Jaren L

Jaren L

0p

4 comments posted · 0 followers · following 0

14 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - You know why Capitalis... · 3 replies · +1 points

You're very good at coloring paraphrases.

The "intellectual labor" of the managerial class cannot be dismissed out of hand, whether you view it as more or less valuable than the manual labor of whatever term you like for those who contribute manual labor to the market. Whether the current system overvalues that job in capitalistic or wage-based systems is, again, another argument.

An anarchic socialist system would have a use for managers, too. Remove the *flawed* trappings, such as greater material prosperity and unwavering authority, and the use for a manager in a role more like a secretary is still significant. If one person can contribute to the *overall value output* of a factory more by poring over books and numbers and devising new strategies for efficiency, cooperation, sustainability than he personally can through physical work, do you still think that person is *less* valuable than a manual worker, and that their intellectual labor is "non-work?" As long as they answer to society rather than their own gains, and are only able to *present* their ideas for acceptance by the majority, the work done by what you refer to as a "capitalist" actually has even *more* value to an egalitarian system.

And, again, you take his observations as statements of moral preference. "Barring any other differences, the more intelligent of two workers is more likely to prosper in a system based on supply and demand" is not the same as "The intelligent ought to be rewarded more". You're using should as an indicator of moral preference, where katpoop10 tends to use it more as an indicator of logical prediction based on the existing system, regardless of the moral validity of that system.

14 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - You know why Capitalis... · 1 reply · +1 points

I see you make two *incredibly* pivotal points here - the fact that those born into money often delegate the preservation of that money to others smarter than themselves, and the myriad of other less savory, less "human" traits which can contribute to capitalistic gain.

Either or both of these, explored further by way of the wording you present here, would have made your essay - as well as your argument with katpoop10 - far more convincing in my opinion.

14 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - You know why Capitalis... · 6 replies · +1 points

As far as I can tell from katpoop10's argument, that's not what he's saying. At all.

During the first point you refute, he's saying that *of all of those who participate in the capitalist system,* in today's market those more savvy to the workings of the system are more valued (not valuable) by others who participate in the system. Your presentation of his argument as "capitalists are richer than (what? non-capitalists? A man who works at a factory to take home a wage which he subsequently spends in abstracted barter on goods or services isn't a non-capitalist. An unwilling capitalist, maybe, but they are partaking in the allotment of capital nonetheless) because they are smarter, and for no other possible reason, which correlates with the idea that higher intelligence implies greater humanity" is faulty. Perhaps those in possession of rare, complex knowledge with a high value to the market shouldn't be compensated more for their use of that knowledge than those in possession of physical strength. Perhaps compensation is an outmoded construct period. But these points are irrelevant to katpoop10's observation of what is desired by the workings of the current system.

He does a bad job himself of delineating between intelligence in general and intelligence valuable to a capitalist, but nonetheless this difference exists. In your about page and elsewhere, you, as most people do, describe yourself to others based on the philosophical ideas you subscribe to - your humanity is defined by what you have, as a human, learned. So it's not an unreasonable theory to present that, as you acquire more knowledge, you will in a sense become "more" human.

This is not to agree with your interpretation of katpoop10's statement, that one person who is "more intelligent" than another is more human than the other. Humanness itself is an abstracted concept, and meters of intelligence are culturally biased and inconsistent, so comparison between the humanness of two *separate* humans is impossible. But neither does katpoop10 say or even loosely imply that capitalistically-valued intelligence is the only meter of humanity.

To coin a metaphor, say you have two baskets, and fill one with more apples than the other. The basket with more apples is, obviously, more full. But this fact can't be questioned directly as it appears written in common English because of the assumptions it makes. Given two different baskets, the one with more apples may well be less full if the other basket is filled with more oranges, or bananas. Similarly, the statement that a person becomes "more human" as that *person* accumulates more intelligence does not imply that that person is necessarily more human than any person less intelligent than them.

Please note, I don't mean specifically to endorse either of katpoop10's ideas here as *correct;* I see redeeming points and glaring flaws to each.

But be honest - your essay isn't about him being correct or incorrect. It's about him being a filthy amoral capitalist who hates the oppressed poor and hopes they stay oppressed and poor. Which strikes me as unnecessarily defamatory in the context of an argument which *should* focus on fact and theory, and avoid unnecessary bias at the hands of emotional investment.

14 years ago @ A Division by Zer0 - Distinctions of Ownership · 3 replies · 0 points

Convenient how your system to account for the welfare of six billion different people depends on the definitions of concepts espoused by exactly one of them.