this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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the_dunk_tank
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It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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Three simple questions can reveal whether these ultras are genuine or larpers who don't read
No lie, I've never meet an ultra who answered these correctly, mfs on that dogmatist train do not read Marx
What are the correct answers?
my attempt
Is profit on alienation the same as arbitrage? Is arbitrage profit?
Yes, essentially the same thing
I assume this also includes rentierism?
Rentierism is basically just a transfer from a circuit of capital to a circuit of revenue, so the source of the revenue can fall under both categories of profit making in the form of costs
Conflating price with value is a pretty basic mistake and I've seen it in that sub from a fairly prolific poster lmao.
Fortunately most of the comments were clowning on them but it still managed a positive upvote ratio. Thread is here if you want to take a look, it's pretty funny seeing the poster try to defend themselves
Reminds me of that one famous episode back during the old sub days when another prolific poster tried to "debunk" Marx by repeatedly copy-pasting the definition of "production functions" and claiming the only way socialism would work is through marginalism, he received hundreds of upvotes very comment
lmao it was simultaneously the funniest and worst thing I'd ever seen on the old sub, leftist reddit in 2018 was wild
For the theory of monopoly to make sense it has to apply to both macro and mirco, sure from the individual consumer's viewpoint there appears to be monopolies everywhere (Walmart in a small town) but at scale we don't see that, we see vicious competition between enormous firms (and small firms) all over the world, Walmart may not have powerful competitors in a small town, but go to any plaza in the US what do you see next to the Walmart? Nothing but competitors; a Target right there, a best buy over there, a Home depot down the road, a Costco across the street, there's centralization of capital absolutely, but where's the monopoly in this picture?
Now over the history of capitalism there have been phenomenon that take on the appearance of monopoly (company towns, energy cartels, massive nation sized corporations) and sure you can assert there are localized monopolies, but as an aggregate across national economies small firms still exist in enormous numbers, and at the scale where the majority of capital is made, i.e. across national borders there's nothing but competition
Now there's widespread confusion on this matter because neoclassical economics implies that any firm at scale is not competing "properly" and as such is a monopoly, liberals and modern Marxists alike fall for it, but it's a fantasy construction by a tradition that was designed specifically to negate Marxist economics
Thank you. Now I wish for more trick questions, hopefully a book with exercises.