Geert Hofstede's "Culture's Consequences" is one of the most influential management books of the 20th century. With well over 80,000 citations, Hofstede argues that 50 percent of managers' differences in their reactions to various situations are explained by cultural differences. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri has determined that culture plays little or no part in leaders' management of their employees; this finding could impact how managers are trained and evaluated globally.
"We all want a higher quality of life, a desirable workplace environment and meaningful work -- no matter our home country," said Arthur Jago, professor of management in the Robert J. Trulaske College of Business at MU. "In management theory, we focus more on leaders' differences rather than their similarities. By analyzing the data in a new way, I found that managers across country borders and across cultures are more alike than different."
Crud. Does this mean you can't get away from PHB's no matter where you go?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Thursday December 22 2016, @06:28PM
It's this sort of confusion that is typical of Marxism. In my view, I don't own something that I can't trade. So either I own the output of my labor and can, via contract, exchange ownership of the output of my labor to an employer. Or I can't which implies I don't own the output of my labor. Which is it, aristarchus?
Once again, my dear and fluffy khallow, the confusion is on your part! But you already knew that. Exchange value is only one aspect of value, and it is capitalism's reduction of all value to this single one is what Marx refers to as "commodity fetishism" in the opening pages of Das Kapital. Here possession is the law, not labor. John Locke, who you may have heard of, tried to hold that it was the mixture of one's labor with some natural material that introduced property rights, but this soon becomes only a fiction.
The other form of ownership is what we might call inalienable: Copyright law focuses on the right to make copies, production of commodities, and restriction of the right to trade. But there is the other aspect of copyright, the more important, I think, what the Berne convention refers to as the "moral right" of an author. This is what Marx is talking about, that the product of your labor be yours, even if it be sold and "owned" by another. So it still exists under copyright, and in most craft and arts, where the producer is part of the product, or in other words, is not alienated.
Stealing authorship is the crime we are talking about here. There is a vast difference between "unauthorized copying" of an artist's work, and trying to claim that you are the author of the work, plagiarism. Of course, authorship can be just as extinguished in industrial production: a worker will more often than not be unable to tell which particular widget he actually produced a part of. (And it is worse, as Henry Ford knew, when the worker is unable to afford to own what he produces, but that is another issue.) Work-for-hire does the same thing, only the producer does know, and the reduction of ownership to possession and right to alienation (exchange, or gift, or destruction) is something of a legal fiction.
The really twisted version, though, is the essence of Trumpism: Branding and ghostwriting. Someone hires an artisan to produce a work specifically for the purpose of the employer claiming authorship? We usually call this "fraud", or market plagiarism, or intellectual slavery. Is your confusion relieved, khallow? I trust you are not being intentionally obtuse.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 23 2016, @01:08AM
and it is capitalism's reduction of all value to this single one is what Marx refers to as "commodity fetishism" in the opening pages of Das Kapital.
And there's another slanted term that no one else respects. If only we could get rid of the many brutally boring parts in between, it'd be a proper parody of human thought.
Exchange value is only one aspect of value
There are two things to note here. First, value is not ownership. You are conflating two very different ideas. Second, there are an uncountably infinite number of valuations possible at any given time and the Marxism-flavored one is just one of many such.
But the only valuations that matter are the preferences we express by making choices. It's decisions that make valuation real. Since we're speaking of choices made in the course of trade (capitalism otherwise not being relevant aside from the context of the trade), then of course, it's exchange value by default.
This is what Marx is talking about, that the product of your labor be yours, even if it be sold and "owned" by another.
And we now get to the supernatural aspect of Marxism, labor cooties. So how do I deal with the world being awash in labor cooties? I don't care about it one fucking bit. You would do well to do the same.
I think also you haven't thought through the implications. This sort of ownership rationalization is also why companies are converting ownership to subscriptions. When you no longer own the things that you buy, that causes Marxism-like problems.
I will say this, you do make a good case that Marxism is some sort of moderately communicable mental illness. But I'm not feeling it past that observation.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday December 23 2016, @01:58AM
So, Azuma got to you, eh? Alright, I can wait until you are capable of rational discussions of the issues again. However long it takes.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 23 2016, @05:14AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 23 2016, @06:40AM
Sincerity is important but so is being correct. You, Mr. Hallow, are very often incorrect, and dangerously so. You may not have a problem with me, but I sure as shit have a problem with you, and am thanking my lucky stars your hands are nowhere near the metaphorical levers of power.
Your biggest problem, ironically, is a cancerous case of the aforementioned "feelz over realz hurr hurr hurr." Specifically, you are an ideologue: you have an abstract notion of what "capitalism" and "free market" and "regulation" are, and attempt to bend reality around these frankly solipsistic, self-serving definitions. You are placing ideas above the people they were created to serve. This is a kind of secular idolatry, a sort of moral priority-inversion bug, and we've seen the results time and time again when this is tried with everything from hard collectivism to utter laissez-faire.
It's always the same result. In theory any of these pure ideological systems could work, and in practice none of them do, and all for the same reason: people are complex, messy, irrational things, and in large numbers you get some truly bizarre emergent behaviors. This insistence on ideological purity at the cost of unbounded suffering and death is the mark of a sociopath.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday December 23 2016, @12:38PM
My only interest is in your education, khallow. You seem to be intelligent enough. But perhaps you have been mislead by some unwarranted assumptions. It is alright. Happens to all of us, at some point in our lives. But I can see that right now you have doubled down and shut down and cannot even read, let alone consider, what I have written. The tarbaby is the assumptions you have attached yourself to, much like your default position on global warming. Not much I can do to convince you otherwise, if you refuse to engage in rational discussion.
So: labour (best to use the English spelling, more dignified?): My point is that if I make something, it is mine, my product. This may be touchy-feely to you, but perhaps you have never actual engage in physical labor before. I find that this is a common short-coming amoungst the neo-conservative, alt-right, libertarian, and even neo-liberals. Truly, the everyman connection with actual production is lost, ergo, more alienation. But even in fast-food emporiums, the old dictum of "put a little of yourself into everything you serve!" is being upheld. Except, since they are given no creative options, the only thing they can do is spit on your burger, or lick all your taco shells. Not that I would condone such action, but also that I never eat at such places, at least not since that one video.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Friday December 23 2016, @02:10PM
Then there's the cognitive dissonance such as insisting that labor continues to "own" the products of its labor long after labor has sold them away. Even if we ignore the raw terribleness of the idea of permanent, irrevocable ownership (which has let us note been used, sometimes successfully, by both businesses and government to claim ownership over a lot of things), it still means that by that idea, I don't own my labor well enough that I can sell the output of it to someone else without creating permanent entanglements. Thus, the Marxist version of labor ownership is actually a weakening of the ownership of labor while the opposite is claimed.
Another spectacular example of this happened in Das Kapital where Marx backs up his claim that the "capitalist" doesn't add value via his labor by proof via heavy sarcasm and nonsense story where the capital's stooges are smirking as the capitalist makes these claims.
Another such happened when you equated value with ownership. Just because someone thinks something is valuable doesn't mean that they own it.
There's the broken ways of looking at the world such as obsessing over the conflict of interest between workers and everyone else, or using dialectic materialism as a starting point for any sort of reasoning - when you can get the same results, even the same broken fallacies, for less effort, by not doing that.
Then there's the parts of Marxism that just have no connection to reality at all, like claiming that there's some unalienable ownership of the products of labor, asserting stuff which doesn't work that way in the real world (like insisting the added value of capital is zero, even though it painfully is not), or asserting an asymptotic march of human society to a particular flavor of utopia by a process that never has to work in reality, much less do that particular march.
When confronted with these sorts of problems, I notice the rebuttal always ends up that the flaw is with me not with this incredibly broken reasoning. This is typical religious evangelism. You disagree merely because you're not listening to God. The fault is always with the skeptic not the kool aid drinker.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 23 2016, @10:02PM
When confronted with these sorts of problems, I notice the rebuttal always ends up that the flaw is with me not with this incredibly broken reasoning.
This must happen to you quite a lot! You know, if something like this happens consistently, it just might be that the common factor is the cause. Not saying that correlation is causation or anything, but there is an obvious rebuttal, you know. And like I said, I can wait.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:02AM
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:06AM
Still waiting. . .
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 24 2016, @06:45AM
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Saturday December 24 2016, @08:23AM
But I have hope for you, khallow! Faith in your fellow thinking creatures is not insanity. So, I'll keep waiting. After the holidays is fine. But just keep this in mind: pride in craftsmanship, a signed original, "I built that". Non-transferable property rights.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 24 2016, @09:13AM
But just keep this in mind: pride in craftsmanship, a signed original, "I built that". Non-transferable property rights.
A "property right" that only exists in the imagination of some crafters, can't be exercised, and has no relevance to the real world. Quite the solid foundation for Marxism, isn't it? Maybe I'll invent my own imaginary sky god to watch over you. He'll be patient too.
You're shooting blanks. Your naked emperor has truly gone fishing.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday December 26 2016, @03:49AM
Oh, you silly libertarian! Here, I want to sell you a Picasso, except that it was not painted by Picasso. Or I want a drop point hunting knife, handcrafted by Bob Loveless! What? Produced by some factory in f-+*ing China? Well, not the same thing, then, is it? The labor of the craftsman matters, unless you are going to go all generic. Generic Bespoke Custom KHallow, that is what I got for Christmas.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 26 2016, @09:22AM
Look, I don't know what your actual opinion on these matters is. But if this is your real opinion, then you need to get a better one. This whole thread has been a chain of obvious rebuttals to your bizarre and unfounded claims and meanderings. But since you've relied on Karl Marx, how could it be different? Sorry, the dude had some interesting ideas, but wish fulfillment had higher priority than rational argument or things that actually work, and his whole edifice is a dull, wandering morality play which makes for lousy philosophy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 16 2017, @10:58AM
No. Since humanity is finite, the number of possible valuations at any given time is at most countably infinite.