161–170 of 368 posts
Equality is not a thing I ever care to have a society optimized for. If you give me a planet, I don't care that everyone else has a galaxy. Simply optimize for the leading edge and the rest will get dragged along.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a free market, the market does. In most actual cases, some combination of a sort of free market, monopolies over labor (unions) and capital (large corporations), and government regulation does.
It would be better to say the market sets wages to maximize efficiency. With wages being price signals people are supposed to respond to in choosing and changing jobs. The "fairness" view assumes everyone is born into their jobs somehow and stuck there. If people could choose any job they wanted, fairness is irrelevant because everyone has an equal choice. This is obviously an ideal, but then the opposite extreme is…
however in the real world people are forced to work by a need to survive, which puts disempowered people in a position to be exploited. and there is unequal access to education, to the leisure time to participate in education, and to the material security required to have a brain that is able to focus on education, so not everyone will be able to even make an attempt to qualify for every job. not to mention the fact that there is unequal access to the networking and connections, and to the non-merit-based "qualifications" that bring certain people to power (e.g. race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. all the isms).
so exploitation and injustice abounds in an unregulated system which tends to entrench and concentrate power within the hands of those who already have it
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, maybe I've misunderstood you. I'll try to hear you out. Are you basically proposing worker-owned cooperatives?
> Are you basically proposing worker-owned cooperatives? From what I know about them, they would be one example of what I am talking about, yes, since as I understand it, the cooperative makes all the business decisions--what products to build and sell, how much of what to produce, where to locate the factory, what supply chains to rely on, etc. But I'm not just proposing that we adopt something that already exists,…
One property of free markets it that they're unstable: as soon as any company gains enough power, they use that power to create rules and make the market unfree. Lobbying and laws are one way, monopolies and trusts are another. CEOs have no compunction about lobbying or taking bail-outs. You aren't really a successful company until you've pulled the ladder up behind you. And if CEOs aren't bound by free markets, it's foolish for workers to play by the rules when nobody else is.
In this terminology where every person is a business owner, then unions are trusts, worker-owned cooperatives are just companies owning the means of production, etc. If you're willing to let workers break the free market in their favor the same way CEOs break the markets in their favor, then this idea that everyone should own their own company is just linguistic gymnastics about worker-favored structures that already exist.
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I always argue caution about revolution to help the poor, as there are plenty of examples where revolution killed as many poor people as it did aristocrats. Possibly the least flame war worthy example is the French Revolution. While the popular image is of the great terror killing off nobles, the reality is that most of the killings in Paris were either politicians or unfortunate merchants who refused to sell their g…
I'd say it's very hard to find any violent revolutions that improved a society. It's pretty much a long line of tragedies. I count throwing out a foreign oppressor, like the American revolution or the Czech "velvet revolution" as a separate category. Those can be good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always argue caution about revolution to help the poor, as there are plenty of examples where revolution killed as many poor people as it did aristocrats. Possibly the least flame war worthy example is the French Revolution. While the popular image is of the great terror killing off nobles, the reality is that most of the killings in Paris were either politicians or unfortunate merchants who refused to sell their g…
I'd say it's very hard to find any violent revolutions that improved a society. It's pretty much a long line of tragedies. I count throwing out a foreign oppressor, like the American revolution or the Czech "velvet revolution" as a separate category. Those can be good.
The revolutionaries were British citizens, just like the soldiers they faced. Sure, England shipped in more soldiers, but neither side was more foreign than the other.
Not all work is equally valuable. Not all work is equally doable. Some work requires decades patience and sacrifice before one is competent enough to perform it. Some work is physically or cognitively beyond the vast majority of the population. It doesn't make sense to expect all jobs to have all the same benefits and privelegdes. Even if we pretend that all humans are fundamentally equal in ability, inequality will…
>> "Benefits not available to low-income workers" A more accurate statement would be "Benefits not available to low-income jobs " There are plenty of jobs that simply cannot be done remotely. The more physical the job, the less it can be done remotely. A meat packer at a meat packing plant cannot work from home. A construction worker cannot build houses from a desk. (I'd add nursing, but a large amount of those jobs…
There are many low income jobs that can be done remotely. And they are, I very rarely talk to a customer rep from the U.S. or buy something that was woven or built here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are you basically proposing worker-owned cooperatives? From what I know about them, they would be one example of what I am talking about, yes, since as I understand it, the cooperative makes all the business decisions--what products to build and sell, how much of what to produce, where to locate the factory, what supply chains to rely on, etc. But I'm not just proposing that we adopt something that already exists,…
From the sound of it, you're just proposing that people at the bottom have to play the free market better on a large scale, and you aren't giving much in the way of specifics of how they would do that. One property of free markets it that they're unstable: as soon as any company gains enough power, they use that power to create rules and make the market unfree. Lobbying and laws are one way, monopolies and trusts are…
If they want to capture more of the value they create, yes. The fact that for increased upside you need to take on increased risk, which is what underlies my proposal, is just a fact (one that is often unpleasant, which is why it is often swept under the rug), not a proposal by me or anyone else.
> One property of free markets it that they're unstable: as soon as any company gains enough power, they use that power to create rules and make the market unfree
In a free market, nobody can "create rules" as you describe. The process of "creating rules" that you describe only exists in the first place because the government has the power to make the market not free, by prohibiting transactions that people would otherwise choose to engage in, or by forcing people to engage in transactions they would otherwise not choose to engage in. And as you correctly note, the government exercises this power, not for the benefit of the people in general, but for the benefit of special interests.
> If you're willing to let workers break the free market in their favor the same way CEOs break the markets in their favor
No, what I would propose is that nobody be allowed to break the free market. But I understand that's a lot to propose, since people are extremely unwilling to give up the fantasy that they can somehow get the government to use its power for the benefit of the people as a whole instead of for special interests.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution#Long-term_im... Just skimming this, it seems the french and the entire world was left better-off actually
Fair enough, but I think we could both agree that the revolution was only beneficial because it changed the old system into something more malleable and predictable. The throne is an unstable thing, as is the man in it, and only subject to change on unpredictable whims. If you already exist in a system that is pliable, like a democracy, revolution really wouldn't bring you any of the benefits the French revolution di…
There have been numerous revolutions with positive benefits to the world at large as well as to the society/culture in which they took place. I would chance to say that the majority were net-positive. If you find yourself scared of revolution, you should maybe take an introspective moment and ponder why the poor and downtrodden of the world (or just in your own country) would consider you their enemy.