Babylon and on - the new capitalism/communism thread

[JohnT]

If that is true, then you are arguing that Kid, if he is really truly interested in society as a whole and disinterested in individuals, should be a Capitalist.

In regards to the definition, if it is incomplete, take it up with Britannica. I wanted the Oxford English Dictionary definition but you have to subscribe to that site... by mail.

[JohnT]

"Capitalism works perfectly if the goal is to reward those who are already advantaged (and I don't even mean millionaires, I'm talking just anyone who's lucky enough to live in the developed world)."

This conveniently ignores the fact that there was, at one time, no "developed world."

How did we get this way? Through Communism and forced society-wide privations?

Your comments re: Chinese workers making 50 cents a day could just as easily apply (and did apply) to the "developed worlds" peoples appx. 150 years ago. Given that these problems were addressed and largely solved by Leftists working within the framework of Capitalist societies, it is doubtful that throwing away 5 centuries of hard earned knowledge and experience re: the two systems in favor of the failed one will improve their lot.

[cinch]

This conveniently ignores the fact that there was, at one time, no "developed world."

Yes, but now there is, so perhaps it's time for a new strategy.

Your comments re: Chinese workers making 50 cents a day could just as easily apply (and did apply) to the "developed worlds" peoples appx. 150 years ago. Given that these problems were addressed and largely solved by Leftists working within the framework of Capitalist societies, it is doubtful that throwing away 5 centuries of hard earned knowledge and experience re: the two systems in favor of the failed one will improve their lot.

The difference being that workers in Britain 150 years ago were working primarily FOR Britain, and the industrial revolution actually did lead to their lives being improved. In Southeast Asia, the workers are primarily working for America, and very seldom do they see their lives improved by what they make.

***************

But I do agree with your point about capitalism getting us this far. It has, but now it may be time to take a different approach. Just as we dropped mercantilism to adopt capitalism, perhaps (I'm not saying anything is conrete here) it's time to drop capitalism and move on to the next form of economy, something that will improve everyone's standard of life.

[Velociryx]

Last one of the night for me...gotta get some shuteye.

Kid: While it is true that new technologies displace workers in the low-skill fields, it is equally true that every piece of machinery that replaces a guy on the shop floor, that machine needs maintenance, repair, and reprogramming. As has been pointed out to you, we're trading low-skill jobs with high skill jobs.

More and more, the low skill jobs are moving overseas, in the factories that Cinch makes mention of (and i'll attempt to tackle that one momentarily).

Is this a bad thing? High skill jobs = higher paying jobs. It takes all of a month and $200.00 to get certified to repair some types of popularly used printers (widely used by the business world, I mean). It takes less time than that to learn the basics of software troubleshooting and land an entry level job in the IT field. In the meantime, new companies open up all the time, replacing low the low-skill jobs lost with other low-skill jobs (every time a new store opens, every time a new cleaning company launches, etc). The jobs are there, and are being created every day, but yes, the business cycle is just that....cyclical. There are lean times and there are boom times. In the lean times, you're exactly right, it's those near the bottom of the economic food chain that feel the pinch first. Having come from that, and eaten more than my share of Ramin noodles, I know firsthand what you're saying.

The solution though, is to continually improve yourself. The solution is NOT to throw your hands up and surrender your individuality to a monolithic state where EVERY detail of your life is dictated to you, in exchange for a regular paycheck. Perhaps there are some who would freely choose to live that way, but I believe you will find the majority of people in this country dead-set against it.

Creativity and innovation are the twin pillars that are driving our modern economy. Both come from the ability we enjoy in our largely free society to think and live as we will. Take that away (which is exactly what your highly centralized, authoritarian utopia will do) and you destroy the single greatest engine for growth in the modern economy.

Factory workers in other countries.

Let's look at those for a moment, because Cinch brings up a good point.

Their wages are dismal and their hours are long. Working conditions are wretched.

Much of that is the fault, not of the capitalist system, but of the governments in power in the nations where these factories exist.

In the US, and other industrialized nations, we have strong (and numerous) laws dictating working conditions and wages. Not true in other countries.

Long term, the problem will correct itself (ie - as increasing numbers of factories open, wages rise as companies compete for the best workers to be had in the country in question), but it falls to the nations we're doing business in to speed that process along by adopting laws similar to the ones found in industrialized nations. Further, there are things we as consumers can (and are) doing to stop companies from mistreating their legions of foriegn workers. In recent years, a number of small startups have opened (especially in the clothing industry) and their main marketing point is that none of their clothes are produced in sweat shops.

It's working, their market share is growing, and the big companies are beginning to take notice. Already wages have risen in Saipan (tiny country in Micronesia, IIRC, officially listed as an American protectorate), with other areas sure to follow as that trend continues.

Frankly, I hope your "glorious revolution" never comes, espeically after the arguments I have seen put forth here and in the other thread touting its supposed "merits."

GePap rightly points out that since its original chartering, "Communism" has splintered into so many variants and sub-cultures that it's nigh on impossible to keep track of them all. The problem with that is IF the day of the "glorious revolution" should ever arrive, all of these splinter groups touting their own "brand" of totalitarianism will converge like a pack of wolves, first on anybody who disagrees with them, and then on each other.

Just about everybody who has come here arguing the "communist" side has had something different to say on it. If you guys can't even get together and march to the same tune, I have serious doubts about the viability of your revolution, even if capitalism falls apart tomorrow.

-=Vel=-

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Last one of the night for me...gotta get some shuteye.

Is this a bad thing? High skill jobs = higher paying jobs. It takes all of a month and $200.00 to get certified to repair some types of popularly used printers (widely used by the business world, I mean). It takes less time than that to learn the basics of software troubleshooting and land an entry level job in the IT field. In the meantime, new companies open up all the time, replacing low the low-skill jobs lost with other low-skill jobs (every time a new store opens, every time a new cleaning company launches, etc). The jobs are there, and are being created every day, but yes, the business cycle is just that....cyclical.

There are not enough of these jobs for everyone, even if everyone was trained. Of course, if everyone were IT trained, there would be an oversupply and IT wages would fall.

What capitalism amounts to is the slim possibility that anyone can "make it" in exchange for a large underclass. That is, the market is left to run its course and the underclass inevitably forms because unskilled labor is plentiful. Alternately, if too many people have a skill, that segment of skilled labor has the same market as unskilled labor.

The solution though, is to continually improve yourself. The solution is NOT to throw your hands up and surrender your individuality to a monolithic state where EVERY detail of your life is dictated to you, in exchange for a regular paycheck.

You ignore the fact that one will never get rich (the great promise of capitalism) by collecting a paycheck. In fact, these days unskilled laborors often have to work two jobs - one job barely (if even) covering their rent. The book "Nickeled and Dimed" does a good job of outlining this dynamic. As for the professional class or unionized workers who do collect a reasonable paycheck, after you deduct expenses like food and rent (and god forbid they have children to pay for!) there isn't enough left to do much else. The truth is, you can't work your way to the top and you can't get rich off of hard work. Investment? Just look at the Enron scandal to see how well the middle class investor fares ...

There is a third solution. An economic system that provides everyone a roughly equal high standard of living. No miniscule chance to get rich - but no larger chance to fall into poverty either. There are, after all, more ways to induce people to work than the chance for a nickel raise every couple of months. Again, there is nothing more authoritarian about a political system that enforces communal property than one that enforces private property.

Creativity and innovation are the twin pillars that are driving our modern economy. Both come from the ability we enjoy in our largely free society to think and live as we will. Take that away (which is exactly what your highly centralized, authoritarian utopia will do) and you destroy the single greatest engine for growth in the modern economy.

Creativity and innovation are the twin pillars are current system is trying to knock down! Our culture exhalts money as the prime indicator of status, thereby our system places the venture capitalist at the top of the hierarchy. Does the venture capitalist find the cure for cancer? Write the awesome HBO series? Develop artificial intelligence? Design new and safer building methods? Work to ensure equality? Defend the poor from excesses of the legal system? No. In order, those goals are accomplished by doctors, artists, scientists, engineers, activists, and public interest lawyers. These are the guys who innovate, who "expend [mental] labor to shape the world".

Venture capitalists only move money around. Money only represents scarce resources. Thus, our society has placed at the top of the heap the people who should play the secondary role of enabling scientsts, engineers, artists, and even factory workers to create.

I'd rather see a centrally engineered market dedicated to providing resources for innovation and making sure everyone has their material needs and wants met as opposed to pursuing profit which only benefits the few. In other words - put those jazzed up scientists in the lab and let them go at it. Don't halt innovation because you're worried about those jazzed up scientists developing something you can sell.

GePap rightly points out that since its original chartering, "Communism" has splintered into so many variants and sub-cultures that it's nigh on impossible to keep track of them all. The problem with that is IF the day of the "glorious revolution" should ever arrive, all of these splinter groups touting their own "brand" of totalitarianism will converge like a pack of wolves, first on anybody who disagrees with them, and then on each other.

Just about everybody who has come here arguing the "communist" side has had something different to say on it.

This just proves you have nothing to worry about in terms of lockstep authoritarianism. Capitalists don't all agree on what products can legitimately be on the market (witness the war on drugs), how much governmental regulation is appropriate in the market, and so on. There are different approaches and different emphasis among communists. Big surprise.

[Velociryx]

Templar, I'll tackle your post in the morning, had one more comment about Kid's plan before drifting off to sleep.

The bottom line is this:

The Kid would ask each of us to sacrifice our individuality and freedom of choice to the altar of the state, and what do we get in return? A guaranteed wage.

How much? ~30k per year, per the Kid himself.

What does that mean?

It means that we'll be asked to give ourselves and our lives over to the state and take a paycut.

PPP Adjusted average income in the US (2001 data): $34,280
Kid's guaranteed wage: $30,000

So, for the low, introductory price of $4,280 a year, YOU TOO can give up your personal freedom!

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

Quick answer to Templar (and then I really am going to bed!)

Show me. Show me an example of communism today, working as you describe. If you can do that, I'll be much more interested in the theory.

Regarding innovation, and capitalism's desire to knock it down. Let's see....(off the top of my weary head)

Polio Vaccine
Electiricy\Electric Lighting
Mass Produced Automobile
Flight
Jazz
Rock-N-Roll
Personal Computers
The Internet
Wireless Communication
Wide-Scale use of Satellites
The Genome Project

All fine examples of communist innovation?

-=Vel=-

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by JohnT
If that is true, then you are arguing that Kid, if he is really truly interested in society as a whole and disinterested in individuals, should be a Capitalist.

Arguing that capitalism benefits the whole is fine. That's just not what Vel and MtG are doing.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Last one of the night for me...gotta get some shuteye.

Kid: While it is true that new technologies displace workers in the low-skill fields, it is equally true that every piece of machinery that replaces a guy on the shop floor, that machine needs maintenance, repair, and reprogramming. As has been pointed out to you, we're trading low-skill jobs with high skill jobs.
-=Vel=-

We aren't trading unskilled jobs for skilled jobs. At least we aren't trading them one for one. We lose a lot of high paying jobs here in the US and what we more often than not get in return is another unskilled service job that pays less. In the end we may have more skilled labor jobs here in the US, but we will also have a high level of permanent unemployment as productivity gains are made in all the labor sectors including the service sector. Actually, I would say that we already have that, but it's going to get worse.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious
But it's not working. You're assuming that it's very easy for a displaced worker to achieve the status that they once held. More often than no they end up working for Wal-Mart. Now it's even getting hard to find work there. At K-Mart I noticed that they have a self-check out registar. You scan your own stuff and slide your credit card. No clerk needed.

Again, the system may be working for you right now, but not overall. You just don't want to look at what is happening.

You (and to an extent, Imran, but he's a law student, not a business guy) missed several issues here.

You equate productive technology with job loss, but that ain't necessarily the case. I can't speak for K-Mart, but their management can't be too hot, or they wouldn't be where they are in the marketplace. Let's take someone a little more functional, like Home Despot.

All supermarket type retailers have a basic problem in common, and that's getting lots of people out the door with their stuff in the most efficient way possible. Efficient in this sense isn't limited to "cheap labor" - you have to figure out average and peak customer flows, how much shop space to allocate to registers, traffic flows to the registers and from there out the door with the stuff. You don't want to piss off customers with half hour waits and huge obstacle courses as they clog aisles, or customer traffic will start to manage itself - and not in the way you want.

In general, if you have smart retail architects, you plan the number of registers for some routine level of peak traffic (not Christmas eve rush levels, but one you hit weekly, or at your peak hour of the day - it varies with the nature of the retailer, with some goal for how long the lines are and how quickly people get through them. That's your number of registers. Most of the time, you don't have peak customer flows, sometimes, you have very few, and other times you have a flood. So you have to figure out how many registers to staff on a given schedule. You can move people around some, but people moving boxes in the back aren't the most efficient checkers, and good checkers are kind of wasted moving pallets in the back. Meanwhile, customers have questions, or are looking for stuff, and you have people stuck at registers, so you have less people available to help customers with anything else.

There's more to it than just having bodies or not having bodies. You might get some store management cultures where they say "Good, we can automate these registers and fire some of the rabble scum that are taking away from out bottom line."

You can also get a smarter management approach that says: "By automating, we can have all registers available all of the time. We can move checkers into other areas of customer service, and in inventory control and audit (stick-on bar code stamping, manual sale pricing, and price/inventory databases are notoriously inaccurate and cost a lot of losses to retailers), so that we can deliver better customer service and improve customer retention. We'll also cut costs by better utilizing some our people in inventory control and inventory and price checking, when they're not handling direct customer service."

Smart management in this case uses technology to get cost savings and productivity improvement without shedding employees, and delivers that cost savings with a higher quality of customer service. Dumb management doesn't do that. So it ain't the technology, it's the quality of management.

If you want to make a difference in the world, don't waste your time on a pie in the sky system that's fundamental dead, waiting on a magical "revolution" that ain't gonna happen. Get into the system that works, and work on transforming and evolving management approaches and corporate culture to something that works better.

Otherwise, you're just wasting time, but it's your time to waste.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Arguing that capitalism benefits the whole is fine. That's just not what Vel and MtG are doing.

You insist "the whole" can not be described in terms of individial outcomes, therefore we're not even speaking the same language. In my view, an ever expanding set of positive individual outcomes creates to a benefit for "the whole." The only thing you've argues is asset seizure, collectivization, central planning, Luddism, and redistribution. Just like Gosplan, you would subsidize the inefficient by extracting resources from the efficient, until all enterprises were equally inefficient, and stagnation occurs, then eventual implosion. Thats' the result of your approach, tovarich.

[The Templar]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Quick answer to Templar (and then I really am going to bed!)

Show me. Show me an example of communism today, working as you describe. If you can do that, I'll be much more interested in the theory.

I've already said that there isn't one. But there are plenty of democratic socialist countries that do function. Again, I think this indicates that any economic system will function given sufficient rule of law in the host nation. But 'function' does not indicate just distribution.

[QUOTE]Regarding innovation, and capitalism's desire to knock it down. Let's see....(off the top of my weary head) [QUOTE]

Let's do it -

Polio Vaccine
-Don't know enough about the actual development. Are you sure this wasn't done in academia with federal funding as opposed to a corporate lab.

Electiricy\Electric Lighting
-Electricity? Discovered prior to capitalism. The electric light? Invented by Edison, a capitalist. Electrification? - accomplished via government programs. Especially rural electrification, in Louisiana this was primarily due to Huey Long's efforts. But overall, the New Deal may count among its accomplishments mass electrification. Not communist per se, but not free market either.

Mass Produced Automobile
-Mass production goes back at least to Adam Smith. Marx acknowledges this is a capitalist contribution.

Flight
- The Wright brothers were terrible businessmen. Again, more proof that engineers must be freed from market constraints to work on their work - not selling their work. As for Space Flight, space stations, and satellites, that was all done by the Soviets first.

Jazz
- Well, it wasn't music created for a market like boy bands. So the fact that jazz came to be in a capitalist country seems ancilary to me. Of course, I love Jazz and the market is not being very kind to Jazz these days. You know, why expect people to take the time to learn to listen when you can mass market crap.

Rock-N-Roll
- Sufficient contributions from socialist European countries (especially at the time) to neutralize this. Besides, communist and socialist visions inspired many of these songs.

Personal Computers
- No widespread until after the cold war.

The Internet
-another government project beloved by hobbiests that only later had a market. In a purely capitalist world, this may never have been invented.

Wireless Communication
-the Soviets, Cubans, etc. had radios. But seriously, the most wired country in the world (at least according to 60 Minutes) is Finland - a fairly socialist nation.

Wide-Scale use of Satellites
-another government project. Sure it has commercial applications NOW, but in a capitalist world this may never have been created due to the initial capital outlays.

The Genome Project
- At least half government/academic. Again, comercial entities jumped on late when they saw a profit motive.

Here are some Marxist ideas: labor unions, collective bargaining, the 40 hour work week, vacations, overtime pay, unstable hierarchies, cooperative control, material theory of power, etc. Granted they aren't as scientifically splendid as the geonome, but they radically improve the quality of life of people.

[Kidlicious]

The automated clerk didn't save K-Mart, but I wouldn't be surprized to see another one in another store eventually. You are right about the management though. That doesn't mean you can't cut costs with automation. You just have to learn how to cut costs with it. That takes a while to work through the economy, but it does happen eventually.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


You insist "the whole" can not be described in terms of individial outcomes, therefore we're not even speaking the same language. In my view, an ever expanding set of positive individual outcomes creates to a benefit for "the whole."

Ok, but you can't then just say, "They are lazy. Too bad for them." You have to create a system that benefits them. Even the supply-siders have a model that claims to benefit everyone.

[DAVOUT]

In my country, there are 4.5 millions persons benefitting the totally free healthcare; they are what Kidicious names poor people. They represent 7.5% of the population.

Everybody has noticed that a significant portion of the OT posters has a IQ around 130 and above; this means that a symetrical share of the population has a IQ around 70 and under. It is possible that these people will never be able to adapt to the sophisticated and complex technological society, and consequently it would be stupid to organize the whole society around a very small minority (a portion of 7.5%).

The real issue is about the extent and comfort of the social net.

It is quite surprising for a French to discover that communism is still living in the US. Here it has decreased from 25% of the voters after WWII to 2/3% now, and the official newspaper of the Communist Party is owned by people like Dassault and Lagardère who are archetypal capitalists (they did that for the sake of diversity of opinions). I like to compare the decline of the communist ideal to the steady increase of people owning their house, which is now above 50%.