What is a Liberal, and What is a Conservative?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Are you suggesting a system in which all firms are operated on a break-even basis and run by workers?

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Run by workers, for profit yes.

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Two words for you. Soviet Union.

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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

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Are you suggesting a system in which all firms are operated on a break-even basis and run by workers?

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Two words for you. Soviet Union.

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I'm apologize for my ignorance, paisano, but which Soviet firms were run by their workers?

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True, it also allows for abuses, the executives can use the profit to throw lavish parties.It's a bad business strategy, and competition and the marketplace tend to eliminate such firms.

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Are you actaully claiming that none of the fortune 500, successful companies ever throw lavish parties?Furthermore, the last kind of abuse I am concerned with are "lavish parties". I am much more concerned with the abuses of golden parachutes, huge executive bonuses awarded for laying off thousands of workers, and in general, the trend in the US for there to be an enormous, unreasonable disparity in compensation from the bottom of the organization to the top.

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Are you suggesting a system in which all firms are operated on a break-even basis and run by workers?

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Two words for you. Soviet Union.

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Two words for you. "Employee-owned", which is a growing trend in the US. These companies are certainly for-profit, though the profit is shared among everyone, because everyone owns a part of the company.

Why not? It is the same moral imperative for any human. Read the Declaration of Independence on why governments need to be overturned when they violate basic human rights, including the unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness? Do governments need to be overturned by revolution when the can be changed by evolution? The people being governed are the ones that will decide on recourse (a) if (b) is not done. The very concerns for happiness, equality and justice that lead our founding fathers to break from english rule should fuel the debate for kind, equal and just treatment by our own government Why not let the workers decide how much the managers should make? A nice democratic vote, what could be wrong with that? After all they are the ones actually making the product that brings in the sales dollars that pays for everyone else’s wages. Why shouldn’t every person in a company get the same amount from the net profits and if the company is doing well they all benefit? Would that not be a good inducement to do good work? ahhh yes, the same scam as the privatize social security cause people manage their money better than the government shinola shrubby was touting before the economy went south — heard much about it lately? You won’t, shrubby is too busy looting the funds and would be hard pressed to find enough to finance those accounts. Problem is that health costs are not related to how you work, how much you make and the way you live, they are related to such things as drunk drivers leaving others as quadriplegics and dependent on medical services the rest of their lives. That is why it is insurance so that the large cost of the few are born by the small cost of the many that all have an equal chance of becoming the few. The cost of health insurance is artificially high with private companies because they are paying extra people to manage the system and they are taking a profit (a healthy profit?) from it as they go. Look at some CEO salaries in this field.enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

What's your point ? If the consumer wanted a lawnmower engine, he could buy raw bauxite, setup a small aluminum foundry and machine shop in his garage, buy electricity (or build a generator, but we won't go there) , make the aluminum and cast and machine it into an engine, all with the costs of raw materials, his own labor, etc.He isn't going to get the lawnmower engine for free, however. 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. 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.
And external market forces, beyond the worker's control, still are operative.It is no panacea. United Airlines is an example.

There should be differential rewards for performance and for skill sets that contribute more or less to the company performance, in primary compensation. Nothing wrong with a profit-sharing program as secondary compensation.I see nothing wrong with paying airline pilots and mechanics more than ticket agents, for example, because I want the perople in the most safety-critical positions to be the most highly paid.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.

The cost of US health care is artificially high across the board because of many inefficiencies in the system, some of which you've mentioned. Compensation is excessive across the board relative to economic value, from medical secretaries to MDs to hospital administration to those HMO CEOs. Excessive litigation is another factor increasing cost (trial lawyers, IMO, are far worse than CEOs). Excessive and fraudulent billing for products and services (10.00 per pill Tylenol in the hospital) enabled by this system.I advocate the establishment of medical savings accounts, caps on litigation, and, most radically of all, making all forms of health insurance, public and private, illegal. This would remove much excess cash and overhead from the system. For example, MDs would be forced to charge more reasonable rates that are actually affordable and accept the more modest compensation of DVMs.I am sure there are counterarguments to this scheme, but I really think socialized medicine will just make the current inefficiencies
a new government agency.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.

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What's your point ? ...
He isn't going to get the lawnmower engine for free, however.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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And external market forces, beyond the worker's control, still are operative.

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Of course.

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It is no panacea. United Airlines is an example.

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Quite right. But it is free, unlike wage labour, and does not show the same degree of parasitism by non-productive exploiters.

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Get it, yet?

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Yep, I'm going to leave this one alone, we pretty much agree, plus what we were discussing is rather trivial.

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"Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."Ephesians 5:14

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Does that also apply to the person who said this in post 160 of this thread?

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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.

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Well? Isn't calling your opponents prima facie irrational indicative of someone who cannot carry an argument factually and logically?

There is nothing preventing you or others in our free country and capitalistic system that prevents this "run by workers" type of organization from doing this in the marketplace. In fact, partnerships are quite common.However, they don't always compete as well as a decisive structured organization. Decision-making and risk/reward can get murky and hard to reconcile. Some fail because of the competing self-interests of human nature in a company "run by workers". I am back to the evolution analogy of businesses surviving.What I sense from you is a government-regulated economy that would restrict freedom of organization. That puts power in the hands of a few. Mix that with the variety of human nature and the ability of ambitious selfish tyrants to rise with whatever means it takes, and you have a society that leads to communist-type governments that restrict freedom. Sorry, but I think "run by workers" as a government-imposed economic model is idealistic and unworkable (can't compete and leads to degradation).Evolution is a proven model. Let the people figure out how to compete with each other and reach acceptable (notice I didn't say the murky word "fair") conditions. It is a journey. It's freedom.It astounds me that Evolutionists, of all people, don't see the value of that principle in economic and government issues.

By no means. If I assert that a position is "irrational", I am asserting it has been arrived at via one or more logical fallacies.
This is not a pejorative or invective.I do, of course, assume the burden of pointing out the fallacies involved. I did so, by pointing out that leftist economic systems, in practice, are always coercive, in that they have involved using state power to expropriate wealth and property from their rightful owners.To my knowledge, no one has challenged the point, and indeed have argued that this form of coercion is morally justified (e.g. the "human", "decent" thing to do).Calling President Bush "shrubbie" , on the other hand, is content free in terms of facts, logic, or argument and is simply pejorative labeling. A conservative saying "I'm not voting for Kerry because he's a terrorist-loving Massachusetts pinko" is engaging in similar content-free invective. I'd be equally critical of such a conservative.

Then the word you're looking for is "fallacious", not "irrational." You're attempting to backpedal from an obvious ad hominem by conflating "logical" and "rational"; these words are not synonyms. That's not a fallacy.In fact, your statement assumes what it's trying to prove; the system can only be called "coercive" if the targets of this system are the "rightful" owners; clearly it is the position of the leftist that they are not.Assuming what you mean to prove is fallacious; it's Circular Reasoning.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-02-2004 11:13 AM

Have you ever tried door-to-door sales? Convincing people to do something that cost them something (material or time) is difficult. It is a skill. Bill Clinton certainly has it. He's so good that he can take your wealth without your realizing it... and if fact, he can get many folks to go along enthusiastically! That is skill that not everyone has.My point is that while it seems that capitalists contribute nothing, they actually have a skill and serve a useful purpose. Someone has to decide which ideas will survive and prosper, and mobilize a new organization/facilities/working capital, so it is best left with someone who may lose something from a bad decision, instead of some government bureaucrat who just has a job ... i.e. a true non-contributing parasite, to use your term.Workers make capitalist decisions everyday on a smaller scale. We all decide who should get our money for the goods and services that we need or luxuries we want.