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Woland Special user 680 Posts |
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What is interesting is that you talk about the inefficiency of authoritarian bureauracy, while at the same time that is exactly how you propose businesses should be run. There is a salient difference between a business in a free market and the authoritarian bureaucracy you believe will be capable of assigning to the workers their proper share of the value that they have a hand in producing: A business is an entirely voluntary combination of people and capital. As a worker, if you are unsatisfied with the compensation you receive for your time, talent, and effort, you are free to negotiate with your employer for more money or to seek other employment elsewhere. (In general, your employer is forced to pay the prevailing wages for your particular occupation.) If you don't like the way the business is managed, you can leave. I don't think that bureaucratic administration works very well in business; in my experience, big, bureaucratic firms make decisions slowly and poorly, if at all, and often flounder. But in a controlled, command economy, in which the workers' wages are to be set at their correct level by experts, there is no freedom for the workers to seek a better deal elsewhere. Indeed, in most socialized economies that have actually existed in the world, the workers are legally required to work wherever they are ordered to work, and for whatever wages the authorities offer, with no right to strike or otherwise withhold their participation. Or as Victor Davis Hanson paraphrases the meme: Quote:
The reason why, say, an orthodontist makes more than a Wal-Mart clerk is due to some sort of race, class, or gender discrimination, unfair advantage, or fatal flaw in the capitalist system, and only a technocratic elite in government retains the wisdom and morality to rectify that resulting inequality. One’s salary, then, is not quite his own, but more the collective’s — given that the professional’s good fortune results from an insidious system of exploitation from the moment he was born to the last bill he sent out for services rendered. |
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rockwall Special user 762 Posts |
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On 2011-12-27 23:33, landmark wrote: Oh, I don't know. Almost every other government run operation comes close to qualifying. Congress, Public Schools, etc. etc. |
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
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On 2011-12-28 13:41, LobowolfXXX wrote: Do you charge $.10 an hour for your LSAT tutoring? Do you charge $10,000? Why or why not? Would you pay $.10 for Bazooka bubble gum? Would you pay $10,000 for a new Toyota Tercel? Why or Why not?
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
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On 2011-12-28 23:13, landmark wrote: Actually, the LSAT tutoring example highlights a minor error in the excerpted statement. What I should have said is that the value of my labor is what a prospective buyer and I agree that it's worth. My labor as an LSAT tutor isn't worth $.10, because I don't think it's worth so little, and it's not worth $10,000, because nobody things it's worth that much. I wouldn't pay $.10 for the gum, because I don't chew gum (and I don't want to start an exciting new career as a gum arbitrageur); I'd buy the Tercel, because I'd expect it to be worth my time (at that price) to be a Toyota arbitrageur. The non-sequitur would be for me to take $75/hour for LSAT tutoring, and claim that it's "really worth" $1,000/hour, when nobody will give me $1,000/hour for it.
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
Should a janitor at a company that makes a billion dollars a year make 10 times as much as a janitor at a company that makes a hundred million a year? Assume the same number of employees (including janitors) at each company, if it's relevant to your answer.
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
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critter Inner circle Spokane, WA 2653 Posts |
Janitors at the Eastern State Mental Hospital made a heck of a lot more than I did when I was a janitor. I doubt that's relevant, but if you were wondering for some strange reason...
"The fool is one who doesn't know what you have just found out."
~Will Rogers |
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Woland Special user 680 Posts |
In the absence of a free market for labor, who is going to decide how much the workers' labor is worth? Who is going to set the price of labor? Or of any and all goods that are distributed in the economy? To whom are you going to give that power? On what basis will the decisions be made? What will happen to workers who don't like the value that their labor is assigned? If you can't answer these questions, then of what utility is your claim that workers in an automobile plant are not receiving their fair share of the value that you think their labor produces?
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mastermindreader 1949 - 2017 Seattle, WA 12586 Posts |
I feel like I'm watching an episode of "Big Bang Theory."
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Pakar Ilusi Inner circle 5777 Posts |
And he's still dead.
"Dreams aren't a matter of Chance but a matter of Choice." -DC-
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Woland Special user 680 Posts |
Not familiar with that one, Bob, but at least someone is paying attention.
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ed rhodes Inner circle Rhode Island 2885 Posts |
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On 2011-12-21 14:33, Duaut wrote: Sorry guy, if you state something as a fact you should provide some sort of reference to back it up other than "go do your own research."
"...and if you're too afraid of goin' astray, you won't go anywhere." - Granny Weatherwax
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Pakar Ilusi Inner circle 5777 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-12-29 05:51, ed rhodes wrote: Yes.
"Dreams aren't a matter of Chance but a matter of Choice." -DC-
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
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My labor as an LSAT tutor isn't worth $.10, because I don't think it's worth so little, and it's not worth $10,000, because nobody things it's worth that much. Yes. The market price isn't the value of the item, but it is the negotiation of what it is really worth. There is a sense between buyer and seller of the true value of the product and each tries to get the better of the deal if possible. You could argue that a glass of water to a man in a desert is worth the $10,000 charged--and he might willingly pay it--but we all know he got exploited, because we have a sense of what the true value of a glass of water should be.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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Woland Special user 680 Posts |
I think that the distinction between "the value of the item" and "what it is really worth" is incoherent. But suppose I accept for the moment that "we have a sense of what the true value of a glass of water should be."
(Love that "should be." Reminds me of the Serpent's statement from that old Fabian socialist G.B. Shaw's play, "Back to Methuselah": "You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?") But what about things for which "we" don't have as absolute a sense of the "true value," landmark? You still have not answered my repeated question: if the free market is not going to be allowed to determine the value of labor, who do you think should decide? Is it true that "only a technocratic elite in government retains the wisdom and morality" to make those decisions for us? |
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts |
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On 2011-12-29 08:26, landmark wrote: Again, I have no idea what you even mean by "really worth," as a separate concept from the "value of the item." And, naturally, the opinion of any prospective client of mine as to what my services are worth is informed by the availability and price of other qualified LSAT tutors in the area (and rightfully so).
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
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critter Inner circle Spokane, WA 2653 Posts |
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On 2011-12-29 03:37, Pakar Ilusi wrote: Schrodinger's cat?
"The fool is one who doesn't know what you have just found out."
~Will Rogers |
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
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On 2011-12-29 13:14, LobowolfXXX wrote: The distinction I was making above was between "market price" and "value of the item." The latter term I'm using fairly synonymously with "really worth." Your second sentence begs the question. (Am I using that phrase correctly here? If not, take it in the colloquial usage.) Why are the other qualified LSAT tutors in the area not choosing $.10 an hour or $10,000 an hour?
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts |
Quote:
On 2011-12-29 08:58, Woland wrote: You still have not answered my repeated question: if the free market is not going to be allowed to determine the value of labor, who do you think should decide? Is it true that "only a technocratic elite in government retains the wisdom and morality" to make those decisions for us? You are so wedded to authoritarian structures that you cannot conceive of a democratic process that could come to its own conclusions. There is a history of worker-owned and run factories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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Woland Special user 680 Posts |
Thank you, landmark. So tell me, how do the worker-cooperatives set their prices? And what do they do if other worker-cooperatives don't want to pay those prices? You're simply describing small enterprises that function like partnerships.
It looks like most of the members of the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (founded 2004) for example consist of counter-cultural bakeries and Cafés. Meanwhile, the model has never really worked on a generalizable scale. Most communes don't last much past the lifetimes of their founding members. The kibbutzim are almost all gone. The large Israeli institutions such as the Bank HaPoalim that were founded by the labor unions function like similar large institutions anywhere. Even when strong religious beliefs provide a foundation, the model is with few exceptions not sustainable.Oneida and the Amana Farms became corporations. Only the Hutterites in the United States (and Canada) survive as communes. Besides which, it seems to me that your worker-cooperatives function across the broader economy just like corporations, and in fact they do not set their own prices -- prices are still set by the market. Worker-cooperatives whose wages departed substantially from the prevailing market rates (either lower or higher) would not long survive. Therefore, in essence, you have simply provided another argument that the most fair and efficient way to assign wages is through a free market. In country-wide socialism, as you may have noticed, it never works out that way, and iron-clad wage and price controls are one of the factors that leads socialist economies into poverty. Finally, the idea that things have a "real worth" distinct from their "market value" is a pernicious falsehood. It is one of the delusions that still has the market choking with millions of overpriced homes that will not sell at the prices their owners persist in believing reflect their "real worth." |
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16544 Posts |
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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