Company paying a person for their work that both parties agree to voluntarily is 'inhumane'? Government using force this steal from one person to subsidise another is 'humane' though, right? Your logic is.... Well, you are surely a Sanders voter.
Corporations are people, they are owned by people, those are the people that corporations are. There is no 'more right' or 'less right', there is only access to different media. You have the same right for speech as any billionaire. You cannot buy as much air time as a billionaire, but the right is the same. A right is protection against government oppression. If you think that you have less protection than a billionaire in court of law against government oppression then your problem is with your government.
Free speech means that government cannot oppress you by not letting you speak out, by punishing you for your views and expressed opinions. Those with more means can speak louder, they are spending their money to speak louder, there is no problem there ad long as others are not shut down. In the age of the Internet the cost of speaking louder went down significantly. Almost anybody can drive a car today but 120 years ago only the wealthy could. Today anybody can speak very loudly on the Internet, the cost of loudness of speech is much lower than 120 years ago too. That is why DHS, a GOVERNMENT department wants to make it impossible to be anonymous in line to limit your speech. The wealthy may not like that they are not drowning out your voice, but only the governments can actually oppress you and take your voice away. Money is speech, it is ability to be louder than the other guy. Well, the Internet has a lot of money dumped into it by a lot if people. It is also speech.
Correct, and the courts upheld anonymity of super PAC donors so if money is speech (and I agree that it is, because money is used to buy media time to promote a message) then the Internet is speech, because internet is money that is used to build and maintain this media that is used for speech.
Did anybody see this DHS guy? Was he by any chance a 63 y.o. short, bold, Russian speaking guy, likes to take topless pictures riding horses? Because that guy just said something very similar the other day? Or does DHS always take cues from foreign dictators?
Where is the form that can be filled out opting OUT of SS and Midicare that allows me to KEEP my money that are stolen through the taxes that supposedly go to SS and Medicare?
The equipment will still be manufactured in China. It will be fully assembled and tested there. Then it will be disassembled into 10 parts, packaged for shipping. Then it will be received in the USA as components. It will be put together into a complete unit once again somewhere in Idaho. This will add 50$ to the price at your local retailer but it is still better than the 35% of course. Nobody will be manufacturing anything in the States but the politician will look like he achieved something while in reality it will be a loss of efficiency and still just a tax.
No, it's not that, there are people here who make it a point to mod my comments down to prevent me from being able to make too many comments. As long as most of my comments are pushed down, I cannot effectively participate in discussions, since the number of comments is limited to two or three a day.
I would tell the government to suck it. Governments created terrorists, AFAIC governments are terrorists. ISIS and such are nothing at all until governments (mostly western) create them.
Of course the real theft is the collective with its government (proxy thugs) is stealing from the people and businesses with all of these income and wealth related taxes. Corporate, income, wealth taxes are theft that prevents freedom and oppresses individuals who actually make the money. People must be free to earn and keep every single penny they earn. Government stands in the way of sound economy and progress, that is what all of the government programs, including every form of welfare and military are. It is all theft, it is amazing what government 'education' does, it turns honest people into thieves by instilling the idea into them that theft is the right thing to do.
People who are not stolen from can save their money and apply it however they think is best. People who make lots of money are good at it, they use their money to make more of it and in the free market (free from government oppression and theft) capitalist economy (private ownership and operation of property) the money is spent to make more and better producrs , which is what making money is - creating more products and services that others voluntarily exchange for.
Income and wealth taxes are both immoral theft and economic illiteracy.
The first dozen comments I read on this story read like this place is mostly visited by huge assholes. Never mind that I get moderated into oblivion every time I talk about lack of productive output in the USA and most of the west due to the huge government and oppression of the individual, these comments are likely left by some people who waste their moderator points on me. You gotta be a special kind of asshole to berate a guy for building something with his hands that looks like a beautiful piece of art. He is actually manufacturing something nice, not unlike musical instruments that are made by hand in the world of mass manufacturing.
I don't say this too often, especially in my political and economic comments, but fuck you, guys.
You have gone full retard long ago, when you got your government propaganda 'education' into your head and started believing everything that you were taught about government and society. Civics classes are propaganda, the worst kind. Today you can take a look at your economy, it is a disaster and it's going to get worse. The Fed will come out with negative interest rates and QE4, a massive fiscal stimulus. The government will print and mail everybody checks again for you to go shopping. Of-course the debt in the last 8 years doubled, so Obama and the gigantic government added more debt to the economy than every president from Washington to Bush combined...
You have gone full retard and you don't know it, that's a sad but reality will bring you back, don't worry.
Vaccination is not based on edge case scenario, as to public education, all it is is propaganda. Education needs to be delivered privately, without government money and agenda. By the way, government 'provided' education is not a sustainable economic model and it is a symptom of a larger problem of government interference, which eventually destroys the economy and is horrible for the society in the long term.
As a society we would be better served by stopping the theft perpetrated by the governments, stopping the income related taxes, shutting down government departments, getting rid of most regulations and laws that were introduced in the last century.
As a society we would be better off without government getting its hands into money, into business, into every aspect of our lives. As a society we would be much better served with INDIVIDUALS figuring out how to help other INDIVIDUALS in the world as opposed to using the collective oppressive powers of government to steal and set agenda that works for politicians and their buddies.
Sure, but all government is based on the worst edge case scenario. Terrorist attack is a very unlikely event, war on drugs, war on poverty, SS, Medicare, minimum wage, FDIC, FHA, all of these things start by rallying the mob around the least likely edge cases. Scarrying people is always the most politically profitable strategy and it works. Taking the worst edge case scenario and building a policy around it that negatively impacts everyone... No child left behind means that all children will be left behind. Government doing anything to 'help' some small group leads to the worst possible outcome for all.
And you are wrong because you are making the implicit assumption that ALL supply requires SOMEONE ELSE to produce it, when it does not. Natural resources do not require production. They are simply there.
- OMG, you are truly special. Go find yourself that lump of gold. You know that people look for gold and they do find it and sometimes they lose their lives looking for it. Ever heard of the term 'Gold Rush'? Things are "just there" except where are you? Where is your excavating effort? Where is your refinery? What are you doing that is so useful, poopooing efforts of people who bring you ENERGY as an example. You think that oil and coal and gas and uranium makes it into your car and local power station all by itself? Curious ideas you have. That piece of gold that somebody finds is PRODUCED by that act of finding. Before it was found it didn't exist in the economy. There are probably mountains of gold out there in the Universe, so what? Who is going to reach out and bring that stuff here?
Yes I can. I can consume the things I find and make myself.
- and you should re-read what I have said here, you want to be a hunter gatherer, subsistence farmer? Cool. That's fine, except you will not participate in trade economy with anybody else, you will not be able to buy anything else from anybody if you are not doing anything productive *FOR OTHER PEOPLE*. I understand now, I am arguing here with you but you are unable to process simplest of things.
Your argument is that Apple made the iPad *without* expecting to sell it. That production drives consumption.
- nonsense, that's not my argument. My argument is that before anything can be consumed it has to exist. You are arguing against causality, do you realize that? You are arguing that consumption is what drives production, I am arguing that ability to consume relies on your ability to produce.
If you cannot produce anything you will not be able to consume anything, because nobody will trade with you. The only way to consume without producing is to be a baby, who is taken care of by the parents or to be any kind of a dependent, be it an old relative or a disabled person. Welfare state breeds people who do not produce anything and yet they are not actually disabled and they are not babies. They are just a voting block to be used by the collectivists who promise to steal (tax, print, borrow) and to redistribute.
You are arguing that consumption drives production, I am arguing that production allows consumption. Demand is always there, demand is what people want but consumption is what exists to consume and what people can afford.
Did Apple expect to sell iPads? Sure. I also expected to sell products that I build. Did Apple ALWAYS succeed with the products that they tried selling?
NOT EVEN CLOSE
Apple made tons of products that either never sold at all or were very unsuccessful and were eventually removed from production lines. So a business EXPECTS to be able to sell but the business is never certain that it can sell. It may not sell, it may fail selling.
However if a business fails selling the question is: why?
a. Is it a bad product? b. Is it a product that enters a saturated market at the wrong price? c. Is it a product that enters a market that actually cannot afford this product at any price because that market is full of people who are *not* producing anything and so they cannot consume anything?
I argue that USA is at this point at the level *c* - too many people are not producing anything, the trade deficits have been at negative 500,000,000,000 a year for over 20 years now. USA cannot afford products because USA is running a negative trade balance, which means that *USA on average does not produce enough to afford consumption*.
While you are arguing against something that I am not even defending, I am telling you that if you don't produce something of value people will not trade with you because you won't be able to afford the things you want that those people make because you are unproductive. USA is unproductive as a country today.
Supply does not have to come from production. Natural resources, for example.
- nonsense. What good is oil if it's not extracted? What good is coal if it's not extracted? The value of natural resources is nothing at all until somebody extracts it, ships it, refines it. That's productive work, somebody does that work and for you to be able to afford those goods you have to do some productive work of your own to exchange for those extracted goods.
What is not clear? Have you ever owned an oil rig? You think it's free to operate or something?
No they wouldn't. For example, there are people who don't have a dollar to spare.
- I am sure even beggars can get a dollar for a yacht if a yacht meant they could have a roof over their head. Anybody can buy a plastic bag for a few cents today, however 200 years ago you couldn't buy a plastic bag even if you were the richest person on this planet.
Why couldn't you buy a plastic bag 200 years ago that costs a couple of cents today that anybody can buy? Because production of plastic bags wasn't there 200 years ago.
Production is what created the market for consumption of plastic bags. Demand for plastic bags existed since the humans differentiated from other primates. A plastic bag is a wonderful thing to have, you ca
Did Apple make it without expecting to sell it ? Of course not. They were answering demand.
- The only 'demand' that Apple saw for iPads was Steve Job's idea that iPads would sell. There was no product like an iPad in the market and Jobs thought that people would want to buy it.
But that's not the main point. The main point is that for somebody to be able to consume an iPad that have to be able to *pay* for it, which means that *they have to produce* something of value themselves. Without *reciprocal* production there is no trade and nobody would give you an iPad if they didn't expect to get something back from you.
I am talking figuratively speaking, the transactions in the real market economy are not 2 way, there are many indirect transactions that take place. Somebody producing bolts and nuts that are used by car manufacturer does not sell bolts and nuts directly to a farmer, but a farmer can buy a car that has those bolts and nuts in it.
If you produce bolts and nuts and people need them, you will be able to buy things for the output of what you produce. You are trading for bread, for energy, for vegetables, for meat, for clothing, for entertainment, for whatever it is you want to buy. You are trading for those things indirectly by producing something that somebody in the entire market needs. Without you producing something you cannot demand anything from others.
Businesses that produce without consumption of their products or services do not stay in business - no demand, production is pointless.
- I am not arguing on this at all, a business needs to make a product that makes sense. However selling a product to somebody who does not produce anything in return is not a fair trade, it's not a trade at all.
Until you produce something of value you cannot expect others to trade with you.
You have contradicted your earlier statement that demand is a function of supply.
- no, you have to read carefully. Consumption is a function of supply. Human demand is infinite, it can be satisfied if there is a product and the price is right.
Demanding something and consuming something by trading your own production for what you consume are not equal. Demand exists regardless of supply, demand exists always. Consumption exists only if there is supply and consumption is a function of choices of products and price, and the price is relative to your own production level.
A billionaire can buy a 500,000,000 yacht because he already satisfied demand of millions of people for some product and he has amassed enough IOUs (money) from people who bought his products that he can afford the most expensive products.
No thereâ(TM)s not, because not everyone wants or can afford a yacht, even for a dollar.
- you have 0 imagination. Ability to buy a yacht for $1 would provide people with infinite number of possibilities for using the said yacht. A yacht is also a house. It is also a party venue. It is also a platform for a floating drone. A million yachts can be used to build a sea steading, they could be robotised and used for protection. I don't know and I don't care how, but people would buy infinite number of yachts for $1.
People are buying much less valuable things for much more than $1 today. People are paying hundreds of dollars for MODELS of yachts.
You keep explaining how the production of things is driven by demand for them
- demand is infinite. Only ability to consume is limited by production and by relative prices.
The money that you make relative to the prices for things that others produce gives you a level of your consumption.
Ah. I think I see the problem. You are assuming that all consumption needs to be someone elseâ(TM)s production. It does not.
- all consumption that you are not producing yourself has to be produced by somebody and by something, you may want to question what you know about the reality of the world, life and Universe in general.
The first iPad did not have any market until people started buying.
The first tomato or potato brought into Europe didn't have much of a market until people started buying.
Nobody uses phonographs today, so producing them makes no sense except as a hobby. However the reason why phonographs are not in demand is because something else, something much better and much more convenient exists to play music for people who want to listen to it.
Demand is always there, demand is infinite. There is infinite demand for yachts out there at $1 price. There is very limited demand for yachts out there for $500,000,000 price tag. The difference between a $1 yacht and a $500,000,000 yacht is lack of production of yachts to allow for $1 prices..
If production of yachts was automated to the point where all of the components could be put together very quickly for 50 cents, then $1 yachts would be sold today and the demand for them would be through the roof.
The fact is that the only things that stop people from buying something is price or maybe that they have something better that already does the job.
In a fish/wheat economy a new type of food would be valuable and would satisfy the infinite demand of people who want tomatoes and people would want tomatoes because they have nothing like that on the table if they only eat fish and wheat.
If on the other hand there was already a fruit that was exactly like a tomato in every way, then people would STILL buy tomatoes if the price made sense. We have more than one type of tooth paste in the stores because there is demand for it the moment it is introduced and if the demand is not there, that particular product stops being produced and instead a different product is offered.
However the demand part of the economy is absolutely trivial, it is only a question of price and market saturation. Nobody forces anybody to come up with a 'better tomato' in a tomato rich environment. Come up with something else that people would want to eat.
However the PRICE element is a much more limiting factor and that's where the actual root of the question is: can you *afford* something or not? If not, then you are not producing enough of whatever it is you are doing to be able to afford that product at that price point.
The only real question is: what are *you* doing, what are *you* producing? Does anybody need what you are producing? Are you producing anything of value for somebody to exchange their production output with you?
The only limiting factor to your purchasing power is your ability to produce, not your ability to consume. You can consume, anybody can consume, what can you do to afford that consumption?
Economy is production, without production you can consume absolutely nothing that other people produce. But you can steal of-course.
Slashdot Mirror
Company paying a person for their work that both parties agree to voluntarily is 'inhumane'? Government using force this steal from one person to subsidise another is 'humane' though, right? Your logic is .... Well, you are surely a Sanders voter.
Who came up with that name? Every time I see ChakraCore I immediately read it as Cracka Whore.
Not before 1991. Worse than that, books censored just like everything else, many books and other materials were simply illegal to own.
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
Corporations are people, they are owned by people, those are the people that corporations are. There is no 'more right' or 'less right', there is only access to different media. You have the same right for speech as any billionaire. You cannot buy as much air time as a billionaire, but the right is the same. A right is protection against government oppression. If you think that you have less protection than a billionaire in court of law against government oppression then your problem is with your government.
Free speech means that government cannot oppress you by not letting you speak out, by punishing you for your views and expressed opinions. Those with more means can speak louder, they are spending their money to speak louder, there is no problem there ad long as others are not shut down. In the age of the Internet the cost of speaking louder went down significantly. Almost anybody can drive a car today but 120 years ago only the wealthy could. Today anybody can speak very loudly on the Internet, the cost of loudness of speech is much lower than 120 years ago too. That is why DHS, a GOVERNMENT department wants to make it impossible to be anonymous in line to limit your speech. The wealthy may not like that they are not drowning out your voice, but only the governments can actually oppress you and take your voice away. Money is speech, it is ability to be louder than the other guy. Well, the Internet has a lot of money dumped into it by a lot if people. It is also speech.
Correct, and the courts upheld anonymity of super PAC donors so if money is speech (and I agree that it is, because money is used to buy media time to promote a message) then the Internet is speech, because internet is money that is used to build and maintain this media that is used for speech.
Did anybody see this DHS guy? Was he by any chance a 63 y.o. short, bold, Russian speaking guy, likes to take topless pictures riding horses? Because that guy just said something very similar the other day? Or does DHS always take cues from foreign dictators?
Where is the form that can be filled out opting OUT of SS and Midicare that allows me to KEEP my money that are stolen through the taxes that supposedly go to SS and Medicare?
The equipment will still be manufactured in China. It will be fully assembled and tested there. Then it will be disassembled into 10 parts, packaged for shipping. Then it will be received in the USA as components. It will be put together into a complete unit once again somewhere in Idaho. This will add 50$ to the price at your local retailer but it is still better than the 35% of course. Nobody will be manufacturing anything in the States but the politician will look like he achieved something while in reality it will be a loss of efficiency and still just a tax.
I prefer Islam terrorists to have my personal information than ANY Western government, AFAIC those are the real terrorists.
No, it's not that, there are people here who make it a point to mod my comments down to prevent me from being able to make too many comments. As long as most of my comments are pushed down, I cannot effectively participate in discussions, since the number of comments is limited to two or three a day.
This could be a magnetar or this could be an event that would prompt the Pierson's Puppeteers to start a massive migration.
I would tell the government to suck it. Governments created terrorists, AFAIC governments are terrorists. ISIS and such are nothing at all until governments (mostly western) create them.
Of course the real theft is the collective with its government (proxy thugs) is stealing from the people and businesses with all of these income and wealth related taxes. Corporate, income, wealth taxes are theft that prevents freedom and oppresses individuals who actually make the money. People must be free to earn and keep every single penny they earn. Government stands in the way of sound economy and progress, that is what all of the government programs, including every form of welfare and military are. It is all theft, it is amazing what government 'education' does, it turns honest people into thieves by instilling the idea into them that theft is the right thing to do.
People who are not stolen from can save their money and apply it however they think is best. People who make lots of money are good at it, they use their money to make more of it and in the free market (free from government oppression and theft) capitalist economy (private ownership and operation of property) the money is spent to make more and better producrs , which is what making money is - creating more products and services that others voluntarily exchange for.
Income and wealth taxes are both immoral theft and economic illiteracy.
The first dozen comments I read on this story read like this place is mostly visited by huge assholes. Never mind that I get moderated into oblivion every time I talk about lack of productive output in the USA and most of the west due to the huge government and oppression of the individual, these comments are likely left by some people who waste their moderator points on me. You gotta be a special kind of asshole to berate a guy for building something with his hands that looks like a beautiful piece of art. He is actually manufacturing something nice, not unlike musical instruments that are made by hand in the world of mass manufacturing.
I don't say this too often, especially in my political and economic comments, but fuck you, guys.
You have gone full retard long ago, when you got your government propaganda 'education' into your head and started believing everything that you were taught about government and society. Civics classes are propaganda, the worst kind. Today you can take a look at your economy, it is a disaster and it's going to get worse. The Fed will come out with negative interest rates and QE4, a massive fiscal stimulus. The government will print and mail everybody checks again for you to go shopping. Of-course the debt in the last 8 years doubled, so Obama and the gigantic government added more debt to the economy than every president from Washington to Bush combined...
You have gone full retard and you don't know it, that's a sad but reality will bring you back, don't worry.
Vaccination is not based on edge case scenario, as to public education, all it is is propaganda. Education needs to be delivered privately, without government money and agenda. By the way, government 'provided' education is not a sustainable economic model and it is a symptom of a larger problem of government interference, which eventually destroys the economy and is horrible for the society in the long term.
As a society we would be better served by stopping the theft perpetrated by the governments, stopping the income related taxes, shutting down government departments, getting rid of most regulations and laws that were introduced in the last century.
As a society we would be better off without government getting its hands into money, into business, into every aspect of our lives. As a society we would be much better served with INDIVIDUALS figuring out how to help other INDIVIDUALS in the world as opposed to using the collective oppressive powers of government to steal and set agenda that works for politicians and their buddies.
Sure, but all government is based on the worst edge case scenario. Terrorist attack is a very unlikely event, war on drugs, war on poverty, SS, Medicare, minimum wage, FDIC, FHA, all of these things start by rallying the mob around the least likely edge cases. Scarrying people is always the most politically profitable strategy and it works. Taking the worst edge case scenario and building a policy around it that negatively impacts everyone... No child left behind means that all children will be left behind. Government doing anything to 'help' some small group leads to the worst possible outcome for all.
Maybe Grapheme should run for the president?
And you are wrong because you are making the implicit assumption that ALL supply requires SOMEONE ELSE to produce it, when it does not. Natural resources do not require production. They are simply there.
- OMG, you are truly special. Go find yourself that lump of gold. You know that people look for gold and they do find it and sometimes they lose their lives looking for it. Ever heard of the term 'Gold Rush'? Things are "just there" except where are you? Where is your excavating effort? Where is your refinery? What are you doing that is so useful, poopooing efforts of people who bring you ENERGY as an example. You think that oil and coal and gas and uranium makes it into your car and local power station all by itself? Curious ideas you have. That piece of gold that somebody finds is PRODUCED by that act of finding. Before it was found it didn't exist in the economy. There are probably mountains of gold out there in the Universe, so what? Who is going to reach out and bring that stuff here?
Yes I can. I can consume the things I find and make myself.
- and you should re-read what I have said here, you want to be a hunter gatherer, subsistence farmer? Cool. That's fine, except you will not participate in trade economy with anybody else, you will not be able to buy anything else from anybody if you are not doing anything productive *FOR OTHER PEOPLE*. I understand now, I am arguing here with you but you are unable to process simplest of things.
Cheers.
Your argument is that Apple made the iPad *without* expecting to sell it. That production drives consumption.
- nonsense, that's not my argument. My argument is that before anything can be consumed it has to exist. You are arguing against causality, do you realize that? You are arguing that consumption is what drives production, I am arguing that ability to consume relies on your ability to produce.
If you cannot produce anything you will not be able to consume anything, because nobody will trade with you. The only way to consume without producing is to be a baby, who is taken care of by the parents or to be any kind of a dependent, be it an old relative or a disabled person. Welfare state breeds people who do not produce anything and yet they are not actually disabled and they are not babies. They are just a voting block to be used by the collectivists who promise to steal (tax, print, borrow) and to redistribute.
You are arguing that consumption drives production, I am arguing that production allows consumption. Demand is always there, demand is what people want but consumption is what exists to consume and what people can afford.
Did Apple expect to sell iPads? Sure. I also expected to sell products that I build. Did Apple ALWAYS succeed with the products that they tried selling?
NOT EVEN CLOSE
Apple made tons of products that either never sold at all or were very unsuccessful and were eventually removed from production lines. So a business EXPECTS to be able to sell but the business is never certain that it can sell. It may not sell, it may fail selling.
However if a business fails selling the question is: why?
a. Is it a bad product?
b. Is it a product that enters a saturated market at the wrong price?
c. Is it a product that enters a market that actually cannot afford this product at any price because that market is full of people who are *not* producing anything and so they cannot consume anything?
I argue that USA is at this point at the level *c* - too many people are not producing anything, the trade deficits have been at negative 500,000,000,000 a year for over 20 years now. USA cannot afford products because USA is running a negative trade balance, which means that *USA on average does not produce enough to afford consumption*.
While you are arguing against something that I am not even defending, I am telling you that if you don't produce something of value people will not trade with you because you won't be able to afford the things you want that those people make because you are unproductive. USA is unproductive as a country today.
Supply does not have to come from production. Natural resources, for example.
- nonsense. What good is oil if it's not extracted? What good is coal if it's not extracted? The value of natural resources is nothing at all until somebody extracts it, ships it, refines it. That's productive work, somebody does that work and for you to be able to afford those goods you have to do some productive work of your own to exchange for those extracted goods.
What is not clear? Have you ever owned an oil rig? You think it's free to operate or something?
No they wouldn't. For example, there are people who don't have a dollar to spare.
- I am sure even beggars can get a dollar for a yacht if a yacht meant they could have a roof over their head. Anybody can buy a plastic bag for a few cents today, however 200 years ago you couldn't buy a plastic bag even if you were the richest person on this planet.
Why couldn't you buy a plastic bag 200 years ago that costs a couple of cents today that anybody can buy? Because production of plastic bags wasn't there 200 years ago.
Production is what created the market for consumption of plastic bags. Demand for plastic bags existed since the humans differentiated from other primates. A plastic bag is a wonderful thing to have, you ca
Did Apple make it without expecting to sell it ? Of course not. They were answering demand.
- The only 'demand' that Apple saw for iPads was Steve Job's idea that iPads would sell. There was no product like an iPad in the market and Jobs thought that people would want to buy it.
But that's not the main point. The main point is that for somebody to be able to consume an iPad that have to be able to *pay* for it, which means that *they have to produce* something of value themselves. Without *reciprocal* production there is no trade and nobody would give you an iPad if they didn't expect to get something back from you.
I am talking figuratively speaking, the transactions in the real market economy are not 2 way, there are many indirect transactions that take place. Somebody producing bolts and nuts that are used by car manufacturer does not sell bolts and nuts directly to a farmer, but a farmer can buy a car that has those bolts and nuts in it.
If you produce bolts and nuts and people need them, you will be able to buy things for the output of what you produce. You are trading for bread, for energy, for vegetables, for meat, for clothing, for entertainment, for whatever it is you want to buy. You are trading for those things indirectly by producing something that somebody in the entire market needs. Without you producing something you cannot demand anything from others.
Businesses that produce without consumption of their products or services do not stay in business - no demand, production is pointless.
- I am not arguing on this at all, a business needs to make a product that makes sense. However selling a product to somebody who does not produce anything in return is not a fair trade, it's not a trade at all.
Until you produce something of value you cannot expect others to trade with you.
You have contradicted your earlier statement that demand is a function of supply.
- no, you have to read carefully. Consumption is a function of supply. Human demand is infinite, it can be satisfied if there is a product and the price is right.
Demanding something and consuming something by trading your own production for what you consume are not equal. Demand exists regardless of supply, demand exists always. Consumption exists only if there is supply and consumption is a function of choices of products and price, and the price is relative to your own production level.
A billionaire can buy a 500,000,000 yacht because he already satisfied demand of millions of people for some product and he has amassed enough IOUs (money) from people who bought his products that he can afford the most expensive products.
No thereâ(TM)s not, because not everyone wants or can afford a yacht, even for a dollar.
- you have 0 imagination. Ability to buy a yacht for $1 would provide people with infinite number of possibilities for using the said yacht. A yacht is also a house. It is also a party venue. It is also a platform for a floating drone. A million yachts can be used to build a sea steading, they could be robotised and used for protection. I don't know and I don't care how, but people would buy infinite number of yachts for $1.
People are buying much less valuable things for much more than $1 today. People are paying hundreds of dollars for MODELS of yachts.
You keep explaining how the production of things is driven by demand for them
- demand is infinite. Only ability to consume is limited by production and by relative prices.
The money that you make relative to the prices for things that others produce gives you a level of your consumption.
Ah. I think I see the problem. You are assuming that all consumption needs to be someone elseâ(TM)s production. It does not.
- all consumption that you are not producing yourself has to be produced by somebody and by something, you may want to question what you know about the reality of the world, life and Universe in general.
The first iPad did not have any market until people started buying.
The first tomato or potato brought into Europe didn't have much of a market until people started buying.
Nobody uses phonographs today, so producing them makes no sense except as a hobby. However the reason why phonographs are not in demand is because something else, something much better and much more convenient exists to play music for people who want to listen to it.
Demand is always there, demand is infinite. There is infinite demand for yachts out there at $1 price. There is very limited demand for yachts out there for $500,000,000 price tag. The difference between a $1 yacht and a $500,000,000 yacht is lack of production of yachts to allow for $1 prices..
If production of yachts was automated to the point where all of the components could be put together very quickly for 50 cents, then $1 yachts would be sold today and the demand for them would be through the roof.
The fact is that the only things that stop people from buying something is price or maybe that they have something better that already does the job.
In a fish/wheat economy a new type of food would be valuable and would satisfy the infinite demand of people who want tomatoes and people would want tomatoes because they have nothing like that on the table if they only eat fish and wheat.
If on the other hand there was already a fruit that was exactly like a tomato in every way, then people would STILL buy tomatoes if the price made sense. We have more than one type of tooth paste in the stores because there is demand for it the moment it is introduced and if the demand is not there, that particular product stops being produced and instead a different product is offered.
However the demand part of the economy is absolutely trivial, it is only a question of price and market saturation. Nobody forces anybody to come up with a 'better tomato' in a tomato rich environment. Come up with something else that people would want to eat.
However the PRICE element is a much more limiting factor and that's where the actual root of the question is: can you *afford* something or not? If not, then you are not producing enough of whatever it is you are doing to be able to afford that product at that price point.
The only real question is: what are *you* doing, what are *you* producing? Does anybody need what you are producing? Are you producing anything of value for somebody to exchange their production output with you?
The only limiting factor to your purchasing power is your ability to produce, not your ability to consume. You can consume, anybody can consume, what can you do to afford that consumption?
Economy is production, without production you can consume absolutely nothing that other people produce. But you can steal of-course.