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What if you're the ploughmaker? Do you either 1) sell the ploughs at such a high price that nobody can afford them; 2) lease them to people for a sizeable fraction of their product as yearly rent?

Note that just because you can make a plough doesn't mean you know how to use it - or that you have the land to use it. In other words, to the blacksmith the plough is relatively useless, and the value of the materials and labour that went into it is not commensurate with the productivity gains resulting from its use.

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 19th, 2007 at 09:48:03 AM EST
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What if you're the ploughmaker? Do you either 1) sell the ploughs at such a high price that nobody can afford them; 2) lease them to people for a sizeable fraction of their product as yearly rent?

Under capitalism, if you're a ploughmaker, you do "what the market will bear."  Socialism, as Marx pointed out again and again and again, is not some impossible state of affairs where all exchanges are "fair."

"Imagine all the people/ Sharing all the world" -- John Lennon

by Cassiodorus on Tue Jun 19th, 2007 at 12:22:20 PM EST
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So how is socialism unfair?

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 19th, 2007 at 12:24:06 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Socialism is not about exchange.  

"Imagine all the people/ Sharing all the world" -- John Lennon
by Cassiodorus on Tue Jun 19th, 2007 at 01:59:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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