Capitalists perform a very valuable function in society, and one that lacks in any kind of socialist society and which ultimately always leads to its demise. This has been described in many works, but foremost in Ludwig von Mises' works.
In capitalist society there is no director directing capital from above. Instead the free market functions as a mechanism that naturally brings resources there where they are most useful. For example, suppose we have a large country, and harvest in the east fails and there is a scarcity of food. People in a capitalist society will want to pay much to stay alive, and producers of food will want to get food there as quickly as possible in order to capitalize on this increased market price. A potato may be 10 cents in the west, but 50 cents in the east.
In contrast, if there is scarcity in an organized society it is up to the organizer to detect this. This usually works fine. It is not very hard to detect where there should be more food and where there should be less. It is in the subtleties where this goes wrong. Definitely you can ask people how much food they need and calculate when to get it there. The problem occurs in many layered industries. How is a director supposed to decide how much steel to allocate to the tractor factory, to the constructors, to the railway builders, to the automotive industry, to the small tools manufacturers, to the nail and screw factories, etc etc. In the free market society there is no need to think about these problems, they fix themselves. Market prices are determined for steel and producers outbid eachother to get the resources they need. There is no way to do market calculations in the socialist society, as has been proven many times, and therefore such market mechanisms are not possible, neither in theory nor in practice.
This is also why socialist societies are breeding grounds for black-markets (free markets). Volumes have been written about the underground economy in the soviet union. In the DPRK there is a thriving black market for sweets, which are underproduced and in great demand.
It is also worth noting that monopolies occur because of, not despite, regulation. Regulation allows big money corporations to put their fingers where they don't belong: politics. Name me a monopoly or market failure and I'll name you a case of state intervention.
"In capitalist society there is no director directing capital from above. "
can you please define private property?
because the only system like that I can think of is market socialism
"Capitalists perform a very valuable function in society, and one that lacks in any kind of socialist society and which ultimately always leads to its demise. "
are you talking about the economic calculation "problem" or something lmao
actually, I have the opposite
https://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/
why do free market principles destroy businesses lmao
I see where you're confused. I mean one single director directing all capital from above. In the free market we have many free actors directing their own capital.
Not sure what that Salon article has to do with anything.
This is not an argument against the free market, it's an argument for it. He decided to manage his business in this fashion while his competition had a different strategy. He lost and the competition won. Capital was moved from inefficient to efficient actors.Lastly, you dismissing the economic calculation problem with a lmao really does not look good on you. Please explain how economic calculation is possible in a society without market prices. Don't worry if you can't. No one can, as it is not possible, as has already been proved many times.
"I see where you're confused. I mean one single director directing all capital from above. In the free market we have many free actors directing their own capital."
"We have multiple countries directing their own capital from above"
point being?
government = free market
Let's abandon this strain as clearly you misunderstand me and I you.
"This is not an argument against the free market, it's an argument for it. He decided to manage his business in this fashion while his competition had a different strategy."
his strategy was to use the free market within his company. The argument to be made here is that even in the free market, the free market is not the best answer and that management is better
Let's try this again. Your argument is that the free market does not work to provide the best outcome because one person tried to apply his interpretation of the free market in his business and the free market eliminated his business.
If you are of the belief that this person's management skills were suboptimal, then you admit that the free market solved this problem by eliminating his business and allocating his capital to more competent business owners.
To admit that you do not agree with this person's management skills is to admit that the free market works to move capital from inefficient to efficient actors.
Moreover, to admit that this person's management skills does not lead to a contradiction in terms. Just because I believe I have found the perfect way to apply free market principles to my business does not mean that is the only way, or even if that is a truly free market way.
" Don't worry if you can't. No one can, as it is not possible, as has already been proved many times."
also wrong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/wiki/debunk
The arguments mentioned here go something as follows. "Businesses (in the free market) centralize resource control, therefore centralized control of resources works".
I hope you realise that using the fact that a business survives in the free market by using strategy A as an argument to prove that strategy A works implicitly supports the free market as a tool for selecting efficient strategies.
Moreover, libertarian free marketeers readily admit that on a small scale centralized resource allocation cannot be avoided and is likely very efficient. For example in the family unit no one would dream of applying free market principles to a great extent.
I have also read your own article trying to disprove the economic calculation problem. You seem like an intelligent person, which is why i was sad to see that you misrepresent the problem and accordingly disprove a misrepresented statement of the problem. The problem is not that a unit for calculation cannot exist. The problem is that a value can not be attributed in any useful way to such a unit. This is a very different problem.
Then you use the labor theory of value to try and disprove this statement, which does not work as the labor theory of value is easily disproven by an example. The labor theory of value roughly asserts that :
If this were to hold you would have no objection to me grinding planks into dust as opposed to turning them into chairs as long as it too the same amount of effort. Clearly nonsensical. Less simply put, the labour theory of value asserts that we will always have constant returns to scale, which is clearly not true. If I flood the market with chairs the value of the chair decreases, but it still takes the same effort to produce.The remark that labour is a determinant of price is definitely correct. To conclude that it is the only determinant is observably false. The easiest way to deal with this is to abandon the labour theory of value and accept that the equation that determines value is multivariate and labour is just one of the variables.
In conclusion you misrepresent the problem then use faulty theory to disprove it.
"If this were to hold you would have no objection to me grinding planks into dust as opposed to turning them into chairs as long as it too the same amount of effort. "
and that kids, is called irony
"The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of socially necessary labor required to produce it,"
"socially necessary labor"
fuck off with that retarded shit
The socially necessary labor argument is circular. You determine the value of a product by the value of the labour involved, and you value the labour involved by the value of the product, which depends on the value of the labour.
Please tell me where I am wrong or revise your argument.