meatbag
Member
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2016
- Messages
- 1,771
"more access to jobs will help lift people out of poverty...no matter how many people get jobs, overall rates of homelessness, poverty, struggle with finances, etc. never change much for the better. The number of people working goes up, but the number of people sufficiently okay with their incomes -- if anything -- seems to keep going down...you could argue that financial problems do not have to correlate with work effort...impoverished conditions create negative feedback, thus those who struggle too much end up just struggling forever, whereas those who "turns things around" found a right way forward for themselves that was either feasible, opportunistically reachable, or whatever other philosophy you prefer...People vehemently stand against basic income due to it not solving the inherent desire of exiting poverty/struggle, but I've never heard of anyone personally who was miserable and poor who just grabbed one of those job thingies and is now blessed in life...Kind of like income I'd say there's not much middle ground which is why you don't see much income mobility these days -- it's almost like an all-or-nothing thing where you're either comfortable/rich-ish or you're struggling/workaday and can't afford much room for anything else. I guess the middle exists for everything, but it's seemingly becoming more and more infeasible to step up one leap rather than being pulled up close to the top or at the top. Income mobility, I'd say, is hardly a thing since jobs do not continue to propel you through life...But seeing how so many work and still have problems it's glaringly obvious that having a steady job is not likely to help one out in life, as what makes them miserable without it is likely something that won't complete one with it, in my overall view of a person and their being. Such explains endless statistics on job markets, income disparity, biases, etc. but at the end of the day each person (hopefully) knows mostly what is best for them, although I can't confidently say I do 100% regarding myself or if society as a whole can reach that deeply either.
How much worry does one who takes Xanax, benzos, or other similar compounds have? Maybe people see their problems/limits and take substances that allow them to not worry about them, but the problems remain there -- kind of like the medical industry/pharmaceutical industry/etc. giving antidepressants/SSRIs, benzos, etc. to those with poverty, deep pains/struggles, and unsolvable problems to people as a way to pretend they aren't there without necessarily making them a non-problem for the most part.
Like money or anything health-related there is an overlap with almost anything regarding our physiology, society and largely our actions -- so maybe we can solve money problems by solving lots of other related problems that run swiftly through them too like reducing the discrimination gap, opportunity/hopes, and of course internal health/productive/empathetic measures as a people too)
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In regards to health, consider the role of the market and the culture it creates in promoting, providing, and enforcing, things that degrade health;
"A distorted idea of human nature is sold when people are treated as "the market.""
"A culture is theory of human Nature",
"Culture, it seems, starts to make us stupid long before the metabolic problems appear.",
"Our brain grows into our culture, and the culture lives in our nervous system. "
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"U.S. marketing dominates the world economy, including of course the communication media, so we shouldn't expect to hear much about the role of PUFA in causing cancer, diabetes, obesity, aging, thrombosis, arthritis and immunodeficiency, or to hear about the benefits of the saturated fats. "
"...around that time, the seed oil industry was in crisis because the use of those oils in paints and plastics was being displaced by new compounds made from petroleum. The industry needed new markets, and discovered ways to convince the public that seed oils were better than animal fats. They were called the “heart protective oils,” though human studies soon showed the same results that the animal studies had, namely, that they were toxic to the heart and increased the incidence of cancer."
"Prostaglandins, which are produced in the body by oxidizing the polyunsaturated fatty acids, provided an opportunity for the drug industry to get involved in a new market, and the prostaglandins offered a new way of arguing for the nutritional essentiality of linoleic and related acids: A whole system of “hormones” is made from these molecules. "
(1)
"Creating a "deficiency" of DHA, even when an oil of known toxicity is used to replace the omega -3 oils, prevents retinal damage from light. Despite evidence of this sort, Mead Johnson is going ahead with the marketing of its baby formula containing added DHA which is industrially extracted from algae."(2)
"50 years ago, paints and varnishes were made of soy oil, safflower oil, and linseed (flax seed) oil. Then chemists learned how to make paint from petroleum, which was much cheaper. As a result, the huge seed oil industry found its crop increasingly hard to sell. Around the same time, farmers were experimenting with poisons to make their pigs get fatter with less food, and they discovered that corn and soy beans served the purpose, in a legal way. The crops that had been grown for the paint industry came to be used for animal food. Then these foods that made animals get fat cheaply came to be promoted as foods for humans, but they had to direct attention away from the fact that they are very fattening. The "cholesterol" focus was just one of the marketing tools used by the oil industry. Unfortunately it is the one that has lasted the longest, even after the unsaturated oils were proven to cause heart disease as well as cancer.
Now and then someone learns how to make a profit from waste material. "Knotty pine" boards were changed from a discarded material to a valued decorative material by a little marketing skill." (3)
"Marketing and medical claims are intertwined with a view of life that permeates our culture. I am aware that my criticism of the doctrine of the essentiality of linoleic acid threatens the large profits of many people, and threatens the prestige of the most popular "theory of cell structure," but I think it is important to point out that nutritional and medical advice depend on the truth of the theory of cell structure and function which supports that advice, and so it is reasonable to see how sound that theory is."(4)
"Historically, the FDA has ruled against traditional generic drug products when the drug industry is ready to market a synthetic substitute product."(5)
"if it is more profitable to sell powerful drugs than to sell the nutrients needed to form natural hormones (or to supplement those natural hormones) we can't expect the drug companies to spend any money investigating that sort of cure. And at present the arthritis market amounts to billions of dollars in drug sales each year. "(6)
" Both estrogen and cortisol are known to cause clotting disorders and to increase capillary fragility, but these steroids have been elevated to the realm of billion dollar drug products, beyond the reach of ordinary physiological thinking. Other stress-released substances that are entangled in the drug market (tryptophan, serotonin, nitric oxide, and unsaturated fats, for example) are similarly exempt from consideration as factors in circulatory, neoplastic, and degenerative diseases." (7)
"To promote the sale of the "premium'" lenses, which cost thousands of dollars, patients are told that the more expensive lenses will save them money in the long run, by making ordinary glasses unnecessary (sometimes)."(8)
>(1) Fats and degeneration
>(2)Aging Eyes, Infant Eyes, and Excitable Tissues
>(3)Unsaturated Vegetable Oils: Toxic
>(4)Membranes, plasma membranes, and surfaces
>(5)Cascara, energy, cancer and the FDA's laxative abuse.
>(6)Blocking Tissue Destruction
>(7)Gelatin, stress, longevity
>(8)Cataracts: water, energy, light, and aging.
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The Case For Water Fluoridation May Be Nothing But A Corporate Plot
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Also consider the relationship between the pharmaceutical firms and the state in the case of SSRI medication;
Regulatory capture - Wikipedia
Serotonin Creates Obedient Zombies - The Ultimate Government Wet Dream
"Btw, this link between SSRI and violent behavior is nothing new. When Prozac was first introduced on the European health market decades ago, several countries in Europe refused to approve the drug for treating depression. The most notable example is Germany, which resisted approval for Prozac for almost a decade as it was concerned both about the risks of the drug as well as potential fraud in Eli Lilly's studies touting it. While most articles covering that "resistance" the German agency BGA put up against the toxic SSRIs focus on the increase in suicide risk from those drugs, BGA's refusal was driven more by the concern for violent behavior and turning people into criminals. It is quite understandable that a country is more worried about the potential of one person harming many others AND themselves, than harming only themselves." -SSRI Drugs Increase Violent Behavior And Promote Recidivism
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Here is a brief seg-way describing how this same concept applies in the Energy and Appliances sectors;
"Thomas Edison, who was adept at publicizing himself as the inventor of ideas he had bought or stolen, founded General Electric. Attempting to eliminate Nikola Tesla's system of alternating current, since Edison was invested in direct current systems, Edison's GE tried to convince the public that direct current was safer, by using alternating current to electrocute an elephant, and by promoting its use in the electric chair. GE eventually gave up the direct current technology for electrifying cities, and they refined the electric light bulb and were fairly successful in controlling, practically monopolizing, that market, and in shortening the life of incandescent bulbs. Carbon filament bulbs made around 1900 often lasted decades; I had one that kept working until it was broken during a move in 1960. Light bulbs made in England 65 years ago, and in the Soviet Union, and bulbs currently made in China, had a life expectancy five times as long as the bulbs made in the US since GE learned how to carefully control the rate at which the tungsten filament deteriorates.
Irving Langmuir was their leading light bulb scientist."
>Pathological Science & General Electric: Threatening the paradigm
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"Marx discovered the simple fact that human beings must have food, drink, clothing, and shelter first of all, before they can interest themselves in politics,science, art, religion and the like"
-Friedrich Engels
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"To expect impartial science in a wage-slave society is rather stupidly naive-like expecting owners to be impartial on the question whether to raise the workers' wages at the expense of the profits of capital"
"Where the bourgeois economist had seen a relation between things (exchange of commodity for commodity) Marx discovered a relation between people."
"People have been and they always will be the stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics, until they learn behind every kind of moral, religious, political, social phrase, declaration and promise to seek out the interests of this or that class or classes"
"The labor power of man becomes a commodity. The wage worker sell his labor power to the owner of land, factories and the instruments of labor. One part of the working day he spends in order to meet the cost of supporting himself and his family (wages), but another part of the day he spends working for nothing, creating for the capitalist surplus value, which is the source of profits, the source of the wealth of the class of capitalists"
"Capital, created by the labor of the worker, opresses the worker by undermining the small proprietor and creating an army of the unemployed"
"In outstripping small-scale production, capital leads to an increase of the productivity of labor and the creation of monopolies through the union of the biggest capitalists"
"...the product of thier general labor is appropriated by a handful of capitalists.
"From the first beginnings of commodity economy, from simple barter, Marx followed the development of capitalism to its highest forms, to large-scale production."
-Lenin
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Ch.1
What determines the the value (or price) of the commodities which constitute capital. That value is determined by the costs necessary for theri own production. And among among such costs of production is found wages. In the long run it is found that the rate of wages is determined by-the rate of wages! And the price of commodities-by the price of commodities!
Wages are determined by the price of food needed by the labourer, but such foodstuffs are themselves commodities, and thier price is in part determined by wages; the error is obvious.
Ch.2
The origin of profit, the creation of surplus-value, must hence be explained on the presumption that commoditites are sold at their real value. But in this case the surplus value must manifestly have its origin in the process of production; during the process of production of the commodity a new value must have been created.
Ch.3
A commodity is primarily an external object, which by reason of its qualities satisfies some sort of human want....the usefulness of the thing implies that it is a 'value in use'.
Exchange Value: The quantitative relation in which values in use of one kind are exchanged against values in use of another kind, it seems to sonsist soley in the relation of the commodities to our wants.
All products of labor demonstrate that human labour power has been expended in their production and that labor is accumulated in them"
The exchange value of a commodity thus only exists because, and in so far as abstract human labor is embodied in that commodity.
After the introduction of steam weaving-looms in England, for instance, perhaps only half the labour needed previously was henceforth necessary in order to transform a given quantity of yarn into a textile fabric. The English hand-weaver still needed the same amount of time for effecting such a transformation; but the product of his individual hour's work represented hence-forth only half an hour's social labour, and lost in consequence half its former value.
Thus it is only the quantity of labour or of working-time socially necessary for its production, which determines the exchange value of a commodity.Thus the total value of a commodity would remain unchanged, if the working-time necessary for its production were to remain the same. But the latter changes with every variation in the productiveness of labour. The productiveness of labour is determined by various circumstances-amongst others by the average amount of skill of the labourers,by the degree in which science is developed and applicable for technical purposes, the manner in which the process od production is organized, the extent and efficiency of the means of production, and by natural conditions.
A thing can posses value in use, without having value. This is the case when no labour is required in order to make it useful to mankind. Such are air, virgin soil, natural pastures, wild-growing wood, etc. A thing can be both useful and the product of human labour, without constituting a commodity. Whoever satisfies his own wants by the produce of his own labour creates values in use, but no commodity. In order to produce commodities he must not only create values in use per se, but values in use for others, i.e. social values in use. Nothing can have value without being an object of utility. If it be useless, the labour contained in it is useless, cannot be reckoned as labour, and cannot therefore create value.
Ch.4
How can the manufacturer obtain from his commodities a greater value than that invested by him in them?
The origin of surplus-value must be explained in the normal case of the capitalist paying the full value of what he purchases for the purpose of labour. That which the capitalist obtains by paying wages, consequently that which he purchases from the labourer, is the latter's faculty, or power, of working...Labour power can only appear as a commodity on the market in so far, and because, it is offered for sale by its owner. In order to sell it as a commodity, the owner of such labour power must be able to dispose of it...The owner of labour power and the capitalist differ in that one is the purchaser of and the other the vendor and are consequently legally equal person. If the seller of labour, the proprietor, sells his labour in bulk, once and for all, he would be selling himself, and converting himself from a freeman into a slave; he would cease to be a proprietor of commodities and would become a commodity himself.
The capitalist must therefore find a free labourer; free to dispose of his labour power as his own commodity and person having no other commodities to sell-free from everything necessary to utilise his labour power.
Nature does not produce on the one hand capitalists and proprietors of commodities and on the other proprietors soley of their own individual labour power
The value of labour power is the value of the necessaries required to sustain its proprietor. The proprietor sells his labour to obtain the necessities of life and the so called natural wants. The manner to which, are satisfied, depending on the degree of civilization attained by any given country. Contrary to all other commodities a moral and historical element, the standard of life of the sellers of labour, enter into determination of its value.
A service is nothing but the useful effect produced by a value in use, be it a commodity or be it labour, bet here there is only question of the exchange value. The vendor of labour power obtains its exchange value and sells its value in use.
Ch.5
In the production of surplus value it is indifferent whether the labour bought by the capitalist be simple unskilled labour of average quality or more complicated labour. The labour which is of a higher kind and more complicated is the maifestation of a labour power which has cost more to develop, whose production has cost therefore more working time, and which has consequently a higher value than unskilled labour power. This power being of a greater value, it will be expended in labour of a higher class; it will, therefore, materialise itself in an identical length of time in proportionately higher values than unskilled labour. But whatever differences in skill may exist between the labour classes, the portion of his labour by which the jeweller merely replaces the value of his own labour power, does not in any way differ in quality from the additional portion by which he creates surplus value.
Labour is only creative of value in the measure in which the time needed for the production of a value in use is socailly necessary
Ch6
Surplus value arises during the production of commodities, and it is clear that the surplus-value obtained in every individual undertaking must differ in its amount independently of the amount of capital. Surplus-value is exclusively derived from living, newly performed, labour, and not the pre-exisiting means of production.
Ch8
Surplus-value is produced by the employment of labour power. Capital buys labour power and pays the wages for it. By means of his work the labourer creates new value which does not belong to him, but to the capitalist. He must work a certain time merely in order to reproduce the equivalent value of his wages. But when this equivalent value has been returned, he does not cease work, but continues to do so for some further hours. The new value he produces during this extra time, and which exceeds in consequence the amount of his wage, constitutes surplus-value.
Ch9
Cooperation, such as we find it at the dawn of human development, among tribes who live by the chase, or, say, in teh agricutlre of Indian communities, is based on the one hand, on ownership in common of the means of production, and, on the other hand, on the fact that in those cases each individual has no more torn himself off from the navel-string of his tribe or community, than each bee has freed itself from connection with the hive.
The sporadic application of cooperation on a large scale in ancient times, in the middle ages, and in modern colonies reposes on relations of dominion and servitutde, principally on slavery. The capitalistic form, on the contrary, presupposes from first to last the free wage-labourer, who sells his labour to capital.
Ch10
Machinery causes, at first, a further increase of employment in the industries that produce luxuries. Fir it augments surplus-value and the mass of products in which surplus-value is embodied. Thus the wealth of the capitalist class increases.
Ch11
The aim of machinery is to save labour. The same quantity of commodities-or a larger one-is produced by less labourers. Living labour becomes more productive and more fertile.
Capitalist production requires-on account of the decrease of the rate of profit-constant expansion.pg144
The development of productive power results in setting in motion a constantly increasing quantity of means of production by a constantly decreasing quantity of labour,each individual commodity contains less labour and its price decreases. But the total number of commodities produced augments accordingly. A decrease of the amount of profit realized on the individual commodity, a decrease of its price, and an increase of the amount of profit realized on the increased total amount of commodities produced by the total capital. The capitalist realizes less profit on the individual commodity, but produces a larger total quantity of commodities.
The capitalist then seeks to counterbalance the decrease of the rate of profit by an increased exploitation of labour power. More most be extracted from the individual worker.
A means of intensifying the exploitation of labour, and thereby of increasing the amount of surplus-value extracted from each individual workman, the total number of workmen being reduced, is to force down wages to a point below the value of labour power.
The most important means of checking the decrease of the rate of profit, and thus escaping ruin, consists in the unceasing increase of capital.
Ch12
All means of production serve as capital, for they all enable their proprietor to reap surplus value by employing wage-labor . The capitalist does not intend reaping surplus-value only once, but continually, from the capital advanced by him.
The purchase of labour power for a fixed period is the prelude to the process of production. But the laborer is not paid until after he has expended his labour power, and realized in commodities not only its value, but surplus value. He has therefore produced not only surplus-value, but also before it flows back to him in the shape of wages, the fund out of which he himself is paid; and his employment lasts only so long as he continues to reproduce this fund. The money paid by the capitalist to the proprietor of labour is the transmuted form of the product of his labour.
The capitalists class is constantly giving to the labouring class order-notes, in the form of money, on a portion of the commodities produced by the latter and appropriated by the former. The labourers give these order-notes back just as constantly to the capitalist class, and in this way get their share of their own product. The transaction is veiled by the commodity form of the product and the money form of the commodity.
In order to convert his money into capital, the capitalist had originally to confront, on the labour market, the labourer lacking all means of production and subsistence.
The indispensable condition of capitalist production is the perpetuation of the proletarian labourer; the process of production incessantly converts material wealth into capital, into means of creating more wealth and the labourer is a source of wealth but is devoid of all means of making that wealth his own since by selling his labour power the products of his labour have been incorporated with capital and belong to the capitalist.
The labourer consumes in a twofold way.
1-While producing he consumes by his labour the means of production, and converts them into products with a higher value than that of the capital advanced
2-The labourer turns the money paid to him for his labour-power, into means of subsistence
In the first method of consumption he acts as the motive power of capital
In the second he belongs to himself, performing his necessary vital function outside the process of production
By converting part of his capital into labour power, the capitalist augments the value of his entire capital. He profits by what he gives to, as well as what he receives from, the labourer.
When contemplating not a single capitalist or a single labourer, but the entire capitalist class and the entire labourer class, the matter takes on quite another aspect.
The maintenance and reproduction of the working-class is, and must ever be, a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital.
All the capitalist cares for is to reduce the labourer's individual consumption as as possible to what is strictly necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of the working-class, which is a necessary condition to the reproduction of capital. That part of the labourer's consumption is necessary as it is required for the perpetuatuion of the Capitalist class, what the labourer consumes beyond that is unproductive consumption.
Individual consumption provides the means for their maintenance and reproduction, and is a mere factor in the reproduction of capital.
The centralization of capital becomes more intense in proportion as the specifically capitalist mode of production developed along with accumulation.
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The system affecting peoples health, in which the state wields power in the interests of the centralized capitalists, rather than the population, was demonstrated by Marx. In the capitalist system, the capitalist class can only increase their capital and all of society then functions in their interests
Rudolf Hilferding - who was murdered by the Nazi Gestapo- explores how this happens as industrial capitalism progresses into finance capitalism in his book "Finance Capital"
Rudolf Hilferding - Wikipedia
(I am reading this right now and don't have argument from it to present, but I thought some people might find it of interest)
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