Cost to produce is along the lines of what I expected you to answer, but I don't understand. Am I not to collect a wage as the runner of the business even if I'm not doing production work? Or is that in fact included in the 'cost to produce' and then you have to figure out a wage with no logical reference frame?
And how is a business going to get the capital to start if it can't take in money to pay interest? If that would be allowed you're dangerously close to capitalism.
Also I disagree that your idea is in fact anti-capitalist. Paying people based on the value they provide in exchange would favor giving successful wall-street fund managers hundreds of millions of dollars which seems supremely capitalist. (the business itself being exploitative to externals doesn't really matter here)
runner of a business? what is that? Does that mean you are living off the surplus value of your workers? or are you a worker yourself? Your "wage" is decided by your work isn't it? i.e if banana is worth x and you pick 5 of them, then you earned 5x no?
I don't understand your capital/interest point.
except in a world of no-profit companies... wall street fund managers wouldn't exist.
I'm talking about the guy in the back that tracks all the bananas and schedules the deliveries and orders the equipment and all the other logistics on this banana team. Does he not get paid? Or does this job not exist somehow?
Creating a banana farm takes money. Who is going to do it? If there are no profits then nobody that focuses on money will bother, and nobody that focuses on rewarding labor can get a loan either.
And fine, if you won't ignore the nonexistence of fund managers long enough to answer a question about principles I'll try a different tack. If I invent a banana picker that saves ten million dollars am I entitled to ten million dollars? Value in, value out.
sorry to rankle you. I'm not meaning to. More playing out a thought experiment.
So this hypothetical (socialist) banana farm, in order not to disadvantage anyone, would have to be owned by the local community (and ultimately the nation), given private ownership wouldn't exist. People aren't focused on money, or profit, they are focused on bananas, because they enjoy contributing to society.
> If I invent a banana picker that saves ten million dollars am I entitled to ten million dollars.
You are phrasing the question from a capitalist centric point of view. If you invent a banana picker, that is super efficient (and in a capitalist workforce would allow you to cut costs but firing your ten million dollar workforce) then you could just let your workers work less, given there is no profit, and you are already servicing the needs of your community with bananas. So perhaps the workers can think of improvements to other parts of the process, like shipping, or perhaps you just want to give them more time to their family.
It's actually very difficult to think about, given we have an innate capitalist view of things.
Hypotheticals aside, Is it really a controversial point to say that "profit" and "free markets" (while providing an efficient way to price things) motivates a whole lot of behaviours not in the "public good". Should we not explore other alternatives?
So you're saying there isn't private ownership of any objects but there is private ownership of money? That's not something I had realized about your scenario and if I've got it right I find it strange.
Or do people not get paid in private money and I don't understand your original point about pay whatsoever.
And yes that scenario I was making is deliberately about an exploitative capitalist.
"Intrinsic value?" What if I invent a new banana plant that can grow in cold weather. It's so successful that there is a banana glut. All the banana republics face bankruptcy because it costs more to ship the darn things than for me to go out back and pick a fresh bunch off my own personal banana tree?
This may seem like a silly example, but think of how the invention of the tractor affected the draft horse industry.
There is no such thing as intrinsic value. There is only the value the marketplace assigns to it. The Soviets spent decades trying to quantify it -- that is, to figure out how much to pay the janitor compared to the factory manager -- but ultimately gave up.
so because the soviets tried and failed (with stalinism that is). We should just assume that "free markets" are the best solution despite the obvious exploitation that occur due to the 'profit motive'?
You wouldn't accept a political system that gave more votes to a select minority, so why so keen on an economic system that does that? (substitute votes, for money)
Free markets are the least bad option so far. You tried to make the same point about intrinsic value the Marx, Engels and their followers have been making for the last 150 years.
Rhetoric only gets you so far. It's easy to seize the moral high ground when you don't have to actually implement. It's like me saying "there needs to be a better search engine than Google" and getting mad if someone suggests I build one.
And as another commenter posted earlier, the US Senate prioritizes votes from low-population states.
And "money" is just a store of value. Ultimately it has to be backed by a marketplace that accepts its value.
bananas and shirts have an intrinsic value, it isn't subjective, they cost X to produce/ship, that's their value. The rest is exploitation.
Of course, a pro-capitalist isn't going to like this line of thinking, as it is explicitly anti-capitalism.