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How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

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Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#211

Post by imtringued »

DC1350 wrote: post #65
andrepd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because nobody with money gave a shit about the global poor until they realized they could be used for cheap labour. They did. It's called slavery. It's only when that finally became mostly unacceptable (remember there are still millions of enslaved persons worldwide), that they had to turn to paying them wages of a dollar a day (slavery with extra steps).

The transition from slave ownership to slavery as a service is truly one of the most disruptive innovations of the last 200 years.

Working for income is not slavery. You can always go join open source ecology and build your own civilization from scratch.

Forced work in a prison could be considered slavery depending on the reason for the arrest and the financial motives of the owner of the prison.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#212

Post by imtringued »

bbreier wrote: post #137
DC1350 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese people only became wealthy after major economic reforms that abandoned anything related to communism except for the name and aesthetic

For some definitions of communism... in the US, many would have us believe that universal health care is a key component of communism and China still has plenty of that.

I don't think capitalism is incompatible with government run services. Some services are so fundamental that everyone needs them and thus demand is very easy to predict. Adding profit incentives to basic needs just adds friction and inefficiency since the transaction is involuntary.

Private industry is really, really good at innovation (e.g. discovering new drugs and treatments) and providing optional goods and services but most people just want a basic level of service and they want a funding structure that does not misalign incentives.

For example, optional basic health insurance doesn't work because poor people will quit the insurance program while they are healthy and then only unhealthy people will stay and bear the full cost. This raises the cost for poor unhealthy people and then they quit insurance and get denied access to care. Finally only the wealthiest people will have health insurance.

Capitalism is just a tool that's used to achieve certain outcomes. It just happens to work more often that it fails. Nothing more, nothing less. If a different tool works just as fine or better then it can be used selectively in areas where it's superior. Blind faith to any tool is stupid.

Communism on the other hand tends to fail by default and because it requires external forces to make it work, it breeds authoritarianism and then everything goes bad.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#213

Post by [deleted] »

refurb wrote: post #85
yulker wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And created the very context for that poverty to exist in the first place as an extension of post ag society.

“By curing 99% of cancers you created the very context for people dying of cancer.” Making some people rich doesn’t create poor people. They were poor before.

[deleted]

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#214

Post by imtringued »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #115
fatsdomino001 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system.

Since it is pretty much the only system used today, that is kind of hard to avoid. But on a serious note, the command economy of the Soviet Union did surprisingly well despite its profound number of flaws. Literacy rates, economic output, educational levels, scientific output etc was significantly improved in Soviet times, relative to the Czar area which after all was capitalist. This all happened despite the fact th…

>Despite all this China has 3x the GDP per capita of India. All despite the fact that India had democracy, private property and capitalist enterprises in this whole period.

This is a recent phenomenon that started in the 90s. China was essentially flat until 1993 (that's when India and China's GDP per capita started diverging).

Remember that article about a feed processing company in India not getting a permit to build a factory because he has to rezone land because all land in India is zoned for agriculture by default? The problem wasn't the bureaucracy. It was the corruption. The founder had to go to 14 different offices and one third of them didn't even process his forms because he refused to pay bribes. He had the bribe money but he refused out of principle and that heavily delays the start of the company.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#215

Post by imtringued »

djrobstep wrote: post #149
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is literally what deprivation means - the thing you need is absent. “Deprivation” is the act or process of removing. You’re claiming someone removed the income, but they haven’t done anything to create an income. There’s no income from which to deprive them because they haven’t done anything to generate an income. > The deprivation happens through a large government program called "property law". That doesn’t…

> but they haven’t done anything to create an income "People who don't work full time should starve" is ideology, not some law of physics. > There’s no income from which to deprive them There is plenty. US GDP is trillions a year. > How does that work? Property law creates property ownership. Ownership assigned to one person is deprived from others.

>"People who don't work full time should starve" is ideology, not some law of physics.

If you don't work then where do you expect your food to come from? I don't work full time and I don't starve so please keep the petty details out.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#216

Post by TeMPOraL »

esotericn wrote: post #209
TeMPOraL wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car accident rate doesn't grow exponentially, with doubling time measured in days. With an infectious disease like this, what you want is to curb its ability to spread. That means disrupting the entire social network, because while the virus is most dangerous to the elderly, it spreads best through the young. Also lung damage, the fact that small chance of disability or death multiplied by whole country getting infec…

Your second paragraph is of course true. But right now, we're eleven months in and it's illegal for me to have a single friend over for a cup of tea. Not advised against; not something we should limit; illegal, punishable by law. I'm at the point at which I've been told by medical health practitioners to ignore this nonsense and see people for my own wellbeing. We have a vaccination program running in the UK and it's…

Ok, fair enough. I didn't mean to diminish your experience. I also I didn't realize meeting in homes is strictly illegal in the UK. That sounds a tad bit excessive, for the reasons you outline (over here in Poland, it's currently max 5 people except the host and people living with the host, and I think there was no actual case of enforcing it against small family&friends gatherings).

> But it's not viable at a population level because a significant percentage of people are either in situations whereby they need to mix households in order to function, or have brain chemistry which means that avoiding social mixing for prolonged periods (months or more) causes them to become depressed, anxious, or in extreme cases psychotic.

That's absolutely true. The long-term effects of social restrictions on public health and general morale was something somewhat unexpected, or at least not thought much about early in 2020 (and, hindsight being 20/20, only confirms that the big mistake was not doing hard but short lockdowns early on). I'm just hoping we can vaccinate our way out of this in the coming months, because even introverts are having troubles taking this much longer. Myself, I started this pandemic in a state of being burned out by interacting with other people - a year later, I now desperately crave some socialization, but I'm not sure if I'm even capable of it anymore.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#217

Post by imtringued »

sunstone wrote: post #18

Sure, and universal health care helps even more but it doesn't fill the pockets of the members of the medical associations the way private health care does. Regulatory capture in its rawest form.

Arguably, one of the dumbest things you could do is restrict the training and employment of medical professionals while simultaneously having privatized healthcare.

I disagree with private healthcare but there are ways to make it work.

Here is the basic idea. People are sick and there are not enough doctors and not enough drugs. Cost of healthcare rises until more doctors can be hired. Thus there will always be enough doctors. It also rewards superior care by making superior care more profitable.

However, if you artificially restrict the number of doctors then you are going against the idea of privatized health care. Similarly, if its possible to buy an existing drug to monopolize it and raise prices you are going against the idea of privatized healthcare.

It's the same with student loans. You privatize education and make students pay for it. Fine. However, by guaranteeing loans you did the exact opposite. You simultaneously privatized it and nationalized it in a highly inefficient way.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#218

Post by esotericn »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #216
esotericn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your second paragraph is of course true. But right now, we're eleven months in and it's illegal for me to have a single friend over for a cup of tea. Not advised against; not something we should limit; illegal, punishable by law. I'm at the point at which I've been told by medical health practitioners to ignore this nonsense and see people for my own wellbeing. We have a vaccination program running in the UK and it's…

Ok, fair enough. I didn't mean to diminish your experience. I also I didn't realize meeting in homes is strictly illegal in the UK. That sounds a tad bit excessive, for the reasons you outline (over here in Poland, it's currently max 5 people except the host and people living with the host, and I think there was no actual case of enforcing it against small family&friends gatherings). > But it's not viable at a popula…

Meeting indoors has been illegal in London since December 2 and based on current communication will be illegal until at least March 2, so that'll be four months of it being illegal to meet any person from outside your household indoors.

I actually had to look this up in order to make sure I had the dates right, but it's absolutely correct.

It is also illegal to meet a single person in your garden or outside unless you're exercising. I don't have exact timings on that, because in order to protect my mental health I've stopped following the news.

"A tad excessive" is understating it a bit. It's inhuman. Writing it down makes me feel ill. When people talk about it as if it's normal and okay, I get an intense feeling of anger and a desire to cause them pain.

So if you want your perspective on why people are acting like "covidiots" or whatever offensive name we're applying to our brothers now - this is why.

I am done with bureaucratic despots telling me what to do, I am not a guinea pig to be experimented on.

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#219

Post by ClumsyPilot »

treeman79 wrote: post #127
refurb wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basis of capitalism is that under most circumstances, focusing on “me” also produces the best outcomes for “us”. And a pure focus on “us” can lead to poorer outcomes as there is no immediate reward for the person doing the work.

Wrong. Focusing on “us” ends in ruling class and endless poverty everywhere. Alternatives to capitalism have been tried and it always fails. Venezuela is the most recent example.

Alternatives to Monarchy have all been tried, and it always fails.

Focusing on freedom ends up in anarchy and chaos everywhere.

Freench revolution is the most recent exanple - just look at the amount of people beheaded!

Re: How Poverty Makes Workers Less Productive

#220

Post by ClumsyPilot »

imtringued wrote: post #199
TeMPOraL wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how this goes. Capitalism is great because it promises individual freedom and giving everyone what they wants, while also holding 70% of Americans at economical gunpoint, justifying that with "well if everyone truly got what they want, nobody would produce and civilization would collapse". Perhaps the capitalists should drop the talk about freedom and voluntary trade. Or we need a new word for "freedom" th…

>Capitalism is great because it promises individual freedom and giving everyone what they wants, while also holding 70% of Americans at economical gunpoint If government policies are set in a way that encourages this outcome then that's what you get. It doesn't have to be that way.

Either they are structural outcomes of capitalism, or capitalism doesn't really matter, quality of governance does.

You responce sounds like you are trying to have it both ways

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