[p2p-research] negative interest at NYT

[marc fawzi]

Patrick

I think the idea of giving a portion of an enterprise to each paying
consumer (as they buy more goods/services from that enterprise) is a
fantastic one.

I think it's time has come.

The hard part is SEC rules (fucking stupid, and not evolving at the speed of
change that's happening) dictate that such a model cannot happen.

Marc

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 10:19 AM, Patrick Anderson <agnucius at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 10:03 AM, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > If you have a shovel and are not using it, you can lend it to me.
> > I use it and gain value.
> > What is the problem for compensating someone for such value?
>
>
> I'm glad you made this comparison.  It's much easier to understand why
> someone would pay to rent a physical tool.
>
> So the Renter should pay the Rentier, just as the Consumer pays the
> Owner, and as the Owner pays the Worker.
>
> But if these transactions are 'perfect', then where is the problem in
> Capitalism?
>
>
> Rent is composed of 2 separable concepts:
>
> 1.) Real costs including initial purchase costs (and any interest that
> owner had to pay), maintenance, insurance, storage, even "opportunity
> loss"
>
> 2.) Economic-Rent is the amount a user pays *above* those costs.  This
> is also called "Profit".
>
>
> The "partially correct" nature of these transactions make them
> difficult to analyze since people tend to oversimplify.
>
> Physical Sources such as shovels degrade over time.  If owners did not
> collect enough rent to at least cover costs, the users would slowly
> destroy the shovel with no funds to fix or replace it.
>
> That would be no good.  Even the users don't want to be without shovels.
>
> Most users are willing to pay rent if it is not too clumsy to do so,
> but if the rent gets too high, they begin to feel as though they are
> being "taken advantage of".  Are they?  Is Rent, Profit or Interest
> ever *too* high?  What would that even mean?  Is it a magic number?
> Why do we artificially cap the amount of interest a 'Bank' can charge
> with usury laws and such?
>
>
> The Labor Theory of Value (LTV) claims the Price above Cost
> (exchange-value) arises because of the amount of labor expended during
> it's production.
>
> But if that is the case, then why does scarcity effect price at the
> point-of-sale, long after production is complete?
>
> Why will nobody consider the plight of the Worker **while acting as a
> Consumer**?  For it is during this transaction that profit occurs.
>
> Capitalism makes a small impact on Monopoly, but does not eliminate it
> completely.
>
> In fact, Capitalism cannot function at ALL under conditions of perfect
> competition, for in that case Profit would be Zero since Price would
> equal Cost.
>
>
> Hmm...
>
> So paying rent is OK for covering Costs.
>
> And paying rent *might* be OK for growth beyond Costs (say purchasing
> even more shovels to be rented simultaneously because demand is
> currently too high to meet that demand).
>
> But if we are going to grow in this manner, my question is "who will
> be the owners of those new shovels"?
>
> Will it be the current owners ~ causing Capital to accumulate further
> and further into the hands of the few?
>
> Or maybe it should be the property of the people who PAID for it = the
> users who paid price above cost?
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Patrick
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>



-- 

Marc Fawzi
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Marc-Fawzi/605919256
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcfawzi
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090518/4430d24f/attachment.html>