[FRIAM] means of production take 2

[uǝlƃ ☣]

OK. So, moving on from the basic idea that "means of production" is used as a hook for this fundamental issue of ingrained vs. contrived claims, you've refined that into this *game theoretic* language about asymmetric access to pools of resources. I guess it does smack True that the people I've heard use the phrase "means of production" tend to have some sort of chip on their shoulder ... some beef they want to express ... like they've lost the game and are using the phrase morally or ethically to express the asymmetry.

But it's not clear to me that this way of thinking is useful, at least not to me. I appreciate you're laying it out. But it's not necessary for leveraging a dialog with people who use the phrase. I.e. what I need is simply some grounding so that I don't just laugh off or miss some important point they might be making. And the core distinction you've made (ingrained vs. contrived) is solid, which is not to say I agree or disagree, only that it helps me be better at listening. In fact, going any further, might inhibit me from listening to the phrase-user with empathy. I might preemptively assume I know what they mean before asking them. So, I don't want to charge into the gaming the commons extent, at least not in this conversation.

Thanks very much!

On 11/25/19 2:16 PM, Steven A Smith wrote:
> 
> Glen -
> 
> After lettin ghtis sit a while and engaging in Dave's take3 subthread, I
> am more ready to respond.
> 
>> what I'm trying to do is work out why some people can use the phrase
>> "ownership of the means of production" with a straight face. 8^)
> I saw that in your original response but didn't recognize that to be the
> core of your questions, though I think I do see it now.  Part of that is
> that I also find the phrase something of an oxymoron in the world I
> *choose to live in* but sadly a near truism in the culture of hypermanic
> capitalism that we *DO*??? (or many choose to) live in.
>> What you lay out below worked. I did *not* grok that the key
>> difference you see is one of ingrained vs. contrived senses of
>> ownership. I think we could have an interesting discussion down into
>> that. But it's definitely not what I *thought* we were talking about.
>> I'd like to tie the 2 topics together more explicitly than you do below.
>>
>> To be clear, the 2 topics are: 1) what do people (e.g. you) mean when
>> they use the phrase "means of production" and 2) ingrained vs.
>> contrived senses of ownership. It's tempting to dive down into the
>> mechanisms of something being ingrained vs. contrived. But I don't
>> think that dive pulls much weight in relation to question (1).
>> Whatever lurks at the depth of the distinction, maybe we can just
>> allow that there is a distinction and stay "up here" for a minute?
>> Perhaps you're suggesting that people who use the phrase "ownership of
>> the means of production" are trying to make that distinction between
>> an ingrained vs. a contrived ownership claim.
> 
> I would say that not only are they trying to make that *distinction* but
> are in fact trying to impose what I am calling "contrived" to be
> "ingrained" and perhaps dismissing "ingrained" almost entirely, or
> treating it somewhat as a quaint anachronism.   The real estate agents,
> title companies, tax agents, bankers, foreclosure agents, and Sheriffs
> who create and exercise the ambiguity of ownership of one's own "home"
> are an example.   The myth of home ownership (in this context) as part
> of the American (first world?) one's own home, crossed with the myth of
> "a man's house is his castle" and juxtaposed with "home is where the
> heart is" all jangle hard against one another if taken seriously.  I
> feel that I "own" the silver amalgam fittings and gold crowns in my
> mouth nearly as "intrinsically" as I do the teeth they are attached to. 
> If I were in a Nazi death camp, I suppose those who operated it might
> not care much about that distinction.   They own my teeth (in your sense
> of "ability to destroy") as surely as the gold and silver married to
> them.  What I *might* still own is my sense of dignity (I happen to have
> just re-read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" - set in a
> Stalinist Gulag, but still pretty daunting).
> 
> ..
> 
> <deleted protracted tangential argument on the contrast in arguments
> around "right to bear arms" and "freedom of choice">
> 
> ...
> 
>> It would make sense to me to identify people who use that phrase as
>> accusing others of conflating ingrained "rights" vs contrived
>> "rights". E.g. if only socialists used the phrase as accusations that
>> the "ownership of the means of production" is contrived and not
>> ingrained (or "natural"). I.e. the "means of production" should be
>> collectively shared, not privately owned. Whereas a capitalist might
>> counter-claim that allowing for a more ingrained (or "intuitive"),
>> expansive extent of ownership fosters things like innovation, and
>> accuses socialists of defusing one's motivations (ingrained sense of
>> ownership) into the collective. So each side is arguing about where to
>> draw the line between ingrained vs. contrived.
>>
>> Is *that* your sense of how people use the phrase(s)?
> 
> I think that is very close, if not spot on, and provides the foundation
> for the stronger sense in which I was trying to delineate different
> modes of ownership".  
> 
> Elaborating what I think is implied in what you said here:
> 
> Using the language of Socialist/Capitalist (in their stronger senses), I
> agree that the former might believe that by virtue of the fact that some
> specific "means of production" are tapping in an imbalanced way into
> some kind of "commons", that to allow private/individual (vs
> communal/collective) control over that "means of production" gives the
> owner unequal access to the shared resource in "the commons".   By
> extension, this "means of production" might should become part of the
> commons in their mind. 
> 
> A Capitalist may want to deny the very idea of "a commons" and believe
> that all unowned resources are available for appropriation (esp. by
> them).   For the longest time, bodies of water, grazing land, forests,
> veins of minerals were pretty much treated that way.  Possession was
> 100% of "the law".  Ownership of some conserved "means of production" is
> an even better lever with which to appropriate... if you dam the river
> and put in a water mill, if you set up a sawmill operation big enough to
> clear a mountainside, or bring in big enough drills/pumps to empty an
> aquifer or a oil deposit, then even if you  don't claim to own the
> water-head, the forest, the aquifer, you have established the ability to
> appropriate it (somewhat) to the exclusion of others. 
> 
> In the struggle between labor/capital in the industrial age - Labor, as
> you point out is to Capital, just another commodity to be virtually
> "owned", "traded", and even "destroyed" in some sense.  Labor becomes
> part of the "means of production".   Labor Unions flip that around (to
> some extent) by collectivizing Labor into a presumed CoOp (though many
> Union members or students of criminal activity around Labor Unions might
> argue that is also an illusion), the individuals making up the Labor
> have their own labor potential returned to themselves (though now
> collectivized).  "Right to Work" laws speak in the language of
> returning/leaving those rights in the individual but it appears this is
> almost exclusively a storyline and misdirection by Capital to undermine
> Unions to maintain their ability to exploit the labor of Labor at-will. 
> This battle, I would claim, has squeezed out everything but the thinnest
> of illusions than an individual might "own" their own labor (potential).  
> 
> I continue to fail to match you in conciseness and honor your
> forbearance in tracing out some of my more convoluted responses and
> distilling some aspect of their essence for continued remastication.
> 
-- 
☣ uǝlƃ