Re: Like the Auto Industry? You'll love card check.

On Wed, 19 Nov 2008 07:08:30 -0600, John Galt wrote:

Mike wrote:
On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:22:47 -0600, John Galt wrote:

[stuff from previous posts deleted as thread was getting too long]

I read that section. That's why I said "nothing new here". Yet
another anti-capitalistic screed
no it's anti-exploitation, not a distinction to be missed except
perhaps by those that equate the two.
I really don't know what to make of that, since the very essence of
capitalism can be referred to as "exploitation", depending on how you
define the term. How can you *not* equate the two?


from dictionary.com i was referring to these particular definitions of
the word "exploit":

to use selfishly for one's own ends: employers who exploit their
workers

To make use of selfishly or unethically: a country that exploited
peasant labor.

work excessively hard; "he is exploiting the students"

In no sense whatever does a man who accumulates a fortune by legitimate
industry exploit his employ['e]s or make his capital "out of" anybody
else. --W. G. Sumner.

In the business sense, I agree with Sumner. In the human sense, it's not
so clear. In a company of three, all three might be working equally
hard; however, the owner becomes enriched while the others receive only
wage. Logically, that's exploitation. Practically, it is not.



The motivation to create any business concern is the enrichment of the
business owner. The business owner enriches himself or herself by
absorbing as much of the productive output of the employee into the
business, compensating the employee as little as possible.

i guess it depends on whether you're the exploiter or the exploited.

That is, in its essence, an exploitative model. It survives for no
other reason that it's the only model consistently shown to deliver
wealth to the broader society.


if the "broader society" is the working class which is being exploited
for the benefit of the exploiters (business owners) that doesn't really
make any sense because you can't simultaneously be the recipient of the
benefits as well as the one from which the benefit is being extracted.

The broader society is everyone. Since part of the lucre from the
business concern is distributed to said broader society in social
programs designed to support a civil society, then everyone benefits
from the model.


agreed that the corporate exploiters provide the minimal amount of
benefits that prevent them from being eradicated as completely worthless
but that's not the aspect of exploitation that i'm referring to. it's
the $billions upon $billions upon $billions that wind up in the hands of
the exploiters that i'm talking about. the corporate robber barons
didn't become that rich by doing the general public any favors, they got
it by manipulating the system and in influencing the gov't to eliminate
or fail to enforce regulations that prevent abuse.


that rewrites economic reality by pretending that massive
improvements in standards of living for billions of people have
*not* accompanied globalization. Compare standards of living in
India (that's a billion people, right there) 10 years ago and
today, and try to explain how only a few "owners" have benefitted
from globalization. Then, do the same exercise in China, Malaysia,
Indonesia, Vietnam........(...).
call me selfish, but if my standard of living has to drop so it can
rise in other countries then i'm not for it, but then i don't
believe in the whole globalized competition for who can work the
most hours for the least pay either.
It's not a zero sum game. The "at-risk" workers from globalization
are blue-collar workers in developed nations who have been protected
from wage competition since WW2 either by unions, or by geographical
barriers, or both. And, since the "at-risk" workers can mitigate
their risk by retraining and/or further education, that risk is not
all that great.

well maybe a college degree might be of some value to those that
don't already have it but it's not like they roll out the red carpet
for education. in the salaried job class, corporations want to own
you 7x24 for as little as they can possibly pay you. they start you
off working 8-5 and before you know it you're working evenings,
weekends & missing vacation time and since you're salary, pay is the
same and come raise time, it's oops, we can't give you one because
the global competition has really cut into our margins...
As to point one, we are indeed moving into a period where vocational
training is as valuable in some scenarios as formal education.
However, that's a good thing -- it makes it easier for people wishing
to develop themselves. A lot of this is driven by the aging
population, creating good paying jobs in the allied health fields,
which can't be outsourced and require a variable amount of community
college education, for the most part.

As for the rest, sure, that's called "business." That's why it's
important to love what you do. The Chinese are working 60 hour weeks
on the cheap, it's up to the business to out-productivity them. We do
that by leveraging technology.


education is a good thing but given an economy that has been overrun by
globalized corporations in an incestuous relationship with the
government which has committed to giving the greed mongers every thing
they want at the expense of everyone else it really makes for lousy job
prospects regardless of education.

I don't agree. 80% of the employment in this nation does not come from
"globalized corporations" but from small business. That's hardly
"overrun".


% of profits is the more relevant number, after all it takes a lot of $$
to buy politicians, they don't come cheap what with all the campaign
contributions and the lobbying, not to mention all the perks that await
them when they leave politics for the corporate office. the small
businesses just don't have sufficient funding for that type of
operation. the article distinguishes between "big capital" and "small
capital" and puts the small business in with the "losers" (ie. the
exploited as opposed to the exploiters):

"Like all capitalist ventures, globalization has produced winners and
losers. The winners have been few -- the owners and agents of big
capital -- while small capitalists, labor, working-class communities, and
the environment have clearly been the losers."

and one more thing, please cite the 80% of employment is from small
business as i'm not willing to take your word for it. a quick search
yielded this:

http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.pdf

"What is small firms' share of employment?
Small businesses employ about half of U.S. workers. Of
116.3 million nonfarm private sector workers in 2005, small
firms with fewer than 500 workers employed 58.6 million and
large firms employed 57.7 million. Firms with fewer than 20
employees employed 21.3 million. While small firms create
60 to 80 percent of net new jobs, their share of employment
remains steady since some firms grow into large firms as they
create new jobs."

that shows it's only about half and that's if you include firms with up
to 500 employees as "small business" which i don't consider small. the
under 20 employee category is less than 20% if i did the math right.


Your standard of living is going down, not because somebody else's
is going up, but because the US standard of living over the last
decade and a half has relied on cheap credit and leverage. As the US
citizen unwinds that leverage, the multiple laptops per family and
televisions in each room and $150 athletic shoes and jerseys and
automobiles given on the 16th birthday are reduced to shared family
computers and one or two televisions and Wal-Mart clothes and back
to sharing cars again.

i believe that humans are clever enough to find a way
that all can simultaneously achieve a decent standard of living
working decent hours in a safe workplace without destroying the
environment and the main thing preventing that from happening are
those that are cheerleading deregulation of the corporate
exploiters.
I agree up until "main thing...." There are indeed smart ways and
stupid ways to accomplish all these things, but it's way too easy
(and incorrect) to just say "it's the corporate exploiters fault."

agreed. corporations have the objective of profit with no
requirement whatsoever for having any social value at all so any
profitable behavior that isn't specifically forbidden by regulation
is fair game. in a perfect world, ethics would eliminate most of the
conflicts, but reality is the opposite end of the spectrum where
morals, ethics & decency are scorned if they reduce profits, hence,
extensive regulation & vigilant oversight is an absolutely essential
component of capitalism to prevent abuses.
Government can do whatever it likes. The job of we free-marketers is
simply to remind business that there is no such thing as a regulation
(or tax increase) that doesn't cost profits and thus cost jobs.


that's the corporate viewpoint, to the population as a whole
regulations reduce cost in terms of the harm that corporations cause.

It's not a viewpoint, it's fact. If a governmental body passes a
regulation, that regulation has a cost of compliance, even if it's just
paperwork. The money for the compliance ultimately comes from gross
profits, and in the short run decreases the profit margin. Since a
lowering of the profit margin increases the risk that the business will
not survive as a going concern, the business manager takes steps to
restore that profit margin to its former levels. In a high-wage economy
like the US, Canada, Japan, or Europe, the most efficient way to recover
that lost profit is to adjust the burdened cost of an employee downward.
At best, that means lower wage or benefits; at worst, it means the loss
of employees, causing the other employees to work harder for the same
compensation, a condition that you bemoaned above.


the costs of allowing corporations to trample all over our rights and put
us at risk is of far greater concern. so the dollar amounts are a little
lower in the list of the worlds richest robber barons, good.


So, a regulation not only (as you say) reduces societal cost in terms of
possible harm caused, but then INCREASES societal cost as society doles
out social welfare to the unemployed, AND ALSO deals with the
repurcussions of lowered tax receipts as a result.

So, as I said above, government can do whatever they like vis a vis
regulation, as long as the count the cost carefully and wisely, neither
of which are characteristics of our government.


the gov't doesn't do "whatever they like" they do what their corporate
overlords tell them to.


At best,
a regulation delivers significant social or ethical benefit at little
cost; at worst, a regulation can accomplish very little and cripple an
entire industry.


if a corporation operates ethically and in a manner which optimally
benefits the population as a whole (as opposed to its own self interest
at the expense of others) then regulations should be of no consequence.
if a regulation prevents a corporation from maximizing benefit to the
population then it should be changed.

Suppose you were suing a corporation for product liability. You find
that the judge on your case owns a significant amount of the
corporation's stock. Do you become concerned?

Of course you do, because of conflict of interest. And, that's exactly
what you have when you expect a corporation to "behave ethically" as
opposed to "legally" -- a conflict of interest. The purpose of a public
corporation is to enrich the shareholders, not to avoid profitable
business based on some set of morals and ethics.

As an investor, I refuse to invest in any company that behaves
irrationally. That means I refuse to invest in any company that
deliberately accepts lowered profits for any reason, because that's a
conflict of interest -- their job is to enrich the shareholders. I want
my industrialists lean, mean, willing to fire their own mothers if
necessary. I want them maximizing profits and viciously competing in the
marketplace.


which is exactly why corporations need to be regulated to prevent them
from wreaking havoc on the lives of employees, customers & the general
public because there are very many ways that profits can be increased by
putting people at risk and usurping their rights. you can't just create
corporate entities with profit as the only objective with no requirement
whatsoever for any social responsibility, that's a recipe for disaster
because the corporations will not be responsible and people will be
harmed.


I want ATT to buy Bharti someday. I want to shop at
WalMart, not Carrefour; I want to fuel my cars with gas from US-produced
wells, or US-produced natural gas, or anything from a US source. (And
yes, I only buy new cars from US automakers.)

THEN, I want a RATIONAL GOVERNMENT providing a RATIONAL regulatory
framework and taxation system to insure that the some of the profits
from the lean and mean industrialists cited above are brought back into
society in distributed wisely, and that corporations are required to
clean up their messes. It's the job of the corporation to earn profits;
it's the job of the government to create the environment in which it
rationally occurs. Never the twain shall meet. Don't ask the corporation
to think in societal terms, and don't allow the government to get into
business

i don't see it so much as an issue of: "don't allow the government to get
into business", but more of an issue of: don't allow corporate interest
to interfere with gov't regulation of corporations, but that has already
occurred (ie. the fox has taken charge of guarding the hen house) so now
it has become an issue of how to get the fox out of the hen house.


(you can see the mess we have since the government has been in
the mortgage business since the 30's -- and it's going to get worse).
BUT, we don't have a rational government. What we have is a government
that spends its time pulling the wool over the eyes of people, assigning
the blame for their own incompetence onto everyone else but themselves.

it's not incompetence, it's calculated & deliberate on behalf of & for
the benefit of corporate interest.


Corporations are a convienient foil for this purpose.

if that's your stand, then we'll just have to agree to disagree because,
imo, excessive corporate interest *is* the reason that regulations/policy
do not function in a way that benefits the majority.


Convince the
people that there is such a thing (or should be) as an "ethical
corporation" and one that is not; and the sheeple go right along and
believe their problems are the cause of big business and the desire for
profit, even though that is the PURPOSE of business.


that's the corporate viewpoint, total disregard for anything but self-
interest, exactly why regulation is mandatory to minimize abuse. hate to
repeat myself but the issue is that you can't just create corporate
entities with profit as the only objective with no requirement whatsoever
for any social responsibility, there's no countervailing force there to
counteract the greed & that's a recipe for disaster


You may as well try
and turn your dog into a vegetarian. In the meantime, the government
(when you're not looking) lets those same corporate representatives
write the regulations and the policies, takes their donations, flies on
their planes and smokes their cigars. They funnel billions of our
dollars into the "corn farmers" in the form of subsidies, telling us
that it's to keep the "family farm in business" and "to promote
alternative fuels" when in fact the vast majority of the subsidies go to
rich individuals and corporations, burning up our FOOD SUPPLY in the
process, when the REAL REASON all that money is being spent is because
the "corn state" is Iowa and it has a disproportionate (and scurrilous)
role in the selection of the POTUS. At the same time, supposed
"anti-corporate" legislators like Maria Cantwell are working behind the
scenes to get Starbucks classified as a MANUFACTURER rather than a
retail food business so it can collect tax breaks given to manufacturers
by our irrational corporate tax system.


you acknowledge the incestuous relationship between corporations & gov't
yet earlier denied that as a fundamental problem, seems contradictory to
me.


For example, what gets lost in the chaotic discussion of the subprime
matter is that the US ALREADY has more banking regulation and
transparency than any other country in the world. (Scary, huh?) What
we have is shitty, 1930's regulation that actually makes our banks
weaker than they otherwise would be (from the balance ***
perspective).

What we actually need in banking is LESS, but MORE EFFECTIVE
regulation. Transparency can be increased still, but the maze of
financial services regs should be simplfied into a system that is
focused on dedicated reserve requirements for each sort of financial
instrument -- if properly implemented, you would then have a system
that would automatically be delevered, and if a bubble did form, the
financial institution could pay for its own bailout from its
reserves.>

whatever it takes to prevent billionaires from gambling with such huge
debts that it puts the entire world's financial system at risk when
they inevitably lose their ass.

The minimum it takes to get the desired result. Simple is good.

JG








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