Tristan

To the extent you support private enterprise you support the exploitation of the workers, because according to you, that's your reasoning for nationalisation, remember?

According to you, profit is intrinsically exploitative, so therefore you support the exploitation of the workers. How can you be so dumb as to not see your own self-contradictions?

You don't even agree with your own economic theory. In fact you don't you don't even understand your own economic theory. Then you've got the gall to talk down to people about how you know better than everyone else in the world.

Gawd, what a lot of wordy waffle !
If this is the Labour Party in discussion no wonder they spend like drunken sailors.

JKJ - I'm not being contradictory - just nuanced. I don't like exploitation. And I prefer co-operative to private enterprise where a surplus is extracted. But I recognise that a return on investment for small investors who defer consumption - can be argued as just - even if there are conflicting principles at work. Large investors who inherit millions, however, are different. And the wrongness of surplus extraction under those circumstances is less ambiguous.

Also I try to 'live in the real world'. It is not hypocrisy to recognise the reality of a global capitalist economy. It is not hypocrisy to deal with 'the art of the possible', and to reject the self-destructive path of autarky.

Hence I try to deal with the kind of 'good society' I actually believe is possible for now. For the long term I aspire to more; and I don't drop my criticisms of capitalism. But I don't expect to see 'the end of capitalism' in my life-time. I do expect the problems with capitalism to lead to either 'an increasing bad society' with increasing inequality, instability and waste. Or on the other hand, I expect the alternative is possible of a 'hybrid economy' which cushions people and industry from the problems associated with capitalism.

You are contradicting yourself to the extent you advocate and support capitalism while believing that it is fundamentally exploitative and oppressive and abusive and unjust.

So stop denying it.

Now. Why don't you care that you're contradicting yourself?

If you are being "nuanced" rather than self-contradicting, what is the objective criterion by which you decide when to favour voluntary versus coerced social relations?

JKJ - For many people social relations are always enforced. Workers are forced to accept wage labour when the alternative is grinding poverty, maybe even homelessness. And work-for-the-dole is also coercive for the same relations.

As for socialism - the Soviet Model was highly coercive. As I understand it you could be forced by the State (in a different way) into a job. Also there was little opportunity to form your own needs structures via market-mediated consumption.

But again: some deal of coercion is inevitable - especially where 'majority rule' is often the substance of democracy.

If social insurance in health, aged care etc provides social security for vulnerable people - and better value for money - but is 'coercive' in the sense we pay for it through tax - I think that is a fair trade-off. The alternative is a different form of coercion but coercion nonetheless. (dependence on the capitalist market for non-negotiable needs - where peoples' very lives are at stake)

Its funny though that you talk of coercion when Conservatives use coercion (state power) to repress workers' rights to organise and withdraw their labour.

But to conclude - majority rule means coercion. Sometimes we should govern by consensus ; or at least pluralist consultation. But usually SOMEONE will be left unhappy with the situation.

But back to the issue of 'contradiction'; I believe that markets do some things well - and the state does some things well too. I am critical of exploitation- but also recognise the issue is more morally 'opaque' when it comes to small investors. I also recognise that we're dealing with 'the art of the possible' and for the foreseeable future there's no way out of capitalism. That's just dealing with facts.

So you can't tell the difference between rape and making love, robbery and gift-giving, getting things from other people by threatening to attack them, and getting them by an agreed exchange? Because, according to you, social relations are always coerced?

Yes? That's what you're saying, isn't it?

"But usually SOMEONE will be left unhappy with the situation."

So you agree with the Idi Amin theory of government. There is no principle of right. There is only grabbing, based on threats, and you see nothing wrong with that?

Well we've established that you stand for violent aggression, and that you can't understand the difference between attacking people, and agreeing with them. So this totally invalidates your entire political ideology.

You are still contradicting yourself. You support the exploitation of the workers to the extent you support the private ownership of capital. When I asked you how you justify the existence of private capital, you have no answer, but just to say *sometimes* it's good and *sometimes* it's bad.

But what I'm asking you is, how do you know whether someone should be imprisoned for the economic crime of engaging in productive activity that your socialist utopia depends on?

How do you know whether, in any given case, the relation of employment is exploitative or not? Answer the question. According to you, it's always exploitative, right? If not, then who don't those same beneficial characteristics justify the private capitalism that you want to cage people for? If you can't identify any objective criterion, then admit it, stop trying to squirm out of it.

According to you, people should be physically punished for being free and for making the lives of the poor and the workers much better off. What physical punishment should that be? Cage and raped? Tasered? Shot? How should they be punished, do you think?

You're contradicting yourself literally every sentence. Why don't you are that you are contradicting yourself, not even you agree with what you're saying, and it doesn't make sense?

Have you ever employed anyone Tristan?