Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

[davidstvz]

I was raised as a Republican, but being non-religious (socially liberal), I quickly gravitated toward libertarianism around 10 years ago (I'm 31). In the last few years, I've been starting to question some of the free-market ideology, and Eric Janszen's book just blew the lid open on that. Try convincing a committed libertarian that the government may need to step in and interfere with certain industries (energy/transportation) to break a catch-22. Try convincing one that we, in fact, do need a minimum wage (probably a much higher one) along with trade protectionism aimed to keep productive industries here.

So to start, the right has it plain wrong on minimum wages.

For a little while, I have gotten a little twinge of doubt in my head when thinking about the minimum wage. Only this morning did that doubt crystalize. Ultimately, having no minimum wage in a truly free-market will allow employers to pay workers what they are really worth. And isn't that a good thing? Of course, the answer is no. My epiphany this morning was that the true worth of the average unskilled human worker on the planet is somewhere near zero. There are too many of us and industrial production is too efficient. Most of us aren't needed and consequently most of us are utterly replaceable and consequently marginalized. We do alright in western countries because the rich need to surround themselves with people who are somewhat content and hopeful, of course, there is trouble in those waters at the moment. I am starting to have some sympathy for OWS protesters who want to do nothing more than tax the shit out of the rich. Let's go ahead and do that and make them earn the money back from us. I'm starting to see the need for a little class warfare.

The big question is how much redistribution of wealth should we engage in? There are finite resources on the earth, and we do need to allow rewards for the skilled, hard-working and risk taking entrepreneurs. We also need to be careful to avoid blowing up a new government debt bubble once the current ones are handled via inflation or default.


I'm curious, is anyone coming into knowledge of the corrupt political system from the left? Have you come to realize that there are any big problem with cherished left-wing positions? Perhaps there are few. After all, the left plays the role of the populist party (although they mostly fail to follow through once in office).

[jiimbergin]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

I too have come from the right, but unlike you I am a born again Christian. Still I have reached much of the same conclusions you have. I have a nephew who has come from the left, but we find ourselves agreeing more and more to the surprise of both of us.

jim

[fengguo1]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

We aren't "redundant" just because industrial production is inefficient. This is an old myth that has existed since the dawn of the industrial era. The wants of human beings are unlimited, so the supply of goods and services is always limited. To illustrate my point, who wouldn't employ a cook, a cleaner, a gardener and a driver if they could afford it? I would, along with a masseuse, dietician, yoga instructor, etc. The problem with minimum wage laws is that they make these jobs impossible because wages for legal low-skilled work can no longer fall to match the price you & I are willing or able to pay for these services. Thus, minimum wage causes unemployment.

A common objection is the above logic is that not enough people would earn a living wage doing jobs like these. However, if enough people do these jobs, this creates an aggregate supply which causes the general price level to fall to meet their wage levels. After all, if you can't live on a wage, you simply wouldn't do the work.

[lektrode]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

+1
yes, interesting sitch jb/david we have - and have myself reached same conclusions - reading EJ (never mind the rest of the crowd here ;) has been a fairly mind blowing (but certainly expanding) experience all around for this kinda rightwinger, gop-leaning, small-r, smaller-gov, former resident of The Live Free or Die state (NH)
whos had more than a bunch of arguments with his younger and much better educated (ivy league econ degree) solid-dem brother (who took the 'bohemian oath' after a stint in M&A in the 80's, finally had nuff of the 'poverty lifestyle' and went back to work for 'the enemy' (banksters) - its getting clearer by the day that the 'traditional political labels' arent accurate anymore, along with the 2party system failing to honestly represent the electorate, on either side of the aisle - that prevents candidates who WILL do a better job for The Rest of US to be elected.

this could end up being a most-interesting thread - maybe oughta be put into 'news' to get wider exposure?

[lektrode]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

i guess the problem with this (min wage causing unemployment) is that unfortunately the cost of living, being ever so 'upwardly mobile' due to the debasement of our currency, as expressed by the CPI - which is being fraudulantly manipulated to rob us of our purchasing power and thus making it impossible to survive on?

[davidstvz]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

We aren't "redundant" just because industrial production is inefficient. This is an old myth that has existed since the dawn of the industrial era. The wants of human beings are unlimited, so the supply of goods and services is always limited. To illustrate my point, who wouldn't employ a cook, a cleaner, a gardener and a driver if they could afford it? I would, along with a masseuse, dietician, yoga instructor, etc. The problem with minimum wage laws is that they make these jobs impossible because wages for legal low-skilled work can no longer fall to match the price you & I are willing or able to pay for these services. Thus, minimum wage causes unemployment.

The wants of human beings are only unlimited in theory. We are finite creatures and hence have finite wants and needs. Further, the richest people own the vast majority of the capital including the means of producing essentials. Hence, we peons aren't particularly useful to each other (one starving person with no shoes can't do anything useful for a starving person that has shoes), and richest already have all the cooks, gardeners and cleaners they want and need so we're not useful to them either. The only thing they need from us is for us to shut up and stay out of the way.

Imagine 1% own all the land and control all food and wealth. They have a monetary system and they engage in laissez-faire capitalism among themselves. Suddenly they become aware of the 99% and start to hire some of them as cooks and gardeners and such. They wouldn't be required to provide anything more than the fundamentals of survival to those lucky peons and hence those lucky peons would have nothing to offer the rest of the 99%.

We're no where near that idealized hell, but seem to be heading in that direction.

EDIT

Btw, while the supply of services may always be limited and thus could be fulfilled by unemployed people, the supply of goods is physically limited which is what ultimately puts natural limits on our ability to pay people. What is the libertarian free-market solution to a world in which there is simply not enough food to feed everyone adequately without some people starving? There is no solution (by definition), libertarian or otherwise.

[c1ue]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

We aren't "redundant" just because industrial production is inefficient. This is an old myth that has existed since the dawn of the industrial era. The wants of human beings are unlimited, so the supply of goods and services is always limited. To illustrate my point, who wouldn't employ a cook, a cleaner, a gardener and a driver if they could afford it? I would, along with a masseuse, dietician, yoga instructor, etc. The problem with minimum wage laws is that they make these jobs impossible because wages for legal low-skilled work can no longer fall to match the price you & I are willing or able to pay for these services. Thus, minimum wage causes unemployment.

A common objection is the above logic is that not enough people would earn a living wage doing jobs like these. However, if enough people do these jobs, this creates an aggregate supply which causes the general price level to fall to meet their wage levels. After all, if you can't live on a wage, you simply wouldn't do the work.

This is an extremely confused and poorly constructed argument.

How exactly does a minimum wage law change the fact that your desire to have 4 other human beings wait on you hand and foot would in turn require an intrinsically asymmetric economic system?

The minimum wage itself has nothing to do with this asymmetry.

In the past, the only situations where such asymmetric situations existed were, respectively, slavery and hereditary nobility. In both situations, fundamental access to economic self determination was forcibly removed from large portions of the population: for slaves, in being quanta of labor and for nobility, for a vast crowd of landless peasants.

There is a very simple way of understanding the problems going on today: when considering the division of wealth in a given nation between capital, labor, and any other grouping you can consider - who owns the 'natural' wealth consisting of land, mineral resources, timber, water resources, etc etc?

The fallacy which labor has fallen into is wages. It isn't that there is not a place for a minimum wage, it is that a minimum wage itself guarantees nothing.

No matter how high the minimum wage is set, the price required to live can always be increased. Unlike 'natural' wealth - which price increases according to the fraction of the economy sustained by it, wages have no such mechanism.

As was said by Simon Patten in 1891:

It seems to me that the doctrine of Professor Clark, if carried out logically, would deny that the laborers have any right to share in the natural resources of the country. . . .

All the increase of wealth due to fertile fields or productive mines {or technology, or infrastructure} would be taken gradually from workmen with the growth of population, and given to more favored persons whose shares are not reduced by the use of poorer land.

These privileged classes would then enjoy all the advantages due to better natural resources or to more productive instruments of other kinds.

When it is said that the workingman under these conditions gets all he is worth to society, the term “society,” if analyzed, means only the more favored classes who are contrasted with the workmen. They pay each laborer only the utility of the last laborer to them, and get the whole produce of the nation minus this amount.

http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthr...pture?p=212383

What we are seeing today is exactly this process, only it is occurring via depreciation of the dollar as well as increasing of living wage costs via health care and FIRE-induced housing costs rather than simply demographic increases.

[World Traveler]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

I believe that U.S. politicians will ultimately respond more to the needs of the 99%. It's just that it will take a lot longer than we want and there will be a lot more social unrest before they do. We're not called the 99% for nothing - we are the majority and the scales are falling off our eyes, whether we started off with a liberal or conservative label. It's either that or a semi-fascist police state where the 1% use repressive means to control us, as our standard of living declines.

I believe the 99% will choose the alternative and start to organize and demand certain changes. It will be a give-and-take, push-and-shove-back scenario, where the 1% will fight back, but will ultimately have to make concessions to the 99%.

I posted some of the reasons for my optomism in another thread. Look at the U.S. in 1885, a major industrializing upstart of a nation. Child labor was legal. 12 hour workdays were the norm for the working classes. Get injured or maimed in an industrial accident and it was your problem, not the mill or factory owner, they had no legal responsibility toward you. Railroads exploited Mid-West farmers thru freight charges to get their crops to market. Congress was a rich man's club. Senators were appointed by (often corrupt) state governors. John D. Rockerfeller was cornering the oil industry and market-cornering trusts were allowed in major industries. Price-fixing was tolerated. Millionaires ruled! And it was strictly a "Buyers Beware" marketplace of phony medicines, rancid beef sold by meat-packers, cosmetics that could blind and scar, and other assorted gruesome items of questionable characteristics.

The early 1900's are not called the Progessive Era for nothing. The 99% had organized themselves into unions, workman's benevolent societies, and pressure groups within both political parties (ex: William Jennings Bryan and Teddy Roosevelt.) Writers wrote searing exposes in newspapers and novels that highlighted and exposed the corruption and exploitation.

If you were Rip Van Winkle, went to sleep in 1885 and woke up in 2011, the world that you'd see would be inconceivable from your 1885 perspective

I believe the pendulum will swing back in favor of the 99%, but that the kinds of changes needed will take at least 10, possibly 20 years to play out.

[davidstvz]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

World Traveler, you may well be right. I hope you are. That said, dwindling fossil fuels (and thus dwindling wealth to go around) and far greater disparity between government power vs. people power (due to technology) could make things difficult. The Libyan rebels needed outside help to defeat their dictator, and he didn't even have access to the best of the best as our government does.

[astonas]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

World Traveler, you may well be right. I hope you are. That said, dwindling fossil fuels (and thus dwindling wealth to go around) and far greater disparity between government power vs. people power (due to technology) could make things difficult. The Libyan rebels needed outside help to defeat their dictator, and he didn't even have access to the best of the best as our government does.

This is why one key turning point in non-violent social change is the moment when the military or police refuse to obey an order to suppress the people. This was the power of Tienamen square. The tank could have easily rolled over the student. But the driver couldn't bring himself to do so.

In this sense, developments in non-lethal crowd control do far more to suppress a population than advanced lethal weaponry. If pepper spray and tazers can be used with no permanent damage, it is much easier for a riot-control squad to feel good about following orders. This is also why a great show is made about giving lots of notice, and clear instructions to protestors about their unlawful acts. It is not for the benefit of the protestors, and only secondarily for the cameras, which only indirectly apply pressure to the police. These shows help the officers believe they are just doing what is appropriate. Protocols are written as much to manipulate the feelings of the police as they are to hold to the law.

So if you feel sympathy toward a non-violent social movement, and know a police officer, let them know (kindly, and sympathetically) the ways that your movement helps people like police officers (ie. keeping their pensions safe, etc.). You'll have a much bigger impact than ranting to the general public.

[jpatter666]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

World Traveler, you are correct -- read People's History of the United States which delves into this subject more than 99% of the history books.

In the US, historically when the 1% have faced potential armed revolt or serious political change, concessions were made.

The question for us and them is how much (or little) concession will mute the rage of the masses.

[astonas]

Re: Cherished left/right positions that are just plain wrong

Just an update on this line of reasoning:

This new (12/8) article (still just available in German, Der Spiegel has a few days delay for translations to their English edition) makes the case that while the U.S. and Asia would certainly be sunk by a breakup of the Eurozone, Europe itself would fare much better, given its higher dependence on manufacturing, and lower reliance on FIRE industries.

Der Hintergrund der Dauerferngespräche allerdings ist bitterernst: Würde der Euro zusammenbrechen und mit ihm der Wirtschaftsraum auf dem Kontinent, hätte das fatale Folgen für die USA. Nicht weniger groß ist die Sorge vor einem Euro-Crash in Asien.

my translation:

The background of the continuous long-distance calls [with Obama] however, is deadly serious: If the euro were to collapse, and with it the economy of the continent, it would have disastrous consequences for the United States. No less great is the fear of a Euro crash in Asia.

The article goes on to make the assertion that:

Anders als die USA verdankt die Europäische Union einen wichtigen Teil ihrer Wirtschaftskraft produzierenden Unternehmen. Diese Industrien sind hoch entwickelt und verfügen über hohe Innovationskraft. Auch der gemeinsame Binnenmarkt gehört zu den Stabilitätsankern der EU.

my translation:

Unlike the U.S., the European Union owes a critical part of its economic power to productive companies. These industries are highly developed and have high level of innovation. The single market is also anchored by its internal free trade policies [independent of the common currency].

The article goes on to claim that Europe has not lost any of its attractiveness to customers, only to finance markets. (It neglects to mention Britain's extreme dependence on finance; presumably this can be brushed off along with America). It also speaks briefly to the idea that it is the EU (not the Eurozone) that has been bound by successful joint efforts in the arena of foreign policy.

Overall, my take-away is that this is an argument that however much the U.S. (and presumably also Britain) may desperately need the European banking sector and the current Eurozone finance structure to be "saved" intact, the rest of Europe would be better off without any of this. As before, I see this making the most sense in the context of an intent to nationalize banks as they fail, using bankruptcy proceedings to seize assets from individual bankers.

It is a dangerous time to be a banker in Europe. Time will tell if this results in improvements, or declines, in the lives of non-bankers. If bankers are correct in assessing the value their services provide to an economy, then things will be bad indeed in Europe. But if EJ's thesis of a largely parasitic FIRE economy is correct, then Europe may be much closer (in years, not current standing) to stability than the U.S.