SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.