For a really insightful approach to how we got here, read Prof David Graeber's book Debt: the First 5000 Years
Fortunately you don't even have to read it from cover to cover to get the meat of it. Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs is a talk 80 mins long Graeber gave at Google.
Then once you've done that listen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y_wz85ViLY to Robert Paul Wolff talk about the problem Ricardo, Smith, and Marx tackled. This one is a bit longer and it is tougher going but the pay-off is immense.
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What this New York Times article and the recent Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-21/why-wages... (“Why Wages Aren't Growing”) article that hit the front page here have in common is that they both refuse to recognise that Marx's critique of capital was correct in his day and it _remains_ correct.
The next part is important. We _must_ separate the critique from his proposed solution. To be very clear I can agree with Marx's critique but I do not have to agree that central collectivisation is the solution.
The very simple observation is this. For-profit capitalism over time will cause (a) workers to be exploited to the point where they can't actually take part in the society they're a part of (which hurts the capitalist too!) and (b) wealth gets concentrated inefficiently.
What the New York Times and Bloomberg (and many others) outright refuse to admit is that _Marx was right_.
Universal Basic Income. What is that but an alternate solution to collectivisation? Same applies to profit-sharing. It's the reason why charities are non-profits because we all recognise the alternative would be unseemly. The Tobin tax (taxing certain international financial transactions) is another solution. As are regressive tax regimes that hit the wealthiest hardest. Consider also alternate forms of incorporation like cooperatives. And so on. What all these have in common is that they try to address the flaw at the heart of capitalism. The sooner we stop calling people communists for putting forward sane solutions the better. If we don't address this there will be ruin and revolution and when that happens we'll have a messy rather graceful transition to a fairer society.
As to wage growth, it seems to be about 3% a year in the US at the moment and 13% in Hungary suggesting it depends on various factors rather than falling everywhere because capitalism.
To reiterate. My specific point about Marx is this. Given capital, given private property – his analysis/critique about for-profit capitalism is correct. And critique pertains to essentially free and fair markets, let alone markets distorted by too little or too much regulation or markets distorted by cartels, oligopolies, monopolies, cronyism, and so forth. Marx's point is that even when capitalism is operating in its _ideal_ state it is a system where wealth will inefficiently accrue to a minority (the rentier class) and where those who do not have a handle on the means of production will get progressively more exploited because -as your turn of phrase goes- profit. It's that simple.
You counterpoints are meaningless in the face of the very well documented and ever-widening pay gap between workers on the bottom rungs of the ladder and those towards the top.
As an aside there are things that bug me about Marx and his style of reasoning. Both the hundreds of pages so its hard to say you're for or against. Also nearly all his statments are slightly off eg. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly." By his definition is you don't have rental income you are "proletarian" and so selling yourself hourly or daily. Which doesn't seem quite right - ok you may get a job but it's not quite like that. It slightly amazes and saddens me that people took this stuff seriously and it went on to cause so many deaths and do this day messes with clear thinking analyses of poverty and the like.
> I'll give you that without intervention the rentiers can get richer.
This is a central claim of Marx! Those anti-Marx claim "it'll be okay because <some form of trickle-down economics>" or "you'll discourage entrepreneurs" or "taxes are theft!" or some other variant. What I'm trying to show is that you can agree with this part of Marx but reject his solution – state-run collectivisation or communism or whatever you want to call it. The trick is to not throw the baby out with the bath water.
"The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly."
Sell himself means sell his own toil, his own labo(u)r. If you are fortunate enough to have some form of rental income then your _capital_ is doing the work, ergo you are not part of the proletariat. I think that's pretty clear, no?
Marxism != Communism
Marxism != Anti-capitalist
If you want for-profit capitalism to succeed you have to be partly Marxist, that's the irony given the way these terms have been bent out of shape.
The fault-line of "property is theft!" from one side and "taxation is theft!" from the other to my mind illuminates the entire discussion. :)
brain-fart – that should read progressive not regressive of course. suppose that's clear enough from the context but for the record …
The concept of zero isn't even 5000 years old. Negative numbers were still being debated in the 1700s, though I think the first known use was in China's number rod system in 200 BCE. Conceptually, less than nothing is a funny thing and not really well grounded in the physical world.
It does make me curious. I'll have to look for the book. I find the history of mathematics to be fascinating, though debt may have originally been more culture and less math.
As for negative numbers, you can express "owes" without them so I doubt it was a problem. After all, you don't "owe" someone negative one thousand dollars—you just owe them positive one thousand dollars. You hand them a negative-one-thousand dollar bill, they're not gonna be happy. Being able to write negative balances or work formally with negative numbers isn't strictly necessary to work with debt.
In subsistence economies surplus is used primarily for fostering social relations and creating social obligations which one can call upon when times get though. And in subsistence economy sooner or later they will.
As more added value is created socioeconomic relations get more complicated and they become based on money.
e.g. I give you seed and you give me a portion of your crops for X growing seasons.
I'm going to read the book.
Debt contracts appear to be the origin of writing in Sumeria and, likely, in the Americas (the third independent invention, China, appears to have a different origin).
We have remnants of what appear to be contract vessels: pots with statues of sheep and such in them presumed to memorialize a deal for some sheep or grain. If there was a dispute the pot could be broken open and the terms examined. Then they started putting a sheep on the outside so you knew what was in the pot, then a drawing of a sheep and then someone figured out you didn't need the pot.
I believe in the Americas writing began with record keeping such as with the quipu which might even have been discussed on HN recently. Not sure of its contractual implication though.
They are still trying to piece our history together and digging up what they can, sometimes literally. If you ever need something to do, many archeological digs accept volunteer labor. It's hard work but a lot of fun. They will train you and you start by moving lots of dirt that has already been sifted. Sometimes, you get a bucket and sometimes you get a wheelbarrow. Eventually, you can do the sifting and work your way up to doing some digging. Though, they probably will not want you doing much cleaning, mapping, or removal. If you're quiet and polite, you can usually observe when they do classification.
But, I digress...
Anyhow, there weren't many written languages in the pre-Columbian era in North America. Some, like my people, had pictographs and others had increased complexities.
You've given me something to research after dinner. Thanks!