The Game Between Labor and Capital: Economic Reflections Behind Labor Day

International Labor Day is approaching, a holiday that commemorates the 1886 Chicago workers’ strike for the 8-hour workday, which always sparks in-depth discussions about labor rights.

Every time this happens, there are always some economic viewpoints advocating for the abolition of labor law protections and the implementation of a completely free employment system. However, we need to recognize that any economic theory carries a bias. Those seemingly objective economists and opinion leaders, no matter how they disguise themselves, will reveal their true stance as soon as they express their opinions.

This type of economic viewpoint often favors the interests of capital and business owners. As Mr. Lu Xun once accurately described: “Any running dog, though perhaps raised by a single capitalist, actually belongs to all capitalists; therefore, it is tame with all wealthy people and barks fiercely at all poor people. It does not know who its master is, which is precisely the reason it is tame with all wealthy people, serving as evidence that it belongs to all capitalists.”

The logic that an 8-hour workday will lead to trade wars or even military conflicts is completely wrong. Historical facts are exactly the opposite; it was excessive overtime and overproduction that fueled the capitalists’ impulse to expand into overseas markets, ultimately leading to global colonial wars in the 17th to 19th centuries.

Human production activities can be simply divided into three stages:

1. Self-sufficiency stage: producing what is needed to meet basic needs without competing with others.

2. Demand-oriented phase: Producing to meet the needs of others, expanding scale based on market demand.

3. Profit-driven Stage: Producing purely for profit, without regard for actual demand, continuously expanding production capacity as long as it is profitable, even forcing the market to accept products through various means.

There are three obvious problems here:

1. Production aimed at profit will inevitably lead to excessive production that ignores demand.

2. The financial credit system has accelerated the speed of overproduction.

Thirdly, the overproduction in the third stage is the root cause of trade conflicts, wars, and imperialist expansion.

The third phase is a typical “capitalist mode of production”. In this model, capitalists are like investors chasing popular speculation, flocking to wherever there are high profits, ultimately leading to overproduction and most investments going to zero.

Those who have held Bitcoin should understand better: truly valuable things are often strictly limited, and scarcity creates value. Blindly expanding production is like issuing tokens without restraint; on the surface, it seems that wealth is within reach, but in reality, it is rapidly diluting value.

The behavior of capitalists producing for profit is no different from blindly chasing popular investments; both are zero-sum games. This negative-sum competition in the capitalist mode of production is referred to in modern economics as the crisis of overproduction — producing goods that cannot be sold, ultimately leading to losses.

It is worth noting that what is the key difference between the transition from the second phase to the third phase? Is it “for people” or “for money”.

The production before the second phase is still people-oriented. The production transition that begins in three stages is based on money.

This is precisely the classic philosophical question: Is man an end in himself or a means to an end?

In the capitalist mode of production, the answer is clear: humans become tools for profit realization. Money, which was once a tool to satisfy human needs, has become the master of humans. People have become tools for the proliferation of money, reduced to modern “cattle and horses”.

Ironically, the situation of modern “cattle and horses” is even worse than that of actual cattle and horses. Real cattle and horses do not have to worry about food and lodging costs, while workers have to pay for their own meals, rent, housing, and entertainment, exhausting themselves with overtime just to create more profits for their bosses.

What capitalists fear the most is that workers reject this relationship. Because once everyone stops accepting exploitation, no one will create profits for them.

Therefore, the financial freedom of workers is a threat to capitalists. If everyone is financially free, who would still be willing to be a “beast of burden”?

Therefore, those who promote the theory of wealth freedom that everyone can gain without work like capitalists are often traps of the intelligence tax. The methods taught to make people wealthy are usually not meant to make you rich, but to make the person teaching you rich.

A more reasonable logic of financial freedom might be: work for ten years, enjoy freedom for a lifetime. Or, with the improvement of productivity, perhaps it could be work for one year, enjoy freedom for a lifetime?

So, under the current historical conditions, how can ordinary people break the deadlock?

In fact, you just need to see a little more clearly. The world is a cycle. What you have been exploited of by capitalists can be taken back from another direction.

The article repeatedly analyzes the logic of capitalists and capitalist production, aiming to remind readers to think about issues from a higher perspective. Since the essence of capitalists’ shrewd calculations is merely a blind pursuit of trends, how can ordinary people avoid being swept along in this zero-sum game?

Compete in it? Unless you have a definite advantage or are a manipulator, the outcome is hard to predict.

For ordinary people, perhaps the way to cope is to leverage the inherent weaknesses of overproduction and capital madness by holding truly scarce assets, such as Bitcoin.

As someone summarized: “All excess belongs to Bitcoin.”

Store up scarce assets and relax peacefully during the May Day holiday.