5G is on the way!

[pbrower2a]

(09-24-2018, 01:59 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-24-2018, 03:58 AM)Galen Wrote: You are wrong about this but you can't understand why.  Why is it that every time socialism has been tried it has failed badly every time.  You would do well to consider what Rothbard had to say about Egalitarianism.  Come to think of it what Mises had to say about Socialism might me of some value.

Eric ... is an idiot and always has been.  Socialism can not and will not ever work for the simple reason that central planning in any form can not work.  The death of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact should have taught you that.  If the current experience of Venezuela can't teach you that then you truly are too stupid to live.

Why do you libertarian types equate socialism (ownership of the means of production by the workers themselves) with communism (central ownership and planning).  Essentially, they are as similar as beer and gasoline.  Capitalism, on the other hand, makes no allowance for distribution outside the ownership class.  As jobs are replaced by machines, and all business receipts are held for the owners, how do the prior workers eat, to say nothing of buying all the goods and services capitalist enterprise creates?  Since you foreswear all communal methods to distribute outside your narrow structure, capitalism just dies.

Note: socialism as I stated it is the most extreme version.  Most neo-socialists prefer a mixed but well regulated economy.

I'd like Galen to explain how extreme inequality is either (1) necessary for or (2) irrelevant to human freedom and progress. Under Galen's ideal, any reduction in the input of labor  implies that competition would drive wages down to zero or near such.

Nobody can yet deny that workers have nothing to sell but their toil.

If he says "become capitalists", then such is not for everyone. You would be surprised at how bad some people are at record-keeping. Many people want an hourly wage instead of a feast-or-famine income. Besides, people without income cannot be customers.

We will need some sort of welfare state just to keep people alive if they have no jobs.

[David Horn]

(09-24-2018, 03:32 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I'd like Galen to explain how extreme inequality is either (1) necessary for or (2) irrelevant to human freedom and progress. Under Galen's ideal, any reduction in the input of labor  implies that competition would drive wages down to zero or near such.

Nobody can yet deny that workers have nothing to sell but their toil.

If he says "become capitalists", then such is not for everyone. You would be surprised at how bad some people are at record-keeping. Many people want an hourly wage instead of a feast-or-famine income. Besides, people without income cannot be customers.

We will need some sort of welfare state just to keep people alive if they have no jobs.

As a damning data point in this argument about worker freedom, the gig economy is slowly collapsing.  First, gig workers are finding it nearly impossible to actually live on gig work.  Second, the actual gig jobs lacked the freedom they promised -- in exchange for benefits they still don't provide.  In short, gig workers feel screwed, and they should.

[pbrower2a]

(09-25-2018, 11:15 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-24-2018, 03:32 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I'd like Galen to explain how extreme inequality is either (1) necessary for or (2) irrelevant to human freedom and progress. Under Galen's ideal, any reduction in the input of labor  implies that competition would drive wages down to zero or near such.

Nobody can yet deny that workers have nothing to sell but their toil.

If he says "become capitalists", then such is not for everyone. You would be surprised at how bad some people are at record-keeping. Many people want an hourly wage instead of a feast-or-famine income. Besides, people without income cannot be customers.

We will need some sort of welfare state just to keep people alive if they have no jobs.

As a damning data point in this argument about worker freedom, the gig economy is slowly collapsing.  First, gig workers are finding it nearly impossible to actually live on gig work.  Second, the actual gig jobs lacked the freedom they promised -- in exchange for benefits they still don't provide.  In short, gig workers feel screwed, and they should.

Erratic employment and low pay is a raw deal. Of course the American economy is beginning to look like a raw deal to anyone not born into nearly-hereditary privilege, which is new to America except as a reflection of the plantation-based economy of the antebellum South.

The old saying. "don't give up your day job" applies to this work. Even if one has the skill with which to do this work well, people with insecurities need recognize that they will be doing the scariest thing possible -- applying for a job -- once every gig is completed. Many very talented people are working as cleaners, clerks, waiters, bussers, drivers, servants, and laborers because of their insecurities as well as lack of opportunity.

Gig work might be fine for people trying to do something different from some dreary job for which they are severely overqualified, people supplementing retirement or disability pay, people who are unwilling to make the move to places where the jobs in the field are until they can convince themselves that they can afford the rents of New York City or Silicon Valley.

Gig work is a gamble -- one of low personal cost and allegedly high return.  This economy increasingly resembles a crooked casino that most of us wish we could leave. The glitz is boring. The action is monotonous. If one wins one is directed to some boutique that offers overpriced trinkets or a buffet that offers overpriced food. Maybe you can get some free soft drinks or coffee so that you can play the slot machines on the kick from sugar and caffeine. 

I can do the math, and I know that the edifice would not be built were it not for people believing that they might have some tangible quality called luck that can get them ahead spectacularly on some tiny investment -- money placed on a card that one draws against while playing the one-armed bandit. It's all money, but I am smart enough to recognize accounting as more interesting and honestly remunerative. I would have done well in it had I gotten the chance, but I never got a chance.

F--- the alleged new economic order. The economic elites know that they can draw and discard employees until they come up with someone who would be perfectly happy as a slave. If people fail and become addicts, criminals, or suicides... they are expendable people who fail to appreciate their appointed lots in a nasty system. Those in our ruling elite are the economic royalists that FDR warned us about but who now own the political process, and who are probably even more damnable for extreme narcissism that borders on sociopathy. The new economic order looks like a new form of aristocratic order but with no pretense of noblesse oblige. If it takes another Great Depression to bring back the fundamental decency that makes life tolerable, then so be it.