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On September 19 2019 15:52 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2019 15:42 gobbledydook wrote:
Fundamentally, if it pays the same to be an owner with the risk involved as it is to be just a worker with no skin in the game, no one would run a business. There just isn't any benefit.
Secondly, the owners/management provide the direction for their workers to follow. If their direction is not correct, the business goes under. Compare to a worker who does his job wrongly, the effect is typically limited only to his duties If managers weren't paid more, why would they bear the responsibility if things go wrong?
Therefore it should be obvious that if you want people to bear more responsibility and risk,.which are inherent in running a business, then you have to pay them more. Their time is worth more than a workers'.
Yeah the goal is for there to not be an owner, the goal is that the workers are the owners instead of an individual. If there was a benefit to being an owner, the goal couldn't be achieved. That's the feature, not a bug. Similarly, I don't want the owner to provide the direction, or assume responsibility, I want the workers to democratically decide what is good for them. I am concerned that the owner is going to look for his own interests when deciding the direction of the company, and not the best interest of his workers. It's okay if someone gets paid more btw. If you're doing more work, that should be rewarded. If your job is very important, that should also be rewarded. Those decisions can be taken by workers. Don't you think it would make more sense for this to be based on labor, rather than ownership?
That's all good, until you get to the reality: It can cost a lot of capital to operate a business. Say you wanted to open a refinery. That might cost you a billion dollars just to build it. Let's say it takes 1000 people to run a refinery. That means everyone would have to chip in a million dollars. I don't know that you could find a thousand people with the right skills and a million dollars apiece, and willing to invest in this project.
In a capitalistic world these billion dollar businesses are usually funded by a large number of stock owners, most of whom just want to get returns on their investment and do not want to help run the company. In your socialist world, who would pay for it?
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On September 19 2019 20:05 gobbledydook wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2019 15:52 Nebuchad wrote:On September 19 2019 15:42 gobbledydook wrote:
Fundamentally, if it pays the same to be an owner with the risk involved as it is to be just a worker with no skin in the game, no one would run a business. There just isn't any benefit.
Secondly, the owners/management provide the direction for their workers to follow. If their direction is not correct, the business goes under. Compare to a worker who does his job wrongly, the effect is typically limited only to his duties If managers weren't paid more, why would they bear the responsibility if things go wrong?
Therefore it should be obvious that if you want people to bear more responsibility and risk,.which are inherent in running a business, then you have to pay them more. Their time is worth more than a workers'.
Yeah the goal is for there to not be an owner, the goal is that the workers are the owners instead of an individual. If there was a benefit to being an owner, the goal couldn't be achieved. That's the feature, not a bug. Similarly, I don't want the owner to provide the direction, or assume responsibility, I want the workers to democratically decide what is good for them. I am concerned that the owner is going to look for his own interests when deciding the direction of the company, and not the best interest of his workers. It's okay if someone gets paid more btw. If you're doing more work, that should be rewarded. If your job is very important, that should also be rewarded. Those decisions can be taken by workers. Don't you think it would make more sense for this to be based on labor, rather than ownership? That's all good, until you get to the reality: It can cost a lot of capital to operate a business. Say you wanted to open a refinery. That might cost you a billion dollars just to build it. Let's say it takes 1000 people to run a refinery. That means everyone would have to chip in a million dollars. I don't know that you could find a thousand people with the right skills and a million dollars apiece, and willing to invest in this project. In a capitalistic world these billion dollar businesses are usually funded by a large number of stock owners, most of whom just want to get returns on their investment and do not want to help run the company. In your socialist world, who would pay for it?
A government program to loan money to business? A lot of the functions of banks can easily be nationalized. The Bank of North Dakota is an example, as are municipal banks, see e.g. this proposal for a public bank in LA.
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Have we talked about the recent whistle blower in the intel community coming out against Trump?
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I'm suprised there are still whistleblowers against Trump and journalists to report them, after what happened to Jeffrey Epstein.
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On September 19 2019 21:07 ShoCkeyy wrote:
Have we talked about the recent whistle blower in the intel community coming out against Trump?
Briefly.
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On September 17 2019 00:19 Ben... wrote:
Several high profile Democrats are now calling for an impeachment inquiry for Kavanaugh. Multiple media outlets have been able to confirm the NYT story regarding Max Stier. It has also been confirmed that Stier communicated the allegations to Chris Coons, who passed the allegations on to the FBI ,who then proceeded to do nothing with them. Also, there are indeed other confirmed witnesses. This could get ugly quite quickly.
The Democrats need to go on the attack with this. If Pelosi lets this one slide, I think it will severely harm the Democrats. The Republicans pointed to the FBI investigation as their justification for confirming Kavanaugh, and now it's turning out that the investigation basically didn't happen other than for a couple limited scope issues.
Welp, got your answer. Pelosi and Dem leadership are pushing against impeaching Kavanaugh saying it's too expensive monetarily and politically.
House Democratic leaders and rank-and-file members are dismissing calls to impeach Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, with some arguing the House has limited investigative resources and others saying it is a politically toxic issue
Asked on Tuesday night if she sees the House spending any time on the Kavanaugh matter, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded with a simple "no." .
www.cnn.com
I suspect this whole cup and ball accountability routine is going to continue as long as people keep falling for/accepting it.
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I don't really understand how the dems could impeach anyway. They could vote to open proceedings, send it to the senate and McConnell would kill it dead. It'd be a giant waste of time unless the evidence was incontrovertible (which it really isn't).
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On September 19 2019 22:35 Acrofales wrote:
I don't really understand how the dems could impeach anyway. They could vote to open proceedings, send it to the senate and McConnell would kill it dead. It'd be a giant waste of time unless the evidence was incontrovertible (which it really isn't). Even without the McConnell, I haven't seen anything that would support something as drastic as trying to impeach a Supreme Court Justice.
Once Kavanaugh was confirmed the chance of getting him out again turned to practically 0, regardless of the makeup of Congress.
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On September 19 2019 22:35 Acrofales wrote:
I don't really understand how the dems could impeach anyway. They could vote to open proceedings, send it to the senate and McConnell would kill it dead. It'd be a giant waste of time unless the evidence was incontrovertible (which it really isn't).
Dems can't hold anyone accountable, and if they could, they won't as we saw with Obama and the banks and Bush and Iraq.
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On September 19 2019 23:42 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2019 16:10 Nebuchad wrote:On September 19 2019 16:02 JimmiC wrote:On September 19 2019 15:52 Nebuchad wrote:On September 19 2019 15:42 gobbledydook wrote:
Fundamentally, if it pays the same to be an owner with the risk involved as it is to be just a worker with no skin in the game, no one would run a business. There just isn't any benefit.
Secondly, the owners/management provide the direction for their workers to follow. If their direction is not correct, the business goes under. Compare to a worker who does his job wrongly, the effect is typically limited only to his duties If managers weren't paid more, why would they bear the responsibility if things go wrong?
Therefore it should be obvious that if you want people to bear more responsibility and risk,.which are inherent in running a business, then you have to pay them more. Their time is worth more than a workers'.
Yeah the goal is for there to not be an owner, the goal is that the workers are the owners instead of an individual. If there was a benefit to being an owner, the goal couldn't be achieved. That's the feature, not a bug. Similarly, I don't want the owner to provide the direction, or assume responsibility, I want the workers to democratically decide what is good for them. I am concerned that the owner is going to look for his own interests when deciding the direction of the company, and not the best interest of his workers. It's okay if someone gets paid more btw. If you're doing more work, that should be rewarded. If your job is very important, that should also be rewarded. Those decisions can be taken by workers. Don't you think it would make more sense for this to be based on labor, rather than ownership? Im not sure that works. Lets say 5 people are owner workers.with votes and 3 are best friends, family what ever. And they vote themselves the best jobs and the most pay. Don't work with them^^ As long as there is enough options and you can get other work that works. Im all for profit share, the end of billionaires, co-ops and so on. But I admit im a little scared of democratically run businesses. I dont know how well they would be run if they had votes on lots of things. Id also be concerned on how the election to be boss, or how that would work out. It takes an absolutely incredible amount of checks and balances to keep a democracy free of corruption (and even the least corrupt still have them) That being said it is the best form of government we have so far so maybe it would also be the best way to manage a business. Perhaps the employees would be like bureaucrats and the voters would be in the community? Im not sure what would work best, but Id sure be interested in giving it a shot. Id love to be a part of the piolet and try to figure out hoe to make it work and how different the rules have to be on different scales.
I could see this ending up like our congress. Elected board officials are "offered" portions of salary to tank or advocate for a certain position that undermines a percentage of the overall workforce, provided the people "offering" gets some kind of kickback at the end of the day.
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I remember reading that Yugoslavia's model of socialism ran a variation of local worker ownership instead of the government command-and-control of the USSR, though I've never really studied up on it.
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On September 19 2019 16:53 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +You've established this by reducing it to 2 business of 1 interacting with a neutral environment and a final consumer. That's obviously not practically applicable to large scale economies and is represented by the tiny fraction your example represents of the economy or even it's general area of it. So then are you willing to reduce your massive generalization? Profit is not inherently exploitative? Only certain forms of it (I'll leave you to clarify, if you wish.) Show nested quote +I don't think this is the time to get deep into this particular aspect but capitalism demands a concept of private ownership that isn't/wasn't as ubiquitous as it's heirs teach us. The short answer is the land and it's fruit belong to no individual beyond an equitable distribution of the value obtained including compensation for work done with consideration to it's place within a global community. I suspect as soon as you had agrarian, sedentary societies, then it was pretty ubiquitous with three main categories- king or his administrator's land, family/ clan lands, and common pastures. The first two are more or less private property and the last is due to the fact that herding sheep and the like is one step away from nomadic living.
in Marxian writings “exploitation” is a technical term that quantifies the value produced by a worker over and above operating costs and wages. workers are “more exploited” when their wages are cheap and there is a high margin per unit of labor (defined in units of time within the factory system) and are not exploited when they share equally in the surplus value they create. if workers decided, for example, to reinvest their surplus value in more productive capacity, they would not necessarily be exploited, because they participated in the decision (ie werent alienated from the products of their labor)
it is NOT directly tied to a notion of “fairness” that you might find in liberal contract theory
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On September 20 2019 00:45 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2019 16:53 Falling wrote:You've established this by reducing it to 2 business of 1 interacting with a neutral environment and a final consumer. That's obviously not practically applicable to large scale economies and is represented by the tiny fraction your example represents of the economy or even it's general area of it. So then are you willing to reduce your massive generalization? Profit is not inherently exploitative? Only certain forms of it (I'll leave you to clarify, if you wish.) I don't think this is the time to get deep into this particular aspect but capitalism demands a concept of private ownership that isn't/wasn't as ubiquitous as it's heirs teach us. The short answer is the land and it's fruit belong to no individual beyond an equitable distribution of the value obtained including compensation for work done with consideration to it's place within a global community. I suspect as soon as you had agrarian, sedentary societies, then it was pretty ubiquitous with three main categories- king or his administrator's land, family/ clan lands, and common pastures. The first two are more or less private property and the last is due to the fact that herding sheep and the like is one step away from nomadic living. in Marxian writings “exploitation” is a technical term that quantifies the value produced by a worker over and above operating costs and wages. workers are “more exploited” when their wages are cheap and there is a high margin per unit of labor (defined in units of time within the factory system) and are not exploited when they share equally in the surplus value they create. if workers decided, for example, to reinvest their surplus value in more productive capacity, they would not necessarily be exploited, because they participated in the decision (ie werent alienated from the products of their labor) it is NOT directly tied to a notion of “fairness” that you might find in liberal contract theory
I read somewhere that by this definition workers at places like Walmart are actually the least "exploited", because Walmart is such a large operation with a relatively small profit margin. If you work at Goldman Sachs you're the most exploited, because they have the largest ratio of total profit : labor costs. If Walmart was fully unionized then prices would have to go up to make up for increased worker pay, it can't simply all come out of executive pay or shareholder dividends.
Now obviously Walmart should be unionized and its workers should get more pay, but I think it's a bit odd that the example that would most immediately come to mind when you think of an archetypal exploited worker in actuality doesn't fit with the theory.
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On September 19 2019 22:18 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 17 2019 00:19 Ben... wrote:
Several high profile Democrats are now calling for an impeachment inquiry for Kavanaugh. Multiple media outlets have been able to confirm the NYT story regarding Max Stier. It has also been confirmed that Stier communicated the allegations to Chris Coons, who passed the allegations on to the FBI ,who then proceeded to do nothing with them. Also, there are indeed other confirmed witnesses. This could get ugly quite quickly.
The Democrats need to go on the attack with this. If Pelosi lets this one slide, I think it will severely harm the Democrats. The Republicans pointed to the FBI investigation as their justification for confirming Kavanaugh, and now it's turning out that the investigation basically didn't happen other than for a couple limited scope issues. Welp, got your answer. Pelosi and Dem leadership are pushing against impeaching Kavanaugh saying it's too expensive monetarily and politically. Show nested quote +House Democratic leaders and rank-and-file members are dismissing calls to impeach Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, with some arguing the House has limited investigative resources and others saying it is a politically toxic issue
Asked on Tuesday night if she sees the House spending any time on the Kavanaugh matter, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded with a simple "no." . www.cnn.comI suspect this whole cup and ball accountability routine is going to continue as long as people keep falling for/accepting it.
Yeah, I pretty much expected that. The Democrats seem split between a group that doesn't want to rock the boat, even if it means missing political opportunities, and a group that wants to go into a full-on attack on the Republicans and those adjacent to them. As long as the group that doesn't want to rock the boat keeps power, this type of thing will keep happening. Though at the same time, recent news about the latest Kavanaugh allegations have suggested that the NYT got a little ahead of themselves on this piece they put out, but it's the NYT so that's to be expected. They've been making massive mistakes frequently for the last 3 years now.
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The weapons used by HK police against protesters were imported from the US according to reports/testimony from HK protestor Joshua Wong Chi-fung among urges for congress to pass legislation making the US relationship with HK contingent on our assessment of their independence. In particular, protests have demanded an investigation into the police's use of force against them, arguing the intensity of the crackdown is unacceptable. Over 800 canisters of tear gas were used on August 5 alone, compared to just 87 during the entire 2014 protest movement, according to Wong. Tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, and rubber batons with "Made in America" stamped on their side have all been found in the streets of Hong Kong.
"The police's excessive force today is clear. Their increasingly liberal use of pepper spray, pepper balls, rubber bullets, sponge bullets, bean bag rounds, and water cannons -- almost all of which are imported from Western democracies -- are no less troubling,"
abcnews.go.com
The PROTECT Hong Kong Act would prohibit U.S. exports of police equipment to Hong Kong, including tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and more. The bill has bipartisan support and is authored by the Congressional Executive Commission on China's chairman, Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass.
This kind of begs the question "Where's the PROTECT the US Act" that prohibits our police from buying that stuff until they get their excessive violence under control. Also, still going to ship weapons and provide military support to Saudi Arabia (a literal monarchy) while they starve and bomb children in Yemen though?
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On September 19 2019 20:05 gobbledydook wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2019 15:52 Nebuchad wrote:On September 19 2019 15:42 gobbledydook wrote:
Fundamentally, if it pays the same to be an owner with the risk involved as it is to be just a worker with no skin in the game, no one would run a business. There just isn't any benefit.
Secondly, the owners/management provide the direction for their workers to follow. If their direction is not correct, the business goes under. Compare to a worker who does his job wrongly, the effect is typically limited only to his duties If managers weren't paid more, why would they bear the responsibility if things go wrong?
Therefore it should be obvious that if you want people to bear more responsibility and risk,.which are inherent in running a business, then you have to pay them more. Their time is worth more than a workers'.
Yeah the goal is for there to not be an owner, the goal is that the workers are the owners instead of an individual. If there was a benefit to being an owner, the goal couldn't be achieved. That's the feature, not a bug. Similarly, I don't want the owner to provide the direction, or assume responsibility, I want the workers to democratically decide what is good for them. I am concerned that the owner is going to look for his own interests when deciding the direction of the company, and not the best interest of his workers. It's okay if someone gets paid more btw. If you're doing more work, that should be rewarded. If your job is very important, that should also be rewarded. Those decisions can be taken by workers. Don't you think it would make more sense for this to be based on labor, rather than ownership? That's all good, until you get to the reality: It can cost a lot of capital to operate a business. Say you wanted to open a refinery. That might cost you a billion dollars just to build it. Let's say it takes 1000 people to run a refinery. That means everyone would have to chip in a million dollars. I don't know that you could find a thousand people with the right skills and a million dollars apiece, and willing to invest in this project. In a capitalistic world these billion dollar businesses are usually funded by a large number of stock owners, most of whom just want to get returns on their investment and do not want to help run the company. In your socialist world, who would pay for it?
Some of "the reality" is influenced by the capitalist system already. Part of why it costs so much is because the people that would want to build a refinery are already the capitalist class, so they have all the money available and they are willing to put up billions as investment, knowing that they're going to make profit later out of the exploitation that they'll get from the refinery. I highly doubt it costs a billion dollars to build one in terms of labor and materials alone (although I've spent two minutes on Google and it looks like it would cost more than a billion dollars to build today, maybe you were already thinking about that and reduced the prize accordingly).
When we get to the correct amount, regardless, you're going to need loans as Grumbels said.
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On September 20 2019 02:56 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 19 2019 20:05 gobbledydook wrote:On September 19 2019 15:52 Nebuchad wrote:On September 19 2019 15:42 gobbledydook wrote:
Fundamentally, if it pays the same to be an owner with the risk involved as it is to be just a worker with no skin in the game, no one would run a business. There just isn't any benefit.
Secondly, the owners/management provide the direction for their workers to follow. If their direction is not correct, the business goes under. Compare to a worker who does his job wrongly, the effect is typically limited only to his duties If managers weren't paid more, why would they bear the responsibility if things go wrong?
Therefore it should be obvious that if you want people to bear more responsibility and risk,.which are inherent in running a business, then you have to pay them more. Their time is worth more than a workers'.
Yeah the goal is for there to not be an owner, the goal is that the workers are the owners instead of an individual. If there was a benefit to being an owner, the goal couldn't be achieved. That's the feature, not a bug. Similarly, I don't want the owner to provide the direction, or assume responsibility, I want the workers to democratically decide what is good for them. I am concerned that the owner is going to look for his own interests when deciding the direction of the company, and not the best interest of his workers. It's okay if someone gets paid more btw. If you're doing more work, that should be rewarded. If your job is very important, that should also be rewarded. Those decisions can be taken by workers. Don't you think it would make more sense for this to be based on labor, rather than ownership? That's all good, until you get to the reality: It can cost a lot of capital to operate a business. Say you wanted to open a refinery. That might cost you a billion dollars just to build it. Let's say it takes 1000 people to run a refinery. That means everyone would have to chip in a million dollars. I don't know that you could find a thousand people with the right skills and a million dollars apiece, and willing to invest in this project. In a capitalistic world these billion dollar businesses are usually funded by a large number of stock owners, most of whom just want to get returns on their investment and do not want to help run the company. In your socialist world, who would pay for it? Some of "the reality" is influenced by the capitalist system already. Part of why it costs so much is because the people that would want to build a refinery are already the capitalist class, so they have all the money available and they are willing to put up billions as investment, knowing that they're going to make profit later out of the exploitation that they'll get from the refinery. I highly doubt it costs a billion dollars to build one in terms of labor and materials alone (although I've spent two minutes on Google and it looks like it would cost more than a billion dollars to build today, maybe you were already thinking about that and reduced the prize accordingly). When we get to the correct amount, regardless, you're going to need loans as Grumbels said.
Most construction is financed with loans under capitalism as well. Practically everyone, from the land owner to the company that would install the safety grip tape on stairs, all take out loans in order to complete a project like that. The practical but imperfect examples of co-ops working with credit unions demonstrate what this generally looks like in practice.
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On September 20 2019 01:20 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2019 00:45 IgnE wrote:On September 19 2019 16:53 Falling wrote:You've established this by reducing it to 2 business of 1 interacting with a neutral environment and a final consumer. That's obviously not practically applicable to large scale economies and is represented by the tiny fraction your example represents of the economy or even it's general area of it. So then are you willing to reduce your massive generalization? Profit is not inherently exploitative? Only certain forms of it (I'll leave you to clarify, if you wish.) I don't think this is the time to get deep into this particular aspect but capitalism demands a concept of private ownership that isn't/wasn't as ubiquitous as it's heirs teach us. The short answer is the land and it's fruit belong to no individual beyond an equitable distribution of the value obtained including compensation for work done with consideration to it's place within a global community. I suspect as soon as you had agrarian, sedentary societies, then it was pretty ubiquitous with three main categories- king or his administrator's land, family/ clan lands, and common pastures. The first two are more or less private property and the last is due to the fact that herding sheep and the like is one step away from nomadic living. in Marxian writings “exploitation” is a technical term that quantifies the value produced by a worker over and above operating costs and wages. workers are “more exploited” when their wages are cheap and there is a high margin per unit of labor (defined in units of time within the factory system) and are not exploited when they share equally in the surplus value they create. if workers decided, for example, to reinvest their surplus value in more productive capacity, they would not necessarily be exploited, because they participated in the decision (ie werent alienated from the products of their labor) it is NOT directly tied to a notion of “fairness” that you might find in liberal contract theory I read somewhere that by this definition workers at places like Walmart are actually the least "exploited", because Walmart is such a large operation with a relatively small profit margin. If you work at Goldman Sachs you're the most exploited, because they have the largest ratio of total profit : labor costs. If Walmart was fully unionized then prices would have to go up to make up for increased worker pay, it can't simply all come out of executive pay or shareholder dividends. Now obviously Walmart should be unionized and its workers should get more pay, but I think it's a bit odd that the example that would most immediately come to mind when you think of an archetypal exploited worker in actuality doesn't fit with the theory.
goldman sachs presents a number of issues for the most traditional, basic Marxist analysis of labor, but yes, you are right. marx’s theories on finance capital were not as developed because he was writing in the mid 19th century when factory labor was the dominant capitalist paradigm
and if you were going to critique the idea of profit as illusory in some way, teasing out a more fully developed theory of hw finance capital works (position, rent seeking, disciplinary loan conditions, etc) would be a place to start
walmart is in that sense a more exemplary capitalist corporation within marx’s scheme in vol 1 of Capital, subject to equilibrium conditions and the iron law of wages
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consider, for example, that it is hard to trace investment profit to only the labor of goldman employees. the finance deals they offer accrue profits from a whole range of companies that pay back that investment w interest
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EPT
