Quote from: blablahblah on June 09, 2013, 09:04:32 PM

Quote from: MoonShadow on June 09, 2013, 01:34:35 AM

Quote from: ktttn on June 09, 2013, 01:16:28 AM

Quote from: NewLiberty on June 09, 2013, 12:39:44 AM

Quote from: ktttn on June 09, 2013, 12:06:26 AM

In practice, what you describe is the exception to the rule within a state capitalist framework. Dependency on employers prevents many from ever coming far enough out of debt to do what they want.
I have a hard time with equating pay to exoneration or choice because reliance on any paycheck does not let you all the way out of the state or capitalist's control.

Pay is to coercion as exoneration is to execution. This does not in any way suggest that pay is equal to exoneration.
Pay is merely a civil agreement to perform for compensation so no it does not let you all the way out of state control, this is not its promises.
However it very well may put you all the way out of any particular capitalist's control, if by control you really mean enticement.

In jobs that can teach you something, you might as well be an intern.

Interns generally don't even get the fish for a day, the daily pay of the unskilled cabin boy is a better deal for the cabin boy. Your priorities are screwed.

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The civil agreement put forth by employers is the only option for toilers unless you can figure out how to thrive outside of it (which we should).

I know how, and my children will know also; but subsistance farming isn't a preferable lifestyle to most. Specialization is for insects, but free trade always improves the lifestyles of those who freely engage in it. And yes, I can prove that.

http://desertislandgame.com/

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I don't consider the fishermen slaves. That's a fantastic example of how mutual aid works. Captaining a ship with a crew is a-ok by me, yo.

Capitalist pig!

Hmm. Without access to other people's economic calculations re: internships, you have no basis for accusing them of having screwed priorities. As someone who has actually been an intern, in my case the incentives were right for both sides of the trade. I got to work at a 'cool' place, had tutoring, room to experiment and make mistakes, and that made up for the low wage. In return, the employer got their easier/menial tasks done for a lower price, giving their full-time employees time to do more advanced stuff. Win win.

That desert island game seems like childish propaganda -- the only incentive that exists is a contrived need to eat an equal yet maximal amount of fish and coconuts. What about personal growth? Boredom? Self-sufficiency/safety/redundancy? Maslow's hierarchy of needs?? In trying to make a point about trading, the game dehumanises the characters -- they're just drones, and you're the controller trying to maximise factory output.

Quote from: ktttn on June 07, 2013, 04:52:48 PM

Market price for labor is how slavery works.
There is no such thing as a fair price, because the human slave trade determines the market price from the most abject slavery to the mcdonalds employee to the middle management and way on up to the CEO. A one way "market" is not a market. I cannot buy back my labor.

Great point. There seemed to be some uncomfortable squirming in the follow-up posts. I wonder why? Life largely consists of a fight for survival -- do whatever it takes to "not die" and then progressively fulfil all those other Maslowian needs. Being stuck, life-long in just one body (and you don't even get to choose which one) is not exactly a great start for voluntarism. It seems that most of life is involuntary -- people live out their genetic programming, and maybe, occasionally make conscious decisions. Even so, people seem divided on whether free will exists at all -- maybe our conscious 'I' is just a helpless observer and even the feeling of making a voluntary decision is just an illusion, another quale to add to the collection?

There's the issue of death. It's an "unknown unknown". We usually don't know when it'll happen, but we also don't know what happens. Do we get re-incarnated? Do we die forever? We don't even have first-hand proof if it happens! We only have the evidence of the 'Matrix' senses telling us that lots of other people die every day. Thus, we can't make accurate economic calculations on how to spend our time. This is where capitalism breaks down -- the economic calculations just don't work when we have no freaking idea what proportion of our life we are exchanging for the temporary enjoyment of some material item.

Similar points can be made about healthcare but I've had that discussion before.

+>9000
Throw some transhumanist immortality a la Robert A Wilson, and I'm finding you and I'm hugging you.