[FRIAM] capitalism vs. individualism

[uǝlƃ ☣]

In response to both MGD and SAS:

OK. But again we're arguing about how many angels can dance on a pin, right? It's like distinguishing between objects and processes, nodes and edges. Property implies a kind of control and vice versa. So, whether you "own a means" or "control a thing" is irrelevant. It's the *privacy* that's the distinguisher, not the thing that is private.

This goes back to concepts of "closure", I suppose. If you kill just enough lizards to feed your family for a month, that's one thing. But if you somehow finagle your way into preventing others from having enough lizards to feed their family for that month, that's another thing. So, the closure of privacy or, better yet, the closure of control is the leveragable distinction.


On 11/14/19 3:45 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> HR often departments act as if the feature space for skills can be represented as a binary vector associated with a given candidate.  That resource is a thing they try to acquire and will get rid of when they no longer need it.   A rich enough company might even hold on to such resources just so that another company couldn't get it.    They aren't as bald-faced as calling their employees property though.   They don't hesitate to use terms like "intellectual property", however.

On 11/14/19 3:50 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> I think this is a fair question.   Perhaps the dead lizard I just killed
> in the dilly bag around my waist is *mine all mine* but the throwing
> stick I used to kill it, which gives me the ability to kill lizards
> before anyone else in my tribe can is perhaps the pragmatic
> difference?   Fundamentally it has to do with whether "the group" can
> "afford" for some members to have/take significant advantage over "the
> commons" whether that be by technological leverage (throwing stick,
> plantation, factory, or national railway system) or force of law (laws
> and law enforcement contrived to protect "private property" vs "citizens
> health and well being") or more organic aspects (being bigger, faster,
> more aggressive than others).
> 
> I use these extreme examples, only for illustration.   I'm not
> advocating the kind of handicapping parodied in Vonnegut's Harrison
> Bergeron, just suggesting that maintaining an extended phenotype through
> the principle of private ownership isn't (qualitatively) the same as A)
> literal hoarding (gathering all the lizards up in a region)  or B)
> potential hoarding (establishing and maintaining the ability to gather
> them so much more efficiently than others so as to effectively hoard them).

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