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Old 04-04-2010, 09:34 PM   #127
salamander21
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My point is that in capitalism, there is no specific "priority", but every person can pursue whatever individual goal they want. So if a person wants to go off and join a commune, then they can do it, but they can't drag other people who don't want to along with them. The reason why communism doesn't work is as I explained before; only lazy people like the man who does nothing but stay at home and watch TV would enjoy and encourage that system, while any other person would immediately leave upon realizing what the system is like. The lazy people can try to keep the productive ones from leaving by force, and the result is nothing other than slavery.

Then the idea arises to distribute the money, or products, according to who has done how much work to produce it,therefore eliminating the problem. But then this question arises: "How is that to be determined?"

The answer is difficult to find, and I think that the best way to determine how much a person's labor is worth is to simply let market forces do their work. Because many people see the words "market forces" as a sort of voodoo or catch-all used by capitalists, I will explain. Labor, or work is a commodity like any other. People get paid a certain amount based on how much their work is worth. Say I work for my boss, and my work is worth $1 an hour. My boss is willing to hire me for anything under $1/hour, because otherwise he is taking a loss. In a capitalistic system, he would try to pay me as much as he possibly could of that $1/hour I am producing, because otherwise I could quit and go to work for his competitor, who is willing to pay me more.

At this point, some might complain that there might not always be a competitor to go work for, and that is true, there might not be. However, consider this: I have a certain number of widgets, each of which I am trying to sell for $1 each. I can only find one person who wants to buy widgets, but they only want to pay 50 cents per widget. What are the widgets worth? Price is whatever someone is willing to pay for something, so the widgets are worth 50 cents. Likewise, if the most that is offered me when I am looking for a job is less than I think my work is worth, then I am wrong. The price of my work is determined by the wages that are offered, just like the price of widgets is determined by whatever someone is willing to pay for it.

But couldn't bosses get together and all agree not to offer pay above a certain amount? Yes, they could. Workers could do the same thing. In fact, they already do. Labor unions are common across the world.

Basically, people can demand whatever they get, but if others don't give it to them, then they have no right to take it by force.
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