Injuries to All

Typical.Republicans spew populist rhetoric,vagaries like"moral values”,yet when it comes to actually helping the workers they claim to support,they’re nowhere to be found.I’m sorry,they are somewhere to be found:in the pocket of big businesses cheating their workers.

Get off it, Stan ! The dumbass workers cause
most of their own injuries.
If anything the corporations are too benevolent
with these goons.

Right on, wwoods!  What could be more “family values” than assuring a safe work environment with decent pay and benifits?  If only the voters could wake up and see that the Republicans (and many Dems) don’t give a crap about their welfare or the welfare of the American family.  Sigh....

G.O.P. ==> Government of the corporation, by the corporation and for the corporation.

BTW, do you know what G.O.P. really stands for? Gang of Pimps.

How is a union any different from a business? They both have the same goal of maximizing their participation in the contract. With less investors in a company than there are employees, the increase in cost of the company’s products will be more affordable to the investors and less so to the workers when each acts as a consumer and buys their own product.

The rest of us are forced to deal with their prices - which sucks.

If Patemt Law dropped away, these investors and workers could make products at lower costs any time they wanted - then we’d see true market forces working to hone just what this species is going to produce.

As long as we’re ignorant TV people, we’ll never see it coming.

SHubert,
True,a union does have a goal of maximizing profits for its workers.However,you have to bear in mind that money will be used for the consumption of other goods and services.Management can still charge the same pricve for non-union goods as it does for union goods.As a matter of fact,many companies do.The difference is the amount of material benefit to the worker as opposed to the benefit to C.E.O.
Consider this:Where is more production generated,in a C.E.O spending a million dollars to buy a vintage Bugatti,or five hundred workers
buying five hundred Fords or Chevrolets?Funny enough,but not only do the Ford workers benfeit,so does the Ford C.E.O.

Republicans and the big-business cohorts are playing an economic game which could be called conservative.Others would call it stingy or greedy.

Thinking about the Republicans hatred of the French.They don’t really hate them,they fear them.The French did something about arrogant rich people who treated the poor like a commodity.Republicans are afraid the same idea might take root here,and deservedly so.Hence, French-bashing,put forth by very rich guys at Fox News and the EIB network.

If it wasn’t for those millionaires there would
be no jobs for workers. The personal consumption
of the rich counts for very little in the overall
economy but even their spending creates jobs.
Of course, 500 CEO’s generate a great deal more employment than 500 workers but that’s not the point either. Without the investment there would
be no employment and that investment must come from the rich, i.e., the people who have money.
Union goods are priced higher because of the greater labor costs. Economics 101.
Capitalism by George Reisman, Human Action by
Ludwig Von Mises, Man, Economy and State by
Murray N. Rothbard and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
are very worthwhile to get a different viewpoint
on capitalism.

Rhetoric aside, Rotten Robbie, have you even worked on a factory floor?  I have been both a union worker and management and I tell you one thing, worker safety ALWAYS takes a back seat to productivity and profit!  When a safety guard on a machine is removed in order to speed up the process how is the worker to blame?  Get your head out of your ass.

Rotten Robbie,

Would you mind telling me how a mine worker causes the mine to collapse when he follows,exactly the rules set forth by management.Quite often the standards,which are as malleable as silly putty by the unscrupulous.Why are they made malleable?Profit.Management,more and more,views labor as an expense and not as crucial part of business.

Jack,

How do you think millionaires get their money.A few may get it from the powerballs,but most get it from others working from them.Do you honestly think Bill Gates could have made 50 billion dollars by assembling 50 million computers himself?What about Henry Ford?Capital and management must have labor in order to make money.Also Economics 101.While union items do cost more,those workers are also able to buy more goods and services which benefits other workers.
This is the same ridiculous argument beginning that I had with J Craig last month,if you aren’t him as well.

Jack,
Two other points:

1)Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a cult of selfishness,the perceived strong justifying stepping on others.great unless you’re being stepped on.Cult?Ask some of her former associates.
You can read Ayn Rand for a different view on capitalism just like you can read The Turner Diaries for a different view on political dissent.

2)Don’t you think it’s a bit perverse to blog on using the name of a noted labor leader,then bashing the very ideas that man stood for?

Your blogging names are also showing a pattern.

Again,why not just use Louis Friend?Maybe you’ll use Lin Biao?

Hey Jack, instead of filling your head with books written by people with a vested intrest in capitalism try watching the documentary The Corporation.  Might give you a better idea about the system in which we live.  I also believe that capitalism can work, but capitalism without restriction leaves the door open for criminal behavior, think Enron, Worldcom, GE ...

We seemed to have returned to the early years of the progressive era when the lives and limbs of workers have a very low value in dollars and cents to big capitalists whose only concern is profits!  Maybe more regulations and social concern would stem the greed of the much maligned ambulence chasing trial lawyers.  In US Labors’ golden age of defined benefit health care and pensions, OSHA, good pay, and assiduous regulation of industry (which industry largely supported!) those menacing lawyers were rarely heard from!  Today, they have LITERALLY become a substitute for the role of government in guaranteeing the public and workering people’s well being through costly lawsuits instead of efficient, preventitive, common sense, regulatory legislation.  I say the old way was far preferable!

Proud vet (what are you proud of ?) you are proving my point, instead of taking your own
advice and looking at the other side, you simply
use the old ad hominem methods of attacking the
opposing viewpoint as bought off rather than
having a different point of view.
And yes, the workers are real fvckoffs in many
cases as I’ve observed from a variety of work
situations in over 42 years of working.
It is precisely the mixed economy capitalism
WITH restriction that has failed and Enron is
a great example of what Ayn Rand called the
pull peddlers, people using governmental
connections to get what they couldn’t in a
real capitalistic society. We have had 150
years of your state interventions at all levels
of government and they do not work in addition
to being morally wrong.
Wwoods, unlike you I use only my name. Never
heard of any labor leader with the same name.
Oh, the labor theory of value was discredited
well over a century ago. The workers do not
create wealth, physical labor as such never
does in an industrial society. It is the entrepreneurs who create the wealth by financing
and managing the transformation of raw materials
into products that satisfy human needs, that people are willing to pay for, for details
see Atlas Shrugged or the Reisman tome.
The same Nader mentality that created the
government agencies also created the lawsuit
pandemic, both are attempts to steal from the
owners of wealth to give unearned benefits
to workers and ambulance chasers.
A legitmate lawsuit is worth more than all those
agencies combined. Bush is right (for a change)
in wanting to curb lawsuits.

Jack, I am proud that I have volunteered to serve my country, and to defend the Constitution.  What work have you been involved with that qualifies your statements?  How many times can you use “ad hominem” in order to try and derail another person’s arguments.  You don’t seem to really have a grasp as to what an ad honinem is.  In every thread you are involved in you either say someone is using ad hominem or taking drugs.  You are a hateful old bastard.

Jack,

What I am saying is that well designed regulatory legislation that prevents problems will avoid expensive lawsuits thus avoiding needless pain and suffering and leaving more wealth to circulate in the general society for productive purposes.  We sometimes must be forced to act in our own self-interest.  That is the purpose of good government.  It coordinates collective action in the interest of all which otherwise would not emerge from individual calculations and rationality which often avoids seeing the bigger picture and hopes to selfishly externalize the costs of individual gains!

Isn’t Any Rand a novelist?

Proud Vet

Ann Rand is the name of a Russian-Jewish writer who emigrated to the US and did much writing in the post-WWII period.  She was apparently horrified by Stalinist collectivism and its brutality and went mindlessly counterphoebic as sometimes occurs.  Her many novels extoll individualism and selfishness as the core values of a free society.  She concurs with people like Margaret Thatcher who claimed “there really is no such thing as society, only individuals or families.” For such people only individual or small group rationality exists.  They disregard the obvious significance of power inequality, rigid class boundaries, patterns of history and their role in conditioning society, and the total lack of choice most people face in determining the course of their lives.  Seeing things from the bottom up gives perspective.

Thank you steve, but my point is that people who base their philosophy on fictional writings lend no credence to their philosophy.  Might as well follow Steven King, John Grisham, or the Bible for that matter.

Dear Jack,

while we are bragging with our knowledge of the subtleties of advanced capitalism, it would be wise to problematize some of the assumptions you make about one of the basic premises of the production/consumption cycle, namely your ideologically quite suspect (but obviously telling) representation of the commodity fulfilling “human needs.” This rhetoric suggests, as I am sure you are perfectly aware of, that the producer creates a commodity to satisfy a pre-existent need within the consumer. You thus try to argue here that the need precedes the commodity, which, as we all know from any study of consumer capitalism and marketing strategies that further determine new product development, is precisely not the case. Consumer capitalism rests in large upon the manufacturing and disseminating of needs within the consumer that are then assigned a commodity and niche. Your rhetoric which is oh so popular (or populist) these days tries desperately to rescue the last bit of democracy appearance neoliberal ideology tries to cling to in order to hide its increasingly hegemonic system of production and exploitation. It is precisely this form of unsubstantial surface democracy of neoliberal politics that the author the original article attempts to point toward. The closest we get to your representation of consumer capitalism is the strategy of pattern recognition, but even that is still miles away from your neoliberal demagogy.

If you attempt to criticize the labor theory of value you do, however, need to situate your critique in the correct socio-economic conjuncture, which will force you to abandon the desperate attempts to cling to the democratic rhetoric that in times of neoliberalism is simply too easy to see through as to present a valuable opposition to progressive critiques of capitalism. I am sure you are aware that post-Fordist production has become increasingly immaterial, extending to the psyche of the worker/consumer and involving the worker/consumer more deeply than ever in the process of surplus production, which then, and only then, creates the disposable capital that allows the CEO etc. to engage in financial transactions. Your representation of these new forms of surplus production as democratic in nature, relying upon outdated representations of the production cycle are simply too easy to be persuasive to a truly informed audience. Post-Fordist production relies more upon the worker/consumer and involved them more deeply in the production of disposable capital then ever before and this in a totalitarian way that erases the logic of your imagined liberalism at the very point of its climax.
Suggested reading that takes this historical moment seriously: Giulielmo Carchedi.

Proud vet, you can’t even spell ad hominem.
It is to attack the person in lieu of dealing
with his arguments. You can call someone a
rotter but if you use namecalling as a substitute
for dealing with their views you are committing
the logical fallacy of ad hominem.
And you do it in every posting but you are not
alone.
Ayn Rand wrote three novels, at least seven nonfiction books, a novelette and two plays.
Leonard Peikoff’s Objectivism:The Philosophy
of Ayn Rand is a good place to see the whole
picture of her philosophy. She was as much a
philosopher as a novelist.
But if you disdain fiction, then check all the
other books I recommended above which are nonfiction.
Poum, if the need wasn’t there in some form,
no one would buy the product. Fortunately, I
do not have to refute the labor theory of value,
it’s already been done, see Human Action by Mises.
Being forced to act in our own self-interest is a
contradiction in terms, Steve. Force and mind are
opposites, force paralyzes the mind and the thinking process and is an anti-creative element.
No one owns our individual lives but ourselves
and there can no equalization of costs because
the people who do not commit fraud or cause injury
should not be required to subsidize those who do.
Goverment agencies take away the whole of individual responsibility much as the disastrous
no-fault divorce have done in the realm of marriage and thus intruded the state ever further
into was previously a private affair.
I do not favor administrative law which regulates
conduct in advance. I do favor objective law
wherein a perpetrator of a real crime faces
punishment after the crime. The state has no role
to play in prevention other than the knowledge
that committing a crime leads to consequences.
So I am opposed to administrative or preventive
or regulatory law but favor the common law and
torts where legitimate.
I do not believe that the collective acquires any rights whatsoever apart from the right of its
individual members and as Rand stated (Thatcher
merely echoed her) there is no such thing as
society, it is only a term of convenience for
people living in a common geographical area.
Proud vet, you never served your country because
your country was never under attack, even Pearl
Harbor was only the result of FDR’s goading the
Japanese into war. And it was a colony thousands
of miles from the USA. The last defensive war
the US fought was 1812.
So I always vote against every Veteran Bond issue.
They did not defend me or the Constitution and many are war criminals who should be in jail.

There a few typos in the above but I think
the gist of it is clear.

Jack, just re-read one of your earlier posts that states, 500 CEO’s generate a great deal more employment than 500 workers and I couldn’t agree with you more.  The problem with this situation is those 500 CEO’s create the employment where it benefits the corporation and, ultimately, themselves.  I know you are as old as dirt and don’t need to find work anymore (how’s that Social Security check working for you?) but the generation comming up today needs jobs also.  I have been forced to change careers three times in the past ten years as a result of jobs going to the lowest bidder (usually overseas).  I’m not talking about the blue collar work that is now being done by children in Chinese factories (you know, where Nike’s CEO outsourced to).  I have a college degree and worked in the corporate world of aerospace and medical device manufacturing.  My retraining has come at the expense of myself and my family because neither the corporation nor the government gives a damn.  The corporation feels it owes nothing to the people (flesh and blood) who make the corporation a viable commodity but what happens when the conspicuous consumers (created by marketing firms owned by the corporations) have no money left to consume the corporation’s cheaper products?  It won’t matter to you Jack, because you will be rotting in your grave, but what about my nine-year-old, what about her, Jack?

I’m still working and have not seen my first
SS check, I’ll be happy if I can get back
what I’ve paid into it.
The corporation is not a welfare board.
IT IS in BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY AND THAT IS A
GOOD THING. HIRING YOU IS STRICTLY INCIDENTAL
TO MAKING MONEY AND THEY DO NOT OWE YOU A JOB.
Of course people make any business a viable
entity and so what ? How could it be any other
way ?
If you can’t feed them, don’t breed them !
How am I supposed to feel guilty because YOU
have failed to provide for your daughter ?
Between you goddamned overpriced union thugs
and government regulations it is amazing that
we have ANY businesses left.
Go see your pal Clinton about NAFTA and all
the military technology he let the Chinese
Communists steal from us.
Your concerned about youth unemployment ?
Repeal the minimum wage laws and people will
get jobs.
Sorry about your degree but they are now a
dime a dozen and were always overrated.
Your quarrel seems to be with objective
reality. Which capitalism as the most
natural system merely reflects.
But, no, you’d rather sit around and whine
and read Excuse # 1054 from the Democratic
Party’s Manual for Failures.

I see your ad hominem and raise you one gravitas.  Why don’t you answer the question of your work experience?  I’m actually a disabled vet from the oil war back in ‘91. Service is to comply with demands or commands so by the very definition of the word I SERVED my country.  I have a sneaking suspision that you never have but you write like you have the right.  That’s right, you do have rights defended by the men and women who volunteer to SERVE and DEFEND.  Not my fault that the Commander-in-Chief’s reasons to go to conflict are often suspect. Your accusation of my use of ad hominem is unfounded.  Your questioning of my intelligence is infantile especially considering the ammount of typographical errors in a majority of your posts.  With all the writing you do, have you ever thought of buying a dictionary?

I provide for my daughter, again not my point.  I am talking about the country’s future.  I never supported Clinton and am not a Democrat.  I am far from a failure an am happy that I am young enough and determined enough to make a life for myself and my family.  I do all of this and still find the time to volunteer my time as an active member of my daughter’s school PTO and school council.  I choose to be part of the solution.

You joined the stinking socialist military to
get benefits and because you couldn’t cut it in
a free market. You never defended me because I
was never under attack nor was the USA. Even 9-11
would not have happened if not for our Israel First foreign policy. I proudly did not serve.
There are very few typos on the whole in my posts
and most of the time I am the one to point them out. Often it is not a typo but a missed word.
So big fvcking deal.
Anyone who reads you’re posts can see the ad hominem fallacy in every one.
Who are you trying to kid ?
Why am I supposed to tell you about my work experience ? All you need to know is that I have
been working since my late teens.
Why did you bring up your daughter in the context
of a personal attack one me ?
Why do I need to know of your rough age status ?

You’re right Jack. I love you!

Jack said:

“. . . The corporation is not a welfare board.
IT IS in BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY AND THAT IS A
GOOD THING. HIRING YOU IS STRICTLY INCIDENTAL
TO MAKING MONEY AND THEY DO NOT OWE YOU A JOB. . . .”

And what does the employee owe the corporation Jack?  Based on your model, the absolute minimum productivity they can get away with, which as a practical matter, is to be the slacker you previously complained of.  And that is precicely the kind of employee that your model corporation deserves.

Why is a corporation any more noble or righteous that a union?  Why should the employees give any more of a damn about the corporation than the corporation cares about its employees?  Why shouldn’t workers band together to exact as much benefit out of a corporation for themselves as they possibly can?

BTW Jack, in the “Free Market” there is no such thing as a corporation.

The minute I see that some dope has put President Bush in a headline and made the issue his fault I get aggravated. The writer obviously must be another one of those people who wants more government because they don’t think that We The People can possibly be responsible for our own actions.

My way of being responsible for my own actions is to grow my own food, meat and all, so that we can stay out of the system. The system is corrupt, has been corrupt for a long time, longer than when Bush came into office.

Wake up and do something about it rather than complaining. If you don’t like the way it is, then get off your computer and go make a damn difference.

“Being forced to act in our own self-interest is a contradiction in terms, Steve. Force and mind are opposites, force paralyzes the mind and the thinking process and is an anti-creative element.”

Again, this is an utterly uncritical way of thinking about this issue and in itself indicative of a certain ideological interpellation that shapes the way we think about subjectivity in a post-Fordist economy. More important than that, however: it is dangerous, since it is precesiely this rhetoric of democratic participation by the consumer in the market, of individuality and freedom that form the ideological basis (and strategies of manufacturing consent) of the present war mongering you seem to be opposed to as well.
What needs to be complicated is the source of the desires you seem to characterize as natural, as an expression of self-interest. How, then, do you personally form the definition of self-interest? Why are the things you describe as vital to you, your desires, so important to you that you describe them as constitutive of your individual subjectivity (a cult that in itself has all too often throughout history been at the source of totalitarian regimes that were very appealing to people--see Nazi Germany: it was not law and total order that drew a whole country into madness, it was individual gratification elevated to the primary virtue shrouded in the rhetorical appeal of collectivity and nationalism [sound familiar?] and the subsequent denial of the superego!).
Are you seriously willing to argue that the formation and development of your needs has not been a dialectical process depending on, let’s put it carefully at first, social feedback that shaped the way you situated yourself within society? But more importantly, are you seriously willing to argue that there are no needs that are manufactured by our culture industry and then imposed upon the consumer, who, granted, MUST experience these needs as natural in order to keep alive the illusion of freedom and democratic participation in the system of commodity development and exchange? Force and mind are not opposites. Precisely the opposite of that statement is true, or, to put it more accurately, it is not an opposition but a productive contradiction. In times of immaterial labor the mind is (via a forceful inclusion into the production apparatus) a PRODUCTIVE entity--the opposition between mind and force that your rhetoric is so desperately trying to hide is, as you correctly say, on a very basic level a limitation of freedom. Hence it is this concept that needs to be preserved by neoliberal ideology in order to hide the productive aspect that results out of this paradoxical relationship between mind and force. Only a mind that considers itself free will be able to generate the desired marketable libidinal surplus and perpetuate ideological cohesion--what you have identified and what forms one of the ailments of our present situation (which is also apparent in your anti-social responses to proudvet) is a psychological condition necessary for neoliberal systems exploitation. you are the prime example of this--the subject marked by happiness in unfreedom.

Hen,

No one said that Bush invented corporate pimping.  He’s just elevated the practice to a level that, never in their wildest dreams, conservative politicians, ever thought possible.  (Jeb is even worse.  He can barely contain his glee when making policy statements in public).  Bush supporters and constituents are crooks and idiots (respectively) of the highest order, and the Bush’s are taking full advantage.

That’s the point, Hen. 

BTW, congratulations on your 19th century lifestyle.  I’m sure it suits the conservatives just fine.

The worker owes the corporation performance to
the absolute best of their ability. Their pay,
advancement and job status depend on it.
Thanks for warning potential employers that you
are untrustworthy.
Corporation is legitimate in and of itself.
If you want to abolish bankruptcy as a special
privilege then we agree because that is an intervention by the government on behalf of
one party to absolve the debts owed to another.
Murray Rothbard deals with this in Man, Economy
and State, I think Volume 2, and in Power & Market.
Otherwise, the lefty criticisms of the concept
of a corporation have absolutely no merit.
Poum, I can’t make head or tails of what you
are trying to say. Perhaps english is not your
native tongue or perhaps you are into pomo post
deconstructionism.

Jack,
Entrepeneurs do create wealth through finance and management.Question:Who actually manufactures the goods?

Etymology lesson:

MANU:Latin base word meaning"hand"

FACT:Latin base word meaning"to make”

Thus,items which are manufactured are items made by hands which belong almost exclusively to human beings,unless one desires products made by monkeys.Those human beings are laborers,who have needs which must be met in order to function properly.

Management and labor have a symbiotic relationship.If workers are treated well,the company’s productivity will increase.

Unfortunately,Republicans lack the ability to understand this.The cruel irony of Republicans is in the nineteenth century a Republican freed the slaves;while in the twenty-first century,Republicans are trying to bring slavery back. 

I’ll see if I can’t simplify this:Workers make things for management to sell.If you don’t treat workers well,they won’t work well and make management lots of money.

It’s understandable that right-wingers hate Nader.
Heavens to Betsy!He actually made corporations take responsibilty for their negligence!We can’t have that!That interferes with profits!Who cares if the car explodes on impact?In time of war,it could be a land torpedo!

Ayn Rand,by the way,was a mediocre novelist at best.Thick book does not equal good book.Her works are generally endorsed by simple people who want a simple philosophy and think that interaction of entities is a mechanistic process.Try reading some real books.I know,that will involve leaving the terminal,putting more clothes than just your underwear,and actually leaving the basement.Regardless,you may find it worthwhile.

Again,I only post under wwoods.You’re not entirely stupid.Why should I have to repeat that?Is it one of the tricks out of the Cato/Hoover/American Enterprise institute playbook to make that accusation?

One last thing.Your writing has improved.Apparently you’re using your copy of Fowler’s Modern English Usage.Good for you!

Mr. Woods,

Indulging in what the late Edward Said referred
to as the lowest form of humor, sarcasm, doesn’t
become you.
Your comments on Ayn Rand are rubbish. She is
an outstanding novelist as well as philosopher.
Her works, fiction and nonfiction, continue to
sell in the millions worldwide every year.
She is now the most widely read author on the planet (earth)outside of the the folks who crabbed together the unholy bible.
Oh, by the way, I’ve read the Great Books, The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy and all the classic
novelists & dramatists.Plus extensive readings
in history, political science, economics,
philosophy of science, art, psychology and
current events.
If the investors had not created the factory
and the inventors the product, the workers would
have nothing to produce. Physical labor is not
the source of wealth. I suggest you start with
Reisman’s Capitalism for the full arguments.
The etymological antecedents predate the industrial revolution as does you’re stone age
thinking. The labor theory of value was totally
demolished by Eugene Bahm-Bawerck over 130
years ago. I might be slightly off on the spelling
of the last syllable. Don’t have time to look it
up now but I can if you want the reference.
Excuse me, but when I accept you as the authority
on the english language ?
Honestly, I have no idea of how many aliases that
you post under. That practice is not limited to
one side of the spectrum as you well know.

Jack,

As I suspected, you cannot argue substantively because you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.  And, you don’t know what a “free” market is. 

First, in a free market, a worker owes ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to her/his employer - assuming that the employee is paid after the labor is provided.  And any worker who gives any more than the absolute minimum, to an employer who pays no more than the absolute minimum needed to induce an employee to accept the employment, is a fool.  If the employer doesn’t like it, he can either lump it, find a fool for an employee, or pay more.

Second, a corporation is a statutory fiction.  Without statues creating corporations, they don’t exist.  You remember statutes right, Jack, they’re laws that tell people what they can and cannot do, just like regulations which are mandatory laws.

In the “free market,” Jack, there are no corporations, there is no need for bankruptcy because there are no courts to enforce contracts of debt.  In the truly “free market” THERE IS NO LAW.  If you make a bargain with someone and decide you just don’t want to perform your end of the bargain anymore, you just don’t have to. If the other guy doesn’t like it, he can just F--- off.  Or challenge you to a duel, or just kill you.  Or perhaps he could be honest and hold you up for the bargained for perfomance. In a free market, free from government regulation, he is free to do whatever the hell he wants.

In reality, Jack, a free market can only exist for a very short period of time because, in very short order, all wealth and power will inure to those most able to take it.  Then, there will be very little freedom for anyone but the few very wealthy and powerful.  There will be virtually no market, no competition and no commerce because NOT ENOUGH PEOPLE WILL HAVE ENOUGH WEALTH TO CREATE COMPETITION.

The closest thing to a free market that can ever exist is an “orderly market” which BALANCES the requirement of regulations that are absolutely essential to maintain competition, with the freedom to do whatever the hell you want in order to make as much as you can for yourself - the personal motivation to compete to the best of your ability.

In reality, Jack, libertarianism is no less a failed theory than communism.

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, that to speak out loud and be thought remove all doubt.” - Abraham Lincoln.

You want freedom?  A more free marketplace, Jack?  How about cutting the 150 billion dollars of yours and my money given to corporations so they can F us over again by getting rid of us.  Let’s see your response.

Typo:

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, that to speak out loud and remove all doubt.” - Abraham Lincoln.

Aw, screw it.

Lefty, I made the preliminary necessary arguments
and gave the sources for a full substantiation
of my remarks. That’s all I need to do in an
honest debate. Your assertions are meaningless.
In order to get and keep one’s job one is obligated to do their best possible work.
That’s a prerequisite of getting a paycheck.
If you are such a lazy, dishonest bum as to disagree with that basic premise, then we are
not having a conversation about political economy.
You may be in need of moral training or psychiatric attention but that is beyond my
obligation here.
Well, you could say that anything put on paper
and created by human beings is artificial but
that really proves too much. Actually much of
the commercial law code was developed privately
over the centuries, see Rothbard’s For A New Liberty for details. All the legislature did
WAS RECOGNIZE THE RIGHT TO FORM CORPORATIONS,
NOT GIVE THE RIGHT.
Your assertion that there is no need for law
in a free market is totally false.
See Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty or Isabel
Paterson’s The God Of The Machine.
Ayn Rand wrote an essay distinguishing between
laissez-faire capitalism, limited government
and anarchism, see The Nature of Government in
The Virtue of Selfishness.
Your comments about total monopolization in a
free market are historically false as is your
other assertion about their time length.
See Rand’s Capitalism:The Unknown Ideal and
Louis Hacker’s history of American capitalism.
Libertarianism has always been a resounding
success TO THE EXTENT THAT IT HAS BEEN TRIED.
Liberalism, welfare statism, mixed economyism,
socialism, fascism, communism, national socialism
and statist conservatism have all been resounding
failures. We agree.
We agree that the Lincoln quote applies to you.
TW, are you talking about government subsidies ?
If so, we agree. If not, it’s loony.

Jack,

I have discredited you’re argument and your philosophy and all you can do is repeat your tired false premises, and resort to personal attacks.  You have no idea what you are talking about.  You don’t know what a corporation is. You don’t know what a regulation is.  You don’t know what a law is.  You don’t understand basic economics.  You are unable to think for yourself.  You can only parrot what others have spoon fed you.

Thank you for removing all doubt, Jack, for all to see.  You have, once again, confirmed that there are only 2 kinds of conservatives: idiots and crooks.

To my recollection, I have never heard a conservative argue without the aid of a false premise.  I am now resolved that it cannot be done.

BTW, Jack, Ayn Rand was a psychopath whose “objectivist” philosophy - moral selfishness, is irreconcilable with itself.  Morality makes no such requirement, nor could it.

Your assertions do not an argument make.
Argumentem ad hominem is a classic logical
fallacy.
The only discrediting you have done is of
yourself. All you are reduced to is calling
names and empty generalizations.
“Resort to personal attacks” ?
Try reading your own post.

For the serious readers on this board
check out Objectivism:The Philosophy
of Ayn Rand by Leonard Peikoff.
I feel very sorry for lefty, he represents
the end time of the intellectual degeneration
of the Left.
Reduced to nonprovable assertions and juvenile
namecalling.

I just whipped lefty’s bare butt.
Apologize to all here for my delinquent
child.

I Love You, Jack but your ad hominem is showing.  Your over use of the return key gives you away everytime!

Hey Jack,

Come over here. Let me show you something.  Try on this pretty white coat.  Yeah, I know the sleeves are a little long and they have these funny straps at the end, but, just try it on.  There you go.  Left hand, right hand . . . bang, smash, bash, oooff, crunch, errrrrrrrghhaaah.  Got it.

OK boys, you can take him away now.  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . . (the sound of the wagon taking Jack back to the booby hatch).

It seems that Jack’s idea of an ideal society was the guilded age, the closest thing to libertarianism in U.S. history. 

You know, the age of trusts (because interstate corporations were not invented yet), where the richest men in America had more assets than the gross national product - the economic aristocracy consisting of a few dozen families who owned more than the rest of all Americans combined (The Mellons, Carnegies, Rockefellers, Morgans, Vanderbilts), where there was no public education and children worked 12 hours a day, where the average American lived in poverty earning under $500 per year and worked in sweatshops, where the 2 leading causes of death in America were infection and starvation.

This is the libertarian vision for America “The Gospel of Wealth.”

“We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” – Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court Justice (1916-39).

Jack is one of those fools who fail to learn from history and, if he had his way, would insist on repeating it.

“I can’t make head or tails of what you are trying to say.”

Hey look, Craig, Lin Bio, Barnes finally said something I can agree with. Wow a troll who knows he can’t understand what real people are saying. Break out the champagne!

Now here is an unfair question for all you good folks who are arguing with this troll. Why are you doing it?

You all know what he is and what he stands for. You know he is simply baiting us. If you want real discussion, ignore trolls and discuss the issues amongst yourselves. The only thing that stops a troll is simply ignoring it. Trumpeting its views to an empty theatre is a hollow victory.

Jack:

Wake up and smell the reality.

1) Ayn Rand is obsolete. Has been for 50 years. All of her writings are based on 19th century ideas of business operations - Robber Baron ideas.

2) Corporations are a fiction. They are the result of thieves lying to get the laws changed. Originally, the Founding Fathers counseled that corporations be disbanded after 20 years and that they NEVER be granted any rights of any kind. Instead, we get lawyers willing to lie to get the fiction of “corporate personhood” enshrined in law. Something that has screwed up this nation for the past 150 years.

3) Employers OWE their workers decent working conditions. That is the reason behind the rise of Unions at the end of the 19th century. If it had not been for the terrible working conditions, there would not have ever been a need for unions to form. Workers are the source of all wealth. Without workers, there is NO wealth of any kind. Your rich capitalist will be dirt poor without the workers. Capitalists have ALWAYS exploited the worker to try to squeeze every penny out. Witness GM autos - they want out from under their pension plan, so they are going to fire 25,000 US workers and open more factories in China. The intent is to remove a large expense - the pay and pensions of 25,000 workers, as well as the 1.5 million others who benefit from GM’s retirement package. GM has no intention of cutting the price of their vehicles (as well as no intention of truly addressing the fuel mileage problem), but intends to continue business as usual.

4) Government exists to protect the weak from the strong (among other duties). Government is the source of benefits far beyond the obvious ones. Those of us who served in the military (myself USAF ‘69-’73) know that sometimes that government is loaded with idiots and fools. But still we try to make things better for ALL, not just the fat-cat wealthy bastards that have never lifted a finger in labor in their entire lives. The majority of millionaires are like Paris Hilton - vapid, mentally challenged do-nothings who are suited for one thing - filling holes in church pews and clipping coupons. They are a drag on the economy since they are not spending their tax refunds but are putting the money into off-shore accounts to hide it from taxes (over 7 billion in overseas accounts). The wealthy are nothing but fancy thieves.
You have probably never done a single altruistic act in your tiny miserable life. I have been active in my community for decades, helping people, instead of kicking them off the life raft. You are the epitome of neo-conservative (fascist theocrat) thought and have no need to face reality. You are part of the problem.

5) There is no government that truly does a perfect job, but ours was the best. I say was because, sadly, the neo-cons are destroying it day-by-day. Every day, I see new examples of tiny souled slime taking away another piece of the Bill of Rights. The so-called Patriot Act comes to mind, as does the lack of media response to the crimes of the Bush Admin.
The public is going to awaken soon. It is not going to be pretty, either.

Addendum to Jack:

1) See:  www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/10/opinion/edkrug.php for support to my arguments. This is from an honest newspaper - the International Hearld Tribune. You might try reading it someday.

2) I am secure and honest enough to put down my REAL name. I do have pseudonyms, but for such as you, they re not necessary. I used to agrumentativly “eat alive” people such as you in my college business law classes, where they tried to espouse Ayn Rand’s stupid economic theories. A small amount of simple logic shows the fallacy of Ayn Rand and how berift her thoughts truly were.

3) Bush and company seem to believe that they can roll the clock back to 1895 and gain from that. They forget the brutal and bloody workers rights riots that took place and how that changed America. Since 1973 the top 1% has had their annual income doubled, since 1973 the top .1% (top tenth) has seen their annual income tripled! That’s obscene. The number of multi-millionaires has increased drastically, mostly on the backs of the shareholders who have been robbed blind. Additionally, the wealthy (top 2%) pay less in taxes (by percentage) than the entire combined other 98%. That is thievery on a huge scale. Prior to 1973, the middle class was earning well - incoem betweed 1945 and 1973 had doubled for the middle class. Since then, income has gone down for the midle class. Most families are one paycheck away from poverty.
Think of that while you are preparing your specious arguments.

Richard,

You seem to observed the transition from “Fordist” or Keynsean welfare state economic policy which is reliant on broad consumer spending and some redistribution in the form of transfer payments in order to sustain the economy to what David Harvey calls globalized “flexible accumulation.” The first was the “golden-age” for the working and middle classes which grew along with rapid industrial growth, economic expansion (4.5-5% annual average GNP growth rates between 1945-73), and high average rates of profit in the general economy (about 8% in the 1950s down to 3-5% in the early 1970s). The early post-WWII period could be considered a fourth long-wave of capitalist expansion (a roughly 50 year long wave of economic expansion followed by contraction over the now 225 year course of modern capitalism’s existence) brought on by the exogenous factors of post-war reconstruction, US political hegemony, military-industrial complex, the new world order based on the US Dollar as key reserve currency, pent-up consumer demand both in the US and abroad for US consumer goods, and, in conjunction with this, expanding export markets stimulated also by neo-liberal removal of tariffs and currency conversion controls.  The growth that resulted created middle-classes all over the world including the third world. It stimulated global investment and competition between North America, Europe, and Japan for the production of consumer durables (especially autos) which the post WWII economic expansion was based on.  An overaccumulation of investment and excess global industrial capacity was created by an overproduction of these goods relative to effective demand and the cut back in capacity and investment produced a global recession long before oil price hikes and inflation entered in to make things more intractable.  A consequent fall in the average rate of profit lead to slackening investment and chronic stagnation. A restructuring of capital along global neo-liberal lines, hyper-financialization, and the hyper-mobility of capital has led to increased profits through the growth of new industries such as Info-Tech and Telecommunications yet such has not led to a fifth long wave of expansion of global capitalism although labor productivity was certainly increased for a time in the 1990s.  The “new economy” seemed to go bust and now recession and stagnation seem once again to be a chronic issue for the US and the world.  The result of the restructuring is an upward concentration of income on a global scale which has created demand in niche markets for luxuries, expensive real estate, the stock market, and high-risk financial derivatives.  None of this will restore a general “prosperity” that we saw in the “golden-age” of Keynsean capitalism.  A new global division of labor has made manufacturing a low value industry based on cheap third world labor and relagated dead end services and retail to US.  Few get rich and the middle class disappears.  National boundaries disappear and capital concentrates and centralizes with new global production and supply chains. Income disparities widen globally.  Such is the new epoch!

Jack, Rotten, etc.

Unions are NOT like corporations under the law.  Corporations are treated like people and have a right to free speech, etc.  Unions are limited by many laws that favor the bigger and richer corporations.

By law, a worker CANNOT hire a lawyer to file a claim for working conditions that pose a danger to himself, another worker or the community.  Workplace violations are subject to the arbitrage of the government.  Workers can only sue for damages AFTER an incident has occured.  BTW, the government departments that handle worker complaints are very small and getting smaller, AND they are run by people in industry.  In other words, government departments that are supposed to protect workers are more often than not a firewall that protects industry from workers.

I hope you understand that the American way of life is in danger not because of “stupid workers” or even immigrants.  We are in a battle of rich vs. poor, and, guess what, the rich are winning big time.

Yes, corporations do create jobs.  You are right.  That is not their goal, however.  A corporation’s goal is ONLY to MAKE MONEY.  Therefore, job creation takes place whenever and wherever necessary--NOW and IN ANOTHER COUNTRY. 

You talk about personal responsibility, you talk about freedom to choose, or at least you imply that they are central to your arguments.  The current global nature of business is exactly the opposite of what is advertised.  “The world at your doorstep...new markets and new choices...consumer freedom...” In fact, globalization is not about you paying the lowest price; it is about the corporation PAYING YOU or somebody else the lowest wage.  Globalization opens up markets for the corporations in search of raw materials AND LABOR, this is why they want it.

Have you noticed how bad the service is in, say, Macy’s these days?  If you listen to the TV, you will hear “they are not competitive,” “competition from Walmart and Target is too strong.” That is true, but only partially so.  what they don’t say is that corporations are in a race to the bottom--in terms of service and price.  It is not about how much service companies can give you, it is about how much they can take away before they lose you as a customer.  Think about this as you wait on the phone 30 minutes to ask a question to your “Verizon representative”. 

Walmart, Target etc. have essentially created a giant portal through which foreign goods can enter the U.S. without hindrance.  They are produced in societies that do not sustain the “American Way of Life.” The question is, how long can we sustain it?

Merlin said:

“Now here is an unfair question for all you good folks who are arguing with this troll. Why are you doing it?

You all know what he is and what he stands for. You know he is simply baiting us. If you want real discussion, ignore trolls and discuss the issues amongst yourselves. The only thing that stops a troll is simply ignoring it. Trumpeting its views to an empty theatre is a hollow victory.”

Because the lies and subterfuge need to be exposed and defined for what they are, in case anyone is inclined to adopt them, that’s why.

If nothing else, I’ve exposed Jack Barnes for the fraud that he is.  He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.  He read a book by a psychopath named Ayn Rand and she is now his lord and savior.  Jack Barnes is woefully uninformed and unable to think critically or argue without the aid of false premises.

Andyw said:

“Workplace violations are subject to the arbitrage of the government.”

Did you mean arbitration?  Arbitrage is when an investor takes advantage of inefficiencies in different stock markets buying the same stock in one market at a lower price and selling it in another at a higher price.

BTW, a corporations legal duty is to maximize profit for its shareholders.  However, that is rarely the corporation’s GOAL which is generally to maximize the salaries of the CEO and Directors - the ones who decide what the goals will be. 

The exception would be a closely held corporation in which the shares are owned in large part by the CEO and Directors.  Otherwise, what do the CEO and his pimps (Directors) care about troublesome shareholders constantly trying to butt in on corporate affairs.  In the eyes of corporate officers and directors they are nothing more than P.T. Barnum style suckers who have gambled their money like craps players in Las Vagas and deserve to loose it.  They share the status of union employees in the eyes of the officers and directors.

Globalization is more about Foreign direct investment than about trade.  That is why it doesn’t make sense to talk about trade and currency policies of different countries any longer because capital is so hyper-mobile that it basically establishes its own rules and can structure the world economy any way it wants merely by shifting about the globe establishing global product and supply chains to evade costs, laws, taxes, etc. and sell in markets directly rather than rely on long-distance trade which HAS grown 6-fold in the last couple of decades but not as much as foreign direct investment or the value of cross-border mergers & Acquisistions which have increased manyfold.  In the Early 1980s, annual average global inflows and outflows of FDI was in the tens of billions but by 1999 total global FDI outflow was about $1.6 Trillion with inflows valued at about $1.4 Trillion.  This seems to suggest that the world’s most significant and determinant economic activity is the consolidation of global productive assets or Gross Fixed Capital Formation (GFCF) and thus, the concentration of the world economy.  This does not necessarily amount to a per capita long-term economic expansion and growth cycle as there is still the ongoing stagnation.  The reason that the working classes of the various capitalist powers are so politically weak is that thier purchasing power is no longer key to the expansion of industrial capitalism and profits as in the old “golden-age” of 1945-1973.  Now profits tend to depend on constant financial restructuring and an intensification of concentration of manufacturing assembly outside the first world and a concentration of retail and services in the first world.  From here it becomes a question of monopolies and cross-border mergers and acquisistions in the various industries were they are located around the globe just as there was a concentration of intermediate industries by industrial “robber barrons” in the Progressive Era one hundred years ago in steel, iron, coal and oil, railroads, banking, cattle, and grain-the so called “trusts” that led to the first consolidation of the economy under early monopoly capitalist conditions after 1890.  Post 1980s globalization is seeing a global rather than a national consolidation of this system of investment and production.  Only a great mega-crisis of collapse will see a new fifth long-wave of per capita long-term economic expansion and sustained increase in labor productivity the likes of which we saw begin over fifty years ago.  The real danger is that the exogenous factors that ultimately lead to such a change in productive relations and radical economic retrenchment are also likely to be highly destructive and violent.

Very well put Steve. 

And now for something completely different, back to the topic at hand.

I am almost certain he meant arbitration.  That makes far more sense as a reference on the topic of labor relations than arbitrage!

Which was:  worker safety.

INMHO, corporations don’t give a fig for the safety of the fungible components - workers. Alive, a worker is a source of money. Dead, just a door stop. In other words, in the way. Corporations destroy people, spit them out and plug in another one.
Our schools are designed for the pleasure of the corporation - to turn out good little workers who just plug into the job slot and start working. If the worker is hurt and can’t work any more, out they go, despite the ads for AFLAC. Insurance is only of limited use - eventually it runs out and then you are on your tail - with nothing.
How to change this? Start by limiting corporations again - no political contributions, no ‘free speech,’ no corporate immunities, no corporate charter (the soul of the corporation, it gives corporations existance.) It is time to reduce a corporation to the level they deserve - menial duty.
There are no, repeat no rights for corporations, that is a false fiction - a fallacy of the legal profession. At no point did Congress assembled pass any Amendment to the Constitution to legalize ‘corporate rights.’
It is the corporation that is responsible for the legalized bribery that comprises our election process. They have been pushing large sums of money into the process, allowing the politicians to whore after it. The election process should be shortened - to 90 days. Each side gets $20 million from the Gov’t (NO contributions from anyone within 90 days of election day). Ballots are paper, only. No voting machines of any kind, type, or sort allowed. Too many elections in America have been tainted by the machines already - going back 150 years.
Reduce the size of the military, bring our boys home from most everywhere. Evaluate our role in world politics. Let the UN do its job! Cut the Military budget by 66%. It is bloated - they now get 68% of every dollar earned by the Govt. They can do a fine job on $175-200 million/year.
Radical? Dern tootin’! It’s about time to take radical action to rein in the so-called neo-cons (financial idiots is what they are (by-the-way - Bush has been a failure in every job he has held. From Arbusto (ar-busto) to Harken Energy (sold out on insider info, avoided prosecution), as Gov of Texas (killed 152 on 15 minutes briefing or less, by Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the US), got 2750+ people killed on 9/11/2001 by ignoring every bit of advice from his terrorist people, got 1675+ US soldiers killed for a trumped-up war that can never end (War on Terror - don’t make me retch.) It is impossible to win this war (I leave explaining that as a excersize for the student)).
The longer Chimpy stays in office, the worse it will get. I anticipate a 2nd American Revolution within the next 2 years, assuming Chimpy gets his way with the courts. Remember, we are one Supreme Court seat away from a Fascist Theocracy.
Sorry, I seem to have ranted a bit. It just galls me that these crooks and liars can get away with pulling the wool over America’s eyes for so long. The budget can be balanced by cutting military spending, restoring the tax cuts to the wealthy (God, was that a bad idea) and raising the limits on Social Security earnings (earmarked for Social Security only, with a new lockbox that takes a 3/4 majority to overturn).
We need to vote in new people that will truly listen to the people and not the corporations.
I guess that should evoke some comment!

I agree with Lefty on Jack.  Boy how do I agree!

Hi Lefty,
You answered:
“Because the lies and subterfuge need to be exposed and defined for what they are, in case anyone is inclined to adopt them, that’s why.”

Thanks for your answer, Lefty. I heartily agree with the above. However, doing so with trolls is a fools errand. This can be done better by doing it directly in discussion with people who are of good intent and truly want to learn through debate And ignoring the troll. This troll’s purpose is to create havoc and to upset people. Its posts are not at all real for that reason. Arguing (not discussing, as that is not possible with it) has no meaning. Such arguing is only about whether “I’m better ‘n you.”

And:
“If nothing else, I’ve exposed Jack Barnes for the fraud that he is.”

You certainly have and I have enjoyed your pithy comments.

Continuing directly you said:
“He has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.”

And in my view that is what this troll would like you to think!
The info it spouts is to deceive, upset and confuse the unwary. Anything that is goading is used. Whether it believes the things it spouts or not, it knows exactly what it is doing. I agree with a previous poster who congratulated our resident troll as being one of the best trolls anywhere. Personally I don’t believe this troll, in its actual (note I did not say “real”) life lives anything but a fantasy.

And you concluded:
“He read a book by a psychopath named Ayn Rand and she is now his lord and savior. Jack Barnes is woefully uninformed and unable to think critically or argue without the aid of false premises.”

I completely agree here. And it is all the more reason to ignore this troll. It might be a more productive exercise to talk to a resident of psychiatric ward. At least they often know there is something wrong with their ability to recognize life as it really is and act in a real way.

Yeah, Lefty, I agree with you.

Ayn Rand and her “followers” can eat dirt!

Jack Barnes CERTAINLY doesn’t know what he’s talking about, when he talks about “freedom”, “liberty”, obligation of employee to employer and so on.  He certainly doesn’t appreciate how things WORK IN THE REAL WORLD - ie, what is “objectively” true, IN PRACTICE, not in somebody’s silly ego-driven fantasy… and if EGO is what Rand’s “OBJECTIVISM” is about, then Barnes is right! If it is supposed to be, on the other hand, based on what is “objectively” true, then I dunno…

Libertarians are full of sh*t, anyway! Fancy believing in all the evils of American capitalism and yet decrying the military as “a socialist organisation”!  Yes, it probably could be defined as such, Jack, in that all soldiers in it are regarded as “brothers” and “comrades” - well, in the mythology of the organisation, anyway - and not merely as “colleagues” or “co-workers”.  Well, it’s a pretty authoritarian model of a socialist society, with father-dictator superior officers leading the “brothers in arms”… But then all such organisations, including the Church, have always been organised thus hierarchically.

Hey, no WONDER the military still has quite an appeal to many people, and no wonder it inspires such loyalty in many of its recruits even after they have left it - because they nostalgically remember their time as part of a group, a brotherhood, a SOCIETY no less, that accepted them as part of it, from the day they passed basic training, to the day they were demobbed. I would imagine that that kind of notion of community would be many people’s goal; and that they are prepared to put up even with military discipline in order to achieve it.

(There, there’s a little paean to the armed services, coming from a non-militarist, anarcho-socialist!!)

Anyway, Jack Barnes, you are full of sh*T, because your vaunted capitalistic society would not FUNCTION if it did not have a military arm, an arm of force, which granted it access to other countries, to their resources and markets.  Just try to run a “libertarian” capitalist society without a military!  It’s never been done; it never will be done, it never can be done!  All trading was linked with military power, from the days of the Roman Empire at least onwards.  Ayn Rand my ass!  I suppose she never listened to Eisenhower and his “military-industrial complex”!

International socialism and pacifism are logically linked, not libertarian capitalism and pacifism.

Oh, and as regards the obligations of employee to employer, and vice versa: If, as you state, “a business is not a charity”, and it has NO social or human obligations (that would seem to fit Rand’s thinking, only of course she thought that businesses and the “creative talent” in them were the “fountainhead” - did she not - of all human splendour and achievement… hmmmm.)… Well, if your businessman has no OBJECTIVE obligations to his employee, beyond that of squeezing the maximum amount of work out of him/her for the minimum PAY… then it logically FOLLOWS, under such an OBJECTIVE system, where human emotions and subjectivity are not allowed to come IN to it, that the employee has NO obligations other than the converse of that: to squeeze the maximum amount of pay from the employer for the minimum of work.

All this talk of “well you must be lazy”, as f you were threatening to inform on people - and how, pray? Well, Jack, that just exposes the true, AUTHORITARIAN nature of your thinking, and belies your supposed “libertarianism”. In a Randian society, you shouldn’t give a rat’s ass -unless, of course, you are a paid employer’s snitch.

“In order to get and keep a job one is obligated to do their best possible work”… oh yeah, Puritan work ethic, another of the (pretty loathsome) things that have been invented to imprison human souls for centuries…

Yeah, but WHY would they do that - if it ISN’T for the best possible REWARD??  Nobody in a TRULY libertarian society would be interested in the idea of “slaving so as to make an impression on the boss so that he MIGHT pick me, pick me!”… They wouldn’t be brought up by their parents to think like that.  The above is only possible in a servile, feudal or post-feudal “Upstairs Downstairs” kind of society.

If you’re talking about workplace spies, snitches, or the threat of high unemployment or wage freezes/cabals by employers, “you’ll never work in this town again” etc - again you’re talking about authoritarian coercion!  NOT ANY form of liberty!!  But THOSE, are, of course, the tricks used by employers over the centuries!

As for the notion of PROMOTION in the job - that only comes into it where there is a TRUE hope of such - and in many modern dead-end, low-wage jobs, that possibility is not there… Anyway, people are often promoted, not for hard work IN the job, but for attending management courses, for reasons of nepotism, for race reasons… usual reasons!

People’s local prejudices come into how they are prepared to do their jobs.  For example, I read a reliable article about how there is at least one resort area in the US, where the chambermaids/housemaids - who are white - won’t regularly clean the visitor’s rooms, because they have been brought up to think cleaning beneath them and a “black” job… However, for the moment, because there aren’t enough blacks or immigrants in that area, which is underpopulated anyway, the stuck-up white women who won’t do their job properly (I would find THAT annoying, I can tell you!) don’t get the sack, probably again, because they got the job through nepotism - and the people who have to suffer are the tourists!

But usually menial employees of any race don’t have it that good!!  They are forced to give their maximum, all right, in waitressing and Walmart jobs, as far as their employers can extort it; but what happens in practice, of course, is that the employees “go slow” as soon as the manager’s back is turned; that is actual workplace culture, it is enforced by the employees collectively to avoid burnout… very sensible of them.  After all, there ARE no rewards, beyond minimum wage and a few tips, in the restaurant industry, that they get for working BEYOND the normal call of duty, or the “average” pace of everybody… Tell you what the waitresses REALLY do, for their tips, and again they know it’s in their self-interest: they give EXTRA helpings, extra dressing or more croutons than the penny-pinching manager says they are “allowed” to give - because they KNOW this will gain them more tips!

I am not from the USA but I know all this because I read “Nickeled and Dimed”, a study of menial jobs in the US in 2000, by Barabara Ehrenreich!  I greatly recommend it to all, especially head-in-the-clouds gits like Jack!

Well, all that comes of treating people as if they were THINGS, which I am reliably informed is the pastime of psychopaths.

People are not THINGS or commodities. That would be the thought for the day!

Liz,

Think of it this way, in the ultimate libertarian society where, according to Ayn Rand, selfishness is pure, perfect morality, then Mother Theresa would be the ultimate looser and crook, no?

Both Liz and Lefty have good points. I have been in many ‘jobs’ that had zero potential for ‘bettering’ myself. If Jack had the tiniest inkling of understanding about reality (he must have been management) he would know that in most jobs, there is no hope of advancement beyond what the employer wants to give to the employee. When you job is such that there is no hope of advancement, no hope of tranferring out (lateral move to different division) and no hope of moving to another type of work, you begin to simply ‘mark time.’ You see it in the military with soldiers that are near discharge (or at least one used to see it) when that person puts up what is known as a “short-timers calendar” to count down to discharge.

Jack believes in the idealized world of Ayn Rand, a novelist who did not know (in the business sense) her ass from a hand towel. She was not an employer, nor was she ever an executive in any corporation. She was just a writer, and a 1930’s style hack at that - the same as that idiot L Ron Hubbard.

Currently our government is being run by idiots that believe the nonsense expoused by ultra-right-wing nuts from the 1950’s who thought that they knew the right way to run the nation. Their policies have left the nation in deeper debt than ever before (the majority of the National Debt is courtesy of Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2. It is easy to prove that Republican conservatism is a lie and a sham. Just look at the debt - 7 TRILLION and growing like a rocket. Bush 2 believes that debts don’t matter. Of course not, he’s wealthy, so he has never known of any debt he could not pay easily. Bush wanted to look more ‘folksy’ so he bought his hobby ranch in Texas, where he grows - brush and weeds. There are no cattle, no horses (except the one he supposedlly masturbated (according to Laura)), nothing to qualify this as a ‘ranch’ except Bush calling it that. I grew up in So Calif, where we knew the difference between a hobby ranch and a real ranch. Despite all the urban sprawl in Calif, San Diego County has real working horse and cattle ranches. Real ranchers work on the ranch, not in Washington spreading lies and stealing the future from our children.

Part 2

Jack - you are a classic idiot and fool for believing the nonsense spewed by Ayn Rand. I read her crap in ENGLISH class, nobody beleived a word of it. The local colleges (including San Diego State and UCSD) did not teach Ayn Rand in economics classes since they recognized that her theories were berift of rationality and were unworkable in reality. Indeed, most economists have their heads up their collective asses since they have no idea of what they are talking about. Lots of pretty rhetoric about teh market doing this and the market doing that, but when it comes to the final crunch, they have no idea what they are doing. Best witness to that is the dot-com crash. None of the economists or stock market analysts had any idea the crash was going to happen. Now, it hsa emerged that the analysts lied about how good an investment in the stock market could be, touting how great it was going to perform. Just like whores, they were selling the product as hard as they could. The stock market is a scam to steal from the middle class by making it appear that one can make money by investing in stocks. The average person can not make any signifigant money, since the “traders” (stockbrokers) are siphoning off the earnings by charging fees. All neat and legal.
Remember, the world does not operate by Ayn Rands methods but by real commerce - value for value. And value is created on the backs of the workers, not by the managment or the CEO. In many cases (especially in the biggest corporations) the CEO is a liar and crook. Witness Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Rite-Aid, more. Each of these companies and more failed no because of bad investments or poor employee performance, but because of a corporate culture that fostered criminal activity - supported and sponsored by the executives, accepted by the workers as the price of being employed there. The lowest level employees at Enron got screwed, where Ken Lay (the main thief) is still not in jail and has been selling off his ill-gotten goods (his wife’s boutique selling ‘excess’ property (furniture, art works, etc.).
Until we, the people, insist in higher standards in business and make it work (demand that thieves be punished as thieves, cheats be forced out and true honesty and transparency forced into business) we will continue to be taken advantage of by the corporations. As long as they see us as being cash cows to be slaughtered at their whim, we will never be able to really enter the upper classes. The wealthy do not want a lot of upstarts joining them at their country clubs (rich white men only, please. No Mexicans, Blacks, Asians allowed.). They want to continue to dominate the world. Keep in mind, of the Republican Party’s upper leadership and all Republican elected officials nationwide less than one (1) percent is non-white. The Republican Party is the party of rich white MEN. There are no national Republican women in leadership positions. Jack is one of those short-sighted bigoted white men.

At no time in history has there been so many examples of why the Founding Fathers wanted to separate the parts of government nd install checks and balances to prevent one party dominating the other party(s). The Republican leadership believes (being short-sighted and bigoted against any other political beliefs) that they have a ‘mandate’ to destroy the best (if sometimes frustrating) government on the planet. Their agenda is to put people like that bigoted religious freak, cat-killing liar, Bill Frist into major political offices nationwide, so they can force their religious fanaticism onto everybody. Only problem, their beliefs are antithical to the average American, being that they are of the extreme right-wing hate everybody type of religion (they want to use the Bible as the sole source for US law - welcome to the American Taliban - worse than the original.). If one really wants a book to base a reaction to, go read Robert A Heinlein’s “If This Goes On’. A better description of a theocratic America can not be found in fiction. It also describes the outcome when the people have had enough and rise up to sieze their country back.

Fiction being fiction, as an illustration Heinlein did a better job of outlining reality than many other writers, Ayn Rand included. He read her works, thought they were crap.

At present, it appears that the public will have to force the right-wingnuts out and put in more moderate people. But, until that is done, there will be no improvement to the nation, but it will continue to be dragged through the mud of our own creation. Wake up and recognize that this discussion is useless unless YOU are willing to get out into the community and do some rabble-rousing. Get off your lazy ass and start organizing a community protest group. The first thing on the agenda should be getting our troops out of Iraq. No wind-down, just get out NOW! That will save US taxpayers $80 billion per year and will stop the Bushistas agenda cold. Next is to impeach Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell (criminal prosecution), Gonzales, etc. for TREASON. ONce one looks at all that they have done, one realizes that these bastards have greatly weakened our nation. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that Bush wants the US attacked again. There is nothing being done about border security, cargo entering the US is not inspected (only 1% is inspected), the radiation detectors that are supposed to find smuggled in a-bombs are unable to detect a test source held against the detector - utterly useless. Yet Chimpy claims that the nation is safe. Our leader is an idiot and he has morons advising him. They are so caught up in their agenda of dismantling every Democratic social program ever enacted, that they are not seeing the peril they are creating.
I seem to have goten a bit off track, no matter. I hope the rest of you will not waste your time further on that moron Jack. He is a little man and is of no importance

I leave your with the following:

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower
November 8, 1954

Now, there was a Reublican I could respect.

Re: “lazy”

The American worker works more hours per week than any workers anywhere in the world - including Japan.

The American worker takes less holiday time than any worker anywhere in the world. European workers get 30 days paid vacation leave per year. The US averages 2 weeks, if lucky enough to get that.

I should think that ‘lazy’ would nt be the proper word for the American worker. Overworked and underpaid is more like it. It is the policy of Wal-Mart (Largest non-governmental US business - 15. million workers) locks their employees in the building overnight, stiffs workers on overtime, refuses to allow any unionization, forces workers to work off the clock, overcharges on health insureance and has the largest number of emplyees using welfare and Medicare for health care and extra food.

If Jack had the tiniest inkling he would understand that his position is untenable. But like all Reaganites, he understands nothing except tax cuts for the wealthy and the back of the hand to the poor and middle classes. Jack is a throwback to the “Mauve Decades” when lazziz-faire economics were the way and caveat emptor was the watch word of the business world.(I think I spelled those correctly).
Sorry, but ‘let the buyer beware’ is not a good honest way to run a business. And “All’s fair in business” is not a good business strategy.
P.T. Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute. Jack is one of P.T’s ‘egress’ people, thinking something exotic must be beyond the “Egress This Way” sign.

Myself, I am a rational person. I don’t believe in economic fairy tales that promise a fortune at the end of the economic rainbow. I believe in TANSTAAFL - “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” (R.A. Heinlein). If something sounds too good to be true, it absolutly is too good to be true.
Any other viewpoint is inconsistant with reality. So. all the rhetoric, especially from Steve, with his overly complicated maunderings on economic theory, is essentially silly and a time-waster. The real job is to put honest practices inot place and eliminate the ‘dog-eat-dog’ mentality from business. Business is there to provide goods and services, not to enrich itself on the backs of the workers. There is no guarentee that a business will make money. Most never do and go out of business within the first 5 years. Those that survive, go out when the owner dies or retires. This is good and proper. For a business to survive for 50-100 years is an aberation and goes against history. Business should have limits and be put out of business from time-to-time to keep them honest.

We need limits on what businesses can do and what they can’t do. We need most of these limits to be what a business can’t do. What they can do can be limited to simply marketing their wares (goods or service). No business should be exempt from this ‘rule:’ No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.

Nowhere in law does it specify that a business can exist forever. The Founding Fathers wanted corporation severly limited and for the first 100 years they were. Crooks and lawyers managed to get that changed. But the laws were not changed until relativly recently.

To Hell with corporations!

Richard,

I really didn’t think what I pointed out was silly or a waste of time. It is perfectly consistent with your and many other critiques in this and other threads of US corporate based capitalism and its harmful effects on the working classes both here and abroad. The idea that theories don’t count or matter IS silly!  I think that a theory that incorporates three essential points that I have discovered in my Meanderings (I think this is what you meant) and melds them together in a unified understanding of where we are is essential politically!  First, we have passed from a Fordist to a post-Fordist society whereby the rising national incomes which created the growth based on a national mass consumer based society (especially in consumer durables like autos and residential housing stock) is no longer valued as essential by capitalists who seek to globalize the economy mostly through foreign direct investment and restructure a new division of labor which is highly specialized through production and supply chains and which concentrates and centralizes wealth and productive assets in global economy that increasingly operates above national boundaries.  Secondly, the Keynesian/Fordist epoch that has collapsed and led to the current global one constituted a major (4th) long-wave of capitalist economic expansion that turned downward in 1973 due to an overaccumulation and overproduction crisis and whose restructuring has not lead to more permanent growth but constant stagnation and lurching toward recession.  Finally, the new restructuring is a form of globalization which is NOT international but TRANSNATIONAL and based purely on Foreign Direct Investment not on overseas trade.  Competition now takes place exclusively between Transnational Corporations (TNCs) through investment strategies, not nation-states through trade or trade policy.  The era of the nation-state is being replaced by the global era! This understanding is crucial! It is silly and futile to continually argue, as have some, that we are undermined by trade with China and India and need new “get tough” trade and currency policies--eg “China should revalue its currency; the US should have higher tariffs to protect its remaining manufacturing base”, etc.  Governance is increasingly at the behest of a Transnationalized capitalist class (TCC) which expresses its interest through globalizing investment and merging production with other parts of the TCC.  They are impervious to old nation-state governance strategies which are themselves being eclipsed by fragments of the old nation-state accepting the new epochal shift as they merge with and facilitate the emergence of a new Transnational State (TNS) which many recognize and the WTO, the IMF, The World Bank, and agreements like NAFTA.  The TCC is in the process of recasting the old world and old nation-state centric forms of resistance will not bring justice.  For this counter-hegemonic movements which span boundaries like the World Social Forum and other sectors of the Global Justice Movement which transnationalize the concerns of those harmed by globalization and its concommittant upward redistribution of wealth and political control and merges issues in a way that creates effective global political agenda for change. In the end, I think all of us who find fault with transnational capitalism are pretty much on the same page!

This is a good thread, but the best was when Richard A Knighton made the following decree:  “Myself, I am a rational person.”

That was a screamer. Richard A Knighton, if you are not a professor in an institution of higher learning, you’ve missed your calling.  That you live in California is understandable and a good place for you because all your protests won’t interfere with my quality of life.

I wish we could get your opinions out in a larger forum.  For the moment we have Howard Dean but I believe you could give him a run for his money.

Save your breath on Jack-he’s way to far down the rabbit hole to bring back. I listen to that libertarian crap all the time; to quote Homer Simpson, they’re “living in a world of make believe”.  Lordy.

It’s great to read some people making sense and having real discussions on this thread.  You all are absolutely correct, Jack Barnes (Lin Biao, J. Craig, etc.) is totally off his rocker.

I think Richard has raised some terrific points.  U Scare Me, as usual, has the same old tired, worn-out rhetoric of the Right, delivered in sound-bite chunks.  Obviously, the intellectual discussion above was too much for him to read, digest and deliver a rational response.  What really cracks me up is that Dean is actually doing a very good job of fundraising.  He has raised three times more for this quarter than did the DNC in the prior non-election year quarter.  While he may speak out of turn at times, he more often hits the nail on the head by telling the truth--something that the GOP knows nothing about.  DeLay, Noe, Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, etc. spew nothing but lies.

Today the polls showed that support for the war is down to 34%.  Boy, that’s a mandate!

Merlin is right on the money.  We should simply ignore the trolls and talk among ourselves.

Hi Margaret,
You noted:
“It’s great to read some people making sense and having real discussions on this thread.”

I definitely agree! And thanks to you folks for stimulating my thoughts and teaching me as well. Lots of good stuff on this and a couple of other threads! Let’s all keep up the good work!

Margaret,
***Obviously, the intellectual discussion above was too much for him to read, digest and deliver a rational response.***

I believe you are a pot calling the kettle black.  Mostly what I see are progressives, you in particular, ignoring counter points because you lack the diligence, intelligence or integrity to respond to respond to them.  I do give you an A+ in name calling however.

Lets try one:  Richard A Knighton stated the following, “No business shall be permitted to exist beyond 50 years. No argument, no alteration.”

This to me sounds like a stepping stone towards a Moa Tse-Tung Cultural Revolution.  Maybe we should consider taking “Republicans that have never done an honest days work in their lives” and put them in work camps so we can reprogram their thinking.

I like you am pulling for Dean to stay right where he is.  You believe he’ll help your party, I believe he’ll continue to kill it.  One of us is right and the other is wrong, but we both want the same thing, keep him talking.  I just wish Republicans would shut up about it.  There is no sense in attacking a guy that is beating his own head with a hammer.

USM is a classic conservative isn’t he.  When he has absolutely nothing substantive to argue, he resorts to hate - the conservative stock in trade. 

Even his galant attempt at analyisis was short lived.  He actually focused in on an idea proffered by Richard, raising false hope that he might do something constructive with it . . . but no, he just couldn’t do it.  He doesn’t know how.  Rather, he employs the only method for dealing with argument he’s capable of, he redirects it to something else that he hates - Mao Tse-Tung.

And of course there’s the classic conservative tactic of employing the aid of the false premise when real, honest analysis can only lead to that most hated of conservative predicaments - agreement.  And a true conservative like USM could NEVER admit (to himself or others) that he agrees with a liberal.  USM, I don’t recall reading where Richard wrote anything about work camps - work camps was your idea.  A very hateful concept, work camps.  I’m not surprised you brought it up. 

Hate and subterfuge - the conservative method.

USM, thank you for once again confirming that the unfortunate reality that there really are only 2 kinds of conservatives: 1) idiots, and 2) crooks.  And USM, you’r