I don’t disagree with you, but that is a subjective value structure, not an objective one. Objective values are predicated on logic. You cannot be moral and steal even from someone you think is an asshole and still be a moral actor just because you subjectively think they’re a jerk.
Would I steal from someone who had lots of food if it meant my children would starve if I didn’t? Oh, 100%. I know how evil I could become given the right circumstances. If there was a button that said it would wipe out 50% of the world but my baby would survive, and if I didn’t, they would die, I would press it 10 times before you finished the sentence. That act alone would make me objectively evil, and I consider myself a very good person, but that’s because I can be.
I’m not talking here about what we would or would not do, I’m talking about what is moral and immoral, objectively.
The notion of surplus value isn’t real, it’s an arbitrarily made-up idea without an essence (see Aristotle.)
All that matters is this: I ask you to mow my lawn and you say sure, if I pay you $20. We both agree. You mow my lawn and I give you $20. That’s it.
Every human being values everything differently. If someone else came along and for reasons that are their own decided to give me $1,000 because they loved my lawn so much and I agreed to accept that, the two of us made a transaction. We, as consenting adults, made an agreement. It has nothing to do with you. You do not get to come along and tell me we cannot make that trade, that it isn’t worth $1,000, or that I now owe you $500 because you were the one who mowed it.
In fact, the $1,000 itself has no intrinsic value. The value of a given currency fluctuates by the minute. Something on a store shelf could be selling for $1 today and $2 tomorrow, then $0.50 Wed and $5 by next week Friday. Then something else could be worth completely different values too.
Maybe this week $10 gets me a meal and a t-shirt but tomorrow it gets me 2 meals and a t-shirt and the following week I can’t buy any meals or t-shirts at all - with that same $10.
EVEN if it were some kind of objective concept, what exactly would the numbers be in a network where everything has value independent of everything else?
Let’s say you work for me and make shirts. I pay you $10 a shirt and sell it for $20. You might say that according to Marx, I should give you $20, and let’s leave out everything else for the sake of argument. Why is $20 the value?
What if I also own the grocery stores, and I agree to pay you 100% more and raise the grocery prices by 100%? So now instead of you having $10 and a loaf of bread costing $1, I now give you $20 and that loaf of bread now costs you $2? So you now have the exact same buying power and I’m now making the same value from you.
No offense if you are a self-proclaimed Marxist, but I find that the socialist/communist crowd rarely thinks through their positions.
The problem here is that you are equating walmart to the humble wumble bwissness owner that just wants to hwelp the pweople. Walmart would press that button if it meant profit margins go up by 3%.
Then just stop shopping there or taking jobs from there.
If you own a business, refuse to do business there.
In a true free market, if you don’t like the way people do business, you have freedom of association.
One of the biggest problems in modern reality isn’t big business, it’s government. Government takes away your freedom of association and is deficient at protecting the public from unjust actors - specifically fraudulent actors.
A free market requires protection from fraud and fraud is fundamentally any withheld/false information that is withheld or falsified in order to get you to consent to something you otherwise wouldn’t consent to. If I go to sell you a car and don’t tell you it doesn’t have an engine yet make it seem like it does and you agree to buy it for $5K I am defrauding you. You cannot give consent if you do not have adequate information.
Now keep in mind that obtaining information is also your responsibility and not only mine as the seller, but I cannot go out of my way to withhold information or lie about information to get you to commit to something you otherwise wouldn’t.
The fundamental PROBLEM is that we do not live in a state of freedom, we live in a hodge-podge between freedom and authoritarianism because a huge swath of modern-day populations do not want the responsibility associated with freedom, they just want to lose some money out of every paycheck and have a bunch of things taken care of, then complain all day because things aren’t exactly as they want.
I don’t disagree with you, but that is a subjective value structure, not an objective one. Objective values are predicated on logic. You cannot be moral and steal even from someone you think is an asshole and still be a moral actor just because you subjectively think they’re a jerk.
Would I steal from someone who had lots of food if it meant my children would starve if I didn’t? Oh, 100%. I know how evil I could become given the right circumstances. If there was a button that said it would wipe out 50% of the world but my baby would survive, and if I didn’t, they would die, I would press it 10 times before you finished the sentence. That act alone would make me objectively evil, and I consider myself a very good person, but that’s because I can be.
I’m not talking here about what we would or would not do, I’m talking about what is moral and immoral, objectively.
it’s not subjective. If they steal surplus value from the workers and withhold it from them, it is the workers right to get it back, right?
The notion of surplus value isn’t real, it’s an arbitrarily made-up idea without an essence (see Aristotle.)
All that matters is this: I ask you to mow my lawn and you say sure, if I pay you $20. We both agree. You mow my lawn and I give you $20. That’s it.
Every human being values everything differently. If someone else came along and for reasons that are their own decided to give me $1,000 because they loved my lawn so much and I agreed to accept that, the two of us made a transaction. We, as consenting adults, made an agreement. It has nothing to do with you. You do not get to come along and tell me we cannot make that trade, that it isn’t worth $1,000, or that I now owe you $500 because you were the one who mowed it.
In fact, the $1,000 itself has no intrinsic value. The value of a given currency fluctuates by the minute. Something on a store shelf could be selling for $1 today and $2 tomorrow, then $0.50 Wed and $5 by next week Friday. Then something else could be worth completely different values too.
Maybe this week $10 gets me a meal and a t-shirt but tomorrow it gets me 2 meals and a t-shirt and the following week I can’t buy any meals or t-shirts at all - with that same $10.
EVEN if it were some kind of objective concept, what exactly would the numbers be in a network where everything has value independent of everything else?
Let’s say you work for me and make shirts. I pay you $10 a shirt and sell it for $20. You might say that according to Marx, I should give you $20, and let’s leave out everything else for the sake of argument. Why is $20 the value?
What if I also own the grocery stores, and I agree to pay you 100% more and raise the grocery prices by 100%? So now instead of you having $10 and a loaf of bread costing $1, I now give you $20 and that loaf of bread now costs you $2? So you now have the exact same buying power and I’m now making the same value from you.
No offense if you are a self-proclaimed Marxist, but I find that the socialist/communist crowd rarely thinks through their positions.
The problem here is that you are equating walmart to the humble wumble bwissness owner that just wants to hwelp the pweople. Walmart would press that button if it meant profit margins go up by 3%.
Then just stop shopping there or taking jobs from there.
If you own a business, refuse to do business there.
In a true free market, if you don’t like the way people do business, you have freedom of association.
One of the biggest problems in modern reality isn’t big business, it’s government. Government takes away your freedom of association and is deficient at protecting the public from unjust actors - specifically fraudulent actors.
A free market requires protection from fraud and fraud is fundamentally any withheld/false information that is withheld or falsified in order to get you to consent to something you otherwise wouldn’t consent to. If I go to sell you a car and don’t tell you it doesn’t have an engine yet make it seem like it does and you agree to buy it for $5K I am defrauding you. You cannot give consent if you do not have adequate information.
Now keep in mind that obtaining information is also your responsibility and not only mine as the seller, but I cannot go out of my way to withhold information or lie about information to get you to commit to something you otherwise wouldn’t.
The fundamental PROBLEM is that we do not live in a state of freedom, we live in a hodge-podge between freedom and authoritarianism because a huge swath of modern-day populations do not want the responsibility associated with freedom, they just want to lose some money out of every paycheck and have a bunch of things taken care of, then complain all day because things aren’t exactly as they want.