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For the past four decades, the majority of American workers have been shortchanged by economic policymaking that has suppressed the growth of hourly wages and prevented greater improvements in living standards. Achieving a secure, middle-class lifestyle has become increasingly difficult as hourly pay for most workers has either stagnated or declined. For millions of the country's lowest-paid workers, financial security is even more fleeting because of unscrupulous employers stealing a portion of their paychecks.
Wage theft, the practice of employers failing to pay workers the full wages to which they are legally entitled, is a widespread and deep-rooted problem that directly harms millions of U.S. workers each year. Employers refusing to pay promised wages, paying less than legally mandated minimums, failing to pay for all hours worked, or not paying overtime premiums deprives working people of billions of dollars annually. It also leaves hundreds of thousands of affected workers and their families in poverty. Wage theft does not just harm the workers and families who directly suffer exploitation; it also weakens the bargaining power of workers more broadly by putting downward pressure on hourly wages in affected industries and occupations. For many low-income families who suffer wage theft, the resulting loss of income forces them to rely more heavily on public assistance programs, unduly straining safety net programs and hamstringing efforts to reduce poverty.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @03:53PM (32 children)
Be glad you have a job at all. If you don't like it, go find somewhere else to work. If we don't do this, the whole company will go under, do you want that?
When people asked Trump about the Mars mission, he said "it sounds great, I love it, but let's fix our infrastructure first." Yeah, starting with our social infrastructure - can we at least pay people what they are promised, guaranteed by law, to be paid - get the economy working in a legally compliant manner, is that too much to ask?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @05:20PM (2 children)
Is that where the "anti-science" babble comes from? Because he wants our infrastructure to be fixed before we go for an adventure to Mars?
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Monday May 22 2017, @05:29PM (1 child)
I don't think anything "anti-science" is at issue with fixing our infrastructure. Aside from the glorious southern border wall, AFAIK the White House hasn't proposed *anything* related to infrastructure. If anyone has actually seen such a proposal, please link it in a response. I'd love to see it!
I'm not real sanguine (see what I did there?) about the Trump administration's commitment to repairing/improving our infrastructure. All I've seen so far is platitudes and unrealistic claims that haven't been backed up by even a high-level list of priorities.
I suppose that could change, but I'm not holding my breath.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @08:39PM
Is a thick layer of male bovine excrement considered infrastructure? He's already laid that out.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday May 22 2017, @06:08PM (12 children)
That's the beauty of "crumbling infrastructure"--it keeps on crumbling. Japan has one of the top five economies in the world, with a high population crammed into a small area. It has a lot of dollars to spend on infrastructure. So it becomes a common site to see construction crews building Buck Rogers bridges, retaining walls, and drainage ditches on small roads in the mountains that maybe 3 cars a day use. They can keep doing that in ever finer detail forever and never "fix" the infrastructure such that they can re-allocate those funds to another purpose for a while.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @06:37PM (11 children)
Anybody who thinks the US infrastructure is "crumbling" needs to get out and travel a little to those "backwards third world countries" you know, like France, Australia, Brazil. Look around for freeways, bridges, roads, etc. and then reflect on what you see in the US.
Unpaved roads are really rare in the US, bridges are all over the place, as are multi-level overpasses, massive capacity airports, seaports, and even cargo train terminals (yes, our passenger rail sucks, but I think that was done to divert focus to the other modes of transportation).
The reason we have "crumbling infrastructure" like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge [wikipedia.org] http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/traffic/I-4-makeover/orl-i4-sinkhole-20170323-photo.html [orlandosentinel.com] is, in part, because we have so much infrastructure in the first place.
If we want to talk about infrastructure upgrade, let's talk about competitive internet service delivery to the home. Fiber, Cable, or DSL doesn't really matter, what matters is allowing multiple vendors to compete for the opportunity to serve people on an individual basis, not bribe city commissioners for decades long monopoly access to large block markets. Doesn't that seem like a good old-school free market rhetoric thing for the business savvy leader to bring to the country? Sure does to me, but I'm not holding my breath.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @07:03PM (6 children)
You have made a life choice: You have chosen to live in the middle of nowhere, far away from the infrastructure that carries the Internet's bits.
If you want to tap into that infrastructure, then you find a way to do that; either pay for last 100 miles out to your shack, or move into the nearest city like everybody else.
It makes no sense for society to squander its resources bringing YouPorn to the sticks. Fuck You, you entitled forest-dwelling cunt.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Monday May 22 2017, @07:57PM (4 children)
I live in the middle of one of the top three largest US cities. I am unable to get fiber to the premise. I can get contract-hobbled DOCSIS/cable internet with incredibly abusive terms-of-service and horrible maintenance and customer service.
If I can't get decent internet service without paying upwards of $500/month, then there's much to be said for GP's point.
And so for me and GP, fuck you, you self-righteous, ignorant, piece of shit!
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @08:00PM (3 children)
If not even the city has been able to build Internet infrastructure robustly, then why in the world would anyone be willing to let governments squander resources in the sticks?
We can agree on one thing: Governments fuck everything up.
(Score: 4, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:01AM (2 children)
Ftfy.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:24AM (1 child)
However, you cannot stop paying a government for its rotten services.
Indeed, if you try to stop paying a government, you'll probably be beaten up by thugs and then thrown into a cage.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday May 24 2017, @01:26AM
Substitute "protected privately owned monopoly, such as water supply" for "government" and your argument is equally valid.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @08:50PM
I live in the city limits, 1 mile from the loop interstate offramp, 3 miles from the thru-interstate offramp, 1/2 mile from shopping centers, in a major metro area (800K pop.)
I have Comcast and AT&T to choose from, and they both suck. AT&T charges nearly as much for dysfunctional DSL as Comcast charges for slightly more often functional cable internet. We've been in this home for 3 years and Comcast has raised our monthly bill to 2x what we started at, a little bit every 6 months, while trimming services along the way. For the cheapest slowest internet service they offer, we're at $56 per month, up from $48 per month for "BLAST SPEED" last year, up from $36 per month for the cable bundle the year before that, up from the $28 per month "please please please don't use our competition dear new resident" introductory period.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @08:01PM (3 children)
I drove over that bridge the day before it collapsed.
Was a bit freaked out by that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @08:52PM (2 children)
We decided to not move to the Lakeland area in 2012, after one of those sinkholes opened on I-4 while we were visiting, plus a dozen more that summer in neighborhoods swallowing houses and also closing smaller roads.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Monday May 22 2017, @08:58PM (1 child)
Man, where I am, when a sinkhole opens up under a house, sometimes the whole house explodes. Iron gas pipes from the early 20th century. One time an entire block exploded. Allegedly they are "mostly" replaced now but the gas company doesn't publish where the unreplaced ones are because of terrorism concerns... and sometimes they find out about ones they didn't have on their maps...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @09:21PM
It's kind of a sad story in Lakeland. Sinkholes (there and most places) form when the water table gets low. Well, when it doesn't rain as much as normal, the strawberry crop in Plant City struggles, so - on top of the low rain input, the strawberry farmers pump extra water on their crops - seriously dropping the water tables to un-natural levels. Then, mysteriously (not) an unnatural number of sink holes appears over the following months. So, in a dry year, a $200M strawberry crop ends up scattering several million dollars in damage around the area, probably propping up a "sinkhole insurance" industry to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year in premiums.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday May 22 2017, @06:38PM (5 children)
Your employer cheats you of your pay, and gets away with it, and all you can advise is to suck it up be glad you got a few crumbs instead of none at all? You aren't taking this problem seriously enough. This is systemic corruption.
If the employer cheats employees, why shouldn't all the employees cheat too? It's a huge breach of trust, and it's just plain bad management to turn the workplace into hostile environment, full of mutual suspicion between management and wage slaves. Employees will steal office supplies, goof off more, work slower, do a bad job, be sloppy, careless, and rebellious, and never volunteer any information about anything, such as improvements they see. You know, much like the slaves acted on a plantation.
The imbalance of power is huge. Employers have too much, and won't stop trying to amass more. Do you understand that the US doesn't have healthcare because employers wanted to have the threat of losing health benefits available as another way to pressure employees? Employees can be blackballed and their careers ruined, live in fear of being fired without a moment's notice and ending up homeless and hungry. Employers can always find another cog, easily, and everyone knows it.
And why should cheated employees stop the retaliation at the employer? Why not refuse to pay the rent, drive without auto insurance or a driver's license? And as for income tax, it's not even cheating to report the income you were actually paid, rather than the income you should have been paid. The government loses out on income tax revenue when employers cheat, yet they won't enforce the law and stop the cheating?
If the nation doesn't keep a lid on the cheating, if the government is corrupted and won't do anything about it, keeps changing the law to favor employers more and more, at some point the whole system will collapse. FDR understood that. He was asked, what if his programs didn't work and he replied that then he wouldn't be president, and the US might not be a nation anymore either.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bzipitidoo on Monday May 22 2017, @06:43PM (2 children)
Or were you being sarcastic and I missed that?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @08:56PM (1 child)
First paragraph yes, second paragraph no.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:44AM
You have four paragraphs in the GGGPP.
Was that YNYN or YYNN ?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @06:43PM
Thanks for the diatribe - good stuff. However, you might want to develop a satire filter...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 22 2017, @09:37PM
"They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work" has been tried elsewhere. When generalized, it leads to authoritarianism in power - you don't think the 0.1 percenters will do nothing, do you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by number11 on Monday May 22 2017, @08:02PM (8 children)
Don't let it bother you if your employer is criminal scum who steals your money, he's a business so he shouldn't have to obey the law.
Yeah, we need to fix the infrastructure. But don't expect it from the current lot (and maybe not from any politician these days) because taxes are bad and it would cost money. Even if the contractor steals half the workers wages, that's still not enough to build infrastructure. Hell, even with slave labor it would still require taxes. So forget about that.
I think we're in agreement.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @08:32PM (2 children)
In all walks of life, I think this saying applies:
You can wrestle a pig but in the end you'll both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it.
Sure, you can take criminal scum to court, you might win, you might lose, but it's going to cost so much more effort and frustration than simply finding somewhat less criminal scum to work for - and you'll have more net income to show for your effort. Some days it feels like the scum needs to be "taught a lesson" or "exposed for the garbage that they are," but, mostly, it's just going to be wrestling a pig in the mud, and you'll rarely, if ever, get the full vindication you were hoping for.
I was hit by a hit and run driver in a stolen car, I stuck around and filed a report with the Public Safety Officer who decided I and two witnesses (strangers to me) were lying and made up his own version of what happened when he wasn't there to write on the official report. I ran around and got notarized witness statements that basically said that the PSA's version was physically impossible, then went for my day in court. PSA didn't show, instant win. Was an incredibly empty feeling.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by number11 on Friday May 26 2017, @03:39PM (1 child)
Isn't this true of crime in general? If you get mugged, reporting it to the police isn't going to benefit you personally, it will just mean having to wait around and interact with the police, and perhaps being required to attend a trial at an inconvenient time and perhaps monetary loss. It's not like the mugger is likely to ever pick you personally as a victim again. Just a waste of time.
Is the preferred route to go home, get a gun, and resolve that the next person who tries to steal your money will end up full of holes? Is there any difference between that thieving employer and a mugger, other than (as Woodie Guthrie said) "some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen."
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday May 26 2017, @06:18PM
All true, so - are you a justice seeker, or a selfish seeker of happiness for yourself?
I tried to get some car thieves caught and prosecuted, the police declined to even try.
A professional office flim-flammed us and caused us a bunch of grief, I came very close to tearing them down through the licensing board but backed off before pushing the court case because it was getting blown way out of proportion for us - 20x the investment for justice seeking vs the harm actually done. In the end, we made enough noise with the office management to get the bad actors fired, but it could have gone full scale career wrecking ugly, and the blowback from that can be considerable.
Bottom line: people do what they think is right _for them_ and that doesn't always include seeking justice.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by migz on Monday May 22 2017, @09:54PM (4 children)
You can leave, and go work somewhere else.
Slavery is immoral. And fortunately illegal.
The behaviour of the abuser is halted, by refusing to be a victim, and leaving.
You don't need any law to effect this remedy.
Simple, effective, and does not require you to surrender your freedom to the wolves in the name of protecting the sheep.
I am not bothered as much by the abuser being left, as I am by your twisted belief that forcing the alleged abuser to comply, by a bigger abuser is a dangerous, and ineffective technique. Eventually the biggest bully will stand alone, and who will protect you from them?
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:27AM (3 children)
I worked for a rip off artist once, took over a month to realize that his BS was just that, BS and I left. He got 4 weeks work for 2 weeks pay and had a lineup of people looking for work. Even if everyone left as soon as they figured out the scam, the employer was still ahead. Being a corporation, it was also easy for him to fold one business and continue as another business when things caught up with him.
There's a reason that capitalism depends on a high unemployment rate, and it isn't for the benefit of the workers
(Score: 2) by migz on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:01AM (2 children)
Sorry that you got caught by this con artist, but without capitalism, this douche would still be a douche. That's not capitalisms fault. Well done for getting away. You should name and shame. It is your responsibility to protect others from harm by reporting on his actions. Hopefully by now his reputation is ruined, and nobody else is being caught out by this bloodsucker.
Capitalism does not depend on a high unemployment rate.
Btw. capitalism does not require corporations.
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday May 25 2017, @06:03AM (1 child)
Naming and shaming someone who has probably been dead for a few decades won't do any good.
While capitalism doesn't require corporations or a high unemployment rate, becoming super rich at the expense of society while doing the minimum of real productivity does. Our form of capitalism rewards efficiency, not morality.
(Score: 2) by migz on Saturday May 27 2017, @09:01AM
Sorry to raise an old thread.
Your form of government rewards connectedness to the elite, not efficiency.
The opposite of Capitalism is Central planning. Less capitalism means more elitism.
You cannot argue that because some people are bad, and you choose to mistakenly blame capitalism for this failure, that capitalism is at fault.
The axiom that some people are bad, holds true regardless of whether there is capitalism or not.
They question is what system is better considering that there are bad people?
Capitalism means that you get to keep what is yours, and are never forced to part with it against your will. It means that you are not forced to buy the government hamburgers, and that you are free to spend your money on avocado lattes, or craft beer. Nor are you forced to serve in the army, but can choose who you wish to work with (note not for, but with). Capitalism means that you can choose to transact with those you find moral.
Again the getting rich at the expense of society is only possible because of the central planning of the federal reserve monopoly which is empowered by the government. This is not the fault of capitalism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @05:07AM
During downturns (industry & general), both my wife and I at times accepted shady payroll practices just to keep a job by not making waves. Choice is nice when you have it. When you don't, ya gotta shuddup.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 22 2017, @03:56PM (6 children)
Just document it. No, not a month after you've fired, or quit, or whatever. Your first day on the job, bring a journal to work with you. Log the hours you work. Don't worry that carrying your journal around may cause it to get a little smudged or something. Keep it legible, but make sure it's "worn" to some extent. Keep that log for as long as you work - whether it is weeks, months, or years.
After you have moved on to greener pastures, hand that journal over to the labor board. I've often been told that the labor board will collect the difference in your at-work hours, and the hours you have been paid. I've never put it to the test, primarily because I can't remember where the hell I put my journal after about day twelve or so.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:40PM (4 children)
You're funny, Runaway. I hear this all the time. "Just document it." Seriously, those exact words, I hear them all the time. I hear those words specifically from boomers and they're a boomer catchphrase. Boomers who lived before the invention of the Xerox machine always say this. They actually think "just document it" still works. It doesn't.
Let me tell you what will happen when you "just document it." You will be accused of fabricating fraudulent documents, you will have confessed to disloyalty, and you will be fired.
Documents don't mean anything anymore, idiot. Not since photocopying and photoshopping make forging documents so easy, any disagreeable document can conveniently be presumed to be fraudulent.
Kindly take your bad advice and shove it up your ass from whence it dribbled. Asshole.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:43PM (1 child)
That's still a problem with documentation; get signatures, get stamps, etc.
Hell, in grade school, I was regularly accused of not turning in my homework assignments, so I told my teacher to sign a document that I had done so on every assignment I turned it; she laughed in my face at first, but I stood there until she signed it. Bitch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @07:07PM
Wow, if you are willing to share, I'm really curious where this was and when it happened (roughly).
This kind of behavior by a teacher was unheard of in my grade school years (through the 1960s & early 70s) in the NE USA. Even the bad teachers were honest and generally pretty fair.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:55PM
You poor, poor, illiterate douche. "you will have confessed to disloyalty, and you will be fired." Which part of " Keep that log for as long as you work - whether it is weeks, months, or years." did you fail to understand? Even poor idiot un-evolved baby boomers understood that going to the labor board while still employed will get you fired. Let me make this clear, even for the illiterate. DO NOT GO TO THE LABOR BOARD UNTIL AFTER YOU QUIT OR ARE FIRED OR LAID OFF!!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:17AM
Ever stop to think that maybe someone older than you may have experience with this and as a result know what to do? If you want to be a doormat because you're too stubborn or stupid to take advice from people with experience, that's your business. But maybe the rest of us ought to listen.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 22 2017, @05:17PM
The more important message is: employment at will works both ways.
If you have to keep a journal to get paid, you really should be investing that journal keeping effort in finding a better employer. If you can do both, great, but finding the more secure job is going to be far more important in the long run than whatever hours the bad employer cheated you out of.
Also, there's the marginal concern that your journal keeping activities might dampen future employers' enthusiasm for hiring you - no matter how legally right it is, employment at will works both ways, they can choose to not hire you for any reason or no reason.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @03:58PM (42 children)
When society becomes dependent on "There should be a law!", then members of society lose the capacity to be shrewd in their dealings with each other.
Worse yet, the lack of shrewdness prompts politicians to buy votes by establishing fake resource supply chains ("Welfare"), which just exacerbates the spiral towards dysfunctional social interaction.
A good example is Walmart, which tweaks its employment policies to meet governmental standards such that employees are forced to make ends meet by registering for welfare programs; this becomes a "normal" lifestyle, the result of which is that there is no strong signal to Walmart (or to the rest of society) that there are structural issues with the "real" economy. It also allows governmental officials to grab significant power, because so many people depend on these programs.
All great empires evolve towards this command-and-control structure, and they all fail because of it, requiring society to head back towards a more decentralized (and therefore robust) structure.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:09PM (8 children)
Dude, this is plain and simple contract law. Yeah I know it's actually employment law which is a whole 'nother ball of wax, but you're making a contract with somebody. I work n hours and you pay me r $/hr. My paycheck gross pay is gexpected = n × r. If gactual < gexpected, the contract has been violated.
I'm the men/angels AC and even I could figure that out. All it takes is employees not sucking up abuse and sticking to their guns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:11PM (7 children)
Next.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:24PM (6 children)
Unions?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @04:40PM (5 children)
That's what has given U.S. unions such a terrible reputation: They have largely been creatures of government, special interest groups that coerce people to associate with them. Once again, the problem has been legal mandate.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday May 22 2017, @04:51PM (4 children)
Except that when a union gets involved, you avoid the exact economic problem OP pointed out about Wal-Mart. Unions negotiate a fair contract with the employer without any government passing any laws. Without unions, the only way to get Wal-Mart to do better for their employees is through legislation.
I think you have a problem with the political activities of some straw man union. National politics is not the primary purpose of any union, even a union which engages heavily in them. Negotiating specific concessions from the employer is.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 22 2017, @05:07PM (3 children)
In the US, unions have historically wielded a lot of power. Power attracts the criminally minded. Criminals abuse power. Unions did a lot of good in this country, until they reached some threshold, and had to much power. Unions were instrumental in moving the American steel industry out of the United States, to Belgium and India.
Like most things, unions in moderation are wonderful. Overdosing is hazardous to your health.
I love arguing with union haters, just as much as I love arguing with union worshippers. Had there never been any unions in the US, our lives would be much more miserable than they are today. Corporations would openly buy and sell us, between themselves. Corporations would make all kinds of claims on us, and we would be powerless to argue those claims. On the other hand, unions allowed corruption to run rampant, so they have been stripped of a lot of power. You won't hear me singing the praises of unions, nor will you hear me bashing them - or not very much, anyway.
Unions are a necessary evil, I think.
(Score: 3, Informative) by meustrus on Monday May 22 2017, @05:17PM (2 children)
Citation needed on "Unions were instrumental in moving the American steel industry out of the United States, to Belgium and India." That would be directly opposed to their own self-interest, both of the union as an institution and of the individual workers that make up the union. If they wielded any power they would be using it to keep the jobs at home. Anything else just doesn't make sense.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 22 2017, @05:27PM (1 child)
1980's the steel companies losing lots of money. They tried to negotiate with the unions. "Take a 2% reduction in benefits for a couple years, and we'll get out of the mess we're in." The union answer was, "No, we'll take our Cost Of Living raises, now, or we'll shut the plants down." The corporations began asking themselves if non-American people can make steel. The obvious answer was "YES!" Some of those non-American people produced very good steel almost immediately, others needed some time to learn, and yet others still haven't learned. But, each of those groups fills a niche.
Union doctrine claimed that no one in the world could make steel like American steel workers make steel. The doctrine was proved wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:25AM
All that means is that the few years of non-raises / cuts would have delayed the offshoring of their jobs for a short bit. The corporations wanted to maintain their current infrastructure as long as possible, for profit maximization, but the end game would have been the same. "Get out of the mess we're in"? Nope, that is a major lie, and you should know better!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 22 2017, @04:47PM (31 children)
If what you said were true, and a more decentralized structure was actually more "robust," then why do decentralized societies historically also trend toward more centralized ones? For the longest time, the benefit of a centralized structure was military prowess -- if you were too "decentralized," it made it easier to conquer you... so human nature and ambition favored larger empires over independent smaller governmental units.
In modern times, you can look at the emergence of the modern "welfare state" in the U.S. Why did it happen? Basically, because the people demanded it during the Great Depression. Parts of the government (particularly the Supreme Court) valiantly fought against FDR's attempts to put more power into the federal government to create things like Welfare, Social Security, etc. But people were starving and dying. So they supported politicians who might actually try to help them (and did). State governments were not sufficient or coordinated enough to deal with a nation-wide economic disaster of that magnitude. (That's one significant reason why Hoover got voted out; even though he eventually started promoting stronger aid programs late in his presidency, early on he had established he was more of a "let the states figure it out" kind of guy. Voters realized that solution wasn't working for the emerging economic crisis.)
Now I'm sure your counterargument to this will be that FDR made the Great Depression worse (a common argument among conservative small-government types these days), or even that government regulation was the SOLE cause (somehow) of the Great Depression to begin with. (The latter one requires a real conspiracy theory view of history and denial of a bunch of facts. Government may have made some poor regulatory choices, but you can't blame the whole thing on the government.)
But all of that is irrelevant -- since your claim is that decentralized systems are more "robust." They can't be robust when people demand more centralization. That sort of thing has repeatedly happened throughout history -- populist movements following a crisis drive centralization... because decentralized systems are often inadequate to deal with large-scale crises.
Perhaps the Romans were wise in this regard: to them a dictator [wikipedia.org] was someone invested with near absolute but temporary power to deal with a particular crisis or pressing issue. Power was only temporarily concentrated, but then reverted back to usual. Unfortunately, even that system failed over time -- again due to populist movements around emerging crises.
Anyhow....
All this theoretical and historical talk is fun, but I can't imagine how decentralization is supposed to work in modern societies. Traditionally, the way to overcome your "shrewd dealing" in pre-modern societies was through local networks of trust -- you knew your neighbors and the local guy who ran the bank and the store and whatever. Everyone was always suspicious of the guy who passed through from out of town, because they had to be "on their guard" when dealing with him, in case he ripped them off or robbed them blind or whatever. In modern societies, we are forced to deal with people outside an immediate "network of trust" on an everyday basis. How can we do so without at least some centralized laws regulating standards of behavior?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Monday May 22 2017, @05:00PM (16 children)
Perhaps societies oscillate between decentralization and centralization as different limitations becomes clear?
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 22 2017, @06:36PM (15 children)
Agreed, though fundamental government structural changes are perhaps less likely to oscillate in this way. You usually need a war, a revolution, an invasion, an economic or environmental disaster, etc. to topple centralized power once established, whereas decentralized government often seems to evolve more centralized tendencies over time. But if we're talking about smaller-scale regulatory regimes within an established government, I agree that oscillation between regulation and deregulation is pretty common.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @06:51PM (14 children)
What makes an organization a government is the fact that said organization allocates resources through coercion rather than through prior agreement; it's not the case that people prefer to exist under the dictates of a government, but rather that a government prefers for people to exist under its dictates.
When society is built around a coercive organization, then the shit hits the fan when that organization becomes dysfunctional; in order to find a replacement for the dysfunction organization, people will naturally try to turn back towards the underlying decentralized system from which the now-dysfunctional centralization originally sprang, but because the organization is coercive, it will do some pretty nasty things to prevent this process.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 22 2017, @07:10PM
Once the government becomes enough dysfunctionaly nasty, people will return the nastiness.
But it is a problem with dysfunctionality enforced through coercion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @07:33PM (10 children)
You appear to be USAian.
You also appear to have made zero effort to investigate non-USAian systems.
Perhaps Bradley13 could inform us about how things go in his adopted homeland of Switzerland.
There, they have Direct Democracy. [wikipedia.org]
So, how have YOU -gotten involved- in making things better?
What constitutional amendments have YOU -actively- been working for that will disempower the status quo (which swapped a king-centric system for an Aristocracy-centric system[1] 2 centuries ago)?
...or do you just sit around and bitch in unconstructive ways?
[1] Electoral College, first-past-the-post vote counting, election campaigns that are not publicly funded, etc.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @07:58PM (9 children)
A democracy is just one group dictating to another group; actually, it's potentially worse than a one-man dictatorship, because a moron in a democracy has as strong a vote as a scholar.
Whether a dictator, an oligarchy, a warlord, a monarch, or a representative democracy, it's all the same: Coercion. A government is just an organization in the market, an organization that allocates resources by dictate rather than by agreement.
This is a fundamental problem, the solution to which is already known but only poorly implemented: Capitalism: Each resource is allocated solely by the person who gained control of that resource through prior, voluntary agreement; this is a philosophy of iterative contract negotiation and dispute resolution, and it does not require reliance on any one particular organization (especially, it does not require reliance on a government).
When humanity finally achieves civilization, there won't be a government.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @08:13PM (6 children)
You are a sad, pathetic individual.
With that level of cynicism, I'm surprised that you haven't killed yourself.
...and, centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson said specifically that an educated, informed public is essential to a Democracy.
(It's why the discounted postal rate for bulk mail i.e. newspapers was established and never revoked and land grants were given to colleges.)
The fact that USAians have allowed themselves to unquestioningly swallow bullshit that indoctrinates them into a system which continues to prop up an Aristocracy is at the root of the problem.
USAians plopping down in front of the TeeVee and allowing Lamestream Media to fill their minds with propagandistic nonsense is at the heart of the situation.
Right Wing Hate Radio is another part of this.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @09:42PM (5 children)
... the United States Government outlawed beer; it shuttered that 100-year-old pub, seized people's hard-won property, and threw them in cages for enjoying a secret pint.
I repeat: Representative democracy is no different from a dictatorship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @10:15PM (4 children)
It's interesting how you think that "the majority rules" is a broken system.
So far, the only thing you have suggested as an alternative is "no government".
I challenge you to gather together 1000 who feel as you do, start a settlement, and report back to us how The Law of the Jungle thing is working out for you.
A society needs a set of rules and a method to enforce those.
Libertarian denial of this is simply bullshit.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @10:44PM (3 children)
People drive on a particular side of the road not because it is mandated by a government, but because they don't want to die.
Contract negotiation, dispute resolution, and contract enforcement do not require coercion; indeed, the enforcement of a contract is voluntary by virtue of the fact that the parties involved agreed to such enforcement in advance, as per the contract.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @11:20PM
contract enforcement do[es] not require coercion
Boy, that shit you guys smoke in Libertarianland must be really great stuff.
Meanwhile, in the real world, gangland warfare is what the always-be-maximizing-profits business environment looks like without laws and courts and cops.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:08AM (1 child)
Look at the article we're discussing. There are lots of people who will break a contract as quick as it benefits them. And as the past shows, they'll hire their own mercenaries, or private police force to make sure that contract is not enforced.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @11:48AM
So, then, what could the point of your Government possibly be? It even fails at what you claim it's good at: Making sure people's contracts are enforced.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Monday May 22 2017, @08:56PM (1 child)
Of course it requires reliance on a government. At the lowest level, police and courts to keep me from just taking your goods. A government's blessing (via something called "courts") is necessary to guarantee those voluntary agreements are kept, and that I actually owned what I sold you. Intellectual "property" is an invention of government, and cannot exist without it. At a higher level, because modern society is not Adam Smith's capitalism. Capitalism requires a government to hand out special privileges called corporate charters. You must rely on a government for a corporation to exist. Capital markets require corporations, so fractions of ownership can be bought and sold. Who would invest in "AC's Widget Works" if, should the widget works commit a crime or go broke, the owners (investors) would be personally responsible?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @09:34PM
Capitalism entails an iterative, evolutionary process. There's no need for a god.
There is no requirement that one organization be blessed and ordained as being magically different from all other organization; there's no need to rely on a monopoly, let alone one that is violently imposed.
There is nothing magical about the security or contract-enforcement industry ("policing") or the dispute-resolution industry ("courts"); they can and should evolve in the market along with everything else. Indeed, most interactions in modern nations today are largely "private", entailing contract negotiation and all manner of arbitration processes which never even get close to a governmental court room.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:53AM (1 child)
No, pretty much the defining characteristic of government is not the use of force, but the claim of a moral monopoly on the use of force.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:46PM
You have not made a meaningful distinction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @06:30PM (8 children)
This was essentially explained to you here: [soylentnews.org]
Now, practice your extrapolation (though, maybe that's not within your abilities [soylentnews.org]).
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 22 2017, @06:43PM (7 children)
See, now you're just getting mean.
Anyhow, the quick response is that you're using a variant of the "No true Scotsman" fallacy. Apparently you want to claim that every "centralized" system is merely a "pocket" superimposed on top of an "underlying decentralized system." By that logic, the Italic city states that existed before the rise of Rome are just an "underlying decentralized system" that ended up exactly the same once the empire fell a millennium later. That's crazy. Even if there is some minor continuity among some of those local governments over a millennia, they were radically transformed over time by the presence of the "centralized" republic/empire. They didn't just revert to the "underlying decentralized system."
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @06:57PM (6 children)
That is an excellent display of your inability to reason meaningfully.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 22 2017, @08:25PM (5 children)
Dear Mr. AC,
You've taught me a valuable lesson today. Just a few hours ago, I went out of my way to comment on how important I thought ACs were to the discourse on this site. (Which I sincerely believed.) In response, you've chosen to attempt to troll me with ad hominem attacks, even as I've tried to respond politely.
So I'm done replying to ACs at least for the near future. If you want to actually have a discussion, either log in and own up to your trolling, or at least learn how to express yourself in something more than vague overgeneralizations. You rightly called me out earlier for my sometimes excessive verbosity. But a pithy reply without substance coupled with a personal attack is, I'd say, a much stronger indicator of an "inability to reason meaningfully," as you put it.
Cheers!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @08:44PM
For what it is worth, I enjoyed your comments and found them valuable. Please don't feel you need to respond, I don't want you to break with your new policy so soon. I just want you to know your words are thought provoking and valued, even by those of us without an account.
- JCD
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @09:37PM
I certainly won't miss your replies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @09:46PM (2 children)
It does not make sense to say that something is both "pithy" and "without substance".
I guess you really cannot reason meaningfully.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:44AM (1 child)
Pithy was a reference to what the comments were TRYING to be, without substance is what they actually WERE. Not AK, just helping a fellow AC be less of an idiot.
There are many ways to view pithy, as usual context is quite important for language. Sounds more like you're looking for minor flaws since you've got nothing better!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @04:50PM
So, the other AC made a statement that was—according to your definition—"full of substance", and yet it still makes sense to say that it was "without substance"?
To borrow a phrase, you people really cannot reason meaningfully...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @07:00PM
And we still haven't amended the Constitution to allow for these things; even retroactively doing so would be an improvement over the current situation. Why even have a Constitution at this point, if we're not even going to pretend to follow it? The ignorant, unprincipled, and easily manipulated masses will have their way in the end. Oh, a terrorist attack? The government needs new unconstitutional spying powers; it's fine because it's for security and the Constitution isn't a suicide pact. Oh, the Constitution doesn't allow for [policy I like]? Who cares, just ignore it and implement the policy anyway!
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday May 22 2017, @07:24PM (1 child)
Centralized power is good for more than just military action. Power is centralized when people require or expect immediate action. Military, economic, and social crisis are all good examples of such--like your Roman example. Look at the difference between the Executive and Legislative branches on creating laws/executive orders. Congress has yet to address people's rights to privacy to their digital property, yet a offhanded mention from the POTUS can generate tremendous action and universally violate or protect your information on your devices. However, just like your Roman example, centralized power is easy to abuse. And when a centralized government makes a wrong decision, it is usually severe because there was not the (hopefully) thoughtful discussion before committing to a decision.
In regards to your Great Depression example, FDR was the right person. I will not debate the cause of the Depression, but unlimited, unsecured credit given to the masses seems like a good start to some financial issues. Even if every one of FDR's decisions was wrong, his persona of having a solution and a plan that benefited the average American was precisely what the country needed during that time to recover emotionally from the Depression. FDR's New Deal gave the common man hope that the wages for his labor will make ends meet and the government was working to ensure there was a demand for his labor and a solution for when he became too infirm to work. If the New Deal actually did what it intended to do or if it harmed the recovery is a debate for the historians. My argument is FDR prompted action when Congress couldn't even come to a decision on what hand a one armed man is required to use when wiping his own ass.
Now, should a centralized government remain in power? Ultimately no. The argument of the founding fathers and the examples throughout history show that an all powerful executive leads to tyranny. Whoever bet 250 years for the US to remain a democracy had some pretty good insight. We're not quite there yet, but the light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to look like an oncoming freight train. I'll become a miracle believing FSM worshiper if sanity is restored to D.C. in the next decade.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @07:37PM
A double carriage return works better.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday May 22 2017, @08:29PM (1 child)
"If what you said were true, and a more decentralized structure was actually more "robust," then why do decentralized societies historically also trend toward more centralized ones? "
This really reads to me like, "Why do hard workers spoil their children? I am assuming that over time everything improves, so, therefore, their spoiled children must be better than they are."
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:04PM
"why do decentralized societies historically also trend toward more centralized ones? "
Centralized government isn't necessarily a preferred state, just a consequence of the behavior of government (government is like a simple life form....consume to available resource, try to get more resources, destroy competition).
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by chewbacon on Monday May 22 2017, @06:25PM
Yeah, but people won't do the anything they don't want to do unless they are coerced to. People don't want to be complacent with getting screwed out of wages, but they fear losing their jobs and while being comforted by the idea of taking credit to make ends meet. Meanwhile, those making the call to screw people out of wages can't hear about or see the problem from their big houses on big lots of land in high income areas. So what do the little people do? Get a law passed, unless it effects a company with big pockets. Then it's the other political party's fault as they continue to get screwed.
A hospital I worked for rolled out an on-call program for nurses. It was really mandatory overtime, but they avoided using the term since it is linked to poorer patient outcomes. A nurse on call would get time and a half if they were called in. Eventually, we found out, if you went into overtime because you were on call, you waived your incentive rate for being called in. Waived, as if you had a choice. A few nurses ended up reaching out to the state nursing association, an advocacy group, who condemned the hospital that didn't care and the group said it was perfectly legal, albeit unethical.
Get a job where you can screw over everyone you know and ruin their lives, but it's legal. Be a business executive!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by idiot_king on Monday May 22 2017, @05:42PM (22 children)
All the proof continues to point that Capitalism incentivizes people to take advantage of each other for the greatest profits, and only hurts people.
How many stories like this do we have to read to realize the system is broken and shortchanges us all? Seriously!
When all the evidence points that something doesn't work, you throw it out and try something different.
Get rid of Capitalism, you get rid of sh*t like this! Come on, people!
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @06:41PM (4 children)
It is in my self-interest to live in a society that runs smoothly, and that is robust and functional, and therefore provides adequate access to the resources that I both want and need.
That is to say, it is in my self-interest to make sure that I allocate my capital (my resources) towards endeavors and organizational structures that yield such an outcome; that is capitalism—the notion that I control the resources over which I've gained control through prior agreement with those around me (that is, through voluntary trade/interaction).
That's all Capitalism is.
Capitalism is the acknowledgement that overall, resources are allocated best when they are allocated solely by the person who gained control of those resources through prior agreement. That's it. Capitalism is the most liberal, poverty-destroying, robust, modern, civilized philosophy of society in the history of mankind. If any other philosophy of society is to work, it must be based around a foundation of capitalism. Period. Full stop.
Now, bugger off!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @07:59PM (3 children)
Unless you are a billionaire, -your- capital doesn't mean shit.
There are folks with gobs of multi-generational wealth who own the vast majority of the stock, vote as a bloc, and make your ownership/vote inconsequential.
Bernie Sanders has, yet again, proposed a system that will give support for Employee Stock Ownership Plans.
The thing is that, even with an ESOP, it is still one vote per share (still Capitalism).
With the boom-and-bust cycle and 4 giant economic crashes in the USA, Capitalism has repeatedly shown itself to be a failed system.
If you had a roommate as unstable as Capitalism, you would have kicked his ass out long ago.
The solution to making things better is one vote per owner.
Making the Ownership Class and The Working Class one and the same (Socialism) is the hurdle to be crossed to get to something better.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @08:08PM (2 children)
Democracy is a sham: The moron's vote has as much weight as the vote of a scholar. No, thanks.
The weight of a person's vote should increase or decrease based on that person's historical performance; if that person makes a bad bet, his vote loses weight; if that person makes a good bet, his vote gains weight.
Keep your grubby, sticky, unwashed fingers out of my pockets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @08:21PM (1 child)
If your wisdom/experience is so much greater than everyone else's, you should easily be able to persuade the majority that your way is the correct way.
...you sad, pathetic hump.[1]
[1] used in the signoff of comedian/interviewer/political commentator David Feldman's weekly program on Pacifica Radio.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @10:50PM
The world is filled with people who believe that the creator of the entire universe wants people to cut chunks of flesh off little boys' sexual organs. Good luck working with that.
If fools like Lenin are capable of amassing followers by the millions, then there is very little hope that good ideas will triumph by persuasion alone; there are so many morons, that you must expect disaster to come before the solution—hence the phrase "It will get worse before it gets better."
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 22 2017, @07:14PM
Which is why there are laws on spam, environmental protection, volunteering of contract, violent guards, fraud etc. Mostly about not being allowed to externalize costs.
(Score: 1) by UncleSlacky on Monday May 22 2017, @07:32PM (2 children)
Exactly - it's time to SEIZE THE MEANS!
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday May 22 2017, @07:52PM
To the Internets! - SEIZE THE MEMES!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @09:39PM
That's not how Mondragon did it.
Mondragon started in 1956 with zero capital and 6 worker-owners.
They have competed with the Capitalist operations and, in the process, the Mondragon worker-owned cooperative regularly eats the lunch of their competitors.
Today, Mondragon has over 100,000 worker-owners.
Similar deal in Italy where there are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of worker-owned cooperatives which were formed with unemployment insurance payouts owed to workers who had been idled by boom-and-bust Capitalists.
That re-thinking of how to do things in Italy (which now accounts for a significant portion of their economy) started in 1985.
The Marcora Law [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Monday May 22 2017, @08:31PM
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good
(Score: 2) by migz on Monday May 22 2017, @09:26PM (11 children)
It's not Capitalism that makes people greedy. That's human nature. Capitalism gives us the power to stop supporting those we consider too greedy. Capitalism gives us a choice. When there is no Capitalism there is no choice. Then only the powerful, the members of the central committee, those more equal than others, get to choose.
If my burger joint charges too much, then I buy my burgers, elsewhere. If my burger joint puts horse meat in their burgers, then I buy my burgers somewhere else. If government made the burgers, we would consider ourselves lucky for the rare privilege of eating shit-burgers.
If you don't like the way your boss is treating you, go get a better boss. The old one doesn't give a shit right? It's like a bad relationship. You don't try get the arse to behave. You leave. That's the answer. That's capitalism. The alternative is everyone works for the government, and if your boss is an arse-hole, then there is nothing you can do about it.
Oh right. Idiot king...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @10:01PM (3 children)
Capitalism gives us a choice
That's NOT Capitalism.
You're talking about MARKETS.
Markets existed before Capitalism and will still exist after Socialist workplaces are the norm.
Capitalism is a method of PRODUCTION.
That model, with its concentrated ownership, stands in contrast to Socialism where the means of production is owned collectively by the workers.
Today, the (Socialist) Mondragon cooperative regularly competes with Capitalist operations and regularly eats their lunch.
There were markets when there were slave economies and there were markets when Feudalism was The Big Thing.
Capitalism is just one rung on the ladder on the way to something better.
...and that rung has just about worn through.
...and OBTW, it's nice to hear that you aren't in the USA and that you have so many ISPs from which to choose.
Because...Capitalism.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @10:56PM (2 children)
Capitalism always existed, because it is what works.
It's just that nobody codified capitalism; nobody uttered the phrase "voluntary trade" (or, perhaps more generally, "voluntary interaction").
Capitalism is the foundational theory; if socialism is to work, it must be based on top of capitalism (e.g., a person chooses to allocate his capital towards "socialist" endeavors; that is, a person chooses to associate with socialist organizations).
Capitalism is the new idea. Capitalism is the attempt to rid humanity of the ancient ideas of authoritarianism—capitalism is the notion that there is no such thing as a "noble" class ordained by "God" through birth to rule over others.
You are a capitalist. Accept it. That is your philosophy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 22 2017, @11:54PM (1 child)
Capitalism is the attempt to rid humanity of the ancient ideas of authoritarianism
Gawd, you are fucking ignorant.
How can you possibly still be alive after swallowing that much bullshit?
Capitalism is all about concentrating wealth and power.
It's an employer/employee relationship with the employee having zero power.
Capitalism -IS- Authoritarianism in the economic arena.
...and Thomas Piketty's 696-page analysis of Capitalism concludes that Capitalist economics always results in Oligarchy in government.
Socialism has at its core **distributed/democratic** ownership, with only producers (workers) being owners (One worker == One vote), replacing a system where the idle rich have the only vote(s) that count.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:37AM
[...]
Except when they aren't. There's little point, once again, to definitions that no one else agrees on. Capitalism is about private ownership of capital and the infrastructure, such as capital markets, needed to make that happen. Socialism is merely about ownership of capital by or on the behalf of a society. It can be done in a democratic manner, but it doesn't need to be. For example, the thing you've termed "state capitalism" (which is rather state socialism) in the past is a classic case of non-democratic socialism.
Further, I sense as many times before, that this is just an argument from semantics - defining things in a way to automatically win arguments. Capitalism is defined as bad and socialism defined as good. But reality doesn't fit the spin of the definitions.
It also leads to colossal myopia. In particular, the enormous benefits of our widespread capitalist systems are being roundly ignored when one obsesses about alleged concentration of wealth and power (especially when such concentrating is done by blatantly non-capitalist approaches! What other system is supposed to work when you deliberately break it?) rather than an overall view, such as how beneficial such systems are to the whole of society (after all, the point of socialism is to benefit society as a whole) or the efficacy of the approach.
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Monday May 22 2017, @10:14PM (6 children)
Stay around enough and, without checks, there will be a single burger provider and the burgers will be as expensive as you can pay for them. If not enough of population can afford to pay for burgers above the production cost, the quality of them will degrade until it becomes profitable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday May 23 2017, @03:02AM
Just as an aside, I think horse meat would be much better than some of the things that end up in burgers.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 23 2017, @07:49AM
Yup, capitalism may be an ideal that could work in an ideal world where everyone could easily set up their own shop. Human greed results in many situations where newcomers are forced out, can't afford to compete with economy of scale, etc.
Regulation is required to keep capitalism working properly, otherwise it devolves into monopolies and cartels as c0Lo pointed out.
(Score: 2) by migz on Tuesday May 23 2017, @08:07AM (3 children)
If the price of burgers gets high enough, then I will go into the burger business and get rich. If the inputs get too expensive to produce decent burgers, then that's economics telling us to become vegetarian. It is much better then getting the tax-payer to subsidise the production of cheap corn, to be fed to cattle, to make cheap burgers.
Also correct, that the government is a monopoly. Under capitalism abusive monopolies are unsustainable, because new entrants can enter the market and take away their business. Under government an artificial monopoly can be created and protected from competition, and abuse its patrons at will.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 23 2017, @12:19PM (2 children)
Cool.
Here's an opportunity for you: iGadgets are overpriced for their capabilities.
Now, get off your ass, stop wasting time and get into business of making iPhones or their equiv - sorta like Samsung, only cheaper.
I'll meet you in a year at the Ritchie-Rich club and you'll pay me a beer for the tip I gave you today. Deal?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Tuesday May 23 2017, @02:37PM (1 child)
"Gadgets are overpriced for their capabilities.
Now, get off your ass, stop wasting time and get into business of making iPhones or their equiv - sorta like Samsung, only cheaper.
I'll meet you in a year at the Ritchie-Rich club and you'll pay me a beer for the tip I gave you today. Deal?"
That's a saturated razor thin margined commodity market (albeit with ludicrously high cost of entry and high switching costs for consumers, which are a slightly different discussion.) It is the exact opposite of 'price of burgers gets high enough'
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday May 23 2017, @09:57PM
So the burger analogy/model is of limited value when applied to the entire economy? And conclusions based on this analogy may be terrible flawed? Who would have thunk?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford