I'd say that capitalists use property ownership to exploit the cost of producing redundancy. They would capture a good or capital and prevent their use unless a ransom is paid. If consumers don't wish to pay it, then they can re-produce the captured good in order to fulfill the same amount of demand. Re-producing the same good while the captured good remains unused is producing redundancy.

For example, a landlord purchases a home to transform into a rental property and asks for a compensation for its access. Consumers can decide not to pay, but if the house was built to fulfill a demand and its capture prevents its access, an additional house has to be built to fulfill the same amount of demand. Building 2 houses to only be able to use one is twice the cost of a house, which is a way higher cost than the price of the ransom the landlord asks for. This exploitation of the cost of producing redundancy is what gives the landlord his bargaining power. No one would otherwise need to pay the landlord to not produce anything.

So, the problem with exploiting the cost of producing redundancy is that it lacks a reasonable justification. A redundant good or capital is something that semantically doesn't have a function. You can't reasonably justify paying a cost, like the cost of labor or expending resources, to produce something that doesn't have the function of fulfilling a demand.

And here's the important part. To receive or ask for a payment, a reasonable justification is required by law. Here's a criminal code article from Canada:

346 (1) Every one commits extortion who, without reasonable justification or excuse and with intent to obtain anything, by threats, accusations, menaces or violence induces or attempts to induce any person, whether or not he is the person threatened, accused or menaced or to whom violence is shown, to do anything or cause anything to be done.

After reading the definition, you might think that, yeah, there might not be a reasonable justification to exploiting the cost of producing redundancy, but it's not done under threats, menace, accusations or violence. But you'd be wrong. The production of redundancy, which is synonym with the waste of resources, is itself a menace. Wasting resources leads to a reduction of wealth, not something anyone would want. The production of redundancy or the payment of the ransom are also forced through violence. If consumers don't want to either pay the ransom or produce redundancy, the only option is to use the captured good or capital without paying the unjustified portion of the asked price. If consumers do that, they subject themselves to threats by law enforcement since it will be understood as theft. So there's is two different sources of threats, menace, accusations or violence that forces the payment of the ransom, the menace of having to produce redundancy and the threats of being arrested for theft.

So in conclusion, it becomes apparent that generating profits from sole ownerships of goods or capital is literal extortion, a criminal act.

If that's the case, fixing capitalism could be rather easy. Compensations for prejudices could be sought after, or citizen's arrests could be made against law enforcement or the judiciary. We could then eliminate compensations for the sole ownership of stuff.

  • HumanBehaviorByBjork [any, undecided]
    hexbear
    4
    edit-2
    9 months ago

    shooting people is still illegal, even if you have a justification. also cops regularly shoot people to prevent crimes considerably less severe. that's not the standard used at all.

    my point is that it's a contradiction in terms to say that the things that the edifice of law exists to protect and uphold are themselves illegal. it's a fallacy shared by the sovereign citizen and related movements, who believe that law is a real thing that exists in the ideal world, which can nevertheless be wielded to effect the physical world.

    • Microtom [none/use name]
      hexagon
      hexbear
      1
      edit-2
      9 months ago

      Shooting people isn't black and white illegal, you make a mistake here. You can have a legal justification.

      You don't have a legal justification to exploit the cost of producing redundancy. There are no laws that protects your capability to generate profits from the sole ownership of anything. But the law prevents you from legally generating profits without a reasonable justification. To have a reasonable justification to seek a compensation, you necessarily have to produce wealth in equivalent amount, for the simple reason that wealth is exclusively produced if we exclude rare cases of natural occurrences.

      The law is a real consensus that has to be followed or altered. Being followed is its function.