GarbageShoot

The thing is, if we believe we are on the side of reason, the nature of such an argument should only be considered a nuisance to us rather than catastrophic. If I want to prove that Israel is fascist and someone hits me with the "not everyone you disagree with is a fascist" line, then I can simply ask them to give me a set of criteria and either argue the criteria being incorrect or argue that Israel meets it (depending on the criteria, context, etc.) What our comrade is proposing is a way of opening discussion so that preconceived notions can be challenged more thoroughly.

Socialism is the ruthless criticism of all that exists; if a socialist can't produce a justification for their ideology, this isn't an argument they should be getting into (they should be studying, whether through reading or investigating the world).

Ad hom is in a Venn diagram here, because the two are often used together but are not the same. An ad hom is specifically when you say something that boils down to "You're a scoundrel [or otherwise undesirable], so your argument is incorrect". The labeling strategy that Awoo is discussing is closer to equivocation (insinuating things are the same that are different) as a means of obfuscation, such as the "terrorist" example. See how so many people complaining about the Hot Houthi Winter interview with Hasan were calling the interviewee a "terrorist" in order to get people to not actually think about what he is, which is decidedly not a terrorist. What specifically the dude is saying or even the truth of it hasn't even come into play yet.

So I spent a minute there trying really hard to figure out the difference as I typed because it's honestly a good question on your part, and I think the answer is that this thought-terminating cliche bit is used to conclude that the person is a scoundrel, while ad homs are predicated on the person being seen as a scoundrel to falsely prove some other point (Biden being an imperialist does not make the time of day change when he comments that it's morning). The reason these are so hard to pin down, aside from the fact that they are informal fallacies, is that common communication and even argumentation is filled with implied premises, inferences, and conclusions, so mapping them out formally enough to be able to compare the structure is a genuinely difficult task.

What do you think, @Awoo@hexbear.net?

Market value is how much it can be/is sold for. Use value is the value it has not to be sold but to actually be used (which often has a direct economic expression, especially the use value of manufacturing equipment). You know what production cost is, the combination of wages paid along with materials, rent, etc. paid (in all cases, given value by other labor but filtered through market value) in order to produce something such as a commodity (item made to be sold).

So any single commodity has for itself at any given time: The cost of its production, the price you can sell it for (these two are different in part due to the monopolizing nature of their being only so many means of production), and what the commodity is actually good for besides selling it.

Most of the supposed counterexamples they mention in the thread have a non-zero cost of production (or very high, in the Juicero case), but virtually zero market value (because people don't want to buy it) and disproportionately low use value (because it's gadgetbahn or macaroni art or whatever).

I'd like to gently (to you) condemn the site as probably not the best option for patronage, but still a helpful comment from an informational standpoint

Doing secret terrorist espionnage with my "Houthi Hydromancy House" patch fully visible so that my fellows may identify me in the field.

Fair enough

I'm not saying he caused the Gilded Age, but rather like the absurd rate of Union deaths in the Civil War, his negligence allowed things to be much worse than they could have otherwise been, even if it would have happened without him.

Is there any chance you could provide a tl;dr on Jevons, who is mentioned in the thread? That's the one thing they mention that I'm not familiar with (obviously I've heard about the "marginal revolution", but the predditors there are demonstrating how vibes are inadequate)

Liberals breaking new grounds in ways to say racist things while using academic sounding jargon.

It's funny how much it's just a synonym for "civilized" no matter how you read it, but anyone would rightly recognize "civilized" in this context to be a blatantly racist term

I look forward to your future posting about this, it's a very interesting connection! False consciousness bears some commonality across seemingly-disparate cases, turns out.

Grant was a careless fool who would go on to facilitate the Gilded Age. You don't need to give him a slave pass, and in fact you should not.

oh god oh fuck