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



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.


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".


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.

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.


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. 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 (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.
Corporations are a convienient foil for this purpose. 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. 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.


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








Right. Business does whatever it can to screw the public. Government
protects the public. It may not be pretty, but it works.

This is not the way it has been working for the past 28 years. I
think only a 1929 style collapse will rectify the situation. Will it
all happen over again with another collapse in 2090? Probably, but
it's not my problem.

.

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