Analysis of a Chinese video

> You can keep saying that as much as you want, but it’s still not true.

> If capitalism was pre-existing, why did Enlightenment thinkers publish vast tomes extolling the reasons why it ought to be tried?

Commie liar

You are making up your own history.

Adam Smith, 1776, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” presupposes and takes for granted that capitalism has always existed, that it is ancient beyond memory, beyond recorded history.

“An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” is a fundamentally conservative book, that explains why it is unwise to interfere with this ancient and divinely ordained system.

Rousseau, on the other hand, urges us to smash capitalism – but again, Rousseau, like Adam Smith, assumes that capitalism is as ancient as the dawn of history, as the oldest civilizations, that civilization is inherently capitalist, and proposes to dismantle civilization itself.

I have actually read those books. You have only read twenty first academics writing about what other twenty first century academics, who have not read those books either, wrote about those books.

Don’t tell us what Adam Smith said. It is not what he said. It is what Karl Marx frames him as saying.

You have one argument: Argument from fake consensus: That people we admire agreed with Marx, that everyone agrees with Marx, that we agree with Marx.

Don’t argue from supposed consensus: Argue from the evidence, as I did here and here. Respond to the evidence I gave, using the definition of capitalism that I, and everyone who is not a Marxist, uses, that capitalism is the process whereby merchants use the market in capital goods to apply capital and labor to its highest and best uses, like the good woman celebrated by Solomon in Proverbs 31, that capitalism is the free market in capital goods, such as land, grapevines, carts, and ships, plus wage labor.

Deleted for lying about what Adam Smith said, lying about what I said, lying about what everyone who is not a Marxist says.

Stop arguing from fake consensus. Argue from the evidence, as I did here and here, and use same definition of capitalism as non Marxists use, which definition I gave you yet again here.

> I’ve never once praised Karl Marx, nor have I ever claimed that anything Karl Marx ever said was true.

Instead you have claimed that Adam Smith, Moldbug, myself, Bastiat, and the rest totally agree that every key point of Marxist class theory, Marxist history, whig history, and progressive history is true.

You always argue from false consensus, never from evidence. Further appeals to consensus will be silently deleted.

And in this very comment to which I reply you attribute Marxist class theory, Marxist history, and Cultural Marxist economics to Adam Smith, while in fact he flatly and plainly said the direct opposite. He was indeed arguing that the sovereign should make it easy for merchants to transfer property from the protection of one sovereign to the protection of another, but his argument for this was the reverse of the argument that Cultural Marxists attribute to him.

Further, his position on international trade is irrelevant to the point in dispute.

Adam Smith claimed that capitalism was ancient, divinely ordained, and that for the sovereign to interfere is unwise. It would still be capitalism internally even if the sovereign built a brass wall one hundred meters high around the country, provided that the sovereign allowed merchants to internally allocate capital to its highest and best use using markets and prices. Debate on tariffs is irrelevant to the ancient and divine origins of capitalism. During the Y Chromosome singularity it was hard to trade between patrilineal kin groups, so trade areas were so small that merchants could not get rich from capital goods, but after rise of Kings in the early Bronze age or late neolithic age, trade occurred on a Kingdom scale, even if it was often hard to trade between Kingdoms, and the Kingdom scale was large enough to permit the rise of numerous wealthy merchants whose wealth derived from specializing in the highest and best use of some capital good, from employing wage laborers to apply that capital good to its highest and best use, and from supervising those wage laborers to apply that good to its best use.

Further you always tell us your position is what Cultural Marxists think that right wingers think – but your position (you hate blacks and women despite the fact that blacks are magical, the British white male working class is trash, women are wonderful, and the acid attacks in Britain have nothing to do with the mass importation of a hostile alien race and religion) makes no internal sense. Just as no one supports capitalism as you define it, nor has capitalism you define it ever existed, nor could it ever exist, no one believes, nor could anyone ever believe, in your insanely evil and stupid parody of the right wing political position. We don’t hate people of other races. We just think that there are good reasons why some races living together causes problems for both races. Jews should not have state and quasi statal positions in the USA, and non Jews should not have state and quasis statal positions in Israel. Blacks should have their own areas, and should be guests of a white person when in white areas, and whites should be guests of a black person when in black areas. Integration of East Asians with whites works OK, but integration of middle easterners with whites causes big problems, though it is hard to tell to what extent this is race, and to what extent it is religion. Mixed teams of white and East Asian engineers work fine, but they work considerably better when a white engineer is in charge. I conjecture if the team is all, or nearly all, East Asian, the team would work better if an East Asian is in charge, but have insufficient data to support this conjecture. Mixed teams of whites and Indians have big problems, albeit maybe they work OK with high caste Indians.

You presuppose agreement on Marx’s most absurd claim, his Immiseration thesis: “Let’s look at what Marx got right”, making absolutely no attempt to defend or support it, since we supposedly already agree.

Since he supposedly obviously got it right, and we supposedly agree he got it right, you don’t have to present any evidence or argument.

The booming economy of 1819 disproves the Marxist story about capitalism immiserating the workers, as does the booming US economy of 2019.

Not to mention the Marxist story about the immiseration of the proletariat is transparently insane on its face, presupposing that capital rules society politically, rather than merchants ruling merely their own property.

Obviously Capitalism, and in particular corporate capitalism, will increase the productivity of the workers, and equally obviously the lion’s share of that increased productivity will go to the workers, as the above market profit received by one capitalist who innovates higher productivity methods gets competed away as the innovation spreads, as for example Shockley and the Fairchildren.

And if Marxists genuinely doubted this, they would attempt to present arguments against it, rather than telling us that we don’t believe our lying eyes, so they don’t need to present evidence and argument that our lying eyes are misleading us.

> Why HAVE wages fallen in the West since, say, 1950, if indeed it hasn’t been due to government parasitism

Wages have fallen in the west due to government parasitism – observe that under Trump wages, employment, and capital formation have risen dramatically, proving, yet again, that Marx was wrong about wages.

Wages have not fallen due to women. Wages have fallen due to women being affirmative actioned into jobs which they cannot do and in which roles they disrupt the creation of value by men. If women had continued to do jobs that women do well, as they have done for centuries, there would be no problem.

> Marxist?

> I hardly think so.

You offer us the standard Marxist explanation of the Obama economy. It is all the fault of the kulaks, and Obama needs to crack down on the kulaks even harder. Obama the lightbringer is doing the best he can to protect us against those horrid kulaks.

You endorse Marx’s most ludicrous and absurd claim, that his immiseration thesis, as self evidently true and uncontroversial.

Deleted for presupposing facts not in evidence. Discuss the Trump economy, rather than blaming the Obama economy on capitalism.

If I silently delete a comment, it is because it is same old same old that I have repeatedly given the same reason for deleting.

I not only want to stop your endless and repetitious Marxist spam, I also want to stop my endless and repetitious complaints about your endless Marxist spam.

Deleted because Motte and Bailey.

If you are actually making “only a very modest claim”, it does not address the argument of your interlocutor – but by making only a “very modest claim”, you imply that you and your interlocutor agree on a wildly immodest claim, an evil and insane claim, when your interlocutor has forcefully and passionately rejected that evil and insane claim.

If you are genuinely claiming only the motte, “only a very modest claim” and conceding the bailey to your interlocutor, you have to concede that he is correct to claiming the bailey, rather than presupposing that his agreement on the motte, implies agreement on the bailey.

A motte and bailey argument is a particular form of the fake consensus argument. You presuppose consensus on evil, improbable and absurd things, things that people who are not watermelons passionately disagree with. You presuppose that everyone agrees that the motte implies the bailey, which reactionaries obviously do not believe.

> My ‘modest claim’ was that planetary resources are finite.

That is your motte claim, intended to imply consensus on your immodest extreme and unreasonable bailey claim that we are going to run out of oil.

We are not going to run out of oil. The stone age did not end for lack of stone.

Chances are we will be riding fusion power to the stars and will lose interest in the remaining oil. Peak oil will happen because no one cares.

Future repetition of your motte claim will be silently deleted until you concede the bailey claim, or explicitly or implicitly admit that your interlocutor rejects your bailey claim, or present evidence and argument against your interlocutors bailey claim and for your bailey claim.