/lit/ - Literature

>>16679209
The whole point of neoliberalism is to conceal and manage economic decline via deregulation, financialization, mergers, tax breaks, etc.

>>16679255
Have you ever had a bullshit job?

>>16679209
Why are you literally dead OP?

>>16679209
David Graeber was a fraud who had a dangerous misunderstanding of economics

>>16679209
Books like these fail to acknowledge the idea that perhaps we are not even close to end stage Capitalism like some want to believe. Consider this: how is it possible in a perfect system to have scenarios where you want to spend money but can not due to reasons like inventory not being available, the line being too long, or the store being closed. how are we even remotely close to end stage capitalism when I have to wait 15 minutes in fucking line to buy my shitty thing of ice cream.

>>16679209
>capitalism is efficient
it demonstrably is

>>16679292
I don’t think you’ve read the book.
>>16679328
It demonstrably isn’t.

>>16679209

>reeeeeee you can't just voluntarily exchange goods and labor in mutually beneficiary transactions!!

>>16679343
It demonstrably is. Inefficient mechanisms inside capitalism are failures, however.

>>16679361
But what if the majority of capitalism is inefficient mechanisms to propagate a busy population?

>>16679343
There is more evidence of its efficiency than your theoretical worker co-op model

>>16679368
Ah yes, the system that couldn’t supply toilet paper to the masses was super efficient. Make sure to get all your toilet paper compliance officers and toilet paper research specialists and toilet paper phone bank customer service representatives to explain how useful and efficient they are.

>>16679392
>everybody goes from shitting at wok to shitting at home
>it takes a couple weeks for stores to stock toilet paper that was packaged for and marketed to big buildings with janitors and large supply closets instead
>its somehow the fault of the system
i suppose you think the peoples bureaucrats would do a better job

>>16679365
Then get rid of those bad mechanisms, which are usually born of cronyism.

>>16679392
Are you talking about the Covid event where people suddenly mass-bought toilet paper, which was a sudden spike to the system?

>>16679271
Most jobs are, so it's very likely.

>>16679392
I am not sure why you think a worker-owned supermarket would magically generate more toilet paper during a pandemic.
And if you are going to demand the dismantling of capitalism you need to provide us with a working alternative, preferably one that is empirically tested and proven to work.

>>16679602
different anon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_manufacturing
is to blame for a lot.

>>16679392
>the system that couldn’t supply toilet paper to the masses was super efficient
I thought you were talking about the Soviet Union for a second

>>16679271
Yes, most of my jobs have been bullshit jobs. The only ones that weren't were entry level service jobs.

>>16679642
Yeah, it would be crazy if people couldn't buy products and had to wait in bread lines here in the great US of A! That would be insane! GOOD THING THERES PLENTY AND NO BREAD LINES RIGHT? RIIIIIGHT?

>>16679639
Interesting

>>16679209
Thus, we came to this.

>>16679919
why cant idiots do anything different from the mainstream? if you wanna own nothing, own nothing. if you wanna be self sufficient, be self sufficient. do something on your own for once in your pathetic life and stop expecting everybody else to change so you can live the life you want without any effort.

>>16679965
I have no idea what you mean by mainstream and all I want is to see this whole thing to fail.

rightoids in this place think aocialism means not having any private property at all, yikes

>>16679965
If everyone thought like that the world would collapse because it would never change

>>16679292

End Stage Capitalism just means that the society based Capitalism becomes unbearable for a large part of the population, doesn't necessarily have to have those things

>>16679292
Shh.
>we are not even close to end stage Capitalism
It's better to have them believe that so they will think about "accelerating" without doing shit and capitalism will prosper more and put commie fags in body bags.

3 trillion divided by 200 million is $15,000, yet we only got $1,200, how much did corporations get? Do the math.

Now what the corporations recieved becomes part of the national debt, and we have to pay it off through wage slaving.

So we have Corporate Welfare right now, we have to pay the high return retirements of boomers that were also able to retire earlier as well, we have to wage slave to pay for healthcare for Medicaid recipients on top of our own, and for food stamp recipients, we have to pay the insane salaries of politicans and all their staff, while they then ignore us and do what the lobbyists tell them which ends up fucking us up down the road.

But God forbid a little bit of "Socialism" for the rest of us who work. Fucking shills.

>>16679348
>mutually beneficiary
>he thinks the price he pays for things is what they're actually worth
Every time you buy something you're having money stolen from you, there nothing mutually beneficial about it, it's an extremely one-sided exchange.

>>16679209
>capitalism is efficient
Capitalism is efficient only by comparison to anything else that has been tried at large scale. Efficient is also an overloaded term, you have to be clear what you mean "efficient" with respect to. It's very good at getting those hard-to-reach places because it's pragmatic and disorganized. As far as material efficiency, of course not. It encourages maximum utilization in all sectors at all time, which is great for total throughput but terrible for material conservation.
>top down management is effective
Who says this? There are limited circumstances where it's true, but almost no one seriously believes that, much less will stand by it. That's old-school shit from when classes were purely about birth and nobility made you strictly better than everyone else in all respects.
>I create value for shareholders
Trivially true. I'm not sure what you're taking issue with. Is it a trivial goal? yeah. Getting the people who provide for you the shit they want is how every system works, and works both ways if asymmetrically. I guess I'm asking what's your point?

>>16679977
which, ironically, is mainstream. Antifa is being de facto condoned by most of the mainstream media. What about the famous quote:"The protests are mostly peaceful"?
>>16680001
>If everyone thought like that
Not really, look around yourself and you'll see quite the opposite. The world could collapse because there would be too much change even.
>>16679209
>>16679343
>>16679392
>>16679752
>>16679999
I'm sorry to break it to you, but here's a sad truth: it was only your mom who cared about your good boy points and now that she's gone, you'll have to live just like the rest. Welcome to planet Earth.

>>16680062
Ugh Jesus says give to Caesar what is Caesar's and the Church says I must be obedient because heaven awaits me. Are you trying to steal my salvation, lad?

>>16680141
Antifa encapsulates the general feeling of the world population right now. Like it or hate it, that's how things are.

>>16679292
>the line being too long, or the store being closed. how are we even remotely close to end stage capitalism when I have to wait 15 minutes in fucking line to buy my shitty thing of ice cream.
The reason these problems exist are the same reasons capitalism exists. Scarcity. In a post-scarcity world there would be no shortages and no obstacles to consume. However, without scarcity, capitalism would lose its reason to exist.

>>16680162
except it's not, otherwise there wouldn't be the Proud Boys, policemen who defended the places that are being attacked and general disdain from the public (including outside of the US, ohmygodyikes).

>>16680144
Does Jesus say give to Caesar what is yours? Or does he say give up everything and follow him?

>>16680193
Proud Boys are nothing but a byproduct of the same phenomenon that created Antifa. One goes for one direction, the other reaches another end, but the center cause is the same.

>>16680162
Nah they're just edgy teens (developmentally) like anybody else. People who fit in with society at large aren't mad enough to do violence, and wouldn't risk it even if they were because they understand that they have something to lose.

>>16680236
Well, edgy teens are a byproduct of our environment, no?

>>16680162
>>16680193
>>16680220
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-system-s-neatest-trick
>in a nutshell, the System's neatest trick is this:
>For the sake of its own efficiency and security, the System needs to bring about deep and radical social changes to match the changed conditions resulting from technological progress.
>The frustration of life under the circumstances imposed by the System leads to rebellious impulses.
>Rebellious impulses are co-opted by the System in the service of the social changes it requires; activists "rebel" against the old and outmoded values that are no longer of use to the System and in favor of the new values that the System needs us to accept.
>In this way rebellious impulses, which otherwise might have been dangerous to the System, are given an outlet that is not only harmless to the System, but useful to it.
>Much of the public resentment resulting from the imposition of social changes is drawn away from the System and its institutions and is directed instead at the radicals who spearhead the social changes.

>>16680251
Hence why there are many copies of the Communist Manifesto and merchandise with communist imagery and symbolism. The same works for the far-right as well, albeit they hide it a little more because today's system is more left-leaning.

>>16680250
Biological Leninism has been proven. There is also proof that people on the left have a higher mutational load in their genes.

>>16680401
>Biological Leninism has been proven.
I don't believe this shit, honestly. Just like the "gay gene."

>>16680434
I don't believe in anything.

>>16679328
>t. took exactly 1 econ class and stopped thinking about economics after that
behavioral economics blows this myth out of the water --- by any serious measure, markets are highly inefficient. examples of such inefficiencies include:
>mass expiration of coupons and gift cards
>the "bull whip" problem of production & distribution
>the collapse of Sears after they adopted an "internal markets" model
>many of the major stock market bubbles (1999 dotcom, 2008 housing, etc.)
>overfinancialization in first world countries
>reduced birthrates as a result of financial incentives to have fewer children, in spite of the fact that increasing birthrates is the fastest way to grow the overall economy
and these are just the intermediate-level issues

>>16680674
Didn't Taleb already BTFO behavioral economics?

>>16679292
the only endstage is violent revolution otherwise capitalism go to infinity and beyond

>>16680952
no. even in his area of expertise (equity markets), he never really contradicts the fundamental ideas or conclusions of behvaioral econ. he sort of says "yes but"
>yes markets are inefficient but investing in the stock market has the highest potential ROI out there
>yes stock market valuation is very different from a company's actual value, but traders still make money
>yes people make irrational buying decisions, but this is predictable, so we can capitalize on it and make money
his line of thinking is less about designing good systems, and more about how he (or you) can personally benefit from any given system.

>>16680990
I would imagine that Taleb would absolutely shit all over the idea that expiring coupons and gift cards is an example of market inefficiency, since they are basically options

>>16681079
gift cards are very different from options.

if you buy a call option, you pay a small fee now to fix a purchase price in the future. when the price of the underlying asset rises, you can exercise your option to buy the asset below market value, and profit.

if you buy a gift card, you pay an item's full price for the right to get it for "free" later. but if the price of the underlying asset rises, you can't profit --- you have to make up the difference in cash, or buy another gift card.

so, options have a strategic value that gift cards don't. in fact, gift cards are a form of fiat currency, backed by a company's promise to value them as they would the dollar. and unlike other currencies, there's no way to invest in them, since they have well-defined price ceilings. there's no rational economic reason to buy a gift card rather than have the equivalent in cash.

this means that we can't explain gift cards in classical economic terms --- they have to exist for a cultural (i.e. behvioral) reason. and the reason is that middle class families see gifting cash as gauche. in the absence of this cultural belief, gift cards would not exist.

of course, there are inefficiencies created by gift cards that you can exploit. i remember reading about online retailers that arbitraged gift cards using e-bay bots. but this isn't exactly productive economic activity; it's a way to exploit inefficiencies caused by consumer culture. if the market were perfectly efficient, none of this would happen.

>tl;dr
"gift cards bad"
t. classical economics
"but they exist"
t. behavioral economics

Capitalism is by far the most successful way to do economics for human beings.

Stay seething retard leftists.

>>16679209
Refuted before he even published this.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/managerial_work.html

>>16681198
Nordic countries say nope

>>16681306
Nordic countries are capitalist you fucking imbecile retard.

>>16681314
I live in Denmark and we are not capitalist.

>>16681319
Explains your retardation then. All danes seem to be suffering mental retardation.

Denmark is capitalist you retard fuck.

Nordic countries are socdem, calling them just Capitalist as of they are the same as the US is simplistic

>>16681343
I'm getting paid to study. This is socialist.

>>16680162
Lmao they are completely astroturfed by the establishment.

>>16681399
I mean, I thought they just provided more social services, you can still start whatever business you want, hire people to work at it, etc. right?

>>16681319
You’re an idiot

Its almost as if capitalism is an absurdly broad and vague boogeyman word.

>>16679965
How do I "do something on my own"? Virtually every market is incredibly saturated already.

Recently on my local Facebook page someone asked if anyone knows a roofer that they could hire. In response, people supplied 10 different people/small businesses within 20 comments.

Looking around me, there's nothing that really has to be done. If anything, we need to stop doing shit.

>>16681510
degrowth is the word you're looking for

>>16681510
>we need to stop doing shit
quit being retarded, if you want people to stop doing shit then stop spending money, it's that simple they're not going to work for free

>>16679292
Capitalism cannot reproduce itself since 2008. It's over.

>>16681476

Yes, correct, but Socialism needs a society already developed to then be successful. Socdem can be seen as a country moving in the direction of Socialism progressively.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_government_enterprises_of_Norway

>>16679361
I've always been under the impression that most Commies/or Leftists today agree that Capitalism is more efficient. And it's more of a question of whether or not that efficiency is itself good in the long run environmentally and in regards to how it obscures the labor that went into the product. I'm not super well read though that's just my impression.

>>16681423
You can get paid to study in the U.S.

In fact it is extremely unusual for a stem Ph.D student to not receive a stipend. And elite institutions finance all of their Ph. D students in all fields.

If you're getting payed to get an undergrad degree then I'm pretty impressed by your country.

>>16681614
>I've always been under the impression that most Commies/or Leftists today agree that Capitalism is more efficient
No, the whole argument for a socialist system is more efficiency. Capitalism takes forever to address issues and clearly does not provide for people's needs in a substantial, stable way.

>>16679825
You’re honestly an idiot if you don’t know what JIT manufacturing and inventory are

>>16679639
Not really, retail stores didn’t have huge stockpiles of goods before Just in Time, they just ran out of stuff a lot more often

>>16679825
Actually i take that >>16683165 back