The basic logic is that if you don't eat, you will eventually starve to death. You might get by for a while on stored fat (savings), but eventually your body will begin to consume itself (debt) and eventually die (bankruptcy).
Sometimes there are other inputs, which aren't as "from nothing" such as car parts or oil. But skilled labor is still a necessary component, to turning those components into a working car that is more valuable than the parts or oil.
And sure, some of those "not from nothing" components are absolutely non-negotiable for survival, like people having to eat and be sheltered. But I think it's pretty clear that a skilled laborer like Henson is able to give more value from his labor than he consumes in food and board.
The corporate model you're shoving everything into assumes we have to put a dollar value on everything and that dollars in versus dollars out has to line up, but forcing a service-based charity into that model is an impediment to its effectiveness. The entire point is to give as much as you can, even if that means giving more than you take.
And that makes perfect sense, by itself, without having to represent it in a balance sheet. And the only way you can shoehorn it into a balance sheet is by ignoring the entire point.
For an organization to output something of value to people they will generally need something of value as input. Money is the best way to convince someone to give you that input. Money is burgers, beers, drugs, and gasoline. Something you can sell for money or barter is a close second. There are other ways to get that input, but ultimately you are relying on someone being convinced into doing something for less in return than what they put in: military draft, patriotic enlistment, prison labor, slavery, volunteering, donations, taxes, robbery, inflationary money printing, non-competes, anti union laws, a nationwide campaign to convert to communism, etc.
If someone has all their basic needs met, what mechanism would cause them to fail if they choose to produce more value (through labor) than the value required to meet their basic needs?
> If someone has all their basic needs met
So, plenty of stuff in, so they can produce value through labor. Reduce stuff in to no longer have their needs met and expect them to keep up that labor. Think that'll go on forever?
If an organization only gives and never receives, it'll surely run out of stuff to give, won't it?
If some people only had a few hundred calories to eat a day, a basic sleeping mat, and a simple roof over their heads their basic needs will be met and will continue living but they probably won't be very good at producing much additional value. They won't be good at forming a symphony, as they don't have any instruments. They won't be good building things, since they won't have hammers or nails or saws or wood or any other construction materials (those fall outside the "basic needs").
So you'd probably need more than just the "basic needs".
And then once again, if they are expected to put out more than what they're getting in, they probably won't live very long. If you're only consuming a few hundred calories but putting out a couple thousand a day, you're not long for this world.
Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: If someone has all their basic needs met plus enough to have energy, what mechanism would cause them to fail if they choose to produce more value (through labor) than the value required to meet their basic needs plus enough to have energy?
> And then once again, if they are expected to put out more than what they're getting in, they probably won't live very long. If you're only consuming a few hundred calories but putting out a couple thousand a day, you're not long for this world.
Input and output are obviously not measured in calories. Again it seems you're willfully missing the point.
I live pretty frugally, and easily live on ~$30K/year. I have at points been paid $180K/year (annualized) for significant periods of time. If I chose to do the same amount of work as when I made $180K/year, live on $30K/year, and give away the other $150K/year in work, receiving no income for it, by what mechanism would I wither away and die?
> I live pretty frugally, and easily live on ~$30K/year. I have at points been paid $180K/year (annualized) for significant periods of time. If I chose to do the same amount of work as when I made $180K/year, live on $30K/year, and give away the other $150K/year in work, receiving no income for it, by what mechanism would I wither away and die?
So, clearly well above and beyond the basic needs, huh? I bet even the ~$30k/yr includes some amount of personal comforts, more than just the absolute bare minimum to survive? Probably meeting more than just the basic needs?
Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if someone is only getting the basic needs, they don't have anything left to give. Because otherwise they'd inherently be getting more than the basic needs, by evidence of being able to give some away without being below the basic needs.
Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if you need 5 units of something, and are given 5 units of something, how many units of something do you have left over to share? 5 - 5 = ??? And if you're given 7 or 8 of those units, clearly you were given more than just the basic need of 5, right?
You're able to produce that labor because you at some point had more than the basic needs to survive. And if you continue to only get the basic needs to survive, you literally won't have the energy to do it anymore or you won't continue to have as useful of knowledge or have access to the computing for that labor or tools or what have you. Getting the tools for generating that value goes above the basic needs of survival.
The same concept goes for that tool repair collective talked about in the sibling comment. If the organization isn't being refreshed with replacement parts for the broken tools or doesn't have a place to store things or doesn't have a place to work on stuff or energy to run a forge or what not, they won't be very effective at being a tool repair collective. Eventually the things they do have will fall apart and need "new" stuff to come in to keep it up. They'll need more than just having a small amount of food and a roof over their heads for the tool repair collective to be useful, more than just the basic needs of survival.
If all I'm given is a 150sqft prison cell of an apartment with a toilet and a sink and a loaf of bread and some beans a day, I'll survive. My basic needs are met. I probably won't be able to start up a tool repair collective though, I can't run a forge on a loaf of bread. A sink isn't a useful hammer. I won't have any books to tell me how to actually build or use a forge. And I'll probably tire pretty quickly since I'll barely have any extra calories.
Sure, I'm not contesting that point, which is why I rephrased to specifically agree with that point. You should read the post you're responding to.
Given that's the part of what I'm saying that you continue to focus on, you're still missing the point.
> Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point, if you need 5 units of something, and are given 5 units of something, how many units of something do you have left over to share? 5 - 5 = ??? And if you're given 7 or 8 of those units, clearly you were given more than just the basic need of 5, right?
I understand that if you only focus on one unit, that there are a lot of cases where units must be conserved. If you eat 2500 calories a day, you can't expend more than 2500 calories a day without running into problems. Obviously. Nobody is disagreeing with you on that completely irrelevant point.
It's completely irrelevant, because as it turns out, nobody gives a shit how many calories of software development you do. That's not how the value of software development is measured. If you consume 2500 calories a day and expend some fraction of it on 8 hours of software development per day, 8 hours of software development is worth more than 2500 calories of food in most contexts.
And sure, there's other inputs which are necessary to do software development besides calories, but as it turns out, no matter how many things you add as "necessary", software development seems to come out ahead, as evidenced by the fact that lots of people, myself included, are able to work as software developers and buy a whole lot of junk that nobody could reasonably argue enables them to produce value through software development. If you add up the value of the inputs in the form of food, housing, entertainment, travel, education, computers, and whatever else you think is necessary for optimal software development in a year, the fact is, I've produced an order of magnitude more value than that in the form of software development in the same year. The equation isn't even close to balanced. Going beyond basic needs doesn't change anything about this.
This is the original comment in this chain that I was really wanting to address and build on. Charities and non-profits need to have some kind of input more than just existing, or else they probably won't achieve their goals. If the FSF stopped being able to host things and potentially sponsor free software and lobby for the goals of free software, if a scholarship foundation's grants exceeded their incomes for too long, if the tool collective stopped getting parts of fuel to run the forge, they'll eventually for all practical purposes cease to be. If the inputs fall below the outputs, there will eventually be a time where the outputs stop. This was my main point. Do you disagree?
> If you add up the value of the inputs in the form of food, housing, entertainment, travel, education, computers, and whatever else you think is necessary for optimal software development in a year
Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: all that stuff is beyond the basic needs. The fact you can work as a software developer is evidence of you having access to more than the basic needs for some period of time. You have computers. You have an education. You probably have an internet connection. You don't need computers to survive. You don't need much of an education to survive. You don't need an internet connection to survive. You don't need Linux to survive. You don't need GCC to survive. All of these things are massively above and beyond one's "basic needs". So if our standard is we'll just give people the basic needs, they won't be very good software developers.
I definitely agree, a software developer's labor will generate a massive ROI. I definitely agree, my employer isn't measuring my caloric expenditure and writing a paycheck based on that. Teaching a miner better mining strategies, equipping a miner with better mining tools, giving a miner better geologic analysis, etc will also massively increase a miner's ROI. But if I never had a computer, and I never had an internet connection, and I never had an education, I probably wouldn't be in software. If you just put an uneducated person in a mine without any tools or guidance, they won't be a very good miner. All of those things are above one's basic needs.
So arguing all we need to do is give people some "basic needs" and they'll magically create tons of extra value is a bit absurd. They need tools. They need education. These are all above and beyond the basic needs.
Well, I'd have to wonder what units you're using that you think are relevant for all inputs and outputs. You might, for example, consider what units you'd measure "all of the inputs you think are necessary for software development" and whether that's an appropriate unit for measuring "software" in.
> Let me rephrase since you're seemingly willfully missing the point: all that stuff is beyond the basic needs.
Agreed! I never disagreed, I merely misspoke initially.
But I've amended that error two posts ago and you're still ranting on about how I don't understand all of this is beyond basic needs. You're trying to argue with me on a point we agree on. Until you stop doing that, it's clear you aren't reading what I'm writing, so I'm not sure why I'd keep writing it.
For example: if my basic necessities were covered by something like a UBI, I could spend my time teaching math/art/code/whatever. If I were a medieval peasant, to take another example, I'd be subsisting on my own farm and after the harvest (and after paying the lord a hefty amount of it) I might have some time to help neighboring villagers repair their tools. That is to say: the need for survival does not necessarily imply the need to have a society organized around profit-seeking.
That we _do_ live in such a society today is a matter of history, not logic. The structuring of human society around profit-seeking (or capitalism more generally) is a relatively recent historical phase (what, about 600 years, maybe?) -- it was not inevitable and there's no logical reason to assume that it will go on forever.
Sure, but you'd still probably need to somehow gather additional resources to make that tool repair collective effective. You'd probably want to somehow acquire additional tools, maybe build a place to store spare parts, acquire spare parts and inventory them, etc.
Organizations today don't need to be profit seeking. I'm a member of many such groups which don't seek profit. We still ask for donations and/or have dues for members, not because we pay leadership any salaries but because some part of the mission does require acquiring things. If we didn't bring things in, we wouldn't be as successful at doing the mission.
You're ignoring a massive part of the tax code if you think all organizations in the US need a profit motive. But in the end almost all organizations probably need to acquire some stuff somehow, otherwise they'll probably fail.
As it turns out, skilled labor is a resource that can be given charitably, without having to amass vast resources at other people's expense. Paul Farmer or Jonas Salk have changed more lives than the Gates foundation, without accumulating "abundance"--Jonas Salk even refused to patent the polio vaccine.
Gates is a problematic figure for other reasons, but the idea that all profit is theft and therefore abundance is impossible within the market is a bit absurd. The profit motive is what creates abundance. How individuals choose to spend their profits is an individual decision.
Before you can act charitably, you need the requisite resources. Obsessing over the units of measure is completely besides the point. Time, skills or goods must be acquired in advance. Hard leftists have a penchant for misconstruing market incentives. Greed, uncharitable hoarding and immoral behavior is an option in the market. However it is not a predetermined outcome. The article speaks to this. The charitably minded auto-mechanic is free to deploy his resources in the way that best suits his ends.
Contrast this voluntary charity with state mandated coercion. Violence is implicit. Central planners have little to no incentive to create abundance. Class based subsidies often create resentment and divide communities. As you observe, inter-class and inter-caste conflicts are often used in service of the state's largess. Voluntary market systems have no issue with voluntary charity. To the contrary, they create the conditions of abundance necessary for charity.
As Margaret Thatcher once said: "No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions; he had money as well."
As a brit who grew up during her time in power, I want to say the Thatcher was a vile, vindicive. and spiteful person who blighted countless lives in my country and community. Using her as an exemplar of morality is abhorrent.
Put another way, you need both will and power to do something. Just wanting to be charitable never helped anyone, you also need the means to be charitable.
The power to take charitable action does not require vast resources to be concentrated in a few individuals, and in fact concentrating vast resources in a few individuals often prevents charitable action from occurring.
The Good Samaritan helped because he was doing well in life and could afford to help someone out. If he was a beggar he wouldn't (read: can't) help. The Good Samaritan is remembered because he had good intentions and money to turn his good intentions into good actions.
Thatcher was so inured by her own harsh, judgemental worldview that not only couldn't she properly recognise the point of the story, but her misinterpretation actually contradicts its essential meaning.
[1] were you intentionally referencing Nietzsche there?
Whether the Good Samaritan wants to be compassionate to someone is irrelevant, he could be compassionate because he could afford to. Without the means, his desire to be compassionate would end as just a desire and we wouldn't be here talking about him.
>were you intentionally referencing Nietzsche there?
No.
There is obviously nothing wrong with charity per se; GP is simply pointing out the obvious inefficiency in using charity to improve the lives of the poor (for example). Why not just pay them more to begin with (say through a democratic organization of the workplace in which no worker would ever choose to pay themselves below-subsistence wages)? Instead, we let money accumulate at the top, and then charity sometimes trickles a tiny bit of it back down.
> Contrast this voluntary charity with state mandated coercion. Violence is implicit. By state-mandated coercion do you mean taxes to fund welfare programs? Violence is already implicit in the creation and perpetuation of the working poor. Welfare is a necessary tool to make sure that the poor are not so starved that they might rise up against the ruling class, "having nothing to lose but their chains". Again the inefficiency here is clear -- welfare would be unnecessary if our basic needs were met. Welfare would be unnecessary if workers had democratic control of their own workplaces. Instead, we have a "voluntary" market in which the worker is coerced to participate at risk of starvation and rewarded by wages that have not kept up with increases in productivity for 40 years. The market thus violently creates the _need_ for charity.
I didn't say "all profit", and I didn't say "within the market". Profit is fine and can even be necessary to meet one's needs--the problem arises when people begin accumulating well beyond their needs while others are struggling to meet their needs. If you want a more accurate representation of what I'm saying it's this: Abundance is theft. Abundance and scarcity cannot coexist in a just society.
The way I see it, labor is what creates value. Organizing labor is itself a form of labor which creates value, but often the organizers are self-serving, structuring things in such a way that they receive a disproportionate portion of the results of the collective labor, far beyond the value that their organizing labor provides.
Profit motive is one way to incentivize labor, but there are other reasons why people perform labor. One such reason is simply because we want to provide value to each other: pro-social motive. And unlike profit motive, pro-social motive doesn't motivate people to amass gigantic amounts of resources while others suffer in scarcity.
> How individuals choose to spend their profits is an individual decision.
And when people make bad decisions, they should be treated accordingly.
> Before you can act charitably, you need the requisite resources.
Sure, but the requisite resources isn't billions, or even millions of dollars. Nothing is stopping you from helping people right now, with the resources you have.
> Greed, uncharitable hoarding and immoral behavior is an option in the market.
There is no such thing as "charitable hoarding"--the phrase "uncharitable hoarding" is redundant.
The question is, why are hard rightists so insistent that greed, hoarding, and immoral behavior must be options? Why is it desirable to have that as an option?
> However it is not a predetermined outcome. The article speaks to this. The charitably minded auto-mechanic is free to deploy his resources in the way that best suits his ends.
A few selfish people siphoning off the majority of the profit from millions of people's labor can both drive millions into scarcity, creating a greater need for charity, and take up the resources created by their employee's labor which otherwise might have been used charitably. Sure, a few people here and there can find ways to buck the trend, but with rent-seekers on all sides, it can be a great deal of people's charitable labor is sucked up by greed rather than need.
> Contrast this voluntary charity with state mandated coercion. Violence is implicit. Central planners have little to no incentive to create abundance. Class based subsidies often create resentment and divide communities. As you observe, inter-class and inter-caste conflicts are often used in service of the state's largess. Voluntary market systems have no issue with voluntary charity. To the contrary, they create the conditions of abundance necessary for charity.
I'm not proposing state mandated coercion, so you can drop that straw man. Collective labor and cultural change that causes greedy people to be ostracized are much better solutions.
In a democracy, central planners are incentivized to create value by threat of (non-violent) removal from their position. This breaks down, of course, when you start allowing people to amass huge amounts of resources and then invest a portion of it in buying elections.
I'll add that the contrast between authoritarian communism (which, again, I'm not proposing) and unbridled capitalism, is not as large as you seem to think. Class creates resentments now, because so many are living in scarcity while a few accumulate resources far beyond their needs or contributions to society. Violence is implicit now, with wars driven by greed, prisons driven by profit creating a slave class, and violence driven by poverty and disfranchisement. You're worried about charity being involuntary, but what we have now is that instead of charity being involuntary, giving a portion of your labor to the already-rich is involuntary.
None of the problems of communist authoritarianism which you point out, are solved by capitalist authoritarianism where the rich rule.
> To the contrary, they create the conditions of abundance necessary for charity.
To reiterate, abundance, as in billionaires, is not necessary for charity, and in fact, charity is hampered by this sort of abundance.