BO Loss = Riots

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
81

[quote]Sloth wrote:
ninearms wrote:
Sloth wrote:
ninearms wrote:
belligerent wrote:
I oppose any system that pits one class against another regardless of my own economic standing.

You do realise that’s the basis of capitalism, right?

I thought the basis of Capitalism was the private ownership of the means of production in a division of labor society.

Or the exploitation of those who have only their labour to sell by the owners of the means of production. If belligerent doesn’t like one class being pitted against another (although technically it’s not so much classes being pitted against each other as one class subjugating another) perhaps he should avoid praising the virtues of capitalism.

Exploitation? It’s a system of voluntary exchange. You can sell your labor for whatever you want, and others will decide if they want to pay your price.
[/quote]

In theory that sounds great, but you forget that people still have to live, and in our society that means they need some sort of wage. Unfortunately they don’t have any real power to negotiate what that wage is (unless it’s for a very prestigious position which only a handful of people are qualified for).

That’s the whole reason why these big companies outsource their jobs. American workers want more money than they are willing to pay them.

What you wind up with are a lot of out of work people in America, and kids working in sweatshops for $1 a day in asian countries (that have either no, or less strict labor laws). The only winners are the big companies themselves, and in the end that’s all they really care about anyhow.

Another result of this high unemployment rate is high amounts of people collecting unemployment or walfare. As a result we as tax payers wind up having to pay even more to make up for this lack of jobs. People get pissed that the government is taking their money to help these people in need out. But then turn around and support these big companies by buying their goods, or support politicians who allow these big companies to engage in the very practices that result in this situation occurring in the first place.

82

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Exactly! Big businesses are not concerned with the rights of their workers, nor whether or not their practices are moral, because the bottom line is…well the “bottom line”.
[/quote]
In a legal sense, and if they’re practicing free-market principles, they are worried about not infringing upon the rights of workers. If they promise to pay a wage for 2 weeks worth of labor and don’t, though the worker fullfilled his end, that’s fraud. If a worker decides he’s had it and decides to walk out, but is prevented by hired muscle to leave. And, is in fact forced to continue work, that’s not free. As long as it’s a voluntary exchange-- labor for wage–amongst free individuals, why would you decide their agreement isn’t moral? Why is the employer taking advantage?

They have to care about them enough to attract people to work for them on a voluntary basis. By the way, you sound almost upset that they’d try to stay in business. Which is kind of a problem if you care about the standard of living of others.

[quote]
That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Free markets by their very nature are in direct opposition to human rights.[/quote]

Free markets are the greatest achievement of human rights! A pure democracy in which our interactions determine how scarce resources are allocated, prices, which technologies to persue or discard…It is comprised of free-men making choices and exchanging voluntarily. And out of that emerges an order to society not planned by some armed central government.

83

You guys are a riot.

84

[quote]Big_Boss wrote:
You guys are a riot.[/quote]

I’m just a wild and crazy guy!

85

Obama won, but individuals still were injured.

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=104&sid=1511597

86

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Big_Boss wrote:
You guys are a riot.

I’m just a wild and crazy guy![/quote]

lol.

87

[quote]VALERIUS wrote:
Obama won, but individuals still were injured.

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=104&sid=1511597[/quote]

Why is this news? Some drunk college kids get into a fight with campus police and off duty officers working as security and this gets related to Obama?

88

But Obama went to college! Can’t you see the obvious link!

89

[quote]Professor X wrote:
VALERIUS wrote:
Obama won, but individuals still were injured.

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=104&sid=1511597

Why is this news? Some drunk college kids get into a fight with campus police and off duty officers working as security and this gets related to Obama?

[/quote]

Dude - are you kidding? Just wait until you see what Obama gets blamed for…

It has only just begun.

90

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Sloth wrote:
No, (truly) free markets lead to the kind of effecient production systems and cheap goods and services that raise the standard of living. Over-regulation and taxation is largely responsible for outsourcing. If you pile costs onto me to do business here, I’ll take my jobs overseas to a friendlier enviroment.

“Truly” free? Please define what you mean by that.

Again, I’m not arguing that free markets will lead to cheaper goods and in some cases services. But as the goal is always an increase in wealth, you will inevitably find people who choose profit over morality/respect for human rights. This seems to become increasingly evident the larger the company becomes and the more money it makes.

Free markets are based on the concept of competition, and in a competitive environment you will always get people who are willing to “cheat” to get ahead (in this case cheat means take advantage of other people for personal gain).

Unfortunately this makes it nearly impossible for companies who wish to stay true to their moral convictions to compete. So, they eventually either follow suit, or go out of business/get bought out.

And if you really believe that companies like Nike outsource the manufacturing of their shoes to sweat shops in Asian countries because they are being taxed and not because they can pay the workers less than $1 a day for labor, you’re kidding yourself, though the absence of taxes probably doesn’t hurt either.

Is working for that $1 a day voluntary?

In many cases yes it is (sort of).

So, they need the jobs?

Of course they do, in many cases these people are literally starving and desperate. You’d be surprised what kinds of atrocities you’d be willing to put up with if you were desperate.

The companies could pay them more, but why do so when you can make more money by not doing so. Heck, if they actually cared about paying fair wages, they wouldn’t have moved their manufacturing plants out of the U.S in the first place and would pay American workers competitive wages.

If a company has gone into business to pay “fair wages,” I doubt it’ll be in business very long. And then noone is making a wage off that company. And, what’s so great about an American making a higher wage, if the gains are erased by more expensive goods? This all comes back to comparative advantage, though. But, I’m up too late, and too tired to go into this much more tonight. Take care.

Exactly! Big businesses are not concerned with the rights of their workers, nor whether or not their practices are moral, because the bottom line is…well the “bottom line”.

A free market (or any capitalistic/monetary based system) is based on competition and in order for companies to “remain in business for very long”, as you yourself stated, they cannot afford to care about their workers or the ethics of their business practices.

That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Free markets by their very nature are in direct opposition to human rights.[/quote]

Paging Orion…

91

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:

That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Free markets by their very nature are in direct opposition to human rights.[/quote]

That is obvious nonsense because all human rights can be reduced to one right, and one right only, the right to own private property.

Therefore it follows logically that capitalism is a highly moral system and every interference in the market beyond enforcing property rights is a human rights violation.

As to your next post, repeat after me:

Wages follow productivity.

Wages follow productivity.

Wages follow productivity.

Whatever your ideas are concerning evil corporations, exploited workers, comrades marching in goosestepping unison to right those wrongs,

wages follow productivity,

and it forever shall remain that way.

Meaning government cannot “protect” peoples wages, period.

92

[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Sloth wrote:
No, (truly) free markets lead to the kind of effecient production systems and cheap goods and services that raise the standard of living. Over-regulation and taxation is largely responsible for outsourcing. If you pile costs onto me to do business here, I’ll take my jobs overseas to a friendlier enviroment.

“Truly” free? Please define what you mean by that.

Again, I’m not arguing that free markets will lead to cheaper goods and in some cases services. But as the goal is always an increase in wealth, you will inevitably find people who choose profit over morality/respect for human rights. This seems to become increasingly evident the larger the company becomes and the more money it makes.

Free markets are based on the concept of competition, and in a competitive environment you will always get people who are willing to “cheat” to get ahead (in this case cheat means take advantage of other people for personal gain).

Unfortunately this makes it nearly impossible for companies who wish to stay true to their moral convictions to compete. So, they eventually either follow suit, or go out of business/get bought out.

And if you really believe that companies like Nike outsource the manufacturing of their shoes to sweat shops in Asian countries because they are being taxed and not because they can pay the workers less than $1 a day for labor, you’re kidding yourself, though the absence of taxes probably doesn’t hurt either.

Is working for that $1 a day voluntary?

In many cases yes it is (sort of).

So, they need the jobs?

Of course they do, in many cases these people are literally starving and desperate. You’d be surprised what kinds of atrocities you’d be willing to put up with if you were desperate.

The companies could pay them more, but why do so when you can make more money by not doing so. Heck, if they actually cared about paying fair wages, they wouldn’t have moved their manufacturing plants out of the U.S in the first place and would pay American workers competitive wages.

If a company has gone into business to pay “fair wages,” I doubt it’ll be in business very long. And then noone is making a wage off that company. And, what’s so great about an American making a higher wage, if the gains are erased by more expensive goods? This all comes back to comparative advantage, though. But, I’m up too late, and too tired to go into this much more tonight. Take care.

Exactly! Big businesses are not concerned with the rights of their workers, nor whether or not their practices are moral, because the bottom line is…well the “bottom line”.

A free market (or any capitalistic/monetary based system) is based on competition and in order for companies to “remain in business for very long”, as you yourself stated, they cannot afford to care about their workers or the ethics of their business practices.

That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Free markets by their very nature are in direct opposition to human rights.

Paging Orion…[/quote]

93

[quote]orion wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:

That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Free markets by their very nature are in direct opposition to human rights.

That is obvious nonsense because all human rights can be reduced to one right, and one right only, the right to own private property.

Therefore it follows logically that capitalism is a highly moral system and every interference in the market beyond enforcing property rights is a human rights violation.

As to your next post, repeat after me:

Wages follow productivity.

Wages follow productivity.

Wages follow productivity.

Whatever your ideas are concerning evil corporations, exploited workers, comrades marching in goosestepping unison to right those wrongs,

wages follow productivity,

and it forever shall remain that way.

Meaning government cannot “protect” peoples wages, period.

[/quote]

Of course, there’s always the glorious alternative. Here’s a book about how it works out in practice:

94

[quote]SkyNett wrote:
Professor X wrote:
VALERIUS wrote:
Obama won, but individuals still were injured.

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=104&sid=1511597

Why is this news? Some drunk college kids get into a fight with campus police and off duty officers working as security and this gets related to Obama?

Dude - are you kidding? Just wait until you see what Obama gets blamed for…

It has only just begun.[/quote]

But this guy posted the link as if this was really relevant. What is wrong with some people?

95

[quote]Sloth wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Exactly! Big businesses are not concerned with the rights of their workers, nor whether or not their practices are moral, because the bottom line is…well the “bottom line”.

In a legal sense, and if they’re practicing free-market principles, they are worried about not infringing upon the rights of workers. If they promise to pay a wage for 2 weeks worth of labor and don’t, though the worker fullfilled his end, that’s fraud. If a worker decides he’s had it and decides to walk out, but is prevented by hired muscle to leave. And, is in fact forced to continue work, that’s not free. As long as it’s a voluntary exchange-- labor for wage–amongst free individuals, why would you decide their agreement isn’t moral? Why is the employer taking advantage?
[/quote]

Because they are taking advantage of the fact that these people are desperate and/or starving and will pretty much put up with atrocious working conditions for practically no pay. Their hand isn’t being forced outright in many cases, but the fact that these businesses know that these people are desperate and take advantage of that by paying them shit for wages in factories where you don’t have to pay for temperature control, or paid breaks, or paid time off, workman’s comp, or any of the other benefits that we as U.S. citizens (or I’m sure Canadians as well) take for granted, makes these practices immoral (or at least lack a concern for human rights).

Many of the labor laws in the States we take for granted were passed to protect the workers from such working conditions. Fortunately for these big businesses, not every country has these labor laws and they tend to go where they don’t.

[quote]
Free markets are the greatest achievement of human rights! A pure democracy in which our interactions determine how scarce resources are allocated, prices, which technologies to persue or discard…It is comprised of free-men making choices and exchanging voluntarily. And out of that emerges an order to society not planned by some armed central government.[/quote]

Bull shit. A free market has nothing to do with democracy. We don’t vote in who owns these big companies, they don’t answer to anyone. They are more like kings than politicians. We as the people also have practically no control over how resources are allocated, prices, or technologies. Those are all controlled by an elite group of people who’s soul purpose is to get more for themselves, regardless of the costs to the rest of society.

People have been developing extremely low cost forms of energy for years, some of which could literally nearly eliminate the need for using fossil fuels as sources of energy. Unfortunately, the big energy corporations also spend billions of dollars lobbying congress to prevent these technologies from ever seeing the light of day in the states. Or, they try to develop them themselves, patent them, and then never release them into production. Why? Because it would cut into these companies profits, and they don’t want that to happen.

You’re speaking from an ideological standpoint, but things just don’t happen in that way in the real world. Free markets want you to believe that they are for the good of the people, but that’s just to pull the wool over your eyes while the poor keep getting poorer and the rich keep getting richer.

Someone mentioned redistribution of wealth earlier, well the real irony of that statement is that this is exactly what these big corporations have been doing for years now, and no one seems to have any problem with it. In 1960 the income gap between the 1/5th of the people in the richest countries and the 1/5th of the people in the poorest countries was 30/1. By 1998 it was 74/1, and it continues to climb. From 1985 to 2000 the percentage of people living on less than 1$ a day increased by 18%. The rich keep getting richer, and the poor keep getting poorer. The world’s wealth is being constantly redistributed and consolidated into the hands of the top 1% of the population.

The more trade barriers that are broken down, and the more the world market becomes a “free” market, the worse things get.

96

[quote]Professor X wrote:
But this guy posted the link as if this was really relevant. What is wrong with some people?[/quote]

You’re an intelligent man, you don’t need to ask me that.

You know as well as I do that many of our fellow Americans are ignorant dip-shits. Correction - many of our fellow human beings, from all over the world, are ignorant, fear-mongering dip-shits.

But I’m guessing that question was rhetorical anyway…

97

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:
Exactly! Big businesses are not concerned with the rights of their workers, nor whether or not their practices are moral, because the bottom line is…well the “bottom line”.

In a legal sense, and if they’re practicing free-market principles, they are worried about not infringing upon the rights of workers. If they promise to pay a wage for 2 weeks worth of labor and don’t, though the worker fullfilled his end, that’s fraud. If a worker decides he’s had it and decides to walk out, but is prevented by hired muscle to leave. And, is in fact forced to continue work, that’s not free. As long as it’s a voluntary exchange-- labor for wage–amongst free individuals, why would you decide their agreement isn’t moral? Why is the employer taking advantage?

Because they are taking advantage of the fact that these people are desperate and/or starving and will pretty much put up with atrocious working conditions for practically no pay. Their hand isn’t being forced outright in many cases, but the fact that these businesses know that these people are desperate and take advantage of that by paying them shit for wages in factories where you don’t have to pay for temperature control, or paid breaks, or paid time off, workman’s comp, or any of the other benefits that we as U.S. citizens (or I’m sure Canadians as well) take for granted, makes these practices immoral (or at least lack a concern for human rights).

[/quote]

So, according to your own description those companies give jobs to people who are desperate and starving and thereby help them feed their families?

May I ask how many thousand people you saved from starving since you seem to care a lot about those people?

98

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:

Bull shit. A free market has nothing to do with democracy. We don’t vote in who owns these big companies, they don’t answer to anyone. They are more like kings than politicians. We as the people also have practically no control over how resources are allocated, prices, or technologies. Those are all controlled by an elite group of people who’s soul purpose is to get more for themselves, regardless of the costs to the rest of society.

People have been developing extremely low cost forms of energy for years, some of which could literally nearly eliminate the need for using fossil fuels as sources of energy. Unfortunately, the big energy corporations also spend billions of dollars lobbying congress to prevent these technologies from ever seeing the light of day in the states. Or, they try to develop them themselves, patent them, and then never release them into production. Why? Because it would cut into these companies profits, and they don’t want that to happen.

[/quote]

Please tell me about these patents, because they will run out in a few years.

If what you say is true, watch me take on EXXON and get filthy rich along the way, because OMV or Royal Dutch would be very interested in putting big American firms out of business and make a killing.

99

Wow. You have exactly zero data to support this assertion. My father-in-law uses a factory in China and has remarked about how much wealthier everyone there has become, how everyone has a cell phone and other amenities now, and how much wages have gone up there. The same thing is now happening in India and southeast Asia. Free markets allow the most efficient producer of goods and services to produce them at the lowest cost to everyone else. This, in turn, allows the overall size of the economic pie to grow, as it has. The total wealth of the world is up around 60-70 trillion and it keeps increasing, benefiting those who used to live in dollar-a-day poverty. The alternative is Mugabist regimes where private property is stolen by the government. Look at those countries and tell me they’re better off, and everyone will laugh in your face.

100

[quote]orion wrote:
Sentoguy wrote:

That’s the point I’ve been trying to make. Free markets by their very nature are in direct opposition to human rights.

That is obvious nonsense because all human rights can be reduced to one right, and one right only, the right to own private property.
[/quote]

Really? And by what method of deductive reasoning did you come to this conclusion?

Utter nonsense. Logically? So I suppose that you think because something is “logical” that it makes it true huh?

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Have you ever actually worked in a factory or manufacturing facility? I have. I worked in one for 6 years. I busted my ass 40-60 hours a week, week in and week out. Sometimes not missing a single day for years at a time. My pay only went up when someone else got fired and they needed someone to take their place. Usually I wound up doing the work of two people and the best raise I ever got was 1$.

But I wasn’t the most taken advantage of by far. There were guys who had been there for 40+ years making less than $10 an hour. Guys who had been loyal to the company and were good, hard, consistent workers, always made it to work early, and almost always were willing to work over time (most likely because they hadn’t received a cost of living raise in years), and yet they were getting paid shit for their hard work.

Oh, and the company WAS making quite a bit of money. My boss and I figured out one day that we had done something like 4 million dollars (it was a fairly small business) worth of work in the past year, the company had also severely downsized the workforce and had begun buying materials overseas (because supposedly they could get them for cheaper), yet we had done more work that year than the previous year. None of us saw any wage increase as a result.

You might think that this is an isolated case, but it’s far from it. Just take a quick glance at the number of manufacturing jobs in the states over the past 20 years and you’ll notice a sharp decline. Reason? Because these companies can either get people overseas to do the jobs for cheaper pay, or they can get a machine to do the work for cheaper (and even then the remaining workers don’t wind up getting paid the money of their laid off co-workers).

Maybe for the owners of the company increase productivity always leads to increased wages, but certainly not for the people on the ground floor.

Again, NO they don’t. I’m sure you’d like to think they do, but they don’t.

You can bet your ass that all of those kids working in sweatshops making Nike shoes are busting their asses and their productivity easily matches that of workers in U.S shoe making factories (if there even are still any). But they’re still getting paid way, way less money.

You know not of what you speak.

To an extent it can. The lifting of all of these trade regulations is one way that the government has allowed these corporations the ability to exploit these foreign workers. The trade regulations were designed to “protect” people’s wages and prevent such practices from being engaged in.