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On March 10 2017 15:57 Amui wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 15:45 GreenHorizons wrote:As for ways in which the poor can create additional value, if they increase the value of their labour by improving upon their skillset then their contributions to the economy will increase and the overall economic output of society will increase. Couldn't they also increase their exchange-value by affixing a higher value to their labor than society currently does. Like DeBeers did with diamonds for example? I mean the details would be different, but the general premise may hold. For instance, couldn't there be a campaign to increase the exchange value of the poor's labor from a social perspective, not just within the constraints of the use-value of said labor? Said another way, is it possible that the exchange-value of the most wealthy has already underwent a similar transformation? Isn't that just raising the minimum wage? Assuming a majority of poor people work at, or very close to the minimum wage.
Not quite. I mean, that's the most common mechanism people would look toward, but essentially it comes down to reaching the conclusion that we've overvalued some contributions and undervalued others. One which I think may appeal to a gut-level
perception many people have.
As for how I would like to see it addressed, probably something more in the direction of a basic income. But I suppose that's for the econs and marketers to figure out.
The underlying concept is that rather than trying to be "better laborers" they could better market the value of their already existing contributions.
To be extremely reductive, that simply their humanity (though more likely to practiced as citizenship) entitles them to more than the safety nets we currently have in place. One would also hope to see benefits from a proactive approach like basic income, as opposed to the reactive approaches of minimum wage and safety nets.
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Kwark, noone really argues your point that working more/having a higher productivity on an individual level increases the amount of value you generate and have at disposal. What people are correctly arguing is your jump from "if I do it it works" to "if everyone does it it works". There has been no convincing argument yet why the societal and macroeconomic framework wouldnt have a massive shift back to the previous state of affairs. An overall increased value of the average labor could just mean that the individual payment for your increased ability to work lowers, so your are back at the start. You can't even guarantee that the additionally produced value lands in the hands of the people producing it.
The average living situation for a steel worker in the early 1800's was worse than for the farm workers in 1700 despite an enormous amount of increased productivity. He even worked more hours just to be shit on by society. And if you choose to blame people for not wanting to work the 13th and 14th hour a day to save for retirement you can do that. I don't blame them and blame the current economical framework. But in the end it doesn't matter who we blame for these shortcomings since we can't change those people, but we can work to improve the points u made about improving their overall situation.
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United States43274 Posts
IgnE, I know people who donate plasma weekly including an unemployed homeless vet who I helped rebuild his entire life. It's really not so bad. You can put vampiric in italics all you like but just because blood is involved doesn't mean vampires are involved. As for the alleged health problems, it's certainly better for your health than not having health insurance. If we return to our friend Chaffetz saying that people should make better decisions if they want health insurance, if it comes down to plasma or going uninsured, do the plasma.
As for learning a second language, I'm currently working on my Spanish on top of my multiple jobs and school. A few hours a week of Memrise and watching dubbed Futurama, it's not so bad. Literally the only skill you need to pick up a language is the wiring of the brain that happens the first time you pick up a language as an infant. Everybody has it. After that it's just exposing yourself to it. I live in a bilingual state, second language Spanish is a huge bonus, if you can't find a job in New Mexico and you're not trying to learn Spanish then you're not looking for a job.
I don't expect everyone to do as much as I do, but it baffles me that you expect so little of them. The world isn't out to fuck you, it's out to get something from you. You can complain about that as much as you like but until it changes you should look to see what it is the world wants that you can provide. You can't create the systems but you can control the choices you make within them.
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On March 10 2017 16:04 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 15:45 GreenHorizons wrote:As for ways in which the poor can create additional value, if they increase the value of their labour by improving upon their skillset then their contributions to the economy will increase and the overall economic output of society will increase. Couldn't they also increase their exchange-value by affixing a higher value to their labor than society currently does. Like DeBeers did with diamonds for example? I mean the details would be different, but the general premise may hold. For instance, couldn't there be a campaign to increase the exchange value of the poor's labor from a social perspective, not just within the constraints of the use-value of said labor? Said another way, is it possible that the exchange-value of the most wealthy has already underwent a similar transformation? Yeah, this would be an approach that would deal with the way that society as a whole is structured, and would be long overdue. Unionization, an end to top down class warfare, a more re-distributive tax code, greater penalties on capital gains etc would go a long way. We've come a long way to get to where we are, of course, although we've gone backwards a little since WWII, but there is more to be done. But until such a time as people aren't forced to choose between watching The Big Bang Theory or having a funded retirement still believe that we should expect them to make the right choice. IgnE's argument that the world isn't the best possible world and therefore we shouldn't ask that people try to make better choices is both absurd and arbitrary. I question whether there is any level of redistribution at which IgnE will say "okay, now it's okay to ask that people be accountable for their own decisions" or if it's pure sophistry. After all, we live in a country that already has a large amount of redistribution in the form of guaranteed housing, food, welfare and so forth. In an alternate universe without those alternate IgnE would most likely be arguing that if only they existed it would be fair to expect that people save a little for their own retirements.
I think you are confusing me with a capitalist welfare state advocate. I am for restoring meaningful work through worker-owned enterprises and meaningful community investment as a way of tapping into people's willingness to take responsibility for ways of living that they feel are self-directed.
You might consider that anomie, the exemplary modern capitalist affective state, is literally a lawlessness. Subject formation under late capitalism is always an externally imposed identity comprising that of the alienated laborer and the consumer whose desires are not his own. It leads to a complete breakdown in what might be called practical sovereignty, which is directly responsible for the deficits we perceive in the "lazy idiots" we have been talking about.
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On March 10 2017 16:19 KwarK wrote:
IgnE, I know people who donate plasma weekly including an unemployed homeless vet who I helped rebuild his entire life. It's really not so bad. You can put vampiric in italics all you like but just because blood is involved doesn't mean vampires are involved. As for the alleged health problems, it's certainly better for your health than not having health insurance. If we return to our friend Chaffetz saying that people should make better decisions if they want health insurance, if it comes down to plasma or going uninsured, do the plasma.
As for learning a second language, I'm currently working on my Spanish on top of my multiple jobs and school. A few hours a week of Memrise and watching dubbed Futurama, it's not so bad. Literally the only skill you need to pick up a language is the wiring of the brain that happens the first time you pick up a language as an infant. Everybody has it. After that it's just exposing yourself to it. I live in a bilingual state, second language Spanish is a huge bonus, if you can't find a job in New Mexico and you're not trying to learn Spanish then you're not looking for a job.
I don't expect everyone to do as much as I do, but it baffles me that you expect so little of them. The world isn't out to fuck you, it's out to get something from you. You can complain about that as much as you like but until it changes you should look to see what it is the world wants that you can provide. You can't create the systems but you can control the choices you make within them.
The bolded part is utter bullshit, you should leave it out. The other parts i kinda tried to address above.
And to be honest it now appears to me that I don't really get your basic point. Do you want to say people make bad choices and that is their own fault? I don't think anyone argues that.
People are arguing that you are providing a guideline that would lead to a general improvement of the working poors status.
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On March 10 2017 16:19 KwarK wrote:
IgnE, I know people who donate plasma weekly including an unemployed homeless vet who I helped rebuild his entire life. It's really not so bad. You can put vampiric in italics all you like but just because blood is involved doesn't mean vampires are involved. As for the alleged health problems, it's certainly better for your health than not having health insurance. If we return to our friend Chaffetz saying that people should make better decisions if they want health insurance, if it comes down to plasma or going uninsured, do the plasma.
As for learning a second language, I'm currently working on my Spanish on top of my multiple jobs and school. A few hours a week of Memrise and watching dubbed Futurama, it's not so bad. Literally the only skill you need to pick up a language is the wiring of the brain that happens the first time you pick up a language as an infant. Everybody has it. After that it's just exposing yourself to it. I live in a bilingual state, second language Spanish is a huge bonus, if you can't find a job in New Mexico and you're not trying to learn Spanish then you're not looking for a job.
I don't expect everyone to do as much as I do, but it baffles me that you expect so little of them. The world isn't out to fuck you, it's out to get something from you. You can complain about that as much as you like but until it changes you should look to see what it is the world wants that you can provide. You can't create the systems but you can control the choices you make within them.
Yeah great, there are a lot of evils that are better than other evils. We know.
So can I hire you to do some Spanish translation for me on the weekends? It's just some legal stuff, contracts and the like. I'm sure your Spanish subtitles on Futurama will have prepared you for it.
Edit: It seems like when I add up all the shit you must be doing: 8 hours at work, at least an hour before and after getting ready for, commuting, and eating, a couple hours of school work, we are already up to like 12-13 hours. Now you want to add another hour learning a language? You said I was strawmanning you by characterizing your advice for poor people as setting up a programmed, productive 16-hour day. Was it a strawman because you only meant to encourage a 14-hour day of doing work and educating yourself to do future work?
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On March 10 2017 15:55 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 15:15 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 10 2017 15:08 KwarK wrote:
The correct conclusion from the Chinese example is that the Chinese workers considered working 40 hours a week but they couldn't produce enough value from those 40 hours to have the lives they wanted, ie they were too poor. But when they increased their hours to 60 then they became less poor which is what they wanted. They're not super rich because they live in fucking China and the global economy doesn't give a shit about their labour, but they still increased their economic output effectively through increasing the amount of their labour. You must be trolling now. Given that you ask me to believe that you in good faith attempted the argument "the economic output of an individual cannot be infinite and if it cannot be increased infinitely then it cannot be increased" I don't think you're in good shape to accuse anyone of trolling friend. You keep falling into the trap of assuming that the status quo is a perfectly optimal allocation of labour and that value output has already been maximized. This leads you into weird places like claiming that Chinese workers working long hours don't create additional value in excess of what they would if they worked shorter hours or that a more highly skilled population couldn't possibly have a greater economic output than the current one. I imagine if I described to you any other moment from human history and asked if the value of the economic output of the individuals at the time could be increased you'd immediately say yes, identifying that skills in animal husbandry, land management, the construction of basic machinery such as water/wind powered grindstones etc all would have dramatic impacts. But if I ask about today it's suddenly "there is no reason to suppose that a worker that improves his skills might produce more".
And yet they're still poor. You just said they were poor.
I cannot understand the mental disconnect between knowing people in Hong Kong and Tokyo can work 50% longer than American counterparts and still be poor, yet still believe that your solution will still work on a national scale.
So you must be trolling.
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United States43274 Posts
On March 10 2017 16:19 RolleMcKnolle wrote:
Kwark, noone really argues your point that working more/having a higher productivity on an individual level increases the amount of value you generate and have at disposal. What people are correctly arguing is your jump from "if I do it it works" to "if everyone does it it works". There has been no convincing argument yet why the societal and macroeconomic framework wouldnt have a massive shift back to the previous state of affairs. An overall increased value of the average labor could just mean that the individual payment for your increased ability to work lowers, so your are back at the start. You can't even guarantee that the additionally produced value lands in the hands of the people producing it.
The average living situation for a steel worker in the early 1800's was worse than for the farm workers in 1700 despite an enormous amount of increased productivity. He even worked more hours just to be shit on by society. And if you choose to blame people for not wanting to work the 13th and 14th hour a day to save for retirement you can do that. I don't blame them and blame the current economical framework. But in the end it doesn't matter who we blame for these shortcomings since we can't change those people, but we can work to improve the points u made about improving their overall situation.
19th C steel workers would be best compared with landless seasonal labourers in the countryside in the 18th C. Neither owned the means of production or had any real ability to bargain with those who did, comparison with a landed yeoman isn't accurate. And if we then ask ourselves where the 19th C steel worker came from the answer is usually "he used to be a landless seasonal labourer but it sucked so he took up steel working". This is back before cities had self sustaining populations, cities killed their occupants and replaced them with new people from the countryside. So no, I disagree with your argument that steel workers were worse off, and I certainly disagree that they were worse off due to their economic status. They were worse off because there was cholera in their water and typhus on their rats but in spite of those factors they still chose to come to the cities in droves.
As for your point about the state of affairs being unchanged, consider the literacy argument. If a large segment of the population were functionally illiterate then their economic output would be drastically reduced (unable to drive, catch a bus, complete a time card, read instructions, record their work etc) while there would be far more higher value positions for literate individuals than there would be workers to fill them. We know this to be true because we know how little our current economy values illiterate individuals and we know that literacy is a prerequisite for almost every job currently available, the jobs currently available having been curated by the invisible hand to be those that produce the greatest value. If we accept that our current world, which definitely exists, is the hypothetical world with higher value jobs for skilled individuals then why must we refuse to consider the possibility that computer illiteracy (for example) could be drastically reducing the economic output of many of our workers.
Again, the problem is the assumption that the status quo is all that might ever be. But if we can look backwards and see a series of steps behind us then it is not unreasonable to conclude that we are on a staircase and that there are steps ahead of us too.
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I think this is part of what the hold up is.
But until such a time as people aren't forced to choose between watching The Big Bang Theory or having a funded retirement still believe that we should expect them to make the right choice.
I don't expect everyone to do as much as I do, but it baffles me that you expect so little of them. The world isn't out to fuck you, it's out to get something from you. You can complain about that as much as you like but until it changes you should look to see what it is the world wants that you can provide. You can't create the systems but you can control the choices you make within them.
History is full of people from all walks of life and intelligence (however one wants to define it) levels, in persistent and epic fashion, making obviously stupid choices. Not just with the value of hindsight or modern lenses, but things people argued rightly at the time were stupid choices, and they were made anyway.
We could expect people to make the right choices within the system we've cobbled together, but that's an avoidable personal hell. One would be condemning themselves to eternal disappointment. So the real question to be answered is not how do we coerce these people into making the right decisions, the question is, how do we develop a society that accepts that reality as both inevitable and indispensable.
If one can find themselves at a point where they see those who aren't able/willing to make the "right" decisions as not just inevitable, but indispensable, then they wouldn't be so upset by the notion of having to contribute to their continued existence.
Stepping away from whether it's true or not, believing it would certainly make economic conservatives feel better about the idea of a redistributive society.
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The landless peasant was forced off his land by enclosure acts favored by the bourgeoisie. You forgot that detail.
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United States43274 Posts
On March 10 2017 16:28 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 16:19 KwarK wrote:
IgnE, I know people who donate plasma weekly including an unemployed homeless vet who I helped rebuild his entire life. It's really not so bad. You can put vampiric in italics all you like but just because blood is involved doesn't mean vampires are involved. As for the alleged health problems, it's certainly better for your health than not having health insurance. If we return to our friend Chaffetz saying that people should make better decisions if they want health insurance, if it comes down to plasma or going uninsured, do the plasma.
As for learning a second language, I'm currently working on my Spanish on top of my multiple jobs and school. A few hours a week of Memrise and watching dubbed Futurama, it's not so bad. Literally the only skill you need to pick up a language is the wiring of the brain that happens the first time you pick up a language as an infant. Everybody has it. After that it's just exposing yourself to it. I live in a bilingual state, second language Spanish is a huge bonus, if you can't find a job in New Mexico and you're not trying to learn Spanish then you're not looking for a job.
I don't expect everyone to do as much as I do, but it baffles me that you expect so little of them. The world isn't out to fuck you, it's out to get something from you. You can complain about that as much as you like but until it changes you should look to see what it is the world wants that you can provide. You can't create the systems but you can control the choices you make within them. Yeah great, there are a lot of evils that are better than other evils. We know. So can I hire you to do some Spanish translation for me on the weekends? It's just some legal stuff, contracts and the like. I'm sure your Spanish subtitles on Futurama will have prepared you for it. Edit: It seems like when I add up all the shit you must be doing: 8 hours at work, at least an hour before and after getting ready for, commuting, and eating, a couple hours of school work, we are already up to like 12-13 hours. Now you want to add another hour learning a language? You said I was strawmanning you by characterizing your advice for poor people as setting up a programmed, productive 16-hour day. Was it a strawman because you only meant to encourage a 14-hour day of doing work and educating yourself to do future work?
I like to be productive about 12 hours a day. Places to go, people to be. I have ambition. I don't ask that others match me, simply that they own their choices. If they choose not to save for retirement etc in a system that gave them options then that's on them. Structural problems don't excuse playing the hand you're dealt. And dubbed isn't subbed and Futurama is a perfect place for me to start on my Spanish listening comprehension because I know the English pretty much off by heart. If I were trying to be fluent I'd take a course on it, right now my goal is closer to just being able to have a polite exchange with the cleaning staff at work.
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United States43274 Posts
On March 10 2017 16:35 IgnE wrote:
The landless peasant was forced off his land by enclosure acts favored by the bourgeoisie. You forgot that detail.
The landless peasant fucking sucked at farming, even before he was landless. He subdivided his land into ever smaller strips which were impossible to be managed, he let his animals breed freely and he was completely oblivious to the concept of economies of scale. Enclosure fed England. And unlike the genocidal theft of land from Native Americans, the children of the deprived peasants were part of the society that directly benefited from the new order. I shed no tears for them.
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That's a common theme for tonight's discussion: no tears for lazy idiots. Off to the factories you curs.
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All poverty in the world can be solved with some goddamn good old fashioned personal responsibility.
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United States43274 Posts
On March 10 2017 16:33 GreenHorizons wrote:I think this is part of what the hold up is. Show nested quote +
But until such a time as people aren't forced to choose between watching The Big Bang Theory or having a funded retirement still believe that we should expect them to make the right choice.
Show nested quote +
I don't expect everyone to do as much as I do, but it baffles me that you expect so little of them. The world isn't out to fuck you, it's out to get something from you. You can complain about that as much as you like but until it changes you should look to see what it is the world wants that you can provide. You can't create the systems but you can control the choices you make within them.
History is full of people from all walks of life and intelligence (however one wants to define it) levels, in persistent and epic fashion, making obviously stupid choices. Not just with the value of hindsight or modern lenses, but things people argued rightly at the time were stupid choices, and they were made anyway. We could expect people to make the right choices within the system we've cobbled together, but that's an avoidable personal hell. One would be condemning themselves to eternal disappointment. So the real question to be answered is not how do we coerce these people into making the right decisions, the question is, how do we develop a society that accepts that reality as both inevitable and indispensable. If one can find themselves at a point where they see those who aren't able/willing to make the "right" decisions as not just inevitable, but indispensable, then they wouldn't be so upset by the notion of having to contribute to their continued existence. Stepping away from whether it's true or not, believing it would certainly make economic conservatives feel better about the idea of a redistributive society.
I'm fine with this. If we step back a half dozen pages to when this all began it was with me saying that both the Chaffetz argument and the reaction from the left are absurdly missing the point.
Chaffetz style Republicans arguing that if people were responsible we wouldn't have a problem misses the point because people aren't responsible and we do have a problem so the policy responses should be addressing the actual problem rather than wishing that people would stop being people.
And the leftist response that personal responsibility and good decision making cannot possibly be expected to help people improve their own lots is just dumb. Of course making better decisions would be better, it's literally included within the description of the decisions, better decisions are better. The problem wasn't that part of the Chaffetz argument, the problem is that people don't do it.
And then I got into weird arguments about whether it is even possible for an individual to increase their economic output (obviously yes) and whether economies can adjust to large numbers of workers increasing their output (has every time in the past so far) and whether a richer society provides benefits to those at the bottom (not always proportionally but yes, it does).
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On March 10 2017 16:54 KwarK wrote:
And then I got into weird arguments about whether it is even possible for an individual to increase their economic output (obviously yes) and whether economies can adjust to large numbers of workers increasing their output (has every time in the past so far) and whether a richer society provides benefits to those at the bottom (not always proportionally but yes, it does).
1. Noone argued that in the way you describe it here.
There were arguments like "they could learn a language, since they just need to rewire their brain". Ye I just need to get more intelligent so I can be the new Math-Jesus. Thanks Obama.
Or rather you can't fucking rewire your brain to learn a language as easy as a 3 year old. The same way you can't get your babinski-reflex back (without severing your spine that is).
But yes, I agree that most people could theoretically do something to increase their productivity. whether taht would be practical in any way is a wholly different story.
2. That was a side-argument at max, and I haven't seen anything besides "it works" as an argument here.
3, This is essentially what people are arguing. To get back to your argument about "where did the steel workers come from" you completely dismissed IgnE's answer. And that seems to be the tone of the thread right now. If anything doesn't fit your chain of arguments you just say "stuff can change" or dismiss the argument as a whole. Please show us your evidence that a large worker based increase in productivity tends to bring about a significant increase in the living situation of the poor, since this is your claim.
Isn't there a possibility that the current manifestation of capitalism is not like it is because the poor are lazy, but because capitalism always evolves in a specific direction (unless actively fought against)?
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United States43274 Posts
On March 10 2017 17:14 RolleMcKnolle wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2017 16:54 KwarK wrote:
And then I got into weird arguments about whether it is even possible for an individual to increase their economic output (obviously yes) and whether economies can adjust to large numbers of workers increasing their output (has every time in the past so far) and whether a richer society provides benefits to those at the bottom (not always proportionally but yes, it does). 1. Noone argued that in the way you describe it here. There were arguments like "they could learn a language, since they just need to rewire their brain". Ye I just need to get more intelligent so I can be the new Math-Jesus. Thanks Obama. Or rather you can't fucking rewire your brain to learn a language as easy as a 3 year old. The same way you can't get your babinski-reflex back (without severing your spine that is). But yes, I agree that most people could theoretically do something to increase their productivity. whether taht would be practical in any way is a wholly different story. 2. That was a side-argument at max, and I haven't seen anything besides "it works" as an argument here. 3, This is essentially what people are arguing. To get back to your argument about "where did the steel workers come from" you completely dismissed IgnE's answer. And that seems to be the tone of the thread right now. If anything doesn't fit your chain of arguments you just say "stuff can change" or dismiss the argument as a whole. Please show us your evidence that a large worker based increase in productivity tends to bring about a significant increase in the living situation of the poor, since this is your claim. Isn't there a possibility that the current manifestation of capitalism is not like it is because the poor are lazy, but because capitalism always evolves in a specific direction (unless actively fought against)?
You completely misunderstood my post about language and brain wiring.Literally the only skill you need to pick up a language is the wiring of the brain that happens the first time you pick up a language as an infant. It appears that you read it to be saying that to learn a language just revert your brain to how it was when you were an infant and you'll pick it up in no time. That wasn't what I was saying. What I was saying is that as long as you learned any language as an infant your brain will be language compatible and will pick up new ones through immersion. That is, anyone not a feral child deprived of all human interaction as an infant has no real excuse for not becoming multilingual beyond "I don't really want to".
The steel workers came from a population boom because the land was being used effectively so the kids stopped starving to death. The agricultural revolution increased agrarian productivity so much that the cost of feeding a given individual dropped massively. This made a population boom possible and lowered the barrier for entry for industrial tasks, such as textiles, which in turn reduced living costs in a cyclical spiral upwards.
Regarding a link between the economic productivity of individuals and their economic status, hopefully I need not have to explain that on a micro scale. If you work overtime you get more money than if you don't. Extra productivity, extra money. On a macro scale increased productivity still represents increased value of the contributions to the economy so we might rationally assume that economic status ought also to improve unless the increase was consumed by a rentier class. In some cases the increased productivity cannot be absorbed by a saturated market, in which case those that retain employment in a given industry retain the wealth previously divided between a larger number of individuals and those that do not create new jobs and new wealth that did not previously exist. A series of productivity increases saturating the market pretty much describes the ascent of man, that's how we get from 100% hunter gatherers to 70% farmers, 30% craftsmen and from there to 50% farmers, 30% craftsmen, 10% administrators, 10% priests or whatever. People are displaced up the pyramid as it gains additional layers and complexity.
A rational examination of the history of the western world shows each generation of poor people having significantly more access to consumer goods, essentials, healthcare etc than their parents. While the poor haven't done so well when the benchmark is their rich peers there is no doubt that as productivity increases so does the living standard of the poor. This somewhat stands to reason. When a sack of flour represented a significant investment of labour by farmers, harvesters, millers etc then giving a sack of flour to the poor would be expensive. Human labour is now so efficiently geared that a sack of flour represents a negligible amount of labour to the point that we no longer need charge the poor for flour and can have programs such as food stamps. I'd challenge you to show the inverse of your claim, can you provide an example in which increased productivity within society made people poorer? And don't use your steel workers, previously food was in such short supply that they couldn't afford it and so they died and so there were no steel workers and no industrial revolution. The huge food surpluses were a prerequisite of food being cheap enough and available in sufficient quantities for a population of steel workers to be sustained. Arguing that efficient food production creates poor adults only works if you selectively edit out that it makes poor adults from poor and starving children, it's about as meaningful as pointing out that people who drink water inevitably die.
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You completely misunderstood my post about language and brain wiring. Show nested quote +Literally the only skill you need to pick up a language is the wiring of the brain that happens the first time you pick up a language as an infant. It appears that you read it to be saying that to learn a language just revert your brain to how it was when you were an infant and you'll pick it up in no time. That wasn't what I was saying. What I was saying is that as long as you learned any language as an infant your brain will be language compatible and will pick up new ones through immersion. That is, anyone not a feral child deprived of all human interaction as an infant has no real excuse for not becoming multilingual beyond "I don't really want to".
Okay, I misunderstood what you wanted to say about language. But there is still a decent percentage of population that is not able to learn a second or third language during their off-time since they lack the mental capabilities to do so.
Regarding a link between the economic productivity of individuals and their economic status, hopefully I need not have to explain that on a micro scale.
I just wrote about that. So no.
For the paragraph following that, I believe u misunderstood me. I never argued the point that human productivity increased during the last 40000 years. I asked you (and maybe I wasn't clear enough in my choice of language) to provide evidence for your claim that an increase in working hours for the poor would bring about an improvement in their situation.
So the wording "worker based productivity" meant in my mind an increase in the amount of work a worker does per day. That is (after thinking about it) the wrong choice of words but I guess that happens.
The steel workers came from a population boom because the land was being used effectively so the kids stopped starving to death. The agricultural revolution increased agrarian productivity so much that the cost of feeding a given individual dropped massively. This made a population boom possible and lowered the barrier for entry for industrial tasks, such as textiles, which in turn reduced living costs in a cyclical spiral upwards.
Lots of early industrial and manufacture-workers came from expelling them from their homestead or the land they were working on before to produce wool in a comparatively large-scale, since that sold way better on the upcoming world-market. That was in answer to your "why did they become industrial workers if being a farmer was so much better". The later boom in population sure had different reasons, but the living quality as early coal/steel/textile worker was definitely no improvement over farming the land on mostly your own accord.
A rational examination of the history of the western world shows each generation of poor people having significantly more access to consumer goods, essentials, healthcare etc than their parents.
I hope I understood u wrong but there were centuries without advancements and even deep cuts for poor people. A large part of the advancement you talked about is simply technology based and kinda independent from the amount of work the average worker does.
I'd challenge you to show the inverse of your claim, can you provide an example in which increased productivity within society made people poorer?
I can give u lots of examples where people stayed as poor as they were despite increases in time worked/productivity. That is much nearer to anything I said, than increased productivity making people poorer.
For starters we can just use the famous:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#/media/File:U.S._Hourly_Wages_-_Real_or_Adjusted_for_Inflation_1964-2014.png
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On March 10 2017 10:56 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Why use a huge base of diplomacy experience and knowhow when you can send your son-in-law to make deals -_-
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On March 10 2017 20:29 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:Why use a huge base of diplomacy experience and knowhow when you can send your son-in-law to make deals -_-
Because that huge base tells him things don't work the way he thinks/wants them to work.
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EPT
