May Day Reflections: The Essential Thoughts on Labor, Production, and Capital

International Workers' Day is approaching, a holiday that originated from the historic struggle of workers in Chicago, USA, in 1886 for the 8-hour workday.

Every time at this moment, there are always some opinion leaders with distinct economic viewpoints calling for the cancellation of labor law protections and advocating for a completely free hiring system.

It is worth noting that there is always a positional orientation behind all economic theories. No matter how much economists and opinion leaders try to conceal it, as soon as they speak, their stance becomes evident.

These opinion leaders of free market economics essentially speak from the standpoint of business owners and capitalists. To use the sharp words of Mr. Lu Xun, they are playing the role of "the lackeys of capitalists."

Lu Xun once brilliantly pointed out: "All lackeys, although they may be raised by a capitalist, actually belong to all capitalists, so they are tame when they meet all the broad people, and bark wildly when they meet all the poor people." I don't know who its master is, which is the reason why it meets all the broad people who are tame, that is, the evidence that belongs to all capitalists. Even if there is no one to feed him, and he is hungry and lean, and he has become a wild dog, he still meets all the good people who are tame, and all the poor people bark wildly, but then he does not understand who the master is. "

These opinion leaders are completely wrong in their logic that an 8-hour workday would lead to trade wars or even hot wars. Historical facts are exactly the opposite; it was excessive overtime and overproduction that led capitalists to seek overseas markets, which in turn triggered the global colonial wars of the 17th to 19th centuries.

Human production activities can be simply divided into three development stages:

Stage One: Self-sufficient production. People produce solely to meet their basic needs, with no need to compete or engage in internal competition with others.

Phase Two: Demand-driven production. Producers expand their production scope due to their exquisite craftsmanship to meet the needs of others until the market is saturated.

Stage Three: Profit-Driven Production. Producers have become large business owners who no longer care whether there is real demand; they continue to produce and expand capacity as long as they can make a profit. When the market is unwilling to purchase products, they will use various means, including using force to expand the market, lobbying for legislation, squeezing competitors, and even funding academic research to prove the necessity of their products.

Here are three obvious facts:

1. A production model that focuses solely on profit will inevitably lead to overproduction and supply surplus, ignoring real demand.

Second, the financial credit system has accelerated the formation speed of this surplus.

3. It is the overproduction of the third stage that is the fundamental cause of trade conflicts, wars, and imperialist expansion.

This third stage is a typical "capitalist mode of production".

In this mode, capitalists are like speculators chasing hot concepts, investing a large amount of resources into frantically producing wherever they see high profits.

The result is like the countless projects issued daily in today's digital asset market, with a severe oversupply, most of which ultimately become worthless.

Those who hold Bitcoin will have a deeper understanding: truly valuable things are often strictly limited, and scarcity is the source of value.

Blindly expanding production is like blindly chasing popular concepts; on the surface, it seems to quickly create wealth, but in reality, it leads to rapid dilution of value due to over-supply.

Capitalists produce for profit, which is essentially no different from a speculative mindset; both are forms of negative-sum game involution. The negative-sum involution of the capitalist mode of production is the issue of overproduction that is widely recognized in modern economics.

What is the key turning point for the production method to transition from the second stage to the third stage?

is shifting from "people-oriented" to "money-oriented".

Before the second stage, production was still people-centered.

Starting from the third stage, production became money-centered.

This is precisely that classic philosophical question: Is a person an end or a means?

The answer to the capitalist mode of production is very clear: people are the means of realizing profit.

Thus, money has transformed from a tool that meets human needs into the dominator of humanity.

People have become tools for the proliferation of money, reduced to "cattle and horses" in modern society.

The situation of humans as "cattle and horses" is actually worse than that of real cattle and horses. Real cattle and horses do not need to worry about food and lodging, while modern workers have to pay for their own food, housing, and entertainment, maintain a good condition, and continuously work overtime, just to create more profit for their employers.

What capitalists fear the most is that workers choose to lie flat, because this means that no one is willing to create profits for them.

Therefore, it is a terrifying thing for capitalists if workers achieve financial freedom. If everyone is financially free, who would willingly become a "beast of burden"?

Therefore, those who promote the theory of financial freedom that everyone can reap without labor like capitalists are mostly just a tax on intelligence or a harvesting mechanism.

The methods taught to help you get rich often serve to make the person teaching you rich instead.

A more reasonable logic of financial freedom might be: work for ten years, enjoy freedom for a lifetime. With the improvement of productivity, perhaps in the future it can be shortened to working for one year and enjoying freedom for a lifetime?

So, how can workers break the deadlock in the current historical stage?

The answer lies in higher-level thinking. The world is a cyclical system, and the value exploited by capitalists can be reclaimed in other ways.

Since capitalists are merely speculative players who exhaust all means to chase popular trends, how should wise individuals profit from the prevailing trend of negative-sum games?

Are you participating in the competition of involution? If you can indeed become the "King of Involution", then it's worth a try. Or are you the operator, able to become the reaper.

But for the average person, a wiser choice is to take advantage of the inherent weaknesses of overproduction and capital frenzy by holding truly scarce assets: Bitcoin.

In short: all surplus value belongs to Bitcoin.

Hoard Bitcoin and relax during the May Day holiday.