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Re: [ox-en] Re: "At Cost"



Patrick Anderson wrote:
Price would approach Cost as Profit approached Zero.

Paul Cockshott wrote:
Profit does not disappear in competitive industries!

Profit disappears when Competition is Perfect, but Competition is
usually not Perfect, so Profit is usually not Zero.

Profit and Competition are inversely related, while Profit and
Monopoly are directly related.  A Perfect Monopoly would enjoy
Infinite Profit, right?

Profits approach, hit, and go below Zero if consumer prices go below
the Costs of operation for that round of production, right?  Isn't
that the 'Red' and 'Black' that a business is in?

I think this is a commonly accepted view of Prices and Profits.



#### REMAINDER OF ENTRY: Ignore if annoyed by theory.



==Part 1: Design -- The pattern of the GNU GPL as User Freedom through
"at cost" access to the Sources of production.

More likely in question are my assertions that profit is optimally
handled as an investment from the consumer who paid it.

Profit during trade indicates the consumer's need for ownership of the
kind of physical sources needed for that production.

A typical for-Profit Corporation will eventually close and be labeled
a failure if they cannot keep Price above Cost.

Without profits, nobody will continue to fund the operation.

Nobody, that is, except those that can be paid through product instead
of profit = the consumer.

Therefore, if the investors of production are the very consumers of
that production, then they can be paid in Product while Profit can be
treated as an investment from the consumer who paid it so that
ownership is distributed naturally as the organization grows.

Perfect Competition occurs when Consumers own the Means of Production
in precisely the amount needed for the production of the things they
will consume.  In that case they pay all the Costs of production, but
do not pay any more.  They get the product "at cost" because there is
nobody else to collect it - the consumer IS the owner.

Competition is Perfect for any product's economy when and where and
while each consumer has sufficient ownership in the physical Sources
of that product.

Owners of Physical Sources always get product "at cost" because they
own the product even before it is produced.

For instance, if you have enough ownership in a dairy where you own
part of a milk cow, you would pre-pay the costs of investment,
operation, maintenance, insurance, wages, water, taxes, etc. but you
would own the product (milk) even before it was produced because you
own the Physical Sources (Means of Production) of that product (the
cow shares and the dairy infrastructure).

If you own an apple tree, you might pay someone to harvest the fruit,
and would pay those wages as a cost, but if you already own the
product, you wouldn't pay profit because you are not exchanging
product, you already exchanged labor.

On Sun, Aug 17, 2008 at 12:54 AM, Paul Cockshott <wpc dcs.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
national accounts or input output table
of any leading captitalist country

I'm not familiar with those terms.  Are you talking about stuff like
GDP and GNP?

If so, are you saying these should be maximized?

I say Profit is a measure of the consumer's dependence upon the
current owners of the Physical Sources of that production.

When dependence is high, profit is high because the consumer is "in a
bind" to purchase the product at a price above cost.

So, if we charge consumers any profit they will pay while treating
that payment as an investment in more Physical Sources, with that
ownership being the literal property of *the very consumer that paid
it*, then consumers will gain the ownership they need while the
community around those co-owned Physical Sources grows and splits.

The proof of investment could be handed to the consumer as the receipt
for that transaction.  The information would also be stored
electronically as title of ownership for the Land and Capital
purchased toward future production of that variety.

You would gain tiny amounts of real estate, water rights, beef cattle,
etc. after paying price above cost for a hamburger under such a Terms
of Operation.




==Part 2: Implementation -- That's great, but whaddaya gonna do about it?

The great Saint IGNUcius implemented the GNU GPL over his *own* property(1).

So all we need to do is get the consumers to invest under a Terms of
Operation as described.

Syndicalists have done this in the past by purchasing Land and Capital.

We will buy real property and then apply the contract.

Just as the GNU GPL enforces Copy rights over 'virtual' material, the
Consumer Capital Cooperative Contract (CCCC) enforces Property rights
over 'physical' material.

In either case these legal structures can be thought of as
self-inflicted constraints on trade.

Both the GNU GPL and the CCCC are inter-owner trade agreements
requiring the User/Consumer receive "at cost" access to the Sources of
that production.

Owners(1) enforce the GNU GPL through copyright.

Owners enforce the CCCC through property rights.

----
(1) Information does not have proper owners beyond privacy.  IP and
IPR are propaganda terms designed to install and support faulty
notions and slander terms like theft and piracy.
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