com/cap/com debate - laboring under delusions

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Because the trade affects other people. If you are allowed to take advantage of your workers poor financial conditions it affects me as a worker, even though I don't work for you.

How? Besides making you sad for the other people?

[Az]

Nope.

Wait, so you're actually claiming that a trade only affects the traders, and not the rest of society? This is wrong on a couple of levels you know..

And it's a load of crap that somehow, how much I'm compensated for my labor should NOT be something I'm allowed to have a say in.

"allowed to say in" is a world away from " only the traders should determine it"

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


How? Besides making you sad for the other people?

Say I work for your competitor. You are able to squeeze more out of your workers and lower your price. Now my employer has to find a way to squeeze more out of me. If he can't he goes out of business and I lose a job.

[GePap]

Any debate going this fast can't be very good debate.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Say I work for your competitor. You are able to squeze more out of your workers and lower your price. Now my employer has to find a way to squeze more out of me. If he can't he goes out of business and I lose a job.

That's not a change in you, though, and the only effects felt by society are those it permits itself to feel. You might as well blame the consumers for buying the lower-priced product.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Azazel

And it's a load of crap that somehow, how much I'm compensated for my labor should NOT be something I'm allowed to have a say in.

"allowed to say in" is a world away from " only the traders should determine it"

If those not party to the trade can dictate it, I have no say.

[Az]

well, you see, this turns into a real approximation discussion ( approximating and bending formal systems to this issue) , but n/m that. I'll just say this: You can have a say, but you're not the only one.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


That's not a change in you, though, and the only effects felt by society are those it permits itself to feel. You might as well blame the consumers for buying the lower-priced product.

nonsense

[Kuciwalker]

Brilliant refutation

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Brilliant refutation

And efficient too, if I may say so!

[Kuciwalker]

No.

[Agathon]

I see this thread has become another confusing cluster ****.

[Kidlicious]

You're going to have to be more reasonable Kuci.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Agathon
I see this thread has become another confusing cluster ****.

I'm sorry, I tried. I did respond to the posts you made in the other thread, though

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Kidicious

We are. You should be compensated for the social value of your labor. Should you not?

So if someone does labor at the behest of their employer that has NO social value, does that mean they get no compensation? That would be the necessary follow-up. Simple question . . . Kidicious what's your answer?

Also doctors and nurses and teachers should get paid far far more than TV repairmen if we are talking social utility. Healing the sick and teaching would seem to me to be far more socially valuable than any commercial product. Again who decides?


If you want to switch it to economic value of the product, then I hope you are willing to pay oil workers and diamond miners millions of dollars per year since thats what their labor produces ( conveniently forgetting the billions of dollars that owners may have spent to get it ready for production). But what do you compensate the janitor at the diamond mine?? You can't share the diamonds or oil now, can you ?? and what about the janitor back at the hospital where (in canada) no commercial service occurs??

No I think in the end the communist state would pay these people a "fair wage" and the individual would have less say in what that wage is than they do now. With no other employers, no right to strike, no possibility to move etc, how would your state employer differ from the very worst of the monopolistic capitalists . . . Oh thats right the decision makers are all philosopher kings that only have the general good-- which somehow they can ascertain-- as their goal.


Sorry-- minimum wage laws prevent the worst exploitation and the social safety net means that no one should starve. Add in free spreech and mobility and the FACT that there are many many many employers out there and I just don't buy the argument that employment is coercive.