Very quickly, ... people live in groups, ... and some people emerge as leaders. And it's often a very organic thing. Somebody is in charge so long as they're the best at organizing the group for the group's purposes.
Left alone on this planet, we try to figure out what's going on, and also rationalize the things we do with some sort of morality. Some leaders try to rationalize the permanence of their leadership with some sort of religious mumbo-jumbo.
But everyone on the planet has a right to whatever they can win with the power of their own body.
Until we invent settled agriculture, and property. Where long terms of work go into production and passing strangers aren't free to devour the fruit of this labour like passing locusts.
But then, some get it into their heads that this stationary group of beings can be extorted into turning over the better part of their production, and wealth without labour can be accumulated.
And the idea of an huge expanse of geography wherein everything is owned by some individual or some ruler, this artificial notion, ... it creates people without an accepted claim to anything but what they can beg for, or work (for someone else) for.
And this idea of dispossessed, dependent individuals is based on gangsterism. The capitalist labourer is in the position he or she is in because of the gangsterism of the "warrior caste" over the millenia.
We can come up with more social rights for individuals than this residue of criminal social relations.
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4 comments:
"it creates people without an accepted claim to anything but what they can beg for, or work (for someone else) for."
People on welfare today, live better than, people 100, 200, 1000 years ago etc.
People who work live better still, people have more leisure time and live longer.
I farm, the two groups that give me the most trouble, the rich corporations and the rich unionized workers.
Corporations are greedy, unionized workers are greedy and lazy.
The First group takes the lion share the next group takes everything else.
I have been self-employed since I was 21.
When I am farming I work 12 to 16 hours per day, 7 days a week for 7 months. Then I work 12 hour days, for 5 months but only 5 days a week.
I have a 2300 acre farm. I don't even make $1.50 per hour. If it wasn't for my wife working, and myself running a business on the side, I could not farm.
The farm is a responsibility, handed down from my great grandfather, grandfather, and father.
My friends work the same.
I will say it again; it is a responsibility, not a job, not a life style.
I'm responsible for feeding 50,000 people a loaf of bread a day, 5,000 people their morning cereal, and grow feed for thousands of live stock.
People are ungrateful, for the wealth they have.
Where do you want me to start Wayne?
Are we supposed to dismantle the industrial revolution?
Are we suppposed to empty the cities and send everybody out into the countryside?
I won't argue with you that farming is hard work, and that corporations and governments have made sure that independent farmers are a dying breed.
But you can't brag that people on welfare live better than 100 or more years ago, without acknowledging the role of cheap food in that.
And you can't go on about how you feed 50,000 people without acknowledging that your oil and fertilizers are all subsidized, and that the technology behind your large farm is the same technology that uprooted the rural poor in England in the late-18th century.
And that started the whole process that I'm talking about.
Regarding corporations; they're certainly monstrously selfish, but they're also highly efficient. Arthur Chandler's Scale & Scope
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/CHASCA.html
gives a good, objective look at this process.
They're also a part of the high living standards we enjoy.
I have a friend who owns his own business. Another dying sector, manufacturing. He works quite hard.
But not everyone can be a farmer, and not everyone can own their own business.
What's realistic for everyone?
That is the question in a nutshell.
Cheap food has forced thousands of farmers off the land.
If you could only see what large corporate farms do to the land, you would pay whatever you could to keep the small farmer on the land.
My farm is a small farm; most of the farms in my area are 4000 to 6000 acres. 20 years ago I was the same size as everyone else.
I found that if you get bigger, you lose control over your farm. You have to hire people to tell you what to spray, seed, fertilize etc.
At 2300 acres I can still walk my fields and only spray what must be sprayed, and fertilize at lower levels.
Big farms just spray anyway and fertilize at insane soil killing levels.
Anyway great post.
Question, am I subsidized when the money just flows through, and none sticks? Or are the people who get cheaper food subsidized?
to the extent that your inputs are subsidized, you're subsidized.
but the real beneficiaries are the people enjoying the cheap food.
yeah, a lot of people oppose corporate farming for some of the reasons you mention.
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