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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!cbdkc1!desoto!packard!topaz!josh
From: josh@topaz.ARPA (J Storrs Hall)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Capitalist production
Message-ID: <1005@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 19-Mar-85 00:05:55 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.1005
Posted: Tue Mar 19 00:05:55 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Mar-85 03:26:51 EST
References: <370@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP> <5252@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 47

> Laura Creighton
> I don't get it. JoSH builds his machine -- fine and good. He hires one
> of his neighbours to use it  ... [etc]
> 
> I'm a widget maker from another town. Business gets lousy -- everybody
> would rather buy from JoSH because he produces more and cheaper widgets.
> I decide that I can either [nothing which works]
> or I can go and work for JoSH. 
> 
> Somewhere JoSH went from being good and fine, to putting me in a
> place where i am forced to sell my labour to JoSH. But I don't get
> it -- what has JoSH done wrong?

Aha!  This is what we might call the "really interesting question".
What indeed did the auto makers "do to" the manufacturers of buggy
whips?  (Or the plumbers to the water carriers, or the electricians
to the purveyors of whale oil?)  

The answer is at once simple and obvious, subtle and abstract:
Nothing.  The seller of a new and better thing has not touched a 
hair on the head of the seller of the old.

How then can the buggy-whip maker be worse off?  Who *has* done
something to him/her?  The answer is again simple, but hard to see
for those who follow the conventional wisdom of the powerful seller:
It is her customers who have caused Laura's demise in this scenario.
It is the power of the consumer to choose a better deal.  In a free 
market, the business exists only because it satisfies the fickle 
desires of the people at large--it *must* offer a deal they'll 
accept *voluntarily*.  The entrepreneur puts himself in the position
of the lumberjack scrambling from log to log--it beats swimming,
but you have to keep on your toes, and you're apt to find yourself 
swimming anyway on very short notice!

Laura has, perhaps without intending to, put her finger on the very
reason that people *do* work for wages (and value "having a job"
so highly).  Why indeed become a "wage slave"?  In a word: security.
The worker is not utterly secure (who is?) but considerably more
so than the capitalist.  The workers of this country make an order
of magnitude more, in sum, than the capitalists.  If they wanted,
they could just buy them out.  Why don't they?  They are, simply,
comfortable.  Sure, they want more.  Everybody always wants more.
Those who want it enough to pass up the beer and football games
are able to succeed here more than anywhere else in the world;
when they do, they are called -- capitalists.

--JoSH