Labor and Capitalism (Ownership of the Means of Production)

[TahitiNut]

(I posted this in this thread, but think it might deserve a thread of its own.)

I'll offer some "food for thought" in this post, hopefully encouraging the abandonment of some mental ruts and offering some perspectives sadly not yet evident in this thread. There's an enormous "body of knowledge" that wrestles with the confluence of issues regarding labor and its valuation, not the least of which is Adam Smith's "Labor Theory of Value." I won't even pretend a comprehensive expertise in these areas; I'll merely attempt to drop some torpedoes in the water of this discussion so the junks are sunk.

Labor as a Commodity
There are those who (whether consciously or unconsciously) condone (mostly from a utilitarian ethical posture) treatment of a human being's labor as a commodity, despite the fact that such treatment is unlawful in the US (and most western nations) and unethical/immoral under any prevalent theory of justice in any democratic nation that accommodates capitalism.

To treat human labor as a commodity (with a standardized trade value independent of source) is to ignore its unique character. First and foremost, its existence is uniquely dependent upon the physical presence (either proximate or Waldo'd) of the human and the property with which it is "mingled." Labor per se is not transportable independent of the human being that's its "means of production." Thus, to "own" such labor one must "own" (either directly or derivatively) the human being from which it is "mined." While most have no difficulty claiming that the human being "owns" (has exclusive rights to) his or her own labor, the commoditization of labor unavoidably necessitates an "ownership" which is inseparable from the "ownership" of the laborer.

While there are many other very real considerations, including the unavoidable "domesticated livestock" treatment of human beings (i.e. labor is the same as milk or wool or hog bellies), the above consideration is foremost and unavoidable imho. To regard labor as a commodity in a capitalist context inexorably results in slavery (ownership of the human being) and the ultimately total devaluation of human life independent of its productive (i.e. market) "value" to others.

The "Value" of Labor
The inclination to 'value' labor according to some specious (commoditized) market value ignores and devalues the alternative use of the "means of production," i.e. the laborer (human being) himself or herself. The choice of each human being to apply his or her time and energy towards laboring (based on some value to another) as opposed to engaging in activities of value to him or herself becomes critical in managing labor "availability." In the Garden of Eden (where there was no illness, disability, sloth, greed, or scarcity), labor had no "market value." Thus, to create "market value," it was necessary to first create illness, disability, sloth, greed, and scarcity. That was the serpent's job. He did it very effectively.

Therefore, to reduce the "market value" of labor, it is necessary to reduce the value and availability of alternative activities and heighten the existence of illness, disability, sloth, greed, and (especially) scarcity. Labor becomes cheap when individual survival itself is threatened - euphemistically called a "standard of living."

The "Compensation" of Labor
It is with some chagrin that I see in the Original Message a one-sided (not even "fair and balanced") utilitarian set of criteria upon which compensation is derived. In other words, it's solely based on the utilitarian 'value' to some recipient and not at all based on any assessment of 'value' of that which is sacrificed by the "producer" of labor: the worker. What's the 'value' to a buyer/employer of the seller/worker's sleep? the seller/worker's quality time with children? the seller/worker's conjugal relationships? the seller/worker's recreation? the seller/worker's spiritual nuturance? Zilch. Nada. Nothing.

Yet those endeavors are what are being sacrificed by the human being in offering his or her labor. Where's the "compensation" for their loss?

What we also seem to ignore when we speak in terms of the minimal individual necessities of food, shelter, clothing, and health care is the commoditization of those very things - particularly health care. In arguing for minimal "compensation" of labor in terms of such goods and services, we must foresee the achievement of some stabilization where the increased "cost" of those goods and services due to the same labor "compensation" theory achieves equity. The basic problem here is the profit slice in such costs. Health care costs are burdened with a 50% 'profit' overhead. Food and clothing costs are depressed by labor exploitation and commensurate profiteering. The complex systemic (predatory) relationship between labor, profit, and cost must be considered - since their use as a basis for compensation isn't immutable.

Balance of Supply and Demand in a "Free Market"
It is axiomatic that a (theoretical) "free market" seeks a price stabilization point where some demand is not met - where some buyers are priced out of the market and their "demand" is unmet. This is the stabilization between market price and productive capacity - the price will always rise to the point that it is not economically prudent to create incremental productive capacity.

This is why agricultural subsidies make sense to a large extent. It creates an artificial (not "free market") demand that motivates the incremental productive capacity such that supply exceeds demand and those priced out of the market (means testing) are, through the non-capitalistic forces in society, fed. The same rationale exists for housing. Capitalism unalloyed with such "socialism" is doomed to destroy the very society in which it becomes the unbalanced force.

But what about labor? Using the morally bankrupt commodity paradigm, where is the societal "artificial demand" for labor that both ensures an adequate supply and permits a 'cost' that matches value? During the Great Depression, the government became an "employer of last resort" through both public works projects and the Civilian Conservation Corps. Our national recognition of the innate 'value' of one another was manifest in such works.

In neoKonservative AmeriKa, that "demand" is solely militaristic - a social force channeled into conquest and profiteering (on steroids). The historical revisionists proclaim the fiction that only WW2 extricated us from the Great Depression - glossing over the inherent theme of 'demand.'

Think about it.

The Enterprise-centric Mentality
We have been mentally seduced (by the politics of scarcity) into thinking that Enterprise is the sole valid perspective when entertaining questions of Value, Ethics, and Justice. Enterprise is vested with concrete permanence and society (human beings) as subsidiary and mutable. Rather than viewing collaborative human activities as primarily serving the participants, the participants are artificially segregated into warring classes surrendering their own welfare to serving the profiteering interests of owners. Just as a mental exercise, how would it be different if the workers within any company were, by law, the equal "owners" of 75% of the company? (Don't think about "how to get there" - just think about how it would be different.) Remember, "capitalism" was originally about a private (not monarchical) ownership of the means of production - allowing what we now call owner-operator businesses (not indolent and titled ownership).

[eallen]

1. OK, I did that mental exercise.

The result is a nation that essentially destroys its equity and venture capital markets, that as a result quickly loses both its economic competitiveness and its wealth, whose citizens are ground down into poverty and who, if they can, soon flee to other nations with greater opportutnity, and whose government eventually is unable to provide the social services it did once upon a time.

There are many small enterprises that are 75% owned by their employees. What happens when such an enterprise needs capital? Most cannot borrow, because they are too much a risk. The usual route now is to look for an angel investor or venture capital. By your rule, those that are at the magic 25% outside investor figure are forbidden from doing this. So.. what happens? The business goes under.

And what happens when employees leave? If they retain their ownership of the business, then each employee who leaves increases the proportion of outside ownership, until eventually that 75% rule is violated. If they don't, then they don't really own a stake in the company.

[TahitiNut]

3. There is NOTHING 'holy' about equity and venture capital markets.

Nothing. They exist solely to enable the same kind of 'titled' ownership that existed in the days of Kings, Dukes, Barons and other 'titled' owners. Such titles were inherited, just as wealth is inherited today. Capitalism, originally conceived to permit labor to own its own means of production (sharecroppers to farmers), has been perverted into a system that merely replaces a King with a Robber Baron.

You talk of 'risk' as though it's greater for a loan than for ownership, yet the entire notion of incorporation is to limit liability - a form of risk - that's already absent in a loan.

What kind of equity theory affords a wealthy person some 'right' to profit without end, even over multiple gnerations, when taking an equity share in the labors of others, but have a limit on profit (interest) when offering that same capital in the form of a loan?

[eallen]

5. I agree completely, there is nothing holy about it at all. But....

There is the issue of what works and what doesn't. Most small businesses are high risk ventures. They can't get significant capital as loans because of that. Imposing the rule that they can't sell equity will have, as its primary effect, that they simply don't get capital. And we all know what happens to under-capitalized businesses.

[TahitiNut]

7. This view inverts results and causes.

One of the primary reasons "small businesses are high risk ventures" is because the Frankenstein Monsters of global corporatism wipe them out with a cough.

One of the primary reasons capital seeks equity rather than loan is due to the artificial socioeconomic rules ("entitlements") established to grant HUGE preferences to (non-participating) equity. The playing field is tilted to the point of capsizing.

Retained profits of owner-operated enterprises were once thought to be the preferred source of increased capitalization. No longer. In both penalizing retained earnings and favoring distributed earnings (abysmally low rates of taxation and no sales tax on the sales of property called stock), non-participating "Owners" create perversions in the economic system that rape workers and pillage the public interests.

Take a look-see at the taxation of interest income.
Take a look-see at the taxation of dividend and capital gain income.
Take a look-see at the taxation of earned (labor) income.

Can there any question about the intolerable injustices?

[eallen]

10. How long are you supposed to work for one business?

Let's say I help start a business and work ten years at it. Under your proposed laws, I own a part of it. But do I? Really? Does that mean anything when I leave? Or must I stay tied to the business in order to benefit from that sweat equity?

I'm not sure I like my savings to be so closely coupled to where I live and where I choose to work. There is a significant degree of personal freedom that comes from decoupling those. I might want to try my hand at another business. Or move to another part of the country. Or take a year off to backpack through southeast Asia. Or perhaps where I work just happens to go under. Or I can no longer work due to illness. If my savings are decoupled from my work, and perhaps diversified into other businesses, I have a something to fall back upon on that rainy day.

[TahitiNut]

11. How long are you supposed to work for YOURSELF?

Again, the insidious paradigm of the current fiction of an enterprise that's separate and distinct from the workers themselves creeps in.

It's as though we're supposed to view being a sharecropper for Baron 'X' who's free to move and become a sharecropper for Baron 'Y' is some kind of liberty. It's not. Liberty came by people farming for themselves and not having 75% of their labor confiscated by some indolent 'entitled' owner.

Indeed, what's to stop the OWNERS (i.e. the people doing the work) of a business from creating branch operations? How about job-swaps? It seems to me that we're weakened and deluded into forever abdicating empowerment - thinking that we owe our very souls to the company store.

It's similar to the drain-bamaged thinking in which we engage when we go about 'resurrecting' a downtown or city center by first subsidizing big companies to take large footprints. No living, vital city in the world attains that vitality by 'building the corporate office center and they (the workers) will come' (that's the path to office park ghost towns). Every city with vitality is first and foremost inhabited. Once there're people, the parasites of 'free enterprise' will come. The people themselves, as an extension to healthy social interactions, will form collaborative enterprises to offer products and services to one another. That's how cities thrive. It merely takes a little bit of tourism to examine San Francisco, London, Rome, Paris and other cities with thriving centers to see that residency comes first! Take away inhabitants and no amount of corporate inducements will breathe life into the city.

[Tansy_Gold]

12. Residency comes first -- and last???

I agree with everything I think you're positing, TN, but I have a question. And forgive me if my ignorance and my failure to read carefully everything you've written shows through.

I live in what is rapidly becoming a gigantic bedroom community at the edge of a large metropolitan area. There are no "jobs" locating here at all, just mushrooming retail outlets. It seems to me that the distant "labor centers" and the scattered "consumer centers" are part and parcel of the entire corporate capitalist paradigm.

As much as I can, I've tried to opt out of this paradigm for the past 30+ years, but it's becoming increasingly difficult.

How, in this age of planned area developments and the destruction (or planned non-existence) of an indigenous local market, do we impose one?

Tansy Gold, anti-capitalist

[TahitiNut]

16. Dunno. It seems to me, however, that we're perpetuating habits ...

... past the point in time they made environmental sense. We chose to geographically segregate environmentally (aesthetics, toxins, etc.) industries from our residences ... at least those who could afford to did. As those 'industries' continue a behavior so trained, they engage in the brainless behavior of a tail wagging the somnolent dog.

Please forgive me if my writing appears stilted and convoluted. I struggle converting a dynamic I visualize into words - a struggle exacerbated by having little formal training in the vocabulary of such topics.

In essence, I'm wrestling with the equitable balance between labor and ownership - seeing an overwhelmingly imbalanced system losing even more balance at an accelerating rate.

I'm not an anti-capitalist; I'm an anti-corporatist.

[eallen]

13. For any company w/more than a handful, company & worker ARE different...

I've worked for both large companies and small, for both publicly traded companies and ones whose entire equity was vested in the workers. The only time I truly work for myself is when I work as a one-man shop. Which is what I'm doing now. Any time you work with others, there is in reality the distinction between yourself and the company, whose interests significantly overlap, ideally, but are not identical. You're right that cooperative work comes first. You're wrong that the desire to and benefit from factoring out differential ownership and responsibilities and participation is far behind. If that creates a degree of injustice, it also creates a leap in efficiency and wealth. That's why nations with significant public services, such as Sweden, rely on a capitalist economy, rather than eliminating it. The goose might lay its golden eggs unequally, but better to keep it laying and manage that problem, than to roast it on a spit and divide its meat.

[TahitiNut]

17. My intention in this thread was to offer folks food for thought ...

... that might let them climb out of a mental rut and acquire a different perspective - a rut where the very walls of the rut become a 'reality' but which are merely created by repeatedly trodding in that rut, in lockstep with other rat-racers.

But I can't (and won't) force anyone out of that rut when they struggle to stay there, not would I ever force-feed food for thought.

---

Try this: Imagine playing a game of Monopoly with another person. Imagine agreeing that neither of you would purchase any of the 'properties.' (How long could the game go on?)

Imagine other people joining the game. (This game has an unlimited number of playing pieces and the bank can print 'money'.) Imagine the other people also agreeing to never purchase any of the 'properties.' Is there any limit to the number of players? Is there any limit to the length of the game?

Now, imagine just one player choosing to purchase properties. How long before the other players choose to purchase properties? How long before players are removed from the game? (I.e. they "die.")

Now, imagine the Earth as one gigantic Monopoly board. How long before only one person 'owns' it? How long before the rest of the players die? What would've happened if all the 'players' chose not to purchase properties?

When that one person is left who 'owns' all the properties, did he win? When all the other players are dead, how can he tell? Is it really worth it to play by those 'rules'???

[eallen]

21. Natural resources are a pretty small part of world GDP.

I suspect well less than a tenth.

Who builds the houses and hotels under your scheme?

To me, one of the big differences between a socialist and a liberal is that the liberal understands and values market processes. That isn't the same is idealizing them into either a natural or ethical order, as does the libertarian. The liberal recognizes the distinctive productivity of capitalism vis-a-vis socialism, and how capital and equity markets multiply that productivity, and also how that productivity comes with externalities and inequities. That last is why the liberal, unlike the libertarian, is more inclined to judicial and regulatory means to limit the externalities, and government education and social programs to alleviate the inequalities.

But the liberal still wants the houses and hotels, and not just the ones that each might build for himself with his own hands, but also those that are built for profit, some bought from others, some rented by the day or the month, and even some built by speculative investment.

You're under the illusion that we don't see the system we're in. But we see it quite well. This is an old argument, and the problem isn't that we don't see, but that we disagree with you about the consequences of your proposal.

[K-W]

22. I dont think that is true at all.

Market processes are extremely easy to understand and are well understood by any competent socialist.

And most american liberals, do not in fact, have any clue about the economic system they are in. Because anti communism in this country has made it taboo to even ask such questions.

The difference between a liberal and a socialist is whether or not you can accept an unjust system as long as a basic quality of life and liberty is protected.

[Tansy_Gold]

23. And you, K-W, are correct

The long bias against teaching the economics of communism in this country did great damage. We were simply told "communism is evil" and were expected to believe it unquestioningly, just as we unquestioningly believed capitalism was good.

Ironically, it was the reading of Ayn Rand's pro-capitalist "Atlas Shrugged" that first got me to begin questioning the perfection of consumer capitalism. When I realized that her perfect system could only work in a perfect (and fictional) world, I knew that it couldn't work in the real and very imperfect world. Her heroes had to escape the world and create a mini-utopia that contained none of the real world's realities, and then they had to destroy the real world to save it. Sound familiar?

[TahitiNut]

24. Pithy and succinct.

"The difference between a liberal and a socialist is whether or not you can accept an unjust system as long as a basic quality of life and liberty is protected."

I tend to heartily agree, while I regard it as more complex than that in the messy day-to-day.

It's indicative of the mixture of deontological and utilitarian ethics in each of us, I believe, even while we might not be familiar with the terms employed to describe our experience. (Most of academia is devoted to describing that which the 'uneducated' merely experience fulsomely and the academics not so much.) :evilgrin:

[TahitiNut]

9. Oh... and there's no rule that they can't sell equity.

Any sale of equity interest would be counterbalanced by an increase in the equity interests of the workers/employees. This merely recognizes the predominant equity interests of those who've actually created the value in which the equity is sought. Companies issue new stock offerings (IPOs) all the time and such issues are always balanced between the equity interests of current stockholders and new stockholders.

Notice that this would necessitate a re-evaluation of the 'value' of an equity interest as opposed to the distributed compensation of labor (i.e. wages and salaries). Since all workers would be coequal 'owners' of the enterprise, just how much unbalanced power do you think the Executive Compensation Committee would have in setting CEO salaries at levels 500 or more times that of the average employee?

Insofar as attaining (through employment) and 'selling' one's equity share once one left the company, those mechanism would work themselves out. Remember, the monetization of an equity share is the abdication of equity power/authority. Tenure might be used in establishing full equity entitlements and the surrender of that equity when leaving the company (working elsewhere or retiring) could be accomplished by either lump sum payment by the inheritors of that equity or an annuity.

Absolutely none of the "difficulties" of such a definition of equity ownership rises to the levels of complexity (and injustice) that the current "system" entails.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

2. Damn..too much in here to address

when I have to be "laboring" right now..but a little request if you will...please post this in a slower moving forum as well so that a conversationcan get flushed out over time.

IMHO, this entire post cuts to the philosophy we must begin to frame as part of our platform

[TahitiNut]

4. That's why you're one of my favorite DUers, luv!!

You seem to see where this goes - to the very root of what "liberalism" is all about.

Democracy is the means ... justice is the ends ... and liberalism is the characterization of "justice." Until recently, "liberalism" existed (and was prevalent) in both the Republican and Democratic Parties ... differing only in nuances regarding the means.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

6. Yeah..I did catch that immediately

at it's roots liberalism means liberty..from libre "to free"

Hard to free when economic parity is non-existant.

and thanks for the compliment..why YOU are one of my favorite DU'ers is that YOU will take the time to compose this incredible essay even at the risk of it sinking unread....it deserves to be seen and considered...it's at the heart of our future.

[TahitiNut]

8. Yep. People as CHATTEL cannot be free.

When labor is increasingly treated as a commodity, people become chattel. This is the fundamental reason we have a law against it. Once upon a time, we (as a nation) seemed to comprehend this.

Labor cannot be bought and sold. Labor is inseperable from the laborer. To buy and sell labor is to buy and sell human beings. Labor is participation.

[Ron Green]

14. Don't forget, though, that slavery is the natural state of Man on earth,

just as fear and pain are our lot while we are time- and space-bound here. The genius of Democracy and Liberalism is that they seek to ameliorate the natural fear and slavery, but do so only ideally and incompletely. To the extent we can promote progressive policy and programs, we are loving. To the extent we acquiesce in the slave system, we are fearing.

[TahitiNut]

15. "Slavery is the natural state of Man " only so long as there are ...

... women making deals with serpents. :evilgrin: :dunce: :silly:

Clearly, there's no comprehension (or realization) of Yin without Yang. I think of humans as 'Choosers'; it's our job - our basic role (raison d'etre) in the Universe.

First there was 0. It was split into +1 and -1. Thus, Choice was created. 'Choosers' give Choice a purpose, through Passion.

[Ron Green]

18. I should have said that BECAUSE pain and fear are our natural state,

slavery follows. I think that the ILLUSION is that we are separate (as we are, bound up in animal bodies), but the REALITY is that we are one. For anyone to exploit another's labor is to deal in fantasy, because we truly are one. The liberal position begins from this, while the "conservative" reactionary position begins from separateness and tribalism. This is why I equate the right wing with the natural "slave" state and the left with the spiritual or "shared" state.

[TahitiNut]

19. We're singing in the same chorus, sir. Ubetcha.

:thumbsup: It has long been referred to as "the politics of scarcity" versus "the politics of abundance."

[zann725]

30. Nicely put.

n/t

[aneerkoinos]

35. Exactly

Gnosticism, Buddhism etc. share that fundamental realization of the fundamental imperfectness of the dependent material existance, and ignorance aka separation from truth as the origin of this sorry state. And socialism realizes that today the most visible forms of the Archons are the Corporations, trying to impose their slavery upon all of us.

And of course, the "we" that are one includes all sentient beings, not only humans. There's no need to get dogmatic about not eating our fellow beings (not strict vegetarian myself), as Middle way is the Way to go, but our horrible meat factories are piling up loads and loads of bad Karma...

[aneerkoinos]

34. Gnostics & Social Revolution

Slavery is the natural state of the material aspect of being; Liberation by spiritual enlightment IS the natural state of Man.

Socialism, in essence, is about spiritual evolution of Mankind, because it is based on our inner sense of compassion and solidarity, driving us to find ways to best alleviate suffering in the imperfect material level of being, to create justice in our social relationships, justice that is beatifully expressed in the words "to each by his/her needs, each by his abilities".

Spiritual socialism is based on the understanding of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that spiritual search requires that our basic material, psychological and social needs are fulfilled. Spiritual socialism understands that being is not static, but an evolutionary dynamic process, so spiritual development of the individual mind and social justice must go hand in hand, both are inseparable aspects of our collective consciousness.


I just came by this site and it looks wonderfull, even with all its fluffier New Age stuff: http://www.gnostics.com/
Especially this: http://www.gnostics.com/nasm.html

[K-W]

20. People seem to forget that compensation has nothing to do with slavery.

As long as we live in a society where, for some of the population, attaining a basic quality of life can only be reached through agreeing to become an employee of someone, we live in a society full of slaves.

[TahitiNut]

25. I sometimes regard 'employee compensation' in the sense it's used ...

... rather much like the sale of indulgences by the 14th century Church.

Superficially, but under the imprimatur of authority, assuaging the souls of the increasingly soulless. :evilgrin:

[AZCat]

26. Pardon my ignorance...

But did Thorstein Veblen address some of these concerns in his works?

I started reading him briefly a couple of years ago but for some reason didn't pick him back up again after an interruption.

[TahitiNut]

27. I suppose only tangentially. (I'm the grandson of Norwegian immigrants.)

I see no reason for you to ask pardon for ignorance when I so eagerly trot mine out for all to see.

---

Veblen, Torstein Bunde (1857-1929)

Thorstein Veblen is to economics what Jonathan Swift is to English literature: a master of the art of satire. Is is essential to effective satire that its message be ambiguous: the reader should never be sure whether the author is absolutely serious or just pulling his or her leg That quality is certainly present in Swift's Gulliver's Travels and it is also present in Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), The Instinct of Workmanship (1914), Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution (1915), TheHigherLearninginAmerica (1918),Absentee Ownership (1923), and his many essays. In fact, it is there in everyt}ung he wrote except The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), WhiCh iS as near as he ever came to writing a conventional academic book.

No matter which of these books we open, we find the idea that life in a modern industrial community is the result of a polar conflict between 'pecuniary employments' and 'industrial employments', between 'business enterprise' and 'the machine process', between 'vendibility' and 'serviceability'-in short, between making money and making goods. There is a class struggle under capitalism, not between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, but between businessmen and engineers. Pecuniary habits of thought unite bankers, brokers, lawyers and managers in a defence of private acquisition; in contrast, the discipline of the machine unites workers in industry and more especially the technicians and engineers who supervise them.

It is in these terms that Veblen describes modern industrial civilisation. As we read him, we have the feeling that something is being explained. And yet in the end the ambiguity of the message remains. He appears to offer a fundamental critique of the market mechanism and a call for something like a technocratic revolution, but Veblen warns us specifically against the belief that the engineers are capable of taking over and running the system, which leaves us wondering just what he is saying. But perhaps the desire to pin him down precisely misses the point: it is, after all, satire and is designed to open your eyes, not to close your mind.

http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/walras/bios/veblen.html

---

The son of Norwegian immigrants, Veblen was born in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, and grew up in rural Minnesota. He received his B.A from Carleton College (1880) and Ph.D. in philosophy from Yale (1884).

Veblen argued that a fundamental conflict exists between the making of goods and the making of money. In The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904), he argued that the entrepreneur is a reactionary predator whose perspective is diametrically opposed to that of the engineer or industrialist. Veblen's businessperson makes profits not by providing an outlet for the forces of industrialization and social evolution but by distorting them: by engaging in monetary manipulations, by restricting output to keep prices artificially high, and by interfering with the engineers who actually produce goods and services. The founder of the so-called institutionalist school, Veblen believed that economics must not be studied as a closed system but rather as an aspect of a culture whose customs and habits constitute institutions that are rapidly changing.
http://radicalacademy.com/amphilosophy8a.htm

I think it'd be difficult to acknowlege Enron without acknowleging Veblen. :evilgrin:

Perhaps our similar ancestry (and looks) explains the resemblance? :silly:

[AZCat]

28. I confess...

I had an idea that Veblen's work wasn't directly linked to this stuff. I find his work interesting and need to get back to the library to read it (the UofA library has his complete works).

I just wanted to give an educated "kick" to a thoughtful thread. In recognition of the Norwegian connection, here's another! :)



On Edit: grammar

[The Magistrate]

29. An Excellent Contribution, Mr. Nut

Most enjoyable. Should time permit, it will be a pleasure to add some comment, my friend!

[TahitiNut]

31. Thank you, sir! It makes my shameless display of my own ignorance ...

... less subject to my delayed embarrassment. Maybe I won't wake up screaming, tonight. :silly: :dunce:

(The self-taught man has an ignoramus for a teacher.)

[TahitiNut]

32. kick

... as I hit the hay.

[DU GrovelBot]

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[TahitiNut]

36. (tsk, tsk) Off-topic.

:silly:

[TahitiNut]

37. one last kick (for the weekend)

:hurts: