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On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip.
Summary of your post:
"I don't think Wal-Mart should have to change, because."
You just said that neither the employees or their government should have any say in how those employees are treated.
I mean seriously. Wal-Mart is almost synonymous with union-busting. They have perfected it to a (mostly) legal art form. I mean I honestly respect the way in which they completely own their workers. I personally do believe that the government needs to step in, and independently form a union for Wal-Mart employees.
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On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution.
A few points:
-first and foremost, the slavery of blacks was pure slavery. They were treated as commodities to be bought and sold and had no control over their labor. They weren't exploited for low wages, they were enslaved. We don't characterize any period after the 13th amendment as slavery because that's not what it was.
-A free market need to have supply and demand for labor along with competition. You keep blocking in hypotheticals where the choice is to work for a single exploitative employer or unemployment/starvation/death. That is not a real choice or a free market. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth.
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On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. A few points: -first and foremost, the slavery of blacks was pure slavery. They were treated as commodities to be bought and sold and had no control over their labor. They weren't exploited for low wages, they were enslaved. We don't characterize any period after the 13th amendment as slavery because that's not what it was. -A free market need to have supply and demand for labor along with competition. You keep blocking in hypotheticals where the choice is to work for a single exploitative employer or unemployment/starvation/death. That is not a real choice or a free market. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth.
And you keep typing in hypothetical free markets that have not, and never will exist. Your last sentence is in itself, laughable. It ignores two key things:
1. In the majority of professions, there is not very much competition between employers. Costco isn't trying to steal Wal-Mart's crack cashiers and stockboys. Applebees isn't trying to steal the top chefs from McDonalds.
2. Wages in most large businesses do not trend with what people are worth. Unless you would say that CEOs have become far more valuable in the last 20 years, while workers have occasionally seen wages raised to remain constant when inflation is factored in.
Edit:
You seem to be trying to skirt around the issue of there being a massive discrepancy in power between employer and worker which results in a not-free market. We can argue technicalities over slavery all day. The point still stands, and you have done little to argue against it other than saying "Well if this was a truly free market then they would be free and compensated based on their input."
That's all fine and dandy. But this isn't a free market, the fabled beast which roams the land feasting on the similarly elusive utopian communes, so your point falls kind of flat.
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On June 03 2013 09:23 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. A few points: -first and foremost, the slavery of blacks was pure slavery. They were treated as commodities to be bought and sold and had no control over their labor. They weren't exploited for low wages, they were enslaved. We don't characterize any period after the 13th amendment as slavery because that's not what it was. -A free market need to have supply and demand for labor along with competition. You keep blocking in hypotheticals where the choice is to work for a single exploitative employer or unemployment/starvation/death. That is not a real choice or a free market. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth. And you keep typing in hypothetical free markets that have not, and never will exist. Your last sentence is in itself, laughable. It ignores two key things: 1. In the majority of professions, there is not very much competition between employers. Costco isn't trying to steal Wal-Mart's crack cashiers and stockboys. Applebees isn't trying to steal the top chefs from McDonalds. 2. Wages in most large businesses do not trend with what people are worth. Unless you would say that CEOs have become far more valuable in the last 20 years, while workers have occasionally seen wages raised to remain constant when inflation is factored in. Edit: You seem to be trying to skirt around the issue of there being a massive discrepancy in power between employer and worker which results in a not-free market. We can argue technicalities over slavery all day. The point still stands, and you have done little to argue against it other than saying "Well if this was a truly free market then they would be free and compensated based on their input." That's all fine and dandy. But this isn't a free market, the fabled beast which roams the land feasting on the similarly elusive utopian communes, so your point falls kind of flat.
Response to the edit:
Uh what? You seem to have missed the entire discussion, which has been going on for three pages. This is all in the context of a Democratic report that Wal-Mart employees are paid so poorly that they need social benefits, with the conclusion that the government should either lift the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to pay employees more, such as intervening to allow a union.
I explicitly stated my position over my posts, that I don't think Wal-Mart enslaves its employees and while I think Wal-Mart deserves criticism for its hiring practices (which it gets), I don't think the proper solution is for the government to step in and change the laws so that Wal-Mart changes.
EDIT: What's laughable is to say there is no competition between employers. What do you think a resume is?
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On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth.
Is this before or after their malnourished corpse is exhumed?
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On June 03 2013 10:01 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth. Is this before or after their malnourished corpse is exhumed?
Does America have an obesity problem or not? You can do better than this.
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As a reactionary I ironically have no problem with the minimum wage and I would not have a problem with it being raised a bit.
The problem comes with a lot of peoples perspectives about companies and their practices. A corporation is not a person but the economical manifestation of a capitalist society in a post monarchy driven world. You can't expect a corporation to act "good" or "want" to better anyone or anything other then themselves. Its a whole organization making decisions on a purely economical basis. If you take away the minimum wage people WILL get enslaved to corporate towns were there is no way out. granted it would probably be a better life then the lives people live in inner city drug war zones but it would be slavery nonetheless.
To have a free and vibrant economy where corporations benefit the people you need a strong centralized government laying a series of ground rules for everyone to play by. Competition should be the rule of law but anti competitive practices are a cancer and that is what breeds unchecked in a "free economy".
My problems with wall mart is that they employ slavery and worse in order to get the cheap goods that they sell. Just because its not american slavery doesn't mean its any better.
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@Kwark
Yes, there is a significant difference between real slavery and so called "wage slavery." The difference is that one is created by the natural order of life, and the other is created by human institutions and laws. Humans can only be held responsible for the institutions they have created, not for the nature of nature.
Poverty is not a human construct, it is the natural order. None of us exit the womb with food, clothing, and a 401k. If you want to blame nature for the fact that you are forced to work in order to survive, go right ahead. Because that is true of every economic system in every country in the history of the world. It was true even in the time of cavemen. If cavemen didn't constantly work and struggle to survive, they would simply die. Who should the caveman blame for his condition? Who enslaved the caveman? Nature, not man. That is how the world works, it is the natural order.
Government sanctioned slavery, on the other hand, is completely different. We cannot change the natural order of existence, but we can change human institutions, laws, and so on. It is incredibly immoral to support a system where humans can own and abuse others with legal sanction.
"Wage slavery", on the other hand, is not abuse. And it is not abuse because in the absence of the job, the person would be even worse off. That is the missing point in the wage slavery argument. With a job, a person is always better off than without a job. Offering work to someone is helping someone, even if you don't like how much they are being helped. Even if you think they should be helped even more, it is still help. It is still mutual benefit. It is not the employer which has made the worker poor, it is the natural order of existence which has made him or her poor. Poverty is natural.
If you want to argue that we have a social right to help people survive now that we have the means to do so, that is fine. But that is completely different from blaming employers or capitalism itself for something that is a natural part of existence. And that is why comparing free markets with human slavery is not just stupid, it is offensive.
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On June 03 2013 10:04 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 10:01 Shiori wrote:On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth. Is this before or after their malnourished corpse is exhumed? Does America have an obesity problem or not? You can do better than this.
If people didn't have to eat garbage because their cripplingly low wages at Wal-mart forced them to work 2 or 3 terrible jobs maybe some of the obesity problem might go away? You expect people to eat well end exercise with no time or money?
Also odds are if you're obese you're in-taking no actual nourishment. Just because you put matter into your face doesn't mean its nourishing at all.
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On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution.
Hogwash. In a free-market (free-competition) labor and its value is subject to supply and demand like any other good and service. This is to say your argument is based on a monopolistic view whereby the person cannot move/travel, and there is only one employer to whom the choose is work, or starve. This is revisionist lunacy at best, and complete idiocy at worst.
I must ask you, why does anyone get paid above minimum wage? Perhaps when you answer this question you'll realize how wrong your post is. As bad and distorted as the American economic system is, it is preferable to outright socialism/communism. There was a time when interns/apprenticeships etc. were pretty commonplace - back before Welfare and the Statism. Now-a-days you folks parrot the line that you have to go into debt (thanks to Government raising tuition costs through 'guaranteed loans' and other incentives), to get a well-paying job. I know so many technical vocations that pay much better than traditional college degrees do.
Anyways, the point is that in a market economy (of which does not currently exist in America today), there are no licenses, permits, regulatory burdens, etc. to increase costs to weed competition out. This means more opportunities for both the entrepreneur and the person selling their labor. If you read New-Leftist historian Gabriel Kolko's work you'll see how competition increases, and wages rise in such much freer economies (America 1880-1910). It is your 'Progressive Era' that hurt the average american, and the New Deal cemented that even more.
Of course, that isn't the point. It is the idea that owning yourself, and having such posterior rights as free travel and movement, choosing which employer and for how much to work for, or to open up your own business venture either through savings (capital) or through loans is tantamount to chattel slavery to bolster your socialistic worldview. That's very difficult today due to Government-incurred costs to even start a business, which is a BENEFIT to Corporations and the Employer since it distorts the supply and demand structure. However, any attempt to remove burdens and regulations to make it easier for more competition to arise you shout down as Corporatism or the spooky 'unregulated free economy (pro tip: it is regulated, via property rights and contract)'.
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On June 03 2013 10:45 OuchyDathurts wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 10:04 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 10:01 Shiori wrote:On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth. Is this before or after their malnourished corpse is exhumed? Does America have an obesity problem or not? You can do better than this. If people didn't have to eat garbage because their cripplingly low wages at Wal-mart forced them to work 2 or 3 terrible jobs maybe some of the obesity problem might go away? You expect people to eat well end exercise with no time or money? Also odds are if you're obese you're in-taking no actual nourishment. Just because you put matter into your face doesn't mean its nourishing at all.
Again, here is the same fallacy that I hear repeated again and again. It just doesn't make sense.
"I would drive a Ferrari if Bill Gates gave me a million dollars, but he doesn't, therefore Bill Gates stole my Ferrari." A logic that come only come from a pure entitlement mentality.
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On June 03 2013 10:40 Ingsoc101 wrote:
@Kwark
Yes, there is a significant difference between real slavery and so called "wage slavery." The difference is that one is created by the natural order of life, and the other is created by human institutions and laws. Humans can only be held responsible for the institutions they have created, not for the nature of nature.
Poverty is not a human construct, it is the natural order. None of us exit the womb with food, clothing, and a 401k. If you want to blame nature for the fact that you are forced to work in order to survive, go right ahead. Because that is true of every economic system in every country in the history of the world. It was true even in the time of cavemen. If cavemen didn't constantly work and struggle to survive, they would simply die. Who should the caveman blame for his condition? Who enslaved the caveman? Nature, not man. That is how the world works, it is the natural order.
Government sanctioned slavery, on the other hand, is completely different. We cannot change the natural order of existence, but we can change human institutions, laws, and so on. It is incredibly immoral to support a system where humans can own and abuse others with legal sanction.
"Wage slavery", on the other hand, is not abuse. And it is not abuse because in the absence of the job, the person would be even worse off. That is the missing point in the wage slavery argument. With a job, a person is always better off than without a job. Offering work to someone is helping someone, even if you don't like how much they are being helped. Even if you think they should be helped even more, it is still help. It is still mutual benefit. It is not the employer which has made the worker poor, it is the natural order of existence which has made him or her poor. Poverty is natural.
If you want to argue that we have a social right to help people survive now that we have the means to do so, that is fine. But that is completely different from blaming employers or capitalism itself for something that is a natural part of existence. And that is why comparing free markets with human slavery is not just stupid, it is offensive.
Humans created the laws of property that states you can own something without using/being in possession of it, which is what leads to wage slavery, so nothing about it is natural. The world is an island, you can't just go somewhere else when everything is owned by someone. Any alternative will have it's issues but don't act like your opinions on how the world works/should work are obviously reasonable or just based on poor logic.
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On June 03 2013 09:58 coverpunch wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 09:23 Jormundr wrote:On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. A few points: -first and foremost, the slavery of blacks was pure slavery. They were treated as commodities to be bought and sold and had no control over their labor. They weren't exploited for low wages, they were enslaved. We don't characterize any period after the 13th amendment as slavery because that's not what it was. -A free market need to have supply and demand for labor along with competition. You keep blocking in hypotheticals where the choice is to work for a single exploitative employer or unemployment/starvation/death. That is not a real choice or a free market. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth. And you keep typing in hypothetical free markets that have not, and never will exist. Your last sentence is in itself, laughable. It ignores two key things: 1. In the majority of professions, there is not very much competition between employers. Costco isn't trying to steal Wal-Mart's crack cashiers and stockboys. Applebees isn't trying to steal the top chefs from McDonalds. 2. Wages in most large businesses do not trend with what people are worth. Unless you would say that CEOs have become far more valuable in the last 20 years, while workers have occasionally seen wages raised to remain constant when inflation is factored in. Edit: You seem to be trying to skirt around the issue of there being a massive discrepancy in power between employer and worker which results in a not-free market. We can argue technicalities over slavery all day. The point still stands, and you have done little to argue against it other than saying "Well if this was a truly free market then they would be free and compensated based on their input." That's all fine and dandy. But this isn't a free market, the fabled beast which roams the land feasting on the similarly elusive utopian communes, so your point falls kind of flat. Response to the edit: Uh what? You seem to have missed the entire discussion, which has been going on for three pages. This is all in the context of a Democratic report that Wal-Mart employees are paid so poorly that they need social benefits, with the conclusion that the government should either lift the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to pay employees more, such as intervening to allow a union. I explicitly stated my position over my posts, that I don't think Wal-Mart enslaves its employees and while I think Wal-Mart deserves criticism for its hiring practices (which it gets), I don't think the proper solution is for the government to step in and change the laws so that Wal-Mart changes. EDIT: What's laughable is to say there is no competition between employers. What do you think a resume is?
Paragraph 1:
If you have a good enough strategy and you have enough influence you shouldn't be restricted by silly things like union laws.
Notes:
Good read, very informative, 10/10. Probably a better script for a chinese audience, this POV probably wouldn't be very popular to the American public.
Paragraph 2:
Wal-Mart is an O.K. guy. Sometimes he beats his wife and slaps his children around, but he never causes a big enough fuss to get the cops out here so here's to him.
Edit 1:
This is just dumb. Competition between employers is competition between employers. There is little because (in general) there are more people than jobs. This means that (in general) there is not as much competition between employers, and only extremely specialized individuals are worth of job security, because there's always more bodies to fill the seats. What you mention in this edit is competition between employees.
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On June 03 2013 09:23 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. A few points: -first and foremost, the slavery of blacks was pure slavery. They were treated as commodities to be bought and sold and had no control over their labor. They weren't exploited for low wages, they were enslaved. We don't characterize any period after the 13th amendment as slavery because that's not what it was. -A free market need to have supply and demand for labor along with competition. You keep blocking in hypotheticals where the choice is to work for a single exploitative employer or unemployment/starvation/death. That is not a real choice or a free market. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth. And you keep typing in hypothetical free markets that have not, and never will exist. Your last sentence is in itself, laughable. It ignores two key things: 1. In the majority of professions, there is not very much competition between employers. Costco isn't trying to steal Wal-Mart's crack cashiers and stockboys. Applebees isn't trying to steal the top chefs from McDonalds. 2. Wages in most large businesses do not trend with what people are worth. Unless you would say that CEOs have become far more valuable in the last 20 years, while workers have occasionally seen wages raised to remain constant when inflation is factored in. Edit: You seem to be trying to skirt around the issue of there being a massive discrepancy in power between employer and worker which results in a not-free market. We can argue technicalities over slavery all day. The point still stands, and you have done little to argue against it other than saying "Well if this was a truly free market then they would be free and compensated based on their input." That's all fine and dandy. But this isn't a free market, the fabled beast which roams the land feasting on the similarly elusive utopian communes, so your point falls kind of flat.
How does the argument fall flat? Are you saying economics is merely a front for 'fabled free markets'? The point you missed is by understanding economic structures and laws, you can move toward better conditions, instead of as you would have us do, toward impoverishment and real slavery (Maxim of; power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts - That is the State which you would use and which always in socialistic countries proclaims itself owner over the labor of the mundanes).
Besides, we do have case studies - America being one. When the economy was much freer (1880-1910) competition flourished, and the standard of living for the average American ballooned. This is fact. It wasn't until the Progressive Era came in and cemented the economic system we currently enjoy today, a bastardization between Fascism (Corporatism) and Socialism. We get the worst of both worlds!
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I thought in my lifetime that there would never be someone making the argument that the new deal and the progressive era hurt the common worker at the benefit of the corporations.
This is where Libertarianism gets the bad rap that it deserves. The insistence of theoretical and logical truths to be a practical reality. Libertarians left the republican party so that they didn't have to subject their philosophy to political relevance. That Irrelevance doesn't just go away when the right isn't doing so well right now.
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On June 03 2013 11:00 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 09:23 Jormundr wrote:On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. A few points: -first and foremost, the slavery of blacks was pure slavery. They were treated as commodities to be bought and sold and had no control over their labor. They weren't exploited for low wages, they were enslaved. We don't characterize any period after the 13th amendment as slavery because that's not what it was. -A free market need to have supply and demand for labor along with competition. You keep blocking in hypotheticals where the choice is to work for a single exploitative employer or unemployment/starvation/death. That is not a real choice or a free market. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth. And you keep typing in hypothetical free markets that have not, and never will exist. Your last sentence is in itself, laughable. It ignores two key things: 1. In the majority of professions, there is not very much competition between employers. Costco isn't trying to steal Wal-Mart's crack cashiers and stockboys. Applebees isn't trying to steal the top chefs from McDonalds. 2. Wages in most large businesses do not trend with what people are worth. Unless you would say that CEOs have become far more valuable in the last 20 years, while workers have occasionally seen wages raised to remain constant when inflation is factored in. Edit: You seem to be trying to skirt around the issue of there being a massive discrepancy in power between employer and worker which results in a not-free market. We can argue technicalities over slavery all day. The point still stands, and you have done little to argue against it other than saying "Well if this was a truly free market then they would be free and compensated based on their input." That's all fine and dandy. But this isn't a free market, the fabled beast which roams the land feasting on the similarly elusive utopian communes, so your point falls kind of flat. How does the argument fall flat? Are you saying economics is merely a front for 'fabled free markets'? The point you missed is by understanding economic structures and laws, you can move toward better conditions, instead of as you would have us do, toward impoverishment and real slavery (Maxim of; power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts - That is the State which you would use and which always in socialistic countries proclaims itself owner over the labor of the mundanes). Besides, we do have case studies - America being one. When the economy was much freer (1880-1910) competition flourished, and the standard of living for the average American ballooned. This is fact. It wasn't until the Progressive Era came in and cemented the economic system we currently enjoy today, a bastardization between Fascism (Corporatism) and Socialism. We get the worst of both worlds!
That you can look at 1880-1910 and totally divorce it from the Great Depression speaks volumes in terms of your knowledge of history. Even better, that you can look at any single event in US history and wholeheartedly attach all negativities with government and all positives with private investment is just flat out stupid. This is cafeteria history at its worst.
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On June 03 2013 11:02 Sermokala wrote:
I thought in my lifetime that there would never be someone making the argument that the new deal and the progressive era hurt the common worker at the benefit of the corporations.
This is where Libertarianism gets the bad rap that it deserves. The insistence of theoretical and logical truths to be a practical reality. Libertarians left the republican party so that they didn't have to subject their philosophy to political relevance. That Irrelevance doesn't just go away when the right isn't doing so well right now.
Read this and perhaps you can enlighten yourself (and it's from a leftist (self-proclaimed socialist), not a libertarian);
http://www.amazon.com/Triumph-of-Conservatism-ebook/dp/B001HQHC5M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370225111&sr=8-1&keywords=triumph of conservatism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko
For Gabriel Kolko, the enemy has always been what sociologist Max Weber] called "political capitalism"—that is, "the accumulation of private capital and fortunes via booty connected with politics." In Kolko's eyes, "America's capacity and readiness to intervene virtually anywhere" pose a grave danger both to the U.S. and the world. Kolko has made it his mission to study the historical roots of how this propensity for intervention came to be. He was also one of the first historians to take on the regulatory state in a serious way. Kolko's landmark work, The Triumph of Conservatism, is an attempt to link the Progressive Era policies of Theodore Roosevelt to the national-security state left behind in the wake of his cousin Franklin's presidency. Kolko's indictment of what he calls "conservatism" is not aimed at the Southern Agrarianism of Richard Weaver or the Old Right individualism of Albert Jay Nock. In fact, Kolko's thesis—that big government and big business consistently colluded to regulate small American artisans and farmers out of existence—has much in common with libertarian and traditionalist critiques of the corporatist state. The "national progressivism" that Kolko attacks was, in his own words, "the defense of business against the democratic ferment that was nascent in the states." Coming of age in the '50s and '60s, Kolko saw firsthand the destruction of the "permanent things" as the result of the merging of Washington, D.C. and Wall Street. A sense of place and rootedness lingers just beneath the surface of his work.[2]
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On June 03 2013 07:54 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 07:19 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 03 2013 05:32 farvacola wrote:On June 03 2013 05:29 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On June 03 2013 02:14 silynxer wrote:
What do you mean by "add value" exactly and how do you measure it in this case? I propose an experiment, let's fire all cashiers and see how little "value" they add. Just replace with automated checkouts. Problem solved. Hardly. Check out this article, it covers the topic nicely. The long and short of it is that customers like to see people working. Automated self-checkout is appearing in more and more retail stores, with Walmart this year installing 10,000 self-service kiosks in hundreds of stores. But self-checkout is a technology direction with risks -- and even as Walmart moves ahead with its plan, other companies are already abandoning it.
Retailer Albertsons LLC, for instance, has already pulled its self-checkout systems, as did Big Y, a New England grocer. Ikea is moving to do the same thing.
At the heart of these reversals: Customer rejection.
Even so, stores like Walmart say automated self-checkout kiosks can increase customer convenience and choice. But what does a checkout kiosk system actually fix?
Vendors argue that having more checkout options means shorter lanes and speedier customer transactions. But there are concerns about the impact on jobs, since stores that roll out the technology can steer customers to self-checkout systems -- and cut back on human cashiers.
That later issue is a flash point. Walmart, jobs and the rise of self-service checkout tech Yes customers generally prefer seeing people - but not at any price. There are limits to how much people will pay for things, cashiers included. Costco would like a word with you on that point. Insert drunk anti free trade argument based on that the countries beifitng from free trade are the ones with a free- protectionist economic policy resulting in their quality of life going up and ours going down. Tbh target is the anti union company wal mart is just big enough not to give a shit about the protests.
Costco would like to say what? They don't pay their workers infinite money. They have limits too. Their limits are higher because their business model can sustain it. And no, their business model isn't copyable across all retailers.
Walmart is one of the most technologically advanced and efficient retailers on the planet and they still don't have much room to raise wages. That should say something about the value of bottom end retailing right there.
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On June 03 2013 10:57 nttea wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 10:40 Ingsoc101 wrote:
@Kwark
Yes, there is a significant difference between real slavery and so called "wage slavery." The difference is that one is created by the natural order of life, and the other is created by human institutions and laws. Humans can only be held responsible for the institutions they have created, not for the nature of nature.
Poverty is not a human construct, it is the natural order. None of us exit the womb with food, clothing, and a 401k. If you want to blame nature for the fact that you are forced to work in order to survive, go right ahead. Because that is true of every economic system in every country in the history of the world. It was true even in the time of cavemen. If cavemen didn't constantly work and struggle to survive, they would simply die. Who should the caveman blame for his condition? Who enslaved the caveman? Nature, not man. That is how the world works, it is the natural order.
Government sanctioned slavery, on the other hand, is completely different. We cannot change the natural order of existence, but we can change human institutions, laws, and so on. It is incredibly immoral to support a system where humans can own and abuse others with legal sanction.
"Wage slavery", on the other hand, is not abuse. And it is not abuse because in the absence of the job, the person would be even worse off. That is the missing point in the wage slavery argument. With a job, a person is always better off than without a job. Offering work to someone is helping someone, even if you don't like how much they are being helped. Even if you think they should be helped even more, it is still help. It is still mutual benefit. It is not the employer which has made the worker poor, it is the natural order of existence which has made him or her poor. Poverty is natural.
If you want to argue that we have a social right to help people survive now that we have the means to do so, that is fine. But that is completely different from blaming employers or capitalism itself for something that is a natural part of existence. And that is why comparing free markets with human slavery is not just stupid, it is offensive. Humans created the laws of property that states you can own something without using/being in possession of it, which is what leads to wage slavery, so nothing about it is natural. The world is an island, you can't just go somewhere else when everything is owned by someone. Any alternative will have it's issues but don't act like your opinions on how the world works/should work are obviously reasonable or just based on poor logic.
Ok, let's break this down please. Let's go back to my example of cavemen/early humans. They were forced to work, or they would die. Tell me how human property laws were responsible for this reality.
The answer is that they weren't. The answer is that poverty and so called "work to survive slavery" have nothing to do with humans or human laws. It is how nature works. Even animals are forced to work or they die. Do animals have property rights?
Therefore, blaming low wages, or laws, or capitalism, for the fact that people are forced to work makes absolutely zero sense.
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On June 03 2013 11:03 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2013 11:00 Wegandi wrote:On June 03 2013 09:23 Jormundr wrote:On June 03 2013 09:09 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:30 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 08:20 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 08:05 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 07:33 coverpunch wrote:On June 03 2013 06:52 KwarK wrote:On June 03 2013 06:40 NovaTheFeared wrote:
There is nothing that separates slavery from the free market except that which slavery is, ownership of other human beings. The market's first principle is that each person owns his or herself. The living conditions for workers between the early days of capitalism and slave societies may not have been that different, true. But that doesn't mean they are the same, morally. To say they are is obtuse. The knowledge that their employment contract is technically different from a bill of ownership would not keep the hypothetical wage slaves warm at night. It is not a meaningful difference. Huh? It has all the meaning in the world. The simple difference is a free person can leave if they want and a slave cannot. And one of the twin criticisms of Wal-Mart and one of the big reasons it has been difficult to form a union is that it has tremendous turnover, a large percentage of people quit within the first year of working there. Any human anywhere may wish to do anything he likes, slave or not. Our minds are not limited, our bodies are. If a slave wishes to end his labour then he may attempt to run away and seek an improvement in his fortune but he will most likely remain a slave or die. If a wage labourer living day to day wishes to end his labour he too can attempt to leave but again, he will most likely remain a wage labourer or starve. Wal-Mart doesn't apply to this hypothetical because it is a hypothetical, the free market has been distorted to prevent such a nightmare. Slavery isn't the whip, slavery is the loss of the ability to control one's own labour. Oh, c'mon, you can see that you are stretching like taffy to make slave = wage laborer, right? That's not to say Wal-Mart doesn't deserve criticism for its employment practices. Again, large turnover is a sign that Wal-Mart is a pretty bad employer. But, I don't think having the government raise the minimum wage or somehow force Wal-Mart to change is a good solution. You can't help people control their own labor by wielding a bigger whip. I'm talking purely hypotheticals here, not about Wal-Mart. My point is that given no government distortions and a surplus of labour the competition for jobs will depress wages to the minimum that someone will work for or the level at which further reduction reduces the productivity of the labourer. The minimum that someone will voluntarily work for can be assumed to be basic survival, if given a choice between working and eating and not working and not eating people will choose the former. At this point they have lost all control over their labour, their only remaining exit is death, while the profits of their labour are kept by those who exploit them. The fact that they choose to work each day does not change the fact that it is slavery, they choose it because they wish to continue to live. Cotton pickers chose to pick cotton rather than to rise up, a human body will not do anything the mind does not wish it to, but we still characterise the slavery of blacks in America as slavery because there was no reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour. The free market could conceivably create a scenario in which workers lacked a reasonable alternative to the exploitation of their labour, the reason it does not is because of social improvements, government intervention and the threat of revolution. A few points: -first and foremost, the slavery of blacks was pure slavery. They were treated as commodities to be bought and sold and had no control over their labor. They weren't exploited for low wages, they were enslaved. We don't characterize any period after the 13th amendment as slavery because that's not what it was. -A free market need to have supply and demand for labor along with competition. You keep blocking in hypotheticals where the choice is to work for a single exploitative employer or unemployment/starvation/death. That is not a real choice or a free market. With competition between employers and the freedom to leave, a person should eventually get the equilibrium wage between what their productivity is worth. And you keep typing in hypothetical free markets that have not, and never will exist. Your last sentence is in itself, laughable. It ignores two key things: 1. In the majority of professions, there is not very much competition between employers. Costco isn't trying to steal Wal-Mart's crack cashiers and stockboys. Applebees isn't trying to steal the top chefs from McDonalds. 2. Wages in most large businesses do not trend with what people are worth. Unless you would say that CEOs have become far more valuable in the last 20 years, while workers have occasionally seen wages raised to remain constant when inflation is factored in. Edit: You seem to be trying to skirt around the issue of there being a massive discrepancy in power between employer and worker which results in a not-free market. We can argue technicalities over slavery all day. The point still stands, and you have done little to argue against it other than saying "Well if this was a truly free market then they would be free and compensated based on their input." That's all fine and dandy. But this isn't a free market, the fabled beast which roams the land feasting on the similarly elusive utopian communes, so your point falls kind of flat. How does the argument fall flat? Are you saying economics is merely a front for 'fabled free markets'? The point you missed is by understanding economic structures and laws, you can move toward better conditions, instead of as you would have us do, toward impoverishment and real slavery (Maxim of; power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts - That is the State which you would use and which always in socialistic countries proclaims itself owner over the labor of the mundanes). Besides, we do have case studies - America being one. When the economy was much freer (1880-1910) competition flourished, and the standard of living for the average American ballooned. This is fact. It wasn't until the Progressive Era came in and cemented the economic system we currently enjoy today, a bastardization between Fascism (Corporatism) and Socialism. We get the worst of both worlds! That you can look at 1880-1910 and totally divorce it from the Great Depression speaks volumes in terms of your knowledge of history. Even better, that you can look at any single event in US history and wholeheartedly attach all negativities with government and all positives with private investment is just flat out stupid. This is cafeteria history at its worst.
The Great Depression wasn't for another 20 years, and I chose 1910 because by 1913 we had the Income Tax, the Federal Reserve, and a whole host of other economic interventions which made the economy MUCH less freer (AMA for instance). So, yeah, you can separate points in time when the economy was freer, and points when it was less free and make a rough comparison.
Or, if that doesn't work for you, you can compare less free countries (North Korea) with freer countries and make economic statements. Or, are you saying that because you don't like the outcome of this particular period because it doesn't jive with your beliefs that you'll make a general statement against historical economic statements? Hmmmm. Ok.
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EPT
