this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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https://twitter.com/ProjectLiberal/status/1729138596592935207

the video is basically describing supply chains and how complex it is. see: commodity fetishism labor makes everything. markets are not necessary.

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[–] SkingradGuard@hexbear.net 40 points 2 years ago

Supply chains so complex! Capitalism is truly amazing! Socialism has no supply chains! porky-point

[–] StellarTabi@hexbear.net 38 points 2 years ago (1 children)

When my parents grew up in the USSR they had to make their own pencils from the random piles of lead in the snow on the way to school.

[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 18 points 2 years ago

seriously, pick your watch or your glasses or something at least

[–] ObamnaSoda@hexbear.net 35 points 2 years ago

Milton Fraudman kelly

[–] TrudeauCastroson@hexbear.net 33 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I was first exposed to the pencil thing, then I heard Marx's critique of commodity fetishism and realized how much of economics is just blow-hards.

Adam Smith already wrote about the division of labour in the production of iron pins, it's retreading the same ground but going "isn't it great that we're outsourcing to so many different places that it makes it harder to organize labour"

The pencil thing is retreading something from hundreds of years earlier and ignoring critique since then.

[–] emizeko@hexbear.net 28 points 2 years ago

It is so frustrating to argue with libs who make arguments so old that literally Marx himself responded to them. I get the impression that Marxists already won the debate back in the 19th century and the liberal tactic has just been to pretend the debate has never happened, to continue repeating centuries-old arguments over and over again as if they've never been responded to, and to discourage anyone from looking into Marxism or reading Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc.

by aimixin

[–] 420blazeit69@hexbear.net 24 points 2 years ago

Dude's never heard of a process engineer and I'm supposed to believe he understands how the whole economy works?

[–] Fishroot@hexbear.net 22 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

''Many people make the pencil'

Yeah some dude from Trier made that same argument in some book written in the 19th

Actually some dude in England before that made the same argument

[–] CascadeOfLight@hexbear.net 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh, you don't know how to make a pencil? Skill issue.

[–] CascadeOfLight@hexbear.net 19 points 2 years ago

Also, after the US completely destroyed Democratic Korea's entire industrial base, the first factory that reopened in the whole country made - you guessed it - pencils.

[–] bazingabrain@hexbear.net 20 points 2 years ago

theres a reason economics is called the "dismal science"

[–] axont@hexbear.net 20 points 2 years ago

I have something to admit. Before I had any idea who Friedman was I was already somewhat read on socialist stuff. So when I saw the pencil video I thought he was a Marxist professor doing a vulgar explanation of labor division.

[–] zifnab25@hexbear.net 18 points 2 years ago

Markets are a transitional mechanism for marrying wholesale raw material production with industrial manufacturers. But once those relationships are formed, the industries integrate vertically and the market becomes vestigial.

Labor makes things possible, sure. But logistics as a rarefied branch of labor is both vital to an efficient supply chain and heavily influential over the flow of revenue within and between firms. The whole idea of the "middle man" as a parasite stems from the leverage afforded to extract rents in between extractive labor, industrial labor, and retail labor.

What's curious is that this middle-man position isn't even strictly capitalism. It can be (via the ownership of transportation capital), but it can always be entirely divorced from the ownership of the machines and real estate involved in production, by way of financing or licensing or administering traffic. The real sleight of hand that markets perform is to transform the concepts of corruption and price gouging, by way of legally or physical monopolizing certain trade routes and cash flows, into economic growth and (exchange) value accumulation.

This can still exist in a socialist economy. It is just categorized as economic loss rather than economic gain.

[–] Alaskaball@hexbear.net 18 points 2 years ago

labor makes everything

No lol marx