# On the Many Failings of Capitalism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 15, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911 "2015-01-15T17:51:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/241 "2015-01-26T21:41:14Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > …reports such as [that](http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-summ-en.pdf) of [Oxfam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfam) show that nowadays [high levels of wealth concentration](http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/23/the-85-richest-people-in-the-world-have-as-much-wealth-as-the-3-5-billion-poorest/) can harm democracy and reduce equal opportunity, as the wealthy begin to have an undue influence on government policy making. Oxfam _asserted_ that, but I didn’t see how they _showed_ it. I don’t think polls of the sort Oxfam mentions can do this. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2015, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/242 "2015-01-26T21:55:57Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Oxfam _asserted_ that, but I didn’t see how they _showed_ it. I don’t think polls of the sort Oxfam mentions can do this. > > Regards, > Shodan Would the manner in which the U.S. dealt with those responsible for the aforementioned crisis make enough evidence for you? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/243 "2015-01-27T01:18:23Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > Would the manner in which the U.S. dealt with those responsible for the aforementioned crisis make enough evidence for you? We’ve been over this before, and the arguments are pretty much that 1)it’s not illegal to make bad decisions, 2)just because someone did something you don’t like doesn’t mean they committed a crime, and 3) business cycles are pretty much innate to capitalism. Seriously, I don’t know why people make this determination that someone must be punished regardless of breaking any laws only for bankers. There’s plenty of assholes in society, but no one goes around screaming about how they need to be jailed. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/244 "2015-01-27T01:18:48Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > … reports such as [that](http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few-political-capture-economic-inequality-200114-summ-en.pdf) of [Oxfam](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfam) show that nowadays [high levels of wealth concentration](http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/23/the-85-richest-people-in-the-world-have-as-much-wealth-as-the-3-5-billion-poorest/) can harm democracy and reduce equal opportunity, as the wealthy begin to have an undue influence on government policy making. Incidentally part of that presentation has been [debunked](http://fusion.net/story/39185/oxfams-misleading-wealth-statistics/). Oxfam’s grouping of the world’s poorest includes people with negative net worth. Add up the the bottom 10% and they have negative net worth. None of these folks are in China. 7.5% of them are in North America. “The poorest people in the world, using the Credit Suisse methodology [which Oxfam works off of, they didn’t do any original research], aren’t in India or Pakistan or Bangladesh: they’re people like Jérôme Kerviel, who has a negative net worth of something in the region of $6 billion.” Oxfam isn’t known for their stellar research efforts. ETA: That said, I disagree with The Joker and the Thief’s stance: if you’ve caused billions, nay trillions of dollars of external damage, methinks jail time might be something to be considered both after the fact _and moreover before_. ---
**Author:** ![Garula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ea666f/32.png) [@Garula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garula)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/245 "2015-01-27T05:45:41Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > Value a relationship. An object is valuable when (1) the object shows the attributes that satiate the needs or desires of the valuing agent and (2) the valuing agent shows the needs or desires that can be satiated by the attributes of the object. Both conditions have to be fulfilled. I find this statement somewhat confusing. You say value is a relationship rather than an inherent quality, which I believe we agree on. A ‘valuing agent’ determines the value of an object, but the process by which that value is determined might as well be a black box from an economic perspective. How is your criteria more useful than simply saying “value is however much a decision making agent desires something relative to all other available options”? It seems like you’re trying to force a criteria that objectively quantifies an object. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 7:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/246 "2015-01-27T07:29:46Z")
> [@Garula](#): > > I find this statement somewhat confusing. You say value is a relationship rather than an inherent quality, which I believe we agree on. A ‘valuing agent’ determines the value of an object, but the process by which that value is determined might as well be a black box from an economic perspective. How is your criteria more useful than simply saying “value is however much a decision making agent desires something relative to all other available options”? It seems like you’re trying to force a criteria that objectively quantifies an object. From the several theories of value I’ve seen so far, I have managed to retain the idea that value is a relationship between an object and a subject in which both terms have an equal standing. I also know that value is socially determined as well because humans are gregarious beings by definition and one’s idea of value must comply with the realities of the culture/civilization one belongs to. Anything above or below what is socially determined represents an exception steming from deviation or some exceptional situation. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/247 "2015-01-27T17:31:35Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > Leftist commentators (like [Naomi Klein](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein), for example) show that, under the siege of global corporatism, states can no longer act socially responsably. As good as Naomi Klein is at selling books with alarmism, it is in fact the case that Western countries continue to maintain a social safety net. (And while this is really, really picky, I have to point out that while the word “corporatism” sounds like it should mean “big corporations running the government,” that is not at all what that word means.) > [@](#): > > … high levels of wealth concentration can harm democracy and reduce equal opportunity, as the wealthy begin to have an undue influence on government policy making. This is indisputably, in my opinion, true. It’s also got very little to do with capitalism. Oligarchy and the dominance of a rich elite are things that happen across all manners of economic systems. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/248 "2015-01-27T19:36:21Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > This is indisputably, in my opinion, true. It’s also got very little to do with capitalism. Oligarchy and the dominance of a rich elite are things that happen across all manners of economic systems. It is the [iron law of oligarchy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy), which recurs in sociologists’ works on democracy. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/249 "2015-01-27T20:43:59Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > It is the [iron law of oligarchy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy), which recurs in sociologists’ works on democracy. I am not sure why you specify that it is attributed to democracies. As your cite mentions, it first arose in connection with the observations about socialist organizations - > [@](#): > > In 1911 Robert Michels argued that paradoxically the socialist parties of Europe, despite their democratic ideology and provisions for mass participation, seemed to be dominated by their leaders just like traditional conservative parties It may also be instructive that the formulator of the theory > [@](#): > > later became an important ideologue of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime in Italy, Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e79b87/32.png) [@The\_Joker\_and\_the\_Thief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Joker_and_the_Thief)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/250 "2015-01-27T21:04:03Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > It is the [iron law of oligarchy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy), which recurs in sociologists’ works on democracy. He may call it an “Iron Law” to sound important, but that doesn’t make it anything more than an educated guess based on a limited set of examples. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/251 "2015-01-28T07:58:25Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > Real estate, mining rights and agistment are some of the obvious ones. While they sometimes can be made \*more \*valuable through labour, there are many, many examples where people derived profits from these commodities with absolutely no labour being done by anyone. > > There are literally thousands of other examples. No, there aren’t. Real estate, mining rights, and agistment are not commodities in the Marxist sense: they have not been produced for exchange on the market by wage labor. Such use value as they have, of course, can only be realized by labor–your mining rights will not even fetch you a good price unless someone, somewhere, is expected to use the rights. I can certainly sell you mining rights and agistment on Pluto–but you’ll probably agree that, because we can foresee no exploitation of them at all, they have no value, even in the looser definition of value favored here. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/252 "2015-01-28T08:34:31Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > No, there aren’t. Real estate, mining rights, and agistment are not commodities in the Marxist sense: they have not been produced for exchange on the market by wage labor. So you start out saying that commodities only have value as a result of labour. Then you challenge anyone to find an exception. And when three exceptions are easily named, you claim they are not commodities, because commodities can only be things that have been produced for exchange through labour, depsite the fact that all those three things are traded on commodity markets. You do realise that’s a True Scotsman that you have there, wrapped up in a circular definition? Never mind, that’s rhetorical. Of course you don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/253 "2015-01-28T08:40:27Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The argument Enterprise will now come back with will be to again point you to the concept of socially necessary labor value, which means - I am simplifying here, but it’s close enough - “about the amount of labor is takes to make something, on average, assuming average skills, capital, and other inputs, measured in time.” > > So if it usually takes 2 hours of labor to make a widget, then the widget has two hours’ worth of labor in it. If I am stupid and take 4 hours to make it, but the average is 2 hours, my widget still just has 2 hours of labor in it because that’s the average. If I invent a widget machine that makes widgets in 1 hour and every widget producer buys the machine, the SNLV of a widget drops to an hour because that’s now the average. Marxism and the concept of SNLT is rife with problems but Marx wasn’t actually an idiot. **RickJay** , not only is this largely correct, but the rest of the post is, too! I have nary a quibble with it. > [@](#): > > Frankly, this is a ridiculous statement, and I said nothing of the kind, or at least nothing to imply it’s uplifting. I apologize if I took this to be implied, and you did not mean to. > [@](#): > > First of all, it’s not just me saying the only thing a person can sell is their labor. It’s you saying it, and if you don’t believe me, here are your own damn words: I did not mean to say that you were the only person to say so, because of course, I do say so myself. We’re really on the same page as far as that is concerned. I’d say, of course, that for it’s only true for most people, because if people could ever only sell their own labor, nobody would be there to buy it. But that’s the distinction between capital and labor right there. > [@](#): > > This is your claim, your words, indeed the very core of your position. The notion that all a person can sell is their labor is pretty much the inescapable conclusion of the notion that labor is all there is. Which, to be honest, is literally true; all utility comes from effort of some kind. Where we disagree, aside from semantics, is how best to organize our efforts. Yes! Exactly. > [@](#): > > But perhaps more pertinently, who says an exchange has to be “uplifting”? Not I. I absolutely agree that some labor is drudgery. Someone whose only choice is to work in a dead end fast food job may not necessary be super happy in that job. I wouldn’t be, though granted I’m not really the target labor market for that kind of job anymore. And I wholeheartedly agree people whose job opportunities are limited can be in a position where the trade is unbalanced to the point that it is simply not good for society to allow it to happen unfettered. And we have those protections, and they work pretty effectively. We have minimum wage laws, labor laws, workplace safety regulations, social welfare programs, progressive tax rates, and on and on. I’m just leaving this in because I could not have said it any better myself. Of course, we have much of these protections in spite of capitalism’s efforts (the personification isn’t really a great way of phrasing it), rather than because of it; which simple adds to its flaws. > [@](#): > > I do not personally know a sane person who supports the general idea of free markets and capitalism but does not believe we need such protections. We can argue over the details of them, or what the minimum wage should be and such. In another thread there’s a debate going on over the value and fairness of legally mandated paid parental leave (which Canada, my home, has, and IMHO is pretty logically structured and socially beneficial.) It’s a good discussion, one in which intelligent questions and answers are being posted. I do not personally know a sane person who does any of these things, either, but it’s crystal clear that they are out there–it’s easy enough to show for minimum wage (does anybody really require a cite?), for many social safety systems (such as universal health insurance, a given in Europe, but fought over in the United States), and health and safety (usually circumvented by putting production in places were such rules aren’t in effect). It’s useful and necessary to debate minimum wage levels in Canada, of course; however, that does not detract from the fact that it’s the logic of capitalism that creates non-minimum wage, high health-risk, uninsured, barely subsistence, near-slave labor jobs in Bangladesh, Vietnam, or China, when it can’t do so in Canada anymore. > [@](#): > > The existence of such holes in the system represent “flaws,” in a sense, of capitalism. However, what we have in capitalist countries is not unlimited capitalism, and never has been and never will be. Hell, it’s not even close to it. The same intellectual tradition that gave us capitalism is the one that gave us the concept of a socially responsible state. That’s arguable, indeed, it’s in need of an argument. There’s very little evidence that, for example, Bismarck’s social laws were the consequence of an “intellectual tradition” and not to take off the pressure being created by the labor movement. There’s clear evidence that it was the usual tools of the labor movement, strikes, boycotts, etc., that curbed the worst excesses of capitalist enterprise in the Gilded Age. And I disagree that we’ve never had “unlimited capitalism,” whatever that is (I believe you mean “an entirely unregulated free market” here?)–we have unlimited capitalism right now, by some possible definitions (in that we don’t have, for example, any regulations at all that would prevent an unlimited accumulation of capital and that capital’s investment for a return of yet more capital). > [@](#): > > But are you better off selling your labor than not? Almost all the time in a modern, socially responsible state, of course you are. Look, the people selling you chicken at Popeye’s may not be doing the world’s most glamorous job, but they’re making a wage that helps pay the bills. That may actually be their best option, and incredible though it might sound, some of them may actually like their jobs. There is no lack of dignity in making fried chicken for people and bringing home a modest paycheck. We have a responsibility as a society to make sure Popeye’s isn’t ripping their employees off, exposing them to safety hazards, or discriminating against them based on race or engaging in other behaviours that we can’t tolerate, but there is nothing inherently wrong in asking a person “please come make fried chicken for me and I’ll pay you $11 an hour.” I would furthermore theorize that redistributing the capital that is Popeye’s Inc., or whatever the company’s called, _is not going to change the fact that some people are going to have to make the chicken for eleven bucks an hour._ In fact, you are “better off” selling your labor even in a non-modern, socially irresponsible state. I’ve no quibble with that, I only have a problem with anybody insisting that this maximizes or even improves my utility and must therefore be understood as a good thing (which, I will say again, if it was not your implication I will not claim you argued). The problem is not that you’re better off selling your labor, in the sense that if you do, at the very least you survive, and in some societies and with some kinds of labor, you might even prosper. The problem is that last part: that this situation becomes naturalized into the only possible way of organizing society, either by saying “this is the best form of organization we’ve ever had or will have” or by saying “that’s just how rapacious people are”. Neither of these claims is amenable to argument, of course–they’re completely unprovable. And yet I’m supposed to accept them at face value. The problem is also that the perspective is skewed: yes, you can have a personally satisfying life on $11 an hour flipping chicken bits at Popeye’s or burgers at McDonalds. But at the same time, the system that has been fought tooth and nail to make sure that that unskilled worker gets $11 dollars, doesn’t have to work 12 hours a day, gets a weekend off, is protected from employers’ harrassment by labor laws, and is free to associate (in most societies) with his fellow workers in a union to fight for his rights when they are (as they will be) violated, still produces $3 t-shirts in Bangladesh, ships its electronic refuse to Africa for people to dismantle it for cents, and gets its raw materials from African mines in which nobody cares a whit about protection or safety. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/254 "2015-01-28T08:49:35Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > So you start out saying that commodities only have value as a result of labour. Then you challenge anyone to find an exception. And when three exceptions are easily named, you claim they are not commodities, because commodities can only be things that have been produced for exchange through labour, depsite the fact that all those three things are traded on commodity markets. > > You do realise that’s a True Scotsman that you have there, wrapped up in a circular definition? > > Never mind, that’s rhetorical. Of course you don’t. **Blake** , I’ll be quite blunt: please read up on the logic of the argument in _Capital_, or any of the excellent introductions to it. I’m not going to do the same rigmarole of explanations everytime somebody just doesn’t get the argument, which is admittedly complex. Suffice it to say here that there’s an argument to be made that even if we define commodities as goods produced by wage labor for exchange on the market, you could make a claim that their value is not depended on the labor inhering in them, but the interplay of supply and demand. Which can only come as a surprise to someone who’s not bothered to read the thread, no? ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 8:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/255 "2015-01-28T08:58:24Z")
> [@Hellestal](#): > > No, it isn’t. > > [snip] > > I’d guess only a very small minority take these assumptions as literally true. One of the previous books I cited states that the assumption of (mathematical) rationality is “clearly false”. So it is, for a “very small minority”. I’m not saying anything else. (If I could find it online, I’d give you a recent cite in German, by a rather well-known German economist, who’s in fact saying exactly the thing I said, in a reputable newspaper no less in defense of economists in general; but I can’t, and so this remains anecdote, rather than data…). ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/256 "2015-01-28T09:12:39Z")
> [@Garula](#): > > I find this statement somewhat confusing. You say value is a relationship rather than an inherent quality, which I believe we agree on. A ‘valuing agent’ determines the value of an object, but the process by which that value is determined might as well be a black box from an economic perspective. How is your criteria more useful than simply saying “value is however much a decision making agent desires something relative to all other available options”? It seems like you’re trying to force a criteria that objectively quantifies an object. It’s a good question and cuts to the heart of the debate about the labor theory of value, which I’m rather grateful for (because Marx argued the theory itself much better than I can, and many people after him have defended it more eloquently than I can). The point is precisely to ask what makes the labor theory more useful than others; and the answer is that it centralizes the role of human beings against the role of the market; it highlights that the production of wealth hinges upon the exploitation of labor, not merely on the assidiuous interplay of market actors. If you take the labor theory of value as your starting point, you realize that what must happen for one person in the commodity-producing economy to accumulate money is to obtain a surplus of value from the labor power he purchases. The obfuscations of market prices and money exchange processes mask this essential relation. The consequence of these obfuscations is, ultimately, a systematic devaluation of humans: they become merely another form of capital, rather than the ultimate producers of any wealth. And the consequences we’re seeing today, as any look into a newspaper will give ample evidence for, is that we’re used to a view in which the economy’s vitality takes precedence over the lives of individuals, and the health of society at large. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/257 "2015-01-28T17:10:07Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > The problem is also that the perspective is skewed: yes, you can have a personally satisfying life on $11 an hour flipping chicken bits at Popeye’s or burgers at McDonalds. But at the same time, the system that has been fought tooth and nail to make sure that that unskilled worker gets $11 dollars, doesn’t have to work 12 hours a day, gets a weekend off, is protected from employers’ harrassment by labor laws, and is free to associate (in most societies) with his fellow workers in a union to fight for his rights when they are (as they will be) violated, still produces $3 t-shirts in Bangladesh, ships its electronic refuse to Africa for people to dismantle it for cents, and gets its raw materials from African mines in which nobody cares a whit about protection or safety. But how is that a feature of _capitalism_? Countries with little or no capitalism trade with other countries as well - Cuba is hardly a self-sufficient state - and do so almost entirely without regard to the working conditions of the people where they’re getting their raw materials or T-shirts. If there is a difference between the capitalist country and the non-capitalist, it’s simply that on average the non-capitalist economy will engage in less trade - which is of no benefit to the workers in the T-shirt factory. Those who don’t have jobs because of the lack of trade are now back to jobs that are worse than making T-shirts. This isn’t just my opinion; study after study after study has shown apparel workers in the Third World make wages far, far above other options. I am 100% positive things could be improved, but that is a matter for those societies to decide, and they will do so in time, just as happened in developed countries. If “people in Malaysia are paid crap to make T-shirts” is to be presented as a problem of capitalism, you have to demonstrate that capitalism has the marginal effect of putting those people in that situation as opposed to something even better - and I suspect you know as well as I that cannot be demonstrated. Developing countries don’t trade themselves into poverty. They trade out of it, and we have actual real-life examples. What would socialism implemented in, say, the United States, do to improve the lot of Malaysians? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/258 "2015-01-28T17:26:39Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > Suffice it to say here that there’s an argument to be made that even if we define commodities as goods produced by wage labor for exchange on the market, you could make a claim that their value is not depended on the labor inhering in them, but the interplay of supply and demand. So – does Marxist theory fall apart if you subtract the labor theory of value from it? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/259 "2015-01-28T17:36:08Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > The point is precisely to ask what makes the labor theory more useful than others; and the answer is that it centralizes the role of human beings against the role of the market; it highlights that the production of wealth hinges upon the exploitation of labor, not merely on the assidiuous interplay of market actors. The problem being that asking what makes the labor theory more useful gets the answer “Nothing, because it isn’t useful. The market theory works better.” You have been given several examples where the labor theory fails to explain, and you have waved them off with obfuscation and bluster rather than addressing them. > [@](#): > > If you take the labor theory of value as your starting point, you realize that what must happen for one person in the commodity-producing economy to accumulate money is to obtain a surplus of value from the labor power he purchases. Well, if you assume a theory is true, and don’t pay too much attention to the evidence, then you will find yourself believing in all kinds of nonsense. > [@](#): > > And the consequences we’re seeing today, as any look into a newspaper will give ample evidence for, is that we’re used to a view in which the economy’s vitality takes precedence over the lives of individuals, and the health of society at large. And yet societies that adopt Marxist principles for their economic organization find themselves poor and backwards. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2015, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911/260 "2015-01-28T17:41:10Z")
Also, “the market” is just the sum of all the decision made by human beings. The idea that it’s “humans vs the market” is nonsense. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/on-the-many-failings-of-capitalism/709911.md?page=14)