Capitalism at its worst

The real currency is productivity, our own labor. If 40 hours of making widgits is a good living in 1980 and a better living in 2020, things have improved on the apples to apples basis.
They have of course improved- but for the most part, they don't improve because people are working harder; they improve because process, automation and technology has allowed the same effort to produce more results.

Things are cheaper because we sent things like our clothing and shoe industries abroad, and because we have refused to be competitive in a global economy. This has put us in a position of dependency and vulnerability- as the current crisis revealing, such as the people discovering that 94% of our antibiotics come from China. I wonder how many of us realize how dangerous it is to be unable to meet your own critical needs in a crisis.

 

Sorry- but you are wrong. Capitalism sees workers as an asset to business, one of the vital components of a machine that benefits them as well as stockholders. As far as disposable- if the value isn't there, they aren't likely to remain employed- and that is righteous; besides they have equal rights to terminate the relationship without cause of any kind. The worker sees jobs as disposable too- good to have so long as they are convenient and useful. They feel no duty to remain if they aren't happy, or for that matter if they don't like anything. They give no fringe benefits to their employer to entice their continued success or future security either, they just walk away.... although they think they are entitled to those things from that employer.

If you see any situation from only one side, you can always find it to be unfair in your favor. You can ignore where the bulk of the tax dollars that fund your country come from, who creates the industries that create the jobs an opportunities that feed your family, who winds up being the major support of virtually all charitable and environmental agencies, who creates foundations to fund and solve world problems- and restrict your assessment and thinking to the fact that a worker does not have a birthright title to his job, and is therefore abused and disposable. How convenient.

 

@GreyMatter: I didn't answer this part of your previous post:

Okay, I didn't make myself clear. (One problem with these debate sites is that, given normal human attention span, it's a great temptation just to throw back one-liners and "gotcha's" and clever sarcastic comments at each other. Which is fun -- if you're reasonably good at it and don't have to defend the indefensible (ahem! --you will notice I never comment on the Orange One) -- but it's the intellectual equivalent of Angry Birds. Life is too short to spend a lot of time doing that.

I want to convince people. Or, I want the wrong things I believe to be corrected by them. Or the gaps in my knowledge to be filled in. I would prefer it to be done by a kindly fellow conservative rather than a sarcastic Lefty, but so long as it's done, I'm happy. And sometimes it's not appropriate to argue. (I had a cataract replaced about 15 years ago, under local anesthetic ...my eye surgeon was a woman who swore like a trooper and excoriated Tony Blair as she cut away the bad tissue -- I didn't share her low opinion of him, but you better believe I didn't say a dissenting word.)

Anyway, I didn't elaborate on my "they're just words" statement, because all my posts are too long anyway. Let me just direct you to this Wiki article. [ Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski ]. Martin Gardner's wonderful book on cults includes his followers as one ('General Semanticists'), but I think he was unfair. They go a bit too far in attributing all the evils of the world to the misuse of the 'to be' verb, but I think they're basically right. ) (I've given papers at their annual conferences in New York -- nice people, not cultists. Maybe they've got hold of just part of the elephant, but ... who can actually hold the tail and the trunk and all the other bits at the same time? We're all over-emphasizers about the things we know best.)

So a lot of semantic confusion can be avoided by refusing to entertain questions like "Is X, Y?" and rephrasing them, and/or analyzing the different, often contradictory ways, we use the words "X" and "Y". "Is Donald Trump a True Conservative?" No no no ... how about something like "To what extent does Mr Trump pursue the goals that conservatives have traditionally defended, and to what extent does he not?" [Sometimes "Is X, Y" is okay: "Is a whale a fish?" because it's in the context where the criteria for inclusion are very clear. But not "Is Pluto a planet?" "Is a Chimpanzee intelligent?" ] I guess it's just an elaboration of what every bright 12-year old discovers when she or he starts reading philosophy -- the importance of defining your terms.

Anyhow, I spent years in the Marxist movement, where hairs were split 32 times over the "meanings" of "socialism" and "communism" (the words were not used in an entirely clear fashion by Marx and Engels). This argument/discussion escalated especially after the socialist revolution occurred first in a backward country that had barely entered the stage of capitalism, in contradiction to the (mechanical) Marxist understanding according to which you had to go through the capitalist stage first before you had socialism. Was Stalin 'building socialism'? And it was called 'Communism'. Whoa ... what confusion!

It was confusing enough when argued about by people who actually had read Marx and Lenin and who knew something about the subject, and were trying to dissect the reality. When the argument is taken up by the American Right -- good people, to be sure -- who are profoundly ignorant of history in general, and of the history of the labor and socialist/communist movements abroad -- and in the US for that matter, then you get total darkness and obfuscation. Listening to these people talk about 'socialism' is like listening to an eight year old explaining what makes the sun shine.

 

Yes, of course. And keeping your highly-skilled workers is the way to make a profit.
But there is an alternative: turn industry over to benign, careing bureaucrats, who don't care about nasty old things like 'profits', because they can increase taxes and or borrow money and or just print it ... and then you can have full employment as the old Soviet Union had.

A good book to read -- a novel -- is Red Plenty, by Francis Spufford. [ https://www.amazon.com/Red-Plenty-Francis-Spufford/dp/1555976042/ ] It's remarkable, especially because the author doesn't speak Russian and did not live in the old Soviet Union. But he has caught the ambience there, the character of people, very well, according to my brief time living there (6 months in 1985) and according to Russians I know who have read it. You see up close the problems of trying to run a complex economy without price-signals. He must have interviewed dozens of people who did live there, and read a lot of memoirs of Soviet managers, if there are such things.

However, although the basic engine of capitalism is self-interest, and the intelligent and successful capitalists will do the smart thing to keep their workers, I don't think this particular case is an example of that. That is, it's probably the 'smart' thing to do, to sack these people immediately and without warning ... hoping that there won't really be the sort of "boycott Britainia Hotels" movement that I would like to see.

Because.... we live in society. And this means that there should be a balance between ME ME ME and consideration of the good of society, of other people. That's really what distinguishes tradtional conservatism, from libertarianism. (It's not really about smoking dope.) Libertarians don't see that we live embedded in a social matrix, and that there must be a balance between the pursuit of immediate self-interest, on the one hand, and acting in a way that may run counter to your immediate self interest.

And everyone really knows this. NOT ONE 'CONSERVATIVE' here has said, "Yes, it's perfectly moral for you to trade that glass of water for all his property." No one believes this. But it does run counter to the simple-minded libertarian ethics that many conservatives hold, because they haven't thought it through. We've let ourselves be stampeded into a morally untenable position, by the Left, who are always banging on against self-interest. We have just put a 'plus' sign where they have put a 'minus'.

We must do better than that. Boycott Britannia Hotels! Send them an email!

 

1) Because there's nothing to add to it. The employer is responsible for their end of the transaction only (paying you, keeping you safe while you're at work, etc), for as long as that transaction is in progress. The circumstances of the employee's private life are not the employer's concern.

2) No, but they made a very good example of how not to do life. IOW, don't travel far away from help and support, and then rely on insecure work in a volatile service industry to survive - while simultaneously doing nothing to prepare yourself for job losses etc.

3) YAY!

 

They're BUSINESSES ... not charities.

Why do you expect businesses to take care of you?

 

Luke 10:25-37 New International Version (NIV)
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ " ; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ "
28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
====================================================================================================================
Exercise: re-write this famous Parable in the spirit of self-interest-is-everything, the-market-rules, Starting with Verse 33:

I'll start: 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was, and when he saw him, he thought, "Here is an opportunity to make a denarus!". 34 He went to him, and said "

You take it from there.

 

So... how long did you work for them?

 

Never said I did. I was defining...nothing more. Try reading more carefully next time

 

Commodity is the wrong term in purely economic terms. Disposable assets is more accurate. Fine

But a "true capitalist" sees ALL his workers (skilled or not) in the same light as he sees a lathe. He'll keep it only so long as it is useful to him. Should a cheaper machine become available...the old one is gone. He has no allegiance to it. It's only an asset after all

 

As long as you did.

 

I am a "bad" capitalist. I had to lay off my workers...and my brewery is limping along on a skeleton staff doing curbside pick up and deliveries.

Know what? Tips have been REALLY good. Know what else? We SPLIT those tips with the laid off workers. We also check in with them periodically to make sure they can meet their grocery needs etc.

 

This may hurt the feelings of any snowflake reading it, but the fact of the matter is no one owes anything to anyone unless they have a written contract. A employer may fire someone at any time for any reason, just as any employee can quit any job for any reason. Where the hell do these pantywaists get the idea that they are entitled to a job or anything else?

 

I'd say that an employer has more allegiance to a good employee than the average employee to a good employer.
Get on the owner/employer side for a while and find out.

 

So ... stating the obvious? Businesses are not charities?

 

Exactly. And if 'he' didn't do that, you would not have a job - because his business would have failed very quickly.

 

Very good point.

 

You can "say" a lot of stuff and you do. Don't make it true

 

My point...is that a true capitalist cares not a whit about his employees. Their only real protection is "socialist" policies that mitigate capitalism

 

Capitalism is some being with feelings? Where did this being come from?

 

Sure a true capitalist wants all employees who he trains and equips to die, he wants them to be malnourished and sick and crippled and uneducated. Now tell my why?

 

A business owner is not required to 'care' about his employees - beyond ensuring they're safe at work and are paid what they're due. How his employees manage their private lives and private finances is none of his business or concern.

Social programs exist for the genuine victim of circumstances, not for people who spent everything they earned on good times, then cried poor.

 

You make my point for me

 

The socialists do indeed plan to "mitigate" capitalism. Everybody winds up in equal poverty.
That way, there are no wealthy people. Good idea. That will teach the a lesson.
Of course then there is no one to blame- or, to pay your wages, bills, unemployment, etc....

 

Yes, but you say it as though it's a problem.