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What if you didn't perform any labor to obtain your property? What if you got your property through the exploitation of other people's labor?

RoboGraham 8 Oct 28
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In the US, living big by sucking Labor's blood is known as being "successful".

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@RoboGraham I agree that American capitalism should be trashcanned, but you stack the deck against it. What you call expolitation is an exchange of some of the bear’s labor for some of the capitalist’s wealth.

IMO, employee ownership is the way to go.

But where did the capitalists get his capital?

Why does this capitalist get to exploit the labor of the bear for his own enrichment?

Why can't the bear and his animal colleagues own the apiary collectively?

@RoboGraham

  1. Where did the capitalists get their capital? The first (= most aggressive ) of the hunter-gathers to start farming claimed the most productive land.

  2. Those who didn’t fight them for it and win got less productive land, or no land and continued their hunting-gathering.and perhaps didn’t survive.

  3. Would you be capable of collective ownership? Not IMO.

@yvilletom

You've got it all wrong. The most aggressive hunter/gatherers continued being hunter/gatherers while the most passive of them gave up that violent way of life and settled into a peaceful agrarian lifestyle. And there's a great deal of history separating the hunter/gatherers and the capitalists. The most violent and successful medieval warriors claimed the most land and later the capitalists class emerged out of the merchant class and surpassed those old land holders by focusing in on production, commerce, and constantly improving technology.

So, the hunter gatherers who got left behind became the wage slaves? That doesn't seem right.

Your opinion would be wrong, I already am involved in collective ownership.

@yvilletom, @RoboGraham Actually, if I may mention a theory which oversimplifies somewhat but gets to the heart of the matter:

Agriculture was the beginning of civilization. Agriculture is labor-intensive. In the process of becoming agricultural societies, it was found that neighboring societies were prone to raid and steal the produce. Therefore it became neccesary for a non-laboring, full-time warrior class to emerge in order to defend the land and the produce. This had the unintended side effect of creating an elite strata which ranked itself above the agricultural laborers, because they realized they, too, were in a position to demand the product of the fields; basically they became a protection racket. Eventually these would be what we came to call the lords of the land, "landlords".

One of the hallmarks of modern civilization, by the way, is a standing military under civilian government control, rather than a military which is itself the government as under the feudal system. Many dictatorships currently don't pass the test of a "modern" civilization by this standard; the military leadership is the government. North Korea is a prime example; the head of state is also in direct control of the military.

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Not all landlords are exploiters. Many are working people trying to get by just like everybody else.

I am a slum landlord. I rent a trailer place way out in the country to a guy that has rented it for the last 15 years. He's mentally slow and an alcoholic . I charge him a whole $50 a month. His trailer is so old I'm sure it would not move. He used to work for a company that valued him so much that they paid his rent and mailed it to us every month. About 4 years ago his protector in the company retired and without close supervision he forgot to turn off some expensive equipment and ruined it. They fired him and I stopped getting the rent.

I thought he had moved away because when I drove out there there was a padlock on the trailer but some friends went deer hunting there and they discovered that he was still there. I went to visit him and found out about how he lost his job. He told me some of the neighbors were helping him apply for VA benefits. He also was living there with a wood stove in the trailer and had no electricity or running water.I told him I hoped he could get them and then he could start paying me rent again. He said yes ma'am I'll try to catch up if I if I get VA stuff.

I didn't get any rent from him for a year and a half but when he got accepted by the VA he started paying me $75 or $100 a month until he got everything paid off.

I knew if I evicted him with the sheriff's help that he would just end up as a street person and that would accomplish nothing for me and be a really bad deal for him. Because of his drinking issues I worry that someday I'll quit getting a check now and he'll just be dead in that trailer. I hope when that happens The neighbors find him quickly.

@Lorajay You're a generous person.

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