Is America a Plutocracy?

[Marat]

Lemur: If you travel from a country with a very high degree of wealth inequality like the U.S. (GINI number 45) and go to live in one with a low degree of wealth inequality like Germany (GINI number 27), you simply don't experience the type of problems you imagine from the restriction of inequality by government redistribution. I lived in the U.S. for about half my life and lived in Germany for 7 years, and Germany seems every bit as economically free as the U.S. does. Perhaps one would notice less economic 'freedom' at the higher levels of corporate entrepreneurship, where profits would be noticeably more heavily taxed, but for most people, 'freedom' means not the freedom to earn as much money as possible without paying much tax on it, and instead means the freedom from fear of bankruptcy as a result of severe illness, or of devastating economic results from unemployment, or low standard housing or homelessness, or the inability to go to university if you are economically unlucky.

[Mr Skeptic]

So at what point does one become unfair as one gets rich? The one millionth sale of that widget they mass produce that people demanded for their happiness? The return on a financial investment that company used to loan money to people to buy houses? When they splurged and bought a yacht that paid the salaries of their employees to build it? When did their equal access and equal protection under the same exact laws create unfairness for someone else?

 

If I point a gun at your head and offer to let you live if you would give me some money (otherwise kill you but not take your money), and you voluntarily give money, is that fair? If you're dying of thirst in a desert and I offer to give you some of my extra water for $100,000, is that fair? Unfairness happens when one party has a better bargaining position than the other, even with voluntary exchanges. A voluntary exchange happens when two parties have items that they each value differently, and improves their total happiness by the difference in value. However, there is nothing that determines who gets the majority of that value. Generally, the person with the better bargaining position gets the better deal from the same exchange. This is why we strive to reduce any individual's bargaining rights, such as in the case of a monopoly. In the case a union has a monopoly of a company's labor, the same applies.

 

In general, rich people have the better bargaining position than do poor people, so they get better deals.

 

In the idealized free market, everyone has an equal (and negligibly small) bargaining position.

 

Freedom doesn't mean that it's free to live and people just give you shit (sacrificing their freedom) it means you're free to make a living for yourself. You are free to attempt to convince anyone, anywhere to give you stuff.

 

Unless you coerce them, right?

 

People don't have to submit to the terms of employers for basic necessities, that's merely the most popular choice since they don't want to build something in their garage and sell it. They don't want to synthesize labor and capital into goods and services on their own and they find it very easy to just show up and provide unskilled, not-very-damn-special labor for them. The problem is when they expect to be paid greater than supply and demand realities.

 

People don't always get to do whatever they want. Some people don't have the knowledge, and others can't take the risk of failure. Some might be unable to take the time off work to start a new business. I do think it would help if independent job creation were taught like an academic subject at school, and loans made available for new small businessmen. I think that would greatly improve fairness, independence, freedom, and the economy in general.

[jackson33]

If I point a gun at your head and offer to let you live if you would give me some money (otherwise kill you but not take your money), and you voluntarily give money, is that fair? If you're dying of thirst in a desert and I offer to give you some of my extra water for $100,000, is that fair? Unfairness happens when one party has a better bargaining position than the other, even with voluntary exchanges.[/Quote]

 

Skeptic; Without trying to disrupt your and ParinoiA's discussion and assuming your discussing indirectly Management/Labor relations;

 

When an employee is hired, both the employer and employee have an understanding of what the jobs description is, if then accepted the terms have been agreed to. I believe your talking about changing that description by the employee and that not a right, IMO. What would be right is if the employer wishes to add duties, responsibility or authority (usual case) then a compromised agreement (pay raise, perks), would be in order. On the other hand if the employee believes the duties he/she has agreed to cannot be met, for whatever reason, with in a reasonable time period (not 5 years later) their right is limited to acceptance, not necessarily renegotiation. It's not so much fairness/unfair, wealth/poor, but authority or no authority.

 

People don't always get to do whatever they want. Some people don't have the knowledge, and others can't take the risk of failure. Some might be unable to take the time off work to start a new business. I do think it would help if independent job creation were taught like an academic subject at school, and loans made available for new small businessmen. I think that would greatly improve fairness, independence, freedom, and the economy in general. [/Quote]

 

Any person with a good business model in mind today, has total access to everything you mentioned. Not so much here, but on several business oriented sites, questions on how to set up, finance or operate a business or the legal components, are common. In fact I've thought about suggesting a business sub-forum here. One point I always delve into is the ability to accept the risk and consequences of that risk. We always hear about that one in a hundred that succeed, but rarely do we hear about the other 99 and why I'll always argue the rights of those that are generally taking risk. More often than you might agree with, the owner/manager will net less than their own workers...

[lemur]

Lemur: If you travel from a country with a very high degree of wealth inequality like the U.S. (GINI number 45) and go to live in one with a low degree of wealth inequality like Germany (GINI number 27), you simply don't experience the type of problems you imagine from the restriction of inequality by government redistribution. I lived in the U.S. for about half my life and lived in Germany for 7 years, and Germany seems every bit as economically free as the U.S. does. Perhaps one would notice less economic 'freedom' at the higher levels of corporate entrepreneurship, where profits would be noticeably more heavily taxed, but for most people, 'freedom' means not the freedom to earn as much money as possible without paying much tax on it, and instead means the freedom from fear of bankruptcy as a result of severe illness, or of devastating economic results from unemployment, or low standard housing or homelessness, or the inability to go to university if you are economically unlucky.

Does German government put requirements on people for labor-force participation, etc. because the economy is seen as a public responsibility that people have in return for receiving welfare-state benefits? In one sense, this doesn't seem so bad to me. I mean, the benefits surely outweigh the cost/effort you put in. Still, at the level of individual freedom of choice, my question would be who gets to decide what economy I have to contribute to and what is good for me to have provided by my 'generous welfare overseers.' What if, for example, I am told I have to work in a restaurant because that is what brings tourist money in, which is needed to pay for the welfare state? But then I don't eat in restaurants and I don't value the idea of providing services to tourists because I am for having a different economy? Would I then be free to choose not to support the welfare state economy and pursue my own projects instead? My impression is that when government intervenes in economics, certain businesses get subsidized and people are driven to work for those businesses to pay the taxes to keep them running. So where does your freedom to vote with economic participation/choice go?

Edited March 11, 2011 by lemur

[ParanoiA]

I don't understand what this analogy specifically addresses? Sacrifices may be voluntary or coerced. When they're coerced, it is likely to be unfair to the person being coerced if the person/market doing the coercing isn't taking their best interest into account.

 

That's what I'm trying to get you to explain. You interpret coercive behavior abritrarily from unfortunate and I'm not getting how you draw that distinction.

 

If I'm paying someone what you believe to be low wages in a job they don't desire to do, then according to your previous comment they have been coerced. My point is that the market - YOU - coerced me, the entrepreneur when you refused to pay more than 2 bucks for a cheeseburger. You make me compete with other cheeseburger businesses and you take your business to them when I raise my prices. This makes me have to find ways to cut the costs of producing cheeseburgers so I can get you to buy them from me.

 

Aside from dreaming up efficient changes in the production process, which is always done regardless and only goes as far as the human imagination can take it, this means finding the cheapest labor and capital. Cheap capital means the labor used to mine it or produce it also uses cheaper labor.

 

If that's all coercive, then stop it. Stop coercing my cheeseburger business lemur. Agree to pay the higher prices for my cheeseburgers and give me the room to pay higher prices for labor and capital.

 

You can't assess what kinds of exploitation and/or coercion are going on based on the price of a commodity. The money-exchange results in a set of material relations that may or may not be exploitative/coercive. By buying the chocolate, you might be assisting the managers to coerce the workers in some way. If you are a chocolate addict, the workers are exploiting your addiction to pay their wages and may be exploiting the managers to provide certain levels of job security. Exploitation and coercion can go in any direction, and even multiple directions simultaneously, like any other form of social power.

 

So let me get this straight....if I really like chocolate and I'm addicted, then everyone who makes chocolate is now exploiting my addiction? I'm addicted to eating, and I will die if I do not. Isn't every food manufacturer exploiting my dependency on food? They are using the threat of death to coerce property from me, no?

 

Denying what I desire based on your judgment of the merit of my choices (ie..chocolate addiction presumably "bad") is immoral. So, those workers refusing to sell or make chocolate for me based on their interpretation of exploiting my addiction, is immoral. Therefore, their only choice is to be immoral by refusing chocolate production for me, or immoral by "exploiting" my addiction of chocolate by selling it to me.

 

That whole problem only exists if the workers presume what's "good" for me, and attempt to judge my choices - which will inevitably conflict with my desires in life. If I wish for a short life of cigarettes, chocolate and liquor then that is my desire and no one has any objective moral position to say that's "bad". Seems to me, this exploitation concept requires defining lines of "good" and "bad".

 

Satiating what I desire, is exactly the kind of "exploitation" I wish to have, over and over. Thank you sir, may I have another?

 

When a person is economically independent and they decide to sell their labor in exchange for wages, that is un-coerced trade. The question is at what point people have little if any choice EXCEPT to sell their labor. Obviously, at the point someone gives you the choice of selling your labor or losing your life, that is coercive, but what about the broad spectrum in between?

 

Then share with us, that point. I don't see it. What I see, is people that have very little to offer society but want a lot of things from that society. They won't make things and sell them in order to be independent. They won't create their own wealth. They find it extremely appealing to do very simple labor for others instead of all the trouble required to be an entrepreneur or just live off of the land.

 

And that fits the conditions because that's why they have very little offer society in the first place - they won't go to the trouble to achieve economic independence. That's why 40 year olds work at fast food and cashier jobs. They value their off time too much to put in effort (like education and trade skills) to increase their value to society so they can trade their labor, or wealth they create, to others for a higher return.

 

I'll agree that people can abuse the will to legitimacy/fairness to achieve unfair ends, but if you would completely reject the very possibility of fairness, why would you criticize people abusing it arbitrarily as a means to dominate and exploit others?

 

I don't reject the possibility of unfairness, I reject the conditions you and others use to define it. I define unfairness in terms of collusion with government, or any exclusion from the same rules the rest of the market must follow. When company A gets special treatment via bribes, or if they get excused from Obamacare for instance, while the rest of us still have to comply, then that is unfairness. When the rules are level and no one is excused from them, then I think you have a much better framework for fairness.

 

 

All I'm saying is that cell phones and everything else is built by humans and/or human technologies. So, theoretically, it is possible for everyone to participate in the process of making things according to their level of interest in the product. I.e. as free as people are to contribute their money to the processes they want in the form of stock investments, why shouldn't people be just as free to contribute their labor, buying and selling as much or as little as they want at will?

 

Possibly because capital is owned? Because it's an unworkable solution? If I understand your question, and it's very possible I do *not*, you're essentially asking why you can't stop by your local auto shop and just start working on broken automobiles until you feel like leaving, then drop by the phone company and do some call routing for a couple of hours and then go home and watch TV.

 

That sounds pretty damned unworkable to me. Somebody owns that auto shop - and people who spend lots of time there might not appreciate you stopping by and just jumping in, misusing equipment, breaking things because your enthusiasm trumps your skills and abilities, leaving someone without a car for much longer and a shop left to repair crap you broke.

 

With you and everyone else coming and going at their leisure, how would you coordinate and give time estimates for repairs to people?

 

Last but should have been first, stocks utilize companies that buy the stock even when no one else wants to buy it. That's how you're able to sell stock in a moment's notice, regardless of searching for and finding a buyer. To do this in labor, is to have people who will agree to provide all the labor that isn't being provided by voluntary "drop-in-and-work-when-you-feel-like-it types". So, here again, we have people "coerced" into labor again - unable to just do things when they feel like.

 

Not to mention the incredible lack of efficiency and output and predictable service. A society like this will fix your car whenever enough people happen to stop by and fix cars. No ETA. Just drop by ever now and then see if it's done.

 

If this is something you've thought about, and I know you're definitely the kind of guy that thinks things through, then you might want to share how you think this would work. It sounds interesting, despite my counter points.

 

Not give you someTHING, but to prevent unnecessary levels of structural constraints from emerging to limit your otherwise greater freedom to make economic choices. Some levels of freedom are unacceptable because they require constraining the freedom of others. However, when freedom is being constrained in favor of others, isn't it reasonable to expect these to be replaced with something that allows the maximum amount of freedom for the maximum number of people?

 

I'm not sure about that. I'll have to think about it. It looks pretty on the surface, but I'm hearing sinister music in the background.

 

My first question would be, which one trumps the other? I could greatly increase my freedom if I could just own a person and put them to work for me. That would maximize my freedom, yet reduce the number of people enjoying freedom. So is it better that my freedom be reduced then so we have more people being free, but not as maximized per person? In that context, it would seem the free market is already maximizing both.

 

What would you build in your garage and how much could you sell it for? Enough to pay taxes and insurance and bills? And even if that was an option, why would that legitimate employers exploiting their position of relative economic power to sollicit excessive levels of submission from employees?

 

There are millions of products and services done by businesses in buildings - my "garage" was referring to your property. Furniture, cabinetry, auto repair, bottled water - whatever you can think of. No one is stopping you - except for maybe licensing and zoning laws, which can be unfair (an example of collusion by big business to force out competitors by requiring gobs of cash to enter a market).

 

And that doesn't even cover service jobs that don't require real estate of your own, like hanging sheetrock, mowing lawns, selling lemonade...

 

If you can't achieve these things, it's because you can't get people to give you money for them. How is that everyone else's fault? How does this create unfairness?

 

And none of this legitmates anything. It simply establishes the reality that people - you, lemur - and everyone else spends their money on things they want, try to get the most they can for as little as possible.

 

If they can get something better from business A, for a better price, then business B won't get the sale. If you can't build things in your garage that people will buy, then it's not coercion that sent you out looking for people to buy your labor service - you and the saturated market you are participating in, in the case of cheap labor.

 

Again, this all comes back to complaining that people won't just behave assymetrical to nature. People won't just ignore price, or quality, or workmanship simply because it would be neato to support someone creating wealth from their own, personal labor. Are you doing that?

 

 

________________________________________________________________________

 

Over the years here, I've tried to show how you are all a part of the system we criticize. That we, you and me, your friends, your family, your co-workers - all contribute to the problems you complain about.

 

You behave exactly like the rich. You make the same decisions as the rich. You are just as selfish and profit minded as they are with your labor. You cut costs and buy the cheapest this and that, and you could care less who it harms. You only do work for the money, or else you'd do it at home.

 

Every complaint I've ever read about rich people, is duplicated in the behavior of the poor and middle class. All of this is maneuvering for social power since you perceive that you lost in the market, despite what your standard of living has to say about it.

 

We give excuses left and right for why we can change the rules for ourselves - the "working" class, and how that's not the same as business changing the rules for themselves, like collusion with government using laws, licensing and etc.

 

You invest in 401K, then complain about corporations and their profits - profits going into your retirement accounts. You aren't complaining when you receive the benefits, only when you notice someone else got more benefits. Same when entrepreneurs lose their ass, no one else is offended they didn't get to give up some of their income in that failure.

 

You bitch that money buys elections, then you elect politicians that spend lots of money on the election. You know how you know an elected official is bought and paid for? When they spend more money getting the job, than what it pays. Why are you creating the problem to then turn around and complain about it?

 

Why are you excused from your own behavior? Why are you excused from your contribution to the problems?

 

I stopped excusing myself a long time ago. A liberal friend of mine once said "Be the change you want to see". That stuck with me. Essentially, it's practice what you preach.

 

 

There's my soapbox themed departure. Pangloss is gone. He was treated like absolute crap here. I'm appalled when I read how he was treated in these threads, and not taken up for by any of the staff. The comments are still there. Pangloss, and his eternal diplomatic centrism, took a lot of shit before he would fling anything back at all. The most fair minded, lefty-conservative on this forum and the lefties still treated him like a punching bag.

 

There's a few on the staff that I have a lot of respect for and I think have been incredibly fair, as you'd expect from a mod. Cap'n, Skeptic, Phi for all, and etc.. And there's those of you that did not take up for him at all, and allowed post after post of childish, abusive petulant behavior, particularly from a certain puppy of a certain admin here...

 

Take it easy guys. I really do appreciate the help I received from many of you and the patience you've shown me over the years. The loss of Pangloss is unacceptable and I won't participate in the forum that encourages it. Most of us come and go in phases, but this is permanent.

 

This is called being the change I want to see. Stand up for good people that deserve it, even if that means sitting down.

Edited March 17, 2011 by ParanoiA

[lemur]

That's what I'm trying to get you to explain. You interpret coercive behavior abritrarily from unfortunate and I'm not getting how you draw that distinction.

 

If I'm paying someone what you believe to be low wages in a job they don't desire to do, then according to your previous comment they have been coerced. My point is that the market - YOU - coerced me, the entrepreneur when you refused to pay more than 2 bucks for a cheeseburger. You make me compete with other cheeseburger businesses and you take your business to them when I raise my prices. This makes me have to find ways to cut the costs of producing cheeseburgers so I can get you to buy them from me.

Right, exploitation typically occurs in chains. Various people are exploiting you, cheeseburger manager, including me the cheeseburger-customer, and then you try to exploit your employees to escape the exploitation yourself. More than likely, you try to add a little to it for your own benefit as well. But the way to really see where the coercion takes place is to simulate what happens when someone opts out of obeying the will of others. E.g. imagine you decide you're no longer going to coerce your employees into doing things they don't want. Then, all your employees tell you they only want to work during the day and not evenings or nights. So you change your opening times accordingly and then you lose your customers because they all go to other fastfood restaurants that do stay open in the evenings. Then you decide, "fine, I quit then," and you seek something else to do with your time but let's say you don't come up with anything so you go looking for a farm to work on in exchange for food but all the farmers tell you to get lost - so then you look for your own plot of land to farm for sustenance, but the police come arrest you for trespassing, so you find out the hard way that you should have kept your cheeseburger restaurant open evenings and coerced your employees to work then because "the customer is king"(sic). But, yes, coercion is more complex than unilateralism and unfair-pricing.

 

Aside from dreaming up efficient changes in the production process, which is always done regardless and only goes as far as the human imagination can take it, this means finding the cheapest labor and capital. Cheap capital means the labor used to mine it or produce it also uses cheaper labor.

Right, and this is good, imo, because it keeps economic exploitation consolidated/rationalized to a minimum. I think there are always going to be certain tasks that have to be done regardless of whether people want to do them or not, but it is ethically logical to me to minimize those tasks and the amount of time spent on them. Ideally, such work should be spread out among the maximum number of individuals possible so that any one person would only have to spend a small amount of their life performing them, somewhat like jury duty.

 

 

If that's all coercive, then stop it. Stop coercing my cheeseburger business lemur. Agree to pay the higher prices for my cheeseburgers and give me the room to pay higher prices for labor and capital.

But higher wages and profits can also have a coercive effect. Let's say you find it unethical to keep your cheeseburger place open 24/7 but you find out that people are willing to pay $10/cheeseburger after 2AM. At that point you could offer bonuses to employees that chose to work night shifts, but wouldn't those employees only make this choice because they felt unable to sacrifice the bonus to choose for their quality of life? Imo, what's less coercive is to simply not patronize businesses that don't promote ethical practices or to use them as little as possible. So, for example, if everyone only bought a cheeseburger from you once a year for as cheap as possible, your franchise would recognize that demand in your area was low and close down all but maybe one of its restaurants. That way, all those employees would be free except for one restaurant. Then, in an ideal world, all the other workers from the other restaurants would take turns manning the one restaurant so that they all only had to work a couple weeks/year.

 

So let me get this straight....if I really like chocolate and I'm addicted, then everyone who makes chocolate is now exploiting my addiction? I'm addicted to eating, and I will die if I do not. Isn't every food manufacturer exploiting my dependency on food? They are using the threat of death to coerce property from me, no?

Yes, your body/stomach coerces you into seeking food. This allows others to use food-access to coerce you into doing things for them. Try it one day; leave all your money at home and take a one-way bus ticket to another city. Then start going around asking for food and see what you end up getting stuck doing in exchange for it.

 

Chocolate and other addictions are also used to exploit people for money. Remember when people were addicted to $3 lattes? There were people spending $100s/month on coffee. They were having trouble keeping up with bills but yet they still had trouble cutting into their coffee money! That's not exploitation? The deal is basically you pay $100/month or suffer caffeine-withdrawal headaches as punishment. When people are in control of their consumption (can take it or leave it), it's not exploitative/coercive. Don't get me wrong, it's the addict's fault as much or more than the supplier, but the co-dependency relationship generally is exploitative/coercive as a whole.

 

Denying what I desire based on your judgment of the merit of my choices (ie..chocolate addiction presumably "bad") is immoral.

That's the funny thing about it. Exploiting your addiction involves NOT denying you the chocolate, cigarettes, heroine, etc. That's why smart businesses (including drug-dealers) often start with free samples. Then, once you are addicted it is unethical to deny you your fix, not because of any merit judgment but because it causes you suffering to withdraw from what you are denies. The irony is that the only way to free you from your addiction is to deny you access to your addiction (ideally, you do this on your own to maintain control over your own life but the whole fundamental issue in addictive substances is that people lose the will to deny themselves access). That's why intervention is such a big issue where addiction is concerned.

 

So, those workers refusing to sell or make chocolate for me based on their interpretation of exploiting my addiction, is immoral. Therefore, their only choice is to be immoral by refusing chocolate production for me, or immoral by "exploiting" my addiction of chocolate by selling it to me.

There is not 'only' one ethical choice. Ethics are complex and you can take different approaches to participating in exploitative/coercive/addictive products. Most things are addictive to some extent, so it's not like there's any totally free path. However, there are many different strategies possible for seeking freedom from states of relative attachment/bondage.

 

That whole problem only exists if the workers presume what's "good" for me, and attempt to judge my choices - which will inevitably conflict with my desires in life. If I wish for a short life of cigarettes, chocolate and liquor then that is my desire and no one has any objective moral position to say that's "bad". Seems to me, this exploitation concept requires defining lines of "good" and "bad".

Do you define freedom as good and bondage as bad? If so or if not, why?

 

Satiating what I desire, is exactly the kind of "exploitation" I wish to have, over and over. Thank you sir, may I have another?

So why don't you get yourself addicted to crack and heroine then? Do you have any reason to avoid strong, expensive addictions like these then?

 

I have to reply to the rest of your post later. I am almost running late because I am so attached/addicted to finishing my response, but I have to be strong and put the rest off for later:)

[lemur]

Then share with us, that point. I don't see it. What I see, is people that have very little to offer society but want a lot of things from that society. They won't make things and sell them in order to be independent. They won't create their own wealth. They find it extremely appealing to do very simple labor for others instead of all the trouble required to be an entrepreneur or just live off of the land.

There are lots of ways to organize human labor to generate sustenance and value. There's a difference between using social power to coerce others into doing things your way to give yourself the better end of the bargain and using the same power to negotiate a mutually beneficial arrangements where all parties involved are voluntarily involved and (truly) free to decline when they disagree with the terms of the contract. E.g. Telling someone they have to do it your way because they're free to quit, when you know that you can give them a bad reference and destroy their career, is exploitative and the manager who uses this tactic is perfectly aware of it which is why they use it to coerce people in the first place. A less coercive way to negotiate would be to tell someone that you require them to fulfill minimum contract requirements and then recommend another workplace where you believe their point of view will work better and then to give them a good reference for it. All your job as a manager really should be is to clearly communicate your business interests and see if there's a way to work together with those of employees. Coercive labor practices are, well, coercive.

 

And that fits the conditions because that's why they have very little offer society in the first place - they won't go to the trouble to achieve economic independence. That's why 40 year olds work at fast food and cashier jobs. They value their off time too much to put in effort (like education and trade skills) to increase their value to society so they can trade their labor, or wealth they create, to others for a higher return.

I think a lot of older people would love to go to school to pursue a new career but the investment is big and the chance it will pay off is not guaranteed. So if they retrain at their own cost, they could end up having done nothing more than stimulate a recessionary economy with their tuition money, fees, book costs, etc. Then they'll end up working to make the money back in fast food anyway, so why not skip the intermediate step of going into debt for schooling?

 

I don't reject the possibility of unfairness, I reject the conditions you and others use to define it. I define unfairness in terms of collusion with government, or any exclusion from the same rules the rest of the market must follow. When company A gets special treatment via bribes, or if they get excused from Obamacare for instance, while the rest of us still have to comply, then that is unfairness. When the rules are level and no one is excused from them, then I think you have a much better framework for fairness.

Any of these things may be unfair but they are hardly the definition of unfairness. They are just special cases that should be discussed case by case.

 

Possibly because capital is owned? Because it's an unworkable solution? If I understand your question, and it's very possible I do *not*, you're essentially asking why you can't stop by your local auto shop and just start working on broken automobiles until you feel like leaving, then drop by the phone company and do some call routing for a couple of hours and then go home and watch TV.

People always do that. They always take the suggestion that there should be more economic freedom to the extreme in order to ridicule me into accepting whatever terms of labor I am told are necessary. I'm not saying that people can completely define their labor-force participation on their own terms; just that there's not enough good-faith effort going into constructively working toward it. It's more like there's this epidemic attitude of complaining when employees don't just shut up and do as they're told. That's disturbing, don't you think?

 

That sounds pretty damned unworkable to me. Somebody owns that auto shop - and people who spend lots of time there might not appreciate you stopping by and just jumping in, misusing equipment, breaking things because your enthusiasm trumps your skills and abilities, leaving someone without a car for much longer and a shop left to repair crap you broke.

Oh, so now you're going to get tough with your language to hammer in your point? Should I cry and accept that you're right now just because you used insulting language? If you would think constructively, you could imagine that experienced mechanics could use a work-order system to plan a work-schedule for them and then show up at a convenient moment to get some work done. The problem with auto-mechanics, I suspect, is that they're constantly overwhelmed with an excessive work-load because of how many people drive their cars like they don't care and then throw money at mechanic shops to make the problems they cause magically disappear. More people should do their own auto repair so they know what a pain it is and that mechanics aren't always ripping them off when they have to fix the same problem 3 times because they were eliminating possible causes.

 

Last but should have been first, stocks utilize companies that buy the stock even when no one else wants to buy it. That's how you're able to sell stock in a moment's notice, regardless of searching for and finding a buyer. To do this in labor, is to have people who will agree to provide all the labor that isn't being provided by voluntary "drop-in-and-work-when-you-feel-like-it types". So, here again, we have people "coerced" into labor again - unable to just do things when they feel like.

You know, the "drop-in-and-work-when-you-feel-like-it types" insult can be turned on consumers who think they have the right to consume other people's labor just because they get overpaid for their bureaucratic position. Yes, as long as economic recession doesn't cause you to get laid off, you can complain about lazy people who want to work at their convenience but when you lose your career and have to work in auto repair or food service, it will be people breathing down your neck to serve them day and night for low pay.

 

Not to mention the incredible lack of efficiency and output and predictable service. A society like this will fix your car whenever enough people happen to stop by and fix cars. No ETA. Just drop by ever now and then see if it's done.

IT is advanced enough that people should be able to pull up a list of exactly what their mechanic is working on and see estimates of how long those jobs take and where they are in the queue. My problem is with the mentality that the customer is king and the workers have to hustle to serve you when you can't even fix your own vehicle. If these people have better mechanical knowledge and skills than you do, you should be grateful that they are even available to help you get your car running again in the first place.

 

My first question would be, which one trumps the other? I could greatly increase my freedom if I could just own a person and put them to work for me. That would maximize my freedom, yet reduce the number of people enjoying freedom. So is it better that my freedom be reduced then so we have more people being free, but not as maximized per person? In that context, it would seem the free market is already maximizing both.

The free market is not allowed to maximize both. Instead it is abused to protect a certain privileged class of people who never have to taste what it's like to be on the service end of their consumption. If everyone had to perform some amount of such service labor, I think you'd be surprised how quickly the middle class would be reforming consumption practices and service-demand.

 

There are millions of products and services done by businesses in buildings - my "garage" was referring to your property. Furniture, cabinetry, auto repair, bottled water - whatever you can think of. No one is stopping you - except for maybe licensing and zoning laws, which can be unfair (an example of collusion by big business to force out competitors by requiring gobs of cash to enter a market).

Great. Go get a job working at any of them and then tell me whether you felt exploited. Were you happy doing you job? Did your personal life suffer in any way? If so, how? These are the questions I would like you to answer after working such jobs for a sufficient period of time to be able to answer from the worker's perspective.

 

If you can't achieve these things, it's because you can't get people to give you money for them. How is that everyone else's fault? How does this create unfairness?

Because if the sheet rock worker buys lemonade for $10/glass and the lemonade maker pays it to the sheet-rock maker, etc. and generally drives up prices and business-access in the economy, it makes it costly for people to use their labor to provide for themselves. If lemonade costs $1 at the fast food restaurant, it shouldn't cost $10 at the elite lemonade kiosk. In a rational free market, that wouldn't happen because no one would be foolish enough to pay $10 for something they could get for $1.

 

 

Over the years here, I've tried to show how you are all a part of the system we criticize. That we, you and me, your friends, your family, your co-workers - all contribute to the problems you complain about.

Yes, and democracy is about using you brain to reflect on it and discuss ways of making things better.

 

Every complaint I've ever read about rich people, is duplicated in the behavior of the poor and middle class. All of this is maneuvering for social power since you perceive that you lost in the market, despite what your standard of living has to say about it.

Rich people are only attacked by people who are jealous of them and want to bring others down. People of any class status can be abusive; it's just the more money you have the more people do it on your behalf to provide you with the things that put them in your favor. It's not fair that these people manipulate you like that; it is really them that are being economic abusive but yet people blame the rich person because they are the one that receives the privileges.

 

There's my soapbox themed departure.

Yes, you rant too much instead of having a cool reasonable discussion about a specific topic. It's like you're trying to establish that you're whole worldview is correct and everything that disagrees with it is categorically wrong. What's the point of discussion if you have that attitude?