Yo, Communists (part one)

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

You have no point as I acknowledged earlier.

Originally Posted by Yahwe

I don't understand how you think you can make the use of public money more transparent without having a large bureaucracy

step aside rebecca wade ...

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

I agree, since you are incapable of reading you should probably go to bed.

the fact is that if (as you stated) capitalism and free enterprise did not flourish then you would have nothing to pretend you were opposed to.

because the opposite of flourishing is dying and they are, my enthusiasticly deluded friend, not dead.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Yahwe

you'll see that you just confirmed my original point

If we're saying that any system which has more than one person checking an invoice is a "large bureaucracy" then fair enough, but I'm not sure I agree.

My (entirely uncontroversial) point remains that in addition to existing controls and procedures, technology if judiciously used could help some processes more transparent.

My original remark was in addition to the above we might want to try :

minimising / eliminating bureaucracy wherever possible

(emphasis added).

Fairly straight-forward really, but it's not the same as the above. For instance, it's arguable that the Soviet Union created a breeding ground for corruption by insisting on so many permits and licences for relatively basic tasks such as types of internal travel or very basic business dealings. More bureaucracy (in the sense of permits, not auditors!) more opportunities for corruption in some cases.

This is something the neo-liberals whine about quite a bit. Similarly there's been a fair number of stories in the business press over the last couple of years about doing business in China. They tend to mention that to do business in China it is accepted certain officials (i.e. the bureaucracy) will need to be bribed.

that seeing a computer screen which says that work has occured and being able to physically see that no work has actually occured may well be two co-existing truths.

Yeah, that happens all the time to internal staff who have to check the status of works at the moment. Some repairs aren't necessarily visible by their nature and sometimes other "proof" is required (e.g. electrical certs, guarantee for insulation, that sort of thing). In general though these sorts of things are triggers for further investigation.

With larger items (usually the type that prompt queries) there will be some kind of visual record or what-not to go back to if required. I doubt you're really that interested in the details of all this though.

When you come down

p.s. I'm sorry man, but I'm not actually on any drugs today/tonight except a Nytol I took ten minutes ago. I feel I've let GD down by not being hardcore enough. Still, it's NYE so I'll try to make up for it.

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

If we're saying that any system which has more than one person checking an invoice is a "large bureaucracy" then fair enough, but I'm not sure I agree.

Actually what I (emphasis added) was saying was that your glib idea that somehow a system of government can exist with a high level of transparency without a correspondingly large bureaucracy is a silly idea.

One person to check invoices is still a bureaucracy, times it by the number of invoices and divide by the number of hours in a day and ... oh look at the pretty pretty numbers.

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

This is something the neo-liberals whine about quite a bit.

neo-liberals???

the english language is a child's playground of bastardy to you.

[demiGOD]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

Saying Communism is extreme is kind of ridiculous. What elements of it are extreme to you? The assertion that people should be free, equal or should have that which they need? Is that so radical?

Communism being an extreme is more of a subjective statement, and here is why;

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

No one said anything about abolishing privacy rights, I assume you meant private property?

Yes, I meant abolishing property rights, which is to me, a very outrageous idea because I'm a property owner myself.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

No one said anything about abolishing competition.

What we have been saying all along is that people at some stage might wish to stop being exploited and demand the right to make more choices about their way of life. You aren' reading this but picking stuff out of somewhere else.

Abolishing competition was never mentioned in this thread and I understand that. But I also fully understand that the very description regarding a good and working communism specifically states that the abolishment of competition is necessary to take control of the equal distribution of wealth and production.

it will have to take the control of industry and of all branches of production out of the hands of mutually competing individuals, and instead institute a system in which all these branches of production are operated by society as a whole – that is, for the common account, according to a common plan, and with the participation of all members of society.
It will, in other words, abolish competition and replace it with association.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

Your view of extreme taxation is based on the notion that we don't already subsidise a whole bunch of other interests through our pay-packet anyway. Has it ever occurred to you that you are being paid less than the value of your labour?

A fair argument. Although people tend to be indifferent with their wages, no matter how hard and long their work hours are, as long as it pays the bills. That indifference becomes a struggle when the wages don't pay the bills anymore, and they therefore will have the freedom of educating themselves, learning a new trade or simply quitting and venturing out for the ultimate goal of making more money. (Most people will anyway, depending on their personal drive for the betterment of their quality of life.)

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

Your statement that the upper class has worked harder for their money than people of lower classes is silly? What evidence do you have for this? If you go to a factory and see who is doing all the work you will note that its not the people earning the most money. Once we expand to a global context are we saying that children working 18 hours a day, every day for £2 a day are working less hard then you?

Positions of leadership takes a lot to be achieved. Using your example of a factory, an industrial environment, of course the supervisors and managers will assume more responsibilities thus will make more than the average framer, machinery repairman, equipment operator, etc., but wouldn't it be safe to assume that these people who work in these leadership positions had to go through that pipeline of starting from scratch, and maybe were the best in their fields and got promoted? It is also debatable, on the other hand, that they achieved these leadership positions through influence and charm (sucking d*ck).

And from there, it comes back to the individual allowing himself a state of indifference. Hard work becomes a decent job as long as it pays the bills on time.

How about another example. A hospital - you have the doctors, heart surgeons, brain surgeons, psychiatrists and ER surgeons who are making an average of $200,000 per year. Then you have your registered nurses, vocational nurses, surgery technicians, etc., who are making $30-$40 per hour totalling to about $80,000 per year - maybe from these 2 professions, a decent example of an outrageous inequality of distribution of wealth within the institution, right?

But see, with the (United States') current property tax laws, credit scoring and loan application processes, a person making $80K per year would be approved for a $500K worth of property. Definitely a person who is not making the most money in that institution would definitely be content with his situation, wages and assets.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

David Beckem does he work hard? The Queen?

Athletes are entertainers and we live in a world where people demand for entertainment. People would spend money without thinking twice just to be entertained. And in a business where a lot of monies get transferred, the profits in these entertainment businesses are unlimited.

On the other hand, in the entertainment industry, I would assume these entertainers work very hard for the constant maintenance their stature, image and physical condition, and by failing to do so, will cost them the loss of their source of income.




The Queen, et al have inherited wealth. I have mixed feelings with inherited wealth.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

Your assertion that having a classless society will never save the poor from poverty is one of the most meaningless statements I have read today. What the hell are you talking about?

Communism is designed to save or liberate the poor from poverty. Subjectively, I think this as an eye candy and in real world scenarios, with greed, corruption and such, the rich will become poor and the poor will stay poor.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THE ABSOLUTE POWER OF ONE INDIVIDUAL

I suppose I worded wrongly, I meant absolute government control. Government control that's mostly influenced by its leader, by one individual.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

On your last paragraph I would simply ask you when that is going to come about? When is capitalism going to award hard work and education? When will the lower classes have access to welfare and compensation? You are talking about a system which doesn't exist.

12 years of formal education for a higher education diploma for free, financial aid, college grants, scholarships, college loans, Medicaid, Food Stamps, cash assistance programs, housing programs, supplementary security income programs, annual increase of minimum wages in all states, social security,tax shelters, etc.

[Phang]

Originally Posted by demiGOD

12 years of formal education for a higher education diploma for free, financial aid, college grants, scholarships, college loans, Medicaid, Food Stamps, cash assistance programs, housing programs, supplementary security income programs, annual increase of minimum wages in all states, social security,tax shelters, etc.

I put it to you here: why do these things exist?

[MrL_JaKiri]

If only The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was the length of A Modest Proposal so the former could be linked here as easily as the latter is in that death penalty thread. It certainly talks about many of DemiGOD's arguments.

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

The defining technologies of the 20th century: Nuclear power, Computers, aeroplanes, robots, the internet were all developed by the Government.

I daresay that if I had the power to compel people to give me money with which I could hire a bunch of very clever people, I could come up with some good inventions too. Sure, governments have had plenty of successes, but for >40% of GDP I think that's to be expected. We might well question why they haven't produced more, considering the vast powers at their disposal.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

I agree that we do live in a world where a lot of money is given to athletes and entertainers. That is neither here nor there. I am simply point out that whereas an immigrant in London will hold down a job as a taxi driver, a cleaner and a fast-food worker, making at most £5-6 per hour and 18 hour days, 7 days a week. Back breaking humiliating labour, and David Beckham plays football. I am sue David Beckam plays a lot of football, but it is just football. So again hard work versus salary. This is easy easy stuff and shouldn't need to be explained in this painful way to you.

Being a taxi driver is easy. Anyone who can drive can be a taxi driver (cue obvious joke that plenty of people who can't drive seem to be taxi drivers too). Anyone can be a fast-food worker or a cleaner after only the most basic training ('here's how to flip a burger and wipe down a surface, now off you go').

Being David Beckham, however, required hours upon hours of training and practice for no pay. Sure, it has paid off big time for him now, but how many hours of monotonously kicking a ball against a wall did it take to become that good at it? So Beckham is being compensated not just for his present efforts, but for the years of training it took to become good at what he does, to the presumable exclusion of other activities he might have undertaken. That, and the fact that a large number of people seem to find David Beckham quite valuable; valuable enough to pay to watch him and his fellow footballers. When burger-flipping requires years of sustained (and unrewarded) practice, and is performed for the entertainment of a crowd of 60,000 and a global TV audience, it might be as well-rewarded as football playing. But, of course, it never will be because anyone can do it.

The same principle applies to lawyers who can charge astronomical hourly or daily fees, not because they're working 'hard', but because they've invested their time in learning something in the past. I wouldn't quite go along with the conservative argument that 'the poor deserve it', but clearly some people are paid poor wages because they have not learned a useful skill that other people want. As I said earlier in the thread, I think people should have a guaranteed minimum income from which to build from, but after that point they have to fulfil some role in society which society actually desires. Suggesting that we break the link between what society wants, and what individuals receive, is essentially destructive of society.

Hard work does not necessarily equal high pay. I could work very hard at, say, becoming a painter. But no matter how hard I work, even if I do 18 hour days, 7 days a week, until I can barely work any longer, I can't expect people to pay me anything unless they actually like my paintings. For a moment, imagine I could compel people to pay me a sum commensurate with how hard I worked; I would be taking large sums of money from others who don't like any of the things I do. That sounds quite anti-social to me.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

I daresay that if I had the power to compel people to give me money with which I could hire a bunch of very clever people, I could come up with some good inventions too. Sure, governments have had plenty of successes, but for >40% of GDP I think that's to be expected. We might well question why they haven't produced more, considering the vast powers at their disposal.

You're vastly oversimplifying the ways that technological advances come about. The vast majority of breakthroughs (in terms of a paradigm shift rather than mere improvements) come as a result of blue sky research, which is something that the private sector has very little time for, when compared to governments. Similarly,

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

Being David Beckham, however, required hours upon hours of training and practice for no pay.

Again, a vast oversimplification. On the one hand, if Average Kid 57 puts the amount of hours in that David Beckham did and does, there would be no guarantee at all that he would be as good at football. The large numbers of professional footballers who aren't as good as Beckham shows that. In addition, David Beckham, from what can't be much past his tenth birthday, has had training from some of the best football academies and youth systems. I wouldn't call signing a schoolboy contract with Manchester United at the age of 14 exactly the result of self-determination alone.

On the other hand, you're judging people by two different sets of criteria. The burger flippers could well have spent hours and hours and hours practicing something they loved doing, but either didn't get the luck to find someone to employ them to do it, or there was some reason why they couldn't do it as a professional.

I'd agree that, in a free market society, footballers should be paid a lot of money. However, that doesn't mean that the free market society that permits this should exist.

The chief aim of their constitution and government is that, whenever public needs permit, all citizens should be free, so far as possible, to withdraw their time and energy from the service of the body, and devote themselves to the freedom and culture of the mind. For that, they think, is the real happiness of life.

[Tietäjä]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

Oh you have mixed feelings about inherited wealth. How kind of you to consider that their might possibly be some inequality in the world. How bold.

To add an icing to the cake, people like David Beckham and Bill Gates represent a minority. A lot of the real rich people have more or less inherited their wealth. This comes especially true in nations like Britain or Finland, where there has been a strong nobility (which obviously has owned everyone's asses back in the brick wall and sword), or a strong conquering party (in Finland, Finnoswedes are mostly on the top class of wealth and income - because their great great grandparents were able to tax, for no particular reason, the serfs and peasants how they wanted, and thus have roots way down to property ownership). Capitalism builds upon owning property. The property owners "steal" the value added. It is possible to gather a fortune during a lifetime, as having started from zero, but that requires extraordinary circumstances (a talent greatly - or over - rated by the society, such as football skills or singing talent, or a huge innovation, such as the PC - mind you, mobile phones made no single people rich except for those who were on the old Nokia heritage; the people who originally owned old Nokia rubber/boot factories and so on. These were no commoners.). Most of the time, money attracts more money, and it doesn't, in practise, spill over effectively over to the poor unless there's strong state intervetion.

Nordic countries in general have very strong state interventions and income differences are very actively leveled with taxing and transfers. United States, however, has nigh any of this system. In fact, unless your parents are wealthy, or are able to gather an amount of money, you might not even be financially able to educate yourself so that you would come to possess one of those scarce skills the capitalist community is ready to pay lots lots of money money for (ie. you don't become Central Bank Chief economist in the gutters of Bronx, for example). In Finland, education is free, and you're granted a subsidy that covers up to 170 euros worth rents and 256 euros worth living per year. That's yet not enough to live with, you can take cheap government backed up student loans, or work while studying, too. But it's closer to "equality" than an education you have to pay all for yourself.

Why? What? The spoon model coming right in. Open mouth, insert spoon, eat porridge, spoon out, close mouth.

A women once made me very pissed off. She claimed that abolishing studying subsidies and placing university level education not free (ie. market priced) would advanced equal opportunity. She also thought even taxes (everyone pays the same percentage of income) would bring more equality to the society. Frankly, what she was saying, is: **** the poor, because my parents are rich through inheritage, I'm allowed better chances of becoming even richer, and the poor may and should stay poor. It's a "brotherhood" of the rich. Capitalism often piles money on the rich people. This can be seen also in a form of Finnish education system, the Swedish schools. The Åbo akademi, ie. Finno-swedish University in the city I study in (obviously in the Finnish university) is piss-rich. Why? Because the people that have inherited tons of money (read up regarding nobility and royalty and the source of their wellfare) have placed money upon foundations so that the limited group of people they support and belong to (the "Swedish bloodline" in Finland) would have it nicer. In no frozen hell would they donate funds to a non Finnoswedish university.

I haven't even reached the point where I'd begin to write about transnational corporations and their threats to the global community. But it's a matter of numbers of choices. Yeah, now you are, oh wait, David Beckham earned his money through hard labour. Yeah yeah, and then he has a fortune, his son will probably never work a day in his life, or if he will, he'll become a model or something like that mainly because his name says "Beckham".

Again I haven't argued anywhere in this thread for stronger Government control. Please pay attention.

Those things at the end, Capitalism can't take credit for those, they are products of Government something you have been arguing against. Furthermore many of those things had to be fought for in spite of what the market wanted. So they don't really support your argument do they?

Capitalism has it's benefits on zones like technology spill. Occasionally it happens so that the greed of one (James Finlayson, a Scottish capitalist-industrialist) becomes the blessing of another too (Finland), but most of the time it doesn't work so (Africa), and it just becomes a burden to anyone but the party on top of things. The party that owns, has money, and wealth to accumulate more wealth with.

Originally Posted by Comrade Rob

The same principle applies to lawyers who can charge astronomical hourly or daily fees, not because they're working 'hard', but because they've invested their time in learning something in the past. I wouldn't quite go along with the conservative argument that 'the poor deserve it', but clearly some people are paid poor wages because they have not learned a useful skill that other people want

Our favourite, David Beckham, or more of interest, any of his children, will never have any trouble attaining quality education. David will certainly be happy to provide his children with not only cemester fees, but also lodging, food, and other supplies necessary to achieve the level of education. I bet any rich American has no problem providing their children with this opportunity to become a well-educated lawyer whose (scarce) little efforts are paid vast amounts of money for, more than Matlock himself. Yeah. The problem is, a tiny minority of the global population has the opportunity for this. Of 1000 people, probably one would have the realistic opportunity to study on university level or spend hours and hours playing football. Some have to strive hours and hours each day only to live. You can hardly call that equality, or you can hardly blame the people who cannot afford to get themselves an education for not getting one. This doesn't only apply to the very poor Africa (another one of my favies, see) but also to some "Western" countries, USA on the head of it.

[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

Give the man credit. He's written over 6 thousand words in this thread alone and its hardly like he's a first time poster yet in your eyes he's being glib?

I didn't ask him to spam. He's glib because his point ignores logical truth.

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

On your second point, you are saying that in the glorious future there will be some administration required. Well if we aggregate all administration then yes, that would be a bureaucracy, however that is not a given in and of itself.

Furthermore there is actually massive amounts of discussion about bureaucracies, most notably by Max Weber and Hannah Arendt. Its a complex post-modernist issue concerning the nature of power relations in a system where a large state rests on a economic system based on intense division of labour and not one that's easy to cover. For example in the second world war all the major sides could be characterised in this way, and to take a few liberties with Chomsky's analysis you could suggest that all sides in WW2 were in fact fascist, that is if you regard fascism as a system not defined by its racist views per se but in fact by its radical statism and its enforcement of social conformity.

In fact if you were to read Bauman's "Modernity and Ambivalence," which is a gem of a book, Bauman makes this case forcefully as a basis for a counter-modernist critique. Namely that it is the bureaucratic state which led to the holocaust through its intolerance of certain groups who do not conform to neat little social boxes(that'sa very brief summary of a complex and wide-ranging argument). He then employs Hannah Arendt's idea of the banality of evil inherent inherent in a bureaucracy where no individual takes full responsibility for a decision so that monstrous things can take place because legislators are alienated from the outcome of their policies.

You can this further with the following analogy: Who is responsible for the bombing? the tactition or code-breaker order who suggests the most effective bombing site, the person who transmits the order, the commander who leads the squadron, the pilot who pulls the trigger on a hazy target, the person who built the bomb, the person who designed the bomb. This is an example of the division of labour as described by Adam Smith. It just happens to be the division of labour for mass killing made possible by no individual having complete responsibility for the action.

So you see bureaucracies themselves could be considered to be a bi-product of the capitalist system and share its characteristics. So if we accept that we accept that under a different system the character of many of its components are likely to change as well.

How might they change you may ask? Well that's a big question but its not an argument against change is it.

More irrelevant spam. It appears that the only thing we will know for certain about your 'glorious future' is that critics highlighting valid flaws will all be bored into submission.

(oh and that they'll all be repeatedly labeled capitalists and booed at like a camp pantomime)

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

You're vastly oversimplifying the ways that technological advances come about. The vast majority of breakthroughs (in terms of a paradigm shift rather than mere improvements) come as a result of blue sky research, which is something that the private sector has very little time for, when compared to governments. Similarly,

Yes, but this advantage comes from not having to make a profit, not (necessarily) simply from being 'the government'. Where technological breakthroughs came, they largely came because clever, dedicated people worked to create them.

It could also be argued that since the government takes such a large cut of earnings (in taxes), private enterprises are less able to invest in speculative research. They are also somewhat insured against the negative consequences of this by the fact that the government will spend money on it. If the government was not conducting blue-skies research, others might feel that they should begin doing so. I could make the somewhat glib point that the industrial revolution didn't result from government intervention, but I'm wary of arguing from historical examples.

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

Again, a vast oversimplification. On the one hand, if Average Kid 57 puts the amount of hours in that David Beckham did and does, there would be no guarantee at all that he would be as good at football. The large numbers of professional footballers who aren't as good as Beckham shows that. In addition, David Beckham, from what can't be much past his tenth birthday, has had training from some of the best football academies and youth systems. I wouldn't call signing a schoolboy contract with Manchester United at the age of 14 exactly the result of self-determination alone.

Are you sure? OK, I'll accept that genetics plays a role here and that some people are more likely to excel at sports than others, but that role is only small. You seem to be taking the view that some people are 'naturally' (in other words 'unfairly') endowed with certain talents (or propensity for such) from birth, and their later success is merely the exploitation of this unearned boon. But I know kids that I went to school with who are professional footballers now; without exception, they were the ones who played football at school lunchtime, went to football training after school and joined kids football teams and played competitively at weekends. I, on the other hand, joined in the occasional kickabout. If I had played as much football as them, I would have been as good as they were. And if they had spent as much time reading books as me, they would have been as good at English or Maths as I was. To say otherwise is to say that we are born with a certain limit on our achievements (possibly true) and that that limit is quite low (certainly not true).

I could be a great many things which I am not. The skills and talents I have are the ones I have worked to acquire, even before the age when I realised what I was doing (to this day, I have the ability to do large multiplications in my head, because at the age of 10 or so I was convinced that it was important that I learn this. It now seems less useful, but it's certainly not a 'natural gift for numbers' as most people seem to think). Likewise, David Beckham could have been many other things, but he chose a path and worked very hard to become good at it. He took a risk that dedicating vast amounts of time to football would pay off, and it did. Society needs people who make those kinds of gambles, because they push the boundaries of what is possible (ok, David Beckham is perhaps a bad example. Einstein might be better).

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

On the other hand, you're judging people by two different sets of criteria. The burger flippers could well have spent hours and hours and hours practicing something they loved doing, but either didn't get the luck to find someone to employ them to do it, or there was some reason why they couldn't do it as a professional.

Yes, the reason was that nobody was willing to pay them to do it. The thing they loved doing was useless to anyone else. Why should society encourage people to do things which give no benefit to society? It's not that hard to do things that other people appreciate enough to pay for them.

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

In reply to "Comrade Rob".

I am not defending government I am similarly pointing out that the cry of "competition is the mother of invention" is false.

You are right David Beckam is the hardest working man alive, I don't know how he does it. Football is of course a very specialist area of human endeavour limited to a chosen few. My mistake.

No, football isn't a specialist area open to a chosen few. But only a few are any good at it.

Computer programming is a lot like football. Both can be learned from a relatively early age and people can become very good at it in their teens. But it's pretty well known in computer programming that only relatively few programmers are highly productive; most are slow, make lots of mistakes and fail to make the intuitive leaps necessary to be a highly productive programmer. As a result, the best command higher salaries (although it's nowhere near as extreme as football, where 'superstar' effects probably exaggerate the rewards to the best).

Many human skills work like that - doing a 'Learn a language in an hour a week!' course will result in mediocre skills in that language. Going to live in the country where the language is spoken will result in far greater fluency, but represents a much bigger sacrifice of time, effort and money. But if you need someone to be a translator, which would you expect to pay more for?

Beyond that you are trying to prove something that isn't really relevant to the argument. Boogster's case is that Capitalism is fair because the harder people work the higher their wages. So when I get £26,000 a year for writing some articles, chatting up admin staff and making wisecracks in meetings off the back of a the job before where I divided my time posting on pa and answering the phone whilst gaining a masters qualification I barely showed up for. That equates to more work than someone earning £5 an hour on their feet all day cleaning and up all night driving. Now it might be true that I am part of some special elite whose skills are so unique that is should demand an ever greater price for them, or possible there is some iniquity.

But you are. You're clearly more articulate than most people. You're intelligent, you have a grasp of issues that are beyond most peoples' comprehension, and that's just what I can observe from a few years of lurking on GD. How many books did you have to read, how much effort did it take, how many discussions and meditations has it taken for you to develop your mental faculties as far as you have? Does this count for nothing?

So I agree with you hard work does not necessarily equal high pay and that is the end of the justification for wealthy people. The idea that they somehow contribute more to society is simply idealistic nonsense. If I were compensated according to my social contribution I think society would be asking for its money back, with interest.

But it isn't, is it? Clearly, someone thinks that paying you is a good idea, and if they're wrong then the consequences obviously haven't been so bad that this fact has become apparent to them (maybe one day it will?). I'll be honest, I feel the same way that you do sometimes; I do website design which is ****ing easy, and I am sometimes horrified by what people will charge for such easy work. But I've seen so many bad websites to realise that good web designers are actually quite rare, and that the good ones are the ones who know what they're doing. A bad web designer can work twice as hard and still produce something far worse. (I'm sure this example is universal enough that you must recognise it). In short, it's up to the web designers to do their best, and others will judge for themselves.

Now our friend Demigod is an interesting case, because if he is a navy recruiting officer I can't think of a more worthless profession. Yet he seems to feel that he is earning his salary and good for him. So satisfied with the job he does, as he looks out of the window and sees people toiling in the streets he can smile to himself and think "I may convince teenagers that defending Western Imperialism is a good career choice, but I am better than all of you."

Yeah, but if you'll forgive the phrase, who the **** are you to decide? Again, someone else thinks what he's doing is worth it and is willing to pay him to do it. That you disapprove is irrelevant (except for that, as a taxpayer, you are contributing to his salary; in theory you are entitled to vote against this, but I'll grant that this doesn't exactly work very well).

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

How many books did you have to read, how much effort did it take, how many discussions and meditations has it taken for you to develop your mental faculties as far as you have? Does this count for nothing?

Well, it depends on how many other people are willing to do the same thing. The tech support jobs I've worked in have generally been with people who had put hundreds of hours of their own time learning computer "stuff" and so they were much more skilled than other entry level jobs.

Yet the basic starting rate of pay in such jobs was only £5 or £6 per hour which for London is fairly low. Why? Well, partially because there are (or were) a lot of people in the 18 to 25 age bracket with low level IT support skills formed in the same way. Everyone knows somebody who can install a motherboard or diagnose basic hardware problems, etc and so the market doesn't reward these skills. If some of these kids had spent the same length of time playing around with plumbing instead of DOS EMM settings or whatnot then they probably could have entered work at higher pay.

The point is that the market can reward hard-work (or investment in skills) and arguably this is the usual outcome. But it's strange to turn it into some moral case - all this "reward" is is just a side effect of supply and demand. If you spend your entire life learning how to be an expert gas heating engineer (say) and then some revolutionary advance means all gas heating is abandoned overnight then your (non-transferable) skills are not necessarily worth anything and you should not expect to be compensated. This is not necessarily a problem of course.

Now, it's slightly more complex than this - supply and demand is obviously not the only thing that affects wages in the real world and I have some issues with the way pay is set in some environments. However, if we are talking about a market model then I'm not really sure we should even talk about "reward" as if it's moral issue - it's not.

A bad web designer can work twice as hard and still produce something far worse. (I'm sure this example is universal enough that you must recognise it). In short, it's up to the web designers to do their best, and others will judge for themselves.

I would agree there is certainly divergance in talent between web designers (or programmers, consultants, whatever) but as projects get larger, levels of individual skill seem to become progressively less important when compared to how the whole thing is managed (which is also a skills issue of course). We have both internal and external web stuff done by consultants which varies wildly in quality (usually most of it is poor though). In the five years I've been here we've redesigned the intranet twice and the external website at least three times - each project done by a diifferent firm. I don't think the problem is the relative skill level of the people doing the work but rather in how the project is run, our vision, etc.

To take an extreme example, look at the government's NHS IT madness. There are probably (simply by the law averages) probably some very smart and able people working on that from a tech point of view, yet the whole thing is a bit of a shambles. If the thing does eventually fail, will it be the quality of the programmers involved who are responsible? Probably not.

In a lot of environments it's very difficult to actually measure real performance (despite hundred of business books on the subject). The success or failure of large projects depend on so many factors that's it's almost impossible to accurately measure one persons impact in isolation. And so evaluations of individuals often rests on slightly woolier notions - how articulate someone is, whether they're friendly or helpful, their perceived dedication to the project, etc. All very important things of course - but possibly also present in people who aren't necessarily any good at getting things done.

There are also various arguments about pay at the top end of the scale. Shareholders in theory determine executive pay, but this is via a board representing them and we find when all other costs are subject to strong downward pressures (either to increase shareholder value or to meet government targets) executive pay continues to rise well beyond inflation. This might be because it's worth paying £2m at the top to save £200m through good leadership but it's not always clear that's the result.

Cynically I would note that most people I've met think their job should pay more (well, duh). But they seem to hink their job should pay more even once they've left (so it's not just a case of wanting more money personally). Not always, but certainly a disproportionately large number of people think their job is the toughest/most important in the company. All perfectly natural, of course. But given this and the fact a lot of boards are filled with people who are directors/CEO elsewhere, what do you think the answer is to the question "How important / valuable are directors/CEOs?" when raised?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

(Blue Sky)

I apologise if I don't see "Don't worry, if the government didn't do something, private enterprise would!" as a particularly strong argument. When given the chance, industry has always been about making larger profits for the people who own the company, and consequences be damned. Whenever industry has been deregulated, or taken upon an otherwise government controlled task, they do it with less regard for the poor, and more regard for the people who make the money. As you say, industry is about profit making. Where's the profit to the privatised rail services if they spend more than they earn to make the trains run on time, be clean and plentiful? Where's the profit from giving people expensive operations for much less than they cost to perform? As you say, industry is about profit making. Healthcare should not be, it should be about making people healthy. Transport should be about making people get to where they should be as efficiently as possible. Profit doesn't really enter into it.

I will, however, freely admit that this is not an entirely accurate picture. Whilst the vast majority of companies are like the above, there are some which are not.

Unfortunately, this is a numbers game, and the majority matters.

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

Are you sure? OK, I'll accept that genetics plays a role here and that some people are more likely to excel at sports than others, but that role is only small. You seem to be taking the view that some people are 'naturally' (in other words 'unfairly') endowed with certain talents (or propensity for such) from birth, and their later success is merely the exploitation of this unearned boon.

How small that role is certainly open to debate, and indeed is not exactly likely to be purely genetic. Genetic determinism doesn't really hold much water, and nuture as a child (and instances of random chance) certainly come into play. Beckham certianly wouldn't be the player he was today if his family wasn't quite so football obsesssed. Things can have more than one cause, however, and football has quite so many people trying to reach the top that doing so must take a herculean effort, or incredible natural ability, or, and this is infinitely more likely, a heady mixture of both.

One of my old rowing coaches used to say that "A good big 'un always beats a good little 'un". This is very true, but you will notice that it does not rest entirely upon being big or small. Being "good" is just as important, but being small always puts a limit upon what you can achieve.

You also seem to attach a stigma of "wacky communist" (not that I am a communist) to the notion that not having the same natural abilties is "unfair". Now, it may not be something that it is desireable to do anything about, but it can't be regarded as "fair". The question is not whether it is unfair or not, just as in other things, the question is if it matters.

You say that you know some professional footballers. What level do they play at, and how good were they without having to put the hours in? You say you could have become a professional footballer. You don't know that, many very promising youngsters coming through the youth systems fail to develop, and many don't have a future in professional football at all. How can you be so sure you wouldn't be one of those? How much would those boys have practiced if they hadn't had some initial ability in it, and training not showed improvement? "Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest mother****er in the world.", to quote Neal Stephenson.

You also appear to be claiming that the only gain of what Beckham did would be to become what he is today. Worded like that, then that's a pretty big risk. But I would say that he also enjoyed doing it along the way - not necessarily in the "hey, this is fun!" kind of way, but that he got some fulfilment out of it, as I do with many things that I do.

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

Yes, the reason was that nobody was willing to pay them to do it. The thing they loved doing was useless to anyone else. Why should society encourage people to do things which give no benefit to society? It's not that hard to do things that other people appreciate enough to pay for them.

So, you accept the disconnect between hard work, being good at something, and any form of success, then? I must also note that I found your argument based around "use" to be amusing. I enjoy watching and playing sports, but they're hardly useful activities. Furthermore, I am not demanding that everyone is paid for doing something that they enjoy.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

I daresay that if I had the power to compel people to give me money with which I could hire a bunch of very clever people, I could come up with some good inventions too. Sure, governments have had plenty of successes, but for >40% of GDP I think that's to be expected. We might well question why they haven't produced more, considering the vast powers at their disposal.

Not only that, but the claim robots and computers were developed by the government is baffling, and nuclear power was largely a case of implementing existing scientific research on nuclear physics/relativity (admittedly this was non-trivial, but nuclear power was an engineering project rather than a scientific one). Aeroplanes being a government development is even more crazy, and I can only assume hes using a definition like "X was developed by the government" <=> "The government invested some money into an already highly promising and pretty much completed technology".

There is no serious doubt that computers, robots, and aeroplanes would exist today regardless of the government. The internet is a bit more controversial, but even then its conceivable that it could have started as a cooperative project by universities.

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

You're vastly oversimplifying the ways that technological advances come about. The vast majority of breakthroughs (in terms of a paradigm shift rather than mere improvements) come as a result of blue sky research, which is something that the private sector has very little time for, when compared to governments.

Yeah but the theoretical stuff behind it largely falls under the rubric of general university research which doesnt necessarily need to be government funded (quantum physics, relativity and the theory of computation being obvious examples of 'major paradigm shifts' that were developed independently of specifc government funding). Corporations may not pay theoretical physicists to piss around with abstract models indefinitely, but universities can (and do) allow them to do this as part of their work and fund them through endowments/grants/etc. Once something has been found which shows promise, corporate funding is easier to obtain. The idea that theoretical research requires governmental funding is totally fallacious.

[milo]

As Nod said the words used by communists generally tend to sound very very dated, but in the tradition of abstracting ideas and as monty python said

"Well, obviously, it's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturers of dairy products"

I give you an internet capitalists take on internet communism.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

I apologise if I don't see "Don't worry, if the government didn't do something, private enterprise would!" as a particularly strong argument. When given the chance, industry has always been about making larger profits for the people who own the company, and consequences be damned. Whenever industry has been deregulated, or taken upon an otherwise government controlled task, they do it with less regard for the poor, and more regard for the people who make the money. As you say, industry is about profit making. Where's the profit to the privatised rail services if they spend more than they earn to make the trains run on time, be clean and plentiful? Where's the profit from giving people expensive operations for much less than they cost to perform? As you say, industry is about profit making. Healthcare should not be, it should be about making people healthy. Transport should be about making people get to where they should be as efficiently as possible. Profit doesn't really enter into it.

All of this ignores how profit is actually made, namely by providing a product that people want to pay for. I dont know about you, but I'd far rather be treated by a doctor who knows that I'll take my business somewhere else if I'm not satisfied, rather than by one who is assured a salary from the government regardless of how he deals with me. The desire of people to make a profit is precisely what makes them responsible to their clients - I'd rather appeal to someone's self-interest than their goodwill.

Transport is a terrible example to use since its been privitised in name only - the rail networks are controlled by the government to the point where they might as well be state owned. If you want an actual example of something which was heavily influenced by private corporations, you can take the Docklands Light Railway which has been pretty much the biggest success story in British transport for a long time.

You also seem to attach a stigma of "wacky communist" (not that I am a communist) to the notion that not having the same natural abilties is "unfair". Now, it may not be something that it is desireable to do anything about, but it can't be regarded as "fair". The question is not whether it is unfair or not, just as in other things, the question is if it matters.

Its perfectly fair and it doesnt matter how much it matters - you might as well complain that Brad Pitt was born more attractive than you and will always get hotter girlz no matter how many hours you spend in the gym. Not everyone is an equally beautiful snowflake.

[dda]

Again, thank you to all of you who have contributed to this thread. I have tried to follow the discussion as best I can.

One small point that I would like to comment on was early on where someone said that religion contributes nothing of value. I think this is the equivilent of saying that art or literature contribute nothing of value. Religion may not contribute anything to me but it doesn't mean that it doesn't contribute inestimable value to others.

I think that I shall start Yo Communists (part two)

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

There is no serious doubt that computers, robots, and aeroplanes would exist today regardless of the government.

I think the only sensible thing you can say (without getting into ridiculous "What ifs?") is that the state has a massive involvement in the economy of modern nations. From welfare states to the role of military, it's difficult to intellectually separate that from the rest of society - even over a shorter period. If you're talking over a much longer period then I wouldn't be confident in anything. If European countries never developed the modern nation state at all then it might be that civilisation as we know it would have collapsed or that the Arabs would be globally ascendent, or that we'd have invented hyperdrives by now.

I think people mention government involvement in research etc because it's easy to over-simplify how the modern economy works. I can look at my pay slip and think "Hmmm, if I didn't have taxes, I'd earn £x more" but I'm not really thinking that the economy would be radically different - my job probably wouldn't exist and even if we ignore those issues then I'd still probably need to pay for private medical insurance, private security, street-lighting and so on.

Originally Posted by milo

As Nod said the words used by communists generally tend to sound very very dated

99% of everything is terrible, and with communists, 99% is a conservative estimate. However, this has to be weighted against the fact that a lot of people argue with a parody of communism rather than what anyone has said. I could probably say that communism is about killing gooks, kykes and ******s and making sure the white man owns the world and someone would still reply something like "Well, communism would work in a perfect world".

Obviously many things have changed (obviously) since Marx's time (and in many cases he was wrong then anyway), and I try to make that clear with what I'm saying. But other changes which seem enormously important to others (e.g. the fact share ownership is more widespread, especially via pensions) don't really seem that important to me in real-world effects. In other cases it's arguable. You could say that things like 'means of production' has lost its meaning because a single computer could technically produce something "worth" billions, but I'm not sure that was the sort of production that anyone was ever talking about. If I manage to convince people my excrement is worth a million dollars per milligram does that mean I'm somehow adding hundreds of billions in value to the global economy every month? Well, in financial terms I am, but I don't think it really makes sense when talking in political/philosophical terms to talk like that. In fact, this is one of the reasons why I think economics generally doesn't properly articulate conceptions of value/need/production/utility well - it's far too easy to fall into broken-window type fallacies if one is looking just at numbers.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by dda

One small point that I would like to comment on was early on where someone said that religion contributes nothing of value. I think this is the equivilent of saying that art or literature contribute nothing of value. Religion may not contribute anything to me but it doesn't mean that it doesn't contribute inestimable value to others.

I said that the Church (of England) produces nothing of value, although that was vaguely facetious. Obviously (see my post above) the value thing is going to depend on the observer, but then I should hope that was implied. If I say hip-hop is worthless, I obviously don't mean to every single person in the world.

[demiGOD]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

Now our friend Demigod is an interesting case, because if he is a navy recruiting officer I can't think of a more worthless profession. Yet he seems to feel that he is earning his salary and good for him. So satisfied with the job he does, as he looks out of the window and sees people toiling in the streets he can smile to himself and think "I may convince teenagers that defending Western Imperialism is a good career choice, but I am better than all of you."

Oh you think I'm not?





P.S. I do like my profession and pay. I can honestly tell you though that there are days when I do feel I should be getting paid more because of the hours I put in. But don't we all?

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

I apologise if I don't see "Don't worry, if the government didn't do something, private enterprise would!" as a particularly strong argument. When given the chance, industry has always been about making larger profits for the people who own the company, and consequences be damned. Whenever industry has been deregulated, or taken upon an otherwise government controlled task, they do it with less regard for the poor, and more regard for the people who make the money. As you say, industry is about profit making. Where's the profit to the privatised rail services if they spend more than they earn to make the trains run on time, be clean and plentiful? Where's the profit from giving people expensive operations for much less than they cost to perform? As you say, industry is about profit making. Healthcare should not be, it should be about making people healthy. Transport should be about making people get to where they should be as efficiently as possible. Profit doesn't really enter into it.

Nod already covered this point; I'll simply agree that I would have a lot more faith in someone who was acting in their best interests than someone who was acting out of apparently selfless altruism. I'd rather be treated in a private hospital than on the NHS.

Your example is too simplistic. Yes, if we could label a set of practices and institutions as 'good healthcare' and get the taxpayer to fund it, there might be some benefit over spending the same sum of money on an array of private providers. But the state provider would then have a monopoly. Innovation would reduce, there would be no incentive to improve patient care beyond what can be enforced by the democratic system (and if you have a problem with a hospital, the first elected person in the NHS chain of command is the Secretary of State for Health, responsible for every hospital in England, and a Prime Ministerial appointee who can be sacked at a moment's notice).

We can't identify what is 'good healthcare' then simply create a state infrastructure to administer it. Such a system might work for a decade or two, but eventually the lack of evolutionary pressure would lead to a relative decline in standards.

The point is that, in business, you only know if your products or services are popular if people are paying for them. Prices and sales act as signals, which would not exist in a state monopoly.

I should also point out that earlier in the thread I advocated the 'basic income' idea; I'm not against the idea of redistributive funding of things like healthcare, but I think individuals should choose what healthcare, from where, at what level of provision.

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

How small that role is certainly open to debate, and indeed is not exactly likely to be purely genetic. Genetic determinism doesn't really hold much water, and nuture as a child (and instances of random chance) certainly come into play. Beckham certianly wouldn't be the player he was today if his family wasn't quite so football obsesssed. Things can have more than one cause, however, and football has quite so many people trying to reach the top that doing so must take a herculean effort, or incredible natural ability, or, and this is infinitely more likely, a heady mixture of both.

One of my old rowing coaches used to say that "A good big 'un always beats a good little 'un". This is very true, but you will notice that it does not rest entirely upon being big or small. Being "good" is just as important, but being small always puts a limit upon what you can achieve.

Yes, but this is only a disadvantage in the context of rowing. Football better illustrates my point, because there are roles available to people of almost all physical stature (from Diego Maradona to Peter Crouch). Yes, I'm sure you can think of plenty of examples of individuals who would be disadvantaged at a certain pursuit due to physical factors. But for every role ruled out by their physical attributes, there is probably a roughly equal number of other roles that are only suitable for people of their physical attributes.

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

You also seem to attach a stigma of "wacky communist" (not that I am a communist) to the notion that not having the same natural abilties is "unfair". Now, it may not be something that it is desireable to do anything about, but it can't be regarded as "fair". The question is not whether it is unfair or not, just as in other things, the question is if it matters.

I'd argue that it doesn't matter. Everyone has their strengths and I think it's more important to encourage people to excel to their full potential than to argue over whether or not someone got a slight head-start.

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

You say that you know some professional footballers. What level do they play at, and how good were they without having to put the hours in? You say you could have become a professional footballer. You don't know that, many very promising youngsters coming through the youth systems fail to develop, and many don't have a future in professional football at all. How can you be so sure you wouldn't be one of those? How much would those boys have practiced if they hadn't had some initial ability in it, and training not showed improvement? "Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest mother****er in the world.", to quote Neal Stephenson.

The highest level football player I know (someone I went to primary school with) played in the Premiership for a while and is currently playing in Division 1. I know a couple of people who have played for lower league sides too. There is a strong correlation between the amount of time spent practising and eventual achievement, to the point where high achievement must come at the expense of achievement in other areas. This, I think, is what limits people's footballing ability, not a 'natural' factor. I could have practised football as much as he did, but then I would have spent less time playing about with computers or reading or whatever, and I preferred to do those things. The same applies in reverse to him; he could easily have learned as much about computers as me, had he not spent the time playing football.

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

You also appear to be claiming that the only gain of what Beckham did would be to become what he is today. Worded like that, then that's a pretty big risk. But I would say that he also enjoyed doing it along the way - not necessarily in the "hey, this is fun!" kind of way, but that he got some fulfilment out of it, as I do with many things that I do.

No, I agree that he gained from doing something he enjoyed. But there must have been a trade-off between football practice and, say, academic study. My only argument is this: when someone achieves something that very, very few other people have achieved, which is enjoyed by many others, we should reward that. You could argue that Beckham's achievements are not valuable, but there are millions of football fans who would argue otherwise. Evidently enough people appreciated what he did to buy tickets, merchandise etc. with his or his team's name on.

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

So, you accept the disconnect between hard work, being good at something, and any form of success, then? I must also note that I found your argument based around "use" to be amusing. I enjoy watching and playing sports, but they're hardly useful activities. Furthermore, I am not demanding that everyone is paid for doing something that they enjoy.

Who are you to judge the usefulness of sport? That's not a rhetorical question; you seem to be implying that your judgement is better than the judgement of all of those people who find sport to be very useful indeed (in the sense that they're willing to spend a lot of money on playing, watching and generally funding it). The utility of a football player can be counted in the momentary elation of millions every time they score a goal (or make a crunching tackle, or whatever). If that emotion could be put in pill form, the person selling those pills would become rich pretty quickly.

Yes, I absolutely accept the disconnect between hard work and reward. I could work very hard at shoving ever larger vegetables up my arse, but I would have precious little claim for financial reward for it, despite the doubtless impressive (and strenuous) physical performance that could be achieved with enough practice. I could only expect a reward if other people (we might call them 'society') found what I was doing to be useful in some way. There are plenty of things that I could work hard at, which nobody else would appreciate, and I don't see what right I would have to claim money from them. Again, I've said that I believe in the idea of a basic income which would give all citizens a share in the success of the economy, but beyond that I think any earnings have to be justified by the benefit caused to others, not how 'hard' one works.

[JonnyBGood]

Crazy people say what?














I mean lots, sorry, my bad.