/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.10748270]

This is the most garbage thing I've ever read. Why are economists so clearly biased towards capitalism?

[Anonymous No.10748294]

>>10748270
follow the money.

[Anonymous No.10748305]

>>10748270
because it's the only viable economic system currently at our disposal.

>inb4 muh central planning

lol

[Anonymous No.10748313]

>>10748270
Capitalism doesn't exist

[Anonymous No.10748321]

>>10748305
It's the "only viable economic system currently at our disposal" because the majority of people who practice economics scoff at any attempts to discuss new forms of economic organization. How could there be any other viable economics systems if we don't even bother thinking about them?

[Anonymous No.10748335]

>why are materialists biased towards materialism?

Not to say commies are any better. The answer to our problems is spirituality

[Anonymous No.10748339]

>>10748270
>Why is the study of the flow of goods and services biased towards the most efficient method of their distribution?
OP gay his mom retared

[Anonymous No.10748341]

>>10748321
yeah cause the soviet experiment went over so well.

[Anonymous No.10748366]

>>10748321
>Designing an entire economic system
Ah yes yes indeed. We should also design a perpetual motion engine while we're at it.

[Anonymous No.10748370]

>>10748341
Oh well! Guess we should just give up and make do with what we've got, instead of thinking of any more ideas or performing other experiments! Capitalism isn't perfect, after all, but it's better than nothin'! *millions of Chinamen commit suicide*

[Anonymous No.10748372]

>>10748335

[Anonymous No.10748376]

>>10748370
>I have no real argument XDXDXD

[Anonymous No.10748379]

>>10748370
didn't say there wasn't a cost and i didn't say it was perfect, but the experiments we've seen with marxism have been horrible failures. until we approach a truly post-scarcity world that isn't dependent on cheap foreign labor i don't think we can experiment. nice job on writing off the many millions that died due to soviet incompetence btw.

[Anonymous No.10748383]

There are multiple schools of Economics, but only the "Neo-Classical Fusion" (Neo-Classical School, with some elements of Keynesianism thrown in to deal with some of the more obvious issues) is taken seriously within mainstream Academia, to the point that the other major schools (Marxism, Schumpterianism, Post-Keynesiansim, Behavioural Economics, Austrian Economics, & Institutionalist Economics) are described as "Heterodox Economics" if you want to read Economics that actually tries to explain how the world works, and examines Free Markets, and Private-Capital with a critical eye, (rather than just doing more, and more game theory, based on the fundamental, demonstrably wrong assumption that humans are largely-selfish, rational actors), then read up on any of the hetereodox schools listed above (except the Austrian school. Austrian Economics is trash).
If you're asking why the Neo-Classical fusion is overblown in Academia, and the Media, and mainstream economics literature, then read up on both the influence of the Chicago school, and the US, and UK governments' suppression of heterodox economics during the early Cold War, in an attempt to prevent the spread of Marxism.

[Anonymous No.10748397]

>>10748372
>christianity is spiritual

Anyway, loose your fedora. It's stopping the blood from reaching your head

[Anonymous No.10748406]

>>10748397
>le Holy Spirit
>not spiritual

[Anonymous No.10748411]

>>10748397
>Christianity is not spiritual
Durr durr durr u have le hat XDdD

[Anonymous No.10748432]

Economics is about deciding what to create, deciding who creates it, deciding who gets what is created, and deciding how to distribute what is created, all while there are scarce resources. None of these questions can be answers without appealing to different values. One thing many people value is private property, another thing many people value are nations. So people who value those things will answer those questions with those values in mind. That is what makes most economists biased towards capitalism. If their values changed then their answers would change.

[Anonymous No.10748436]

>>10748432
>answers
answered*

[Anonymous No.10748445]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-autistic_economics

>tfw

[Anonymous No.10748449]

>>10748432
>Economics is prescriptive

[Anonymous No.10748452]

>>10748383
How do I know you haven't just been brainwashed to believe this stuff by Marxissts?

[Anonymous No.10748458]

>>10748449
yep

[Anonymous No.10748620]

>>10748445
I've been toying with a similar concept in my mind for the past years. I imagine a gradually tiered capitalist system on which people voluntarily agree to give percentages of their wages in exchange of benefits. Something like "capitalism for the rich, socialism for the poor":

[Anonymous No.10748639]

>>10748270
>why are people concerned with modeling so biased towards an accurate model?

>>10748305
>>10748321
>>10748432
CAPITALISM IS NOT A "SYSTEM" INVENTED BY HUMANS. It just is.

>>10748366
>>10748449
this

>>10748620
every moment you've spent contemplating this has been wasted. it's long been known that lesser entities are better off exchanging large portions of their freedom for security. indentured servitude is the redpill, not government subscription boxes.

[Anonymous No.10748658]

>>10748639
>In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and Capitalism
Now please go on to say that anybody who disagrees is a communist.

[Anonymous No.10748726]

>its another /lit/ cant into economics 101 thread
yay
for non-retards only
https://openstax.org/subjects/
also /r/askeconomics and /r/badeconomics are unironically good

also was thinking bout doing a economicscopypasta, but will take some time, already got one debunking austrian "economics" though

[Anonymous No.10748732]

>>10748658
capitalism formed itself, do you think the romans knew they were being capitalists when they minted? the kangs when they paid laborers for building monuments? All Smith did was explain what had already existed for thousands of years

[Anonymous No.10748735]

>>10748452
Factcheck everything I just said. It checks out.
As to whether I've just been brainwashed by Marxists. I don't just read Marxist economics, I also have a keen interest in Behavioural Economics, and think that it fills in all the gaps left by Marx's theories.

[Anonymous No.10748744]

>>10748383
>behavioral economics is heterodox
pls go back to r*ddit thx
>le chicago joos illuminati
ok this is /leftypol/ tier trash, you really need to go back
>le rational actor
One of the many signs noobs giving themselves away.

[Anonymous No.10748747]

>>10748744
also
http://chrisauld.com/2013/10/23/18-signs-youre-reading-bad-criticism-of-economics/

[Anonymous No.10748748]

>>10748726
Nice website, thanks. I was already thinking about doing the econ course in Khan academy, which one do you think it's better?

[Anonymous No.10748769]

>>10748748
have no experience with khan so idk
also make sure to follow some good blogs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/wiki/blogs

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrUniversity/videos
basically covers same as the book, but super condensed into 5 min videos

I have to warn though, the book is really slow and repetitive, it does 1 page in 10 pages, etc so use it alongside videos if you don't have the time

https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/wiki/index

if you encounter lolberts from /pol/ send them this to piss them off
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm

[Anonymous No.10748802]

>>10748383
>based on the fundamental, demonstrably wrong assumption that humans are largely-selfish, rational actors),
This is the silliest, most autistic post I've read here in a while. Please, PLEASE, if you're actually interested in gaining economic knowledge, don't listen to this guy. He has literally know idea what he's talking about. There are tons of people like this, fucking losers with limited actual economic knowledge whos Twitter avi is, like, a gadsen flag snake getting eaten by the syndicalist black cat. Fucking idiots who buy richard wolff-esque insane delusional conspiracy theories about the prevalence of neo-classicism in academia are essentially just sperging out and throwing tantrums over the concrete economic idea that markets and property will always be efficient.
Economists (especially marcoeconomists) don't deny that market failures exist, that negative externalities and natural monopolies and imperfect competition all happen. But even paul krugman or whatever- that is, anybody with an actual wealth of economic knowledge, who's contributed to the body of thought in any significant way- has unwielding support of some form or capitalism. Even the keynesian the anti-capitalist scourge boomer conservatives make them out to be. They support free markets and non-intervention during certain periods of time. Take this guy as seriously as somebody on this board saying that science textbooks are worthless, and that the only real knowledge can be found in alternative sources, or that mainstream sociology is a jewish conspiracy, or that all philosophy besides objectivism is trash because kant (who they've never read and know barely anything about, just like this guy sure as hell hasn't read menger or friedman or w/e) is evil somehow.

>Behavioural Economics,
What the fuck are you talking about? Behavioral econ is incredibly important and relevant to the field as a whole, and tons of studies and research is in the domain of understanding how economic actors behave. Also, as an aside: I'm no Austrian cultist, but out of all the heterodox schools they're probably the most valuable, and the least "trash"- Menger to marginal utility, Bohm-Bawerk to subjective value, Hayek to political economy, etc. Marxian economics and you've just demonstrated your immense lack of actual knowledge about economics (besides repeating ad-nauseum what you heard online) in favor of going on an angry misinformed diatribe about capitalists.

[Anonymous No.10748810]

>>10748445
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-autistic_economics
>However, post-autistic economists also "assert that neoclassical economics has the characteristics of an autistic child"

EHL EEE EHL

[Anonymous No.10748820]

>>10748658

[Anonymous No.10748825]

As many have already stated, capitalism is a very vague term. It is used to describe relationships that exist with bidding, open markets, and influence and direction of a general monetary authority, among other things, all at one time.

It's almost necessary to specify which aspect of capitalism they are biased towards, to avoid sounding like someone who has just read The Communist Manifesto and that's it.

[Anonymous No.10748831]

whats the deal with ecologists and anarchy?

[Anonymous No.10748836]

Maybe because that's their livelihood

[Anonymous No.10748846]

>>10748831
they're hedging their bets on violent competition creating coordination problems that prevent technological advance

[Anonymous No.10748847]

>>10748383 #
>based on the fundamental, demonstrably wrong assumption that humans are largely-selfish, rational actors),
This is the silliest, most autistic post I've read here in a while. Please, PLEASE, if you're actually interested in gaining economic knowledge, don't listen to this guy. He has no idea what he's talking about. People like him are the retards who buy richard wolff-esque desperate conspiracy theories about the prevalence of neo-classicism in academia, and, all things considered, are essentially just sperging out over the concrete economic idea that markets and property are efficient.
Economists (especially marcoeconomists) don't deny that market failures exist, that negative externalities and natural monopolies and imperfect competition all happen. But even paul krugman or whatever- that is, anybody with an actual wealth of economic knowledge, who's contributed to the body of thought in any significant way- has unwielding support of some form of capitalism. Keynesians aren't the anti-capitalist scourge boomer conservatives make them out to be, and all real accepted strains of thought in the field ARE capitalist. Keynes supported free markets and non-gov't-intervention during certain periods of time. Take this guy as seriously as somebody on this board saying that science textbooks are worthless, and that the only real knowledge can be found in alternative sources, or that mainstream sociology is a jewish conspiracy, or that all philosophy besides objectivism is trash because kant (who they've never read and know nothing about, just like this guy sure as hell hasn't read menger or friedman or w/e) is evil somehow. Obviously, people are self-interested actors- the more you study economics, the more you familiarize yourself with the idea that people DO respond self-interestedly to changing incentives and situations, not that they don't. The pseud's tools against econ is limited at this point to crying about the environment, spouting some clintonite pussy hat-tier aphorism about inequality, complaining about things that are in the realm of public choice theory- e.g., money mixing w/ politics, which a fiscal libertarian would be increasingly against- or this line.

>Behavioural Economics,
What the fuck are you talking about? Behavioral econ is incredibly important and relevant to the field as a whole, and tons of studies and research is in the domain of understanding how economic actors behave. Also, as an aside: I'm no Austrian cultist, but out of all the heterodox schools they're probably the most valuable, and the least "trash"- Menger to marginal utility, Bohm-Bawerk to subjective value, Hayek to political economy, etc. "Marxian economics" is a pathetic joke and you've just demonstrated your immense lack of actual knowledge regarding econ (besides repeating ad-nauseum what you heard online) in favor of going on an angry misinformed diatribe about capitalists.

[Anonymous No.10748850]

>>10748846
this explanation doesn't make sense

[Anonymous No.10748861]

Econ majors piss me off so much. It's like if you combined the shear stupidity of a lib arts major, with the arrogance and presumptuousness of a STEMfag despite the fact that they neither produce cultural value like the humanities, nor any coherent logic structure beyond "muh gdp nigga" or "muh globlazashun gib everyone ipads and uggs an dat makes em hap hap happy nigga". Fucking retard scum of the earth

[Anonymous No.10748865]

>>10748847
>Behavioral econ is incredibly important
L O L
O
L

try to name one (1) phenomenon that you can explain with behavioral but not neo-classical economics, and watch me prove you wrong.

[Anonymous No.10748888]

>>10748732
Good post, mate.

Yes economics is one of the few disciplines where you can mathematically analyze things during times where mathematical analysis wasn't even a thing. Going back in time and validating your economic theories historically is obviously the best way to see if they are true or not. This is an aspect that modern economics seems to miss.

[Anonymous No.10748890]

>>10748305
>central planning won't work because it failed before the invention of high powered computers and essentially everything related to the information age that would allow successful central planning
What are computers

[Anonymous No.10748895]

>>10748865
>be you
>wake up
>project the change in quality over time of the contents of my fridge
>conclude that the burgers had better be consumed in the near future
>realize I lack the compliments to optimize pleasure to be received from consumption
>go to building housing institution where goods (including mayonnaise) can be received in exchange for currency I possess
>locate mayonnaise shelf
>assess the situation
>13 brands
>38 flavors
>73 options including sizes
>fucking love capitalism
>consider behavioral economic theory suggesting that consumers would get more utility by having fewer options because it would make decisions less stressful
>dismiss this theory because if it were true the free market would have produced stores catering to those who hate the decision in the form of stores that have fewer options
>literally breadlines
>return to calculating projected utility from various options
>decide on Hellmann's because there's no way so many rational actors would support a subpar product over many years of transactions
>reach for large jar because of savings per unit
>consider current interest rates and projections
>laugh at the thought of forgetting to account for time value of money
>reach for smaller jar of hellmann's
>hand my fiat currency to the free citizen exchanging labor for wage at the current time
>exit market place
>walk to rented domicile
>consider how much more utility I might receive from remaining paper representation of value without government interference in the marketplace
>shed single tear
>let it drip on burger for extra salt flavoring
>eat burger with mayonnaise

[Anonymous No.10748900]

>>10748639
capitalism isn't trade, capitalism is the valueing of trade as a virtue, putting the cart before the horse per se, which is why it is inherently sinful like all materialist systems including communism

[Anonymous No.10748905]

No one here actually gives a fuck about economics, I never see any of the primary texts referenced, quoted, talked about. Nothing.

[Anonymous No.10748922]

>>10748888
>econ majors
>math
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, you're joking right?

[Anonymous No.10748926]

>>10748905
/biz/ and /k/ are the only libertarian boards. Continental philosophy is more fun to read that boring economic analysis, unfortunately. There are a couple really good, quality posters on here that discuss economics from time to time, all things considered.

[Anonymous No.10748940]

>>10748922
No. There some lessons in which I am reading where roughly 1/2 the text is equations.

[Anonymous No.10748944]

>>10748888
>>10748922
just so I'm being perfectly clear, what you call "mathematical analysis" real stem majors refer to as "bitch math"

[Anonymous No.10748956]

>>10748944
Oh okay sorry. Didn't realize this was 'bitch math'... what the fuck are you on about?

[Anonymous No.10748960]

>>10748895
lol what a stupid post. if stores could gain a competitive advantage from offering fewer varieties of mayonnaise, and they aren't doing it, then we're still in neo-classical land because wouldn't you know it efficiency issues arise from a lack of information.

>>10748900
>being greedy is bad
yeah sure, so what does that have to do with holding a realistic worldview? the first two clauses of your sentence are absolute nonsense by the way.

[Anonymous No.10748964]

>>10748956
this post is such a self-own

[Anonymous No.10748969]

>>10748964
No, not really. Calculus-level math is NOT 'bitch math'.

[Anonymous No.10748980]

>>10748964
ikr it's all fucking summation

[Anonymous No.10748988]

>>10748956
Econometrics lives

[Anonymous No.10748992]

>>10748964
This. Fucking binched corn cob style. so whens the next dsa meeting comrade

[Anonymous No.10748994]

>>10748988
That's not econometrics.

Not all economic analysis with mathematics is 'econometrics'. See this is exactly what I'm talking about. /lit/ doesn't know economics.

This is a book published in the late 19th century ffs.

[Anonymous No.10749013]

>>10748956
That is the definition of bitch math. Fancy subscripts covering up hs tier calculus don't make math difficult. Let me know when econ does stuff with abstract algebra or topology

[Anonymous No.10749063]

>>10749013
That doesn't even make sense. Economics is not bitch math, no matter which way you look at it, and math is certainly no pissing contest, either. You aren't even approaching learning correctly

[Anonymous No.10750449]

>>10748890
This is underrated as fuck. There is seriously no logistical reason why collective planning wouldn't beat out markets in tons of ways at this point. Especially with the resources we actually have at our disposal, and even more with the further automation that will take place.

[Anonymous No.10750455]

>>10750449
don't bump threads that are not about books on the book board homo

[Anonymous No.10750492]

capitalism is not the best system, but it, as do economic movements, mimic nature and the dance of energies that flow through all things. there might not even be a system.

[Anonymous No.10750502]

>>10748890
Absolutely this. The "socialist calculation problem" is entirely obsolete nowadays, the whole debate took place before the fucking Internet was a thing. The circumstances are radically different now. Cockshott & Cottrell adress this in their papers and TAS.

[Anonymous No.10750508]

>Hah, according to the laws of economics within my capitalist ideology, your non-capitalist economies wouldn't work! Gotcha!

[Anonymous No.10750559]

>>10750508
The funny thing is that leftists have developed socialist economies within the neoclassical model.
Oskar Lange's Economic Theory of Socialism is an example of this.

[Anonymous No.10750928]

>>10750559
Probably because Marx worked with the LTV. Of course they do. Neoclassicists and Keynesianism are at ends because of Keynes' functional unemployment, which shows a disparity in the absolute equilibrium point for a supply/demand graph for wage labor.

[Anonymous No.10751325]

>>10750449
>There is seriously no logistical reason why collective planning wouldn't beat out markets in tons of ways
if you actually believe this you should not be allowed to participate fully in society. since you're obviously a brainlet I'll help you out with an example: central planning is the functional equivalent of a forced meme.

[Anonymous No.10751337]

>Why are economists so clearly biased towards capitalism?

Feel like thats fairly obvious

[Anonymous No.10751363]

>>10750449
Yeah, except the very small and unimportant fact that needs aren't fucking fixated but shift all the fucking time you dumb fucking faggot

[Anonymous No.10751386]

>>10751363
so does the moon's orbit around the earth but we calculated that just fine back in 1969, checkmate brainlet

[Anonymous No.10751397]

>>10751386
10/10

Incredible troll post, placed very well.

[Anonymous No.10751644]

>>10748831
Ecology puts a spotlight on self organization of systems, they see a world held up without hierachal domination. The orgins of the formal study of hierachy come from ecology. So they see self organizing systems without arbitrary constraint and higher levels of organization that serve lower levels and emerge from the free interactions of it's foundation.
So ecology is inherently radical. Also it should be obvious that people who see the world falling apart all the time would want revolution. And of course the fact that ecology mostly functions in acedemia plays a role.

[Anonymous No.10751692]

>>10748847
b-b-but /leftypol/ keeps pointing towards ha-joon chang , steven keen and others who have debunked economics a gorrilion times! its all a conspiracy, paul krugman, thomas piketty and joseph stiglitz are trying to starve the poor!

[Anonymous No.10751704]

>>10748922
t. never opened a single econ textbook

[Anonymous No.10751716]

>>10751704
>textbook

To be honest, textbooks have less math than the actual economics primary sources. You would be surprised, some authors spend much of their time constructing mathematical proofs to prove economic concepts, like Leon Walras or Irving Fisher.

Some, however, like Henry George or Ludwig Von Mises spend the entire time just writing words.

Economics is the only discipline I can think of like this.

[Anonymous No.10751759]

>>10748639
>CAPITALISM IS NOT A "SYSTEM" INVENTED BY HUMANS. It just is.
To what extent do you mean "invented"? Obviously it wasn't invented by a small group of people and then implemented, but it's still a human creation, whether it is intentional or not. Your insistence that the current economic system "just is" implies that it is outside the control of humans, which is absurd.

[Anonymous No.10751777]

>>10748726
Please go back.

[Anonymous No.10751787]

>>10748769
PLEASE go back holy shit.

[Anonymous No.10751804]

>>10751787
>>10751777
You have a trend of people recommending khan academy or something because they don't understand calculus.

It's not bitch math, like those retards were asserting earlier, but it's not tremendously difficult. Just look up what a derivative/integral is and you can read most mathematical economics texts.

This is why reading Euclid helps too, if you haven't read him. He gets you used to conceptualizing in mathematical proofs, which some economists use constantly.

[Anonymous No.10751807]

>>10751759
>Your insistence that the current economic system "just is" implies that it is outside the control of humans, which is absurd.
yeah you can "control" capitalism, until your control mechanism is absolutely shattered by the reality of the thing. our current basket of policies isn't capitalism. All regulations are just coping mechanisms; capitalism is a fundamental truth.

[Anonymous No.10751815]

>>10748270
Economics is the preoccupation of small souls

[Anonymous No.10751822]

>>10748270
Cold War

[Anonymous No.10751825]

>>10748639
>CAPITALISM IS NOT A "SYSTEM" INVENTED BY HUMANS. It just is.

[Anonymous No.10751834]

>>10751825
>people will not compete for scarce resources!
this is your brain on academia

[Anonymous No.10751835]

>>10751815
I have, in fact, the largest soul, and see economics as a necessary thing the human race must study to survive. Rather than be preoccupied with trivial philosophical concepts, I try to use my intelligence to better the human race by eventually applying my life towards theories and principles which may eventually help fix things.

It is actually something only someone with a grand view of his role in society would study.

[Anonymous No.10751853]

>>10748895
Proof that economists are autistic.

[Anonymous No.10751866]

>>10751853
Only neo-classical economists are autistic.

This I would have to agree with. Neoclassical economics is far too quixotic.

Go Keynesian or go home.

[Anonymous No.10751867]

>>10748922
This. What so many STE majors think is """""""math""""" is really just trivial number-pushing.

>WOAAAAHHHHH, AN INTEGRAL?!?!? THIS IS SOME ADVANCED SHIT!!!!

[Anonymous No.10751872]

>>10751835
Anyone with a grand view of the world and society would do best not to flatter themselves too much, lest they get lost in their own self-image.

[Anonymous No.10751875]

>>10748956
WOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAH THAT'S A LOT OF PLUS SIGNS!!!!!! THIS IS SOME ADVANCED FUCKIN SHIT!!!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.10751880]

>>10751875
You couldn't follow it

[Anonymous No.10751885]

>>10750492
>it, like, mimics nature and energy flows, bro
Hippie-tier shit. Go back to wage-slaving like you are naturally-inclined to do.

[Anonymous No.10751886]

>>10751872
You're already lost in me, just look at this thread.

Forget about it, loser.

[Anonymous No.10751915]

>>10751644
>they see self organizing systems without arbitrary constraint
I don't know a thing about ecology, but can you elaborate this? Imagine there was an advanced alien species observing human society. Would they not be observing a "self organizing system without arbitrary constraints"? Where do we draw the line to determine if a system is "self-organizing" and what do we mean by "arbitrary constraint"?

[Anonymous No.10751921]

>>10751807
This is why economists are retards.

[Anonymous No.10751957]

>>10748890
>>10750449
>>10750502
We already have computers handling finance. They aren't perfect at resource allocation, they pretty much can only handle commodities with extreme liquidity.

>>10748270
Because when you try to understand economics, because it is interesting, rather than using them to further your preconceived notions of how the real world should work, you tend to recognize clear advantages of market economies. Even Lange's socialism (>>10750559) is based around emulating market mechanisms, but without competition. Lange's system would still require a totalitarian state and I don't quite see how it would resolve the social ownership =/= worker's ownership of the means of production problem that was observed in revolutionary Catalonia (workers put their economic interests' ahead of general society's interests and the central planners put their political interests ahead of the workers' interests).

[Anonymous No.10752020]

>>10750492
First off you are thinking about markets. You don't understand exactly what capitalism is. Capital is a value.
Comparing capitalism to energy flows just doesn't make sense, to put it in your terms capitalism is the exclusive,you privatised ownership that is placed on energy flowing within a system, the value doesn't have to be flowing through the owner, (IRL most of it is not) the owner just has to have some abstract convention that gives them arbitrary power of the energy their capital values (a legal system backed by a state, ect.), and thus dominate energy that isn't actually in their possession.
This system means that the person with power over that energy is free to make it's actual possessors do with it has they please, they are free to invest energy they do not actually possess and accumulate more and more control over energy flowing through the system.
I hope this helped explain exactly what private property and capital accumulation mean. It's the biggest propaganda scam in history that meanings of capitalism, socialism and related terms are purposefully obfuscated by those in power.
As someone with a very strong background in ecology and systems science, I can testify that nature doesn't work like this at all. The closet economic doctrine would be liberterian socialism.
Anarchy is a state of the system shifting away from arbitrary domination and letting self organization happen, as is natural.

[Anonymous No.10752036]

>>10750502
>socialist calculation problem
>obsolete
The knowledge problem hasn't been overcome and necessarily cannot be overcome.

[Anonymous No.10752048]

>>10748305
Nope, you just don't understand economics.

[Anonymous No.10752058]

>>10751644
Ecology mostly functions everywhere you fucking autistic cappycuck

[Anonymous No.10752059]

>>10751915
All life is self organizing with the unique ability to direct itself. This is just biology.
I explain something of an arbitrary constriant here>>10752020
It's basically an abstract constraint that gives some arbitrary power other the world around them. But I mean something more particular, domination (power, "hiearchy"(in this context hierarchy means little more than a racket))
Examples include state sovereignty and property. As opposed to community self goverence and possession.

[Anonymous No.10752067]

>>10748888
>Going back in time and validating your economic theories historically is obviously the best way to see if they are true or not.
Nope. Try again, cappycuck.

[Anonymous No.10752073]

>>10751363
sometime grug want mickey mouse t shirt sometime grug want incest pornography
supply demand complicated thing
>t. capitalist needs

[Anonymous No.10752075]

>>10748944
STEM is a bitch field for absolute morons.

[Anonymous No.10752080]

>>10752058
Embarrassing.
Can you really not tell that I was referring to ecology as a field of science? most research comes from acedemia. Of course it's important not to discount people who informally study ecology in situ just because they are alive.

[Anonymous No.10752084]

>>10751957
>i dont have any le rpeconceived notions i am le smart stem man!!!
Please off it, cappycuck.

[Anonymous No.10752087]

>>10752080
Ecology is not science, cappycuck. Try again.

[Anonymous No.10752091]

>>10752075
>

[Anonymous No.10752097]

Wew lad.
Hidden

[Anonymous No.10752109]

>>10752073
>"need"
The most bluepilled word in all of existence.

[Anonymous No.10752114]

>>10751866
what does this post even mean?

>>10751921
that's nice, now get back to circlejerking with your braindead state school buddies on faceberg

>>10750502
>dude exchange value is use value and somehow objective! we can model price!
top laff

>>10752073
>all that matters is subsistence
oy mate, because of recent population growth your CommGov Loot Crate (tm) only contains seven eighths pound of synthesized gruel this month! Projected five eighths for next quarter, so plan ahead!

[Anonymous No.10752129]

>>10752114
>implying I'm communist
you are literally incapable of comprehending a world where money is something profane and classless

[Anonymous No.10752143]

>>10751866
>keynesian economics
>after stagflation happened
W O W

O

W

[Anonymous No.10752149]

>>10751807
>our current system of capitalism isn’t capitalism
>my imaginary system of capitalism is capitalism
>also money has real value which isn’t easily manipulated and exchange isn’t an act of coercion which would deligitimize pricing based on exchange
wow can you believe capitalism looks like that?

[Anonymous No.10752150]

>>10752129
>in favor of central planning
so what, you're a demsoc or something? same difference.

[Anonymous No.10752158]

>>10752149
did you know that monetary policy is regulation? congrats on doing absolutely nothing to undermine my thesis!

[Anonymous No.10752178]

>>10752084
I am not STEM.

I had preconceived notions, but I challenge them. I really like economics and history, and my normative conclusions evolved over time. I used to be pretty much an anarcom, but I came to see capital gains and welfare states as direct outcomes of production surpluses.

Also, you hurt my feelings. I put a lot of brain juice into the post you replied to, I'd like to see serious replies.

[Anonymous No.10752181]

>>10752149
>exchange isn’t an act of coercion
It isn't. I want something for someone else, but they will only give it to me if I give something particular in return. If I think that's fair, then we go through with the exchange. Money is just an abstraction of this. Where's the coercion here?

[Anonymous No.10752186]

>>10752181
>for
from

[Anonymous No.10752195]

>>10752149
You know we live in a mixed economy right?
There are industries that are publicly owned, but most that are privately owned.

[Anonymous No.10752196]

>>10752178
You have not challenged them. You are a dumbfuck liberal who needs to fuck off back to plebbit.
You are STEM. You're an autistic liberal subhuman.

[Anonymous No.10752207]

>>10752196
>muh librals
Go back to church, grandpa.

[Anonymous No.10752217]

>>10752196
Why do you try to remove me from discussion? Why do you try to hurt my feelings? You could be adressing my arguments, and I could adress yours, and we could both maybe gain something new from that conversation, rather than reinforcing our own biases and signalling ideological purity to our "allies".

I just want to have a nice talk. What do you gain from insulting me? Does it make you feel good?

[Anonymous No.10752231]

>>10752217
not anon but really there isn't much to debate. materialism vs non materialism is p much genetic. Either you think the hard problem exists and you are inclined to non materialism, or you think it doesn't and you will always be a materialist, money grubbing materialist faggot of the capitalist, communist, or nat soc flavor. I'm afraid it comes down to that

[Anonymous No.10752259]

>>10752231
whether you're a materialist or not, the distinction is totally irrelevant. because we can theoretically quantify everything in price terms (including your love of your children, your desire for salvation, the fair market value of your grandfather's pocket watch, etc.), the utilitarian framework is conceptually flawless.

[Anonymous No.10752273]

>>10752259
>projMoney(Love) = Love

Oh I'm laughin

[Anonymous No.10752309]

>>10752231
1. I don't think the hard problem exists.
2. I don't think materialistic models are the end of science and philosophy because the contact between "us" and the reality around us is necessarily indirect. Abstractions are not just useful, but necessary. Use value and exchange value aren't inherent properties of things-in-themselves, they are virtual realities superimposed on the objetcs' representations. They are subjective values.

[Anonymous No.10752312]

>>10752067
>implying that's not exactly what Leon Walras did

He literally expressed Ricardo mathematically. That's the way to do it, actually, many times you make very grave errors only relying on words.

[Anonymous No.10752832]

>>10751834
Now you see, that's not the core tenet of capitalism, the core tenet of "capitalist" ideology is that each man is afforded the opportunity to use his skills to compete with everyone else (peacefully) on equal grounds, for the non-delusional, an absurd, unrealistic and unnatural proposal.

Do not make the mistake of believing that every critic of capitalism is doing so from the left or utilizing the Marxian method.

[Anonymous No.10752863]

>>10752832
>, the core tenet of "capitalist" ideology is that each man is afforded the opportunity to use his skills to compete with everyone else (peacefully) on equal grounds,
Who even believes this? All the justifications for Capitalism I have ever read are along the lines of 'capitalism naturally springs up and trying to stop it causes immense suffering, while it increases the total wealth of the society and so everybody benefits, if unequally'

[Anonymous No.10752896]

>>10752863
>capitalism naturally springs up
It doesn't. It is a system which tends to develop in a culture at its peak of decadence, after which it is promptly put out of its misery.
>trying to stop it causes immense suffering
What does this even mean?
>everybody benefits
?

[Anonymous No.10752914]

>>10752896
>which tends to develop in a culture at its peak of decadence,
It was definitely around in like 1600, and the peak of decadence is probably yet to even occur in the West.

It causes suffering to try to take command of the economy and not let it follow its natural course.

Everybody benefits as in everybody has more wealth.

[Anonymous No.10752954]

>>10752914
>It causes suffering to try to take command of the economy and not let it follow its natural course.
Why? I'm not asking for evidence. I mean, what is the theoretical justification for this claim?

[Anonymous No.10752974]

>>10752954
>theoretical justification for this claim?
Nobody can understand the economy well enough to improve on its functioning, and evne if they did have a model they can't have access to all the necessary information, because the economy depends on people having information that others don't.

It would be like somebody opening up a rabbit with a kitchen knife to 'improve' its constitution

[Anonymous No.10753050]

>>10752974
Planned economies aren't based on one person deciding everything, you dumb idiot. Have you read literally anything on models of economic planning in the last few decades?

[Anonymous No.10753058]

>>10753050
A group of people has the same issues.

[Anonymous No.10753069]

>>10752832
>capitalist ideology
miss me with this bullshit lmao. equal opportunity is a liberal fantasy. stop trying to shoehorn your notions of distributive justice where they don't belong.

[Anonymous No.10753076]

>>10752914
Western culture was already retrograde and decadent by the(ir) 15th century.

What do you mean by suffering? Why is wealth a benefit? What is wealth? Capitalism is dependent on the disenfranchisement and emasculation of men both in physical, legal and metaphysical sense.

[Anonymous No.10753085]

>>10753076
From a metaphysical perspective I agree with you, although the 15th century is too early. Depending on the element of culture in question the peak was between 1400-1800. 1600 was definitely not a state of advanced decay.

I assumed you weren't talking about the values of traditional culture.

[Anonymous No.10753093]

>>10753058
How about the inputs of every national enterprise being processed in real time?

[Anonymous No.10753102]

>>10753093
as in some sort of technocracy? I have no idea

[Anonymous No.10753109]

>>10753093
>the output of nationalized industries has something to do with demand
lol...

[Anonymous No.10753151]

>>10753076
>and emasculation of men both in physical, legal and metaphysical sense.
Back to pol

[Anonymous No.10753295]

As others have said there are different schools of economics to read up on if you want your preconceived notions validated.

That being said, OP you are clearly dumber than a rock if you're dismissing an entire field of study based on a single introductory book written for laymen.

And what the fuck is this thread even? Go back to reading Tolstoy and stop trying to argue about a field you know nothing about.

[Anonymous No.10753310]

>>10748321
People scoff at the experimentation because it's stupidly idealistic. When you have a system that's lifted more people out of poverty in the last decades than in the previous millennia you really don't want to throw that out just because "who knows we might have something better in store".

[Anonymous No.10753319]

>>10753310
>When you have a system that's lifted more people out of poverty in the last decades than in the previous millennia
Woah there, buddy, calm it with the Kool-Aid.

[Anonymous No.10753344]

>haha, capitalism is just a word used by butthurt commies. I'm totally not butthurt myself.

[Anonymous No.10753606]

>>10748270
Because most economic evidence indicates capitalism is the best way we habe to distribute resources. We'll probably give it a second look once we invent matter replicators and are post-scarcity, at least for most things (somebody still gets the penthouse condo)

[Anonymous No.10753617]

>>10753606
>invent a science to analyze the current method of economic organization
>somehow use this to come to the conclusion that this is the best method of economic organization
People keep saying there is this "evidence". Where is it? (inb4 muh actually existing socialism)

[Anonymous No.10753639]

>>10753319
he's right. well that and modern technology

[Anonymous No.10753705]

>>10753617
>okay everybody, markets work.
>NO YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, MY IDEOLOGY SAYS THAT [your argument here*].
*your argument is either a.) markets fail because of regulation x and therefore we need regulation y; or b.) Thomas Malthus hurt my feelings.

>>10753639
>technology just appears on its own for no reason! people totally invent everything in their free time apart from their job and any economic considerations!

[Anonymous No.10753723]

>>10753705
>people totally invent everything in their free time apart from their job and any economic considerations!
You're right, they don't! It's almost like they CAN'T do any of that in their free time because unless they're independently wealthy, they must spend their time doing pointless work for their wage masters instead!

[Anonymous No.10753863]

>>10753723
1. Most inventors since the early industrial revolution didn't start as independently wealthy. When patent law became a thing, being an inventor became a job and innovation boomed. Edison is famed for being a very prolific inventor, but most of his patents were for stuff his employees came up with. Today, most people involved in research and development are either employed by corporations, governments, militaries or academies - they are wage workers. R&D is usually conducted on someone else's budget, but wages keep the researchers and developers secure and confortable.
2. That work isn't pointless. If I didn't value whatever it is that you do for me, I have no reason to pay you a wage.

[Anonymous No.10753934]

>>10753863
>2. That work isn't pointless. If I didn't value whatever it is that you do for me, I have no reason to pay you a wage.
Sure, but nobody cares about you. What matters is not whether it is valuable for the employer, but if it is valuable for human society as a whole.

I'm not convinced that our current way of doing things is the most efficient way toward innovation. Yes, it may be the most efficient so far, but it's still probably not as efficient as it could be. Right now, if you are a scientist or an engineer or what-have-you, and you have a brilliant idea for an invention, then you either have to be lucky enough that a company just happens to want to make the same thing (and has the budget for it and won't cancel the project at the last minute), or you have to be lucky enough to be a successful entrepreneur. Much of the skill in being a successful entrepreneur has nothing to do with how useful your product is for society. Most of the innovation today is happening in a small percentage of firms - all the rest are producing basically garbage. Most scientists, engineers, developers, etc. aren't working on anything they believe is useful for society, or even ethical.

[Anonymous No.10753940]

>>10751325
>central planning is the functional equivalent of a forced meme.

But I'm not even advocating 'central' planning, in the sense of some individual government agency deciding absolutely everything. Naturally distribution should be, distributed, but there's little reason not to take advantage of the possibility of taking the information that would otherwise be kept under wraps and sold privately to advertising companies, and use that to co-ordinate large scale logistics publicly.

[Anonymous No.10753963]

>>10752207
Your grandpa is a liberal. Most everybody in America is a liberal.
>>10752217
muh good white male classy enlightenment argument
>>10752231
Oh look, you just made a materialist argument. How ironic.
>>10752259
Nope. Please off yourself.

[Anonymous No.10753972]

>>10752312
Nope. Go back to plebbit. cappycuck.
>>10753310
Changing the definition of poverty isn't taking people out of poverty, cappycuck.

[Anonymous No.10753976]

>>10753639
Technology is destroying everything. Try again, cappycuck.

[Anonymous No.10753983]

>>10753976
get off computer then comrade

[Anonymous No.10754008]

>>10753934
>What matters is not whether it is valuable for the employer, but if it is valuable for human society as a whole.
Is what I get from employing you valuable enough to me? Is what you get from being employed by me valuable enough to you? Then this arragement is good for the both of us. Now, if I'm hiring you to do something that I want to sell, for instance, then you can also assume there is a demand in society for whatever it is that our cooperation would produce. Even if we aren't really producing anything (maybe I'm an old man paying you to mow my lawn for me), at the very least our trade added value to the world, we both got lost something (I lost money you lost labour time) but got something we wanted more than what we lost (I got a mowed lawn and you got my money). Voluntary trade creates value.

I'm actually partial to looser patent laws myself. I think big name artists (who can keep others from singing certain songs or tell me what cartoons I can't put on a t-shirt) and big pharma (who, has a group, in the USA, have been spending more money buying patents than coming up with new ones) and blocking the creativity of others. But I don't think private R&D should be prohibited. Scientists shouldn't just get blank checks for whatever, because their interests may not be society's interests, but I also don't want non-scientists (either all voters, or just bureaucrats, I'm opposed to both full central planning and full democratic centralism) to direct all scientific research, since they often don't really "get it". State grants to science? Good. Private sponsoring to science? Also good.

[Anonymous No.10754011]

>>10753983
HAHA DAE HAB LE IPHONE XDDDEDDDDDDDDDD LE BTFO XDDDD LE KEKED XDDDDDD TRUMP IS LE COOL XDDDDD

[Anonymous No.10754029]

>>10753963
>>10753972
>>10753976
>>10754011
The edgy ironic communist.

[Anonymous No.10754034]

Is this a /pol/ falseflag, or has /leftypol/ come to this level?

[Anonymous No.10754036]

>>10754029
I'm not a communist, cappycuck.

[Anonymous No.10754040]

>>10754011
indeed m8. but unironically 'le iPhone btfo comie' sums it up nicely

[Anonymous No.10754056]

>>10754029
Probably nazbol or natsoc, judging by the linguo.

[Anonymous No.10754088]

>>10754008
>Is what I get from employing you valuable enough to me?
Perhaps.
>Is what you get from being employed by me valuable enough to you?
Almost never. The problem is that the employer has more power than the employee in this negotiation, by a huge margin. The employer is providing the employee's very means of sustaining life. The employee is just giving the employer some labor. And there are a lot more employees out there than employers. So the employer can often be pickier about who to hire, and what to give them, while the employee has to, for the most part, make do with what he gets.
>Then this arragement is good for the both of us.
Except now I'm "stuck" doing crappy, unfulfilling labor for you, because me finding another employer is more difficult than you finding another employee.
>Now, if I'm hiring you to do something that I want to sell, for instance, then you can also assume there is a demand in society for whatever it is that our cooperation would produce.
Unless you, by means of aggressive marketing, *produced* demand in society.

I can agree with you in principle that "voluntary trade creates value" when we consider the lawn-mowing example. But the power dynamic that exists in an employer-employee relationship doesn't really exist in this example. I, the kid mowing your lawn, am probably not mowing your lawn so that I can buy bread and shelter to sustain my survival. My (hypothetical) parents are doing that; I probably just want some extra cash. And I definitely don't agree that absolutely anything that results from trade is necessarily valuable for society. In some cases, this "value" is ethically dubious, for instance.

[Anonymous No.10754130]

>>10753940
the problem is that the government wouldn't be able to to make efficient use of that information... unless there were competing firms offering sovereign services.... in which case welcome to NRx

>>10753723
boohoo? nobody would ever have invented, say, the threshing machine, if there hadn't been some way to profit thereby. innovation is driven by competition.

>>10753963
>Nope. Please off yourself.
sorry, but you're going to have to pay me to do that, and it's going to be extremely pricey. If your last name is Bezos, we can talk.

[Anonymous No.10754144]

>>10754130
>nobody would ever have invented, say, the threshing machine, if there hadn't been some way to profit thereby
There is literally no way to justify this statement. We can't know what "would have happened."

[Anonymous No.10754156]

>>10754088
Power inequalities are outcomes of systems where labour is divided. Unless everyone can do everything they need to do for themselves or every single person's time and skill is exactly as useful as every other single person's, we will never have equal bargaining power.

The presumption that my emplyoyees' situation or society's situation would be better without me owning the things I own and coordinating production they ways I do, is dubious. Revolutionary Catalonia provides both case-studies for the shortcomings of worker-owned-workplaces (these were still run as for-profit enterprises, but with lower efficiency and lower democratically allocatable outputs) and centrally-planned-economies (which took power from the workers and had them essentially employed by the state, meaning they had even less bargaining power than in a capitalist system because they didn't even have employer options).

Now, should states provide social safety nets and other means for people to get a bigger slice of the (growing) pie? Sure, but that isn't a revolutionary idea. It was there with Adam Smith. It was even there in early Hayek (dude argued the state should feed and clothe everyone in Road to Serfdom).

I don't find marketing to be a bad thing. People have agency, seeing a coke ad may make feel like drinking coke but that ain't evil. If we don't trust people to do good choices with the information and money they get, we wouldn't trust them to own the factories either, would we?

[Anonymous No.10754234]

>>10754144
nobody would do anything if it wasn't in some way gratifying. strengthening incentives will produce more innovation, slackening them won't.

[Anonymous No.10754274]

>>10754156
People have agency, yes, but marketing clearly affects their choices. If Coca-Cola is good at marketing, then Coke will be in people's minds in a positive way (instilled in their memories via repeated exposure in multiple forms) by the time they go into the market to choose a soda. It's just a matter of statistics (I suspect; don't ask me for citations) that a person is more likely to buy a Coke than the generic-brand soda, if price isn't a huge concern for them. The point is, we can't trust demand to tell us what is valuable for society, because corporations can influence demand, and the interests of corporations aren't necessarily the interests of society.

I contend that if people were able to meet their needs for sustainable survival without working then I wouldn't have much of a problem with the employer-employee relationship. In "sustainable survival" I would probably also include less "necessary" things like not having to live in crime-ridden or extremely run-down areas, because otherwise it would still be perceived that you "need" to work, and we would be in the same situation.

[Anonymous No.10754314]

>>10754234
>nobody would do anything if it wasn't in some way gratifying.
Yes, that's trivial. But I could argue that many people find things like scientific research, engineering, helping other people, etc. gratifying-in-themselves. That is, they don't need the profit motive to do such things. They only motivated by profit insofar as they are motivated to survive. In fact, I could argue the profit motive is warped or corrupt; people *shouldn't* be doing things solely to gain money, but rather they should be considering if what they're doing is either enjoyable to themselves or is helping other people in a meaningful way. But it pointless to argue any of this because it's all speculation.

[Anonymous No.10754344]

>>10754314
You've lost the plot. I was pushing back against the bizarre notion that the rate of technological progress is unrelated to our economic activity. I'm not really interested in discussing the moral issues surrounding greed or tech, and you too seem to realize that it would be to no avail.

[Anonymous No.10754361]

>>10754274
Again, I don't think corps affecting people's choices is bad. If I only want coke because I saw a coke ad, and getting that coke makes me feel good, then the ad was good for the coke corp and it was good for me. Even if you took money out of the equation, you'd still have some people being more persuasive than others.

A majority of people will never be able to meet their needs without working unless we actually achieve near-full automation or create a slave caste that would work a lot more than the average person does today. Otherwise, how do you keep scarcity low enough? If you have less people working you have less goods to give away. If workers are paid more, goods will have to cost more, otherwise you'd be spending more on production than you'd get out of it (wasting resources). What offsets this, and reduces the workload that has to be distributed by people is technological development.

One alternative to this would be for everyone to own themselves some means of sustenance like a small farm to feed themselves. Like that they wouldn't be pressured to work for miserly wages to afford food. But then again, they'd still have to work to keep themselves alive, just not for wages, and unless you'd prohibit people from leaving or selling their farms, you can't ensure your redistribution of the means of production (in this case, land) would produce a system that couldn't revert to the one before (you'd have to prohibit people from voluntarily trading).

[Anonymous No.10754429]

>>10754274
>marketing clearly affects their choices
by providing them with more information, allowing them to make a more informed decision. advertisements aren't voodoo.

>a person is more likely to buy a Coke than the generic-brand soda, if price isn't a huge concern for them
they're going to buy the coke if the surplus utility derived from doing so is worth the difference in price to them.

>we can't trust demand to tell us what is valuable for society
what can you trust? your own baseless intuition? Demand is the answer; any shortcomings in practice stem from a lack of information. E.g. maybe I would like pepsi more, but it is too costly (re: risk of disliking it) for me to try. Or maybe the 2 extra cents worth of air pollution attendant to the production of a single bottle of coke, of which I am unaware, would make the product to costly for me to consume were I aware.

>I contend that I wouldn't have a problem
a perfect example of the failure of self-knowledge

[Anonymous No.10754446]

>>10754361
I am only refuting your statement:
>Now, if I'm hiring you to do something that I want to sell, for instance, then you can also assume there is a demand in society for whatever it is that our cooperation would produce.
which seems to imply that just because there is demand for something, I would naturally agree that helping you produce it is a good thing. I'll admit that in my mind I changed what you really said to something like "if there is a demand for something, that something is good for society."

Automation is what I'm betting on. Humanity has invented and used tools to alleviate themselves from labor for millennia. We should carry that to its logical conclusion.

[Anonymous No.10754471]

>>10754446
>Automation is what I'm betting on. Humanity has invented and used tools to alleviate themselves from labor for millennia. We should carry that to its logical conclusion.
>conclusion
lol
>Automated fruit-picker provides 200 utils per capita per annum
>Humanity requires 200 utils per capita per annum to survive
>Innovation halts, reproduction continues
>Due to increased Pop., the fruit-picker can only provide 150 utils per capita per annum
>People starve
Post-scarcity is a fantasy.

[Anonymous No.10754483]

>>10754471
>Innovation halts
lol

[Anonymous No.10754505]

>>10754483
so you admit that we're always going to be struggling to survive? dead weight is dead weight, no use keeping it around, much less subsidizing it.

[Anonymous No.10754513]

>>10754505
You are also assuming this automated fruit-picker wasn't created to be scalable. That isn't beyond the realm of possibility.

[Anonymous No.10754516]

>>10754513
>we suddenly have more real estate for absolutely no reason
???

[Anonymous No.10754575]

>>10754446
>which seems to imply that just because there is demand for something, I would naturally agree that helping you produce it is a good thing. I'll admit that in my mind I changed what you really said to something like "if there is a demand for something, that something is good for society."
There are 3 implications, tho. I think what I get from your help is good. You think what you get from helping me is good. The guy that gets the stuff we produce together thinks it's good. Are these people all of society? No, but they are part of it. They can be a pretty big chunk of it, really. And what these people think is good for themselves, I'd say, is a good metric for what is good for society. The only one? No, I'd like to hear to medics, climate scientists, fish stocks conservationists, etc... and have these guys help regulating markets and state services (like vaccination). But I want individual choices to matter. Why would individuals make up a society that hinders them more than it helps them to reach their own goals?