I don’t need the Christian God to see it.

You really have a hang up on Communism. I'd be more concerned with pinning down your own ideology and beliefs which are all over the place. Free market capitalists don't care if someone takes all the fruit and people starve

Which free market capitalists said that?

yet you seem to have some issue with the accumulation of resources for accumulation of wealths sake, at least when it comes to the well being of others.

In a hypothetical pre-economics society, people who see a person hoarding all of the life giving fruit would be foolish to starve instead of stopping him. That is not the same as having an issue with accumulation of resources.

Devout libertarians would also call that communist. It's just a pejorative at this point that doesn't mean anything. I'm not a communist, I just don't think property is a moral right and that society should manage outcomes better to secure a better general welfare for all citizens.

I can understand why a person with no information about the real world would imagine that a managed economy should be better for the general welfare of all citizens. On paper, it looks really good.

I really don’t understand why anyone would ignore all evidence about how much worse all citizens are when governments manage economies.

My ideology is not “capitalism” which I believe is just a pejorative. My “ideology” not really an ideology at all. I is nothing more or less than the recognition that a free market is the best provider of material needs for the greatest number of people. The more free the market the better material needs are met. The less free, the less well material needs are met. That is a lesson learned from history. It is no where in the Christian Bible that I know of.

 

[Curried Goats]

Yes, and I’m sure if you read works by architects, tailors, medical doctors, lawyers of the time, they would all cite the Christian God. It was common to do that. I’m sure in India, China, the Middle East, and anywhere else there was the promulgation of knowledge, they all paid homage to their god. I suppose if the Mayans referenced their god in making their calendars, that invalidates their calendars?

Did anyone of them use God to justify a right to property? Stop deflecting and address the words of the very people who the Founders based our societies rights on, including the right to property.

Again agreed. There are benefits to property. What I'm arguing is that it isn't a moral right. It's a construct of government and society.

Great. Glad we got that settled. I would suggest then that you use other words rather than right or wrong then when making your arguments unless you're refering to objective distinctions which require proof and evidence.

Ok. So?

Then you must take up your disagreement with them. I can clearly see that taxing the rich higher is a disaster for ordinary people, and I don’t need the Christian God to see it.

Then prove it objectively.

Which free market capitalists said that?

Well the passage I quoted you from Bastiat makes it clear he sees and function of government not structured around protecting the accumulated wealth of citizens to be the very definition of injustice.

In a hypothetical pre-economics society, people who see a person hoarding all of the life giving fruit would be foolish to starve instead of stopping him. That is not the same as having an issue with accumulation of resources.

That's a clearer statement than they would be right to. What it doesn't do is support the notion that labor creates property. That's not an objective notion, it is subjective sentiment.

I can understand why a person with no information about the real world would imagine that a managed economy should be better for the general welfare of all citizens. On paper, it looks really good.

All economies are managed.

I really don’t understand why anyone would ignore all evidence about how much worse all citizens are when governments manage economies.

What economy exists without management?

My ideology is not “capitalism” which I believe is just a pejorative. My “ideology” not really an ideology at all. I is nothing more or less than the recognition that a free market is the best provider of material needs for the greatest number of people. The more free the market the better material needs are met. The less free, the less well material needs are met. That is a lesson learned from history. It is no where in the Christian Bible that I know of.

You don't seem to have the best grasp on history.