by Terry 43 Replies latest watchtower bible
Everyone does there fair share and that fair share is defined by utilizing your personal skills to better yourself and all marooned. If you start on the island without a practical skill then it's time to start practicing on something that can help.
It's not, and shouldn't be, about results. If it's about results then you run smack into the social conflict described in your OP. If the ones doing more work can see that the "weak" are getting better than you have a solved problem.
-Sab
Wontleave illustrates this view, by saying that people that aren't willing to be valuable to society go work in retail and blue collar jobs. But what if some anti-ayn rand wrote a book where all the retail workers, roofers, constructions workers, janitors, and factory workers decided to show how valuable they were by not showing up. People can hold up signs saying "who is joe six pack?".
It's a symbioses, the world would shut down without the retail workers, blue collar guys, factory workers, just as much as it would shut down without the engineers, scientists and entrepreneur.
The ability to label this side of the economic chain as not being valuable is classicism and is one of the last few acceptable prejudices in our society.
marked
A little while ago, when capitalism fell and the bailouts began, how much were the people consulted? It was a manufacture of consent, really. It was another transfer of wealth from the poor and what was left of the micddle class to the uber rich. How can this be fair?
The maneuvering of the go getters to cut fairly paid workers out of the loop had a push w the implementation of free trade. This allowed manufacture to move to cheaper areas, like mexico. What followed that was the further moval of maunfacture to places of even cheaper labor, like china and vietnam. How is this fair to the consumers, who are mainly in north america? Henry ford, who started doing mass production had the idea that those who produced should be able to afford to own what they produced. Is that idea outdated?
S
'But, if an outside group forced us to support strangers with our own hard work it would no longer be a choice.'
Is this not what happened in the bailouts?
'Charity and benevolence vanishes and becomes servitude and compulsion under a central authority with the power to fine or punish.'
True
'A family society differs from an artificial gathering of strangers. Familial ties over time create bonds which over-ride mere convenience.'
So, we are all all strangers? People living in cities, provinces/states?
S
the world would shut down without the retail workers, blue collar guys, factory workers, just as much as it would shut down without the engineers, scientists and entrepreneur
Someone already tried your theory. Under Chairman Mao, millions starved. Whether you're a "joe six-pack" and jealous or feel you were born with a silver ATM card in your mouth and ashamed, your uber-leftist theory doesn't wash. There are many more unskilled laborers than the world needs. This was demonstrated at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and during/after the World Wars, when there wasn't enough unskilled manual labor in industrialized countries. Wages skyrocketed and for the first (and last) time in human history, a man only qualified to sweep floors and his family could live quite nicely.
This is why people in China are willing to work for cents a day and even people in wealthier countries will break a picket line for a portion of what the strikers were making. Manual labor is plentiful, whereas educated, skilled, talented people are much more rare. There is a reason a surgeon makes more than a shoe salesman. People don't want to expend the effort or the time to learn a skill or get proficient at it, so when someone is willing to do what it takes to achieve more, he should be rewarded for it.
when capitalism fell and the bailouts began
You don't notice a problem with that statement? "Capitalism" and "bailout" are diametrically opposed. Companies skirted and broke the law to steal money and distribute it among the good-old-boys at the top and the government gave them money for doing it. If that sounds like capitalism to you, you need to check a dictionary. The companies that got bailed out had lobbyists greasing palms in Washington and used their government ties to get away with outright theft. Stop using Michael Moore's definition of "capitalism". He's a liar, just trying to make a point, by using straw men. Believe me, nobody's more upset at the way the US is allowing corporations to get away with murder by refusing to prosecute and giving legal loopholes to the ones making huge campaign donations. That's not capitalism; that's corruption. Remove corruption and just about any system will work to some extent. But don't point to something that is blatantly not capitalism and present it as an example of why capitalism can't work. You want to make the point that corruption doesn't work? Amen!
That's kind of my point, won'tleave. They cheated.
S
I didn't say there weren't more blue collar workers than trained workers, I said that we'd be screwed if their weren't blue collar workers. The assumption that they are "parasites" on society is nonsensical seeing as how society can't function without them. They are symbiotes and are required for society to function. That's not uber-leftist, it's logic. What would a society look like without the service industry? If the John Galts all stopped working, society would collapse. The same is true of the Joe six packs. It's mutual dependence, it's just that one side seems to think it's their moral right to screw the other. Which as I pointed out, morality and fairness are not necessarily the same things.
I'm not saying a doctor should make the same thing as a janitor, the market will sort out who makes what. But it is not immoral to be a joe six pack as ayn rand suggests, and the joe six packs of the world are also necessary for the doctors to have their paychecks. The doctor is not producing his own medicine, or manufacturing the machines he uses. He's dependent on some guy making a fraction of his wage to supply him with the equipment he uses to make his living. And that guy doing the manufacturing is dependent on a engineers and scientists to develop the machines he's making, and the entrepenuers to invest and run the business. But his economic status does not make him less of a human being, or a drain on society because it would still collapse without his efforts.
My point is not that we should all make equal wages or live in communes, but that it is a wrong attitude to take that the janitor in his building is somehow a blight on society, and that the guy that made milllions investing in the futures market should thumb his nose at this "parasite" because that guy has trouble paying his bills. Especially when that guy emptying his trash and cleaning up his mess.
Things like investing in futures should not exist. The speculators in the system are nonproductive parasites. They are lower than janitors, imo.
S
Satanus,
I would offer that it is not the 'speculators' themselves which needlessly drive up prices, but rather, their ability to operate in a system that absolves them of the consequences of their actions (not actually taking delivery on the items speculated on). Were this consequence enforced, most specuators would be strongly discouraged. But this seems tangential to the thread...
Terry,
I think that the thread's title is perhaps worded incorrectly? Anyone, anywhere, has the right to 'demand' anything. But you're really talking about the enforcement of such a demand. Does someone's need (percieved or real) merit justified action of others. If so, I guess the guy on the street is entitled to my wallet by force. After all, he probably has less money than I do...
