- Capitalism and Alternatives -

amused

Posted by: Gee ( si ) on September 29, 1999 at 18:43:25:

In Reply to: Questions about Consumer Utopia posted by Samuel Day Fassbinder on September 29, 1999 at 16:35:42:

: SDF: 1) I thought capital was what you needed to run a business. Is the point here that computers have provided cheaper accounting services for business or cheaper advertising for business? Don't computers just allow big businesses to get bigger, at the point in a business' growth when accounting costs start to loom large?

This responded to BS's original post - I suspect your answer and the ": SDF: No." would have been different in a direct response to BS. Amused.

: : So erm..... business tends to be capital intensive now. If you dont have the IT goodies you cant meet client demanda to their satisfaction relative to others who do have IT goodies.

: SDF: How so?

Where IT enables companies to get what consumers want faster better cheaper etc that they would without the IT.

: : The notion that 'workers spend what they get. and capitalists get what they spend'

: SDF: Is this supposed to have any real-world meaning? Would you care to explain what the thought was behind this (if there was one at all)?

You like links, here is one

: : suggests that capitalist are getting less and less, because less and less is going to workers, as more and more is going into so called 'dead labor'.

: SDF: If "less and less is going to workers," this hardly suggests that "capitalist (sic) are getting less and less", in fact "capitalist" might get more and more. Lower wages means less overhead for competitive businesses. Fewer "labor hassles" means lower wages. Lower wages mean less overhead, or (with an increase in worker hours when workers try to earn the same wage by working more hours) it means more productivity per dollar.

If you had not misread a hybrid between BS's orginal post and mine you would know that what 'we' may be getting at is the issue of low pay as proportion of investment becoming less consumption next time round the investment/consuming cycle. This is predicted to cause catastrophe to capitalists.

Then again it may not.

: SDF: Should we be surprised, given the above logic I've given? I don't get it.

Read Stollers original post about the contraction of return on investment.

: SDF: So you like trinkets and mass communications, and the main advance of mass communications (the Internet) is a product of a government program (ARPANET, courtesy of the US Department of Defense).

so? This proves something according to you? That politician really did 'invent' the internet after all huh? I'll vote for him then.

: Any statistical evidence for rest of the above?

You like book titles too;

"THE 1998 ENTERTAINMENT AND LEISURE MARKET RESEARCH HANDBOOK" ISBN Number 1-8881503-87-9

: Is "massive entertainment capacity" supposed to mean that we are in fact entertained?

If people keep going back for more one can take a 'wild' guess.

: Where is any shred of evidence for "safer everything"?

Death stats, courtesy of govt statisticians!


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