Let's have no more producerism

[Kirkrapine]

Producerism. These are mostly middle-class people and working-class people who see those below them as as great a threat as those above them -- and, they're not.

Nor, for that matter, are those above them quite the kind of threat they think they are.

This kind of nonsense is actually very old in American populist thought. British conservative Paul Johnson commented in his A History of the American People:

The Founders, particularly the Virginians, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, et al., equated property, as a moral force, with land. Their views were articulated by John Taylor (1753-1824), like them a Virginia landowner who served in the Senate and published in 1814 a monumental work of 700 pages, An Inquiry in the Principles and Policy of the United States. Taylor distinguished between 'natural' property. such as land, and 'artificial property' created by legal privilege, of which banking wealth was the outstanding example. He saw the right to issue paper money as indirect taxation on the people: 'Taxation, direct or indirect, produced by a paper system in any form, will rob a nation of property without giving it liberty; and by creating and enriching a separate interest, will rob it of liberty without giving it property.' Paper-money banking benefited an artificially created and parasitical financial aristocracy at the expense of the hard-working farmer, and this 'property-transferring policy invariably impoverishes all laboring and productive classes.' He compared this new financial power with the old feudal and ecclesiastical power, with the bankers using 'force, faith and credit' as the two others did religion and feudality. What particularly infuriated Taylor was the horrible slyness with which financiers had invested 'fictitious' property, such as bank-paper and stock, with all the prestige and virtues of 'honest' property.

Taylor's theory was an early version of what was to become known as the 'physical fallacy,' a belief that only those who worked with their hands and brains to raise food or make goods were creating 'real' wealth and that all other forms of economic activity were essentially parasitical. It was commonly held in the early 19th century, and Marx and all his followers fell victim to it. Indeed plenty of people hold it in one form or another today, and whenever its adherents acquire power, or seize it, and put their beliefs into practice, by oppressing the 'parasitical middleman,' poverty invariably follows. Taylor's formulation of this theory fell on particularly rich soil because American farmers in general, and the Southerners and backwoodsmen in particular, already had a paranoid suspicion of the 'money power' dating from colonial times, as we have seen. So Taylor's arguments, suitably vulgarized, became the common coin of the Jeffersonians, later of the Jacksonians and finally of silver-standard Democrats and populists of the late 19th century, who claimed that the American farmer was being 'crucified on a cross of gold.' The persistence of this fallacy in American politics refutes the common assumption that America is resistant to ideology, for if ever there were an ideology it is this farrago.

19th-Century Free Silverites wanted an inflationary monetary policy. Modern goldbugs want a deflationary policy. What both have in common is the illusion that things will go better if we somehow get a currency the value of which is beyond the reach of the government or the financial sector to manipulate.

Their attitude to Bitcoin is pretty much the same, apparently.

 

[Kirkrapine]

John Oliver on Bitcoin.

 

[BotanyBoy]

These are mostly middle-class people and working-class people who see those below them as as great a threat as those above them -- and, they're not.

The further left they go the more they are though.

We're already at the direct threat level.

Everything social democrat and left has openly declared class warfare and supports policies to those ends.

 

[Kirkrapine]

The further left they go the more they are though.

Who, the poor? No, going further left does not make them any more of a threat to the middle. Ideally, it should make them more of a threat to the high. Let us hope we see the day when the Low and the Middle (that's you) truly unite against the High.

We're already at the direct threat level.

Not this year, we ain't! Do you see a mob marching on the Hamptons?!

Everything social democrat and left has openly declared class warfare and supports policies to those ends.

If only!

 

[BotanyBoy]

Who, the poor? No, going further left does not make them any more of a threat to the middle.

Ideally, it should make them more of a threat to the high.

Yes.

And they employ/pay most of the middle, take out the high and everyone becomes equally poor comrade.

And how is taking more of my shit and harming if not outright destroying the companies that pay millions and millions of 60-180k year middle class folks not becoming more of a threat to the middle class?

Not this year, we ain't!



If only!

Everything you want.....can't have it without taking it out of the middle class's pockets.

 

[Kirkrapine]

Everything you want.....can't have it without taking it out of the middle class's pockets.

The upper class's pockets are deeper.

 

[BotanyBoy]

The upper class's pockets are deeper.

And they will take it out on the middle class long before you get to force them to live on pop tarts and top ramen out of your deep deep envy. And if you decided to go Red Terror on us and just kill em' all?? Lost worker bees with no idea how to manage/run anything.

Welcome to every collapse of socialism for the past century.

You can't eliminate class or it all falls apart, humans are hierarchical.

We need the Jeff Beezos and Bill Gates and Zukerbergs out there to be able to do what they do so that there is a middle class.

Labor needs management just as much as management needs labor.

 

[Kirkrapine]

Lost worker bees with no idea how to manage/run anything.

Oh, I expect they could manage well enough.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Oh, I expect they could manage well enough.

Observable reality and over a century of socialism chewing the hand that feeds too far say otherwise.

Not a single economy, state or military has ever functioned on an egalitarian basis.

Hell even small communes where everyone is on board AND supported by a capitalistic state/society rarely last long.

Groups need leadership to be productive or accomplish goals and most people are not leaders.

 

[Kirkrapine]

Groups need leadership to be productive or accomplish goals and most people are not leaders.

They don't need leadership, only management.

 

[BotanyBoy]

They don't need leadership, only management.

Bullshit.

That's why you can't point to any great truly communist economies.

All of them have some level of hierarchy, even if it comes from the state.

In the real world people won't work if you don't have a "boss" there to put a foot up their ass for fucking around on the job.

Some people fuck off, others who work get resentful and say "fuck it and fuck them" because why should they break their back for everyone else?

Welcome to the falling apart of every commune/communist economic model ever tried in the history of mankind.

Not even the most hopeful of Marxist hippies could get a functioning model going under the very best of circumstances, because human nature.

 

[trysail]

The folks who are getting the free stuff don't like
the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because
the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer
afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.

And the folks who are paying for the free stuff
want the free stuff to stop.

And the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!

Now the people who are forcing the people who pay
for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING
the free stuff that the people who are PAYING for the
free stuff are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.

So the people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff so and giving them the free stuff in the first place.

We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff .


​

 

[BotanyBoy]

We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff .


​

We've let it go on for so long it's a common misconception that cutting back on free stuff is seen as STEALING from those with their hands out.

 

[Kirkrapine]

We've let it go on for so long it's a common misconception that cutting back on free stuff is seen as STEALING from those with their hands out.

What does any of that have to do with producerism? The point of this thread is that producerism is a deceptive fallacy.

 

[BotanyBoy]

What does any of that have to do with producerism?

Nothing, just a chance to put up an example of how deranged the left is.

The point of this thread is that producerism is a deceptive fallacy.

Let's do it then!

Define producerism and present your argument that it's a deceptive fallacy.


Failed the first time around and I know you like to redefine things on a whim so...wanna try again?

 

[Kirkrapine]

Let's do it then!

Define producerism and present your argument that it's a deceptive fallacy.

Definition covered, in article linked in the OP. It is a deceptive fallacy because those below the middle are not as great a threat to their interests as those above them, and also because it is not true that only those who make things you can hold in your hands are "real" producers of wealth.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Definition covered, in article linked in the OP. It is a deceptive fallacy because those below the middle are not as great a threat to their interests as those above them,

Ok and I already trashed that idea.

Those below them present the greatest threat as they are the ones who advocate government violence against the middle class for their benefit.

The upper class doesn't do that shit.

Their biggest threat is deflecting the lowers actions onto us, which brings us back to the lower class being the biggest threat.

and also because it is not true that only those who make things you can hold in your hands are "real" producers of wealth.

That doesn't really have anything to do with producerism as defined....both goods and services are covered, it's how you earn your money that defines class and who is productive and who is not.

If you're providing goods and services to earn your living you're middle class.

If you invest, hold paper and let your money make your money? You're upper/investment/capital class.

If you're not doing either of those things you're either living primitive or more likely your in the welfare/poverty/lower class.


The lower class is the threat to the other two, but only through government authority, the vote.

The upper class is ONLY a threat to the middle class because they have enough juice to deflect the threat from the lower class to the middle class for their advantage.


So producerism isn't entirely bullshit....there is some truth to it because we have seen it happening here in the USA. It's why our middle class is in the sinking tar pit that it's in now.

Thank god I made it out of that quagmire while I could.

 

[Kirkrapine]

Ok and I already trashed that idea.

Those below them present the greatest threat as they are the ones who advocate government violence against the middle class for their benefit.

But, they don't. I've never heard a poor person say such a thing, in person or in the media.

 

[BotanyBoy]

But, they don't. I've never heard a poor person say such a thing, in person or in the media.

Yes, they do, you do it regularly.

Every time you and anyone else advocate for wealth redistribution and government regulations/control over the means/markets.

You're literally voting for the government to send guys with guns to come take their shit, take over/shut down their businesses and arbitrarily manipulate the markets they operate in.

From Joe the plumber to Sally's Salad Bar.

How is that not a threat?