… unless the person works voluntarily, that is.

  • Skunk [any]@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    2 hours ago

    not necessarily, very abridged version:

    The tendency of the rate of profit to fall will soon mean that an industry will stop producing said commodity. It can’t anymore if it’s unprofitable. This is where the state has to step in and start subsidizing that industry or buying the commodity themself in order to articially inflate demand in order to keep that industry afloat. See e.g. the “butter mountains” of the EU.

    That wikipedia article on “The tendency of the rate of profit to fall” is a horrible introduction btw. If you want to know more you can read “Arbeitslohn und Kapital”/“Wage labour and capital” by Marx himself, much more digestible. And rather short.

    • Gullable@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 hours ago

      Thats the exact opposite of capitalism. Unprofitable business go bankrupt. Then their possessions and their labor force gets absorbed by other companies.

      This is to align work with reality.

      If politicians would artificially decide what companies to keep someone would have to pay for their mistakes. Markets are much better at this (just read “the use of knowledge in society” by Friedrich von Hayek)

      Just like the suffering of animals is unnecessary to feed the planet, we now have to pay for the costs of climate change, because people want to life in a socialist fantasy.

      • Skunk [any]@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        2 hours ago

        Ok so unprofitable businesses keep going bankrupt, get gobbled up by a bigger corporation until one corporation has a monopoly. That’s the trend we’re seeing right? How many corporations for food are there left now? Nestle, Unilever, Coca Cola, Mondelez and that’s pretty much it right? Well what happens when the tendency of the rate of the profit to fall forces them to no longer produce food. Do we just go extinct?

        This (in case of the “butter mountains” and in general) isn’t some politicians deciding which companies to keep, this is the state intervening to save itself. They have to prop up an entire industry that cannot reduce costs any further which means that the price keeps fluctuating around 0 profit which means the entire industry goes extinct. That’s why there is a fixed price on milk, not to save some companies, but to prop up the entire industry. Capitalism will devolve sooner or later into state planning since without this state intervention industries start collapsing.

        Could you imagine the ramification of the entire dairy industry dying out? (😸) The economy would go haywire, entire villages depend on their dairy farming, they would revolt it would be pandemonium. This is where capitalism finally leads.