War; Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention (dude)
Immortalist
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374292884/
1. Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention
2. Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention Dude
---------------------------
1. Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention:
...the extent that countries tied their economies and futures to global
integration and trade, it would act as a restraint on going to war with
their neighbors...
I first started thinking about this in the late 1990s, when, during my
travels, I noticed that no two countries that both had McDonald's had
ever fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's.
(Border skirmishes and civil wars don't count, because McDonald's
usually served both sides.) After confirming this with McDonald's, I
offered what I called the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention.
The Golden Arches Theory stipulated that when a country reached the
level of economic development where it had a middle class big enough to
support a network of McDonald's, it became a McDonald's country. And
people in McDonald's countries didn't like to fight wars anymore. They
preferred to wait in line for burgers. While this was offered slightly
tongue in cheek, the serious point I was trying to make was that as
countries got woven into the fabric of global trade and rising living
standards, which having a network of McDonald's franchises had come to
symbolize, the cost of war for victor and vanquished became
prohibitively high.
2. Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention Dude:
The Dell Theory stipulates: No two countries that are both part of a
major global supply chain, like Dell's, will ever fight a war against
each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply
chain. Because people embedded in major global supply chains don't want
to fight old-time wars anymore. They want to make just-in-time
deliveries of goods and services-and enjoy the rising standards of
living that come with that. One of the people with the best feel for
the logic behind this theory is Michael Dell, the founder and chairman
of Dell.
"These countries understand the risk premium that they have," said Dell
of the countries in his Asian supply chain. "They are pretty careful to
protect the equity that they have built up or tell us why we should not
worry [about their doing anything adventurous]. My belief after
visiting China is that the change that has occurred there is in the
best interest of the world and China. Once people get a taste for
whatever you want to call it-economic independence, a better
lifestyle, and a better life for their child or children-they grab on
to that and don't want to give it up."
Any sort of war or prolonged political upheaval in East Asia or China
"would have a massive chilling effect on the investment there and on
all the progress that has been made there," said Dell, who added that
he believes the governments in that part of the world understand this
very clearly. "We certainly make clear to them that stability is
important to us. | Right now] it is not a day-to-day worry for us... I
believe that as time and progress go on there, the chance for a really
disruptive event goes down exponentially. I don't think our industry
gets enough credit for the good we are doing in these areas. If you are
making money and being productive and raising your standard of living,
you're not sitting around thinking, Who did this to us? or Why is our
life so bad?"
There is a lot of truth to this. Countries whose workers and industries
arc woven into a major global supply chain know that they cannot take
an hour, a week, or a month off for war without disrupting industries
and economies around the world and thereby risking the loss of their
place in that supply chain for a long time, which could be extremely
costly. For a country with no natural resources, being part of a global
supply chain is like striking oil-oil that never runs out. And
therefore, getting dropped from such a chain because you start a war is
like having your oil wells go dry or having someone pour cement down
them. They will not come back anytime soon.
"You are going to pay for it really dearly/," said Glenn E. Neland,
senior vice president for worldwide procurement at Dell, when I asked
him what would happen to a major supply-chain member in Asia that
decided to start fighting with its neighbor and disrupt the supply
chain. "It will not only bring you to your knees [today], but you will
pay for a long time-because you just won't have any credibility if
you demonstrate you are going to go [off] the political deep end. And
China is just now starting to develop a level of credibility in the
business community that it is creating a business environment you can
prosper in-with transparent and consistent rules." Neland said that
suppliers regularly ask him whether he is worried about China and
Taiwan, which have threatened to go to war at several points in the
past half century, but his standard response is that he cannot imagine
them "doing anything more than flexing muscles with each other." Neland
said he can tell in his conversations and dealings with companies and
governments in the Dell supply chain, particularly the Chinese, that
"they recognize the opportunity and are really hungry to participate in
the same things they have seen other countries in Asia do. They know
there is a big economic pot at the end of the rainbow and they are
really after it. We will spend about $35 billion producing parts this
year, and 30 percent of that is [in] China."
If you follow the evolution of supply chains, added Neland, you see the
prosperity and stability they promoted first in Japan, and then in
Korea and Taiwan, and now in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines,
Thailand, and Indonesia. Once countries get embedded in these global
supply chains, "they feel part of something much bigger than their own
businesses," he said. Osamu Watanabe, the CEO of the Japan External
Trade Organization (JETRO), was explaining to me one afternoon in Tokyo
how Japanese companies were moving vast amounts of low- and
middle-range technical work and manufacturing to China, doing the basic
fabrication there, and then bringing it back to Japan for final
assembly. Japan was doing this despite a bitter legacy of mistrust
between the two countries, which was intensified by the Japanese
invasion of China in the last century. Historically, he noted, a strong
Japan and a strong China have had a hard time coexisting. But not
today, at least not for the moment. Why not? I asked. The reason you
can have a strong Japan and a strong China at the same time, he said,
"is because of the supply chain." It is a win-win for both.
Obviously, since Iraq, Syria, south Lebanon, North Korea, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and Iran are not part of any major global supply chains,
all of them remain hot spots that could explode at any time and slow or
reverse the flattening of the world. As my own notebook story attests,
the most important test case of the Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention
is the situation between China and Taiwan-since both are deeply
embedded in several of the world's most important computer, consumer
electronics, and, increasingly, software supply chains. The vast
majority of computer components for every major company comes from
coastal China, Taiwan, and East Asia. In addition, Taiwan alone has
more than $100 billion in investments in mainland China today, and
Taiwanese experts run many of the cutting-edge Chinese high-tech
manufacturing companies.
It is no wonder that Craig Addison, the former editor of Electronic
Business Asia magazine, wrote an essay for the International Herald
Tribune (September 29, 2000), headlined "A 'Silicon Shield' Protects
Taiwan from China." He argued that "Silicon-based products, such as
computers and networking systems, form the basis of the digital
economies in the United States, Japan and other developed nations. In
the past decade, Taiwan has become the third-largest information
technology hardware producer after the United States and Japan.
Military aggression by China against Taiwan would cut off a large
portion of the world's supply of these products . . . Such a
development would wipe trillions of dollars off the market value of
technology companies listed in the United States, Japan and Europe."
Even if China's leaders, like former president Jiang Zemin, who was
once minister of electronics, lose sight of how integrated China and
Taiwan are in the world's computer supply chain, they need only ask
their kids for an update. Jiang Zemin's son, Jiang Mianheng, wrote
Addison, "is a partner in a wafer fabrication project in Shanghai with
Winston Wang of Taiwan's Grace T.H.W. Group." And it is not just
Taiwanese. Hundreds of big American tech companies now have R & D
operations in China; a war that disrupted them could lead not only to
the companies moving their plants elsewhere but also to a significant
loss of R & D investment in China, which the Beijing government has
been betting on to advance its development. Such a war could also,
depending on how it started, trigger a widespread American boycott of
Chinese goods-if China were to snuff out the Taiwanese
democracy-which would lead to serious economic turmoil inside China.
The Dell Theory had its first real test in December 2004, when Taiwan
held parliamentary elections. President Chen Shui-bian's
pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party was expected to win the
legislative runoff over the main opposition Nationalist Party, which
favored closer ties with Beijing. Chen framed the election as a popular
referendum on his proposal to write a new constitution that would
formally enshrine Taiwan's independence, ending the purposely ambiguous
status quo. Had Chen won and moved ahead on his agenda to make Taiwan
its own motherland, as opposed to maintaining the status quo fiction
that it is a province of the mainland, it could have led to a Chinese
military assault on Taiwan. Everyone in the region was holding his or
her breath. And what happened? Motherboards won over motherland. A
majority of Taiwanese voted against the pro-independence governing
party legislative candidates, ensuring that the DPP would not have a
majority in parliament. I believe the message Taiwanese voters were
sending was not that they never want Taiwan to be independent. It was
that they do not want to upset the status quo right now, which has been
so beneficial to so many Taiwanese. The voters seemed to understand
clearly how interwoven they had become with the mainland, and they
wisely opted to maintain their de facto independence rather than force
de jure independence, which might have triggered a Chinese invasion and
a very uncertain future.
Warning: What I said when I put forth the McDonald's theory, I would
repeat even more strenuously with the Dell Theory: It does not make
wars obsolete. And it does not guarantee that governments will not
engage in wars of choice, even governments that are part of major
supply chains. To suggest so would be naive. It guarantees only that
governments whose countries are enmeshed in global supply chains will
have to think three times, not just twice, about engaging in anything
but a war of self-defense. And if they choose to go to war anyway, the
price they will pay will be ten times higher than it was a decade ago
and probably ten times higher than whatever the leaders of that country
think. It is one thing to lose your McDonald's. It's quite another to
fight a war that costs you your place in a twenty-first-century supply
chain that may not come back around for a long time.
The World Is Flat:
A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
by Thomas L. Friedman
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374292884/
http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm
http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/
Bret Cahill
fighting. They have nothing to lose.
The Shias are only paying lip service to minority rights and democracy
and anyone who has spent even one year in Iraq knows it.
The choices for the U. S. in Iraq are clear:
1. Withdraw now and let the resulting bloody civil war determine the
next brutal dictator and only lose 2,000 U. S. troops.
2. Withdraw in 100 years and let the resulting bloody civil war
determine the next brutal dictator and lose 100K U. S. troops over the
next century.
3. Anniliate one or more Iraqi groups and let the resulting struggle
for power determine the next brutal dictator.
4. Anniliate all 25 million Iraqis now and let Halliburton at the 20
trillion dollars worth of oil.
There is no democratic future for Iraq.
The neocons who thought the invasion/ occupation was such a bright idea
were all idle scribblers who have never accomplished anything in their
entire lives.
Never read any political classics.
Never elected to anything.
Never spent much time in Muslim countries.
Never built up a company.
Never did a day's work other than scribble nonsense.
Never invented anything.
Never did anything except daydream out loud in public.
They are complete idiots.
Bret Cahill
Edgar Svendsen
wrong.
Ed
mimus
> The World Is Flat -Thomas L. Friedman
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374292884/
>
> 1. Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention
> 2. Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention Dude
>
> ---------------------------
>
> 1. Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention:
>
> ...the extent that countries tied their economies and futures to global
> integration and trade, it would act as a restraint on going to war with
> their neighbors...
The same argument was made to pooh- pooh the very idea of a major European
war just prior to WWI.
--
In the previous number, the cattle rustlers (post-
Hegelian dogma) had trapped Professor Dewey in an
abandoned mine shaft (Jamesian pragmatism) and had
ignited the fuse leading to a keg of dynamite
(neo-Newtonian empiricism).
< S. J. Perelman
Bret Cahill
Century smell to it.
Doesn't mean it is wrong, just that it probably has already been well
tested.
Someone has been down this path before.
Bret Cahill
Roger Johansson
Bret Cahill wrote:
> The neocons who thought the invasion/ occupation was such a bright idea
> were all idle scribblers who have never accomplished anything in their
> entire lives.
The theory behind the war in Iraq:
There is a violent conflict between the islamic
violent groups and american violent groups.
Using violence as a method to solve problems is
a tradition in both USA and some parts of the
islamic world.
So it was seen as a good idea to polarize the conflict,
get the fundamentalists on both sides to take up weapons
so they can be killed off.
This war against people who think they have the right
to influence the world with the help of violence needs
a focal point, an area where this war can happen.
Today all islamists and americans who are stupid and angry
can go to Iraq, buy a kalashnikov and get killed.
This makes the conflict more managable and more restricted
to a certain geographic area.
This forces all the other islamists and americans to
make a choice, do you accept to abstain from violence
or do you prefer to die with a weapon in your hand,
for your convictions.
This will put an end to the use of violence as
a political method, which is necessary for modern
democracy to work as it should in the future.
That is the neocon idea behind the invasion of Iraq.
--
Roger J.
Immortalist
Bret Cahill wrote:
> Pretty much explains why the insurgent Sunnis in Iraq will never stop
> fighting. They have nothing to lose.
>
Same thing might have been said about the Soviets or the CHinese
COmmunists, please explain what you mean by "never."
Immortalist
Roger Johansson wrote:
> Bret Cahill wrote:
>
> > The neocons who thought the invasion/ occupation was such a bright idea
> > were all idle scribblers who have never accomplished anything in their
> > entire lives.
>
> The theory behind the war in Iraq:
>
> There is a violent conflict between the islamic
> violent groups and american violent groups.
> Using violence as a method to solve problems is
> a tradition in both USA and some parts of the
> islamic world.
>
Seems that your kind of explaination is a tradition also. But it
doesn't hold water since the same could have been said about the
Chinese or the Soviets some time ago, and they changed. Your tradition
didn't.
Immortalist
Edgar Svendsen wrote:
> Arguments just like this were made for why WWI could not happen. They were
> wrong.
>
Arguments just like this also have led to particular countries that
were enemies to get along and be good and interconnected trading
partners. Therefore these arguments may or may not have led to WWI.
> Ed
Immortalist
Bret Cahill wrote:
> It sounded like something off a [dusty] shelf -- had a musty early 20th
> Century smell to it.
>
Please present one or more of these arguments, or something of a dusty
shelf, you refer to.
> Doesn't mean it is wrong, just that it probably has already been well
> tested.
>
The theory that the sun will rise tommorrow is also well tested right?
Immortalist
mimus wrote:
> On 2 Oct 2005 10:10:27 -0700, Immortalist wrote:
>
> > The World Is Flat -Thomas L. Friedman
> > http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374292884/
> >
> > 1. Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention
> > 2. Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention Dude
> >
> > ---------------------------
> >
> > 1. Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention:
> >
> > ...the extent that countries tied their economies and futures to global
> > integration and trade, it would act as a restraint on going to war with
> > their neighbors...
>
> The same argument was made to pooh- pooh the very idea of a major European
> war just prior to WWI.
>
Can you please present the argument you are refering to and show
conclusively how the current state of international trade will come out
the same, as you seem to be asserting but not defending?
Publius
news:1128327901.6...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:
> This will put an end to the use of violence as
> a political method, which is necessary for modern
> democracy to work as it should in the future.
Does this mean you renounce all use of violence to achieve political ends?
Bret Cahill
real life, any one aspect of your theory would bring down the entire
plan, why not keep nesting one crazy fantasy into another?
I once did a little neoconish theory making on a cold fusion group by
inventing a H1 reactor that didn't require a turbine or boiler.
Computer quality 3 phase 60 cycle electricity came straight from the
reaction. The reaction also cracked CO2 from the atmosphere into O2
and carbon nano tubes as a byproduct. No transmission lines were
required; you could download the power in a btu. or kWhr. file from
your laptop.
It also cured religious fundamentalism and caused Walmart employees to
make 3X minimum wage.
Hey, it's fun being a neocon! Could I get my fusion reactor theory
printed in the _Spectator_?
Bret Cahill
Roger Johansson
Under these circumstances, yes, absolutely.
We already have democracy in most countries in the world.
Now it is up to us to think out a better system
and vote it to power.
In another historical situation my answer could
have been another.
The democratic system will work fine when we have
stopped money, religion, violence, covert operations,
secret agendas, and other unfair methods from influencing
the democratic processes.
--
Roger J.
Publius
> The democratic system will work fine when we have
> stopped money, religion, violence, covert operations,
> secret agendas, and other unfair methods from influencing
> the democratic processes.
Does that mean you will not resort to violence to stamp out, say, money and
religion? I.e, if, after a vote to outlaw money and violence, some people
continue to use money and practice religion, you will not resort to
violence against them?
Bret Cahill
stop
<> fighting. They have nothing to lose.
< Same thing might have been said about the Soviets or the
< CHinese COmmunists
Their countries were never occupied, at least not by any western
"democratization" army. They had plenty to lose. Those bad guys died
comfy in bed or, as in China, became robber barons.
In sharp contrast as soon as the U. S. troops leave the Sunnies know
full well they will be tortued to death for all the crimes they
perpetuated against the Shias and Kurds, before and after Saddam. A
constitution is nothing but a silly piece of paper to Iraqis. We
cannot even get GOP justices to read the U. S. constitution. Who would
believe Iraqis would care about theirs? Sunnies have no reason not to
fight to the death. There's no way around an ethnic civil war now.
Even if we restored him to power, Saddam couldn't stop it. It's
already begun.
If fhe neocon theory was to get as many Muslims to kill each other as
possible -- I can see why W. never discusses it -- then maybe their
plan is working.
But that plan isn't new. The Gipper was effectively doing the same
thing back when he was arming Saddam to fight Iran.
The Gipster just didn't bother with the nonsense of an Iraqi
constitution. Or getting a lot of U. S. troops killed.
The Bushies do the Iraqi constitution farce to humor Americans, or more
precisely, the media. I love the way the corp. media discuss all the
fine points in the Iraqi constitution without snickering. They must
be getting big bucks to keep up THAT facade.
< please explain what you mean by "never."
As long as even two Sunnis are alive.
Bret Cahill
Edgar Svendsen
"Immortalist" <reanima...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1128357155.4...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
contributing to the causes of that conflict. Rather I tried to say the
arguments were false in the sense that the economic treaties between the
participants in that war did not, as predicted by the arguments, do much to
prevent that war.
>> Ed
>
Roger Johansson
There is no need to forbid money.
Money will not have any practical use.
You get everything for free which you are allowed to own.
No matter how you manipulate with money, theft, and other
means for transferring property you cannot own more.
So there is no reason to steal, beg or borrow.
You are still just as rich as everybody else.
Religion is a different thing.
If it is just theoretical religion there is
no reason to do anything, people have the right
to think and say whatever they like.
If the religion is causing illegal actions it
can be forbidden altogether, like nazism in many
countries today, or just the illegal parts of it
are illegal and the society has to protect itself
against people who use illegal means.
By the way, the society has the right to keep
some people isolated physically from the society
if there is no other way to protect the other people
from them.
But that doesn't mean that the society has the right
to mistreat prisoners, or punish them.
Prisoners should have good conditions and as much
personal freedom as possible.
The prison systems in most countries today are
not acceptable in a civilized society.
The practises against prisoners in the world's
most powerful nation are apalling and a shame for
all the world.
Creationists like torture, obviously.
--
Roger J.
Bret Cahill
civil war, that is, to get Muslims to kill as many Muslims as possible
so when they get tired of killing each other, utopia breaks out.
Bret Cahill
pvo...@yahoo.com
Immortalist wrote:
> The World Is Flat -Thomas L. Friedman
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374292884/
>
> 1. Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention
> 2. Dell Theory of Conflict Prevention Dude
>
> ---------------------------
>
> 1. Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention:
>
> ...the extent that countries tied their economies and futures to global
> integration and trade, it would act as a restraint on going to war with
> their neighbors...
>
> I first started thinking about this in the late 1990s, when, during my
> travels, I noticed that no two countries that both had McDonald's had
> ever fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's.
> (Border skirmishes and civil wars don't count, because McDonald's
> usually served both sides.) After confirming this with McDonald's, I
> offered what I called the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention.
In an allusion that is probably distasteful to American companies,
Abizaid said al Qaeda is not a monolith like IBM. Rather, it is a
franchise operation like McDonald's. This makes it very difficult to
cut off the head of the organization. The group uses any and all means
to further its goals: drugs, smuggling, so-called charitable
organizations and others.
http://www.dod.gov/news/Sep2005/20050929_2887.html
You can't make this stuff up!
==
McDonald's is a drug smuggling franchise? Supersize me!!!
Publius
> There is no need to forbid money.
> Money will not have any practical use.
>
> You get everything for free which you are allowed to own.
> No matter how you manipulate with money, theft, and other
> means for transferring property you cannot own more.
Ah --- "allowed to own." What happens if I acquire more than I am "allowed
to own?"
For example, suppose I write software. Someone I know paints gorgeous
landscapes. He only paints 2-3 per year, and they are highly prized ---
many would love to own one, but cannot obtain them at any price. But he is
fascinated by a software program I've written, and gives me a couple of his
paintings in exchange for it. Someone else I know is a chemist. He has
discovered and synthesized a compound that prevents cholesterol from
depositing in arteries. He gives me a supply in exhange for my software,
and also gives some to the artist, in exchange for a painting.
Are we "allowed to own" these things? Or do you send goons to relieve us of
them?
> If it is just theoretical religion there is
> no reason to do anything, people have the right
> to think and say whatever they like.
What if they meet regularly to discuss their religion, worship, etc.? What
if they stand on street corners and hand out flyers, or post notices of
worship services on members's fences, trees, etc.? What if, in some towns,
the number of followers becomes quite large --- large enough to vote the
local socialists out of office?
> If the religion is causing illegal actions it
> can be forbidden altogether, like nazism in many
> countries today, or just the illegal parts of it
> are illegal and the society has to protect itself
> against people who use illegal means.
Isn't violence the only illegal means?
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > There is no need to forbid money.
> > Money will not have any practical use.
> >
> > You get everything for free which you are allowed to own.
> > No matter how you manipulate with money, theft, and other
> > means for transferring property you cannot own more.
> Ah --- "allowed to own." What happens if I acquire more than I am "allowed
> to own?"
If we are talking about material values, like property
or consumption, the police will get the property you
"acquired" back to the society. And you get a warning,
or is put jail.
> For example, suppose I write software. Someone I know paints gorgeous
> landscapes.
If you do not publish it it is not known by anybody else
and is no problem.
If you publish it it is the property of mankind.
Just like internet works today.
> He only paints 2-3 per year, and they are highly prized ---
> many would love to own one, but cannot obtain them at any price.
If you publish low resolution thumbnails and say you have
high resolution versions, no problem, you have the right
to keep some versions to yourself.
If you try to use the artwork to get material advantages
by exchanging values with somebody else, you are getting
dangerously close to breaking an important principle,
that nobody has the right to use any means to get more
material advantages by some unfair means.
> But he is
> fascinated by a software program I've written, and gives me a couple of his
> paintings in exchange for it.
There are no copyright or patent rights in my system.
If you publish it it can be distributed freely.
As long as we are talking about non-material values
it can be seen as private exchange of ideas, and the
society has no right to get involved.
> Someone else I know is a chemist. He has
> discovered and synthesized a compound that prevents cholesterol from
> depositing in arteries. He gives me a supply in exhange for my software,
> and also gives some to the artist, in exchange for a painting.
If it is not known by other people than you two
there is no reason to do anything.
If it is known by the society we have a problem.
If he uses his knowledge to get power over other people,
or to get material advantages he is a criminal.
Making an artist give him a painting in return for
a chemical compound he is using his knowledge to
get power over other people, and that is not allowed.
> Are we "allowed to own" these things? Or do you send goons to relieve us of
> them?
There is no way to force the chemist to give away his
knowledge, but we can stop him from using that knowledge
to get material advantages or to get power over other
people.
> > If it is just theoretical religion there is
> > no reason to do anything, people have the right
> > to think and say whatever they like.
> What if they meet regularly to discuss their religion, worship, etc.? What
> if they stand on street corners and hand out flyers, or post notices of
> worship services on members's fences, trees, etc.? What if, in some towns,
> the number of followers becomes quite large --- large enough to vote the
> local socialists out of office?
If they do not break any laws there is
no reason to do anything.
> > If the religion is causing illegal actions it
> > can be forbidden altogether, like nazism in many
> > countries today, or just the illegal parts of it
> > are illegal and the society has to protect itself
> > against people who use illegal means.
> Isn't violence the only illegal means?
No.
A beautiful girl can use her looks to get material
advantages or power over other people, that is not
allowed.
There will be popular singers or models who are
loved by millions of people, and they will be
pampered by their fans, I see nothing wrong in that.
We have to use common sense and remember
the basic rules in such cases.
As long as the star is not using her fame to
get material advantages or power over other people
there is no problem.
--
Roger J.
Publius
> If we are talking about material values, like property
> or consumption, the police will get the property you
> "acquired" back to the society. And you get a warning,
> or is put jail.
Wait --- in the example, the property I acquired was from a neighbor, the
painter, in a voluntary exchange for my software. How can it go "back to
the society," if it were not acquired from the "society" in the first
place?
> If you do not publish it it is not known by anybody else
> and is no problem.
I make it publicly known that I have it, but I make it available only to
those people to who are willing to exchange something for it. Is that a
"problem?"
> If you try to use the artwork to get material advantages
> by exchanging values with somebody else, you are getting
> dangerously close to breaking an important principle,
> that nobody has the right to use any means to get more
> material advantages by some unfair means.
Ah --- and you will intitiate violence against me to preserve this
"important principle," even though I have used violence against no one?
And how can a series of exchanges between willing participants be
"unfair?" Unfair to whom?
> There are no copyright or patent rights in my system.
> If you publish it it can be distributed freely.
So I expected. That is why I will be very careful to whom I make it
available, and why it will be available only to a handful of people,
those who I trust and will pay handsomely, instead of too many who could
pay a small amount. Thus that few will have benefit of that software,
while the rest do without. Does the Gestapo come for me now?
>> Someone else I know is a chemist. He has
>> discovered and synthesized a compound that prevents cholesterol from
>> depositing in arteries. He gives me a supply in exchange for my
>> software, and also gives some to the artist, in exchange for a
>> painting.
>
> If it is not known by other people than you two
> there is no reason to do anything.
> If it is known by the society we have a problem.
What problem is that? Are you suggesting that people gain an entitlement
to anything others produce, if they find out about it? Can you explain
how that works?
How about the painter --- if anyone finds out he has paintings, or can
paint them, does he "have a problem," in your Utopia?
> If he uses his knowledge to get power over other people,
> or to get material advantages he is a criminal.
>
> Making an artist give him a painting in return for
> a chemical compound he is using his knowledge to
> get power over other people, and that is not allowed.
No one is "making" anyone do anything. The chemist is exchanging
something the painter wants for something, he, the chemist, wants.
Neither is forcing the other, and both gain "advantages" --- they both
get something they want, and no violence has been used or threatened. And
that is not allowed? Who has has the power to allow or disallow it, given
that no one else is involved? Is this where the Gestapo comes in again?
> There is no way to force the chemist to give away his
> knowledge, but we can stop him from using that knowledge
> to get material advantages or to get power over other
> people.
You could try pulling out his fingernails.
But suppose you stop short of that, and the chemist indeed keeps his
knowledge to himself, since he has no incentive to do otherwise. His
discovery could prevent thousands of heart attacks. But since he gets
nothing for the efforts he's invested, he uses it only himself and his
family. No one else knows about it or benefits from it. Is everyone now
better off?
>> What if they meet regularly to discuss their religion, worship, etc.?
>> What if they stand on street corners and hand out flyers, or post
>> notices of worship services on members's fences, trees, etc.? What
>> if, in some towns, the number of followers becomes quite large ---
>> large enough to vote the local socialists out of office?
> If they do not break any laws there is
> no reason to do anything.
But ARE they breaking any of the laws of your Utopia by doing any of the
above?
>> Isn't violence the only illegal means?
>
> No.
>
> A beautiful girl can use her looks to get material
> advantages or power over other people, that is not
> allowed.
Ah. The Gestapo comes after pretty girls who get more dates than plain
ones, too, eh?
> There will be popular singers or models who are
> loved by millions of people, and they will be
> pampered by their fans, I see nothing wrong in that.
But they can't sell tickets or CDs, right? HINT: if they can't sell
tickets or CD, they will not perform, and so there will be no fans. Or,
like the chemist, the painter, the software designers, and pretty girls,
they will go underground. Until the Gestapo shows up.
I thought you said earlier you were going to outlaw violence. But it
seems you are prepared to use violence against all kinds of people who
have not themselves used it.
> As long as the star is not using her fame to
> get material advantages or power over other people
> there is no problem.
You really don't grasp the concept of trade, do you? In a trade, BOTH
parties are advantaged. The singer gets $20 for a ticket, the fan gets
two hours of entertainment. How do we know that trade was fair? Because
both parties entered into it freely. No force was involved.
Until the Gestapo showed up.
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > There will be popular singers or models who are
> > loved by millions of people, and they will be
> > pampered by their fans, I see nothing wrong in that.
> But they can't sell tickets or CDs, right?
There is no money in the new world, so how could they
sell anything?
> HINT: if they can't sell
> tickets or CD, they will not perform, and so there will be no fans.
If the singer wants to perform, the roadies want to help,
the fans want to come to the concert there will be a concert.
Nobody gets paid and nobody has any use for money, because
there is nothing you can buy for money.
> > As long as the star is not using her fame to
> > get material advantages or power over other people
> > there is no problem.
>
> You really don't grasp the concept of trade, do you? In a trade, BOTH
> parties are advantaged. The singer gets $20 for a ticket, the fan gets
There can be no trade in a world which doesn't use money,
and does not accept the exchange principle.
I am talking about a world where all work is voluntary
and unpaid, a world based on sharing and voluntarism.
A world where the freedom of the individual is the most
important principle. Material advantages cannot be used
to force or motivate anybody to do anything.
The individual is ruled by his own wishes, not outside
forces.
--
Roger J.
forbi...@msn.com
Roger Johansson wrote:
> I am talking about a world where all work is voluntary
> and unpaid, a world based on sharing and voluntarism.
> A world where the freedom of the individual is the most
> important principle. Material advantages cannot be used
> to force or motivate anybody to do anything.
Something close to this world will be upon us before we have
the philosophical technology to grasp it. In my conspiracy
moments I think it could have already been here if other
forces bent upon control were not at work hindering its
arrival.
> The individual is ruled by his own wishes, not outside
> forces.
Not entirely. Society will still see the need to enforce
certain social norms. At the boundry there will be room
for trade but existence won't depend upon it.
About twenty years ago I began to think about a world where
food and shelter were produced, delivered, (and maintained)
by automation. For many this would be enough for them to
start self-actualizing. Their needs are sufficiently sated
by these two goods. No one would be motived to trade labor
for these two goods and they represent a majority of many
people's economic lives.
I began to wonder if the aberrant behavior of destroying
products would abate if replacement was sufficiently cheap.
It looks like capitalists just acquire more of it so as to
keep it scarce and a source of motivation of those whose
labor they wish to extract. Others see the "gift" of food
and shelter as badges they must wear, identifying them as
outcasts (out-castes). Who wouldn't want to destroy their
identification as lower status?
I don't know how we are to overcome the notion embodied in
the adage "Idle hands are the devil's workshop."
Roger Johansson
forbi...@msn.com wrote:
> Roger Johansson wrote:
> > I am talking about a world where all work is voluntary
> > and unpaid, a world based on sharing and voluntarism.
> > A world where the freedom of the individual is the most
> > important principle. Material advantages cannot be used
> > to force or motivate anybody to do anything.
> Something close to this world will be upon us before we have
> the philosophical technology to grasp it. In my conspiracy
> moments I think it could have already been here if other
> forces bent upon control were not at work hindering its
> arrival.
I have been writing about this for 10 years or more,
and nobody has tried to stop me.
I don't assume that the ultimate powers in this world
are blind, I asssume that they like me.
> > The individual is ruled by his own wishes, not outside
> > forces.
> Not entirely. Society will still see the need to enforce
> certain social norms.
Of course, but the new society can accept anything
you like to do as long as people are not trying
to influence others with unfair means, the norms
will be wider and allow more individual freedom
than any other system.
I talk about the official laws I have described,
they are the only social norms we need.
Did you think about something else?
> About twenty years ago I began to think about a world where
> food and shelter were produced, delivered, (and maintained)
> by automation.
The largely automated production systems in the modern world
make it easier to implement a sharing and voluntary society,
but the basic principles are applicable to any society.
> I don't know how we are to overcome the notion embodied in
> the adage "Idle hands are the devil's workshop."
I know.
We simply explain the cultural pattern of creationism,
which is the reason for stress and for morals like that in
the current culture. The ideals of creationism force us
to live at very high stress levels, because some people
want to use love as a drug, and that demands that we live
in fear, as godfearing citizens.
If they understand that they have been fooled by the religious
power system, to participate in making the church powerful,
and that they can feel even better without the created love,
then we can abolish creationism.
When people understand that the creationist system
is a system for social control, based on stone age
ideals, we can abolish it, and let people be lazy if
or when they feel like it.
We will all be free to relax for real.
--
Roger J.
Roger Johansson
Ron wrote:
> Rather than debate the specifics, let's look at putting this plan into
> action. The creationist system(s) involve as many as 90%, or more of the
> human population. How do you propose to counter a system that 90% of
> people acitvely or indirectly support?
I can take 'em, I have a black belt in Tongue Fu.
By explaining to them that they would gain personally
on adopting this new system. And it doesn't matter
how rich they are, everybody will gain on a better
world.
By explaining to them that our current system is built
on violence, because it has come from the wildlife we
humans originate from.
We don't have to waste our mental resources on this old
kind of social life built on violence and mental powers.
--
Roger J.
Bret Cahill
< and nobody has tried to stop me.
That's because it doesn't concern any economic information.
< I don't assume that the ultimate powers in this world
< are blind, I asssume that they like me.
Good assumption because it doesn't concern any economic information.
Bret Cahill
Publius
>> > There will be popular singers or models who are
>> > loved by millions of people, and they will be
>> > pampered by their fans, I see nothing wrong in that.
>
>> But they can't sell tickets or CDs, right?
> There is no money in the new world, so how could they
> sell anything?
Someone would quickly invent money. Until then, some common commodity
would serve the purpose, as cigarettes do in prisons.
BTW, you may not be aware that money, until the 17th century or so, was
virtually all produced privately. For example, the joachimsthaler, a
silver coin from which the word "dollar" is derived, was created and
minted privately by the owner of a German silver mine. Rather than sell
his silver to jewelers and artisans, he decided to mint coins. They were
finely engraved and scrupulously controlled for their silver content, and
as a result, became trusted for exchange throughout most of Europe. In
the US, until the 20th century, all paper money was privately printed by
various banks.
Money in some form is needed as a store and measure of value. Where it
does not exist, it is quickly invented.
However, I'm sure your Gestapo would soon put an end to any such efforts.
Right?
>> HINT: if they can't sell
>> tickets or CD, they will not perform, and so there will be no fans.
>
> If the singer wants to perform, the roadies want to help,
> the fans want to come to the concert there will be a concert.
And why would the singer perform, or the roadies work, if there is
nothing in it for them? That is, day after day, year-in and year-out?
Now, some people might do that from time to time, as a lark, as people
stand up and sing at karaoke clubs. How many fans will they acquire on
that basis? Howe many people will ever have an opportunity to hear them?
You have no grasp of incentives, do you?
> There can be no trade in a world which doesn't use money,
> and does not accept the exchange principle.
It is not what the "world" accepts (i.e., the State) that counts. It was,
by hypothesis, what two particular individuals were willing to accept.
May they engage in those trades or not?
> I am talking about a world where all work is voluntary
> and unpaid, a world based on sharing and voluntarism.
But the world as you have portrayed it is not based on "voluntarism." All
of the voluntary exchanges and transactions I mentioned appear to be
prohibited. The world you describe is clearly bases on force, not
voluntarism.
> The individual is ruled by his own wishes, not outside
> forces.
The Gestapo that enforces your trade prohibitions is not an outiside
force? Its involvement in the trade is at the wish of the traders?
I notice you neglected to answer most of the questions in my previous
post, such as:
1. > If you try to use the artwork to get material advantages
> by exchanging values with somebody else, you are getting
> dangerously close to breaking an important principle,
> that nobody has the right to use any means to get more
> material advantages by some unfair means.
Ah --- and you will intitiate violence against me to preserve this
"important principle," even though I have used violence against no one?
Yes or no?
2. And how can a series of exchanges between willing participants be
"unfair?" Unfair to whom?
Answer?
3. > There are no copyright or patent rights in my system.
> If you publish it it can be distributed freely.
So I expected. That is why I will be very careful to whom I make it
available, and why it will be available only to a handful of people,
those who I trust and will pay handsomely, instead of too many who could
pay a small amount. Thus that few will have benefit of that software,
while the rest do without. Does the Gestapo come for me now?
Yes or no?
4. and 5. > If it is not known by other people than you two
> there is no reason to do anything.
> If it is known by the society we have a problem.
What problem is that? Are you suggesting that people gain an entitlement
to anything others produce, if they find out about it? Can you explain
how that works?
How about the painter --- if anyone finds out he has paintings, or can
paint them, does he "have a problem," in your Utopia?
Explain? "Have a problem?"
6. > Making an artist give him a painting in return for
> a chemical compound he is using his knowledge to
> get power over other people, and that is not allowed.
No one is "making" anyone do anything. The chemist is exchanging
something the painter wants for something, he, the chemist, wants.
Neither is forcing the other, and both gain "advantages" --- they both
get something they want, and no violence has been used or threatened. And
that is not allowed? Who has has the power to allow or disallow it, given
that no one else is involved? Is this where the Gestapo comes in again?
Yes or no?
7. > There is no way to force the chemist to give away his
> knowledge, but we can stop him from using that knowledge
> to get material advantages or to get power over other
> people.
You could try pulling out his fingernails.
But suppose you stop short of that, and the chemist indeed keeps his
knowledge to himself, since he has no incentive to do otherwise. His
discovery could prevent thousands of heart attacks. But since he gets
nothing for the efforts he's invested, he uses it only himself and his
family. No one else knows about it or benefits from it. Is everyone now
better off?
Is everyone better off?
8. > A beautiful girl can use her looks to get material
> advantages or power over other people, that is not
> allowed.
Ah. The Gestapo comes after pretty girls who get more dates than plain
ones, too, eh?
Yes or no?
Come on, Roger. Face the consequences of your Utopian theory.
You constantly speak of prohibiting violence and encouraging voluntarism.
Yet your State routinely interferes in voluntary and otherwise peaceful
relationships by the use and threat of violence.
That is hypocritical, Roger.
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > If the singer wants to perform, the roadies want to help,
> > the fans want to come to the concert there will be a concert.
>
> And why would the singer perform, or the roadies work, if there is
> nothing in it for them?
You cannot imagine people doing things just
because they want to, do you?
You think we need money to be able to force people
to do things.
What does that say about your concern for people's freedom?
All your questions and objections are aiming to
reintroduce money, trade, and rich guys rule.
If you like playing with money and power so much you can
play monopoly with your friends and have fun without
disturbing the real world production and distribution
systems.
--
Roger J.
steveo
"Roger Johansson" <roge...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1128468332....@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com...
>
> Publius wrote:
>
>> > If the singer wants to perform, the roadies want to help,
>> > the fans want to come to the concert there will be a concert.
>>
>> And why would the singer perform, or the roadies work, if there is
>> nothing in it for them?
>
> You cannot imagine people doing things just
> because they want to, do you?
> You think we need money to be able to force people
> to do things.
Personally, I can't imagine anyone willing working a garbage dump, sewage
plant, chemical factory, or janitorial job (to name but a few) without some
kind of incentive.
Automotans may be able to do most of the work, but not all. And, there will
always be the need to maintain and repair said automotans.
Further, if we relegate all the activities of our lives that generate the
perpetuation of our existence, what the hell will happen when there is a
major solar storm that fries all of our robots?
Even further, if we remove ourselves from the task of maintaining our own
lives, we will come to regard life as being far less valuable, and treat it
accordingly. What is not earned is not appreciated.
A society where everything is given to us without any effort will produce
nothing but gluttons (not just of food) and malevolently apathetic people.
steveo
Bret Cahill
you?
Not everything, or, for that matter, even most things. Work, by
definition, is that which people just don't want to do. Stuff like
cleaning up and slicing veggies in food prep just ain't excitin'.
All I gotta do right now is slice ONE zuke and chop a couple of tomatos
-- what's that? 90 seconds? -- for dinner and I'm ALREADY considering
going to bed hungry instead.
Heck, I'm too lazy to even go to the refrigerator to get another beer.
And it doesn't stop with the unglamourous mundane stuff. The great
mathematician Legrange openly admitted that if he didn't need the
money, he'ld never gone into math.
How unmotivated do you have to be to openly admit, "hey, I could have
been a famous thinker but my dad owned a trailer park and I preferred
to go fishing . . . "????
Right there you know the framers were correct with the intellectual
property clause of the constitution.
Even the "joy of creation" isn't enough for most people.
Bret Cahill
Publius
> You cannot imagine people doing things just
> because they want to, do you?
I sure can. I just can't imagine them doing tedious, tiring, back-breaking
or mind-numbing work day after day for the pleasure of it. Why? Because
there *is* no pleasure in it. It is done, when it is, for the pleasures one
may find in the rewards given for it. Hence if those pleasures are "free,"
then there is absolutely no reason to endure the toil and the tedium.
And of course, those "free" pleasures would soon cease anyway. Before
goodies can be distributed, "free" or otherwise, they must first be
produced. And you have just removed the incentive to produce them.
I live in an agricultural area. If I drive a few miles out of town on any
given day, I can watch wheat farmers working their fields. Now this is the
most productive wheat-growing region in the world, in terms of bushels per
acre produced. These farmers typically rise at 4 AM, and are in their
fields by dawn. They drive their combines or tractors all day, every day,
until dusk, irrigating, tilling, planting, fertilizing, harvesting, under a
hot sun or in driving rain, wrestling the machine, breathing dust.
Now, these farmers are very prosperous. They live very comfortably. They
drive Lexuses and send their kids to Stanford.
And you suppose they will continue to do that, dat after day, "just because
they want to?"
You need a strong dose of reality, Roger. Let me guess --- you are about 17
years old and have never held a real job --- meaning a job where you had to
show up every day and produce some kind of product. Right?
> What does that say about your concern for people's freedom?
There is no freedom from work. At best we can be free from coercion, and
choose the work we will do for ourselves. But freedom from all work is not
an option.
PS: You still haven't answered any of the questions in earlier posts. That
is evasion, Roger.
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > You cannot imagine people doing things just
> > because they want to, do you?
> I sure can. I just can't imagine them doing tedious, tiring, back-breaking
> or mind-numbing work day after day for the pleasure of it.
Why do you think they would work like that?
If they are free to do whatever they like they will,
of course, work in a relaxed and cool way.
There is no need for "tedious, tiring, back-breaking
or mind-numbing work day after day".
Engineers will have to shape workplaces in a way which
attracts voluntary workers.
Work has changed a lot over the last 50 years in the
industrialized modern world.
Practically nobody is doing the kind of work you describe.
Today the farmer is driving a computerized, air conditioned,
gigantic machine, he is not digging with a spade all day.
The tedious, monotonous, work in industries which was
typical a hundred years go doesn't exist today.
In a voluntary society this would go even further, so
people will like to work.
> And of course, those "free" pleasures would soon cease anyway. Before
> goodies can be distributed, "free" or otherwise, they must first be
> produced. And you have just removed the incentive to produce them.
I think our total poductivity will rather increase than decrease.
The freedom in the new system is a very strong incentive, the
atmosphere in a society where nobodycan be forced to work will
givepeople a new kind of positive feeling, and a lot of people
will help out in the way they like.
> These farmers typically rise at 4 AM, and are in their
> fields by dawn. They drive their combines or tractors all day, every day,
> until dusk, irrigating, tilling, planting, fertilizing, harvesting, under a
> hot sun or in driving rain, wrestling the machine, breathing dust.
>
> Now, these farmers are very prosperous. They live very comfortably. They
> drive Lexuses and send their kids to Stanford.
A lot of people would like to live in the country,
if they didn't have to work too hard.
Imagine 10 families taking care of the same farm,
instead of just one family. In the new society the farmer
will not own that big farm and thousands of hectars of land.
That farm will be owned by the society, and the work there
can be divided between more people. So they can work a lot
less, and the farm will still produce food for a thousands
of people.
> And you suppose they will continue to do that, dat after day, "just because
> they want to?"
If they can live on a farm, or in a farm village,
they don't have to work hard, they don't have to worry
about loans and mortgages, they can take a few weeks off
whenever they like, don't you think we could find volunteers
to that kind of life?
> You need a strong dose of reality, Roger.
You need to get out of your pre-conceptions, you
are locked into a million ideas about how the world
works, and you cannot imagine another system.
> Let me guess --- you are about 17
I was born in the forties. I read a lot of books when
I was young, so I was a nerdlike person when I was 15
and started hitchhiking around in europe and asia,
because I wanted to see the world I had read so much about.
I was on the road for 5 years effective time when I was
between 15 and 25.
When I came to Paris the first time there were no other
youngsters like me there, I slept under the bridges
because I had no money.
Over the next few years I saw more youngsters hitchhiking,
and our hair grew longer, in 1968 we were thousands of
hippies travelling in Europe.
We had our meeting places and festivals, I saw Jimi Hendrix
at a concert where I arrived early, so I got a place to
stand 2 meters from him when he played. That was in 1967
I talked a lot with french radicals who were doing a kind of
revolution in the streets.
I was a teacher in marxism-leninism in a radical political
party when I was 17 and I was some kind of hippie-communist.
That was a long time ago, in the 60-ies.
> There is no freedom from work. At best we can be free from coercion,
The money system is coercion, so we have to abolish it.
So we can work or play, whatever you want to call what we
want to do, in a really free manner.
Read the web site I put up 5 years ago, especially
Excerpts from: THE ABOLITION OF WORK (Bob Black)
http://hem.passagen.se/rj77/bobblack.htm
which explains the difference between voluntary work
and coerced work.
--
Roger J.
Bret Cahill
< attracts voluntary workers.
When you find engineers that smart let us know.
Bret Cahill
Immortalist
I'll take a suicide bomber burger, please hold the mustard;
The World Is Round
By John Gray
Thomas Friedman
(click for larger image)
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
by Thomas L. Friedman
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,488 pp., $27.50
1.
The belief that a process of globalization is underway which is
bringing about a fundamental change in human affairs is not new. Marx
and Engels expressed it in 1848, when they wrote in a justly celebrated
passage in The Communist Manifesto:
All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man
is at last compelled to face with his sober senses his real conditions
of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly
expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole
surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere,
establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its
exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to
production and consumption in every country.... It compels all nations,
on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it
compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst,
i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world
after its own image.
Marx and Engels had no doubt that they were witnessing the emergence of
a global market-a worldwide system of production and consumption that
disregarded national and cultural boundaries. They welcomed this
development, not only for the increasing wealth it produced but also
because they believed it enabled humanity to overcome the divisions of
the past. In the global marketplace nationalism and religion were
destined to be dwindling forces. There would be many
convulsions-wars, revolutions, and counterrevolutions-before the
Communist order was securely established; but when global capitalism
had completed its work a new era in the life of humankind would begin.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The centrally planned economies that were constructed to embody Marx's
vision of communism have nearly all been swept away, and the mass
political movements that Marxism once inspired are no more. Yet Marx's
view of globalization lives on, and nowhere more vigorously than in the
writings of Thomas Friedman. Like Marx, Friedman believes that
globalization is in the end compatible with only one economic system;
and like Marx he believes that this sys-tem enables humanity to leave
war, tyranny, and poverty behind. To his credit Friedman recognizes the
parallels between his view and that of Marx. He cites an illuminating
conversation at Harvard in which the communitarian political theorist
Michael Sandel alerted him to the fact that the process of global
"flattening" he examines in his new book was first identified by Marx,
quoting at length from The Communist Manifesto-including the passage
cited above-and praising Marx for his prescience. This acknowledgment
of the parallels between his view of globalization and Marx's theory of
history is welcome and useful.
Friedman has emerged as the most powerful contemporary publicist of
neoliberal ideas. Neoliberals have a wide variety of views on political
and social matters, ranging from the highly conservative standpoint of
Friedrich Hayek to the more rigorously libertarian position of Milton
Friedman; but they are at one in seeing the free market as the
fountainhead of human freedom. Though in some of his writings he shows
a concern for the casualties of deregulated markets, Thomas Friedman is
a passionate missionary for this neoliberal faith. In his view the free
market brings with it most of the ingredients that make for a free and
humanly fulfilling society, and he has propagated this creed
indefatigably in his books and in columns in The New York Times.
Friedman's views have been highly influential, shaping the thinking of
presidents and informing American policy on a number of issues, and it
may be instructive to note the matters in which he shares Marx's blind
spots. Because they were on opposite sides of the cold war it is often
assumed that neoliberalism and Marxism are fundamentally antagonistic
systems of ideas. In fact they belong to the same style of thinking,
and share many of the same disabling limitations. For Marxists and
neoliberals alike it is technological advance that fuels economic
development, and economic forces that shape society. Politics and
culture are secondary phenomena, sometimes capable of retarding human
progress; but in the last analysis they cannot prevail against
advancing technology and growing productivity.
Friedman is unequivocal in endorsing this reductive philosophy. He
writes that he is often asked if he is a technological determinist, and
with the innocent enthusiasm that is a redeeming feature of his prose
style he declares resoundingly: "This is a legitimate question, so let
me try to answer it directly: I am a technological determinist! Guilty
as charged." (The italics are Friedman's.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Technological determinism may contain a kernel of truth but it suggests
a misleadingly simple view of history. This is well illustrated in
Friedman's account of the demise of the Soviet Union. Acknowledging
that there "was no single cause," he goes on:
To some degree the termites just ate away at the foundations of the
Soviet Union, which were already weakened by the system's own internal
contradictions and inefficiencies; to some degree the Reagan
administration's military buildup in Europe forced the Kremlin to
bankrupt itself paying for warheads; and to some degree Mikhail
Gorbachev's hapless efforts to reform something that was unreformable
brought communism to an end. But if I had to point to one factor as
first among equals, it was the information revolution that began in the
early- to mid-1980s. Totalitarian systems depend on a monopoly of
information and force, and too much information started to slip through
the Iron Curtain, thanks to the spread of fax machines, telephones, and
other modern tools of communication.
What is striking in this otherwise unexceptionable list is what it
leaves out. There is no mention of the role of Solidarity and the
Catholic Church in making Poland the first post-Communist country, or
of the powerful independence movements that developed in the Baltic
nations during the Eighties. Most strikingly, there is no mention of
the war in Afghanistan. By any account strategic defeat at the hands of
Western-armed Islamist forces in that country (including some that
formed the organization which was later to become al-Qaeda) was a
defining moment in the decline of Soviet power. If Friedman ignores
these events, it may be because they attest to the persistent power of
religion and nationalism- forces that in his simple, deterministic
worldview should be withering away.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is an irony of history that a view of the world falsified by the
Communist collapse should have been adopted, in some of its most
misleading aspects, by the victors in the cold war. Neoliberals, such
as Friedman, have reproduced the weakest features of Marx's
thought-its consistent underestimation of nationalist and religious
movements and its unidirectional view of history. They have failed to
absorb Marx's insights into the anarchic and self-destructive qualities
of capitalism. Marx viewed the unfettered market as a revolutionary
force, and understood that its expansion throughout the world was bound
to be disruptive and violent. As capitalism spreads, it turns society
upside down, destroying entire industries, ways of life, and regimes.
This can hardly be expected to be a peaceful process, and in fact it
has been accompanied by major conflicts and social upheavals. The
expansion of European capitalism in the nineteenth century involved the
Opium Wars, genocide in the Belgian Congo, the Great Game in Central
Asia, and many other forms of imperial conquest and rivalry. The
seeming triumph of global capitalism at the end of the twentieth
century followed two world wars, the cold war, and savage neocolonial
conflicts.
Over the past two hundred years, the spread of capitalism and
industrialization has gone hand in hand with war and revolution. It is
a fact that would not have surprised Marx. Why do Friedman and other
neoliberals believe things will be any different in the twenty-first
century? Part of the answer lies in an ambiguity in the idea of
globalization. In current discussion two different notions are commonly
conflated: the belief that we are living in a period of rapid and
continuous technological innovation, which has the effect of linking up
events and activities throughout the world more widely and quickly than
before; and the belief that this process is leading to a single
worldwide economic system. The first is an empirical proposition and
plainly true, the second a groundless ideological assertion. Like Marx,
Friedman elides the two.
2.
In The World Is Flat, Friedman tells us that globalization has three
phases: the first from 1492 to around 1800, in which countries and
governments opened up trade with the New World and which was driven by
military expansion and the amount of horse-power and wind power
countries could employ; the second from 1800 to 2000, in which global
integration was driven by multinational companies, steam engines, and
railways; and the third, in which individuals are the driving force and
the defining technology is a worldwide fiber-optic network. In each of
these phases, he tells us, technology is the driving force:
globalization is a byproduct of technologi-cal development. Here
Friedman deviates from the standard view among contemporary economists,
who see globalization largely as the result of policies of
deregulation. Here he is closer to Marx-and to the realities of
history.
In any longer perspective what we are witnessing today is only the most
recent phase of worldwide industrialization. In the nineteenth century
the world was shrunk by the advent of the telegraph; today it is
shrinking again as a consequence of the Internet. Contrary to Friedman,
however, the increasing facility of communication does not signify a
quantum shift in human affairs. The uses of petroleum and electricity
changed human life more deeply than any of the new information
technologies have done. Even so, they did not end war and tyranny and
usher in a new era of peace and plenty. Like other technological
innovations, they were used for a variety of purposes, and became part
of the normal conflicts of history.
It is necessary to distinguish between globalization-the ongoing
process of worldwide industrialization-and the various economic
systems in which this process has occurred. Globalization did not stop
when Lenin came to power in Russia. It went on-actively accelerated
by Stalin's policies of agricultural collectivization. Nor was
globalization in any way slowed by the dirigiste regimes that developed
in Asia -first in Japan in the Meiji era and later in the militarist
period, then after World War II in Korea and Taiwan. All these regimes
were vehicles through which globalization continued its advance.
Worldwide industrialization continued when the liberal international
economic order fell apart after World War I, and it will carry on if
the global economic regime that was established after the fall of
communism falls apart in its turn.
There is no systematic connection between globalization and the free
market. It is no more essentially friendly to liberal capitalism than
to central planning or East Asian dirigisme. Driven by technological
changes that occur in many regimes, the process of globalization is
more powerful than any of them. This is a truth that Friedman-as an
avowed technological determinist-should accept readily enough. If he
does not, it is because it shows how baseless are the utopian hopes he
attaches to a process that abounds in conflicts and contradictions.
Globalization makes the world smaller. It may also make it-or
sections of it-richer. It does not make it more peaceful, or more
liberal. Least of all does it make it flat.
Friedman's by now famous discovery of the world's flatness came to him
when he was talking to Nandan Nilekani, CEO of one of India's leading
new high-technology companies, Infosys Technologies, at its campus in
Bangalore. The Indian entrepreneur remarked to Friedman: "Tom, the
playing field is being leveled." The observation is commonplace, but it
hit Friedman with the force of a revelation. "What Nandan is saying, I
thought, is that the playing field is being flattened.... Flattened?
Flattened? My God, he's telling me the world is flat!" Five hundred
years ago, Columbus "returned safely to prove definitively that the
world was round." As a matter of fact it was not Columbus who provided
the proof but the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, whose ship
circled the globe in a three-year voyage from 1519 to 1522. Regardless,
Friedman sees himself as a latter-day Columbus who has discovered that
the world is no longer round: "I scribbled four words down in my
notebook: 'The world is flat.'"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The metaphor of a flat world is worked relentlessly throughout this
overlong book, but it is not its incessant repetition that is most
troublesome. It is Friedman's failure to recognize that in many ways,
some of them not difficult to observe, the world is becoming distinctly
less flat. While he acknowledges the existence of an "unflat" world
composed of people without access to the benefits of new technology, he
never connects the growth of this netherworld of the relatively poor
with the advance of globalization. At times his failure to connect is
almost comic. Recalling his visit to the Infosys headquarters in
Bangalore, Friedman writes:
The Infosys campus is reached by a pockmarked road, with sacred cows,
horse-drawn carts, and motorized rickshaws all jostling alongside our
vans. Once you enter the gates of Infosys, though, you are in a
different world. A massive resort-size swimming pool nests amid
boulders and manicured lawns, adjacent to a huge putting green. There
are multiple restaurants and a fabulous health club.
Friedman notes in passing that the Infosys campus has its own power
supply. He does not ask why this is necessary, or comment on the
widening difference in standards of life in the region that it
represents. Yet it is only by decoupling itself from its local
environment that Infosys is able to compete effectively in global
markets. Infosys demonstrates that globalization does have the effect
of leveling some inequalities in world markets, but the success of the
company has been achieved by using services and infrastructure that the
society around it lacks.
As it levels some inequalities, globalization raises others. Friedman
tells us that he is in favor of what he calls "compassionate flatism,"
which seems to mean a range of centrist or social-democratic policies
designed to enhance job mobility while preserving economic security,
such as portable personal pensions. In an American setting these may be
useful proposals, and it is strange that in the countries that have
been most exposed to the disruptive effects of globalization Friedman
appears to favor neoliberal policies of the most conventional kind. He
describes the fall of the Berlin Wall as a "world-flattening event,"
and cites Russia as one of the countries that has most benefited from
the new flat world.
There can be no doubt that the Soviet collapse represented an advance
for human freedom. Yet since then Russia has suffered rising levels of
absolute poverty and large increases in inequality of wealth, and it
seems clear that the economic "shock therapy" administered on Western
advice just after the Communist collapse contributed to these
developments. Price decontrol wiped out small family savings, and by
limiting the benefits of privatizing government industries to a small
number of insiders produced a marked concentration of wealth. As a
result, large parts of the Russian population have been excluded from
the benefits of the global market. Other policies could likely have
avoided or mitigated this outcome.[1]
In view of the Soviet inheritance, the process of transition was bound
to be prolonged and difficult. Attempting it in the space of a few
years was folly, and shock therapy resulted in the impoverishment of
many millions of people. It also fueled a backlash against the West.
Socioeconomic change on the scale that occurred in post-Communist
Russia tends to produce a political aftershock, and the emergence of
Vladimir Putin can be seen as an unintended consequence of
Western-sponsored free market policies. In some contexts free market
policies continue, but Putin has reasserted political control of the
economy as a whole, reined in the political activities of the
oligarchs, and demonstrated a degree of independence from Western
influences. As a result his quasi-authoritarian regime seems to possess
a popular legitimacy that Yeltsin's lacked, and there is no discernible
prospect of Western-style "democratic capitalism."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Globalization has no inherent tendency to promote the free market or
liberal democracy. Neither does it augur an end to nationalism or
great-power rivalries. Describing a long conversation with the CEO of a
small Indian game company in Bangalore, Friedman recounts the
entrepreneur concluding: "India is going to be a superpower and we are
going to rule." Friedman replies: "Rule whom?" Friedman's response
suggests that the present phase of globalization is tending to make
imbalances of power between states irrelevant. In fact what it is doing
is creating new great powers, and this is one of the reasons it has
been embraced in China and India.
Neoliberals interpret globalization as being driven by a search for
greater productivity, and view nationalism as a kind of cultural
backwardness that acts mainly to slow this process. Yet the economic
takeoff in both England and the US occurred against the background of a
strong sense of nationality, and nationalist resistance to Western
power was a powerful stimulus of economic development in Meiji Japan.
Nationalism fueled the rapid growth of capitalism in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries,[2] and is doing the same in China and India
at the present time. In both countries globalization is being embraced
not only because of the prosperity it makes possible, but also for the
opportunity it creates to challenge Western hegemony. As China and
India become great powers they will demand recognition of their
distinctive cultures and values, and international institutions will
have to be reshaped to reflect the legitimacy of a variety of economic
and political models. At that point the universal claims of the United
States and other Western nations will be fundamentally challenged, and
the global balance of power will shift.
3.
In The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999), Friedman focused on the tension
between the "Lexus" forces of global economic integration and the
"Olive Tree" forces of cultural identity, and in The World Is Flat he
tells us that after September 11 he spent much of his time traveling in
the Arab and Muslim worlds and lost track of globalization. Actually it
was not globalization he lost sight of but rather the forces of
identity that shape it. Friedman writes that the nation-state is "the
biggest source of friction" in global markets. In fact nationalist
resistance to globalization is more prominent in advanced countries
such as France, Holland, and the US than in emerging economies.
Friedman himself expresses concern about the impact of outsourcing on
American employment, and there has been a steady drift toward greater
protectionism in the Bush administration's trade policies. American
nationalism may already be acting as a brake on globalization. In the
fast-industrializing countries of Asia, nationalism is one of
globalization's driving forces.
Rising nationalism is part of the process of globalization, and so too
are intensifying geopolitical rivalries. Just as it did when the Great
Game was played out in the decades leading up to the First World War,
ongoing industrialization is setting off a scramble for natural
resources. The US, Russia, China, India, Japan, and the countries of
the European Union are all of them involved in attempts to secure
energy supplies, and their field of competition ranges from Central
Asia through the Persian Gulf to Africa and parts of Latin America. The
coming century could be marked by recurrent resource wars, as the great
powers struggle for control of the planet's hydrocarbons.[3]
Moreover, worldwide industrialization appears to be coming up against
serious environmental limits. An increasing number of expert observers
believe global oil reserves may be peaking,[4] and there is a consensus
among climate scientists that the worldwide shift to an
energy-intensive industrial lifestyle is contributing to global
warming. If these fears are well founded the next phase of
globalization could encompass upheavals as large as any in the
twentieth century.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It would be wrong to suggest that Friedman is oblivious of these risks.
In an interesting aside, he writes:
Islamo-Leninism, in many ways, emerged from the same historical context
as the European radical ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. Fascism and Marxism-Leninism grew out of the rapid
industrialization and modernization of Germany and Central Europe,
where communities living in tightly bonded villages and extended
families suddenly got shattered.
Again, Friedman recognizes that many of the innovations of the current
phase of globalization are reproduced in al-Qaeda. In the past two
decades some of the most advanced global corporations have ceased to be
top-heavy bureaucracies, and become streamlined networks of
entrepreneurs and venture capitalists. Al-Qaeda has emulated this
change, operating as a network of autonomous cells rather than the
highly centralized organizations of revolutionary parties in the past.
Perhaps most interestingly, Friedman acknowledges that America's
dependency on imported oil exposes it to attack, and urges American
energy independence:
If President Bush made energy independence his moon shot, in one fell
swoop he would dry up revenue for terrorism, force Iran, Russia,
Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia on the path of reform-which they will
never do with $50-a-barrel oil-strengthen the dollar, and improve his
own standing in Europe by doing something huge to reduce global
warming.
Friedman's advocacy of American energy independence illustrates the
error of a unidirectional view of history. Energy autarchy may be a
sensible policy, but it signifies a retreat from globalization. The
Lexus and the Olive Tree trumpeted the arrival of a harmoniously
integrated world. Since then the US has suffered terrorist attack and
become mired in an intractable insurgency in Iraq. Against this
background the prospect of severing one of the crucial supply chains
that link the US with the world is beginning to look extremely
tempting. As he has done in previous books Friedman has expressed a
powerful larger mood, and in this respect The World Is Flat may prove a
prescient guide to future American policy.
Yet while greater energy independence may be an American national
interest the notion that it would force recalcitrant countries onto a
path of neoliberal reform is wishful thinking. A large drop in the oil
price would surely destabilize the rentier economies of the Gulf and
Central Asia, from Saudi Arabia to Turkmenistan, and in some countries
could lead to the establishment of democratic rule. However, in a
number of cases the chief beneficiary would likely be fundamentalism.
Does Friedman really believe that democracy in Saudi Arabia would
produce a liberal, pro-Western regime? In this and other countries,
American energy independence could well further the advance of radical
Islam.
As it has done in the past, globalization is throwing up dilemmas that
have no satisfactory solution. That does not mean they cannot be more
or less intelligently managed, but what is needed is the opposite of
the utopian imagination. In a curious twist, the utopian mind has
migrated from left to right, and from the academy to the airport
bookshop. In the nineteenth century it was political activists and
radical social theorists such as Marx who held out the promise that new
technology was creating a new world. Today some business gurus have a
similar message. There are many books announcing a global economic
transformation and suggesting that governments can be reengineered to
adapt to it in much the same way as corporations. The World Is Flat is
an outstanding example of this genre.
Unfortunately the problems of globalization are more intractable than
those of corporate life. States cannot be phased out like bankrupt
firms, and large shifts in wealth and power tend to be fiercely
contested. Globalization is a revolutionary change, but it is also a
continuation of the conflicts of the past. In some important respects
it is leveling the playing field, as Friedman's Indian interlocutor
noted, and to that extent it is a force for human advance. At the same
time it is inflaming nationalist and religious passions and triggering
a struggle for natural resources. In Friedman's sub-Marxian, neoliberal
worldview these conflicts are recognized only as forms of friction
-grit in the workings of an unstoppable machine. In truth they are
integral to the process itself, whose future course cannot be known. We
would be better off accepting this fact, and doing what we can to cope
with it.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18154
Peter Vos
You want fries with that?
Roger Johansson
Bret Cahill wrote:
This has been going on for generations in europe.
europeans are not forced to take any kind of work
because we have a welfare system which allows us
to live quite well even as un-employed.
The typical industry worker today is handling
computerized machinery, and does seldom have to lift
heavy stuff or get dirty.
Women are working in the industry, and that is possible
because of all the inventions which help workers lift
and handle heavy stuff.
--
Roger J.
Publius
> Imagine 10 families taking care of the same farm,
> instead of just one family. In the new society the farmer
> will not own that big farm and thousands of hectars of land.
>
> That farm will be owned by the society, and the work there
> can be divided between more people. So they can work a lot
> less, and the farm will still produce food for a thousands
> of people.
If 10 families are required to produce the food now produced by 1, your
productivity has just fallen 90%. Those additional 9 families were
previously producing something else, which, because they are now needed
to work the farm, is no longer produced.
Do the math, Roger.
BTW, that is precisely what the Soviets tried. And, interestingly, Soviet
farms were consistently 10% as productive as those in the West. The only
thing that prevented mass starvation in the USSR were the family plots.
During the 30s, after first observing how unproductive the collective
farms were, the goons decided to allow each rural family a small plot of
land (about 1/4 acre, I believe). They could plant what they wanted on
those plots, sell the product freely, and keep the profits. Those private
plots produced 80% of the Soviet crop, while the collective farms, which
embraced 90% of the land, produced the other 20%.
> If they can live on a farm, or in a farm village,
> they don't have to work hard, they don't have to worry
> about loans and mortgages, they can take a few weeks off
> whenever they like, don't you think we could find volunteers
> to that kind of life?
Absolutely! I think they would indeed take a LOT of time off! And while
they are sipping lemonade, nothing is being produced.
Geez!
> You need to get out of your pre-conceptions, you
> are locked into a million ideas about how the world
> works, and you cannot imagine another system.
Those are not "pre-conceptions." The laws of economics have been
validated not only theoretically, but by long experience. They are as
rigorous and well-founded as the laws of geometry.
>> There is no freedom from work. At best we can be free from coercion,
>
> The money system is coercion, so we have to abolish it.
"Coercion" is the use or threat of violence by one agent against another.
Someone who demands payment for some service you desire that he perform
is not coercing you. *You* coerce *him* when you stick a gun in his face.
Until that happens, there is no coercion.
Others have no duty to provide you with any product or any service. They
are not your slaves. They may choose to do business with you if they
wish, and set any terms they like. If you dislike the terms, you are free
to walk away. A trade is free as long as each party may, at any time,
walk away, *taking with them whatever they brought to the table, and
nothing else*.
You are trying to re-define "coercion" in order to justify your own use
of it. You're only fooling yourself.
Publius
@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
> When you find engineers that smart let us know.
Heh. Maybe, as a fellow leftist, you can talk some sense into this fellow.
Bret Cahill
< because we have a welfare system which allows us
< to live quite well even as un-employed.
That's the real reason the U. S. has a Christian fundamentalist
problem.
The GOP uses economic insecurity and fear to manipulate the process.
Bret Cahill
Bret Cahill
out of bed in the morning.
The chief advantage the Europeans have over U. S. society is the dole.
That's why we have fundies and so many other really ignorant people.
Bret Cahill
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > Imagine 10 families taking care of the same farm,
> > instead of just one family. In the new society the farmer
> > will not own that big farm and thousands of hectars of land.
> > That farm will be owned by the society, and the work there
> > can be divided between more people. So they can work a lot
> > less, and the farm will still produce food for a thousands
> > of people.
> If 10 families are required to produce the food now produced by 1, your
> productivity has just fallen 90%. Those additional 9 families were
> previously producing something else, which, because they are now needed
> to work the farm, is no longer produced.
>
> Do the math, Roger.
Okay.
For every producer of real value there is one administrator
in the capitalist system. Half of the working people are just
handling money and other ways to administrate the system.
So I'm down to 45% decrease already.
Farmers work very hard today. I know several in my country
and even here they are working from 6 to 24 every day.
So they have to go into retirement early, when the body
has no more resources to give. They often become victims
of serious accident.
This lowers the actual productivity in the capitalist system,
and this lowers the decrease number above with 20%.
I'm down to 15% decrease.
We are actually burning wheat in power plants to avoid
falling prices. So we are overproducing food today.
We can take a decrease in productivity with 15%
I have nullified you number.
Most governments around the globe have been paying
off farmers to stop producing too much food.
The farmers in my country start farming bilogical
fuel, or start tourist project, like tourists
horse riding, etc..
There is no need for increasing the productivity,
on the contrary, there is a strong tendency that we
need to keep the world's food production at the
current level, while the productivity is increasing
because of technical inventions and machinerary.
(I was very generous in mentioning the
number ten families to replace one family, I could
be a little less generous and lower that number to
5, which would help my calculation a lot)
The normal working day of 15-18 hours is not human.
Let's give the workers on the farm reasonable working hours.
This lowers the productivity per worker to half again.
The productivity in the farm business per worker is too low
under capitalism, for economic reasons.
And there are too many lawyers, priests,
We fix that problem by asking more people to help out in the
farm business.
The productivity decrease justified and fixed.
There are many others factors to add to this calculation,
and most of the will help me, I'm just too lazy to go into detail.
> BTW, that is precisely what the Soviets tried.
Did they abolish money?
--
Roger J.
Roger Johansson
Bret Cahill wrote:
> Engineers can make things better; they cannot make people want to get
> out of bed in the morning.
Animals wake up early and want to become active.
I saw a guy talk about baboons on a nature program
last week, he said they were up early every morning.
The reason we are so tired in the morning is the
creationist religion. This religion cannot exist in
a world where people are really free. We will sleep
a lot better and wake eager to live and play a new day.
> The chief advantage the Europeans have over U. S. society is the dole.
Well, there are more differences too.
The level of religiosity is one of the most important differences.
> That's why we have fundies and so many other really ignorant people.
Yes, that is right.
--
Roger J.
Bret Cahill
religion.
Not too sure about that.
< This religion cannot exist in a world where people are really free.
There's no question that this is true. It's also easy to guess others
know it is true and are keeping quiet about it.
One of the biggest scams in the U. S. after the artificial job shortage
scam is the culture war between "social liberals" and fundies.
The who thing is nothing but a dog and pony show to keep the public
discussion off of economic issues.
Bret Cahill
Publius
> For every producer of real value there is one administrator
> in the capitalist system.
False. You're thinking of the socialist system.
> Half of the working people are just
> handling money and other ways to administrate the system.
False. You forget that a capitalist "system" is not "administered." There
are no "administrators." The farmer administers his own farm. The
businessman administers his own business.
As for "handling money," the financial services sector comprises about 5%
of the economy in the US and UK, much less in most other countries. It is
higher in the US and UK because they provide those services for many
other countries. BTW, that sector includes insurance, accounting, and
stock brokering as well as banking.
You're talking through your hat, Roger.
> So they have to go into retirement early, when the body
> has no more resources to give. They often become victims
> of serious accident.
Also false. At least here, their lifespans are just as long and their
accident rates no higher than anyone else's.
> We are actually burning wheat in power plants to avoid
> falling prices.
Oh? Where? Certainly not in the US.
> I have nullified you number.
LOL. You've not reduced it an iota. THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH. You appear to
subsribe to the "Manna from Heaven" school of economics. I.e, all the
goods you find on supermarket shelves and in automobile showrooms and in
movie theaters and at computer shops and Home Depot and Walmart and
Costco just appear miraculously, as divine gifts. Hence, they would all
still be there, whether anyone worked or not.
> The normal working day of 15-18 hours is not human.
> Let's give the workers on the farm reasonable working hours.
As of now, farmers decide for themselves what hours are "reasonable." You
propose to substitute your judgement for theirs?
> The productivity in the farm business per worker is too low
> under capitalism, for economic reasons.
Too LOW? Compared to what? Compared to socialist collective farms? Third-
world subsitence farms? To WHAT? Roger --- the output per farm worker on
US farms is not only the highest in the world, but in history.
You are truly living in your own fantasy world.
>> BTW, that is precisely what the Soviets tried.
>
> Did they abolish money?
No, because even they realized that could not be done. You can't
"manage" an economy if you have no means to measure and keep track of
what it is doing, and calculate exchange ratios.
You still have not answered my questions about which activities you're
going to prohibit by force --- who you're gonna send the Gestapo after.
Too embarrassing?
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > For every producer of real value there is one administrator
> > in the capitalist system.
> False. You're thinking of the socialist system.
Think about all handling of money in the capitalist system.
That is an enormous amount of work, for both individuals,
companies, taxi drivers, gas station owners, banks, stock
holders, people operating cash registers, atm machines, ...
That is a lot of work, and it is reasonable to assume that
half of all work today is in the administration of the
capitalist system.
> > Half of the working people are just
> > handling money and other ways to administrate the system.
> False. You forget that a capitalist "system" is not "administered." There
> are no "administrators."
Everybody who handles money, checks, credit cards, and other
value papers, insurance companies, banks, supermarkets, etc..
are participating in the administration of the capitalist system.
> > We are actually burning wheat in power plants to avoid
> > falling prices.
> Oh? Where? Certainly not in the US.
google wheat burner pellets,
or corn burner pellets,
and you will find a lot of knowledge you obviously don't have.
I got a broschure in the mail the other day telling me
that they have now developed new burners for wheat,
corn, barley which work even better than the old ones.
The broschure tried to sell me a better burner for my villa
or farm house, so I can burn wheat and other grains instead
of the much more expensive oil, or wood pellets.
Grain is cheaper than oil, coal, and even wood pellets,
it is the cheapest fuel available today.
I will just ignore the rest of your message, as it is obvious
from these few points that you have no idea what you are
talking about.
--
Roger J.
Bret Cahill
< That is an enormous amount of work, for both individuals,
< companies, taxi drivers, gas station owners, banks, stock
< holders, people operating cash registers, atm machines, ...
Regardless of the system at least some accounting will always be
necessary in modern society to keep track of the needs of people,
companies and industry -- even if that accounting is pro bono.
Accounting requires currency and transactions.
Three or more decimal place precision or accuracy of the accounting,
however, might not always be necessary. It's easy to imagine a lot of
penny wise pound foolish accounting labor going on with the looming
energy crunch, but that can be said for a lot of labor.
Isn't "my kingdom for a horse" accounting?
Bret Cahill
Roger Johansson
Bret Cahill wrote:
> < Think about all handling of money in the capitalist system.
> < That is an enormous amount of work, for both individuals,
> < companies, taxi drivers, gas station owners, banks, stock
> < holders, people operating cash registers, atm machines, ...
> Regardless of the system at least some accounting will always be
> necessary in modern society to keep track of the needs of people,
> companies and industry -- even if that accounting is pro bono.
> Accounting requires currency and transactions.
Not if we use no money. We do not measure the amount of work
each person does, because we are not paying any wages.
There is no need to measure each persons needs, because we give
everybody the same amount of property and consumption.
This simplifies the administration enormously.
Each person administers himself, he decides what to do,
or not to do, and why.
The only administration needed is the political system, the
democracy, which is already in place in the capitalist system.
You had nothing to say about google wheat corn burner pellets.
How come?
--
Roger J.
Bret Cahill
<> in the capitalist system.
< False. You're thinking of the socialist system.
Health care in Europe costs 1/2 that in the U. S. They are healthier
in Europe. The reason is socialized medicine requires less financial
administrators.
That's how Europeans are able to take all summer off for "holiday."
In America, however, the robber barons have retained a million
libertarian shills to hype a "free" lunch on liberty, where you don't
pay taxes.
Bret Cahill
Bret Cahill
< because we have a welfare system which allows us
< to live quite well even as un-employed.
In the U. S. we have Social Security disability. The only difference
is you have to say you cannot work to get it.
In fact a lot of the "libertarian" posters here are living on a SS
mental disability -- well justified in my opinion. Not a scam at all.
Bret Cahill
Immortalist
THE VANDALS LYRICS
"Anarchy Burger (Hold The Government)"
anarchy, kill a cat
shoot james brady in the back
raise an army of rabid rats
beat your neighbor with a bat
anarchy burger
hold the government
anarchy burger
hold the government
anarchy, go ape shit
let them know your sick of it
write your congressman,
tell him he sucks, your only in it for the bucks
anarchy burger
hold the government
anarchy burger
hold the government
you're all potential anarchy burgers
if you want to be free
order yourself an anarchy burger
(hold the government, please)
anarchy burger
hold the government
America stands for freedom
but if you think you're free
try walking into a deli
and urinating on the cheese
anarchy burger
hold the government
anarchy burger
hold the government
say fuck in front of your mom
fuck!
and
go to school naked
----------------------------
aftermarket version
------------------------------
HEEEEEEEEY!
anarchy
kill attack
shoot that baby in the back
a raging army around your head
pizza hut neighborhood bullet fed
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
anarchy
full of shit
let 'em know your sick of it
write congressmen tell 'em, "YOU SUCK!"
only in a shool of pricks
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
your robbing cant sell anarchy burgers
and if you wanna be free
order yourself an anarchy burger all together please
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
America stands for freedom
but if you think your free
try walking into a deli and urinating on the cheese
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
hold the government please
HOLD THE GOVERNMENT!
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
say fuck infront of your mom
WHAT?!
go to school and make an...
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
ANARCHY BURGER(HOLD THE GOVERNMENT)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&q=anarchy+burger+lyrics
Publius
>> > Half of the working people are just
>> > handling money and other ways to administrate the system.
>
>> False. You forget that a capitalist "system" is not "administered."
>> There are no "administrators."
>
> Everybody who handles money, checks, credit cards, and other
> value papers, insurance companies, banks, supermarkets, etc..
> are participating in the administration of the capitalist system.
I gave you the figure (for the US and UK). The financial servies sector
comprises about 5% of the economy. Here is the source for the US:
Sector employment:
http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/data/us/US000.HTM
Total Employment:
http://www.census.gov/epcd/susb/2001/us/US--.HTM
5.7%. You have a source for your "half of the working people?"
>> > We are actually burning wheat in power plants to avoid
>> > falling prices.
>
>> Oh? Where? Certainly not in the US.
A few power plants burn biomass because it is in some cases a competitive
fuel. It is raised for that purpose, not to "avoid falling prices."
> I will just ignore the rest of your message, as it is obvious
> from these few points that you have no idea what you are
> talking about.
I expected you would. Embarrassing questions, aren't they?
> The normal working day of 15-18 hours is not human.
> Let's give the workers on the farm reasonable working hours.
As of now, farmers decide for themselves what hours are "reasonable." You
propose to substitute your judgement for theirs?
Not gonna answer that one either?
> The productivity in the farm business per worker is too low
> under capitalism, for economic reasons.
Too LOW? Compared to what? Compared to socialist collective farms? Third-
world subsitence farms? To WHAT? Roger --- the output per farm worker on
US farms is not only the highest in the world, but in history.
Or that one?
I think it is pretty clear who does not know what they are talking about.
Publius
@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com:
> <> For every producer of real value there is one administrator
> <> in the capitalist system.
>
> < False. You're thinking of the socialist system.
>
> Health care in Europe costs 1/2 that in the U. S. They are healthier
> in Europe. The reason is socialized medicine requires less financial
> administrators.
The health care system in the US is by no means "capitalist." The free
market in health care began to disappear in the US during WWII. It is
extinct. What is left of it is so deeply buried in gummint red tape it is
invisible.
> In America, however, the robber barons have retained a million
> libertarian shills to hype a "free" lunch on liberty, where you don't
> pay taxes.
Sure you pay taxes. You just don't pay taxes to finance other people's
health care. Paying your doctor is your problem, just like paying your
barber or your auto mechanic. Until WWII, that is what everyone did, and it
worked just fine. Of course, that was before the market was destroyed by
gummint edicts.
mimus
> The health care system in the US is by no means "capitalist." The free
> market in health care began to disappear in the US during WWII. It is
> extinct. What is left of it is so deeply buried in gummint red tape it is
> invisible.
I'm sure the insurance companies would be pleased to hear someone saying
this like they actually believed it.
--
In the previous number, the cattle rustlers (post-
Hegelian dogma) had trapped Professor Dewey in an
abandoned mine shaft (Jamesian pragmatism) and had
ignited the fuse leading to a keg of dynamite
(neo-Newtonian empiricism).
< S. J. Perelman
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> >> > Half of the working people are just
> >> > handling money and other ways to administrate the system.
> >
> >> False. You forget that a capitalist "system" is not "administered."
> >> There are no "administrators."
> >
> > Everybody who handles money, checks, credit cards, and other
> > value papers, insurance companies, banks, supermarkets, etc..
> > are participating in the administration of the capitalist system.
> I gave you the figure (for the US and UK). The financial servies sector
> comprises about 5% of the economy. Here is the source for the US:
You count only people who work only with money.
You forget all the rest of the people who handle
money as a part of their job.
A taxi driver uses more than half of his working hours
doing administration, bookkeping, money issues.
Source: I know many taxi drivers and they have told me.
A gas station owner spends 50% of his time on administration
and the rest on really productive tasks.
If we look at the now active workforce, and analyze each worker's
time every day we will find that around half of all work by that
workforce is administration, paying, buying, counting, book-keeping,
etc..
5% of them do nothing else but handle money, using your own figures.
Does that number include cash register operators, like the girls at the
supermarket who count your stuff and take your money?
Or was that only about highly paid economists, bank managers, stock
brokers, etc..?
To that regular administration I described above we should add
all the mental work, all the worrying about mortgages, loans,
credit, taxes, rent, etc..
An icecream seller on the beach sells you an icecream.
You take the icecream, give him money, he gives you change back, you
take it and put it into your pocket. He reaches you a receipt, you take
it and put it in your pocket. when he is turning around you throw the
recipt on the sand and you leave, An hour later a beach cleaner takes
up the receipt and throws it into a waste bin. Do you see how the
administration of this transaction easily demands more work from people
than just reaching you an icecream?
> >> > We are actually burning wheat in power plants to avoid
> >> > falling prices.
> >
> >> Oh? Where? Certainly not in the US.
>
> A few power plants burn biomass because it is in some cases a competitive
> fuel. It is raised for that purpose, not to "avoid falling prices."
We are talking about burning food, corn, wheat, barley, etc..
Look here:
http://www.cornburner.com/
"Produced in Central Illinois, the A-Maize-ing Heat products are
marketed as Corn Burners. However, if you live in an area where dry,
shelled corn isn't readily available, these products can be used as
Biomass Heating Systems. By biomass, we mean: wood pellets, plastic
pellets, most cereal grains, fruit pits, weed seeds, as well as other
forms of pelletized waste. The Amaizablaze products come from Nesco,
Inc. in Cookeville, TN. If no local dealers are found, I would be
willing to help."
http://greenfire.pelletstove.com/europa_productinfo.php
"The Europa 75 is a multi-fuel stove with greenfire technology inside.
The first stove of its kind, the Europa 75 burns natural biomass
materials like wood pellets, shelled corn and hulled wheat with an
amazing 86% efficiency."
http://come.to/heat-with-wheat
"The agricultural politic of the past years resulted in a price decline
of grain. At the moment the heat value (energy output) of grain is
twice as high as its trade value in europe."
Don't you understand that this shows that we produce too much food
today?
--
Roger J.
Publius
> Does that number include cash register operators, like the girls at
> the supermarket who count your stuff and take your money?
> Or was that only about highly paid economists, bank managers, stock
> brokers, etc..?
Ooops. Mea culpa. You're right --- in a "Manna from Heaven" economy there
would be no need for that. The supermarket shelves would always be full;
there would be no need for anyone to keep track of what is coming and
going, or to make sure no one takes more than they have contributed.
> To that regular administration I described above we should add
> all the mental work, all the worrying about mortgages, loans,
> credit, taxes, rent, etc.
Yes. When you want a house, you walk to where you would like to live and,
voila! --- there it is. You need only move in. You only need mortgages,
credit, etc., if you expect someone else to build it for you, and those
people refuse to work for nothing. Or for the "free" goods you may feel
like producing rather than lounging on the beach.
> We are talking about burning food, corn, wheat, barley, etc..
>
> Look here:
> http://www.cornburner.com/
You're missing the point. If biomass can be a competitive fuel, it will be
used for that purpose. And more will be produced to satisfy that market. It
is not now being burned as fuel to "prevent falling prices." The people
buying it to use as fuel are certainly not buying it for that reason.
Indeed, they'd be delighted to see prices fall.
> Don't you understand that this shows that we produce too much food
> today?
Indeed we do. That is because in all Western countries, the government
subsidizes farmers. Thus the markets are irrational.
Publius
Since you keep dodging these questions, I'll just keep adding them to
each exchange until they are answered:
> The individual is ruled by his own wishes, not outside
> forces.
1. Is the Gestapo that enforces your trade prohibitions not an outside
force? Is its involvement in the trade is at the wish of the traders?
Yes or no?
> If you try to use the artwork to get material advantages
> by exchanging values with somebody else, you are getting
> dangerously close to breaking an important principle,
> that nobody has the right to use any means to get more
> material advantages by some unfair means.
2. Will you intitiate violence against me to preserve this
"important principle," even though I have used violence against no one?
Yes or no?
3. How can a series of exchanges between willing participants be
"unfair?" Unfair to whom?
Answer?
> There are no copyright or patent rights in my system.
> If you publish it it can be distributed freely.
4. So I expected. That is why I will be very careful to whom I make it
available, and why it will be available only to a handful of people,
those whom I trust and will pay handsomely, instead of to many who could
pay a small amount. Thus that few will have benefit of that software,
while the rest do without. Does the Gestapo come for me now?
Yes or no?
> If it is not known by other people than you two
> there is no reason to do anything.
> If it is known by the society we have a problem.
5. What problem is that? Are you suggesting that people gain an
entitlement to anything others produce, if they find out about it? Can
you explain how that works?
Explain?
6. How about the painter --- if anyone finds out he has paintings, or can
paint them, does he "have a problem," in your Utopia?
Yes or no?
> Making an artist give him a painting in return for
> a chemical compound he is using his knowledge to
> get power over other people, and that is not allowed.
7. No one is "making" anyone do anything. The chemist is exchanging
something the painter wants for something, he, the chemist, wants.
Neither is forcing the other, and both gain "advantages" --- they both
get something they want, and no violence has been used or threatened. Is
that not allowed?
Yes or no?
> There is no way to force the chemist to give away his
> knowledge, but we can stop him from using that knowledge
> to get material advantages or to get power over other
> people.
8. You could try pulling out his fingernails. But suppose you stop short
of that, and the chemist indeed keeps his knowledge to himself, since he
has no incentive to do otherwise. His discovery could prevent thousands
of heart attacks. But since he gets nothing for the efforts he's
invested, he uses it only himself and his family. No one else knows about
it or benefits from it. Is everyone now better off?
Yes or no?
> A beautiful girl can use her looks to get material
> advantages or power over other people, that is not
> allowed.
9. May the Gestapo come after pretty girls who get more dates than plain
ones?
> The normal working day of 15-18 hours is not human.
> Let's give the workers on the farm reasonable working hours.
10. As of now, farmers decide for themselves what hours are
"reasonable." Do you propose to substitute your judgement for theirs?
Yes or no?
> The productivity in the farm business per worker is too low
> under capitalism, for economic reasons.
11. Too low compared to what?
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > Does that number include cash register operators, like the girls at
> > the supermarket who count your stuff and take your money?
> > Or was that only about highly paid economists, bank managers, stock
> > brokers, etc..?
> Ooops. Mea culpa. You're right
You can bet your sweet ass I am. I have
studied economy since long before you were born.
> --- in a "Manna from Heaven" economy there
> would be no need for that. The supermarket shelves would always be full;
We are producing more wheat, corn, potatoes, fruit, etc
than we need, there is an abundance of common consumer
goods.
> there would be no need for anyone to keep track of what is coming and
> going, or to make sure no one takes more than they have contributed.
You are wrong there. There is a need to keep track of how much
is consumed from each shelf, so the store can send for more
of the wares which are used more, and send for less of what
is not used so much.
The store can be run by 2 persons instead of 20 people,
there is only a need for book keeping, cleaning, and stopping
vandalism. All the cash register operators, and cash register
manufacturers, can do something else.
> > To that regular administration I described above we should add
> > all the mental work, all the worrying about mortgages, loans,
> > credit, taxes, rent, etc.
> Yes. When you want a house, you walk to where you would like to live and,
> voila! --- there it is. You need only move in.
Yes, and that works because the people who program the
property register sets the maximum level per person so that
there are always a reasonable number of free apartments and
houses, to allow for movability, to give the individuals
full freedom to move.
> You only need mortgages, credit, etc.,
No we don't need any money.
> if you expect someone else to build it for you, and those
> people refuse to work for nothing.
They cannot work for money, there are no money.
They can work for free, building houses, or do something else.
> Or for the "free" goods you may feel
> like producing rather than lounging on the beach.
A lot of people want to do something more interesting than
lounging on the beach.
> > We are talking about burning food, corn, wheat, barley, etc..
> >
> > Look here:
> > http://www.cornburner.com/
> You're missing the point. If biomass can be a competitive fuel, it will be
> used for that purpose.
You miss this point: The wheat they burn has cost a lot more
to produce than other biomass fuel products, and now they
dump it for a very low price.
The only reason food can be used as fuel is that we have
an enormous overproduction of food.
Which was what I said and you wouldn't accept.
"not in USA.."
Please study my collected works a little better,
before you continue to discuss against your own straw men.
You will find that I have already answered all questions
you can ask.
Use the google groups advanced search, write the key words
of your question in the search field, and my name in the
author field, of course, and you will be able to see how
I handle that specific question.
--
Roger J.
Publius
> You can bet your sweet ass I am. I have
> studied economy since long before you were born.
LOL. You studied under Ricardo, maybe?
> We are producing more wheat, corn, potatoes, fruit, etc
> than we need, there is an abundance of common consumer
> goods.
Yup. It is not manna from heaven, however. It exists because people are
paid to produce it.
> You are wrong there. There is a need to keep track of how much
> is consumed from each shelf, so the store can send for more
> of the wares which are used more, and send for less of what
> is not used so much.
From the manna warehouse.
> The store can be run by 2 persons instead of 20 people,
> there is only a need for book keeping, cleaning, and stopping
> vandalism. All the cash register operators, and cash register
> manufacturers, can do something else.
Those cash registers are also the inventory system. Every item is scanned
in when it arrives, and scanned out when it leaves. The checker must scan
the items whether you pay for them or not. The scanning may take 10 minutes
for a $200 order; swiping your card takes 15 seconds.
>> Yes. When you want a house, you walk to where you would like to live
>> and, voila! --- there it is. You need only move in.
>
> Yes, and that works because the people who program the
> property register sets the maximum level per person so that
> there are always a reasonable number of free apartments and
> houses, to allow for movability, to give the individuals
> full freedom to move.
Where do those houses come from? People build them when they can tear
themselves away from the beach, their computer game, or their bedroom?
> They can work for free, building houses, or do something else.
How many hours/day do you work building houses for free, Roger? You could
do that now, you know. Some free-luncher would be happy to take it off your
hands when it is finished.
>> Or for the "free" goods you may feel
>> like producing rather than lounging on the beach.
> A lot of people want to do something more interesting than
> lounging on the beach.
Yup. Like watching a movie or playing a computer game. Not laying roofing
for 8 hours per day, every day, in the hot sun.
> The only reason food can be used as fuel is that we have
> an enormous overproduction of food.
>
> Which was what I said and you wouldn't accept.
No, that was not what you'd said. You said that people were burning corn to
"keep prices from falling." People burn it, when they do, because it is a
competitive fuel.
There is an overproduction of most crops, however, due to government
subsidies. Needless to say, those farmers continue to farm because they are
being paid (by the gummint). Take away those subsidies and those excess
farmers would disappear instantly. Take away their market income, and the
rest would disappear. But then, we'd still have your manna.
> Please study my collected works a little better,
> before you continue to discuss against your own straw men.
:-)
> You will find that I have already answered all questions
> you can ask.
Well, you haven't answred these, so I'll attach them again:
----------------
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Answer?
Yes or no?
Explain?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
> The normal working day of 15-18 hours is not human.
> Let's give the workers on the farm reasonable working hours.
10. As of now, farmers decide for themselves what hours are
"reasonable." Do you propose to substitute your judgement for theirs?
Yes or no?
> The productivity in the farm business per worker is too low
> under capitalism, for economic reasons.
11. Too low compared to what?
>
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > You are wrong there. There is a need to keep track of how much
> > is consumed from each shelf, so the store can send for more
> > of the wares which are used more, and send for less of what
> > is not used so much.
> > The store can be run by 2 persons instead of 20 people,
> > there is only a need for book keeping, cleaning, and stopping
> > vandalism. All the cash register operators, and cash register
> > manufacturers, can do something else.
> Those cash registers are also the inventory system. Every item is scanned
> in when it arrives, and scanned out when it leaves. The checker must scan
> the items whether you pay for them or not. The scanning may take 10 minutes
> for a $200 order; swiping your card takes 15 seconds.
There is no need for cash registers in a supermarket where the
customers get everything for free. We don't keep track of or regulate
customers consumption individually.
There is a need to keep track of how much in total there is in store,
to be able to tell the distributor to increase or decrease the amounts
of each kind of articles. But that is a simple process, when there are
empty shelfs the store manager tells the distributor that he needs more
potatoes, toilet paper, whatever. If some wares are not use enough so
there are too much of it, he needs to stop the delivery of that ware,
to avoid overcrowding the shelfs with unused articles.
I have already explained this several times but you are not listening.
You are too occupied serving us the propaganda in the yankee capitalist
society, which you have swallowed without any critical thinking at all.
--
Roger J.
forbi...@msn.com
Roger Johansson wrote:
> Publius wrote:
>
> > > You are wrong there. There is a need to keep track of how much
> > > is consumed from each shelf, so the store can send for more
> > > of the wares which are used more, and send for less of what
> > > is not used so much.
>
> > > The store can be run by 2 persons instead of 20 people,
> > > there is only a need for book keeping, cleaning, and stopping
> > > vandalism. All the cash register operators, and cash register
> > > manufacturers, can do something else.
>
> > Those cash registers are also the inventory system. Every item is scanned
> > in when it arrives, and scanned out when it leaves. The checker must scan
> > the items whether you pay for them or not. The scanning may take 10 minutes
> > for a $200 order; swiping your card takes 15 seconds.
>
> There is no need for cash registers in a supermarket where the
> customers get everything for free. We don't keep track of or regulate
> customers consumption individually.
There is value in knowing individual consumption patterns. Why do you
think stores are going to "club cards" and other means of
indentification?
> There is a need to keep track of how much in total there is in store,
> to be able to tell the distributor to increase or decrease the amounts
> of each kind of articles.
Individual consumption patterns aid this process. If the individual
moves to a new area the distribution can move with him or her.
> But that is a simple process, when there are
> empty shelfs the store manager tells the distributor that he needs more
> potatoes, toilet paper, whatever. If some wares are not use enough so
> there are too much of it, he needs to stop the delivery of that ware,
> to avoid overcrowding the shelfs with unused articles.
There are more efficient means.
> I have already explained this several times but you are not listening.
> You are too occupied serving us the propaganda in the yankee capitalist
> society, which you have swallowed without any critical thinking at all.
Money/no money. It doesn't matter. When production is ramped up
sufficiently money isn't an issue. This happens naturally when not
hindered by greed.
Capitalism is just a low tech way of distributing scarce resources
under the assumption that the distribution is just if it is
established by "free" trade.
Roger Johansson
forbisga...@msn.com wrote:
> > There is no need for cash registers in a supermarket where the
> > customers get everything for free. We don't keep track of or regulate
> > customers consumption individually.
> There is value in knowing individual consumption patterns. Why do you
> think stores are going to "club cards" and other means of
> indentification?
To tie the customer harder to a certain shop.
If you have a club card in one shop you will probably
do most of your shopping there.
To be able to send individualized ads and flyers
to the customer.
> > There is a need to keep track of how much in total there is in store,
> > to be able to tell the distributor to increase or decrease the amounts
> > of each kind of articles.
> Individual consumption patterns aid this process.
I don't see how it can help measuring the total numbers
which are important when deciding what articles we need
more/less of.
> Money/no money. It doesn't matter. When production is ramped up
> sufficiently money isn't an issue. This happens naturally when not
> hindered by greed.
Capitalism needs to create scarcity to keep the prices up.
So it looks like there is scarcity in many types of goods
which is not real, it is a created scarcity.
> Capitalism is just a low tech way of distributing scarce resources
That is why scarcity is needed, or at least the idea
of scarcity, without it capitalism could not exist.
--
Roger J.
Bret Cahill
And to keep wages down with an artificial "employee surplus."
That's why they threw the borders wide open after Clinton called the
bluff on the artificial job shortage scam.
The employers needed to tell their employees, "I can replace you with a
Mexican 'just like that!'"
Bret cahill
Bret Cahill
<> <> in the capitalist system.
<> < False. You're thinking of the socialist system.
<> Health care in Europe costs 1/2 that in the U. S. They are
healthier
<> in Europe. The reason is socialized medicine requires less
financial
<> administrators.
<The health care system in the US is by no means "capitalist."
But we agree we would save trillions if we went to a European style
single payer system and eliminated all those administrators.
Just address that issue without pipedreaming "if liberdopia broke out .
. ."
Bret Cahill
Bret Cahill
to his American employees. He said the typical European high school
graduate was better educated than the typical American college
graduate. He went on and on saying Europeans "out performed their
American counterparts at every level." He concluded that American
employees were perpetuating a kind of fraud pretending to work.
This was a letter published in a conservative paper, _the Tampa
Tribune_.
Later I heard a European visitor make similar comments about American
workers being inefficient or "gold bricking" just to get overtime.
All this, however, can be traced to the American robber baron corp. -
wage slave despotism.
As one European immigrant pointed out recently, "Americans just don't
think critically."
Bret Cahill
Bret Cahill
for everyone -- the idea was you just used them to get to the train
station and then you left it for the next guy -- but they all
disappeared.
Bret Cahill
Bret Cahill
< listening.
The minds of dogmatic types like the religious fundamentalists,
"libertarians" and nazis have been shut down by fear. In the case of
libertarians it is, ironically, the very economic policies they support
that contribute to their fear.
There's a difference between being mentally retarded and having your
mind shut down by fear.
Despotism is based on fear. That's the problem in the U. S.
< You are too occupied serving us the propaganda in the
< yankee capitalist society,
The "libertarian" is a very weak minded person. He does not benefit
from the nonsense he spouts. Instead he merely enunciates what the
rich are thinking but are too politically astute to say out loud in
public.
That's why the libertarian dodges so many questions. He has no
answers.
< which you have swallowed without any critical thinking at all.
Many Europeans have pointed out many Americans do not think critically.
This is very important and very true.
But this will change as soon as the Federal Reserve tries to choke off
inflation by increasing unemployment by raising interest rates.
Bret Cahill
Roger Johansson
Bret Cahill wrote:
http://www.hiptravelguide.com/amsterdam/php/article-115.html
"Then in 1998, this idealistic vision was once again revived by Luud
Schimmelpennink, and with the help of new technology and corporate
sponsors, the white bike is back! Electronic locks and hidden
microchips in the bicycles help ensure they don't get stolen.
There are now 19 depots around town, with 26 more planned for a total
of 450 bicycles. Some of the places you'll find them are: The
Waterlooplein, Kerkstraat, the Artis, Nieuwmarkt, Westermarkt and Korte
Prinsengracht."
--
Roger J.
Roger Johansson
Bret Cahill wrote:
> < which you have swallowed without any critical thinking at all.
> Many Europeans have pointed out many Americans do not think critically.
> This is very important and very true.
It is the social culture, based on religion.
They learn to be convinced instead of thinking for themselves somehow.
To them knowledge is to be able to replace one expression with another.
Like learning to think from studying an encyclopedia.
The authoritarian family culture is also a big problem.
US families are often strongly dominated by a very strong man,
or woman, who demands to be respected.
"As long as you live in my house..."
The father in the family uses his property and
threats to control his family.
That is seen as very uncivilized and rude in Europe.
A long time ago, when religion ruled Europe, we had to learn verses and
psalms like parrots, so we could repeat it. That is a religious way to
learn.
USA today is a little more advanced than that, but only a little.
In more advanced school systems they teach the kids to solve problems,
to try different strategies, to try to look through the surface and see
what lies behind it. They learn to think like detectives and forensic
specialists.
We have to learn to ask questions like: What if all this is a lie, what
if it is the opposite, why is this so, who could gain from this, etc..
There is also a big difference in political views and attitudes.
If a european is not satisfied with what his government is doing he
tries to do something about it, he starts discussing with other,
organises an opposition, goes into a party or starts a new party.
Europeans feel that the government is our government.
An american is just getting more and more angry, and finally he buys a
gun and shoots somebody, or he writes a lot of foul language attacks
against his government on internet. To an american the government is
the enemy.
There is a lot fear in the american society, and that creates
conspiration ideas, and is a source of lunatics like the unabomber.
People who are very angry and know no other political tool than
violence and foul language.
The workers movements in europe where successful and took the power,
and are now in the government in many countries.
The workers movement in USA was sabotaged, was associated with violence
and mafia methods, and never managed to become a strong influence in
the society.
--
Roger J.
Publius
news:1128691450.9...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> Money/no money. It doesn't matter. When production is ramped up
> sufficiently money isn't an issue. This happens naturally when not
> hindered by greed.
Er, can you explain how "production is ramped up sufficently" when those
doing the producing are not paid?
Roger's position is that people will work for free. You agree?
> Capitalism is just a low tech way of distributing scarce resources
> under the assumption that the distribution is just if it is
> established by "free" trade.
That is correct. Any distribution that results from a series of unforced
exchanges is a just distribution, regardless of who ends up with what.
Justice consists in securing to each person whatever he or she is due. What
each person is "due" is whatever he or she has acquired by means that do
not impose losses on anyone else. Anything one has produced or discovered
meets that criterion, since prior to its discovery or creation it did not
exist, and thus could not have benefited anyone else.
Many modern liberals equate justice with equality. But that is an
ahistorical and arbitrary re-definition. Justice has nothing to do with
equality, and indeed, equal distributions are often unjust. An equal
distribution is unjust whenever the production of the goods distributed was
not equal.
Publius
> There is a need to keep track of how much in total there is in store,
> to be able to tell the distributor to increase or decrease the amounts
> of each kind of articles.
Roger, take a course in Econ 101. Please! The cash register IS the means
for keeping track of articles.
> But that is a simple process, when there are
> empty shelfs the store manager tells the distributor that he needs
> more potatoes, toilet paper, whatever.
No, Roger. You don't re-order when a shelf is empty. You order when the
supply on hand falls below a reorder-point --- that is when the remaining
supply is sufficient to last until expected delivery date. That varies
for every item in the store. A shelf may be 3/4 full. But if that is a
fast-moving item, you need to re-order now. The computer also keeps track
of all kinds of other info, such as expiration dates and seasonal items
(so that you have the latter in hand BEFORE people start asking for
them).
Please take an econ course! You can't invent economics from scratch,
based on wishful thinking.
> I have already explained this several times but you are not listening.
> You are too occupied serving us the propaganda in the yankee
> capitalist society, which you have swallowed without any critical
> thinking at all.
"Critical thinking" requires examination of arguments and evidence. I've
made numerous arguments and presented considerable evidence. There is a
great deal more out there if you'd bother to look. You've answered none
of the arguments, none of the questions. You've cooked up a fanciful
world filled with fanciful people who do not distinguish between work and
fun, and where economic goods appear on store shelves by magic. You
refuse to consider the possibility that real people and the real world no
not work that way, despite the evidence all around you.
In the last post I asked,
>> They can work for free, building houses, or do something else.
> How many hours/day do you work building houses for free, Roger? You
> could do that now, you know. Some free-luncher would be happy to take
> it off your hands when it is finished.
Another question unanswered.
Here again, are all the other unanswered questions:
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Answer?
Yes or no?
Explain?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
have the approa
>
>
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> Er, can you explain how "production is ramped up sufficently" when those
> doing the producing are not paid?
There are natural regulation processes which do not work under
capitalism, because money talks. After the money are abolished these
processes will work again. If we have too many lawyers and too few
doctors this will lessen the regatrdfor lawyers and raise the
appreciation of doctors. More youngsters will want to become doctors.
In the short perspective you asked about, if there is a lack of fish,
we try to get more workers to work as fishermen, or industrial fish
multiplication through cloning, for example. Engineers create
workplaces which are attractive, with interesting tasks.
> Roger's position is that people will work for free. You agree?
Remember that this new system cannot be implemented unless a majority
of the voters are voting for this system.
So when it shall be implemented we have a big number of people who
understand the new system, who likes it, and want to see it
implemented.
> > Capitalism is just a low tech way of distributing scarce resources
> > under the assumption that the distribution is just if it is
> > established by "free" trade.
> That is correct. Any distribution that results from a series of unforced
> exchanges
"Unforced exchanges"... that would be possible if both parties to the
agreement have the same resources behind them, if they are equally
rich, have equally good lawyers, are equally sensitive to losses, etc..
That is practically never the case in real life.
One of the sides has a lot of money, has very good lawyers and own half
of the town.
The other side hasn't got enough money to last him more than a month or
two. Has never hired a lawyer, and is simply forced to take the work
that is offered him.
A little story about capitalism:
Yesterday a program on tv about a man who owns 1200 apartments in
Stockholm.
He leaves the practical tasks to an alcoholic half-criminal called
Acke.
Acke gets no pay in money, but he gets one new apartment per year he
can do what he likes with.
Acke puts ads in newspapers, he shows apartments to potential
customers, he receives the money and gives the buyer a contract.
Sometimes a customer is easy to fool so he just takes the money and
doesn't give the customer anything at all.
A young foreign girl lost 10000 dollar that way, and Acke just laughs
in her face.
The owner and his accomplice ignore laws and rules and have been
successful for many years, until this tv team used a hidden camera to
reveal what is going on.
--
Roger J.
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
I already won this battle, you lost it.
I only care about what an intelligent
reader thinks about it all.
I am sure I have already caught all the
intelligent fishes in this pond.
I'm like jesus that way, I fish for people.
You can keep the rest.
--
Roger J.
Publius
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
> <The health care system in the US is by no means "capitalist."
>
> But we agree we would save trillions if we went to a European style
> single payer system and eliminated all those administrators.
Absolutely. The more bureaucrats you eliminate, along with their edicts,
regulations, restrictions, mandates, and forms-in-triplicate, the more you
save. If you restore a competitive market in health care and preserve
market incentives, you save even more.
So, by your own reasoning, the way to save the most is by eliminating ALL
of the adminstrators, in and out of government.
That, of course, is free market health care.
Publius
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
Not sure about the Dutch, but a few US cities tried it. Same result.
That sounds like one of Roger's ideas.
Publius
@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> The "libertarian" is a very weak minded person.
:-)
Weak-minded persons are those who rely on *ad hominems*.
forbi...@msn.com
Publius wrote:
> forbi...@msn.com wrote in
> news:1128691450.9...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>
> > Money/no money. It doesn't matter. When production is ramped up
> > sufficiently money isn't an issue. This happens naturally when not
> > hindered by greed.
>
> Er, can you explain how "production is ramped up sufficently" when those
> doing the producing are not paid?
Automation.
Many people are paid by the praise they get or other intangibles.
I believe that for the most part we'd have a lot more of what we
need if poeple were working for these rather than fungibles.
We've lost our way. It's hurting us spiritually and economically.
> Roger's position is that people will work for free. You agree?
People will work for free. It happens every day.
People won't do something they don't think needs to be done for free.
Only an immoral person wouldn't do what needed to be done without being
rewarded if their own needs were met.
> > Capitalism is just a low tech way of distributing scarce resources
> > under the assumption that the distribution is just if it is
> > established by "free" trade.
>
> That is correct.
There is no free trade when needs aren't met. This is especially
true when only one side's needs aren't met.
> Any distribution that results from a series of unforced
> exchanges
If needs aren't met there is force.
> is a just distribution, regardless of who ends up with what.
We go around and around on these issues. You argue from a postion
of privilege and its maintenance.
> Justice consists in securing to each person whatever he or she is due.
Here we agree.
> What
> each person is "due" is whatever he or she has acquired by means that do
> not impose losses on anyone else.
That cannot be done as someones needs aren't met. When a person's
needs
are met the issue is to maximize profits. When a person's needs are
not
met the issue is to minimize losses. A hungry person cannot outwait a
sated person.
> Anything one has produced or discovered
> meets that criterion, since prior to its discovery or creation it did not
> exist, and thus could not have benefited anyone else.
What one discovers doesn't preclude others discoveries. Being first to
utilize a resource precludes others' use down the road. Anything I do
not for need but for desire that precludes others from what they need
is theft. It is very hard to determine what others might do on what
time frame so dealing with parishable morally is quite hard. There is
nothing wrong with taking more than what one needs if it does not
affect
others from getting what they need with equal ease. It seems
reasonable
that equal work be requested in exchange for labor one has undertaken
not for the purpose of exchange but for the purpose of provisioning
from parishables that one could reasonably gone to waste. Heck,
private
exchange where labor specialization is considered is moral as long as
the excess product is one of desire rather than need and no position of
power come into play for the portion that sates needs.
The elimination of force with regards to the meeting of needs is what
I'm all about.
> Many modern liberals equate justice with equality.
No liberal I know makes such an equation.
> But that is an ahistorical and arbitrary re-definition.
I think it's a conservative hobgoblin.
> Justice has nothing to do with
> equality, and indeed, equal distributions are often unjust. An equal
> distribution is unjust whenever the production of the goods distributed was
> not equal.
Equal production isn't important. Any distribution resulting from
unequal force is unjust. When both parties bring equal force and
information to the table the trade is just. It's hard to negotiate
the value of information because one party shouldn't have to give away
the labor involved in its production but if the information isn't
shared
prior to the trade the trade cannot be fair or just.
forbi...@msn.com
I had heard the same about Spokane Washington. It turned out
the guy recking the bicycles didn't like socailism.
There is an adage "You get what you pay for" and the belief
puts a value on things. People are less careful with what they
do not own or is less "valuable" than they are with what they
own or is more "valuable". This is a maladay of a society that
thinks about value the way we do and its fungability.
Bicycles don't reproduce themselves. Socialism cannot work unless
eveyone is on board or the carrying costs of those who are not is
sufficiently small. Economics always comes into play.
As automation advances capitalism will collapse upon itself. There
is nothing to fear here except for those who wish to control others
in a way that allows them to wash their hands of the force they
bring to bear on the situation. Economics is about the distribution
of scarce resources. Once we can separate value from economic value
we can move forward we can start to maximize value while minimizing
economic value.
Publius
>> Er, can you explain how "production is ramped up sufficently" when
>> those doing the producing are not paid?
> There are natural regulation processes which do not work under
> capitalism, because money talks. After the money are abolished these
> processes will work again.
Can you cite some evidence for these processes? Some historical examples?
Explain the dynamics of these processes?
> If we have too many lawyers and too few
> doctors this will lessen the regard for lawyers and raise the
> appreciation of doctors. More youngsters will want to become doctors.
What is this "appreciation?" How is it expressed? Why would a youngster
interested in the law care about it?
> In the short perspective you asked about, if there is a lack of fish,
> we try to get more workers to work as fishermen, or industrial fish
> multiplication through cloning, for example. Engineers create
> workplaces which are attractive, with interesting tasks.
Who is the "we" who try to do this? What do they "try?" If there is a
lack of fish, what incentives can you offer to get me to become a
fisherman, and spend time away from my computer game? What can you offer
the engineers to induce them to re-design workplaces, rather than
building themselves a clever robot to give them massages?
BTW, what about the Gestapo itself? Are they not paid either? Why should
they risk their necks confronting shotgun-toting curmudgeons like me,
when they could be schlepping with their girlfriends?
> Remember that this new system cannot be implemented unless a majority
> of the voters are voting for this system.
It cannot be implemented no matter how many are naive enough to vote for
it. Anyone capable of producing anything useful would be gone within a
week after it was decreed, as occurred in Fidel's Cuba. The rest would be
lounging on the beach, wondering why the manna has not appeared. You
could try a new Berlin Wall, of course. But I'm afraid you'll at least
have to pay the goons who build and man it.
> "Unforced exchanges"... that would be possible if both parties to the
> agreement have the same resources behind them, if they are equally
> rich, have equally good lawyers, are equally sensitive to losses, etc.
Nope. Sorry. There is no presumption of equality, and inequalities do not
justify force. People arrive in the world with different strengths,
weaknesses, talents, etc. They may also be born into families who differ
in those respects. Those may lead, as I said before, to differences in
wealth, health, and ability to attain one's goals. But they did not gain
those advantages, whatever they may be, by taking anything from you. So
they they owe you nothing, and if you attempt to "equalize" things by
taking something from them by force, they are entitled to resist you with
force. Your expectation that everyone should be equal is baseless and
childish. Mother Nature is not an egalitarian.
> Acke puts ads in newspapers, he shows apartments to potential
> customers, he receives the money and gives the buyer a contract.
>
> Sometimes a customer is easy to fool so he just takes the money and
> doesn't give the customer anything at all.
Acke signs the contract, takes the rent, but does not give the tenant the
keys?
Sounds like theft to me.
Acke, like all thieves, is a free-luncher (or as Heinlein put it, a
"free-lance socialist"). I'd think you would admire him.
Publius
> I already won this battle, you lost it.
Heh. Before you can win a battle, you gotta step into the ring.
Here are those unanswered questions again.
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Answer?
Yes or no?
Explain?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
> They can work for free, building houses, or do something else.
12. How many hours/day do you work building houses for free, Roger? You
could do that now, you know. Some free-luncher would be happy to take
it off your hands when it is finished.
Up to 12 now.
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > The individual is ruled by his own wishes, not outside
> > forces.
The only area you seem to know a lot about is how to run a shop,
I guess you are an economy student, and economy in the monetary
meaning.
Of course you want to keep the money system, if you are
planning to make a lot of money based on the education
you are attending.
I could design a lot more sophisticated systems for
keeping the shelfs filled, with electronic sensors,
computerized ordering, etc..
But I want to keep my writing simple enough for anybody
to understand, so I use the simple description with
looking at the shelfs.
The important point is that there is no need for measuring
each individuals consumption, the supermarket only needs
to know about the total consumption.
So we do not need a money system.
You like to use labels like gestapo, I hope you realize that gestapo
and hitler had a strong backing from capitalists in wall street, the
kind of people you are, or are trying to be.
I am on the other side, the social democrat and communist side,
and we fight against capitalism and their puppets, like hitler.
If you had fought in spain before WWII you would have been on
the fascist side, and I would have fought on the socialist
anarchist side, like workers from many countries did.
several of my father's closest friends fought on the workers
side in spain, that's the kind of background I come from.
Where do you come from?
--
Roger J.
Publius
news:1128744783.3...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>> Er, can you explain how "production is ramped up sufficently" when
>> those doing the producing are not paid?
>
> Automation.
Automation works fine once the factory is conceived, designed, and built.
And indeed the market will automate wherever possible, to reduce labor
costs. But "ramping up production" requires a great deal more than
speeding up the assembly line. It requires that demands be identified and
recognized, products for meeting them conceived and developed, materials
and methods for producing them be investigated, factories be designed and
built, sources of parts and raw materials be secured, distribution
methods be devised, all of this be coordinated, and the capital to make
all this happen be marshalled. Ooops --- I guess if everybody is working
for free, there will be no need for the latter.
But as far as I know, none of this can be automated.
> Many people are paid by the praise they get or other intangibles.
> I believe that for the most part we'd have a lot more of what we
> need if poeple were working for these rather than fungibles.
Many people do work, at least part of the time, for intangibles. Some
work is indeed its own reward. And intangibles form part of the
compensation even for work that is paid (people will stay in an office
where they have many friends rather than take another job that pays
slightly more). The problem is that without money, there is no way to
coordinate supply with demand. I.e., there is no means of assuring, if
everyone were to do just those things they enjoy doing (or that provide
them other intangible benefits), that the resulting product mix will bear
any relation to what is demanded. That coordination does not happen
automatically. The price you pay for anything is the *additional*
incentive you must offer to induce someone to produce that good in
sufficient quantity that you will get a share --- to draw them away from
doing whatever else they would be doing instead (the things they do
because they enjoy doing them).
You encounter the evidence for this every day. I hire a guy who mows my
lawn every week. I could mow it myself (and did for years). But I'd
rather pay him, because I'd rather spend that time doing something else,
and I'll give up $25 for the privilege.
Suppose I put a sign in my yard saying, "Anyone who finds mowing lawns
intrinsically rewarding may mow mine. Thank you." You think I could count
on getting my lawn mowed regularly? But by being prepared to give up $25,
I can induce someone else to do it.
John, the lawn guy, will do it for $25 because that work offers him more
intrinsic rewards than it does to me. He would not do it for nothing
either, but the intrinsic rewards plus $25 will induce him to do it.
In other words, the supply of people who find lawn-mowing intrinsically
rewarding is far short of the demand for that service. To bring that
supply into balance with the demand you must offer additional incentives.
> People won't do something they don't think needs to be done for free.
> Only an immoral person wouldn't do what needed to be done without
> being rewarded if their own needs were met.
You're relying very heavily here (and below) on "needs." Economically
speaking there are no "needs," there are only demands. There is no way to
define what "needs to be done," except by determining what others demand
to be done, i.e., what they are willing to pay to have done. I have no
means of determining what you "need" except by observing that you are
willing to give up something in order to obtain the thing you "need." And
when I do that I observe that different people "need" all kinds of
different things.
There are of course biological needs --- to maintain your life you need a
certain quantity and composition of food each day, and a certain amount
of water and oxygen. You must maintain your body within a certain range
of temperatures. But those things translate into demands, economically
speaking, only if the person who needs them is prepared to give up
something (time, money, effort, some other good) to obtain them.
Otherwise they are just biological facts.
I suppose you're saying above that unless people act to meet others'
biological needs, whether or not they are rewarded, they behave
immorally. That of course requires an argument (more below). But the
"needs" asserted by leftists go well beyond biological needs. The
designation seems to be applied *ad hoc*, depending upon the details of
the Utopias different leftists envision.
> There is no free trade when needs aren't met. This is especially
> true when only one side's needs aren't met.
There are only three ways for a given person to meet his/her (biological
or any other) needs.
1. Produce those things you need yourself.
2. Wait for someone else to produce them, and steal them.
3. Wait for someone else to produce them and then persuade that person to
give them to you. He may do so, but your chances of success at this will
be better if you can offer him something you have produced in exchange.
"Free trade" is #3. Even gifts count as free trade.
> If needs aren't met there is force.
Well, sorry, but you can't avoid the need for argument by redefining
words. Force is force; it is violence inflicted upon one person by
another. I inflict violence upon you by beating you, torturing you,
shooting you or stabbing you. "Force" is not a failure by one person to
meet another's "needs." Your "needs," and the biological consequences of
failing to meet them, were not imposed upon you by the person from whom
you propose to steal. If you would die without the food produced by that
person, you would do so even if that person had never existed or never
produced any food for you to steal.
>> What
>> each person is "due" is whatever he or she has acquired by means that
>> do not impose losses on anyone else.
>
> That cannot be done as someones needs aren't met.
Your underlying premise here seems to be, as mentioned above, that
everyone has some kind of *a priori* duty or obligation to meet everyone
else's "needs," and that until all these "needs" are met, no one may
claim more than is necessary to meet his own "needs."
Now, normally, one acquires duties by contract. Such duties are well-
defined. I can have a duty to do something for you because I've agreed or
promised to do that thing, perhaps in exchange for something you have
promised to do for me.
If there is no contract, you must justify the duties you allege with some
other evidence or argument. Without those it is merely a gratuitous
assertion. The usual source of this *a priori* duty among leftists is the
organic fallacy --- the assumption that persons interacting in a social
setting are engaged in a common enterprise --- that they are bound by a
common purpose or goal; that man, per Marx's version, is a "species
being," whose identity and fate as an individual are inextricably bound
up with those of his fellows. That is clearly, and empirically, not the
case. We are all separate persons with our own separate goals, thrown
together by accident. We are individually identifiable and have separate
destinies. The presence of other persons in our environment can be a
benefit in pursuing our goals, but they can also be a hindrance. The
trick is to find rules for social interaction which maximize the former
and minimize the latter.
> What one discovers doesn't preclude others discoveries. Being first
> to utilize a resource precludes others' use down the road.
That argument is not viable. Yes, if I pick an apple from a wild apple
tree and eat it, then it is no longer available to the next person who
comes along. But if I can't eat it (because the next person would not
then have it), then neither can he, because then the NEXT person wouldn't
have it. And so on. Hence, no one can eat the apple.
That argument is absurd. You may lay claim to any unused or unclaimed
resources available when you arrive, but not to any already claimed. Our
ancestors, going back 10,000 or 10 million years, had no duty to forego
meeting their own needs and pursuing their own goals so that we, 10
million years later, might better pursue ours. I injure you by taking
something you have already claimed, but not by taking something so far
claimed by no one.
> No liberal I know makes such an equation.
Heh. You should peruse some of the phil and poli journals.
Publius
>> > The individual is ruled by his own wishes, not outside
>> > forces.
>
> The only area you seem to know a lot about is how to run a shop,
> I guess you are an economy student, and economy in the monetary
> meaning.
Well, there is some progress! At least you hinted at the question, even
if you did not answer it.
That question again was,
> The individual is ruled by his own wishes, not outside
> forces.
1. Is the Gestapo that enforces your trade prohibitions not an outside
force? Is its involvement in the trade is at the wish of the traders?
Yes or no?
> I could design a lot more sophisticated systems for
> keeping the shelfs filled, with electronic sensors,
> computerized ordering, etc..
Please do. Then maybe you could earn your keep in this world.
> You like to use labels like gestapo, I hope you realize that gestapo
> and hitler had a strong backing from capitalists in wall street, the
> kind of people you are, or are trying to be.
Sorry. I could have used lefty versions, such as the OGPU, the NKVD, or
the Stasi. All the same thing.
Capitalists support any sitting government, in order to curry favors.
They supported Lenin also. The way to prevent that is to make sure the
government has no power worth trying to buy.
> I am on the other side, the social democrat and communist side,
> and we fight against capitalism and their puppets, like hitler.
Well, it was Sweden and Stalin who cut deals with Hitler. Not Churchill
or Roosevelt.
> If you had fought in spain before WWII you would have been on
> the fascist side, and I would have fought on the socialist
> anarchist side, like workers from many countries did.
I'd have fought on neither side. One despotism is as bad as another. I'd
have stayed on the sidelines and fought against whoever won.
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> > You like to use labels like gestapo, I hope you realize that gestapo
> > and hitler had a strong backing from capitalists in wall street, the
> > kind of people you are, or are trying to be.
> Sorry. I could have used lefty versions, such as the OGPU, the NKVD, or
> the Stasi. All the same thing.
The old "guilt by association" trick, a very common propaganda
piece from the capitalist US side.
They never mention Hitler without mentioning
Stalin in the same sentence.
> > I am on the other side, the social democrat and communist side,
> > and we fight against capitalism and their puppets, like hitler.
> Well, it was Sweden and Stalin who cut deals with Hitler.
We were forced to it.
> Not Churchill or Roosevelt.
The american capitalists arranged the situation that forced us.
They supported hitler, franco and mussolini to crush
socialism,democracy, and communism in europe.
--
Roger J.
mimus
> The "libertarian" is a very weak minded person.
Like those feebs Machiavelli, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Szasz, huh?
--
Io non giudico né giudicheròmai essere difetto
difendere alcuna opinione con le ragioni,
sanza volervi usare o l'autorità o la forza.
< Machiavelli
Publius
> The old "guilt by association" trick, a very common propaganda
> piece from the capitalist US side.
> They never mention Hitler without mentioning
> Stalin in the same sentence.
Of course not. There wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two.
>> Well, it was Sweden and Stalin who cut deals with Hitler.
>
> We were forced to it.
Excuses.
> The american capitalists arranged the situation that forced us.
>
> They supported hitler, franco and mussolini to crush
> socialism,democracy, and communism in europe.
It was democracy that put Hilter in office, not capitalists in America,
Germany, or anywhere else. Wall Street brokers do not vote in German
elections.
Publius
news:XvKdnbsFXPBxsNXe...@comcast.com:
> "Roger Johansson" <roge...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:1128765842.2...@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>
>> The old "guilt by association" trick, a very common propaganda
>> piece from the capitalist US side.
>> They never mention Hitler without mentioning
>> Stalin in the same sentence.
>
> Of course not. There wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the two.
I could have thrown in Mao and Pol Pot also.
mimus
And some (relatively) milder dictators, Mussolini and Franco and Chiang and
maybe Diem (not really sure what he was doing in the late Fifties over
there in 'Nam).
--
In the previous number, the cattle rustlers (post-
Hegelian dogma) had trapped Professor Dewey in an
abandoned mine shaft (Jamesian pragmatism) and had
ignited the fuse leading to a keg of dynamite
(neo-Newtonian empiricism).
< S. J. Perelman
Bret Cahill
< Like those feebs Machiavelli, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Szasz, huh?
"Libertarian" was in quotes and referred to the self proclaimed
"libertarians" here on usenet who say moroninc things like, "cut taxes
'starve' gummint and utopia breaks out."
Or "democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what's for dinner."
Or, "the high tax Clinton economic expansion never happened."
A better term is "liberdope" -- someone who says stupid things for free
as opposed to a "libershill" who gets paid to say stupid things.
I'll pay $200 for a letter from a libershill tank like Cato, Hoover,
Am. Enterprise, Heritage, the Chicago School, von Mises Inst. etc.
where an outspoken market economist answers the question:
"Does free speech precede each and every free trade?"
Just get:
1. a letterhead
2. the question
3. the answer -- ANY answer
4. the signature of the outspoken economist.
Emaill me a scanned copy and a mailing and I'll send you the $200 MO.
Bret Cahill
Bret Cahill
< socialism,democracy, and communism in europe.
The robber barons had complete control of monetary policy at the time.
After the '29 crash the Federal Reserve RAISED interest rates thereby
guaranteeing a great economic downturn and world war.
Henry Ford I, a notorious anti semite, intimidated the "independent"
media so much in the United States the _New York Times_ was afraid to
cover the Holocaust.
Only a couple a short paragraphs buried in the Times ever mentioned
anything. Only Albert Einstein and few others were courageous enough
to say anything.
Right now the central bank of the United States is getting ready to
choke off inflation with unemployment by raising interest rates.
But this time there won't be a world war. This time the rightards are
going to get their fraudulent behinds kicked out of power.
Bret Cahill
Bret Cahill
< propaganda piece from the capitalist US side.
That's nothing. I can ask a simple innocent question:
"Does free speech precede each and every free trade?"
And guess what?
I don't get an answer. Instead they start calling me a "pinko
socialist commie left winger."
I'll protest, "but I'm just asking a simple question about those 'free'
markets that solve all problems . . ."
It doesn't do any good. They claim if you pop them on the fanny with
THAT question, you must be a communist.
REAL free marketers don't ask questions like that.
Bret Cahill
Bret Cahill
< party shouldn't have to give away the labor involved in its
< production but if the information isn't shared prior to the trade
< the trade cannot be fair or just.
It's not difficult to send the outspoken "free market" economists at
Cato, Hoover, American Enterprise, Heritage, the Chicago School, von
Mises Inst., et. al., scurrying like cockroaches when you turn on the
kitchen light.
All you need to do is ask one simple innocent 9 word question:
"Does free speech precede each and every free trade?"
Our outspoken economists will disappear so fast their wives won't know
what happened to them.
Now the unpaid liberdopes we chat with here on newsgroups, unlike the
professional libershills above, don't know anything about the
consequences of answering the question.
So some will deny an obvious self evident truth while others will admit
it is true even though it is how Clinton got into power and STILL has
the Republicons by the short ones.
But the professional "libertarian" economists above would rather have
socialism than answer a simple 9 word question about free markets.
Now if the professional "free market" economists prefer socialism to
free markets, then, a fortiori, wouldn't most Americans prefer
socialism?
Bret Cahill
mimus
> <> The "libertarian" is a very weak minded person.
>
> < Like those feebs Machiavelli, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Szasz, huh?
>
> "Libertarian" was in quotes and referred to the self proclaimed
> "libertarians" here on usenet who say moroninc things like, "cut taxes
> 'starve' gummint and utopia breaks out."
Oh, yeah. Them.
--
Conservatism = plutocracy + theocracy + hypocrisy
Liberalism = plutocracy + bureaucracy + hypocrisy
Publius
@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> I'll pay $200 for a letter from a libershill tank like Cato, Hoover,
> Am. Enterprise, Heritage, the Chicago School, von Mises Inst. etc.
> where an outspoken market economist answers the question:
>
> "Does free speech precede each and every free trade?"
If you've asked them that question as often as you have posted it here,
you'll have to offer a lot more than that. Any new repetitions would go to
the junk mail shredder automatically.
You ever consider that you don't get answers because the question is
vacuous?
Here is one for you:
"Do nonsensical questions precede each and every nonsensical answer?
Publius
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:
> That's nothing. I can ask a simple innocent question:
>
> "Does free speech precede each and every free trade?"
>
> And guess what?
>
> I don't get an answer. Instead they start calling me a "pinko
> socialist commie left winger."
That's not what I heard. The epithet I heard was "Nuts."
Bret Cahill
> > "Does free speech precede each and every free trade?"
> > And guess what?
> > I don't get an answer. Instead they start calling me a "pinko
> > socialist commie left winger."
> That's not what I heard.
Well you were too busy dodgin' 'n dodgin' 'n dodgin' to hear anything.
Bret Cahill
forbi...@msn.com
Publius wrote:
> forbi...@msn.com wrote in
> news:1128744783.3...@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
>
> >> Er, can you explain how "production is ramped up sufficently" when
> >> those doing the producing are not paid?
> >
> > Automation.
>
> Automation works fine once the factory is conceived, designed, and built.
> And indeed the market will automate wherever possible, to reduce labor
> costs. But "ramping up production" requires a great deal more than
> speeding up the assembly line. It requires that demands be identified and
> recognized, products for meeting them conceived and developed, materials
> and methods for producing them be investigated, factories be designed and
> built, sources of parts and raw materials be secured, distribution
> methods be devised, all of this be coordinated, and the capital to make
> all this happen be marshalled. Ooops --- I guess if everybody is working
> for free, there will be no need for the latter.
Capital eats its own. If you watch TV you see lots of advertisement
for junk. We have plent of productive capacity but we're misdirecting
it due to greed. My energy is sapped by my day at work. I just don't
have the energy anymore to come home and help build the better world.
I suspect I am not alone. With people focusing on making a profit to
survive they don't have the energy to see how this has made them
slaves.
It's not about working for free but rather working together for a
shared better life with more liberty.
> But as far as I know, none of this can be automated.
So far. It's just a matter of technology. All of it will be automated
if not interfered with by those who would control others' lives.
> > Many people are paid by the praise they get or other intangibles.
> > I believe that for the most part we'd have a lot more of what we
> > need if poeple were working for these rather than fungibles.
>
> Many people do work, at least part of the time, for intangibles. Some
> work is indeed its own reward. And intangibles form part of the
> compensation even for work that is paid (people will stay in an office
> where they have many friends rather than take another job that pays
> slightly more).
Yes. intangibles play a much larger role than many would have you
believe.
> The problem is that without money, there is no way to
> coordinate supply with demand.
I'm not that concerned about money. I think Roger Johansson's energies
are misplaced. There has to be metrics of one sort or another.
Can you separate virtuous demand from the rest?
> I.e., there is no means of assuring, if
> everyone were to do just those things they enjoy doing (or that provide
> them other intangible benefits), that the resulting product mix will bear
> any relation to what is demanded.
Demand is what it is. It is quite independent of supply.
I talk of needs. Needs may be swamped by aggregate demands when the
metrics make no distinctions.
> That coordination does not happen
> automatically. The price you pay for anything is the *additional*
> incentive you must offer to induce someone to produce that good in
> sufficient quantity that you will get a share --- to draw them away from
> doing whatever else they would be doing instead (the things they do
> because they enjoy doing them).
That's where automation comes in.
> You encounter the evidence for this every day. I hire a guy who mows my
> lawn every week. I could mow it myself (and did for years). But I'd
> rather pay him, because I'd rather spend that time doing something else,
> and I'll give up $25 for the privilege.
You can still get a lawn mown for $25? I engage in similar activity,
or rather I did until about 10 years ago when I moved into an
appartment.
I had to pay $45 for a city lot. I don't have a problem with fair
trade. At the time the person mowing my lawn was making more per hour
than I was though I suspect there were idle hours in his day as he went
from place to place and took care of disposal and such.
> Suppose I put a sign in my yard saying, "Anyone who finds mowing lawns
> intrinsically rewarding may mow mine. Thank you." You think I could count
> on getting my lawn mowed regularly? But by being prepared to give up $25,
> I can induce someone else to do it.
I have no problem with fair trade between equals.
> John, the lawn guy, will do it for $25 because that work offers him more
> intrinsic rewards than it does to me. He would not do it for nothing
> either, but the intrinsic rewards plus $25 will induce him to do it.
Do you suppose he would do this if nature didn't force him to labor
for life sustaining needs and society's structure didn't close paths
where he could obtain them himself without interferance.
> In other words, the supply of people who find lawn-mowing intrinsically
> rewarding is far short of the demand for that service.
No. No. No. Demand is indenepndent of supply. What you're saying
is people wouldn't supply it at the price you wish to pay for it.
Supply and demand meet at market price.
> To bring that supply into balance with the demand
> you must offer additional incentives.
You have this so wrong. Supply and demand are always in balance at
the market. If supply increases the market price drops. If demand
increases the market price goes up.
What you want is to prey on others needs to have your desires met.
> > People won't do something they don't think needs to be done for free.
> > Only an immoral person wouldn't do what needed to be done without
> > being rewarded if their own needs were met.
>
> You're relying very heavily here (and below) on "needs." Economically
> speaking there are no "needs," there are only demands.
I'm not sure. Economics is about the distribution of scarce resources.
Economics makes no value decisions. It can work as well when taking
needs into consideration as well as other demands. It is the place
of ethicists to help society choose its values and economics to
indicate the effectiveness of our methods in achieving them.
> There is no way to
> define what "needs to be done," except by determining what others demand
> to be done, i.e., what they are willing to pay to have done. I have no
> means of determining what you "need" except by observing that you are
> willing to give up something in order to obtain the thing you "need." And
> when I do that I observe that different people "need" all kinds of
> different things.
It is easy to differentiate between one wishing water to quench one's
thirst and one wishing water to water one's lawn.
> There are of course biological needs --- to maintain your life you need a
> certain quantity and composition of food each day, and a certain amount
> of water and oxygen. You must maintain your body within a certain range
> of temperatures.
Yes. You can spot needs, can't you?
> But those things translate into demands, economically
> speaking, only if the person who needs them is prepared to give up
> something (time, money, effort, some other good) to obtain them.
> Otherwise they are just biological facts.
You're relying upon a value free market economy with a fungible
currency.
> I suppose you're saying above that unless people act to meet others'
> biological needs, whether or not they are rewarded, they behave
> immorally. That of course requires an argument (more below). But the
> "needs" asserted by leftists go well beyond biological needs. The
> designation seems to be applied *ad hoc*, depending upon the details of
> the Utopias different leftists envision.
Why do you use these ad hominems? Can't you focus on the person with
whom you're conversing? I talk for myself not for any amorphous group.
> > There is no free trade when needs aren't met. This is especially
> > true when only one side's needs aren't met.
>
> There are only three ways for a given person to meet his/her (biological
> or any other) needs.
>
> 1. Produce those things you need yourself.
Yes. This is one ideal.
> 2. Wait for someone else to produce them, and steal them.
This would be a bad thing.
> 3. Wait for someone else to produce them and then persuade that person to
> give them to you. He may do so, but your chances of success at this will
> be better if you can offer him something you have produced in exchange.
If done between equals this is an ideal.
> "Free trade" is #3. Even gifts count as free trade.
If 1 is precluded then 3 isn't free trade.
> > If needs aren't met there is force.
>
> Well, sorry, but you can't avoid the need for argument by redefining
> words. Force is force; it is violence inflicted upon one person by
> another.
Violence isn't part of the definition proper. Encarta gives several
definitions but only one mentions violence.
> I inflict violence upon you by beating you, torturing you,
> shooting you or stabbing you. "Force" is not a failure by one person to
> meet another's "needs."
No one is morally required to meet another's needs even though there
are times when it is the virtuous thing to do. One is morally
obligated
to not negatively interfere with those who are trying to meet their
needs.
> Your "needs," and the biological consequences of
> failing to meet them, were not imposed upon you by the person from whom
> you propose to steal.
I don't propse theft from anyone. The commons are just that. As a
society we have chosen to endow "ownership" to individuals because such
stewardship is more effecient but the "owners" need to be aware that
they are stewards for society's memebers who own in common. Recovering
land rent isn't theft but merely the application of market forces to
the effecinet utilization of the commons.
> If you would die without the food produced by that
> person, you would do so even if that person had never existed or never
> produced any food for you to steal.
I wouldn't hold the position you argue against. Can't you get this
straight?
I argue that everyone has a right to their share of nature's bounty.
When one takes more than that one must morally compensate those from
whom one has taken.
> >> What
> >> each person is "due" is whatever he or she has acquired by means that
> >> do not impose losses on anyone else.
> >
> > That cannot be done as someones needs aren't met.
>
> Your underlying premise here seems to be, as mentioned above, that
> everyone has some kind of *a priori* duty or obligation to meet everyone
> else's "needs," and that until all these "needs" are met, no one may
> claim more than is necessary to meet his own "needs."
One has a moral responsibility to compensate other for what one denys
them by taking it.
I'm tired of talking with you. You either lack the ability to
comprehend what I'm talking about or are intentionally misconstruing
it.
You appear to be pretty smart so I think you are being intentional.
Publius
news:1128917511.7...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> Capital eats its own. If you watch TV you see lots of advertisement
> for junk. We have plent of productive capacity but we're misdirecting
> it due to greed.
Well, there are a couple of fallacious assumptions embedded there.
First, there is the fallacy of value. That is the belief that values are
objective properties of things, and can be determined unequivocally, like
mass or size. But the value of anything can only be defined or ascertained
with respect a valuer. There is no means of verifying any equation of the
form, "The value of X = V." We can, however, verify those of the form, "The
value of X to P = V."
In other words, one man's "junk" is another man's treasures. It is
arbitrary (and elitist) to dismiss others' interests, tastes, preferences,
goals, etc., as "junk."
There are thousands of products on the shelves of my local supermarket (not
to mention hundreds of other retail outlets) which I will never buy. In
fact, I would not accept many of them if they were offered for free. But
I'm quite sure someone is buying them, or they would not be there (or at
least not for long).
The fallacy of value presumes that certain things have "intrinsic" worth
and that anyone who fails to apprehend that worth is somehow handicappped
or defective, or perhaps is just evil. That presumption is indefensible
theoretically and empirically.
The second fallacy is, again, the organic fallacy: "We have plenty of
productive capacity but we're misdirecting it." That presumes that "we"
have some common purpose or goals, to which "we" should all be directing
our energies and resources. But there is no such thing. There are only the
purposes and goals of individuals, and those vary widely. Hence the
productive capacity is geared to satisfy all those millions of individual
goals, not any fictitious collective goal.
> My energy is sapped by my day at work. I just don't
> have the energy anymore to come home and help build the better world.
The only way to build a "better world" is build something that makes it
better for some particular persons, i.e., by writing a software program
some people will find useful, or writing a novel someone will enjoy
reading, or building a house someone would like to live in. Any scheme that
proposes to build a "better world" by conscripting everyone into pursuit of
some alleged "common goal" is guaranteed to make most of those draftees
miserable. Such a world is "better" only for those holding the whip.
But let me ask: if your present job is exhausting, unstimulating,
oppressive, why not change it? People do that all the time.
> It's not about working for free but rather working together for a
> shared better life with more liberty.
Shared with whom? Liberty to do what?
Liberty for Roger means manna from heaven --- liberty from the necessity of
work. Since that is contrary to the laws of physics, it can only be
implemented in practice by theft or slavery --- seizing what others have
produced, or forcing others to produce the things you desire to have.
There is no liberty from work. There can only be a liberty to choose the
kind of work you will do, from among all the alternatives available. The
more diverse and numerous the desires of different people are, the more
alternatives you have for finding work that is remunerative and also
satisfying.
>> But as far as I know, none of this can be automated.
>
> So far. It's just a matter of technology. All of it will be
> automated if not interfered with by those who would control others'
> lives.
Hm. I'm somewhat involved in AI design, and I know of no technology
remotely close to being capable of the kinds of tasks described, in any
foreseeable future.
But what do you mean, "controlling other people's lives?" Does that mean
that if someone were to invent such software, and demand payment from
anyone who wished to use it, he would be "controlling their lives?"
> Yes. intangibles play a much larger role than many would have you
> believe.
Agreed.
> I'm not that concerned about money. I think Roger Johansson's
> energies are misplaced. There has to be metrics of one sort or
> another. Can you separate virtuous demand from the rest?
No. The only demands one can exclude in a principled way are those which
involve force, as earlier defined. But one cannot exclude in any principled
way demands for rap music, pornography, chocolate covered ants, low-rider
jeans, Gummi Bears, "reality teevee," Barbie dolls, or pet rocks.
Justice Holmes once observed that you only have freedom of speech if there
is freedom to utter the speech we hate. You can tell you have a free
economy when you have an abundance of frivolous, bizarre, incomprehensible,
and offensive goods on the market.
> You can still get a lawn mown for $25? I engage in similar activity,
> or rather I did until about 10 years ago when I moved into an
> appartment.
I live in a downtown neighborhood where the yards are postage-stamp and the
houses are dripline to dripline. :-)
> Do you suppose he would do this if nature didn't force him to labor
> for life sustaining needs and society's structure didn't close paths
> where he could obtain them himself without interferance.
Well, we can't do much about the laws of nature. But I'm certain John and
everyone else is able to meet his "basic needs" in a modern market economy
by investing far fewer hours than would be required if he lived alone in,
say, the wilds of Alaska, and relied entirely upon his own efforts for
everything he consumed. For example, he can probably now obtain all the
food he needs for a month with 3 days work or so. I doubt he could do that
in the wilds of Alaska. And most of the other things he now enjoys he could
never produce at all, even if he worked on them his entire life. Listening
to jazz in high-fidelity stereo in the comfort of his cave or cabin, for
example (John is a musician also).
> No. No. No. Demand is indenepndent of supply. What you're saying
> is people wouldn't supply it at the price you wish to pay for it.
> Supply and demand meet at market price.
That's what I said. The "price" in this case is the intrinsic rewards.
>> To bring that supply into balance with the demand
>> you must offer additional incentives.
>
> You have this so wrong. Supply and demand are always in balance at
> the market. If supply increases the market price drops. If demand
> increases the market price goes up.
No, supply is not always in balance with demand. It is only in balance at
equilibrium. Until that point is reached you having rising or falling
prices (disequilibrium).
> What you want is to prey on others needs to have your desires met.
How is that? You think I "prey" on John by offering him $25 to mow my lawn?
>> You're relying very heavily here (and below) on "needs." Economically
>> speaking there are no "needs," there are only demands.
>
> I'm not sure. Economics is about the distribution of scarce
> resources. Economics makes no value decisions. It can work as well
> when taking needs into consideration as well as other demands.
It does take "needs" into account. All demand represents the "needs," of
some kind, of someone.
> It is
> the place of ethicists to help society choose its values and economics
> to indicate the effectiveness of our methods in achieving them.
That is the organic fallacy again. "Societies" do not have values, and
there are no values common to all persons in any moderately large society.
Ethicists can articulate values and perhaps point out the consequences of
acting on them. They can even promote certain values. But if their
admonitions are heeded, it will only be by some individuals. Most people
will end up with hierarchies of values that are forged from a variety of
influences, many of which will remain forever mysterious. The only thing we
can predict with confidence is that no two of theose hierarchies will be
precisely identical.
> It is easy to differentiate between one wishing water to quench one's
> thirst and one wishing water to water one's lawn.
But it is not possible to determine, *a priori*, which is more important to
a given person at a given time.
>> But those things translate into demands, economically
>> speaking, only if the person who needs them is prepared to give up
>> something (time, money, effort, some other good) to obtain them.
>> Otherwise they are just biological facts.
>
> You're relying upon a value free market economy with a fungible
> currency.
That statement of mine applies to any kind of *economy*. The term *economy*
refers to the behavior of a number of persons who are involved in exchanges
of goods. Until one person proposes an exchange of goods with another,
there is no economy; there are only a number of persons, all trying
independently to satisfy their desires, including, normally, meeting their
biological needs. An economy does not exist until they begin to exchange
with one another. Until then they are either not interacting at all, or are
involved only in a predator/prey relationship.
>> There are only three ways for a given person to meet his/her
>> (biological or any other) needs.
>>
>> 1. Produce those things you need yourself.
>
> Yes. This is one ideal.
>
>> 2. Wait for someone else to produce them, and steal them.
>
> This would be a bad thing.
>
>> 3. Wait for someone else to produce them and then persuade that
>> person to give them to you. He may do so, but your chances of success
>> at this will be better if you can offer him something you have
>> produced in exchange.
>
> If done between equals this is an ideal.
No. There is no basis for a presumption of equality. Mother Nature is not
an egalitarian. Different people have different strengths, weaknesses,
talents, energies, goals, interests, motives. Alfie may be able to procure
the food he needs for a week in 1 day; Bruno may take all week, though they
are in same environment. Alfie may have experimented and found new food
plants, or discovered a more efficient way to locate or harvest them. If
Bruno wishes to trade with Alfie, he may not first demand that Alfie divide
up their current stores of food equally. If he is rational, he will enter
into a trade if it will be an improvement on his base state, or *status quo
ante*. Alfie will do the same. If Bruno were to demand that their stores
first be divided equally, Alfie would walk away. He would be better off not
dealing with Bruno at all.
People engage in trades when both will be made better off than in their
respective *status quo ante* states. Equality is an extraneous and
unobtainable goal. Adopting it drives the more productive or resourceful
away from the bargaining table (and of course the next step is to keep them
there by force).
> If 1 is precluded then 3 isn't free trade.
I'd agree, if it is precluded by the other agent. Alfie does not preclude
Bruno from picking an apple, however, merely by finding it first.
> No one is morally required to meet another's needs even though there
> are times when it is the virtuous thing to do. One is morally
> obligated to not negatively interfere with those who are trying to meet
> their needs.
Well, I think we agree there.
> I don't propse theft from anyone. The commons are just that. As a
> society we have chosen to endow "ownership" to individuals because
> such stewardship is more effecient but the "owners" need to be aware
> that they are stewards for society's members who own in common.
There are such things as commons. If a particular resource has been used in
common by a number of persons for a period of time, and ownership cannot be
traced to any one (or some subset) of them, then it is indeed a common. If
any of them should seize that common and attempt to exclude the others, he
would be acting immorally.
But claims of common ownership are validated in the same way as are claims
of individual ownership. You cannot claim common ownerships gratuitously. A
mineral deposit for example, which is discovered by a particular person, on
land not being used or perhaps even explored by anyone else, is not a
common. It is unowned.
If I fence off and post armed guards along a stretch of stream where
members of my tribe have for generations panned small amounts of gold for
making jewelry and trinkets, I have violated a common. Finding and claiming
gold in a stream which no one has ever before explored, much less mined, is
an entirely different matter. The gold in that stream is not a common. It
is, beginning with my discovery, private property.
> I argue that everyone has a right to their share of nature's bounty.
Their "share" is the share they have discovered or put to beneficial use.
That is the only means for deciding which shares belong to whom. Many on
the left presume there is a primordial, equal right in common to
everything. Which is an obviously baseless claim.
Roger Johansson
Publius wrote:
> If I fence off and post armed guards along a stretch of stream where
> members of my tribe have for generations panned small amounts of gold for
> making jewelry and trinkets, I have violated a common. Finding and claiming
> gold in a stream which no one has ever before explored, much less mined, is
> an entirely different matter. The gold in that stream is not a common. It
> is, beginning with my discovery, private property.
It is now clear from the icelandic sagas that Leif Eiksson
came to north america long before Columbus, and he claimed
the whole continent for the norwegian government. (ignoring
any rights the indians might have had, just like the white
men who came later did. them injuns were not smart enough
to "claim" property so they have no rights)
That means that the whole north american continent
has been stolen from norway by the people who
control it today.
Leave this norwegian property immediately, and pay damages
to norway with a sum of 34000000000000000 dollars.
Now, do you respect property rights?
Or do you think the american people has some kind of rights
just because they have lived there, on norwegian property,
for many generations?
....
By the way, what you call economics is actually
the monetary system.
The economy of a country can be organised in many ways.
One possible organisation builds on property rights,
the exchange principle and a money system.
That's the game you like to play.
But it is not economy. It is a game built on jungle rules.
Violence rules and foul play is called economy.
Your kind of "economy" is more like playing poker than
a responsible and effective use of the society's resources.
If you and the other neo-liberals and libertarians
could rule, the society would look like Chicago during
the gangster era.
The rich would have their own private armies, or hire the
police force to protect their property.
Law becomes a commodity on a market, according to one of
your leading thinkers.
--
Roger J.