Capitalism doesn't and IS NOT working, it's destructive and creatives poor social incentives

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

Dear Rabbit,

Your post is deserving of answers. I do wish to discuss things like this, rationally, and, maturely. I am very much enjoying this conversation. But, I simply cannot arrange the time right now (at work) to give you the reply you deserve.

I will try to do so tonight, OK?

Respectfully,

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: peck420

originally posted by: freakwars
If communism is responsible for every famine death in their borders, why is capitalism not?

Since 'capitalism' has reined supreme, on our planet, the global population has exploded, and global starvation rates have plummeted.

In the +- death game (as macabre as it is), capitalism is grotesquely ahead of communism.

Capitalism is an ideology FUNDAMENTALLY BASED ON social differentiation. It requires disparity; poor masses to pay the rich minority.

It is purely grotesque to claim that "global population exploding" as a good thing, because it's widely accepted fact that population growth booms in third-world conditions and stifles in the first-world.

As for food? Well, why are corporations buying up massive tracts of agricultural land from African dictatorships? And it's not to build farms to feed the locals.

Nonsense. Capitalism is based on the free exchanges of goods and services and property rights, both intellectual and physical. It does not depend on class, and in fact is one of the least "class-ist" systems there is. Not only does it not "require" disparity, it actually does better when there are less poor and there is less disparity. A poor man can't buy as many of the Capitalist's goods and services as a person who is better off. Capitalism has raised the standard of living and those poor people under African dictatorships, as you pointed out, are poor because of less capitalism and less economic freedom and those African Kleptocracies are by and large the result of socialist revolutions sponsored by, you guessed it, the Soviet Union in the 1960's and 1970's.

This is absolutely garbage and not worth my time. During your Navy tour did you write propaganda leaflets?

Ah, a closed mind who cannot accept the truth. The sign of a real ideologue.

So how did Bill Gates force you to buy that computer in front of you? How were you exploited to give an EVIL corporation to buy it?

Everything above is true. A poor man cannot buy the latest and greatest computer. Evil capitalists can't sell products to people without money. Capitalists WANT people to have money because without money to buy their stuff, they can't make a profit.

In the interest of insuring we're actually having the same discussion here...I want to highlight the fact these terms are not fuzzy, or fluid, or negotiable to what we think or want. The are well defined systems with firm meanings to each.

Capitalism

an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

Socialism

a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies

Communism

a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) and there is no privately owned property

Fascism

: a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government

: very harsh control or authority

Imperialism

a policy or practice by which a country increases its power by gaining control over other areas of the world

: the effect that a powerful country or group of countries has in changing or influencing the way people live in other, poorer countries

Colonialism

control by one country over another area and its people

The above all come from Merriam-Webster Dictionary for the basic and cold definitions

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin
a reply to: MarlinGrace

And you talk about Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Billionaires who made their billions from exploitation. Funny how the richest people make their money from the poorest people, eh?

Almost as if money is actually a representation of social capital, and those with it are powerful because those without must become dependent on labouring their whole lives.

Tell me Mr. American Dream, what is so great about being a billionaire? Why are you trying to tell me that being a billionaire is a great success of capitalism?

The only thing being a billionaire means is that you know how to play the system, how to accumulate the wealth from many others for yourself. Over half of America lives paycheque to paycheque, and lose everything if they miss it once.

But that whole statement is completely untrue. They were middle class kids who started in their garage and produced an innovated product that people wanted for a price they were willing to pay. They were not wealthy starting out, they were average. They built their money by providing something people wanted--not exploiting them.

Methinks your ideology blinds you to the facts.

It's you who is blind. You're telling me that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates mined the minerals, refined them, then put the pieces together on the production lines and delivered the finished products to the consumers?

Obviously not. And I wouldn't expect you to know because you've already shown that you don't know anything about capitalism.

Profit produced under the capitalist process is from exploiting variable labour. Variable labour is the cost of wages. The more workers you can employ while paying them relatively less means you can produced more product to sell.

This is one of the defined contradictions of capitalism. The lower the wages, the higher the profit. Therefore, the tendency is to continuously lower wages. But how can consumers afford products if they don't get paid? Contradiction of capitalism.

By the way, since I just schooled you with knowledge, I'd like to question you on your comment "your ideology blinds you". What ideology would that be? I just laid out the process of capitalism. I just don't realize how having an education in political science blinds me by ideology. So explain to me what ideology I am ascribing to that is "blinding" me.

LOL. I don't know why you are jumping in again when your comment about Jobs and Gates starting out as billionaires demonstrated that you talk about things without knowing anything about them.

And obviously the above shows you know nothing about Capitalism. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs had an idea, a concept. They started out in their garage. They needed materials they couldn't produce themselves so they bought, in free exchange, goods from other companies who had it. As they grew and grew they hired more workers and bought their labor from them in a free exchange and bought more materials from those that produced them. They needed something, the other company had something they needed and they had a free exchange of goods and services. Both companies made money and the workers made money and everyone was better off due to this free exchange of goods and services.

LOL. "Exploited." You are one of those people who think that any and all success is exploited. Gates created a product that people wanted and he supplied it. No one was "exploited." Did someone hold a gun to your head to buy the computer you are typing on or did you buy it because you wanted to surf the net and type stuff and look at porn? Of course, you were not exploited. You desired a good and someone provided it to you.

Being a billionaire would be great. I would love to be one and so would you. The great success of capitalism is that it has brought the most to the most people as efficiently as possible. Sure, it created Billionaires but it also lifted the quality of life of everyone. Certainly I most likely be a billionaire, but capitalism brought me from poverty to reasonably well off and I'm happy with that. The difference between you and I is that I didn't sit around and blame other people for my poverty, I worked my way out of it.

You are incorrect. It is untrue in capitalism that the lower the paycheck, the higher the profit. In the skilled trades, where the labor is very valuable, paychecks are very, very high. The secret of capitalism is in providing the best goods and services at the best price to the public. If you pay your workers too low, quality goes down and you lose profit. If you pay them more than the market will bear, no one will buy your goods because they are too expensive and you lose profit.

You haven't schooled anyone with "knowledge," just the same old tired ignorant leftist propaganda. The ideology that blinds you is one of the stupid notion that no success is possible without "exploitation," profit and success are evil, and that all your failings are someone else's fault.

You are a joke. Not only are you delusional but you've managed to twist my words around. Obviously Bill Gates did not start off as a billionaire.

But the truth is, you cannot be bothered to understand. People like you justify human misery as the fault of the victims for not working hard enough. You disgust me, and you actively work to hold back our species as a whole.

You posited that nobody can better themselves in our capitalistic society. You are wrong on so many levels.

In your capitalist society, there will never be equality of any kind, as the more "advanced" it becomes, the more differentiation occurs. Capitalism in practice leads to monopolies on every scale.

Don't you get it yet? Capitalism has nothing to do with money, but everything to do with social power. You think the people who own a monopoly on social power with allow someone else to take it from them? That's the illusion, because if you believe that it's possible then it empowers the capitalists.

There will always be exceptions, doesn't matter where you look. But Bill Gates is not a reasonable answer to a question of "how can somebody start at the bottom and rise to the top through labour in the capitalist system" when the exploitation of labour is what fuels capitalism?

The truth is that it's impossible. In fact, the only way to get rich these days in advanced capitalist states is to continuously break the law. And this is because it's very profitable, and in countries like the USA, there are two sets of laws depending on your economic status. Thus, advanced capitalism is in contradiction to the universal ideals of social justice.

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: Wrabbit2000
a reply to: freakwars

If communism is responsible for every famine death in their borders, why is capitalism not?

That would be a key difference in how you're debating this topic from how I am. I'm not claiming anywhere that "all" of anything bad came from Communism.

Hell, on paper, communism is one of, if not THE best form of Government ever devised by the hand of man. Therein lay the rub...hand of man...and that hand never stays pure of heart.

Add man to that nice utopian mix, and it goes down the crapper, every time. Capitalism seems to take longer to rot, but it all rots given enough unchecked time to morph and grow as well. We're living in the morphed and misshapen growth of it now.


However, famine is a product of many many things, from economic and political system to micro issues like local leadership history or future with little things like industrial presence or lack of controls playing a role equally to rolling drought by natural cycles.

A good % of the dead under Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao were from famine, not gunshot. Dead is dead and leaders own the outcome, but famine isn't political. It just hits stupid equally, wherever nature doesn't do it herself.

And with so much whining about famine deaths under communism, nobody here has yet explained why that happened.

It all had to do with modes of production. Russia and China were both feudal states where the agrisector was neglected by the state. In Russia, the czar allowed western nations/corporations to build factories in Russian cities (for much the same reasons American corporations now have factories in China), which turned Russia into a semi-modern state. China was just a mess with all kinds of factions vying for control.

The communist policies implanted after the revolution were designed to modernize the agrisectors. What this meant was that machines, workshops and mechanized farming in general was supplied by the industrial sector to farmers. The farmers were mere serfs, who were used to plowing fields with cattle. It took generations for the agrisector to adapt.

The famines occurred due to agrisector adapting. Remember, these communist countries were isolated from the world outside them (for the most part), and the entire population of these countries depended on their agrisectors to feed them.

Once agrisectors became modernized, the famines stopped. The reason why there were so many growing pains in the agrisectors is because they skipped the capitalist stage of development and went from feudal straight to communist. But this was a necessary step, because the feudalist aristocracies, who collected rent from owning the farms, had no intention of just letting these lands go into the hands of entrepreneurs or labourers.

The communist revolution in both Russia and China was successful because it overthrew feudalist-era states. The famines and other hardship were the result of modernizing the infrastructure neglected by the aristocracies.

Utterly wrong. Starvation was caused by collectivism. In Russia, much of the farmland was owned by the Kulacks--peasant farmers who owned land, not a feudal system. They did very well and the Ukraine especially produced food in great abundance because they had that evil profit motive--the more they produced and delivered the better they were off. I can see you don't know your Russian history. The Kulacks, since they owned land, were "enemies of the people" and had their land taken away and "collectivized" and the Kulacks were murdered. The collective was comprised of a lot of people who didn't know how to farm and didn't care anyway because heck the party would make sure their needs were met. What was planted was not determined by what was needed or the famers thought would grow, but by central planning. As a result of this collectivism, famine was rampant. In addition, to punish the Ukrainian independence movement and their resistance to forced industrialization, what little was grown in the Ukraine was taken away "for the better good" and millions starved to death.

Gotta love a communist, calling the starvation to death of millions, avoidable, and caused by the collective, "growing pains." Pretty disgusting but not surprising.

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: peck420

originally posted by: freakwars
If communism is responsible for every famine death in their borders, why is capitalism not?

Since 'capitalism' has reined supreme, on our planet, the global population has exploded, and global starvation rates have plummeted.

In the +- death game (as macabre as it is), capitalism is grotesquely ahead of communism.

Capitalism is an ideology FUNDAMENTALLY BASED ON social differentiation. It requires disparity; poor masses to pay the rich minority.

It is purely grotesque to claim that "global population exploding" as a good thing, because it's widely accepted fact that population growth booms in third-world conditions and stifles in the first-world.

As for food? Well, why are corporations buying up massive tracts of agricultural land from African dictatorships? And it's not to build farms to feed the locals.

Nonsense. Capitalism is based on the free exchanges of goods and services and property rights, both intellectual and physical. It does not depend on class, and in fact is one of the least "class-ist" systems there is. Not only does it not "require" disparity, it actually does better when there are less poor and there is less disparity. A poor man can't buy as many of the Capitalist's goods and services as a person who is better off. Capitalism has raised the standard of living and those poor people under African dictatorships, as you pointed out, are poor because of less capitalism and less economic freedom and those African Kleptocracies are by and large the result of socialist revolutions sponsored by, you guessed it, the Soviet Union in the 1960's and 1970's.

This is absolutely garbage and not worth my time. During your Navy tour did you write propaganda leaflets?

Ah, a closed mind who cannot accept the truth. The sign of a real ideologue.

So how did Bill Gates force you to buy that computer in front of you? How were you exploited to give an EVIL corporation to buy it?

Everything above is true. A poor man cannot buy the latest and greatest computer. Evil capitalists can't sell products to people without money. Capitalists WANT people to have money because without money to buy their stuff, they can't make a profit.

Oh man, if I am an ideologue then you are surely a hypocrite. You preach the tenants of anarchocapitalism as if it were gospel.

originally posted by: Vovin

In your capitalist society, there will never be equality of any kind, as the more "advanced" it becomes, the more differentiation occurs. Capitalism in practice leads to monopolies on every scale.

Don't you get it yet? Capitalism has nothing to do with money, but everything to do with social power. You think the people who own a monopoly on social power with allow someone else to take it from them? That's the illusion, because if you believe that it's possible then it empowers the capitalists.

There will always be exceptions, doesn't matter where you look. But Bill Gates is not a reasonable answer to a question of "how can somebody start at the bottom and rise to the top through labour in the capitalist system" when the exploitation of labour is what fuels capitalism?

The truth is that it's impossible. In fact, the only way to get rich these days in advanced capitalist states is to continuously break the law. And this is because it's very profitable, and in countries like the USA, there are two sets of laws depending on your economic status. Thus, advanced capitalism is in contradiction to the universal ideals of social justice.

But you are utterly wrong. One can get rich in the United States without breaking a single law and the majority of rich people here are very meticulous about obeying the law because they know they have a lot of eyes upon them. Again, you don't have a clue do you. My accountant is VERY meticulous about obeying every law and regulation.

You are wrong about there being two sets of laws and just watching the news, you see wealthy people getting in trouble. Certainly, no system is perfect, but those caught cheating and lying do get punished. Bernie Madoff was caught and punished.

"Social Justice" ah, another leftist buzzword. Translated it means, "gimme free stuff."

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: NavyDoc

originally posted by: Vovin

originally posted by: peck420

originally posted by: freakwars
If communism is responsible for every famine death in their borders, why is capitalism not?

Since 'capitalism' has reined supreme, on our planet, the global population has exploded, and global starvation rates have plummeted.

In the +- death game (as macabre as it is), capitalism is grotesquely ahead of communism.

Capitalism is an ideology FUNDAMENTALLY BASED ON social differentiation. It requires disparity; poor masses to pay the rich minority.

It is purely grotesque to claim that "global population exploding" as a good thing, because it's widely accepted fact that population growth booms in third-world conditions and stifles in the first-world.

As for food? Well, why are corporations buying up massive tracts of agricultural land from African dictatorships? And it's not to build farms to feed the locals.

Nonsense. Capitalism is based on the free exchanges of goods and services and property rights, both intellectual and physical. It does not depend on class, and in fact is one of the least "class-ist" systems there is. Not only does it not "require" disparity, it actually does better when there are less poor and there is less disparity. A poor man can't buy as many of the Capitalist's goods and services as a person who is better off. Capitalism has raised the standard of living and those poor people under African dictatorships, as you pointed out, are poor because of less capitalism and less economic freedom and those African Kleptocracies are by and large the result of socialist revolutions sponsored by, you guessed it, the Soviet Union in the 1960's and 1970's.

This is absolutely garbage and not worth my time. During your Navy tour did you write propaganda leaflets?

Ah, a closed mind who cannot accept the truth. The sign of a real ideologue.

So how did Bill Gates force you to buy that computer in front of you? How were you exploited to give an EVIL corporation to buy it?

Everything above is true. A poor man cannot buy the latest and greatest computer. Evil capitalists can't sell products to people without money. Capitalists WANT people to have money because without money to buy their stuff, they can't make a profit.

Oh man, if I am an ideologue then you are surely a hypocrite. You preach the tenants of anarchocapitalism as if it were gospel.

No, just freedom. I love freedom. Sadly you don't.

I'm still waiting to hear how you were exploited into buying the computer you are typing on. And if people were exploited to make it, are you not an exploiter yourself when you bought it or use it?

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

half those definitions are wrong, particularly those regarding socialism and communism. Those have always been largely against the state.

originally posted by: Wrabbit2000
In the interest of insuring we're actually having the same discussion here...I want to highlight the fact these terms are not fuzzy, or fluid, or negotiable to what we think or want. The are well defined systems with firm meanings to each.

Capitalism

an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

Socialism

a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies

Communism

a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) and there is no privately owned property

Fascism

: a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government

: very harsh control or authority

Imperialism

a policy or practice by which a country increases its power by gaining control over other areas of the world

: the effect that a powerful country or group of countries has in changing or influencing the way people live in other, poorer countries

Colonialism

control by one country over another area and its people

The above all come from Merriam-Webster Dictionary for the basic and cold definitions


Thank you Mr. 2000

I don't disagree with the definition qua definitions,

But the social and individual behavior captured by the definition of capitalism is also a naturally occurring phenomenon, which will happen if it is not prevented by oppression.

That is not true of any of the other political-economic systems.

The word system, in the sense of a design made in order to cause an effect, does not apply to capitalism, except by those who's secular-faith based dogma propagandizes against it.

a reply to: freakwars

Well, I've asked you several times now to supply us *YOUR* definitions and how *YOU* define the terms you're both supporting and attacking in this thread. I have done my part to define them how I know them and they are, to my knowledge, internationally accepted.

However, I am wide open to how you draw your interpretations, and in fact, I very much look forward to seeing it at this point. What are your definitions if the Merriam dictionary is "wrong", in your view?

originally posted by: rom12345
For better of for worse it is the only system that will arise in a non artificial manner.
It is brutal, but natural.
I would love the state to provide for my inadequacies, but my suspicion is that it never really will or can.

The globalization of capitalism, was premature and not properly thought through.
If global capitalism can balance out, things will be better and self sustaining.

The 80/20 rule applies very much to capitalism.

Education is the real equalizer, no so much in amount, but in learning about one's own tastes, talents and weaknesses-- and how to put knowledge into one's own thought processes.

And everyone should want to self educate, learning anything is a matter of time. Learning in a way as easy and personal as possible, the only goal to make knowledge one's own.

Incorporating a unique body of knowledge and experience into a unique mind and body.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

The capitalism definition is fine. I don't think the bit about free markets is a necessary element of capitalism.

Socialism is a system with four characteristics 1. common ownership of the means of production in the sense that it's owned by an association of producers; 2. "from each according to his ability, and to each according to his labor-power"; 3. "the distribution of products" is not yet equal; 4. The proletariat controls the state.

That definition of socialism is drawn Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program, which is probably a better source for a definition of socialism than the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Communism is a system with x characteristics 1. the abolition of private property entirely (this is distinct from personal property 2. the abolition of the state 3. the abolition of class 4. the decentering of production as the basis of human society

Communism is going to have a less specific definition because it's very much a distant goal.

Colonialism is a type of imperialism in which a state has a foreign domain which is directly administered by that state according to that state's own economic and, optionally, political aims.

Imperialism is a policy of finance capital which has the aim of creating the largest possible economic territory for those companies which benefit the finance capital grouping involved, while excluding those which do not as far as possible.

a reply to: freakwars

Well, I thank you for supplying your definitions. It's now with more respect that I disagree, at least understanding a bit better where and fundamentally why we disagree. I think I'll come back a bit later to join back in and just watch for awhile for now..

I do sincerely appreciate the reply and context though.

a reply to: freakwars

No we don't! That is utter horse crap and you are deluded by believing it!

There has been report after report of Millions of manufacturing jobs going overseas. The one I quoted, a report to congress, detailed 1.78 million jobs lost due to swings in the trade balance. Let me spell that out for you: Stuff we made for ourselves we now buy from overseas.

You obviously are young and, as a result, were not around or cognizant when manufacturing jobs went overseas. Why the hell do you think the middle class is shrinking due to fewer quality jobs? FEWER means less, means less than in the past. This isnt in percentages, this is in shear numbers.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Dept there are over 2 million fewer manufacturing jobs in the US from 10 years ago. 2004 vs 2014. Manufacturing jobs are now at a 60 year low. (by millions, I might add)

According to the Feral government's Bureau of Labor Statistics (where were you then ?) ** 1979 ** was the peak of U.S. manufacturing jobs, at 19.426 million.

The tech boom of the 1990's took hold - increasing demand for manufactured goods - during the Clinton administration, which was again favorable to unions as well, and manufacturing jobs had another "local maximum" at 17.56 million in 1998, the last year there was a year-over year increase.

Since then, there was a decrease every year, all through the George W. Bush administration and up until 2010 of the Obama administration. With regulation increasing every year on manufacturing operations, benefits and other non-net-pay employee costs rising, big business manufacturing operations have retreated en masse overseas, with the government "buddy" that unions had come to rely on unable to stem the tide, since big corporations have enough lobbying power to balance out that of unions when it comes to outsourcing.

Manufacturing jobs as of 2010 stand at just 11.524 million, a cumulative net decrease of over 23% from the 15.011 million of 1961.

Oh, and your ignorant comment about automation not reducing jobs would cause a company to go out of business is utterly ignorant. You automate to increase productivity. I managed a plant that opened in 1976. During the 80s and 90s a significant amount of automation was installed. Total employees remained roughly the same approx 120 in the whole plant. Productivity increased by over 60% over those same years. Non-skilled labor lost jobs, skilled labor gained jobs. Support services (accounting, customer service, sales, planning) gained jobs. One does not, contrary to ignorant opinion, invest millions of dollars to automate to eliminate jobs, one invests millions of dollars to increase productivity.

BTW... the equipment manufacturers that made the initial heavy equipment placed in the plant either relocated to Asia or went out of business. Not one, to this day, remains in the US.

I am sick and tired of knuckleheads spouting off about crap they believe but do not know shist from shinola.

You must be extremely blissful

originally posted by: freakwars
a reply to: Wrabbit2000

half those definitions are wrong, particularly those regarding socialism and communism. Those have always been largely against the state.

It's very clear to me that the failures of Capitalism are/were caused by the obvious infiltrations by the ultra-Progressive, ultra-Fascist, ultra-Liberal, ultra-Marxist governmental and non-governmental influences on social and economic programs.

And it seems each and every Left-Wing agenda against Capitalism has failed as well.

Other than the achievements of Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism that always use Proletariat capital to finance their agendas. And even that fails because all modern government banking systems are debt based at all levels.

It's all an illusion.

IMO, Communism is a classic Ponzi con game invented and defined by criminals.

Capitalism is not a political system. It is an economic behavior. Production offering desired stuff and services to anyone and everyone. Capitalism is completely voluntary, or the word voluntary has no meaning. Government is not a component of capitalism.

Socialism is governance foremost, with economics as an after thought. Such economics as will allow the governing ism.

Direct comparison of socialism and capitalism is not logical, or honest.

Socialism vs Freedom is the real comparison.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

sir, you're defining capitalism as essentially synonymous with society/trade. At that point the term becomes useless, as it is not what communists such as I are opposing. I totally support the act of trade.

originally posted by: freakwars
a reply to: Semicollegiate

sir, you're defining capitalism as essentially synonymous with society/trade.

Yes, naturally evolving society, voluntary trade, steadily increasing wealth and knowledge.

At that point the term becomes useless, as it is not what communists such as I are opposing.

So your definition of capitalism is "anything before communism"?

I totally support the act of trade.

Obviously not true.

a reply to: freakwars

I totally support the act of trade.

I believe you do.

But of course that would include at least 1000 restrictions, regulations and agencies of Zee правительство to enforce.

All controlled by the Master Central Kommittee.