Re: Profit and Value, was: Re(2): [ox-en] extrinsic motivation = coercion

Personally, I think it's a subjective issue.

Let me explain my view.

I happen to believe that there are two parts to our psyche: the
rational part and the ancient animal or irrational part (greed,
irrational pleasures, temptation, and most importantly 'fear', all
reside there, i.e. our weaknesses)

Obviously, the purpose of civilization is to tame or minimize or even
eliminate irrational behavior but the irrational part in us is not as
conditionable as the rational part, which is why war, crime and
injustice continue to this day.

According to latest game theory research, rational behavior in nature
demands both egalitarian type cooperation as well as competition, not
just competition or cooperation in the context of competition.

However, when it comes to the irrational part, where fear reigns
supreme (and is the root cause of our weakness), we don't really
follow evolutionary game theory as much as we should. We do follow it
when we are feeling courage and when we are resourced (psychologically
and physically) but when weakness creeps up (due to irrational fear of
something including some of the deepest existential issues) we enter
into a state of temporary irrationality, out of weakness, and with
some people it becomes a homeostasis, i.e. stuck in fear.

That is why the capitalist systems works (whereas socialist systems
have failed thus far) even when it promotes war, crime and injustice.
It feeds on our weakness. We must resist it, but we cannot defeat it
unless we rise above our weakness. At this time seeing how people are
today the hope I have in my own work is to understand fear and the
process of gaining strength and enable a system that allows people to
gain courage and abandon fear, but that is akin to asking someone to
change their homeostasis to a new one. It's an incredibly difficult
process and there are entire libraries of books written about the
subject (e.g. spiritual books, religions, psychology books, self help
books, etc)

There has to be a better way, but it can be overlooking the fact that
we are, as a civilization, still predominantly driven by fear.

Marc

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Patrick Anderson <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 3:03 PM, marc fawzi <[email protected]> wrote:
>> in a true equilibrium anyone who wishes to get X number or amount of some good or service
>> should be able to do so at the median cost of that good or service + a fixed profit 'margin'
>
> Why do you and Franz say there *must* there be a profit 'margin'?
>
> If you say "as a return for the investors", then I ask:
>
> But what if the investors (and therefore owners) are the only
> consumers?  For in that case, there would be no profit ... but does
> imply there can be no production when the owner of an apple tree is
> the sole consumer (eats all the apples himself)?
>
> Notice the owner(s) are not required to be the worker(s) for those
> Means of Production.
>
> If a quadriplegic apple tree owner hired some workers to pick apples
> with money/tokens he earned by giving talks, he would pay those costs
> as Wages, but still would not pay profit, for who would he pay it to?
>
> Sincerely,
> Patrick
> _________________________________
> Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
> Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
> Contact: [email protected]
>



-- 

Marc Fawzi
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_________________________________
Web-Site: http://www.oekonux.org/
Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: [email protected]