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#Post#: 13631--------------------------------------------------
Of Money and Power
By: Kerry Date: December 31, 2016, 11:14 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
The most pressing question of the 21st century may be that of
wages, of how workers and employees divide the money from
business; yet we hear little about it from our politicians. In
the US, we hear Democrats suggesting an increase in the minimum
wage which Republicans often scoff at, saying that the cost of
labor is like any other commodity and that employers should be
free to pay as little as they need to in order to find
employees. Which is it then?
If you carry the Republican idea to its logical extreme, you
would have to agree with the possible situation where someone is
willing to work for no wages. You say, "But no one would do
that." I say, "I can imagine a world in which they would."
Indeed if we are honest, we will admit that today many workers
would be better off under the banned slavery system since slave
owners provided housing, food and other basics of life. Today
some workers work full time and are still be unable to provide
the necessities of life. Federal, state and local governments
often provide assistance in some areas; and food banks and other
charitable organizations work to make up the difference. It is
glaringly obvious that these workers are not being a fair wage
on which one person could support a family. Sometimes two
working parents struggle to make ends meet. The idea of one
working parent being able to support a family seems a thing of
the past.
It is ironic then that the federal government, recognizing the
difficulties of the one parent family, provides a tax credit to
some single parents. It is an acknowledgement that their
employers are not paying them a livable wage so the government
steps in with a tax credit. In other words, the federal
government is subsidizing companies who are paying people such
low wages.
I say it is a great evil for any employer to pay a full-time
worker so little that his living standard is lower than that
which slaves has in the past. It is another great evil for
government to wink at it, allowing the employers to make bigger
profits, while using tax dollars to make up the difference.
I say it is yet another great evil when a full time worker is
deemed to make so little in income that he should be excused
from paying taxes. If we can see such a worker cannot afford to
pay taxes because he and his family are already on the brink of
poverty, we should see that he ought to be paid more. Workers
should be paid enough that they can afford to pay taxes. Anyone
who is working should be seen as having dignity and also
expected to contribute to the general welfare by paying taxes.
There is little liberty in government handouts when bureaucrats
are dictating where you can live, what you are allowed to buy,
etc.
So is the solution simply raising the minimum wage?
Republicans have a point when they maintain it doesn't do much
since employers simply raise the prices of the goods and
services they sell. For example, if you are selling something
for $100 and the cost of labor is $30 and your other expenses
are $50, raising the minimum wage by 10% would make your new
labor $33 and it would also raise your other expenses since the
cost of labor also factors into those so that might increase by
10% as well making other expenses $55. You had been making a
profit of $20 before, so you want to make the same profit after;
and since you anticipate the price of other things will go up,
you'd like to make at least $22 for each sale. Thus you would
be tempted to raise the price by 10% to $110.
#Post#: 13633--------------------------------------------------
Re: Of Money and Power
By: HOLLAND Date: January 1, 2017, 12:03 am
---------------------------------------------------------
^^^Kerry, perhaps Marx would say that the employer, the
capitalist, has to increase the surplus value derived through
the production of the commodity in question. That is to say,
the employer would need to increase the productivity of the
workers but at the same time pay at a rate that does not
correspond to the actual value of the labor put into the
commodity in question. This leads to the surplus value that
Marx had spoken about. This value is not to be, necessarily,
identified with the profit of enterprise, the profit that a
capitalist or employer will discover on his or her balance
sheet. Surplus value exists in the labor power and in the
results of that labor, the commodities in question. These
values are not necessarily quantifiable in the monetary form,
such as labor power, since renumeration of that labor power may
not actually conform to what the laborers produce; nor are they,
also, quantifiable in the monetary form, as in commodities,
since their actual value is not yet realized until the point of
actual sale, in the process of exchange. Surplus value is not
necessarily realized as a monetary value, but just because it is
not reducible as such doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It
does so in the potentialities of value that are derived in the
process of capitalist production itself. Someone is not paid to
the value that is created, that is to say the laborer is not
paid to the value he or she creates.
Marx stated that surplus value had to diminish over time since
the cost of labor power must increase. The needs of an
increasingly sophisticated workforce must lead to the social
costs of maintaining that workforce, the process of replacing it
by what we call automation but what Marx referred to as
machinery. Workers are replaced by machines and the growth of
what is called the unemployed reserve army of the proletariat.
There are more and more workers that the jobs that are available
for them.
As we have discussed before (on another website), Marx did not
advocate slavery but rather its abolition. Marx advocated the
replacement of the capitalist system with worker control and the
abolition of the private ownership of capital production.
Democratic Socialists have always argued for the need for
Worker-Management alliances to create less destructive economic
actions within society. As sophistication and automation
increases, the workforce is always changing, always evolving,
and what could be a large unemployed reserve army of the
proletariat may become a small one later on.
Is not the possible advocacy of slavery just another form of
luddism? It's a curious thing, I must admit.
#Post#: 13634--------------------------------------------------
Re: Of Money and Power
By: Kerry Date: January 1, 2017, 1:17 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Productivity must be considered. Yes. I heard on the radio
that a local business -- something to do with wood -- was buying
machinery that would double the products for sale. They were
not hiring or firing anyone. But how does that work out?
[hr]
Suppose you own a small business and have four competitors
nearby. Each of you employ ten workers and charge the same
amount for your products. Then you discover if you buy
machinery, you can double your output of goods without
increasing or decreasing your labor cost. Over time, if you
borrow the money for the improvement, the annual cost of buying
and maintaining the machinery would be equal to the cost of
five workers.
If your income used to be $100, doubling it would make it $200;
but you want to increase your share of the market by charging
less for your goods and you think you can do that by reducing
the prices by 10% and planning for an income of $180.
If your labor cost used to be $30, it would remain unchanged and
the cost of the machinery would $15. Thus your new cost would
be $45. If your other expenses to produce $100 were $50, the
new total would be less than double that or $100. They would be
less because of economy of scale with some expenses being fairly
fixed no matter how big or small your operation is. So suppose
your new total for other expenses is $95.
Your profit before the improvement would have been: $100 - $30
- $50 = $20.
Your profit after the improvement would be: $180 - $45 - $95 =
$40.
You have doubled your own income and reduced the prices you
charge.
Some economists would argue you've done a favor for society by
reducing the cost of goods; but surely that's not the end of the
story. What you gain in business will be a loss for your
competitors. At first, assuming sales are steady, since
you've doubled your sales, each of your four competitors would
have seen a decline of 25% in theirs. Some of them might see
what you have done and go borrow money to improve their
businesses; but it is quite clear that all five businesses
cannot survive. Thus somewhere we will see workers losing their
jobs.
We also sometimes see an entrepreneur entering a business by
borrowing money and setting up a large and efficient factory and
then drastically underpricing the competition with the intention
of driving them into bankruptcy. He does not see the improved
efficiency as a way of making more money at first. His
intention is to postpone making money until he corners the
market.
Thus a new business could enter the same scenario with five
small family-style businesses; and using lots of machinery
produce goods at a much lower cost than they can. He could
drive four of them out of business completely, and maybe all
five. He could also pay his workers more than they did. Then
later, after they are driven into bankruptcy, he can raise his
prices and make the big profits he planned on all along. The
upshot is, of course, that this new type of business has
increased unemployment. Yes, productivity is up and perhaps
even wages went up slightly; but we also have more unemployed
people who can't buy the goods.
Thus even if the prices declined slightly, we see only the
capitalists, bankers and the workers who didn't lose their jobs
can afford to buy things.
If we carry mechanization to its extreme by imagining everything
could be done by robots, we see that the working class itself
would cease to exist. Productivity would be high but who
could buy anything? Capitalists and bankers?
That extreme is not apt to be reached; but it is a question of
how close we will come. We will require fewer labor hours as
time goes by. Science fiction writers in the past predicted
wildly idyllic societies; but we see society has taken a
different direction. The benefits of improved productivity have
not been spread across society equally.
#Post#: 13635--------------------------------------------------
Re: Of Money and Power
By: Kerry Date: January 1, 2017, 3:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=HOLLAND link=topic=1149.msg13633#msg13633
date=1483250631]
As we have discussed before (on another website), Marx did not
advocate slavery but rather its abolition. Marx advocated the
replacement of the capitalist system with worker control and the
abolition of the private ownership of capital production.
Democratic Socialists have always argued for the need for
Worker-Management alliances to create less destructive economic
actions within society. As sophistication and automation
increases, the workforce is always changing, always evolving,
and what could be a large unemployed reserve army of the
proletariat may become a small one later on.[/quote]I started
reading Das Kapital but couldn't get all the way through. The
various types of socialism seem to me to contain some naive
concepts. There is too much idealism in socialism and not
enough realism. Sooner or later even after workers gain some
power, some group grabs the power and hangs onto it. The
concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat being temporary
strikes me as naive. We see in countries that tried it that a
new type of ruling elite emerged, a hybrid of bureaucrat and
capitalist.
The average person is not that interested in details. He is
easily manipulated. You can see that by looking at our
elections where ill-informed and mis-informed people vote. As
long as a voter believes a candidate will benefit him, he will
vote for that candidate no matter if it injures the rest of
society or not.
[quote]Is not the possible advocacy of slavery just another form
of luddism? It's a curious thing, I must admit.[/quote]
I think we have situations today that are worse than slavery.
Nominally everyone is free. Citizens can vote. They are free
to speak, free to move, free to do many things; but freedom
without money is not real freedom.
Consider the plight of blacks living in our inner cities.
Children are being shot. People are living in abject poverty
in some places. Yet we say they are free. At least, under
slavery the children had enough to eat, had a place to live, and
didn't have to worry about being killed almost at random. Are
we any better off then? In one way, yes. In another way, no.
Don't forget that some slaves worked only during the growing
season; and while that was hard work, they had a lot of time
off too. And their masters paid for everything. I certainly
cannot advocate returning to slavery of the past; but I also
think we need to see the new type of slavery we have. When it
was only blacks, whites seem able to overlook it. Now that more
whites are unemployed, we see a new type of unrest, a kind that
got Donald Trump elected. That too will change as whites
become less dominant in American society; but part of the
problem of "white anger" we see now is the result of
unemployment and part of it is also of feeling the decline of
whites wielding most of the power. If the problem is not
fixed, it will only become worse.
If we are honest, I think we must admit that the black
politicians elected in areas with black voters have failed to
deliver. By that, I mean mostly urban areas. White politicians
elected in predominantly white areas have also failed to
deliver. Here we have places like Alabama and other areas in
the South where poverty is high but the voters keep re-electing
the white politicians who rail against government spending while
bringing home the bacon.
The rise of the use of farm machinery has largely been weathered
in the US; but it is now devastating other countries where
farmers are struggling to compete using traditional farming
methods augmented with fertilizers, hybridized seeds, and
loans. The trend seems fairly clear; but no one seems to have a
plan that will provide jobs for the people driven out of
farming.
#Post#: 13639--------------------------------------------------
Re: Of Money and Power
By: HOLLAND Date: January 1, 2017, 12:28 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Kerry link=topic=1149.msg13634#msg13634
date=1483255044]
Productivity must be considered. Yes. I heard on the radio
that a local business -- something to do with wood -- was buying
machinery that would double the products for sale. They were
not hiring or firing anyone. But how does that work out?
[hr]
Suppose you own a small business and have four competitors
nearby. Each of you employ ten workers and charge the same
amount for your products. Then you discover if you buy
machinery, you can double your output of goods without
increasing or decreasing your labor cost. Over time, if you
borrow the money for the improvement, the annual cost of buying
and maintaining the machinery would be equal to the cost of
five workers.
If your income used to be $100, doubling it would make it $200;
but you want to increase your share of the market by charging
less for your goods and you think you can do that by reducing
the prices by 10% and planning for an income of $180.
If your labor cost used to be $30, it would remain unchanged and
the cost of the machinery would $15. Thus your new cost would
be $45. If your other expenses to produce $100 were $50, the
new total would be less than double that or $100. They would be
less because of economy of scale with some expenses being fairly
fixed no matter how big or small your operation is. So suppose
your new total for other expenses is $95.
Your profit before the improvement would have been: $100 - $30
- $50 = $20.
Your profit after the improvement would be: $180 - $45 - $95 =
$40.
You have doubled your own income and reduced the prices you
charge.
Some economists would argue you've done a favor for society by
reducing the cost of goods; but surely that's not the end of the
story. What you gain in business will be a loss for your
competitors. At first, assuming sales are steady, since
you've doubled your sales, each of your four competitors would
have seen a decline of 25% in theirs. Some of them might see
what you have done and go borrow money to improve their
businesses; but it is quite clear that all five businesses
cannot survive. Thus somewhere we will see workers losing their
jobs.
We also sometimes see an entrepreneur entering a business by
borrowing money and setting up a large and efficient factory and
then drastically underpricing the competition with the intention
of driving them into bankruptcy. He does not see the improved
efficiency as a way of making more money at first. His
intention is to postpone making money until he corners the
market.
Thus a new business could enter the same scenario with five
small family-style businesses; and using lots of machinery
produce goods at a much lower cost than they can. He could
drive four of them out of business completely, and maybe all
five. He could also pay his workers more than they did. Then
later, after they are driven into bankruptcy, he can raise his
prices and make the big profits he planned on all along. The
upshot is, of course, that this new type of business has
increased unemployment. Yes, productivity is up and perhaps
even wages went up slightly; but we also have more unemployed
people who can't buy the goods.
Thus even if the prices declined slightly, we see only the
capitalists, bankers and the workers who didn't lose their jobs
can afford to buy things.
If we carry mechanization to its extreme by imagining everything
could be done by robots, we see that the working class itself
would cease to exist. Productivity would be high but who
could buy anything? Capitalists and bankers? [/quote]
I will think through this argument carefully, Kerry, and then
respond later. Marx predicts the possible ending of the market
economy depending on what we now call technological advancement.
That is why he thought it logical that it would end with the
victory of the proletariat. If the the great masses of the
people have nothing to lose, they would in the end bring an end
to it if they could not survive and prosper within it.
I suppose a return to a feudal/manorial economy could occur with
a small elite and soldiers terrifying and exploiting a remnant
of the masses of people, but somehow I doubt in the end it would
succeed. Society needs social cooperation to exist and a dark
age with modern weapons, I don't think would last long.
[quote]That extreme is not apt to be reached; but it is a
question of how close we will come. We will require fewer labor
hours as time goes by. Science fiction writers in the past
predicted wildly idyllic societies; but we see society has taken
a different direction. The benefits of improved productivity
have not been spread across society equally.
[/quote]
I will always remember George Jetson complaining to his boss in
the cartoon, "Boss, these two days of week work are killing me."
I was under the impression that George Jetson was more of a one
day a week kind of a worker.
I suppose that we could end up going to four day and then three
day work weeks. In Star Trek: The Second Generation, Captain
Picard told one of the visitors from the 21st Century that they
didn't have money, and did not have a commodity exchange based
economy. They worked the usual days of the week. Supposedly,
according to Picard, they sought fulfillment in ways other than
by an accumulation of wealth. I suspect that this would have to
be the case given that capital venture and investment would have
to become society's ventures and not private because the costs
would be so extreme. Given that everyone would have a personal
stake in ventures in space, it would need what we would call a
nationalized economy to keep things going. I suspect that there
would be less individuality that what could be seen nowadays,
but there would still be rebels such as the young James Tiberius
Kirk in the first of the new Star Trek movies. There would be
the ever-present danger of tyranny because of technology, but
there would be the need for social survival that would always be
dangerous to the possible tyrants.
I suspect that we shall lose the possibility of human privacy.
That does exist in my own science fiction world involving the
Star People. This is going to affect human society as well.
This change in affairs will reach into economics in the future,
especially, if wars and terrorism persist. How money is spent
and what is bought and from whom may have a telling effect in
the continued development of human society.
#Post#: 13640--------------------------------------------------
Re: Of Money and Power
By: HOLLAND Date: January 1, 2017, 12:55 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=Kerry link=topic=1149.msg13635#msg13635
date=1483263504]
I started reading Das Kapital but couldn't get all the way
through. The various types of socialism seem to me to contain
some naive concepts. There is too much idealism in socialism
and not enough realism. Sooner or later even after workers
gain some power, some group grabs the power and hangs onto it.
The concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat being
temporary strikes me as naive. We see in countries that tried
it that a new type of ruling elite emerged, a hybrid of
bureaucrat and capitalist. [/quote]
Trotsky, I think was the first to observe that in a supposed
socialist state, the bureauracy of that state can set itself up
as a de facto ruling class and would do so with the Lenin's idea
of a vanguard party that rules the people in the name of the
people but does not honestly integrate democracy into the
supposed socialist state. The nomenklatura, or ruling elite
of the old Soviet Union, was an illustration of this. The new
Soviet nomenklatura, headed by Stalin, was very determined to
kill Trotsky, and eventually did so, because Trotsky was such a
danger to them.
Marx was aware that the proletariat could come to power in
democratic elections in the bourgeois countries, such as in his
Amsterdam speech. It was in Friedrich Engels, that we learn
that the dictatorship of the proletariat is found in the middle
class of a democratic state, the middle class absorbing the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This is the type of hybrid
society that I think must emerge. I think we're seeing that
process today.
[quote]The average person is not that interested in details. He
is easily manipulated. You can see that by looking at our
elections where ill-informed and mis-informed people vote. As
long as a voter believes a candidate will benefit him, he will
vote for that candidate no matter if it injures the rest of
society or not.
I think we have situations today that are worse than slavery.
Nominally everyone is free. Citizens can vote. They are free
to speak, free to move, free to do many things; but freedom
without money is not real freedom.[/quote]
Agreed. Mis-informed and ill-informed people can and must exist
in society, but they eventually get tired of the lack of
information and lies, especially if it hits their pocketbook.
At that point, deeds not words matter. I wonder about present
politics. How long words shall matter without deeds to back
them up. The well of lies shall dry up eventually.
[quote]Consider the plight of blacks living in our inner cities.
Children are being shot. People are living in abject poverty
in some places. Yet we say they are free. At least, under
slavery the children had enough to eat, had a place to live, and
didn't have to worry about being killed almost at random. Are
we any better off then? In one way, yes. In another way, no.
Don't forget that some slaves worked only during the growing
season; and while that was hard work, they had a lot of time
off too. And their masters paid for everything. I certainly
cannot advocate returning to slavery of the past; but I also
think we need to see the new type of slavery we have. When it
was only blacks, whites seem able to overlook it. Now that more
whites are unemployed, we see a new type of unrest, a kind that
got Donald Trump elected. That too will change as whites
become less dominant in American society; but part of the
problem of "white anger" we see now is the result of
unemployment and part of it is also of feeling the decline of
whites wielding most of the power. If the problem is not
fixed, it will only become worse.
If we are honest, I think we must admit that the black
politicians elected in areas with black voters have failed to
deliver. By that, I mean mostly urban areas. White politicians
elected in predominantly white areas have also failed to
deliver. Here we have places like Alabama and other areas in
the South where poverty is high but the voters keep re-electing
the white politicians who rail against government spending while
bringing home the bacon.
The rise of the use of farm machinery has largely been weathered
in the US; but it is now devastating other countries where
farmers are struggling to compete using traditional farming
methods augmented with fertilizers, hybridized seeds, and
loans. The trend seems fairly clear; but no one seems to have a
plan that will provide jobs for the people driven out of
farming.
[/quote]
Marx, of course, argued that the concentration of capital must
lead to the ending of economics as we know it given the decline
in the market. The ruination of all classes is risked if this
is not realized. But the solution is nationalization and a
planned economy that involves the major elements of the economy
in question. There would still be the working of private
capital, but its share would be smaller that what it is now.
What that society would look like would be anyone's guess.
Perhaps it will be like Sweden's economy. The Swedes seem very
conscious of these issues and they may be developing answers in
respect to them. We shall see.
We need to have people today understand that we do not now have
a free market economy. We have monopoly capitalism, a form of
state capitalism that is integrating into a world capitalist
system. This system ruled by a small elite has no national
interests in view. We cannot return to a free market capitalism
in the name of human liberty. We have to defend liberty in
other ways . . .
#Post#: 13648--------------------------------------------------
Re: Of Money and Power
By: Kerry Date: January 3, 2017, 9:01 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote]This system ruled by a small elite has no national
interests in view. [/quote]
I am mulling over the relationship between nationalism and
money. On the face of it, I'd mostly agree with your statement;
but this elite does have to make concessions to politicians and
nationalism at times. I've also been thinking about how the
Chinese are building up their military. To protect Chinese
interests abroad? Is that it?
#Post#: 13654--------------------------------------------------
Re: Of Money and Power
By: Kerry Date: January 5, 2017, 6:58 am
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=HOLLAND link=topic=1149.msg13640#msg13640
date=1483296922]
Trotsky, I think was the first to observe that in a supposed
socialist state, the bureauracy of that state can set itself up
as a de facto ruling class and would do so with the Lenin's idea
of a vanguard party that rules the people in the name of the
people but does not honestly integrate democracy into the
supposed socialist state. The nomenklatura, or ruling elite
of the old Soviet Union, was an illustration of this. The new
Soviet nomenklatura, headed by Stalin, was very determined to
kill Trotsky, and eventually did so, because Trotsky was such a
danger to them.[/quote]It may be one of man's perpetual problems
-- it seems easier to topple a government preaching a message
that often sounds good than to govern in a way that implements
the former message with its promises.
Revolutionary figures often make dismal leaders. Look at the
sad record of the ANC in South Africa. Scandal after scandal
plagued the new government almost from the day they gained
power.
[quote]Marx was aware that the proletariat could come to power
in democratic elections in the bourgeois countries, such as in
his Amsterdam speech. It was in Friedrich Engels, that we learn
that the dictatorship of the proletariat is found in the middle
class of a democratic state, the middle class absorbing the
proletariat and the bourgeoisie. This is the type of hybrid
society that I think must emerge. I think we're seeing that
process today.[/quote]I don't see why it would be inevitable.
In the recent elections, you may have noticed Democrat
candidates talking a lot about the middle class but not so much
about the poor. I also see a pattern of the truly poor
becoming poorer and more desperate -- while the middle class
seems preoccupied with improving its own lot and not caring
about the poor.
What I would call the middle class today in America consists of
government bureaucrats, college educated workers at middle and
large companies, and successful small business owners. The
proletariat is unsympathetically told they need to get more
education if they want to get ahead as if college is a real
benefit for everyone or everyone is qualified for college.
This middle class is, for the most part, college educated. "To
get a good job, you must go to college," children are told.
Education has become a racket of sorts, seen as a necessity when
in fact often the jobs people are hired for may not really
require college. It is deemed so essential that colleges have
realized they can keep raising tuition and other fees. This
rise in the cost of a college education is made easier also by
government subsidies through grants and loans. On this point
the Republicans are mostly right: The more money the government
throws at something, the more it's going to cost; and the Pell
grants and the loans have encouraged colleges to raise the
price of education.
Today the cost of college is so high, students often leave
college with a huge debt burden. Those who do not graduate may
not have four years worth of college to pay for; but they also
lack that degree that employers want to see, and this leaves
them at a huge disadvantage since they usually have to take
lower paying jobs than they had planned on and still have this
debt hanging over their heads. Some graduate and cannot find
jobs in the areas they majored in and take jobs that pay less.
What happened? How did we get to this position? I think it
probably started decades ago with how the government hired
people. They did not care what your degree was in. All they
cared about was if you had one. Business seems to have followed
their lead.
Decades ago, companies often paid for their employees to take
college courses if they wanted to move up the ladder. They
would hire you without a decree; but if you wanted a position
that required a certain skill, the company would pay for you to
get it. This practice seems to have gone out of fashion. The
person is responsible for paying for his own education or
obtaining the money from the government through grants or loans.
The company benefits from that education but is not paying for
it. Either the person himself is or the government is.
Today governments set up "training centers," where they say
train people giving them new skills so they can get better jobs.
Why would a company pay to train anyone if they needed trained
workers if the government will do it for them?
The disconnect with the diploma and reality can be seen in how
graduates from leading business schools can land jobs fresh out
of college with huge salaries. The competition is so fierce to
hire them that companies are willing to pay exorbitant salaries
and also include excessive golden parachute clauses in case
their new bright boy fails.
I would never hire someone like that. I believe in promoting
from within. I would not be willing to pay someone a huge
salary just because he had good grades at a prominent business
school. I believe in using practical results and job
performance as the standard for promotion.
[quote]Agreed. Mis-informed and ill-informed people can and
must exist in society, but they eventually get tired of the lack
of information and lies, especially if it hits their pocketbook.
At that point, deeds not words matter. I wonder about present
politics. How long words shall matter without deeds to back
them up. The well of lies shall dry up eventually. [/quote]
There is the phenomenon of becoming more stubborn and refusing
to admit you were wrong; and the more ridiculous the lies were
that you swallowed, the less likely it is you will admit you
were wrong. This is true in religion as well as politics. If
you can get someone to believe preposterous things in a cult,
they know they'd feel weird coming out and admitting how silly
they were to begin with, so they tend to stay in.
If you want to get someone out of a crazy religion or political
system, you need to make it easier for him to exit without
feeling foolish. The more Democrats mock Trump, the harder it
will be for his supporters to change their minds.
#Post#: 13678--------------------------------------------------
Re: Of Money and Power
By: Kerry Date: January 12, 2017, 6:26 am
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[quote author=HOLLAND link=topic=1149.msg13639#msg13639
date=1483295306]
I will think through this argument carefully, Kerry, and then
respond later. Marx predicts the possible ending of the market
economy depending on what we now call technological advancement.
That is why he thought it logical that it would end with the
victory of the proletariat. If the the great masses of the
people have nothing to lose, they would in the end bring an end
to it if they could not survive and prosper within it.[/quote]
While I tend to look through the same lens as many Marxists
emphasizing the importance of money, I also find myself at odds
with them when their analysis of human events does not consider
other factors. If the topic is the psychology of the masses,
we find many politicians adept at creating diversions which hide
their abject failure or worse their perfidious betrayal of the
working class.
The most popular ruse is to create a bogeyman and then to
promise to defeat it. If there is already tension present in an
area, you pick the side of the majority, vilify someone else and
then proceed to take action, to threaten to take action, or to
promise to defend the majority from the other party. The
Iranian government has done this superbly in its vilification of
Israel, the British and the Americans. It also vilifies gays;
and its persecution of the Zoroastrians is unprecedented in
Iranian history. All this masks economic disaster in a country
rich in oil but still staggering along.
We see too how popular it has been to vilify gays in many
African countries. If you look at which countries resort to it,
I think you will find them have other far more serious problems
which are not being addressed. It seems that both Muslims and
Christians were in favor of strong laws against homosexual
activity in Sudan before it split into two countries. The death
penalty is possible. But this kind of fervor was largely a
diversion from other conflicts, namely between Muslims and
Christians, and that conflict was largely economic. Three
quarters of the oil production was in Christian dominated areas
with the remaining one quarter in Muslim. The appeals to
homophobia before the split, by my analysis, was to gain power
by vilifying a minority; and fearing a religious war, both
Muslim and Christian leaders found appealing to homophobia a
safer path.
That mask did not work long; and South Sudan split with Sudan.
Naive optimists might have thought South Sudan Christians would
be delighted with their great wealth; but on the contrary, we
found neither Muslims nor homosexuals were the real enemy. New
villains were found; and the country fell into tribalism.
Christians in South Sudan were worse off in an independent
country than they had been as a minority before.
I would say almost every bit of it was based on greed.
Corruption was rampant; and while a few people got rich, the
money from the oil wasn't doing anything for the people.
Poverty was the real issue, poverty in a country so rich in oil.
The other conflicts were largely manufactured by unscrupulous
political and religious leaders.
I think an analysis of the current state of Russia also reveals
how its leaders today are hanging onto power by creating
bogeymen with Putin taking on the role of hero and defender.
When we see such things, it tells us not all is well
economically and that leaders are creating such diversions in
order to prevent dissatisfaction from erupting into
demonstrations and revolution. Thus there is more to it than
the economic factor alone; we see there is a nexus of economics,
politics, and religion that determines whether a people will
feel so desperate they choose to rebel, saying they have nothing
left to lose. Indeed there is even a type of manipulation that
can take such desperate people and make them feel they are doing
something worthwhile by killing themselves; and we have
suicide martyr types.
[quote]I suppose a return to a feudal/manorial economy could
occur with a small elite and soldiers terrifying and exploiting
a remnant of the masses of people, but somehow I doubt in the
end it would succeed. Society needs social cooperation to exist
and a dark age with modern weapons, I don't think would last
long.[/quote]Fascism has this advantage: Trains run on time.
You can look at that as a harmonious result with everyone doing
his job to produce it; or you can look at it as a sacrifice of
independence and freedom. The idea of having the trains and
everything else run right can be enticing; fascism can be an
appealing idea, especially in places that tend towards chaos
anyway.
Do not forget also that the species homo sapiens is a pack
animal. Usually it's the male dogs who compete to be the top
dog in a pack. Dogs don't fight to the death since that would
be poor genetics; but the losing dog lies down and offers his
throat to the winner, saying, "Kill me if you want." This sign
of submission is enough to settle matters. The alpha dog is
then expected to operate on behalf of the whole pack. His
orders are interpreted that way. If he shows signs of weakness
or leading the pack into trouble, he may find himself challenged
again.
Humans are set up the same way: There is the urge to be
dominant, and then the urge be submissive when you lose. It
seems counterintuitive to have two such urges co-exist; but it's
clear that man has both. We see this on bold display in
American elections where during the primaries, the candidates
fight each other; but when one wins, the others are supposed to
rally behind the winner. Thus we saw Hillary Clinton
submitting to Barack Obama and becoming part of his cabinet.
We did not see it with all the Republicans this time, with Ted
Cruz being the most notable exception.
Like it or not, the urge to be submissive is part of our makeup.
A return to feudalism is possible; indeed we seem to be on
track to returning to it.
[quote]I will always remember George Jetson complaining to his
boss in the cartoon, "Boss, these two days of week work are
killing me." I was under the impression that George Jetson was
more of a one day a week kind of a worker.
I suppose that we could end up going to four day and then three
day work weeks. In Star Trek: The Second Generation, Captain
Picard told one of the visitors from the 21st Century that they
didn't have money, and did not have a commodity exchange based
economy. They worked the usual days of the week. Supposedly,
according to Picard, they sought fulfillment in ways other than
by an accumulation of wealth. I suspect that this would have to
be the case given that capital venture and investment would have
to become society's ventures and not private because the costs
would be so extreme. Given that everyone would have a personal
stake in ventures in space, it would need what we would call a
nationalized economy to keep things going. I suspect that there
would be less individuality that what could be seen nowadays,
but there would still be rebels such as the young James Tiberius
Kirk in the first of the new Star Trek movies. There would be
the ever-present danger of tyranny because of technology, but
there would be the need for social survival that would always be
dangerous to the possible tyrants.[/quote]
My own prediction would be that the three or four day work week
is in the future by centuries. Increased life span is one
reason. As we live longer, more money will be needed to fund
retirement and the cost of health care. It seems clear to me
that eventually when machines are doing most of the work, the
money they are helping companies make must be returned to people
by helping fund retirement and health care. As unemployment
rises, some of that money will also have to be used to support
those people. So I see a shorter work week as off in the future.
I can see some reduction in it but nothing major. Perhaps more
days off with pay for vacations, parental leave?
I can also foresee what some might call "make work" jobs once we
have machines doing so much of the other work. We have more and
more people in retirement homes today. I can see the
government paying people to go visit them, performing music and
so on. If you're unemployed, the government would guarantee
you a job. Perhaps it would be to shovel snow for elderly
people still living at home or doing other chores. I can also
predict more money would flow to the arts -- encouraging artists
of all kinds.
[quote]I suspect that we shall lose the possibility of human
privacy. That does exist in my own science fiction world
involving the Star People. This is going to affect human
society as well. This change in affairs will reach into
economics in the future, especially, if wars and terrorism
persist. How money is spent and what is bought and from whom
may have a telling effect in the continued development of human
society.[/quote]The move is already on to move away from
physical money. This seems to be because governments want to
know who is spending money where.
#Post#: 13704--------------------------------------------------
Re: Of Money and Power
By: Kerry Date: January 18, 2017, 6:28 am
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The first fact to be noticed when seeing how money and
nationalism interact is that the capitalist's first priority is
to himself by increasing his own wealth. If that means doing
business with the enemies of his own country, he'll do it . . .
if he can get away with it or thinks he can.
In the past, things were slightly different under the obvious
colonial system in which one country invaded another to exploit
its resources and population. The moneyed class of the
invading country made a profit, and the political leaders
extended their sphere of influence; thus the two classes were
natural allies. While this was the predominant way of doing
things, we also observe how even a tiny country like Venice
could extend its sphere of influence, not by using military
force, but through banking. Banks, generally speaking, will
lend to anyone whom they consider a good risk if a deal looks
profitable enough.
The original form was inconvenient in that you needed to raise
armies and pay them to make the conquests; and you often
continued to need them to keep down rebellions and to ward off
other colonial powers who might seek to deprive you of them. As
the nations of Europe became more responsive to the wants and
needs of the people, in other words became more democratic,
this style of colonial rule also became less tenable since the
general population saw the moneyed class deriving the greatest
benefits. It is true, of course, that the working class also
saw benefits like new types of goods and at times lower prices;
but it is also true that the rich were doing it to increase
their own wealth. Justifying wars to the working class is hard
to do when they see the wealthy deriving most of the benefits.
World War I was the beginning of the end for this type of
colonialism. The Gilded Age of the 1890s and early Twentieth
Century came to a close. We can observe with some wonderment
that the current situation may be approaching that of the Gilded
Age over a century ago and then also wonder if some equally
disastrous war must result to end the current extravagances of
the super-rich. Can the world continue in its current state
when eight individuals own as much wealth as the poorer one-half
of the world's population? If so, how long?
The Europeans had spread their conquests across the world; and
by the late Nineteenth Century, there were few places left for
the Europeans to conquer. This created an impasse about how
to increase growth. While unconquered lands remained, the
colonial powers could see the possibility of increasing their
wealth and power by invasion of people ill equipped to fight
back. The military might of the Europeans was, generally
speaking, overwhelming when we consider the weapons of the
people they conquered. Such colonial wars were often bitter,
often protracted; but they appear almost trivial to what was
about to happen when Europeans turned their weapons on each
other. Surely it was predictable that such conflicts would be
disastrous but almost equally predictable was the idea that the
Europeans would fight each other when there were no more lands
available for conquest. If you wanted to increase your own
wealth and power, now you would have to get it by depriving
another European colonial power of some of its colonies.
Then came World War II which was in large part the result of the
harsh peace treaty imposed by the winners on Germany. The
harshness was keenly felt and resented and was a major factor in
making the German people amenable to the ideas of the Nazi
Party.
Today we see a different type of colonialism, one which depends
on banks and corporations more than on armies and navies. We
often see a nation setting up a national bank with the
expressed purpose of its being for the good of the nation; but
we also see other types of banks which operate internationally
without regard to the good of their home countries. Thus there
may be tension at times between banks and national governments.
If a bank goes too far at home or abroad, its home country may
take action against it; and if it goes too far abroad, the
nation it is injuring may take action. Such actions are usually
more like slaps on the wrist than real punishment however.
Corporations also operate internationally. Here we see some of
the worst mischief since a corporation is attracted to nations
with low wages, low safety requirements, low environmental
regulations, etc. A company is usually free to shutter its
facilities in one country, throwing many people out of work, to
move to another country where wages are lower. It can then
export its products back into the country of origin without much
penalty, thereby increasing its profits. Indeed, it can
lower its prices and still increase its profits.
This is often portrayed as a win-win situation. It is said that
the workers in the poorer country are glad to have work and that
people in the richer country are happy since the prices of goods
declines. This is a shallow analysis.
What happens is if one automotive company moves, it puts
pressure on the others to move also. If a company can produce
good cars at a lower price in a foreign country, it can expect
to increase its share of the market. Companies need to stay
competitive, so the competing companies know they'd lose market
share if they don't find a way of decreasing their costs while
also decreasing prices. In any situation we could call a
"free trade" agreement, if companies are allowed to move
production back and forth at will without tariffs or taxes, we
see that production will flow to the country with the lower
wage. This might not be too bad if it was a one time
occurrence; but there is trap for the poorer countries. If they
raise their minimum wages, the companies are apt to move again,
thus creating more unemployment. The manufacturing of garments
has moved factories frequently enough; and any nation which has
foreign countries operating garment factories knows it needs to
approach increases in wages carefully. Thus this ease of
movement acts to keep wages low in poorer countries.
The poorer countries are also frequently prone to bribery and
other forms of corruption. Corrupt political leaders are not
motivated by wanting to do good for their people; they're out to
line their own pockets. This is another argument against
making movement of factories so easy.
So is there any solution? I think there may be. If two nations
wish to form a "free trade" zone, it should be with the
agreement that wages must rise over time in the poorer country.
If they do not rise, the richer country will impose a tariff so
that companies would find it cheaper to pay the higher wages
than the tariff.
Care should also be taken with regard to agriculture and the
other necessities of life. Each nation should be as independent
as possible when it comes the necessities so that other nations
cannot twist arms unduly.
Another factor regarding agriculture is that richer countries
are usually more advanced in how they grow things. If you
remove all barriers to trade all at once, the richer country
will export cheap food to the poorer one, effectively crippling
its ability to feed itself and throwing its agriculture business
into bankruptcy. Thus while such trade agreements can create
one type of jobs in the poorer countries, they can create
unemployment in agriculture.
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