Re: Katja/farm vs city knowledge - POLITICS

[Guest guest]

Katja,

>actually, from what i''ve seen, you seem smart enough to be a farmer.

Lol! Thanks!

>next time you entertain the idea holler at me - i *love* to talk to people

about

>what we're doing and how and all the stuff we've learned...

Allright I'll give you a holla.

> here we agree. but this is different than walmart.

> for example, when i was trying to figure out what to charge for my pork, i

> surfed around online and found some farmers were offering organic (but not

> pastured) pork for as little as 2/lb hanging weight. i couldn't possibly

> have come close to covering my costs at that price, so i charged more. in

> that case, it's up to you who you buy from - there's no exploitation here,

> and if i can't sell my pork at my price then i need to find a way to lower

> my costs. but -- in this case neither of us used slave labor to produce the

> pigs.

Wal Mart doesn't use slave labor to produce their meat either, to my

knowledge. They make it cheaper in part by processing it at their central ware

house.

What is it you're using " slave labor " to describe? Wal Mart sells some stuff

made in " sweatshops, " but that's not " slave labor. "

> > But the fairness of conditions per se is rather arbitrary.

>

> well, that i agree with. it's a really hard thing for me to come to a

> conclusion on, because i know that there are people in chinese factories,

> for example, who are grateful for those terrible jobs, just as there were

> people in our industrial revolution.

True. And actually I want to ammend what I said earlier. If it's true that

people's living standards will increase with free trade at all under

oppressive conditions, its likely that trading with them would increase their

progress

towards a liberal society, because as wealth increases and more people own

property to protect, liberalism develops. At the same time, if there's no

reason

to think property owners will increase, etc, we should use the ability to

trade with us as a lever to increase human rights in other societies. Not by

force-- simply agreeing to trade only with voluntary traders and not oppressive

governments.

> what i come up with is that at some point, we buy not only goods. at some

> point there's a community and there's social responsibility, and we don't

> need another

> yacht.

I don't have any yachts. Do you?

like, i know that it's not part of capitalism, and markets and all

> that, but i still believe that at some point we need to realize that the

> rest of the world doesn't have to do it the hard way like we did - we have

> the ability to make it a little easier for them.

No, we don't. If we distributed all the world's wealth among the world's

population, we'd leave them with under $400 a piece, and we'd have liquidated

all

the capital that's used to produce wealth in our society, and the whole world

would probably be plunged into abject poverty within a year, before a lot of

folks had the chance to buy a cow with their $400. It's simply impossible for

us to give away what we have.

Furthermore, why *should* they have it any easier than anyone else must?

They don't *have* to industrialize. If they agree it benefits them to

industrialize, why shouldn't they trade on terms with the folks are going to

make it

happen?

To interfere with that process can have pretty bad unintended consequences.

For example, if you were to impose a " living wage " on American businesses

doing business in other countries so that wages were comparable to American

wages,

they simply would not spend the money and effort to relocate businesses to

the third world at all.

we have the ability to be

> a little more fair. it's like how the oldest child makes life easier for

> the younger siblings. and i'm not saying we should break the bank to do it

> - i'm just saying we don't *really* need one more yacht.

Who's got a yacht?

i also don't think

> this should be regulated - i think it should just be more important to us

> as people to not exploit the rest of the world.

Well, I agree then-- it's good values to be generous.

> boy, that's utopic, isn't it?

Not really. It recognizes that selfless behavior is part of human nature,

along with selfish behavior, and that people act to satisfy their values.

Nothing utopic about it in my view.

> what would it hurt us to have a

> little less?

Yes. For most people, the difference over the last couple generations isn't

more yachts, or too many pairs of socks, it's computers and refrigerators,

video games, organic food, better lighting, etc. My grandparents didn't have a

refrigerator, and when I was a little kid, a computer took 15 minutes to boot

up. Some people engage in excesses, sure, but for most people we've had

meaningful and important increases in living standards.

> maybe what i really want is a greater understanding of what it is to buy a

> thing.

Ok, I think I understand you.

> maybe i shouldn't have conversations with you if i don't quite know exactly

>

> what i mean!!

Umm, sorry :-)

> >The only way to objectively judge whether a condition is fair or not is

> >whether the person voluntarily chose to work the job or not.

>

> well, except that if there's not any other job to choose, then people would

> rather choose a bad job than no job.

So what? Jobs don't grow on trees. If someone offers me a job, they're

giving me an opportunity I wouldn't have had if I were left to my own devices.

In

what way does that person " owe " me a " good " job?

Essentially that would mean that the job-provider would be the slave of the

worker. But haven't we beend denouncing the slavery of the worker to the

job-owner, or government, etc? Why is one form of slavery justified over

another?

Should the able be slaves of the unable? And if so, what sense is that? Why

should you be *punished* for your ability, and rewarded for your inability?

> > Two people may differ widely in values-- for example, you like farming,

> while

> >Mike likes computers and linguistics-- and one person's choice can not be

> judged

> >by the standards of another's values.

>

> well, as an aside, i have a degree in linguistic theory and one in combined

> foreign language. and i write software to finance my farm. but that's not

> our point

Lol! Ok, well, Mike likes eating earworms, and you don't. Put it that way.

:-)

> i personally value not getting my head blown off by terrorists, which i

> think wouldn't

> happen if we were less exploitive around the world.

Agreed!

But offering people jobs, be they good or bad jobs, isn't exploitive.

Manipulating which governments they live under for a favorable geopolitic is.

> well, they may not have the desire, no. but fundamentally i don't see it as

>

> a luxury. i'd rather have one pair of socks and no coffee than the

> alternative. and i guess that those are just values and you'd say that i

> can't impose that on anyone. boy, i'm doing a good job of defeating my own

> arguments aren't i?

Yes :-)

> the problem is, we *do* impose our values on people. we impose our values

> on the entire world by demanding cheap goods and by exporting bogus

> democracies.

Fine. But you're associating the idea of trading with people with exporting

bogus democracies, which should be dissociated. There *is* a good reason not

to change other people's governments-- because its *theirs*. There *is* a

good reason not to manipulate people's economies with loans and turn them into

slaves. There *is* a good reason Indians should be able to sell unpackaged

edible oils and Americans should be able to sell raw milk-- because it's

*theirs*.

But all of this should be dissociated from the supposed " demand " for cheap

goods. If someone wants to work for a given wage, that isn't us " demanding "

cheap goods, it is us " accepting " cheap goods.

When you use price caps, you get shortages; when you use price bottoms, you

get excesses. Artificially lifting wages up beyond what they're worth to

companies causes unemployment and underemployment. Artificially engineering a

market results in more long-term harm than good, IMO.

> when i learn how to get you to agree to this argument in one paragraph or

> less, i'm running for president.

Good luck :-)

Chris

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 1/21/04 1:25:45 PM Eastern Standard Time,

bberg@... writes:

> Sure we do. And we have. Look at how rapidly places like Hong Kong and

> Singapore have developed under British " exploitation. " By having access to

> our capital investments and technical knowledge, many third-world economies

> have been able to achieve in a single generation what would have taken

> several centuries without assistance from the West. The catch, of course,

> is that the things which have made such remarkable possible are the very

> things which the left is protesting most loudly. As usual.

I think Katja was saying that we had the capacity to make it easier for them

than the ease that market interactions would provide, which is what I was

responding to.

> The general principle is right, but the number is way off. There are six

> billion people in the world, which would translate to $2.4 trillion, and

> there's much more wealth than that in the US alone.

Hmm. I was repeating the figure from an article that ran in a local free

liberal newspaper a while ago. I should have at least made the calculation in

my

head to see if it made sense before I blindly repeated it.

> >My grandparents didn't have a

> >refrigerator, and when I was a little kid, a computer took 15 minutes to

> >boot up.

>

> What kind of computer was that? I don't ever remember waiting more than two

> or three minutes.

You're right. They never took that long to boot up. But to open certain

files, especially pictures, some of the older ones would take considerable

amounts of time.

>

> >There *is* a good reason not to change other people's

> >governments-- because its *theirs*.

>

> I disagree. I do not at all believe that there is any such thing as a right

> to collective " self-determination. " If a government, democratically-elected

> or otherwise, is infringing upon the liberty of any of its citizens, then,

> in theory, at least, anyone has the right to tear it down and replace it

> with a better (that is, more liberal) government.

It's not an easy issue for me. I was thinking about it after I made the last

post, and it seems that two different truths need to be reconciled:

-- the right of the individual within the society

-- the absence of a right of a foreigner to determine another's government.

The fact is that *any* government involves an infringement on the rights of

the individual, and most governments are a mix between various forms of

freedom. It is essentially impossible to favor one government over another in

order

to support a given kind of individual freedom without infringeing upon

another. Therefore, while the collective in a given area has no right to rule

over

the individual in that same region, a collective *outside* the region inhabited

by said collective has even *less* justification.

> >When you use price caps, you get shortages; when you use price bottoms,

> >you

> >get excesses. Artificially lifting wages up beyond what they're worth to

> >companies causes unemployment and underemployment. Artificially

> >engineering a

> >market results in more long-term harm than good, IMO.

>

> Agreed, except for the " IMO " part. It's not really a matter of opinion.

I should actually say " in my estimation. " You have immense economic

knowledge compared to me, so my estimations are less conclusive than yours.

Also,

" harm " and " good " are at least to some extent value-dependent.

Chris

[Guest guest]

Quoting ChrisMasterjohn@...:

> > what i come up with is that at some point, we buy not only goods. at

> some

> > point there's a community and there's social responsibility, and we

> don't

> > need another

> > yacht.

>

> I don't have any yachts. Do you?

You must have a yacht. Otherwise you wouldn't be standing up for the right

to buy them when there are so many less fortunate people living on the

streets. I have seventeen myself.

> like, i know that it's not part of capitalism, and markets and all

> > that, but i still believe that at some point we need to realize that

> the

> > rest of the world doesn't have to do it the hard way like we did - we

> have

> > the ability to make it a little easier for them.

>

> No, we don't.

Sure we do. And we have. Look at how rapidly places like Hong Kong and

Singapore have developed under British " exploitation. " By having access to

our capital investments and technical knowledge, many third-world economies

have been able to achieve in a single generation what would have taken

several centuries without assistance from the West. The catch, of course,

is that the things which have made such remarkable possible are the very

things which the left is protesting most loudly. As usual.

> If we distributed all the world's wealth among the world's

> population, we'd leave them with under $400 a piece, and we'd have

> liquidated all

> the capital that's used to produce wealth in our society, and the whole

> world

> would probably be plunged into abject poverty within a year, before a lot

> of

> folks had the chance to buy a cow with their $400.

The general principle is right, but the number is way off. There are six

billion people in the world, which would translate to $2.4 trillion, and

there's much more wealth than that in the US alone.

> It's simply impossible for us to give away what we have.

More accurately, it's impossible to do any long-term good that way.

> My grandparents didn't have a

> refrigerator, and when I was a little kid, a computer took 15 minutes to

> boot up.

What kind of computer was that? I don't ever remember waiting more than two

or three minutes.

> There *is* a good reason not to change other people's

> governments-- because its *theirs*.

I disagree. I do not at all believe that there is any such thing as a right

to collective " self-determination. " If a government, democratically-elected

or otherwise, is infringing upon the liberty of any of its citizens, then,

in theory, at least, anyone has the right to tear it down and replace it

with a better (that is, more liberal) government. The specific reasons why

I object to the US doing this are that:

1. It usually does a terrible job of it.

2. It costs too much and makes too much trouble for us.

> When you use price caps, you get shortages; when you use price bottoms,

> you

> get excesses. Artificially lifting wages up beyond what they're worth to

> companies causes unemployment and underemployment. Artificially

> engineering a

> market results in more long-term harm than good, IMO.

Agreed, except for the " IMO " part. It's not really a matter of opinion.

--

Berg

bberg@...

[Guest guest]

chris said alot, most of which i disagree with. but the crux seems to be:

At 10:52 AM 1/21/2004, you wrote:

>When you use price caps, you get shortages; when you use price bottoms, you

>get excesses. Artificially lifting wages up beyond what they're worth to

>companies causes unemployment and underemployment. Artificially

>engineering a

>market results in more long-term harm than good, IMO.

so, i guess you're right. besides, what's a " better wage " anyway? who am i

to decide what constitutes a living wage?

and if i were, then it would be no different than bush spreading his

conservative christian values across the globe.

i guess i just wish it were nicer and fairer and...that's not really the

way of the world. i guess the best i can do is make sure i feel good about

the things i buy and try to convince other people to do the same.

bummer.

atg technical support

support@...

1-800-RING ATG

[Guest guest]

Hi Katja,

> so, i guess you're right. besides, what's a " better wage " anyway? who am i

> to decide what constitutes a living wage?

Good point.

> and if i were, then it would be no different than bush spreading his

> conservative christian values across the globe.

I'm not so sure of the " christian " -ness of Bush's values, but, right.

> i guess i just wish it were nicer and fairer and...that's not really the

> way of the world. i guess the best i can do is make sure i feel good about

> the things i buy and try to convince other people to do the same.

What isn't fair about giving people jobs, and making a voluntary exchange

between their labor and your capital, which increases the value of their labor?

Chris

[Guest guest]

except this part - i totally agree with this part!

chris said:

At 10:52 AM 1/21/2004, you wrote:

>But offering people jobs, be they good or bad jobs, isn't exploitive.

>Manipulating which governments they live under for a favorable geopolitic is.

i also agree with this from brandon:

>> It's simply impossible for us to give away what we have.

>More accurately, it's impossible to do any long-term good that way.

i also believe brandon when he says he has 17 yachts. if you sold one and

gave me the profits, i'd pay off my mortgage and buy more cows, and give

you lots of fresh beef all the time. deal?

atg technical support

support@...

1-800-RING ATG

[Guest guest]

Katja wrote:

>well, maybe just nicer then. i mean, i guess you're right. it's " fair " . i'm

> all about how anyone can get out of " the ghetto " if they just work hard

> enough, blah blah. so why is this different? [...] i think there's a lot

> more doing ick for money and a lot less getting up and out. it seems like the

> rest of the world just has to keep slaving (or sweatshopping or whatever) and

> they never get the benefit of getting up and out. and maybe that's the way it

> works but it doesn't seem

> " fair " .

Hi Katja,

I respect and appreciate your compassion, but I disagree with your evaluation

of the situation. You're looking at the situation through a small window of

years, rather than decades. While the conditions are often very rough, people

work the jobs anyway, because it does increase their standard of living to a

degree, and gives them a sense of independence. They can and do save, and can

and do work up. That's what development is all about. If you looked at

America during its industrialization, people worked some pretty nasty jobs, but

the situation didn't stay static, but improved steadily over time.

The world can't magically become developed. If we just liquidated our

capital and threw piles of money on people all over the world, living standards

would decline, not rise. In order for the world to achieve modern living

standards, they need capital to increase the value of their labor. In order for

them

to get capital, they need to form it themselves-- which would take much, much

longer-- or they need to get it from us (US or other develeoped countries).

In order for US companies to have a reason to let them use the capital rather

than keeping it here, they need to entice them by working for less. When they

do, prices decline in the US, benefiting the American consumer, and living

standards in the developing country increase, as they share in a small portion

of

the profit.

People seem to skip over the whole idea that as productivity increases,

prices fall. If we could stop the legalized monopoly on counterfeiting (ahem,

the,

*cough* <government> *cough*) from keeping prices stable, we could get rid of

minimum wages, let people trade freely, and prices would decline, employment

would rise, productivity would rise, and everyone would be richer.

You wish people could " climb up " faster; I say we *would* but for government

to get the hell out of the way.

Chris

[Guest guest]

At 05:49 PM 1/21/2004, you wrote:

>Hi Katja,

>

> > so, i guess you're right. besides, what's a " better wage " anyway? who am i

> > to decide what constitutes a living wage?

>

>Good point.

>

> > and if i were, then it would be no different than bush spreading his

> > conservative christian values across the globe.

>

>I'm not so sure of the " christian " -ness of Bush's values, but, right.

hee. indeed.

> > i guess i just wish it were nicer and fairer and...that's not really the

> > way of the world. i guess the best i can do is make sure i feel good about

> > the things i buy and try to convince other people to do the same.

>

>What isn't fair about giving people jobs, and making a voluntary exchange

>between their labor and your capital, which increases the value of their

>labor?

well, maybe just nicer then. i mean, i guess you're right. it's " fair " . i'm

all about how anyone can get out of " the ghetto " if they just work hard

enough, blah blah. so why is this different? isn't it pretty hypocritical?

i think the reason it feels different is because when you're down and out

here, you might do some nasty stuff for money for a while but if you're

focused, you can get up and out of that. i know that much. but i think

there are not really the same opportunities in other, less developed

places. i think there's a lot more doing ick for money and a lot less

getting up and out. it seems like the rest of the world just has to keep

slaving (or sweatshopping or whatever) and they never get the benefit of

getting up and out. and maybe that's the way it works but it doesn't seem

" fair " .

meh.

-katja

[Guest guest]

Quoting katja <katja@...>:

> well, maybe just nicer then. i mean, i guess you're right. it's " fair " .

> i'm

> all about how anyone can get out of " the ghetto " if they just work hard

> enough, blah blah. so why is this different? isn't it pretty

> hypocritical?

> i think the reason it feels different is because when you're down and out

> here, you might do some nasty stuff for money for a while but if you're

> focused, you can get up and out of that. i know that much. but i think

> there are not really the same opportunities in other, less developed

> places. i think there's a lot more doing ick for money and a lot less

> getting up and out. it seems like the rest of the world just has to keep

> slaving (or sweatshopping or whatever) and they never get the benefit of

> getting up and out. and maybe that's the way it works but it doesn't seem

> " fair " .

You're right. It's not fair. Life in most third-world countries is pretty

bad, and, short of immigration to a wealthier country, there's really not

much that someone born in, say, Indonesia, can do to improve his lot. What

we need to remember, though, is that these are problems inherent to

technologically backward nations, not evils caused by global capitalism.

The foreign investment which the left derides as " sweatshops " and

" exploitation " is, in fact, the only force capable of lifting these

countries up to our level in a matter of decades rather than centuries. It

happened in Hong Kong, it happened in Taiwan, and now we see it happening

again in India and China.

Those who think that they are doing the wretched of the earth a favor by

boycotting their employers are tragically mistaken. IMO, the best thing one

can do is to invest in overseas companies.

Lew Rockwell's latest article is only tangentially related, but I'll throw

in the link anyway because I liked it so much:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/recreated.html

--

Berg

bberg@...