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Tom Perez B/K/M? This poll is closed. |
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MooselanderII posted:How much better should the work be for these exploited people, would you say? How improved should these jobs be? It doesn't matter. Better jobs will make the workers better off. Unemployment won't. Majorian posted:Psssst - the Nordic model is what most of us are advocating here, at least as a stopgap. It's certainly what Bernie Sanders has advocated. So why all the kvetching at Nanci Pelosi for accurately describing the Democratic Party as capitalist? Kilroy posted:No, that does not follow. You are just as terrible at economics as you are at politics and posting. A trifecta of poo poo. gently caress off. I don't know if you're aware, but the economic narrative you've been pushing is deeply libertarian. You've argued that emancipated slaves just need the government to get out of the way, and their agency and potency will provide. And now you're arguing that it doesn't matter if manufacturing jobs move from abroad back to the US, the market will certainly provide for the unemployed.
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May 13, 2017 23:22
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JeffersonClay posted:So why all the kvetching at Nanci Pelosi for accurately describing the Democratic Party as capitalist? Because it seemed like an uncritical endorsement of capitalism, signaling that there would be no push for economic justice from Democratic leadership. Particularly since she followed it up with, "That's the way it is," which suggests that she will stand for no dissent. It would be like saying, "The U.S. is a racist country, and that's the way it is." Well, yeah, it's accurate, but it also sounds way too satisfied with a very bad status quo.
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May 13, 2017 23:33
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Is there much discussion about how if the Democrats retake the house, we'd be looking at President Pelosi instead of President Ryan? Edit: I feel like the prospect of a female Democrat assuming the office of the presidency would really increase turnout. Accretionist fucked around with this message at 23:45 on May 13, 2017 |
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May 13, 2017 23:38
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JeffersonClay posted:So why all the kvetching at Nanci Pelosi for accurately describing the Democratic Party as capitalist? Because she's framing it as being opposed to "socialism" aka Bernie-style Swedish capitalism, due to the framing of the words "socialist" and "capitalist" we have in this country. It's extremely obvious.
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May 13, 2017 23:55
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JeffersonClay posted:Actually my argument is that narratives where sweatshops are closed and the jobs come back to the US must imply unemployment for the former sweatshop workers, which makes them worse off. Those narratives are very similar to the narrative we've seen in this thread, where strict enforcement of bans on hiring undocumented labor will result in those jobs being available for US citizens, as well as the voluntary self-deportation of the undocumented workers. Those undocumented workers won't be better off if they're forced into unemployment, which will force them to return to their home country. Exploitative work is better than no work at all. The only way to help people who are exploited is to get them better work. Eliminating the exploitative work isn't sufficient. What about a narrative where sweatshops must be closed and replaced with well regulated industries that observe human rights? You must be operating on some serious liberal ideology if you think unemployment is the only alternative to sweatshops. Stop apologizing for brutal, grinding exploitation. The Left should be at war with sweatshop conditions.
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May 13, 2017 23:58
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JC would you apologize for sweatshops in The United States? What's the difference?
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May 14, 2017 00:01
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Accretionist posted:Is there much discussion about how if the Democrats retake the house, we'd be looking at President Pelosi instead of President Ryan? It's not a bad point at all, although one also has to consider how much that could boost GOP turnout too. God knows they hasaaate Pelosi.
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May 14, 2017 00:02
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Majorian posted:It's not a bad point at all, although one also has to consider how much that could boost GOP turnout too. God knows they hasaaate Pelosi. I think at this point, it's fairly safe to say nothing really boosts or depresses Republican turnout. They are extremely reliable voters.
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May 14, 2017 00:07
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JeffersonClay posted:I don't know if you're aware, but the economic narrative you've been pushing is deeply libertarian. You've argued that emancipated slaves just need the government to get out of the way, and their agency and potency will provide. And now you're arguing that it doesn't matter if manufacturing jobs move from abroad back to the US, the market will certainly provide for the unemployed. Kilroy posted:Note that buried in JC's reasoning is an assumption that if you emancipate slaves without giving them something else to do, they'll just wither away and die. He grants them neither agency nor potency. It probably never even crossed his mind that, while it's not really ideal, people are better off being left alone to find their own way than they are being made into loving slaves. So it's a pretty short hop from that to "you need to support slavery and slavers unless you're willing and able to create an entire alternative economic engine out of whole cloth and overnight". You're the one creating a dichotomy between trading with nations that have brutal labor practices (and also allowing our companies to set up shop there), or leaving the workers there to starve. I don't think that in the latter case the people would just starve - more likely those regimes would clean up their act so they can engage in free(er) trade with richer nations. In the case of the more brutal and sadistic regimes that do not, I would be strongly in favor of covert and overt support for revolutionary movements there as well. What I do not support is just turning a blind eye to oppression in the hopes that free trade and capitalism will eventually just magically improve these regimes and make their people better off. I don't think we'd see any improvement in DPRK, for example, if we started buying poo poo made at their death camps, got it? Point being, even under your false dichotomy where we choose between free trade with sweatshops, or just leaving the workers there completely to their own devices, to overthrow their oppressors without aid from us, I still choose the latter. I think there are other, still better options, but even your false dichotomy taken at face value is unconvincing. In effect you are supporting the status quo because you've removed one of the most potent weapons we have against slavers and sweatshops (short of literal weapons i.e. military action): not loving doing business with them.
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May 14, 2017 00:13
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JeffersonClay posted:Neither sweatshop workers nor undocumented immigrants are actually slaves, though. They volunteer for the work they do because the alternatives are all worse. This was not true of chattel slaves in the antebellum US. There's no underground railroad leading out of the US so undocumented immigrants can leave without being caught. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants in the US are, by any measure of the term, slaves. These are people who don't have any means of leaving the country, either because they have no means of escaping their captors/"employers" or because they're isolated enough (physically, socially, and linguistically) that they don't know how to leave or even if they can safely leave - and that's assuming that they actually want to leave the country, which isn't the case for most people who do manage to leave indentured servitude in America. And that's not even getting into the hair-splitting distinction between domestic "sweatshop workers" and prison laborers - remember, it's not illegal slavery if it's imposed as punishment for a crime.
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May 14, 2017 00:16
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Put another way, the "deeply libertarian" narrative I'm pushing is that it beats the hell out of slavery. That's it. Really provocative stuff I'm sure, for some 
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May 14, 2017 00:16
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JeffersonClay posted:It doesn't matter. Better jobs will make the workers better off. Unemployment won't. But you've also posited that improved condition regulations could kill their jobs/blow up the price of goods. So yes, it does matter. Stop being a spineless weasel and lay to rest how much improvement to these jobs you would accept.
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May 14, 2017 01:51
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SSNeoman posted:How about y'all motherfuckers actually engage with his argument instead of trying to find who owns a plantation or a chinese sweatshop? Suppose we close down all sweatshops tomorrow. Now what? The correct solution is to simply require that domestic businesses only do business with foreign businesses that maintain certain labor standards. I'm aware this would be difficult to enforce (given how convoluted supply chains often are), but it's still better than nothing for us to make a bigger attempt to enforce such standards. This will obviously probably result in a non-zero number of factories closing and relocating, but the work still needs to be done regardless so the ex-workers would just be replaced with better paid workers elsewhere (or the work would be automated, though I imagine that wouldn't be true for most industries*). JC's posts would be better received if he framed things in terms of "this is how I think we should address the problem of sweatshop (or otherwise poorly compensated/regulated) labor" instead of having 95% of his posts just be contrarian towards people complaining about something that is obviously bad. I gave an analogy earlier about how it's only natural to assume someone is ideologically opposed to something if almost everything they say is contrarian towards people in favor of it. To use the slavery example, it's only natural to assume that someone who spends most of their effort saying "but have you considered the downsides" towards people talking about emancipation is, in fact, against emancipation. This isn't to say that there aren't problems which should be considered, but if someone really cared about those issues they'd frame things more like "I agree sweatshops/slavery is a problem and think we should do X to help deal with the aftermath of ending it." Also, it is very natural to be suspicious towards people who do nothing but hem-haw about the potential downsides to change, because white moderates have taken this approach throughout modern history. You can still discuss things with nuance, but it isn't productive to do almost nothing but act contrarian towards advocates against some obvious injustice. *And even if it was, it's better to capture and redistribute the profits from automation than it is to allow terrible wages just to temporarily stave off automation
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May 14, 2017 02:01
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Ytlaya posted:
Basically this, he just inserts himself into these discussions about change and acts like the mom from that dumb Adam Sandler "They're all going to laugh at you!" bit.
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May 14, 2017 02:11
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SSNeoman posted:No that is not his argument. His argument is that even if you were to remove sweatshops, if you do not have proper worker protections in place, we're just gonna have sweatshop-esque facilities pop up right afterwards. And since people still need money and capital, they'll continue to be exploited. That was what happened with sharecropping and that's what will happen with sweatshops. Another thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that, even though it's correct that just removing all sweatshops blindly would be a problem, there is virtually zero risk of that actually happening so it is strange to expend effort pushing back against it. This is especially true when the topic in question is a genuine serious problem. It's like saying "well, actually, if you removed the police it would be bad" to people who say "gently caress the police" in response to police shootings To use another analogy, it's sort of like if people were discussing the topic of racism and someone did nothing but point out when flawed statistics were being used in anti-racism arguments (though that's actually better than what JC is doing here, since his arguments are usually along the lines of asking questions/casting doubt rather than pointing out clear mistakes). Like, sure, they might not be wrong, but what kind of rear end in a top hat does nothing but argue against people who are concerned about an obvious Real Bad Thing? Like, there are ways to argue with or correct others while making it clear that your main goal is still to address the problem in question.
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May 14, 2017 02:27
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But think how much cotton shirts would cost if we had to pay the slaves. Why do you hate poor kids Mr Lincoln. E: for this to work, imagine I'm also advocating throwing the parents of those kids out of work to replace them with a more economically efficient slave labor force. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 02:52 on May 14, 2017 |
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May 14, 2017 02:49
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Jc in the confederate state: well slavery is bad, but think about the possiblity of unemployment
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May 14, 2017 03:13
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Very interesting discussion. I recently made a thread for discussion about the effects of Globalization and Trade and would be interested to hear peoples comments there as well. Also the sweatshop talk reminds of a great article: The Dark Side of Dubai.
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May 14, 2017 04:02
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Majorian posted:Because it seemed like an uncritical endorsement of capitalism, signaling that there would be no push for economic justice from Democratic leadership. Particularly since she followed it up with, "That's the way it is," which suggests that she will stand for no dissent. She followed it up with calling for the dismantling of shareholder capitalism for stakeholder capitalism, focusing on disassociating corporate valuation from quarterly returns robert reich endorsed bernie and supports this
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May 14, 2017 04:40
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:She followed it up with calling for the dismantling of shareholder capitalism for stakeholder capitalism, focusing on disassociating corporate valuation from quarterly returns Yeah, but the quote that people heard and that got replayed was "We're capitalist, and that's the way it is." Just as the quote that people heard from Hillary was "We're going to put a lot of coal workers out of business." No one gives a poo poo what their broader, deeper point was. They hosed up. e: Glenn Greenwald may be a douchebag useful idiot, but he bullseyes the problem with Pelosi's comment: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/826766194908733441 Establishment Dems never seem to burn even a quarter of the calories that they expend telling leftists, "NO, YOU'RE WRONG, THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE ABOUT." This was a terrible, terrible message for her to send a constituency that her party needs if it's going to survive, only a couple months after it got shellacked in what should have been an easy election. Majorian fucked around with this message at 07:57 on May 14, 2017 |
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May 14, 2017 07:51
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:She followed it up with calling for the dismantling of shareholder capitalism for stakeholder capitalism, focusing on disassociating corporate valuation from quarterly returns It truly is amazing how far Robert Reich has come. The Reich of the 90s would have never said those things. This is one of the differences between Democrats and Republicans, at least Democrats can be persuaded to adopt better policies whereas everything Republicans do is in bad faith. If Democrats can get behind a strong leader (as president) that can take on advanced capitalism, I think Pelosi could be convinced to get behind it too. To be fair to her, she is sorta right that we are capitalists and I don't really expect her to think outside of it, which is already extremely hard for most people anyway (including myself). Confounding Factor fucked around with this message at 08:04 on May 14, 2017 |
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May 14, 2017 07:59
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Majorian posted:Yeah, but the quote that people heard and that got replayed was "We're capitalist, and that's the way it is." Just as the quote that people heard from Hillary was "We're going to put a lot of coal workers out of business." No one gives a poo poo what their broader, deeper point was. They hosed up. The fact is that the reason we were able to have "stakeholder capitalism" in the first place was poo poo like stronger unions and labor protections and all the rest, socialist stuff. Things that Democrats have, at best, sat on their fat asses while all that was dismantled, and at worst gleefully participated in eviscerating. All in the name of the free market. The whole "you dumb leftists didn't listen to the rest of what she said" bullshit act that WJ is pulling (and many others did when that video came out) is extremely disingenuous. Anyone who offers that up either hasn't listened themselves as well, or is counting on the reader to take their word for it and be too lazy to go back and have a listen (or be too stupid to understand what she's talking about and read between the lines).
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May 14, 2017 08:29
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Confounding Factor posted:It truly is amazing how far Robert Reich has come. The Reich of the 90s would have never said those things. This is one of the differences between Democrats and Republicans, at least Democrats can be persuaded to adopt better policies whereas everything Republicans do is in bad faith. Well, yeah, but there's a better way of addressing that fact than the way she did. Even if it didn't reflect what she truly believes, her response fell perfectly in line with how centrist Dems have treated the left for entirely too long. Saying something like, "Yeah, well, we're living under a capitalist system for the moment, and there are problems with that, but we're going to work to make them better, bit by bit" would have been a perfectly fine answer IMO. And the thing is, I like Pelosi overall. She's a good opposition leader in the House. I wish she wouldn't make dumb mistakes like this, because they do more harm than I think she realizes.
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May 14, 2017 08:45
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JeffersonClay posted:It doesn't matter. Better jobs will make the workers better off. Unemployment won't. Because you're dealing with idiots unfortunately. They literally don't even know what political system they are advocating for they are so ill educated. Sad!!!
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May 14, 2017 09:21
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The Kingfish posted:What about a narrative where sweatshops must be closed and replaced with well regulated industries that observe human rights? You must be operating on some serious liberal ideology if you think unemployment is the only alternative to sweatshops. Stop apologizing for brutal, grinding exploitation. The Left should be at war with sweatshop conditions. The left needs to be on the side of workers which means dealing with the reality that "well regulated industry" and the capital it requires doesn't magic into existence. The history of its development has always included lovely factories Amd that's been true for the first world and socialist industrialization as well. Until altruism can fuel multi trillion dollar transfers of wealth trade is the way for poor countries to get capital to within their borders and until they actually have well regulated industry labor may be their best export.
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May 14, 2017 14:58
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TROIKA CURES GREEK posted:Ah yes it's a real mystery why people still favor capitalism, can't they see the glories of socialism?? No?? Then they need to come down to Venezuela, it's a fuckin' workers paradise down here!! Or heck if you don't want to go that far there's other places with working socialism. Why you could go to ummm ... umm. Well if you had a time machine you could go back to ... hmmmm. Well I'm sure it just hasn't worked ever because capitalists are big meanies! TROIKA CURES GREEK posted:Like if you ignore or can't tell the differences between the nordic model capitalism and late 1800/early 1900 robber baron capitalism that's just you being intellectually vacuous. The nordics and Venezuela can both be classified as socialist(and off course both can be classified as capitalistic). Why are you making that difference in classification?
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May 14, 2017 15:38
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asdf32 posted:The left needs to be on the side of workers which means dealing with the reality that "well regulated industry" and the capital it requires doesn't magic into existence. The history of its development has always included lovely factories Amd that's been true for the first world and socialist industrialization as well. Actually that's horsehsit. The best way for a poor country to advance is to engage in central planning and industrialize from there. Certainly helped ROK.
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May 14, 2017 16:15
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asdf32 posted:The left needs to be on the side of workers which means dealing with the reality that "well regulated industry" and the capital it requires doesn't magic into existence. The history of its development has always included lovely factories Amd that's been true for the first world and socialist industrialization as well. Well regulated industry and human rights don't just magic into existence. they result from decades of labor struggle. The left should hijack the state, nationalize the financial system, and subsidize third world labor movements.
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May 14, 2017 16:44
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Majorian posted:Because it seemed like an uncritical endorsement of capitalism, signaling that there would be no push for economic justice from Democratic leadership. Particularly since she followed it up with, "That's the way it is," which suggests that she will stand for no dissent. I mean if this whole "Pelosi is the devil" thing is a tone argument...
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May 14, 2017 17:19
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:I mean if this whole "Pelosi is the devil" thing is a tone argument... No, that one is something you've invented. What people actually are saying is that Pelosi, like the rest of the Dem etablishment, is bad at politics and super out of touch, which gets interpreted as "Pelosi is the devil" by people who lack the ability to see faults in their political leaders.
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May 14, 2017 17:28
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Pelosi sucks rear end. Lol at being backed into making qualifiers like "Well I don't think she's literally Satan" by retards like WJ.
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May 14, 2017 17:47
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JeffersonClay posted:So why all the kvetching at Nanci Pelosi for accurately describing the Democratic Party as capitalist? Because she's not just a passive observer, she's the god drat house minority leader. She can describe the Democratic Party as the party of economic justice, and by doing so she can shape the narrative of the party itself. She is actively choosing to preserve a status quo that is obviously unsustainable and actively destroying her own party.
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May 14, 2017 17:55
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Except Sanders is capitalist too?
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May 14, 2017 18:17
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:Except Sanders is capitalist too? To be for capitalism is to believe it can self regulate, and thus that trade barriers need to be torn down, regulation needs to be scrapped and labor force needs to be more "flexible" (right to work etc). To be against capitalism in that sense is to distrust capital interests. It's to use state powers to regulate capital and create stronger labor protections. IE social democracy. One is moving slowly towards full liberalism, the other towards socialism. This was the social democratic motto after all, to slowly transform capitalist society into a socialist one via slow methodical regulations. (off course they failed to do so, but that's another story.)
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May 14, 2017 18:30
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:Except Sanders is capitalist too? Only in the loosest sense of the word, ie: he believes in some level of a market economy, as opposed to a command economy, and I think you know that. One can accept that capitalism is the reality in the United States, and yet still show determination to put a better system in place. Now please, stop being deliberately obtuse.
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May 14, 2017 18:32
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Majorian posted:Only in the loosest sense of the word, ie: he believes in some level of a market economy, as opposed to a command economy, and I think you know that. One can accept that capitalism is the reality in the United States, and yet still show determination to put a better system in place. Now please, stop being deliberately obtuse. Eh, there's more to capitalism than just having a market (market socialism, which is different than what you see in the Nnordic social democracies, is a thing). Stuff like corporations being owned by capitalists (as opposed to their own workers), for example. Different types of socialism either do or don't use command economies. I think that choosing preserve the current economic power relationships (people free to own and reap the benefits of capital) is a better way to define capitalism than just "having markets", since it's possible for non-capitalist systems to also have markets.
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May 14, 2017 18:54
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Ytlaya posted:Eh, there's more to capitalism than just having a market (market socialism, which is different than what you see in the Nnordic social democracies, is a thing). Stuff like corporations being owned by capitalists (as opposed to their own workers), for example. Different types of socialism either do or don't use command economies. Yeah, but that's what WJ means when he calls Sanders a capitalist: "Oh, he's not a Communist? Then he's a capitalist, hurrrr!  "
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May 14, 2017 19:00
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Majorian posted:Yeah, but that's what WJ means when he calls Sanders a capitalist: "Oh, he's not a Communist? Then he's a capitalist, hurrrr! no, I mean in the "private ownership of capital" sense, which is the like most important thing
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May 14, 2017 19:28
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:no, I mean in the "private ownership of capital" sense, which is the like most important thing No, not in the context of why people are criticizing Pelosi, it absolutely isn't. Stop trying to wiggle your way out of getting called out for your terrible opinion.
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May 14, 2017 19:29
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WhiskeyJuvenile posted:Except Sanders is capitalist too? This may be news to you, but some people are able to support a politician without mindlessly agreeing with all of their opinions.
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May 14, 2017 19:36
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