From: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson)
Subject: Re: Socialism, again
Organization: Clarkson University, Potsdam NY
	<1992Aug25.003220.25787@meteor.wisc.edu>
	<1992Aug25.035503.26120@ncar.ucar.edu>
	<1992Aug25.071059.29449@meteor.wisc.edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 04:16:53 GMT

In article <1992Aug25.071059.29449@meteor.wisc.edu> stvjas@meteor.wisc.edu (Stephen Jascourt) writes:

   In article <1992Aug25.035503.26120@ncar.ucar.edu> gary@isis.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand) writes:

   >  Bzzznt. I wonder how ones manages to sell all these goods from
   >  these exploited workers when they don't earn enough to afford
   >  them. Unless one sells

   They don't. Most of the goods, in terms of dollar value, are sold
   to the affluent, mostly the top 5% in income.

Evidence?

   In terms of the mass or volume of goods, many basic consumer
   non-essentials like TV's and radios and many other such items most
   people take for granted but don't need, many people spend money
   they don't have and go into debt, buy less food and less nutritious
   food (though they could eat properly and cheaply, but that's
   another matter), skimp on insurance or other things that are of
   greater importance than the consumer good they so desire. The point
   is the majority manage with difficulty, while the wealthy do most
   of the economic exchange among themselves.

"are of greater importance", you say.  Who are you to make that decision?

   >  what one has produced, it's extremely difficult to make a living. That's

   What do you mean "one sells what one has produced"? Do you expect every
   individual (or household breadwinner or whatever) to be a personal
   enterpeneur including being the designer, manufacturer, retailer, and
   marketer for his/her own personal line of merchandise?

Sure, why not?  The days of hiring someone just for a particular skill
that they have are over, over over.

   Most people in this country are employees in some larger company in
   which the power and company earnings are disporportionately
   concentrated at the top, disproportionate to the economic value of
   the contributions of those disenfranchised employees.  There are
   many exceptions, but this is true for the majority.

But also consider that companies have to bid for the labor of skilled
employees.  The historical trend in the West and Japan is toward
higher and higher pay for workers.

   And given the economically more favorable situation to produce
   things in large quantities (more favorable from the corporation's
   standpoint or entrepeneur's standpoint), there will necessarily be
   more lower level employees than entrepeneurs in a capitalist
   society and increasingly so with time.

Pick a company.  Look at its personnel costs.  Subtract off the pay of the
highest executives.  You still end up with a very large number.

   >  Due to excessive taxes and stupid economic regulations that
   >  favor the economically weak and politically powerful over the
   >  economically powerful and politically weak. Did you happen to
   >  see 20/20 last week? They had a story that should make your
   >  blood boil. The short version is that this couple has a
   >  hair-braiding business but has been told to "cease and desist"
   >  because they lack a cosmetology license. All they do is braid
   >  hair, but the cosmetology licensing board (run by salon owners,
   >  what a shocker!)  can't compete against them, so the board dumps
   >  some crap regulations upon them. This is what's killing this
   >  country economically, rather than capitalism.

   Capitalism is producing this result, ironically. The salon owners
   want to make it difficult for others to join the club-- a basic
   tenet of capitalism is to undermine your competition-- so they make
   up these ridiculous rules.  If they didn't have undue influence,
   they wouldn't have been able to get such a rule enacted-- that is
   capitalism interfering in governing of the people by the people;
   instead of by the people it is by those with more money.

So the solution, then, is for a less powerful government, since as you
note, entities with money make the rules.  Given a choice between a
company trying to force me to do something, and a government trying to
force me to do something, I'll take the company any day.  Governments
shoot to kill, but companies have to make a profit.

   The farm subsidy program is very much a mess-- you have to let the Feds
   micromanage your farm in order to get subsidies; that program has to be
   completely reworked. But a more general word on regulations: most broad
   categories of regulations were created to deal with problems that resulted
   from an absence of there being rules-- people were being taken advantage of
   by profit-minded capitalists in every imagineable way and rules were created
   to protect the consumer and the worker. Nowadays, many of the rules have
   become very twisted, some to the point that they no longer server their
   purpose or are counterproductive, but to do away with them altogether would
   bring back the original problem. Instead, they need to be reworked.

Again, you propose to fix something which has become broken over time.  Why
do think it will fail to break again?

   >sj> At least with a decentralized socialism (not a state-planned and state-
   >sj> mandated economy of the eastern block countries), a minimum standard of
   >sj> living is established so everyone has the dignity of having a home and
   >sj> being able to eat a nutritious meal and having their medical needs met.
   >
   >  "Everyone" meaning "group of a few hundred or less", since this about the
   >  only scale where "decentralized socialism" can work. No society is built
   >  upon this idea, rather, capitalism is used for production and wealth cre-
   >  ation, socialistic ideals are used for redistribution of that wealth. To
   >  put it blunty, capitalism is the life, socialism the parasite.

   And a hell of a life that capitalism gives the majority! Capitalism by its
   very nature concentrates the wealth at the top.

Oh yes?  Multiply the net worth of the top 5% wealthiest people times the size
of their population.  Then multiply the net worth of everybody else times
their numbers.

   I think some people who know more specifics about his treatment of labor
   would argue with that, but, for the moment, let's suppose Sam Walton was in
   a net sense a great benefit to "the people". Some others will be too. But
   many are not and they have enough influence by their accumulated wealth to
   not only exploit their workers and/or the environment and their communities
   but squash attempts to change their corporate behavior. Dupont, Dow, and 
   RJR just to name a few, and the list is plentiful. There are some caring
   corporations, but there are enough simply motivated by capitalism to extract
   as much as they can regardless of how they do it and they have enough power
   that life is made unnecessarily difficult for a large percentage of the 
   country and those suffering are deprived of the power to change it, all in
   the name of profits.

How do they make those profits?  Do they lie, cheat, and steal?  Do
they make profits off costs avoided by polluting?  Do they rely on
governmental regulation to extract resources?  All of these are
crimes, regardless of the profitability.

A crime is a crime, regardless of whether it earns money or not.

--
--russ <nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> I'm proud to be a humble Quaker.
Peace is not the absence of war.  Peace is the presence of a system for
resolving conflicts before war becomes necessary.  War never creates peace.