Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
4 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   What is a Liberal, and What is a Conservative?
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 149 of 254 (138808)
09-01-2004 12:37 PM
Reply to: Message 148 by Darwin Storm
09-01-2004 12:26 PM


Yes, that is true: but also not the hostility that conservatism demonstrates toward unionisation, and even seeks to restrict unionisation. Fundamemtally, a workers rights agenda is diametrically opposed to the Heroic agenda of the "entrepreneur" advocated by conservatives.
Neverthless, this power does not functionally challenge the ayuthority weilded by employers. Thus for example, some German workers have recently accepted lower pay and conditions in exchange for the firm not leaving for the third world. Our society is still constructed on the many working for the few, and the interests of those few being opposed to the interests of the many.
The rich are necessarily the enemies of the people.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 148 by Darwin Storm, posted 09-01-2004 12:26 PM Darwin Storm has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 152 by ThingsChange, posted 09-01-2004 1:15 PM contracycle has replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 150 of 254 (138810)
09-01-2004 12:43 PM
Reply to: Message 130 by Darwin Storm
08-31-2004 11:16 PM


quote:
You even consider the end goal of globalization to be a postivie thing, but see it frought with bumps. I agree, but that path is the best one we have so far.
Without a very specific clarification on what you MEAN by Globalisation, the term is pointless. So, what do you mean?
Anti-globalisation protestors, for example, do not call for a return to local economies. They criticise the neo-"liberal" privatising, slash-and-burn business model that is referred to by the term Globalisation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 130 by Darwin Storm, posted 08-31-2004 11:16 PM Darwin Storm has not replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 204 of 254 (139083)
09-02-2004 5:44 AM
Reply to: Message 152 by ThingsChange
09-01-2004 1:15 PM


quote:
"Enemies"!! C'mon. That is a false assumption. In many cases it is a symbiotic relationship.
I'll concede parasitic.
quote:
In general, balance is sought by the free market as supply of workers meets demands of owners.
In theory. In practice, that is prevented by border controls, passport regimes and immigration quotas. All of which once again put the cards in the hands of the rich, exploiting the poor.
quote:
Globalization is like the ability of an organism to spread from a local population to a wider area.
That is not what the term means, however: what it means is the practice of bandit-capitalism, the low wage economy, lax-to-homicidal safety standards in "free trade zones", weak or no-existant environmental protections and military and political support for unrepresentative regimes which oppress their populations and thus keep wages low.
It is entirely possible to oppose all of those things without claiming a retreat to national borders or denying the possibility of the best companies succeeding. At the moment however those companies succeed on the back of human misery and suffering, they contribute nothing to the wellbeing of humanity, and are indeed inimical to life, liberty and happiness.
"And the cycle of hungry children will keep on going round
'Till we burn the multinationals to the ground."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 152 by ThingsChange, posted 09-01-2004 1:15 PM ThingsChange has not replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 205 of 254 (139084)
09-02-2004 5:53 AM
Reply to: Message 176 by Darwin Storm
09-01-2004 10:04 PM


quote:
Ideally though, the US has one of the LOWEST unemployment rates in the world. We complain when our unemplyoment rate hits 6 percent. For example, in 2002, the US had an unemployment rate of 6%. Meanwhile, Franch had an unemployment rate of 9% and Spain had 11%!
True; but that is also because "working poverty" - ie.e nearly Victorian conditions for the labour force - are no longer acceptable in Europe. It is said that European work to live, and Americans live to work. The fact that so many people in the American economy are in such low wage roles is not a model that Europe is remotely interested in following, except for the right-wing conservative elements. Most Europeans have an average months leave, Americans get only two weeks. We think we have a better way of life, and better living conditions, than would be the case if we followed the American model. We had it 100 years ago and it sucked.
quote:
There are still many problems we need to address, but your characterization of employees as helpless victems is both sad and groundless.
No those are just your dogmatic blinders.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 176 by Darwin Storm, posted 09-01-2004 10:04 PM Darwin Storm has not replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 206 of 254 (139085)
09-02-2004 6:00 AM
Reply to: Message 188 by Darwin Storm
09-01-2004 11:42 PM


quote:
First off, I would agree that the cost of living has gone up. Part of this is that earning has gone down, which is an issue. However, family spending has gone up dramatically, which means it takes more money to meet the higher expense standards.
Of course - becuase ALL of capitalisms expenses are passed on to the workers. The workers pay for everything - including Lord Blacks $42,000 Happy Birthday Barbara party. If a firm makes profit, it has succesfully passed all its cost to its customers (99% of wehom are workers), and has furthermore extracted from them even more wealth than the service was worth.
A large part of the stupidity in capitalist argumentation is the failure to deal with consumer and worker incarnated in the same person, but treating them instead as distinct abstract entities.
quote:
The other shift we see in the last 50 years has been the vast increase in the labor market as women have joined men in the workplace. This also has had a impact, if you look at the growth rate of the total labor force.
Thats true. Where the income of a single adult was sufficient, by and large, to support a family 100 years ago, the same requires two adult incomes now. Capitalism thus gets twice the labour ouit of us, but contributes no more to our wellbing. Once again, workers do all the work, pay for everything, but the people who get to enjoy it are parasites living off our labour. What we get is table-scraps.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 188 by Darwin Storm, posted 09-01-2004 11:42 PM Darwin Storm has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 210 by paisano, posted 09-02-2004 9:33 AM contracycle has replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 207 of 254 (139086)
09-02-2004 6:10 AM
Reply to: Message 203 by ThingsChange
09-02-2004 2:16 AM


quote:
Why not universal care for everyone in the world?
Yes. In fact IIRC it appears in the UN human rights declaration.
quote:
It's tough to do artificially by government mandate.
Emotively loaded terminology; a state is no more and no less artificial than a corporation. And both are human activities over which we humans have control.
[qupte] Let's look at minimum wage, for example. Noble cause. However, the people and small business (not megacorportations) are the most guilty for hiring illegal immigrants to get lower costs and bypass the minimum wage requirement.[/quote]
So your argument is that where a capitalist firm is so inefficient that it cannot provide a decent standard of living to the people actually doing the work and making the products and delivering the services that the company sells, those capitalists should be protected from thaier failure,a nd the workers should bear those costs. Why should we as workers accept that? If you can't pay a decent rate, out of business you go - is that not how its supposed to work in capitalist competition?
Remember AdamSmith maintained the goal of a capitalist should be to keep their workers fat and content. Modern bandit capitalism is not much like the capitalism that Smith envisioned.
quote:
In Houston's case, this is property taxes. So, folks see taxes increase so much (thousands of dollars) that some of them (such as fixed income elderly) can no longer afford to live in their paid-for houses.
Tax the rich. Tax them 'till the pips squeak. Its all our money anyway; we made it, they stole it.
quote:
The government can play a role in protecting that money account (from ourselves) from being spent on luxuries.
Thus the alleged fiscal liberal introduces the interventionist state to ensure that we are all morally responsible. Note this limitation is considered wholly wrong and immoral when applied to the wealthy.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 203 by ThingsChange, posted 09-02-2004 2:16 AM ThingsChange has not replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 211 of 254 (139114)
09-02-2004 9:52 AM
Reply to: Message 210 by paisano
09-02-2004 9:33 AM


quote:
The service was worth what was paid for it by the consumers, otherwise they would have gone with a lower cost competitor, or done without.
Thats irrelevant - if the sale was made, all costs have been passed to the consumer. Even if they went with a lower cost competitor, then they paid all those lower costs. It doesn't matter if the consumers pick and choose - ALL costs are passed on to the consumer, including those of production and investment.
quote:
The profit is the difference between value added and the market cost of the inputs. Profit is what allows a company to invest in expansion of the business.
There is no necessary relationship between "value added" and profit; it is quite possible to find yourself obliged to sell at under cost. What determines the sale price is the probabilioty that all units can be moved at that price, not any assesment of added value. "Added value" is just a post facto justification for a price that is higher than cost.
Profit does, of course, allow for the investment and the expansion of the business - just as a feudal lords dues and renders from their tenants allowed them to maintain and expand their lordship. Asserting this fact - that is, the redistribution of profits and goods from those who produce to those who merely control the exercise of violence in defence of property - does not in any way justify it as good or legitimate. Village communities, which have been in existance hundreds of time longer than capitalism, also generated -profit and also invested, and they did so without expropriating the producers product.
quote:
True, it also allows for abuses, the executives can use the profit to throw lavish parties. But guess what? It's a bad business strategy, and competition and the marketplace tend to eliminate such firms.
In principle. But who pays the price of that competition? The workers/consumers by and large. I consider the problem of lavish parties and similar something of a second order problem, because this is, as you correctly point out, technically bad business within capitalism. In fact, its often illegal becuase the employees and dirtectors have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders, a director throwing a lavish party can rightly be said to have stolen from the firm. But it is still a problem becuase of the social authority that the culture of entrepreneuarial hero-worship encourages; they have their hands on the purse strings de facto, and their subordinates quickly learn on which side their bread is buttered. Whistleblowing in all these cases is rare, and slow. This is indicative of the serious degree to which this heirarchical relationships distort human relations, makes humans part of the machine instead of running the machine.
quote:
Are you suggesting a system in which all firms are operated on a break-even basis and run by workers?
Run by workers, for profit yes.
quote:
Two words for you. Soviet Union.
A state capitalism is not a model of a worker-owned society, thus the perceived analogy fails.
This message has been edited by contracycle, 09-02-2004 09:01 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 210 by paisano, posted 09-02-2004 9:33 AM paisano has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 215 by paisano, posted 09-02-2004 10:45 AM contracycle has replied
 Message 222 by ThingsChange, posted 09-02-2004 12:03 PM contracycle has not replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 218 of 254 (139131)
09-02-2004 11:16 AM
Reply to: Message 215 by paisano
09-02-2004 10:45 AM


quote:
What's your point ? ...
He isn't going to get the lawnmower engine for free, however.
Nothing is for free. But as I said initially, this means that in the capitalist system, the wealth extracted from the consumer/worker by the capitalist is equal to production plus a special slice to the capitalist who contributed nothing to the process. The capitalist is a parasite who lives off others sweat. Our economy would be much more efficient without them, their destructive competition and spendthrift excesses.
quote:
It may even be advantageous to do so, for a short term, e.g. to gain market share. But if you are forced to sell below cost indefinitely, you either go out of business or must be subsidized.
Yes, thats is what I said. But there is of course another option available to capitalists - increase the exploitation of workers to lower costs proportional to product. That is, Capitalism benefits from a coercive relationship with the workforce. Capitalism is a system of expropriation by which a minority steal the wealth created by the many.
quote:
So you advocate a system in which a firm's workers are majority stockholders. This can work, but limits the amount of capital that can be raised , and the individual worker still has little influence.
Several; points here:
1) it is not the case that this limits raisable capital; after all the products are still be sold, its just that the wealth is in many hands rather than a few. There is nothing preventing a workers collective from choosing to invest its wealth, and many of the same motivations to do so.
2) the individual worker may have little influence, but at the moment they have none. This influence is critically important when, for example, we are talking about outsourcing or manufacturing flight. What happens now is the workers get turfed out; if they owend the firm they could for example just split the proceeds and break up, or retool for another role. Either way, it would not be the coercive relationship that pertains today between employer and worker.
3) what I take to be an apeal to the central focus of the owner/manager demonstrates that capitalism is in fact a command economy, which is ruled by capitalists.
quote:
And external market forces, beyond the worker's control, still are operative.
Of course.
quote:
It is no panacea. United Airlines is an example.
Quite right. But it is free, unlike wage labour, and does not show the same degree of parasitism by non-productive exploiters.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 215 by paisano, posted 09-02-2004 10:45 AM paisano has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 225 by ThingsChange, posted 09-02-2004 12:20 PM contracycle has not replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 220 of 254 (139136)
09-02-2004 11:21 AM
Reply to: Message 216 by paisano
09-02-2004 10:55 AM


Re: health care
quote:
As to executives, if an executive convinces an venture capitalist to invest $ 10 million in a company over cocktails at the club, enabling it to hire 100 more widget makers at 50K annual wages, I see nothing wrong with that executive being well compensated for their superior marketing and negotiation skills.
Ah, no they want us to be grateful to the parasites. That capital was only accumulated through the expropriation of workers, and all the executive is doing is arse-licking like any skilled courtier. Its exactly this lord and supplicant relationship that makes capitalism no better than feudalism, and the arse-lickers function is only required because of the pre-existing exploitationg and appropriation. If the arse-licker wants to get paid, they should get a real job and start paying their own way.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 216 by paisano, posted 09-02-2004 10:55 AM paisano has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 236 by Darwin Storm, posted 09-03-2004 1:49 PM contracycle has replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 221 of 254 (139140)
09-02-2004 11:25 AM
Reply to: Message 217 by paisano
09-02-2004 11:14 AM


Re: health care
quote:
BTW, use of invective and pejoratives ( "scam", "shrubbie") is usually a good indication of someone who cannot engage an argument factually and logically. From what I have seen, you can and should do better.
Does that also apply to the person who said this in post 160 of this thread?
quote:
Most human beings nurse some form of irrationality, regardless of how rational the field they work in is. Many academics tend to nurse "libertarian leftism" as their pet irrationality.
Well? Isn't calling your opponents prima facie irrational indicative of someone who cannot carry an argument factually and logically?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 217 by paisano, posted 09-02-2004 11:14 AM paisano has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 223 by paisano, posted 09-02-2004 12:05 PM contracycle has not replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 245 of 254 (140279)
09-06-2004 6:56 AM
Reply to: Message 236 by Darwin Storm
09-03-2004 1:49 PM


Re: health care
quote:
It is very telling that every arguement you have boils down to the fact that you think managers do nothing except steal, rob, and sit on their tail.
No, I know that is the case; they themselves taught me to do the accounting that shows that they steal, rob, and sit on their tails.
quote:
have to organize efforts, provided communication between different aspects of the company.
So do many, many wage workers. Yet they are not rewarded on the same scale - why not? It is a process of theft, thats why.
quote:
Frankly, your concept of how any organization functions is deluded.
Really? You just argued that equal work should produce radically unequal pay, and yet you accuse me of a delusional view of how organisations work? Back to accounting school for you, son.
This message has been edited by contracycle, 09-06-2004 05:56 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 236 by Darwin Storm, posted 09-03-2004 1:49 PM Darwin Storm has not replied

  
contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 246 of 254 (140280)
09-06-2004 7:05 AM
Reply to: Message 239 by paisano
09-03-2004 2:02 PM


quote:
At most, you have an issue with my defintions of the terms "leftist economics" and "libertarianism".
Erm, of course - becuase even in this post you have repeated the canard that Leftist politics is about state ownership. Seeing as you apparently feel a need to lie about leftists arguments in order to advance the criticism that they are "irrational", that is a pretty fundamental charge.
This is another demonstration of the Idealistic nature of conservatism; they keep shadow-boxiung at an enemy of their imaginiing becuase it is more comfortable and satisfying to do so than to engage with reality.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 239 by paisano, posted 09-03-2004 2:02 PM paisano has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 247 by RAZD, posted 09-06-2004 1:52 PM contracycle has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024