Pretty much any argument I make with my face parts. I am not good live, have severe social anxiety, and lock up if anyone is the slightest bit firm/confident with me.
Can relate to this a lot. I still cringe when thinking back on the times when I’ve been put on the spot about my politics where I just crumbled under the weight of needing to do justice to these concepts. And the guilt that follows. I’ve broken out of that shell at times too fortunately, and if I can, anyone can. It may be slightly hypocritical for me to say, because I’m very isolated these days, but I think that like most things, being good at making arguments live, in person takes practice and honing. It’s just all the more difficult to get that necessary practice for those of us who struggle with extreme social anxiety.
Somebody please DM me in a couple days to tell me to revisit this thread. I’m in a not great headspace right now and reading is making my skin crawl all the way up into my asshole.
(I’m going to see my doctor tomorrow to maybe help medicate my alienation a bit better. Don’t worry about me—just HMU in a couple days!)
Labor theory of value. It’s true, but you have to already accept a ton of premises that most people don’t by default for it to make sense. Trying to convince someone “this is a more useful way to count value” is such a massive, complex thing with so many moving parts that it’s pointless to talk about it as an argument. It is only useful to talk about as educating someone about it.
It’s easier to make it a solid argument if you frame it as the opportunity cost that underlies the concept of supply. Liberal economics starts out with supply and demand but really doesn’t ground these concepts in anything more concrete and fundamental.
It’s also easier if you say that economics should work rationally and objectively. Liberal economics is filled with subjectivities from bottom to top. If you can say "it costs 20 glass beads because it cost me 2.0 hours to produce, you have a much stronger argument than “Because I say so” or “Because I want it that way”.
But the liberal conception of economics makes more sense in the short term, on a small scale. Like, sure I can say my 20 glass beads should cost this much, but the reality is I’m never gonna sell them for that much. How much I can sell them for appears to have little to nothing to do with the labor value or anything like that.
It’s only when you get onto the larger scale of where value is created and moves, and you see the long term effects of some kinds of investment vs others to separate real and fake value that the flaws show up in a way that can’t be dismissed.
The difference between the labor and marginal theory of value goes through so much abstract stuff before you can loop it back to daily life that it feels theoretical compared to a lot of easier to talk about things. Like, for instance, how the bourgeoisie may not always have physical power of violence over you, but whenever it comes down to a sacrifice needing to be made, they choose to sacrifice you, and you can’t do anything about it when you play along the way they want you to.
I’m using glass beads as a money-commodity because it’s easier to imagine them as something independent of inflation. Maybe I should have said “it costs 2 liters of 80-proof vodka”, that is something that I think is more viable as a medium of exchange.
If you think a market should be objective and fair, there should be a set of rules that applies consistently to everyone about how much something should cost. Denying the prerogative of being objective and fair means accepting that the market is a medium of tyranny.
I think you have to be sure to approach it from a philosophical style of discussion rather than a microeconomic approach, otherwise you end up at “mudpies” or “working slow doesn’t make something worth more”. It also requires separating value from price though, which is pretty ingrained in us at this point. If your house appreciates 200%, with no labour input, is it providing more value?
The phrase that comes to mind is that you can’t reason a person out of a position tbey didn’t reason themselves into. Most people don’t have a coherrent ideology in general
Almost every anti-vaxxer I know is in for emotional reasons. The thought of their body beeing violsted with needles ans chemicals is for them the motivating factor. Not infact a reasonable skwpticism about big farma or whatever.
One bad argument I’ve heard made is the idea that certain elements of social democracy in the global north are carried out at the expense of the global south. I can see this being a valid argument for consumer goods that are primarily dependent on foreign labor and resources, but it doesn’t make much sense if we’re talking about basic needs like adequate food, healthcare, housing, etc. These things (at least at a basic level) simply aren’t dependent on exploitation of other countries. If they were, then it wouldn’t be possible for countries like Cuba and DPRK to provide them for their citizens, which they do. Not only does this argument not make sense on its face, but telling some lib who wants healthcare that they are actually an imperialist seems to me like a bad way to open up discussion on capitalism/socialism.
