[Truth To Power]

Lots of factories and producer goods were "expediated" and "made possible" by the financial "tools" that the non-worker Bankman-Fried "produced."

No, only a few were, and only because OTHER people used them to enhance production and relieve scarcity, NOT HE. So your claim remains BALDLY FALSE.

His parents are also [url]famous "non-workers."[/url] His mother wrote a book on how to not feel guilty after committing atrocities, and his father is a specialist on tax-dodging. Both really useful examples of "work." Mom also did some research into the efficacy of political bribes.

So as I knew would be the case, you still have no examples of them causing the construction of any factories or production of any producer goods. Proving me right and your claims false.

Tell us more about all the important stuff that "non-workers" provide...

You mean like factories and producer goods? I am still waiting for you to give some evidence that you can tell the difference between a factory, a financial instrument, and a fraud. So far, you have done nothing but claim they are all the same thing.

[QatzelOk]

...only a few were...

For you, the useful and life-saving factories that Bankman-Fried's 'work' created were **only a few.**

But for all the single mom's whose children were saved by the money they were able to save by working in these Bankman-Fried-enabled working establishments... he was a God.

And that means that **incredibly-talented non-workers** like him probably created the earth and all the creatures in it. Through misrepresentation and hoarding.

[Truth To Power]

Evil must always be justified, and the only way to justify it is with lies. Once you choose to try to justify evil, you have renounced truth.

For you, the useful and life-saving factories that Bankman-Fried's 'work' created were **only a few.**

No, they were zero. You simply made them up. Other people's work created factories, not Bankman-Fried's. You have not been able to identify one factory or even a single item of producer goods that Bankman-Fried caused to exist by his decisions or labor, and you never will. You have to just constantly make baldly false claims in order to prevent yourself from knowing the facts of objective physical reality that prove your beliefs are false and evil. When you chose to justify evil, you repudiated the option of truthfulness.

But for all the single mom's whose children were saved by the money they were able to save by working in these Bankman-Fried-enabled working establishments... he was a God.

No, that is just more false, absurd, and disingenuous garbage you are spewing to help you evade the facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.

And that means that **incredibly-talented non-workers** like him probably created the earth and all the creatures in it. Through misrepresentation and hoarding.

See? You have realized that you have no choice but to spew such false and disingenuous absurdities. The great irony is that it is precisely your socialist refusal to know the difference between production and privilege that enables and sustains all the excesses and evils of capitalism. Without socialists disingenuously pretending that the only alternative to capitalism is socialism, capitalists would not be able to get away with pretending that the only alternative to socialism is capitalism.

[QatzelOk]

...Other people's work created factories, not Bankman-Fried's. ...

It's difficult to argue when you keep moving the goalposts.

Bankman-Fried was the one who did all the arranging, implimenting, and causing to exist.

All the workers did was to use the tools that Bankman-Fried made available to finance their factory-building.

The richest and most successful people on the planet are the model for Bankman-Fried's incredible labor.

[Truth To Power]

It's difficult to argue when you keep moving the goalposts.

I haven't moved anything and you know it. You are the one moving the goalposts by trying to pretend that factories, financial instruments, and fraud are all the same thing. I'm the one trying to get you to address the actual topic -- who it is that causes factories to exist rather than not exist, and how -- which you can't and won't. That's why you had to falsely and disingenuously pretend that SBF is an example of an industrialist when you know full well that he is no such thing.

Bankman-Fried was the one who did all the arranging, implimenting, and causing to exist.

No, that's just another bald falsehood from you, which is why you have not identified any factories or even producer goods he caused to exist, and never will.

All the workers did was to use the tools that Bankman-Fried made available to finance their factory-building.

Wrong again. If anyone used financial tools SBF made available to finance their factory-building -- which you have claimed but offered no evidence for -- THEY were the ones causing the factory to be built, not SBF.

The richest and most successful people on the planet are the model for Bankman-Fried's incredible labor.

No, that's just another bald falsehood from you. We can point to the specific factories, warehouses, production equipment, and other producer goods people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have caused to exist by their decisions and initiative. You cannot identify any such goods that SBF caused to exist because your claim that planning and arranging for execution of a fraud is the same as planning and arranging for construction of a factory is false, absurd, and disingenuous garbage.

It is precisely YOUR cretinous Marxist pretense that there is no difference between factories and fraud that enables the capitalists' pretense that there is no difference between productive investment and buying privileges. So it is YOUR absurd, disingenuous, anti-economic Marxist bull$#!+ that keeps capitalism in power, robbing and oppressing the productive, contributory working and entrepreneurial classes, and I will thank you to remember it.

[QatzelOk]

...I'm the one trying to get you to address the actual topic -- who it is that causes factories to exist rather than not exist...

The struture "causes to exist" can only be applied to God, the creator of universes.

If you are comparing Bankman-Fried and Goldman Sachs to the Abrahamic "God," then I am starting to wonder about the pernicious effects of propaganda on our ability to understand the material conditions of the world around us.

"On the third day, Oligarch created a factory" isn't very convincing to me.

[Truth To Power]

The struture "causes to exist" can only be applied to God, the creator of universes.

No, that's just more false, absurd, and disingenuous bull$#!+ from you, nothing but a refusal to know and identify facts of objective physical reality using ordinary English words. Yesterday I put some flour, water, yeast, etc. in my bread machine, selected the desired process option, pushed the Start button, and four and a half hours later, took a loaf of bread out of it. I caused that loaf of bread to exist, in exactly the same sense that a farmer causes his crops to exist, an entrepreneur causes a factory to exist, and employers cause products and services to exist: i.e., by making the relevant decisions and implementing them in the real world. You have merely renounced all contact with the real world and replaced it with a concoction of absurd and dishonest Marxist anti-concepts. As a result, you are now literally reduced to claiming that when you make a sandwich, you do not cause it to exist, and when you walk down the street, you do not cause your feet to move one in front of the other. To maintain your false and evil Marxist beliefs, you have deliberately renounced knowledge of objective physical reality that you obtained before the age of two.

If you are comparing Bankman-Fried and Goldman Sachs to the Abrahamic "God," then I am starting to wonder about the pernicious effects of propaganda on our ability to understand the material conditions of the world around us.

See above for a conclusive refutation of your absurd and disingenuous refusal to know indisputable facts or use English words correctly.

"On the third day, Oligarch created a factory" isn't very convincing to me.

More accurately, clear, simple, grammatical English sentences that identify indisputable facts of objective physical reality are not very convincing to you, because you have chosen to let absurd and disingenuous Marxist anti-concepts remove all trace of contact with objective physical reality from your brain.

[Skynet]

@QatzelOk The Fascists say: "A productive society has 10% leaders, 90% workers."

I think arab societies fail because anybody wants to be the leader...


Adam Smith the father of capitalism wrote: " Each coin earned is a benefit for society, because this makes everything more efficient."

[Potemkin]

@QatzelOk The Fascists say: "A productive society has 10% leaders, 90% workers."

I think arab societies fail because anybody wants to be the leader...


Adam Smith the father of capitalism wrote: " Each coin earned is a benefit for society, because this makes everything more efficient."

Capitalism already existed when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. He was therefore not its ‘father’. He was the father, instead, of free trade. The established economic orthodoxy had been mercantilism, which regarded trade as a zero-sum game - if you benefitted from a trade, it logically followed that your partner in the trade must have suffered a loss. It also followed from this that national governments had an interest in controlling trade, lest the nation be ruined. Adam Smith demonstrated that, on the contrary, trading goods and services can be, and in fact usually is, mutually beneficial to both partners in the trade. Allowing unrestricted trade is therefore preferable to having strict government controls on trading. The publication of The Wealth of Nations was the death knell for mercantilism and the dawn of international free trade, which the British Empire attempted to impose upon the world during the following couple of centuries.

[Skynet]

Capitalism already existed when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. He was therefore not its ‘father’. He was the father, instead, of free trade. The established economic orthodoxy had been mercantilism, which regarded trade as a zero-sum game - if you benefitted from a trade, it logically followed that your partner in the trade must have suffered a loss. It also followed from this that national governments had an interest in controlling trade, lest the nation be ruined. Adam Smith demonstrated that, on the contrary, trading goods and services can be, and in fact usually is, mutually beneficial to both partners in the trade. Allowing unrestricted trade is therefore preferable to having strict government controls on trading. The publication of The Wealth of Nations was the death knell for mercantilism and the dawn of international free trade, which the British Empire attempted to impose upon the world during the following couple of centuries.

No as he lived there was a transformation of Feudalism due to the invention of the steamengine to Capitalism (Capitalism means you can chose where you work, no slavery or serfdom, free market and social darwinism)

[Potemkin]

No as he lived there was a transformation of Feudalism due to the invention of the steamengine to Capitalism (Capitalism means you can chose where you work, no slavery or serfdom, free market and social darwinism)

No, capitalism means two things: the private ownership of the means of production, and the investment of capital for profit. The steam engine had already been invented in the time of the ancient Greeks, by Hero of Alexandria. It did not change the mode of economic production at the time because the preconditions for the rise of capitalism did not yet exist. Slave labour was so plentiful and so cheap that it made no economic sense to industrialise. And so they didn't. I think Hero's steam engine ended up being used to perform apparent 'miracles' in religious temples, such as raising platforms by 'magic' and the like. Technological determinism is nonsense, as the history of technology demonstrates very easily. Technology, in and of itself, determines nothing. Society, and the mode of economic production of that society, has to be ready for that technology for it to be made use of. The ancient world was not ready for the steam engine, because of the prevalence and cheapness of slave labour, so Hero's invention changed nothing and was soon forgotten.

As for free trade, social Darwinism and the like, these things are not essential aspects of capitalism. As I mentioned, before Adam Smith capitalism certainly existed (otherwise he could not have analysed it or written about it), but for centuries the prevailing orthodoxy had been mercantilism rather than free trade, for the reasons I outlined above. It was still capitalism, since it involved the private ownership of the means of production and the investment of capital for profit, but trade was governed by a different paradigm than free trade, one which Adam Smith did much to discredit in his book. And social Darwinism wasn't a thing before Darwin's theory of evolution, which only came along in the late 19th century, long after Smith was mouldering in his grave.

[Truth To Power]

Capitalism already existed when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. He was therefore not its ‘father’. He was the father, instead, of free trade.

Smith learned about free trade at the feet of French physiocrats like Turgot.

The established economic orthodoxy had been mercantilism, which regarded trade as a zero-sum game - if you benefitted from a trade, it logically followed that your partner in the trade must have suffered a loss. It also followed from this that national governments had an interest in controlling trade, lest the nation be ruined. Adam Smith demonstrated that, on the contrary, trading goods and services can be, and in fact usually is, mutually beneficial to both partners in the trade. Allowing unrestricted trade is therefore preferable to having strict government controls on trading.

The French physiocrats invented the concept of laissez faire decades before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations.

The publication of The Wealth of Nations was the death knell for mercantilism and the dawn of international free trade, which the British Empire attempted to impose upon the world during the following couple of centuries.

The French physiocrats lost influence after the French Revolution because they had been too closely associated with rich industrialists. But their policies would actually have been a lot better for the people than the more socialist ones the revolutionaries imposed.

[Truth To Power]

No, capitalism means two things: the private ownership of the means of production, and the investment of capital for profit. The steam engine had already been invented in the time of the ancient Greeks, by Hero of Alexandria. It did not change the mode of economic production at the time because the preconditions for the rise of capitalism did not yet exist. Slave labour was so plentiful and so cheap that it made no economic sense to industrialise. And so they didn't.

Slave labor was not that cheap in Rome, and people were aware that it carried attendant risks (Spartacus). It was more the fact that before Newton, mechanical engineering was so hit and miss that production machinery could not be relied on, and was ruinously costly to build. Remember, water power was already widely used in Roman times, and steam had to compete with water until well into the 19th century. Industrialization also had to await the use of coal for iron metallurgy rather than charcoal. Europe simply could not grow enough trees to support large-scale industrialization without recourse to fossil fuels. As it was, large areas were deforested just for shipbuilding in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The ancient world was not ready for the steam engine, because of the prevalence and cheapness of slave labour, so Hero's invention changed nothing and was soon forgotten.

No. It wasn't slavery that prevented Rome from industrializing. It was the lack of a science of mechanics and coal-based metallurgy.

[Potemkin]

Smith learned about free trade at the feet of French physiocrats like Turgot.

The French physiocrats invented the concept of laissez faire decades before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations.

Good point. Like most British ideas, we shamelessly stole it from the French. But Smith popularised these ideas in Britain, which managed to (narrowly) avoid a revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, and was therefore able to grab that particular ball and run with it. By the late 19th century, the British Empire was spreading the gospel of laissez faire free trade across the globe.

The French physiocrats lost influence after the French Revolution because they had been too closely associated with rich industrialists. But their policies would actually have been a lot better for the people than the more socialist ones the revolutionaries imposed.

Ah, the vagaries of history….

[Truth To Power]

Good point. Like most British ideas, we shamelessly stole it from the French. But Smith popularised these ideas in Britain, which managed to (narrowly) avoid a revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, and was therefore able to grab that particular ball and run with it.

It helped that Smith, despite being a professor of moral philosophy, was a better writer than any of the physiocrats. Nothing any of the latter wrote could compare with TWoN for entertainment value.

[Wellsy]

https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/

The above makes a good summary of how the industrial revolution in Britain had so many things going for it that it is difficult to imagine where it alternatively might have occurred. It being a mix of both geography/resource availability and historical circumstance.

[Potemkin]

https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/

The above makes a good summary of how the industrial revolution in Britain had so many things going for it that it is difficult to imagine where it alternatively might have occurred. It being a mix of both geography/resource availability and historical circumstance.

We awoke in the 18th century, and found everything we needed directly to hand. It was the perfect storm, but in a good way.

[Tainari88]

We awoke in the 18th century, and found everything we needed directly to hand. It was the perfect storm, but in a good way.

It had too many consonants and sounds like some bad Dutch--the English language. Lol.

Now, they got a bunch of bad politicians who don't want to solve hard problems.

Big hug and kiss for you darling. See you soon. I am going out to the beach.

[Potemkin]

It had too many consonants and sounds like some bad Dutch--the English language. Lol.

Germanic languages never sound good, querida. Lol.

Now, they got a bunch of bad politicians who don't want to solve hard problems.

Nothing new there then.

Big hug and kiss for you darling. See you soon. I am going out to the beach.

Big hug and kiss right back at ya, querida. Have fun on the beach at Progreso!

[QatzelOk]

Capitalism already existed when Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. ...The established economic orthodoxy had been mercantilism, which regarded trade as a zero-sum game - if you benefitted from a trade, it logically followed that your partner in the trade must have suffered a loss. It also followed from this that national governments had an interest in controlling trade, lest the nation be ruined. Adam Smith demonstrated that, on the contrary, trading goods and services can be, and in fact usually is, mutually beneficial to both partners in the trade. ...

The 'Free' trade that followed was often forced onto countries who weren't buying the free-ness angle. Like the Americas, which were created on free-mass-murder, followed by free-trade (the land was free if you killed the people living on it).

And then, there was the freedom of China to accept opium in exchange for actual goods. Did they ever benefit from the free-ness of that exchange.

And in my lifetime, any country that refuses to use freedom-dollars in exchange for their resources (which must be freely purchasable by International monopoly-like corporations) is usually destroyed in order to save freedom.

Adam Smith seems to have proven that countries could trade freely and fairly with mutual benefits ONLY IN HIS NOVELS.