|
As everyone else has mentioned your post is all over the place and doesn't clearly answer any questions. But to try to answer in good faith, I think the problem is that for a lot of this you seem to have these unrealistic ideological tenets that you hold to without having thought them through. Take your criticism of democracy and collective ownership, where in a single paragraph you try to do away with both concepts. You state that it can't work because "If all workers owned factories together, endless meetings and deliberations would be required to make any decisions about the use of capital and production." The problem is, we know this isn't true because there are plenty of collectively owned businesses and strange as it may seem, they decided to set up their businesses in a manner which wasn't really obviously stupid. Take the John Lewis Partnership in the UK where I'm from. They're an employee owned co-operative with tens of thousands of employees and they work just fine. I also think you're either mistaken on your economic history or getting confused between laissez-faire economic policies and a welfare state. The USA and other developing countries were notably protectionist during their period of industrialisation and growth. For over a century from 1816 to 1945 the USA had one of the highest tariff rates on manufacturing imports in the world, which combined with the natural protection due to high shipping costs from the rest of the world meant that the USA's developing industry's were perhaps the most protected of any country. Not just the USA either. For instance the UK during its period of development made plenty of use of export subsidies, import tariff rebates on inputs used for exporting, etc that we saw being used post WW2 in the East Asian countries. In fact you seem to miss the point communal and socialist policies. When you bring up a person in starving in Africa who has a loaf of break the only two choices you think are available are leaving him with the bread or taking some of his bread. You don't see that the kind of policies you are railing against do not see either choice as acceptable, with the option of "Tax some rich fucker a bit more money and pay for this poor starving guy to have two loaves of bread and some chicken, some clean water, healthcare and education for his children" being the preferred go to option. The only reason the poor starving man ends up worse in your example is because you misrepresent what people want and how they would go about it. Generally your entire approach reminds me of Adam Smith's land of barter, an ideological conceit based on no knowledge of the facts which falls apart as soon as you look at it.
|
#
¿
Oct 9, 2015 17:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:18 |
|
|
jrodefeld posted:There are very few people today who actually advocate State ownership over the means of production. Anyone who has studied the matter for five minutes could tell you about the disaster of communism. Laissez-faire is not the opposite of welfare state. Laissez-faire is an economy where the market is free from regulations, tariffs, subsidies, etc. It's also not the systems they had at the time. During their years of development the now industrialised countries did not have a laissez-faire policy because almost all of them with a few exceptions like the Netherlands put in place trade restrictions to make imports uncompetitive and build up their own industries. For instance in their 1816 tariff law almost all manufactured goods were subject to tariffs of around 35%,. The tariff of 1832 (The Tariff of abominations" raised this even higher, adding high tariffs to raw materials or low value-added manufacturers (liquor, fur, wool, help, etc). The tariff law of 1832 did a little bit to alleviate this, but not much, with only small cuts and still high protection of 40%+ for wooled manufactured goods and clothing. This actually caused a crisis (The Nullifcation Crisis) with South Carolina refusing to accept the law. Due to this a year later a bill was passed which didn't do much up front but over the decade or so would gradually bring down the tariffs to about 20-25%. Of course as soon as the 10 years were up a new tariff (The Black Tariff) was introduced and raised the tariffs back to what they were before, around 40%. Due to the different interest of the protectionist Nroth and free Trade South, this was a major issue which helepd bring about the war. in case you don't know the Nroth won and there were very high tariffs until the Underwood tariff of 1913 which loosened things a bit but kept the average tariff on manufactured goods still at around 25%. This quickly changed though with World War 1 right around the corner which saw a tariff increase to pay for it. Up Until 1945 the USA was one of the most protectionist if not THE most protectionist countries around. That's not even mentioning other matters like the government support of agricultural research (Morill Act of 1862) and the establishment of government research institutes to help the private sector like the Bureau of Animal Industry and Bureau of Agricultural Chemistry or the government giving hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of land to railway companies to fund and aid them in expanding West. Similar things went on in most countries people randomly assume were Laissez-faire. The truth is, they had strong protectionist policies to allow them to build up their industries and only became more free-trade later one once they were fully developed and had strong established industries that could compete with others.. quote:Second, and this should be quite obvious, having a legal right to property which you appropriated first from the state of nature of course does not keep any decent person from sharing the property which they have acquired. So if these guys:  Think that these guys:  Have too much money and are not sharing it in the manner they should, then they're free to disassociate from them? And I can support them by disassociated from them too? Can you see why people maybe think this will not work and is not a good system?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2015 11:16
|
|
|
Alhazred posted:I would seriously be loving impressed if you can point to a single piece of American property that wasn't stolen. I'm guessing his argument will be they held the land in common rather than as glorious private property they didn't actually claim it, so sucks to be them.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 10, 2015 16:19
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:The issue I am trying to get across is that if you took a situation where humans are suffering in abject poverty and starvation in a third world African country and your solution is simply for them to implement redistributive policies that take the wealth of the dictator and the (relatively speaking) "wealthy" and divided that money between the poor people of that country, you would have hardly helped anyone. Redistributing wealth in a tiny pie where there is not much wealth to go around skirts the real issue. Yes, if tyrants run your government and hoard all the wealth that does exist, they can seem relatively comfortable. And there is no question they ought to be ousted from power and are clearly exploiters of the poor and everyone else who isn't a member of the dictator's regime. Okay, you don't seem to have realised the problem I was drawing up that the premise and conclusions to your argument are simplistic strawmen that do not represent either reality or the views of 'left-progressives'. The problem I pointed out with your Africa example was that it was a simple binary choice between letting someone in starvation keep their loaf of bread or taking some of it to share was that neither option is what the "left-progressives" would be suggesting in that instance and the idea would be to get the starving person MORE commodities so they weren't in such dire needs, not to leave them the same amount or take from them. Although you've taken this on board a little in your response, we're now offered a ternary choice where the third option still doesn't represent the views of socialists, social democrats, etc. I could have gone into it more on my end (although I did think that if you were going to criticise other people's positions you'd be aware of what they are first) so I'll hold up my hands here say "my bad" and elaborate for you on what the actual positions being put forth as a counter to your own are. There are a variety of different left-wing views about how different developing economies should work. Although there are differing opinions, they all fit within a certain framework that rules out the possibility of a free-market approach being beneficial. They aren't based on simply "Let's redistribute because it's right" they're focused on "let's have a more regulated and redistributive economy because it's fairer and helps develop countries" Let's look at a few. Ha Joon Chang, a popular introductory figure to left-wing economics, who is a Professor of Political Economy of Development at Cambridge University has looked at the economic set-up of modern developed countries while they were developing and concluded Ha Joon Chang posted:"that the developed countries did not get where they are now through the [free market] policies and institutions they they recommend to developing countries today. Most of them actively used 'bad' trade and industrial policies, such as infant industry protection and export subsidies - practices that these days are actively frowned upon, if not actively banned by the WTO (World Trade Organisation" (Kicking Away The Ladder). His view is basically an expansion of the one I out forward in my post here. The crux of it is that your claimed are an economic urban myth that you have bought into without looking at the evidence, that rather than countries being built up by relying on laissez-faire policies they were actually heavily protectionist. In the post I've linked to I've given examples of the USA throughout the 19th and early 20th century but the same applies to other countries like France and the UK and if you're interested or dispute this then I'm happy to elaborate on this. In turn, this gives us a good indication that these policies are the kind of ones that countries should be using to develop now - even though the larger countries are trying to push free trade on them. From historical precedent, which you attempt to cite with no evidence, the government has a big role to play in ensuring the industrialisation and development of a country and claims of it being based on laissez-faire policies are simply false. This ties into the position of academics like Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and Nobel Prize Winner, who in books like Making Globalisation Work and Globalization and Its Discontents who has pushed similar ideas: Stiglitz posted:"If developing countries are to enter into such industries, those industries have to be protected until they are strong enough to compete with established international giants. Tariffs result in higher prices - high enough that the new industries can cover costs, invest in research, and make the other investments that they need in order to eventually be able to stand on their own feet. This is called the "infant industry argument" for protection. It was a popular idea in Japan in the 1960s - and in the United States and Europe in the nineteenth century. Most successful countries did in fact develop behind protectionist barriers: critics of globalisation accuse countries like Japan and the United States, which have climbed the ladder of development, of wanting to kick the ladder away so that others can't follow." (Making Globalisation Work) Tariffs and dumping duties and other protectionist measures are vital tools that have been used by the now developed countries to get where they are. Disallowing these powerful strategies from the countries today is simply harmful to their ability to develop. This isn't to say that free trade can be harmful in every instance, but it is specifically trying to develop and industrialise a country and the areas where it is useful rarely see free trade happening. Agriculture is a key example of where free trade would be helpful for global development but free trade in agriculture is not in or itself going to industrialise a country and the areas needed for development require protectionism.For the developing countries the current system of free trade in some areas and protectionism in others is set up to be the exact reverse of what is needed. Stiglitz points out a good example where in 2005 the US opened itself up to 97% types of goods when produced in the least developed countries. The 3% which was kept protected was things like Bangladeshi textiles and apparel which they do produce at low cost and would want to sell in a fair market to undercut the US and other developed nations, while the 97% that was opened up was things like jet engines and all manner of other things what are beyond the capacity of the developing nations to produce. Simply put it was a free trade agreement which did the complete opposite of what the developing countries wanted, giving free trade in the areas it didn't matter and where they specifically didn't want it and keeping protectionism in places where they needed free trade. Free trade can be helpful, but only in some situations and understanding why involves needing a good knowledge of the processes involved. The fact that you try and take the example of Hong Kong (which actually isn't that free trade seeing as the government owns ALL the land and the companies are merely renters) and assume that the system which applies to a small city-state trading post with unique geographical and historical advantages will apply to all nations everywhere without any critical analysis just shows your comparisons are fairly superficial.. Economists are typically split into three camps in terms of the contributors to national capital accumulation. There are those who believe geography is the primary factor, those who believe market integration is the primary factor and those who believe institutions are the primary factor. I think Rodrik, Subramanian and Trebbi's fairly well known 2004 study gives a good overview of these positions in the introduction. You'll also note that the findings of the study give primacy to institutions as the key driver of growth, with some support from geography and with free trade policies actually having a negative effect on growth. And as we're talking about development and inequality, I would also suggest you have a look at Branko Milanovic's work and especially his conception of the most relevant type of inequality (simultaneously looking at the inequality internal to a state and in comparison to other states) and how the current neo-liberal more free trade orthodoxy has resulted in record highest of equality that may be decreasing soon - but only because of the effect of the non-free trade economies of India and, even more so, China. Basically your idea that the third alternative is simply "Redistribute all the money" is wrong. Frankly redistribution is needed as Piketty made such a big splash about in Capital in the 21st Century but equality is not the sole concern. A non-laissez faire approach is being pushed by other specifically because there is historical evidence and modern academic studies and logic which show it is more effective and allows countries to develop effectively in a manner that free market policies do not. The co-operative aspect of your response I'm going to spend less time on as I'm not really willing to give you the benefit of the doubt there about how you've missed the point. Your position was "A problem with "democracy" and all forms of collective ownership either of the factory or of public spaces is that use for such resources is heavily constrained by the need for consensus to act. If all workers owned factories together, endless meetings and deliberations would be required to make any decisions about the use of capital and production. Furthermore, conflict is enhanced rather than reduced. Who would REALLY have the final say on the use of collectively owned property?" Now you don't agree with by rebuttal because it is anecdotal, but the problem is you agree with the basis of my anecdote (and in having to do so have had to specify that you're only talking about if the entire economy was run on a co-operative basis) and in support of your view you have nothing, not even an anecdote or any other scrap of evidence. I don't usually use anecdotes, but the reason I did here is because it was just one of any number of examples which showed your point of view is wrong. We know Co-operatives are not doomed to failure because they exist now and the circumstances you describe don't happen. You now apparently believe that in a fully co-operative economy everything we know about how co-operatives work would suddenly changed for no given reason and all co-operatives would suddenly change to work in an inefficient and obviously stupid manner? Why would anyone possibly think this would occur? You've offered no rationale and it seems to be based on everyone suddenly getting very very stupid and changing the basis of how these companies are run for absolutely no reason. Hence why I say you're holding onto unsupported ideological narratives; you make these wild sweeping statements that at face value seem absurd and do nothing to back them up. Democratising the workplace does not mean democratising every single decision. Having a once yearly meeting to elect directors of the company, decide on a way forward and cast votes on important workplace matters democratises the workplace. Staying half an hour late once a month to have monthly meetings of each office/factory to discuss and deal with local issues democratises the work place. It does not involve democratic unity of every single mundane decision and trying to frame it as that just shows how irrelevant your comparison is. The nature of a co-operative is not that you have "to achieve democratic consensus for every single business decision" so your point is irrelevant. Hell, a lot of good business will spend this kind of time with employees anyway. The Human Relations school of business management thought (used to good effect in Japan) specifically focuses on working with and engaging with employees in the nature of running the business and many non-co-operative business will spend similar amounts of time discussing workplace issues even if automatic primacy isn't given to majority opinions of the workforce. Not to mention the issues which come with a lack of democracy in the workplace, where strikes are a notable drain on efficient. You also don't seem to have responded at all to my pointing out how countries did not grow by lassie faire economics, which is what you had claimed.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 11, 2015 13:58
|
|
|
Caros posted:This is a really good post by the way and deserves to be on every page until it is addressed. D'awwwwwww, shucks.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2015 09:53
|
|
|
Nintendo Kid posted:His words don't support that though. The only sensible reading is that he's bitching we don't give money to people who are somehow not in any state, which is approximately no people outside people currently on transoceanic air/sea transport. No point to give him more credit and assume he means something that at least makes sense! "Why is it that leftists seem to confine their redistributive goals to within the borders of existing States? Why shouldn't all the richer countries be forced to give up any of their "excess" wealth and transfer it to poorer countries until everyone on the planet is materially equal" No, Nolanar's right. Jrodefeld's clearly taking the position of "Well you come from a rich country, why don't you give some of that money to poor starving people in the Congo?" He's trying to say that 'leftists' don't want to redistribute money outside of the state they're in. Except he wrong because: a) They often do want to transfer wealth from one country to another to help those in need and he's completely mischaracterising the general opinion of leftists. b) Not all leftists are after complete and total material equality and many (most?) are instead after a moderation of the excesses of Capitalism rather than their complete removal. c) Those who do want complete equality wouldn't want to do it in the way jrodefeld presents, which is the stupidest way possible where the richer countries are impoverished until everyone is on the same level. Instead the goal would be spending money of development, infrastructure, industrialisation, etc to bring the poor countries up to the level of the richer ones.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2015 17:17
|
|
|
Cemetry Gator posted:When you say I can do what I want to my own body as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, what does that mean? No you see it's actually only the by-product of the evil government which makes heroin bad. Pure heroin used to be sold in shops and the only side-effects were constipation and addition. It's regulating and outlawing heroin which has caused it to be sold by a criminal element who adulterate it, not to mention the criminalisation issue that causes. People are poisoned and then imprisoned, harming the poorest people in society in multiple ways due to the regulations imposed by government. In a Libertarian society people would have all manner of drugs available to them and would naturally gravitate towards high quality low consequence ones, thus freeing them from the cycle of poisonous modern day street heroin. Some people may make bad decisions but that can't be stopped and they'll suffer the natural consequences of making poor choices as a natural consequence of their actions without any need for outside interference in the actions of the marketplace. The above is a perfect Libertarian argument in that the first paragraph is roughly true but then the second paragraph is a thoughtless and poorly thought out ideal that only sounds good on a superficial level when it's not thought through. team overhead smash fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Oct 12, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2015 18:16
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I feel like the centrist approach is being excluded here. Why couldn't private industry or a state agency provide users with purestrain heroin? They could and would probably do a far better job, especially a state agency where the effects of addiction and needing another high no matter how much it costs would be treated as a health issue to be addressed rather than a great advantage in boosting sale regardless of the poverty it inflicts (and the crime from low income addicts needing to get another fix). Hence how it is a unreasonable Libertarian stance dressed up as being reasonable. The current framework for dealing with drug addicts is undoubtedly bad, but that doesn't necessarily make a superficially analysed Libertarian option the right choice.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2015 18:56
|
|
|
Dr. Stab posted:I don't know. You could derive a set of morals from the idea that everyone has a right to be happy. It makes a lot more sense than picking some secondary thing like property and then also asserting that this maximizes happiness. Although better than property, I don't think maximising happiness (or any other one common principle) can by itself act as a single guideline. I mean you could conceivably really gently caress over certain subsections of society on the basis of maximising happiness amongst the majority. I think a focus on a host of different collective and individual rights and freedoms (E.g. having the right to freedom of speech even if what you're saying makes the majority of people who hear it annoyed and causes a net loss in happiness) is the way to go and I don't think there's any one tenet that we can say encompasses them all. When those rights come into conflict they'll have to be adjudicated on a consistent but dynamic and responsive basis (e.g. if someone commits a crime then they can lose their freedom by being imprisoned with what qualifies as a crime and the amount of time they lose their freedom being decided based on individual assessments of whether laws have been broken).
|
|
#
¿
Oct 12, 2015 20:20
|
|
|
Boo, as you're replying chronologically I can see you have ignored my response to you which I put a bit of thought into but you are willing to respond and get in a spat with "say it to my face, tuff guy" type responses to other posters.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2015 11:15
|
|
|
Undead Hippo posted:Still though, lets take your notion at face value. According to the ILO the global average wage is $1480 per month. A straight redistribution of wealth would put everybody on this income. Now notably, that still represents a substantial *increase* in salary for anybody working for US minimum wage. It would also end relative and absolute poverty as everyone would have equalised wealth which would put them above the $1-$2 absolute poverty limit.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2015 11:37
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:Let's get this straight though. I am not obligated to answer every single post on YOUR schedule. I've wasted far more time than I should on these forums. It's like you are unaware that unlike apparently some of you, I actually have a day job, family obligations and other hobbies. If I don't post here every loving week or every month, it doesn't make me a "coward" who had to concede defeat. You are not obligated to respond to posts, but at the same time just because you are responding voluntarily does not mean that your voluntary responses are good and worthwhile. The manner in which you voluntarily decide to respond to posts can be evasive, disingenuous and avoiding engaging with issues effectively. It's a valid point which you've completely misinterpreted (which is again part of the problem that is being raised)
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2015 13:45
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:I'd be happy to debate just one of you or a small number of those who are serious, but taking on thirty at once is unwieldy at best. Well why just reply to the "small number" of those of us who are serious? Think of it as a market where you are free to choose the most worthwhile posts to respond to! It's not the fault of the rest of us that you respond to posts about whether Triple H is a racist. I've still got my post, which is most serious, for you to respond to: jrodefeld posted:The issue I am trying to get across is that if you took a situation where humans are suffering in abject poverty and starvation in a third world African country and your solution is simply for them to implement redistributive policies that take the wealth of the dictator and the (relatively speaking) "wealthy" and divided that money between the poor people of that country, you would have hardly helped anyone. Redistributing wealth in a tiny pie where there is not much wealth to go around skirts the real issue. Yes, if tyrants run your government and hoard all the wealth that does exist, they can seem relatively comfortable. And there is no question they ought to be ousted from power and are clearly exploiters of the poor and everyone else who isn't a member of the dictator's regime. Okay, you don't seem to have realised the problem I was drawing up that the premise and conclusions to your argument are simplistic strawmen that do not represent either reality or the views of 'left-progressives'. The problem I pointed out with your Africa example was that it was a simple binary choice between letting someone in starvation keep their loaf of bread or taking some of it to share was that neither option is what the "left-progressives" would be suggesting in that instance and the idea would be to get the starving person MORE commodities so they weren't in such dire needs, not to leave them the same amount or take from them. Although you've taken this on board a little in your response, we're now offered a ternary choice where the third option still doesn't represent the views of socialists, social democrats, etc. I could have gone into it more on my end (although I did think that if you were going to criticise other people's positions you'd be aware of what they are first) so I'll hold up my hands here say "my bad" and elaborate for you on what the actual positions being put forth as a counter to your own are. There are a variety of different left-wing views about how different developing economies should work. Although there are differing opinions, they all fit within a certain framework that rules out the possibility of a free-market approach being beneficial. They aren't based on simply "Let's redistribute because it's right" they're focused on "let's have a more regulated and redistributive economy because it's fairer and helps develop countries" Let's look at a few. Ha Joon Chang, a popular introductory figure to left-wing economics, who is a Professor of Political Economy of Development at Cambridge University has looked at the economic set-up of modern developed countries while they were developing and concluded Ha Joon Chang posted:"that the developed countries did not get where they are now through the [free market] policies and institutions they they recommend to developing countries today. Most of them actively used 'bad' trade and industrial policies, such as infant industry protection and export subsidies - practices that these days are actively frowned upon, if not actively banned by the WTO (World Trade Organisation" (Kicking Away The Ladder). His view is basically an expansion of the one I out forward in my post here. The crux of it is that your claimed are an economic urban myth that you have bought into without looking at the evidence, that rather than countries being built up by relying on laissez-faire policies they were actually heavily protectionist. In the post I've linked to I've given examples of the USA throughout the 19th and early 20th century but the same applies to other countries like France and the UK and if you're interested or dispute this then I'm happy to elaborate on this. In turn, this gives us a good indication that these policies are the kind of ones that countries should be using to develop now - even though the larger countries are trying to push free trade on them. From historical precedent, which you attempt to cite with no evidence, the government has a big role to play in ensuring the industrialisation and development of a country and claims of it being based on laissez-faire policies are simply false. This ties into the position of academics like Stiglitz, former Chief Economist of the World Bank and Nobel Prize Winner, who in books like Making Globalisation Work and Globalization and Its Discontents who has pushed similar ideas: Stiglitz posted:"If developing countries are to enter into such industries, those industries have to be protected until they are strong enough to compete with established international giants. Tariffs result in higher prices - high enough that the new industries can cover costs, invest in research, and make the other investments that they need in order to eventually be able to stand on their own feet. This is called the "infant industry argument" for protection. It was a popular idea in Japan in the 1960s - and in the United States and Europe in the nineteenth century. Most successful countries did in fact develop behind protectionist barriers: critics of globalisation accuse countries like Japan and the United States, which have climbed the ladder of development, of wanting to kick the ladder away so that others can't follow." (Making Globalisation Work) Tariffs and dumping duties and other protectionist measures are vital tools that have been used by the now developed countries to get where they are. Disallowing these powerful strategies from the countries today is simply harmful to their ability to develop. This isn't to say that free trade can be harmful in every instance, but it is specifically trying to develop and industrialise a country and the areas where it is useful rarely see free trade happening. Agriculture is a key example of where free trade would be helpful for global development but free trade in agriculture is not in or itself going to industrialise a country and the areas needed for development require protectionism.For the developing countries the current system of free trade in some areas and protectionism in others is set up to be the exact reverse of what is needed. Stiglitz points out a good example where in 2005 the US opened itself up to 97% types of goods when produced in the least developed countries. The 3% which was kept protected was things like Bangladeshi textiles and apparel which they do produce at low cost and would want to sell in a fair market to undercut the US and other developed nations, while the 97% that was opened up was things like jet engines and all manner of other things what are beyond the capacity of the developing nations to produce. Simply put it was a free trade agreement which did the complete opposite of what the developing countries wanted, giving free trade in the areas it didn't matter and where they specifically didn't want it and keeping protectionism in places where they needed free trade. Free trade can be helpful, but only in some situations and understanding why involves needing a good knowledge of the processes involved. The fact that you try and take the example of Hong Kong (which actually isn't that free trade seeing as the government owns ALL the land and the companies are merely renters) and assume that the system which applies to a small city-state trading post with unique geographical and historical advantages will apply to all nations everywhere without any critical analysis just shows your comparisons are fairly superficial.. Economists are typically split into three camps in terms of the contributors to national capital accumulation. There are those who believe geography is the primary factor, those who believe market integration is the primary factor and those who believe institutions are the primary factor. I think Rodrik, Subramanian and Trebbi's fairly well known 2004 study gives a good overview of these positions in the introduction. You'll also note that the findings of the study give primacy to institutions as the key driver of growth, with some support from geography and with free trade policies actually having a negative effect on growth. And as we're talking about development and inequality, I would also suggest you have a look at Branko Milanovic's work and especially his conception of the most relevant type of inequality (simultaneously looking at the inequality internal to a state and in comparison to other states) and how the current neo-liberal more free trade orthodoxy has resulted in record highest of equality that may be decreasing soon - but only because of the effect of the non-free trade economies of India and, even more so, China. Basically your idea that the third alternative is simply "Redistribute all the money" is wrong. Frankly redistribution is needed as Piketty made such a big splash about in Capital in the 21st Century but equality is not the sole concern. A non-laissez faire approach is being pushed by other specifically because there is historical evidence and modern academic studies and logic which show it is more effective and allows countries to develop effectively in a manner that free market policies do not. The co-operative aspect of your response I'm going to spend less time on as I'm not really willing to give you the benefit of the doubt there about how you've missed the point. Your position was "A problem with "democracy" and all forms of collective ownership either of the factory or of public spaces is that use for such resources is heavily constrained by the need for consensus to act. If all workers owned factories together, endless meetings and deliberations would be required to make any decisions about the use of capital and production. Furthermore, conflict is enhanced rather than reduced. Who would REALLY have the final say on the use of collectively owned property?" Now you don't agree with by rebuttal because it is anecdotal, but the problem is you agree with the basis of my anecdote (and in having to do so have had to specify that you're only talking about if the entire economy was run on a co-operative basis) and in support of your view you have nothing, not even an anecdote or any other scrap of evidence. I don't usually use anecdotes, but the reason I did here is because it was just one of any number of examples which showed your point of view is wrong. We know Co-operatives are not doomed to failure because they exist now and the circumstances you describe don't happen. You now apparently believe that in a fully co-operative economy everything we know about how co-operatives work would suddenly changed for no given reason and all co-operatives would suddenly change to work in an inefficient and obviously stupid manner? Why would anyone possibly think this would occur? You've offered no rationale and it seems to be based on everyone suddenly getting very very stupid and changing the basis of how these companies are run for absolutely no reason. Hence why I say you're holding onto unsupported ideological narratives; you make these wild sweeping statements that at face value seem absurd and do nothing to back them up. Democratising the workplace does not mean democratising every single decision. Having a once yearly meeting to elect directors of the company, decide on a way forward and cast votes on important workplace matters democratises the workplace. Staying half an hour late once a month to have monthly meetings of each office/factory to discuss and deal with local issues democratises the work place. It does not involve democratic unity of every single mundane decision and trying to frame it as that just shows how irrelevant your comparison is. The nature of a co-operative is not that you have "to achieve democratic consensus for every single business decision" so your point is irrelevant. Hell, a lot of good business will spend this kind of time with employees anyway. The Human Relations school of business management thought (used to good effect in Japan) specifically focuses on working with and engaging with employees in the nature of running the business and many non-co-operative business will spend similar amounts of time discussing workplace issues even if automatic primacy isn't given to majority opinions of the workforce. Not to mention the issues which come with a lack of democracy in the workplace, where strikes are a notable drain on efficient. You also don't seem to have responded at all to my pointing out how countries did not grow by lassie faire economics, which is what you had claimed.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2015 22:51
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:However, I would be absolutely happy to do a written debate with one, or a small handful, of the serious members of this forum. Caros and Cemetary Gator come to mind, since they are two of the most substantive posters on this site. jrodefeld posted:I'll clearly state MY position and defend that, using sources to illustrate points at certain times. I think the issue is that you mostly don't want to engage in a written debate and you don't defend your points. There are people who make honest efforts to reply to your posts and if you wanted you could be having a written debate because that's basically what a forum discussion is. Now you actually replied to one of my posts, but when I made a fairly substantive response you ignored it and didn't reply. When I pointed this out to you, which I did more than once, I still got no reply. The thing is I'm not the only one, plenty of other people made serious posts and got no response either. You can't complain about people making jokey or insulting posts when you don't reply to the people who do make the type of response you're after.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 19, 2015 12:17
|
|
|
jrodefeld posted:Slavery is one of the most egregious violations of the non-aggression principle possible and is indeed a worse act than a property tax. quote:That is why an income tax, while absolutely and unequivocally far less egregious than chattel slavery, is still a form of slavery because the recipient of this income tax is being forced against his or her will to pay a percentage of his or her income under threat of violence and kidnapping (throwing you in jail if you refuse). Why is income tax slavery but not property tax? Or if property tax is slavery, how can it be less egregious than slavery if it is itself slavery?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 20, 2015 14:31
|
|
|
Make sure to record it and upload it somewhere, on the off-chance jrod does actually show I'd be interested to listen to how he tries to defend his position in real time.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 25, 2015 12:10
|
|
|
GunnerJ posted:So, this is an old point but the question of employee ownership and workplace democracy still interests me. Don't hold your breath. I responded in depth with exactly that being one of the points I made: I posted:Your position was "A problem with "democracy" and all forms of collective ownership either of the factory or of public spaces is that use for such resources is heavily constrained by the need for consensus to act. If all workers owned factories together, endless meetings and deliberations would be required to make any decisions about the use of capital and production. Furthermore, conflict is enhanced rather than reduced. Who would REALLY have the final say on the use of collectively owned property?" Caros even pointed out that Jrod really should answer my post. When no response was incoming I posted trying to get him to respond to that single post more than once. All I got for my trouble was him saying [url=http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3745862&userid=102626#post452905754]"Yeah, it kind of would be good if I could respond to these kind of posts, that's why I want to debate"[/quote] and then doing nothing to answer the points raised or (presumably) to actually involve himself in a debate.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 30, 2015 10:47
|
|
|
Nolanar posted:*Is "socially necessary labor time" a phrase that will set off the Pinko Alarm? Like, I can learn a lot about someone's political leanings just from hearing them use phrases like "mixing your labor with the land" or "fiat currency," but I'm not sure what the equivalent leftist giveaways are. "Means of production" is definitely one, but I don't know beyond that. Yup. Anyone using that phrase will usually be arguing that the value created by work is embodied by the socially necessary labour time and that the surplus value extracted by companies is exploitative.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 14, 2015 18:05
|
|
|
Jrode, you still need to reply to my through and sourced post from 3 months ago that perfectly meets the criteria of the kind of post you say you want to respond to. In terms of this post, despite its length you make remarkably few arguments. Most of what you say is either rambling or unsupported statements. What you did make an effort to explain though is nonsense, albeit nonsense that people who don't bother to look into it or aren't familiar with the situation might not be immediately able to identify as such. However even complete amateurs in this topic would be able to see there is something that doesn't smell right about the claims you're making just based on common sense. I mean look at those prices you list for Atlas MD. Do those look like actual reasonable prices for delivering healthcare? $50 a month? $10 for children? Do you really think that libertarianism can drastically get the prices that low because a dude said so on a podcast? Really? I spent 5 minutes going through Atlas Md's sign-up to look at their terms of service, and you don't get any treatment for health problems (see Appendix 1 for the services they offer). The only medical services you get are a once a year "wellness examination and evaluation" to find out your BMI and all that poo poo. You also get a few non-medical services like being able to skype a physician or whatever for advice (like "that looks bad, go see a doctor who will actually give you tratement, unlike me"), but this is not a replacement for actual medical care. I mean hell, if you'd actually linked to a reputable concierge service, it wouldn't have been much better because it is not a solution. Concierge services (the ones offering real healthcare unlike Atlas MD) will charge hundreds or thousands of dollars a month which puts it well outside of most peoples price range. Not only that but their focus is on offering greater service to a small number of more elite customers (who will use it to complement rather than replace insurance). The physicians offering these services will see a tenth or so the number of patients that a normal physician would to focus on these customers and offer this concierge service. It's not a viable replacement because as well as being a complement rather than a replacement, you couldn't have all the physicians in the country cutting their patient lists by 90%. If this replaced the actual system, 90% of patients would be dropped and have no doctor available even if they could afford hundreds or thousands of dollars a month in payments. It's a system for the rich few, not the majority.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2016 20:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:18 |
|
|
jrodefeld posted:I don't think that a free market libertarian healthcare system would achieve "comparable" results, I am quite convinced through demonstrated evidence as well as a modicum of economic literacy that a free market would provide demonstrably superior results in nearly every way to a State-run healthcare system. Your demonstrated evidence of Amazon product reviews and podcasts you've listened to which when looked at in closer depth turn out to be totally wrong. That's not thoroughly demonstrated quote:You seem to have rose-colored glasses about the general efficacy of actually existing single-payer healthcare systems. There is a demonstrated inefficiency and a shortage of care that necessitates rationing for many types of medical procedures. This is elementary economics. Making something "free" creates a huge spike in demand, overuse of medical resources and unintended consequences. In a system where you have to pay for healthcare, not everyone will be able to pay for healthcare and very few people will be able to pay for the best healthcare. If you're counting the UHC solution as rationing, you have to include the free market approach disallowing healthcare to people as rationing as well. In either case there are finite resources so it's a matter of a) Whether we want to ration it out based on morality and egalitarianism or profit and b) which is more cost effective and productive. Also while people will be more likely to overuse a system if it's free and there are no consequence (going to the doctor for minor ailments that they just need bedrest to deal with) this is fairly minor and you can't treat healthcare like any other commodity when bringing up this point. I'm sure if you gave away free computer games or tomatoes or anything that people actually got some enjoyment out of then yeah, there'd be a huge spike in demand. With healthcare people don't like to waste time at the doctors for no reason so any effect is minimal. Almost everyone will only go to the doctor if they have a need and if they have a need they should go to the doctor, so it all works out. Not only that but it is far less harmful than the opposite problem which is people not going to the doctor because they're afraid of the cost. quote:Would Caros's friend have gotten the necessary treatment in Canada or Great Brittain? She would have probably gotten SOME treatment, as such systems are theoretically designed to ration care in favor of more urgent medical emergencies. Whether she would have pulled through and gotten efficacious medical treatment is another story and we cannot know that counter-factual. We can look at life-threatening illnesses that fit the bill and see if patients get treatment for them. Hmm, yes they do. quote:Why not apply your reasoning to any other sector of the economy? Why trust the market to properly price and distribute groceries? Certainly access to food is a more fundamental human need than even medical care? I don't. Millions of people die from easily preventable causes like starvation and malnutrition as well as lack of healthcare each year while we produce more than enough food to feed the entire world and people in developed countries become obese. The free market system is obviously not working in terms of food or healthcare. quote:We know this idea of State control and delivery of food is foolish not only due to economic theory, but through real world examples like the Soviet Union, where we saw bread lines and an inability to effectively calculate economically without a market price system for capital goods. The Soviet Union isn't most leftists idea of how to model delivery of food as an alternative to the free market but I think even the Soviet Union could probably do it fairly efficiently nowadays, with the popularisation of RFID and modern computer systems it's possible to keep track of stock from a centralised system and act appropriately with a great deal more ease than in the 80's. quote:What so many of you have tried to do is explain how healthcare is a type of good that is completely different from all other consumer goods and thus the rules of economics somehow don't apply to it. These excuses have been unpersuasive and reek of special pleading. It carries certain similarities with other types of good (like food) and most people would argue that those goods shouldn't be free market either and should at the very least be heavily regulated, you just haven't represented those arguments when you're strawmanning. At this point I'm bored and realise you will never reply and even if by some miracle you do it will be a one off. team overhead smash fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Jan 17, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2016 23:52
|
|