Charles Brown and the original argument.

["dlawbailey" <dlawbailey@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

        To your last point first, the original argument was not the capitalist
economy will exist without workers.  In fact I argued the precise opposite
against Freeman who argued the futurist proposition that "dead labor" was
going to crowd out the working man.  While it's impossible to imagine an
economy without workers it is not impossible to imagine any given industrial
process without workers since they exist all the time.  The point of my
argument was "Look, Freeman, automation has been crowding out workers as
fast as it can for a century and the crisis has not come.  I don't think,
for that reason, that automation means catastrophe for capitalists."
Freeman thought different because the fundamentalist Marxist equations lead
one to that conclusion.

%%%%%

        Charles Brown asks:

"What is the source of the profit in your equations ?


        As far as I can see the source of profit is the capitalist buying his
supplies in one market and selling his product into another.  It is the
classic source of profit: inequality of information and liquidity.


%%%%%%%

CB: So, the source of her profit is the capitalist who sells her the
supplies
? And where does that supplying capitalist get that source of profit from ?

%%%%%

        Me again: The source of profit is the potential to find a difference in
information and liquidity between two markets.  The capitalist of the second
part will get her profit from the capitalist of the first part if she is
right about that potential.  It happens continuously every day.



        Labor is an illiquid commodity and money is liquid.  Capitalists know 
the
conditions of credit and the marketplace while workers only know their own
needs.

%%%%%%

CB: Isn't the relationship between the workers and the capitalists in the
marketplace ?

%%%%%

        Me again.  The relationship between a worker with his illiquid labor to
sell and a capitalist with her liquid money to buy it (and the force of the
entire capitalist class structure behind her) is intrinsically unequal.  It
is not, in that respect, the same market as the goods market. It is,
effectively, a monopoly marketplace.  Still, a given capitalist may
certainly pay a worker and find no profit from it.  Happens all the time.
The intrinsic inequality is probabilistic and not mechanistic.




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