Business is a social construct and we can un-construct it if it proves no longer to be the socially valuable way to do things.
It's there to serve humans. if it doesn't do that, it's a parasite, drag it out behind the shed and shoot it.
It's there to serve humans. if it doesn't do that, it's a parasite, drag it out behind the shed and shoot it.
A monarch of the past would have obviously better access to food, more of it, higher quality, they might have slightly less variety available (dependent on the era and location) but they certainly weren't eating the prepackaged garbage that passes for low budget food today.
By law they owned not only their own vast properties, houses, palaces, etc. but also that of all of their subjects and nobility allowing them to give and take as they wished from anyone under their dominion. Even after reforms almost all royal families were still left with vast holdings that produce more than enough wealth to live absurdly opulent lifestyles. There have been many cases of indebted rulers but that is debt in the sense of illiquidity, they were still asset rich and able to melt the plate down to pay off the debts, so to speak.
This notion that everyone was universally worse off in the past and therefore even the lowest of the modern low are somehow better off in their current state and should be thankful for it is the crudest of fallacies. The trite example of modern healthcare being a shining example of why it's better to be poor today than wealthy 200 years ago is equally absurd considering that such care is often avoided by the poorest due to its cost right up until it's too late to do anything about it. You wind up with a situation where a person's only choice is to hope not to get sick since they can't afford the treatment or the missed work either of which could put them even further under water or on the street.
Indeed, just the existence of cheap antibiotics are likely to make the most humble of today's citizens live decades longer than anyone from the past.
I'm going to guess none unless you forget your toothbrush or some other small item. The estate of a king is essentially a hotel room that he also happens to own along with dozens or hundreds of other such locations scattered around the country he rules. Little inventory would be kept there since the majority of day to day furnishing, and I do mean furnishings as including pieces of furniture, would travel with the court as they moved from estate to estate. Nothing valuable would be left behind for the same reasons that you wouldn't leave your laptop at the hotel after you check out, chances are when you come back (if you come back) it's not going to be there and if it is there's a good chance someone else will have had their grubby paws all over it the entire time you were away.
After looking up the inventory in question, it also happens to contain enough livestock and grain to feed well over a 100 people (there were about 100 full time residents) as well as a list of buildings including the mansio itself, two smaller manors, 17 wooden houses, 3 barns, a stable, a kitchen, a mill, two gardens, and a granary. There were also more than 60 horses boarded there.
As for kings not living as long as modern paupers, Charlemagne was a septuagenarian when he died.
Stop believing all this 'robots are coming for our jobs' crap. The robots have always been here.
There is plenty of work. An astonishing amount of work is available for people to do that isn't being done, and it's not because people are obsolete. What is lacking is capital directed at hiring people for that work. You can argue about why this is, but the basic reason to me is the general lack of demand because, more or less, the rich have all the money.
Here is Krugman on the subject: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2015/12/17/robert-reich-chal...
We also had "real" market economies (no trust busting or the like) in the early 20th and it was shitty for a huge part of the population
History is the biggest argument against all economic systems
No matter how bloody the communists were, my original point was that it was never done in an environment without active foreign involvement of undermining, destabilization, and outright warfare.
I also question your suggestion that "real market economies" were responsible for the dispair that certain communities felt in the early 20th century. "Real" market economies really didn't have much of a chance to exist in the 20th century because by 1913 the Federal Reserve was installed. That ended self-regulated capitalism in the United States, at least. Europe followed suit shortly thereafter.
Just prior to the early 20th century, enormous numbers of people were liberated from the misery of famine and early mortality thanks to the innovations derived from a loosely-regulated market economy. Back then, nobody knew how to deal with a world where the vast percentage of infants born would live beyond early adulthood. Most poor people would just die and there would be no government, nor economic system, around to help anyone. So when these people, born into the late 19th century system, grew into adults living in the early 20th century system, policymakers and citizens alike had no idea how to respond to the challenges that arose. We did some really stupid things as a result, and we are still paying for, and suffering from, some of those policy decisions.
I'm actually from Poland, a country that had actual communism created by another rich jew that wanted to help "the opressed masses". You think at the beginning any of the commies said straight what they plan to do how it will look like after they're done? And what they will do with the evil burgois (or "the 1%" as Sanders and his cultists name it). You're playing with fire, just be wary.
People tend to think communism vs capitalism but for most of human history it's been something else. Like hunter/gather or some form of feudalism. I don't disagree that market societies work for distributing goods. But they do have external costs. Are there more efficient ways? Probably. Will market economies go the way of hunter/gather economies at some point? Almost certainly.
Hint: You can't.
If a television is a requisite for a high standard of living, great, we're beating Ptolemy. It's disingenuous to pretend that you can do an apples-to-apples comparison across thousands of years and attribute it to market economics. Given the tremendous natural wealth in the United States, we'd probably have a higher standard of living most countries even if we adopted mercantilist economic policies.
This isn't to claim that market economies aren't a great idea, just that I don't think your reasoning holds water.
I'm also questioning your belief that being protectionist wouldn't hurt our standard of living. Do you know the T-shirt you're wearing cost a lot more if it was made in the USA?
I don't think you're wrong by any stretch--market economics are a great idea--but you've got to present better reasoning for anyone to care.
Listen, you seem to think I'm arguing against market economies or trying to promote some kind of communism. I'm not. I'm just pointing out capitalism and communism are not the only choices. There have been other systems and some of them lasted a long time and were extremely "successful" (if by success you mean providing a sustainable livelihood for the members).
But I don't disagree that market economies are effective in achieving certain ends. However humanity didn't come down out of the trees to a market economy and market economies likely won't be around when humanity finally ends. They are a phase in human history, that's all. It's not an ideological statement. Just observation and projection.
Can you "un-construct" this newspeak for us? It sounds like you're advocating that you or some other force besides free and voluntary trade should literally shut down private businesses, possibly beating and robbing their owners in the process (as has been done historically)?
Because there's some formula for determining "social value" which has "number of employees" as a factor?
I have no idea why you imagined it would involve beating and robbing anyone.
How do you think government would enforce that "revoking a business license" thing?
Beyond that, what the government provides is the articles of incorporation to limit the liability of investors, and allow the owners and operators of the business to act as a single entity within the court system.
If we take away the articles of incorporation, the business can still operate but it's not shielded in anyway from being cut up piecemeal via lawsuits, and a lot of the reason people find it worthwhile to invest in or work for a corporation will be removed.
That's simply not true here, where any business which has to collect sales tax (i.e. nearly everyone) needs a "Transaction Privilege Tax" license.
If the US were a VAT-style country, everyone would have to register for taxation purposes.
Regardless, at least in the USA, sales tax registration is not the same thing as a licence to operate. You can start a business dealing in tangible goods, and begin selling to out-of-state customers without needing to register for sales tax. The in-state registration for sales tax is simply that---registration, there's no qualifications that you need to attain before you get it, and even without registration you are still required to collect sales taxes.
So I have to ask exactly how many businesses can you give me the names & addresses of which legally operate in the USA without any sort of government paperwork which they could punish you for operating without?
As such, the only 'business' licence of interest is one which would prevent an individual, real, breathing human being from selling goods, or providing services to the general public.
The requirement that you must personally fill out a sales tax form is not that. This is really just on par with the law that says 'if you make an income, you must fill out your income tax forms'. The only penalty for ignoring it is paying additional administrative costs (and perhaps a small punitive fine) because you made everything harder for everyone.
Edit: And importantly, no one can stop you from filling the form so it can't be called a barrier to entry.
So if some entrepreneurial lady begins, say, arranging flowers or braiding hair... maybe she gets forced out of business for not having a license. Or maybe she does get a license but it is revoked for some arbitrary reason like the Issuer decides she's a "parasite" because she doesn't employ "enough" people. Either way, force is being used against her.
Do we really need every thread that even tangentially mentions government on HN to devolve into this same childish nonsense?
She'd only be a parasite if she claimed a monopoly on her license and threatened any alternative with violence and imprisonment.
I mean governments also revoke driving licenses all the time, I don't think it always devolves to beatings
Reading history books gives you strange ideas.
The steel foundry example is interesting. Does it have an infinite amount of raw materials? Is it utilizing a perpetual energy machine?
To me this like if the professor asks the class "where does the electricity in your class come from?" and the students respond "The socket!"
"The socket!"
Of course that is silly, but sweat of the brow gets a little hypothetical when you start talking about piling up billions of dollars (probably even less than that). Should we pay the people that are rich today a larger share of the benefits of automation out of nothing more than a commitment to tradition?
No, that's what happens in the scenario where we make workers redundant and fail to provide some alternative social contract.
> Because there's some formula for determining "social value" which has "number of employees" as a factor?
Value of Social Contract = (cost of what you have to sell)/(cost of what you need), aggregate over members of the social group in question.
Markets ruthlessly optimize both the numerator and denominator. So far, the scales have tipped in a direction that benefits most members of our society because there has been plenty of (relatively) valuable work to do. That may be changing. A decreasing numerator can be worse than an increasing (or shrinking-but-too-slowly) denominator. Even in aggregate. The market doesn't really have an innate preference for one direction or another.
It's up to us to fix the problem if the winds shift. If we don't, someone else will, and it will get very messy.
While I'm not saying we should, we could (for example) get rid of limited liability or the massively different tax arrangements for individuals and businesses (which usually greatly favour businesses over individuals). These are social constructs, and we could decide that they are no longer benefitting society.
Systems should be compared as systems, not as piecemeal and mostly-forced decisions.
To "make every human's life a paradise" is also quite literally to either reject the concept of scarcity or to think you would create some sort "Matrix" like environment, some weird sci-fi stuff, which is fun to talk about but not a solid economics argument.
Society rejected that 100+ years ago. Recall that until recently, the folks concerning themselves with money were not at the top of the social heap -- with good reason.
I'm not sure what "economics were the end all be all means" but economics is a method by which to understand the "world" under the circumstance of scarcity. I suggest reading a little more of it; it's an interesting topic.
Actually, I don't think this makes any sense. Economics is not about describing a perfect society or something. Don't be silly. :)
It's about understanding reality. Agents engage in activity described by economic principles under the condition of scarcity.
I know that seems sad or something I guess to some. It's like climate change doesn't care if you believe it's real or not.
It's just the way it is ... under the condition of scarcity.
Feel free to correct me or give more information, I am perfectly fine with being educated.