From: gummitch@techbook.com (Jeff Frane)
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Organization: TECHbooks --- Public Access UNIX --- (503) 220-0636
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 00:23:14 GMT

leecr@microsoft.com (Lee Crocker) writes:

>In article <C0EBCw.11E@techbook.com> gummitch@techbook.com (Jeff Frane) writes:
>>
>>The idea that Capitalism is the system that guarantees workers the
>>"exclusive right to the fruits of his/her labor" is astonishing, and
>>certainly would be a revelation to all the workers in this country that
>>struggled to feed their families on starvation wages and were beaten,
>>shot and thrown out of work by the goon squads hired by the companies
>>that actually owned the fruits of their labor.  Even the simplest
>>American history course should reveal the idiocy of suggesting that
>>capitalism -- at least as it is actually _practiced_ -- is anything but
>>heartless and immoral.  Whatever benefits/kindnesses are practiced by
>>corporations today were forced on them by the collective action of
>>workers, NOT by any inherent virtue in capitalism.

>You miss the point entirely--those terrible conditions were anything
>but capitalism; they were state-supported criminal enterprises with
>no respect for individual rights.  The fact that no one in human
>history has ever practiced true capitalism should be all the more
>argument in favor of it.  All governments in human history have been
>opressive of the working class, because none of them respected the
>absolute inviolable human right of each individual to his own life,
>liberty and property.

The assumption that -- without government intervention -- capitalism
would enrich _everyone_ is the central myth of Libertarianism.  People
do not need governments to exploit each other; it has been a central
characteristic of human culture for millenia.  It's certainly true that
robber barons used the government they owned to aid in keeping the labor
pool under control, but given a stateless situation, what's to keep them
from using other methods: goon squads, lockouts and the like?

Your all premise is based on the idea that -- absent government --
capitalists would "respect the absolute inviolable human right of each
individual to his own ... radada radada".  What could _possibly_ cause
you to believe that?


>Businesses in the US today--which is the closest to capitalism we've
>got even though it's not very close--provide benefits to their
>workers because if they didn't, companies that did would steal them
>away, or workers would strike, customers would boycott, and many
>other free-market solutions would bring them back in line.  That's
>what freedom is all about--each man has the right to choose where
>he works.  If he still "feels exploited", well, though.  That's the
>way nature made the Earth--you have to work to eat.

Could you explain how business in the US today approaches pure
capitalism, given the profusion of subsidies and tax breaks, no to
mention the questionable corporate legal standing, that props up so many
corporations?

In case you hadn't noticed, companies take benefits away from workers
every day and when they _do_ strike, workers are permanently replaced.
In the 1980s corporations started hiring people whose specific job was
to figure out ways to deprive workers and retirees of their guaranteed
pensions or beat them out of the health benefits.  None of your theories
work unless we assume there is a _shortage_ of labor.  If the labor is
highly skilled, then there is competition for the labor, but less and
less of the workforce has needed skills -- and companies are getting by
with fewer and fewer skilled workers.

When was the last time you saw a customer boycott successfully cause a
company to rehire striking workers or give them back their benefits?
Please name one case.

Why do you assume that a worker who feels he is being exploited is
simply a whiner, unwilling to work?


>The idea that a worker isn't keeping the fruits of his labor because
>some "rich executives" are siphoning it off is naive and ignorant of
>economics.  Those rich executives are as necessary to the functioning
>of the company as the riveters and mail sorters.  Without the Wall
>Street traders and CEO's there wouldn't be the loading dock job to
>have, so yes, that worker is getting what he's worth.  Prices and
>wages don't come from thin air--they come from supply and demand.  If
>a worker can make a dollar more somewhere else, he will.  If an
>employer can make a extra 10 cents by hiring somebody else's workers
>for a dollar more than they make now, he will, because his pocket
>money depends on it.

Funny, isn't it, that in Japan the difference between what the riveter
and the CEO make is only a fraction of the difference in the US? and yet
the Japanese seem to have a pretty good grasp of economics, Lee, and a
much better grasp of reality than you.

Do you honestly believe that all the upper and mid-level managers in a
corporation are essential to the functioning of that corporation, and
that something that they do makes them inherently worth 10-100 times
more than the person actually producing the product the corporation
sells?


>Anyone who honestly believes that workers are exploited in the US,
>or even more ludicrously, that they would be exploited more under a
>true capitalist economy, needs to go back to economics 101.

Just as soon as you take History 101.

--Jeff Frane

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