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On being the right size (1928)

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Re: On being the right size (1928)

#131

Post by alive-or-not »

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #106
VLM wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"can't do better in life and need the Government protection." I mostly agree with your points, but this one fails. I say there's a pyramid. You say thats a politically incorrect concept to think about from a psuedo-right perspective, therefore it surely doesn't exist and all topic change-y. Bzzt try again. Is there or is there not a pyramid of skills, and if a working definition of the level of civilization is lookin…

> I mostly agree with your points, but this one fails. I say there's a pyramid. You say thats a politically incorrect concept to think about from a psuedo-right perspective, therefore it surely doesn't exist and all topic change-y. Bzzt try again. Is there or is there not a pyramid of skills, and if a working definition of the level of civilization is looking at how the downtrodden are treated, what are you proposing…

You keep repeating that socialism doesn't work. In the period 1928 - 1934 the socialist USSR went from an agrarian country, devastated by wars to world's second industrial power. Sent the first satellite into space, first man, first space station. To this date the socialist build russian space industry is the best in the world. USSR has made a huge amount of contributions in science as well. Other socialist countries - e.g. Bulgaria - have enjoined rapid increase in industrial output, standard of living and literacy rates when going from capitalism to socialism.

Re: On being the right size (1928)

#132

Post by xerophtye »

tbrake wrote: post #39
sejje wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if bald eagles had 36-foot wingspans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatlus

I wasn't intending to be nitpicking or pedantic when I wrote it - it was just something I remembered off the top of my head - but those aren't, strictly speaking, pterodactyls. I hadn't considered that the use was the generic term. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterodactyloidea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterosauria (Technically correct; the best kind of correct.)

woah! i didnt realize it was a FAMILY of dinosaurs and not just a particular one

Re: On being the right size (1928)

#133

Post by xerophtye »

yk wrote: post #17
xerophtye wrote: post #8

As amazing as the article is, i have one confusion. What about dinosaurs? In the eagle part, he said eagles CAN'T be as big as tigers etc. But what about Pterodactyls? How did they manage to be so big? Oh and weren't all the dinosaurs cold-blooded? So, if I am not mistaken, didn't the author say that we get over the problem of heat loss by being warm-blooded? Or does that just mean that they had to eat ALOT more? (th…

The size is not only determined by the underlying physics, but also by the environment. So there can be a arms race of size, the predator needs to be roughly the same size as its pray, so the larger pray has a evolutionary advantage which gives larger predators an evolutionary advantage. And to stay with the analogy of the article, the same is true for organizations. Some parts of organizations need to be as large as…

I wouldn't say it doesn't depend on the physics. Of course it does. As for my original question, i realize the flying mechanism of an eagle is completely different from that of a Quetzalcoatlus (thank you @sejje). Modern day birds use their feathers to trap air (or somthing like that), no? Where as the Quetzalcoatlus would simply use the surface-area of their leathery wings to glide, like human-made gliders.

Re: On being the right size (1928)

#134

Post by bjourne »

gnarbarian wrote: post #125
bjourne wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it would be a wash. Who do you think is more likely to be incompetent, all McDonald's 450k employees or 10 board of directors?

You must not know many typical mcdonalds employees. How many do you think are college educated (let alone educated in the right areas) or even possess a GED? Compared to http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/boa... Sure education isn't everything. The average mcds employee is a good person trying to earn an honest living fit to have a beer with but probably not the best source of sound investment a…

The argument you are making is equivalent to arguing that dictatorship is better than democracy because regular people are too stupid to decide for themselves.

Re: On being the right size (1928)

#135

Post by mrow84 »

chad_oliver wrote: post #82
ljf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point on outsourcing is hinted at I the other story trending highly today about the man living without money. If you had to look a 9 year old child labourer in the eye each time you were buying your cheaply made T-shirt, or a worker how has just completed a 14hour day making component for your phone, would you still feel as happy with your purchase. Yes not all outsourcing is negative and not all worker a…

I would willingly look a 9 year old child laborer in the eye each time I buy a cheaply made T-shirt, and I would feel good about myself . Consider: most people in developing countries are able to choose which job they will do. It is true that some (far too many) are held in debt bondage, but the vast majority are not. Therefore, if the 9 year old child laborer is working to make cheap T-shirts, they're doing that bec…

Markets "decide" what is best by responding to price signals. If you buy a cheap T-shirt then you are saying to the market that you value low price over an ethical supply chain.

Buyers from first world countries do not (in general) deal first-hand with the labourers, they deal with factory owners who have the capital equipment necessary to do the manufacturing at the required scale. All the while that there is price pressure from the market (from you), the buyers will be pushing that price pressure onto the factory owners. As long as there is one factory owner who is willing to take that low price then all factory owners who want the same (or similar) contracts have to take that price, otherwise they are out-competed in the free market. They, in turn, push that price pressure onto their workers, preventing increases in wages.

The rest of what you said is correct: the workers take the jobs not because they want to work for such low wages, but because they are the best wages they can obtain given their skill levels. Buying cheap clothes almost directly contributes to the continuation of poverty.

As an aside, you mentioned child labour. A not uncommon strand to discussions on these issues is that people should "act more responsibly" and "choose" to get educated when they are young rather than waste their time for the short-term benefits of working. People send their children to work because they can't bring in enough money themselves, for reasons like disability (there are a lot more workplace accidents in countries with poor labour protections!) or plain poverty. How does the hypothetical 9 year old improve their lot if the best thing they can do at the age of 9 is get a job manufacturing clothes?

Re: On being the right size (1928)

#136

Post by mrow84 »

philwelch wrote: post #113
VLM wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the first problem is its not true, or at least badly out of date. The UAW is close to gaining control of Chrysler aka over 50% ownership. Sounds insane, yet its true. Also I think UAW is a hair under 20% stock ownership of GM at this time. Of course there are innumerable smaller unions who own no stock and pretty much have no assets on the balance sheet, which at least makes them judgment proof if nothing else.…

UAW was forced into being vested in Chrysler and GM as a condition of the bailout, and it's a condition that they fought tooth and nail.

Interesting. Apologies for not taking the time to do the research myself, but do you have any idea why they were so reluctant to take a stake in the companies that (I presume) their members work in?

Re: On being the right size (1928)

#137

Post by mrow84 »

gnarbarian wrote: post #116
VLM wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it seems to me to be a pretty desirable state of affairs." Oh I wouldn't put it that way... One interesting issue/analogy is a lot of lawyers (labor lawyers?) won't take conflict of interest jobs where they financially benefit if their client loses / opponent wins. Too much opportunity for malpractice motive, or appearance of it anyway. If you take it out of labor law, as an analogy, say you were suing a company, yo…

While there may be divergent goals between stock holders and employees I think it's incorrect to call all but the worst of them "Conflicts of Interest" (pump and dump situations maybe?). Both the employees and the stockholders rely on their business being successful. as I posted in another comment: "I think it's important to consider the rights of the owner as well. If I am a captain on a fishing boat, and I built/pa…

Sorry to hijack your actual point, but I think the financial investment model of company control does leave something to be desired. In particular, people invest time as well as money into their economic ventures, but this is rarely reflected in the level of control they have. The common retort is that you get paid for your time - but then a lot of people get paid for their money too, often quite handsomely (that's the whole point of investment).

What would be interesting (albeit awkward, perhaps to the point of being unworkable) is if an individual's level of control was equal to the weighted sum of the time and money (or money equivalent) that they had put in. This would mean that early investors would start with a large controlling stake, but it would diminish over time as the effects of the time people spent working at the company started to kick in.

I await the rubbishing of my ideas with moderately bated breath! ;-)

Re: On being the right size (1928)

#138

Post by chad_oliver »

mrow84 wrote: post #135
chad_oliver wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would willingly look a 9 year old child laborer in the eye each time I buy a cheaply made T-shirt, and I would feel good about myself . Consider: most people in developing countries are able to choose which job they will do. It is true that some (far too many) are held in debt bondage, but the vast majority are not. Therefore, if the 9 year old child laborer is working to make cheap T-shirts, they're doing that bec…

Markets "decide" what is best by responding to price signals. If you buy a cheap T-shirt then you are saying to the market that you value low price over an ethical supply chain. Buyers from first world countries do not (in general) deal first-hand with the labourers, they deal with factory owners who have the capital equipment necessary to do the manufacturing at the required scale. All the while that there is price…

Let me respond to your final paragraph first. I actually don't agree with the idea that people should "act more responsibly" and "choose" to get educated. Or rather, I think they are never given the choice. Children working are forced to do so by the poverty of the parent, who were in turn forced into their life path by poverty. Of course this is not always the case, but what I have seen indicates that economic poverty is primarily due to a poverty of choices. Economic poverty flows from that.

That said, I stand by my belief that the free market is an effective way (and perhaps the most effective way) to lift people out of poverty. It's cruel, slow, and painful, but it also produces long-term improvements at a scale that mere charity cannot match. I think targeted aid is great, and I expect that it would be far more effective on a per-dollar basis, but cheap labor has a greater impact simply because the world economy throws a lot of money at it.

I disagree with your assessment that "buying cheap clothes almost directly contributes to the continuation of poverty" (However, see my caveat below). I just had a chat about this with my flatmate, who is an economist and has a much better grasp of the topic than I. He pointed out that, historically, sweatshops are only the first stage of economic development. Sweatshops provide a better (but still bad) income to unskilled laborers, which gives them enough free income to invest in their own human capital. Greater human capital attracts other investors, and the country pulls itself up by the bootstraps. South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have built developed economies by starting with sweatshops. China is in the process of doing this. In contrast, India has more restrictions against foreign investment and sweatshops, and their economic growth has lagged behind countries with less restrictive laws.

Or, to put it more simply: sweatshops are an important stage on the road to a developed economy, because initially cheap labor is the only thing that an undeveloped country can offer to investors. If you don't allow sweatshops, you don't get any investment, and the development process stops before it truly started. There's a lot of inefficiencies, and a lot of greedy people (including us as consumers) taking bites out of the pie, but it works better than anything else we've tried.

As I mentioned above, my position is tempered by an important caveat. You point out that some countries have an ethical supply chain. I initially discarded this based on the assumption that 'ethical' usually just means 'first world', but I realize now that you are correct. I haven't yet come across a garment manufacturer with a truly ethical supply chain, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. I will make it a priority to search out such a supplier, and provide them with my patronage. If you have any suggestions, I would be happy to hear them.

Re: On being the right size (1928)

#139

Post by veganarchocap »

drjesusphd wrote: post #95
veganarchocap wrote: post #60

Marxists.org? Really?

This smells like ad hominem.

It's not ad hominem, it's just that Hacker News is often so (quite rightly, in my view) focused on growth of private industry and tech start-ups. It seems bizarre a Marxist forum crops up, with seemingly swarms of support.

Re: On being the right size (1928)

#140

Post by drjesusphd »

veganarchocap wrote: post #139
drjesusphd wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This smells like ad hominem.

It's not ad hominem, it's just that Hacker News is often so (quite rightly, in my view) focused on growth of private industry and tech start-ups. It seems bizarre a Marxist forum crops up, with seemingly swarms of support.

I don't see "swarms of support". I see informed debate and discussion, which is a breath of fresh air compared to the knee-jerk reactionism usually associated with the topic.

And it's the same kind of reactionism that you're illustrating all too perfectly.

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