vimothy
yurp
You are arguing for a level playing field
We don't have a level playing field, because we don't have level outcomes (and so some people's children have extra "unfair" advantages)
You are arguing for a level playing field
We don't have a level playing field, because we don't have level outcomes (and so some people's children have extra "unfair" advantages)
john eden
male pale and stale
I'm not sure I understand your position now.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Of course, it doesn't have to be anything as extreme as that. Some guy owns a paint factory that illegally dumps waste in a river, while productively employing workers and making a product people want to buy; someone else runs a clothing factory in Sri Lanka that makes school uniforms sold in Tesco for a fiver a pop - great for working-class families in Britain, not so great for the poor buggers paid 5p a day to make them.
So something that's good for one sector of society might have an equally large or larger bad effect on another sector, or a society in another part of the world.
Externalities, Vimothy, externalities!
vimothy
yurp
So this is the real problem, it seems - investment implies an active participation in the profit making process, but inherited wealth at interest is totally passive and implies no effort whatsoever. That's not to say that savings are of no use to the economy or to the bank in question (obviously the bank stands to benefit immediately). Savings are equivalent to rent - an income generating asset.
That's a really tired cliche. As slothrop notes upthread,
if paying the CEO's of widget making firms fifteen billion pounds a year was actually a bad idea, and you could produce more widgets for less money by employing anyone averagely competent and paying them less, then someone would do and their business would do well as a result. If companies are willing to pay fifteen billion a year to have a top CEO, it's because he's worth £15 billion a year to them.
That's why bombing is illegal. Can you find an example of a legal demand? There are ambiguities, of course, and they are the subject of debate and often punative legislation.
No, it limits you to talking about needs and wants which are contingent upon our eocnomic situation.
No, not to me, and not to many people, hence a lack of demand.
vimothy
yurp
It strikes me that people are comparing the best of capitalism with the worst, and jumping to the conclusion that capitalism is not meritocratic, whilst ignoring the basics - people succeed within capitalism by supplying their product more efficiently than their rivals, with success being measured in profit. In other systems (fuedal, socialist) wealth and status is inherited and confined to an elite, with no movement allowed or, indeed, possible.
Capitalism is meritocratic, as the doctors example demonstrates. Doctors are picked accoridng to academic and professional success, judged by their peers and superiors. The fact that certain classes or socio-ecoomic groups do better in university doesn't mean that the system is not meritocratic. No one would want to be treated by a doctor whose only qualification is having grown up in a council estate.
Capitalism is meritocratic, as the doctors example demonstrates. Doctors are picked accoridng to academic and professional success, judged by their peers and superiors. The fact that certain classes or socio-ecoomic groups do better in university doesn't mean that the system is not meritocratic. No one would want to be treated by a doctor whose only qualification is having grown up in a council estate.
IdleRich
IdleRich
Maybe. I just put that up to show as simply as possible that you were wrong when you said that it's not easy to turn money in to more money. Another clear demonstration that increasing wealth disparity does not mean that society has become in some way "better".
An even more tired cliche says that cliches are cliches because they are true.
Are you really saying that every single CEO is worth the money he earns? You might be able to argue that the employer thinks or thought that he might be worth that to them, not quite the same I would say.
In general though when I was talking about people who are only good at earning money I was thinking more about people who work in the city than CEOs.
What difference does that make? You just want to make demands.
Mr. Tea did suggest some obvious legal examples anyway if you read a bit further. There are of course many more.
It may limit one to talking about needs and wants but it is limiting you to talking about money.
Well to me just because something has no monetary demand for it doesn't make it worthless but this is tangential to the debate anyway.
vimothy
yurp
Obviously that's bad - it's illegal.
Dumping toxic effluvia into rivers is bad, but outsourcing production to cheap labour in the third world is good for both our society and their's (vis-a-vis comparative advantage).
But demand reflects a social need. There is no demand for polluted rivers, but there is a demand for cheap clothes, just as there is a demand for jobs in the third world (which you actually disparage).
Are actually a bit more complicated than that.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
So everything that's bad is illegal, and everything illegal is bad? There's an exact one-to-one correlation?
Dumping toxic effluvia into a river might be good for the factory owner (if he can get away with it), because it's cheaper than disposing of it properly.
I would argue that paying exploitative wages to third-world textile workers if pretty fucking morally shoddy, big old softy tree-hugger that I am. Not to mention the fact they're generally young children, and often prevented from forming unions by threat of violence. These kids ought to be in school, learning skills that will help them pull themselves up out of absolute poverty, but instead they're forced to work by simple economic necessity to have food to eat. They therefore grow up from ignorant, illiterate kids into ignorant, illiterate adults, and have kids in turn who will end up working at the same factories. Where's your meritocracy there?
Of course I'm not 'disparaging' the need for jobs in the third world, don't be so daft: I'm disparaging corporations that keep their running costs low by paying their workers barely enough to live on.
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vimothy
yurp
Actually, there's only one way to easily turn money into more money - having a lot of it and keeping it in the bank. I guess that land rent would also tend towards this, although perhaps it implies a little more effort. In any case you first need to have some money, and someone needs to earn that and then give it to you. Does that affect my getting a job, making money or othewise being a successful career whore? No.
One demonstration, that only reflects the fact that wealth creates wealth, is non-zero-sum and that some people are lucky enough to have advantages given to them.
No, but all you can do is hire the best person you can find, pay them the most you can afford (so you attract the best candidate) and then judge in hindsight, or at best you can reflect while they're working. After having worked for an Educational Leadership research project last year, I have more respect for leadership roles. Headship is a very difficult role - I can't see that CEO of a large corporation would be easier.
As cliched. Why aren't you rich, Rich?
I want to see some examples of demands that are not censured by the state yet represent un-ambiguous social bads, such that anyone supplying them are actually clearly having a negative effect.
Money is only an aggregate measure of relative (economically contingent) value. It's metaphoric.
But it does mean that the aggregate view of society is that they value said item relatively less than other goods or services. The market is democratic in that it weights your view against that of every other consumer and producer.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
I've already given you one! Goods, of any description, that are sold in the developed world but made in poor countries by people on exploitative wages. Of course that's not UNAMBIGUOUSLY bad, because somewhere a bunch of senior executives and shareholders are making lots of money, but it's bad for a much larger group of people.
Or what about makers of fatty, sugary foods that advertise to young kids, tobacco firms, makers of gas-guzzling cars, those Slutz dolls, loan sharks...
...and let's not forget private companies that run utilities and public transport services, lining shareholders' pockets while holding out their hands for government subsidies and asking consumers to bear with them because of 'leaks' and 'leaves on the track'...
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come on... do you think that there is a perfect alignment between 'good'/'bad' and legal/illegal?! that what is 'good' is dictated by what the law is?! a bizarre logic if ever i saw one. the only framework you suggest to discern social good is that the market is right, except where the law says otherwise. if tomorrow it was illegal to pay the children 5p per hour (which i suspect is a generous estimation), would it then suddenly be 'bad' for society?!
this is a different argument, and i know its tedious to have to qualify everything, but really that is a ridiculous statement without qualification. it CAN be good (depending (a) on how production is managed and regulated and (b) what you believe to be good!)
there is a demand for chemicals or paint though, at the lowest prices possible. hence the polluted rivers. to me, the paint seems analagous to the clothes, the river the children. a resource is being utilised to meet demand at lowest possible production/supply costs
a true story
as to the meritocracy argument, it seems to me that the key is definition - what you believe to be merit. i may be wrong, apologies if so, but it seems like vimothy is working on one definition, the rest another, and then lots of facts are being thrown around which cant achieve anything because you're arguing about fundamentally different concepts, but treating them as if they're one single concept
vimothy
yurp
The argument is that supplying a demand represents a social good because it represents a social need which the capitalist manufacturer or service provider supplies. Judgement has already been passed on illegality, and although I wouldn't claim that everything illegal is bad, I'm in no position to dictate terms to society.
It's not an example of supply and demand, and it's not a social good in any case because it's illegal.
But these are lame Christian Aid style arguements against globalisation that fail to take into account the actual point of going to the third world in the first place: cheap labour. You might prefer autarky, but people in the third world know that they want foreign direct investment (very difficult to jump start economic productivity otherwise) and jobs.
The explotation wage is a myth, as foreign corps generally pay wages 50% higher than the average (will bring in research tomorrow that supports this).
The young children trope is an over-exageration and also neatly ignores the fact that poor people have lots of children presisely as a source of cheap labour - many of these children will be working any way, just working for less - or starving.
The kids will never get to go to school as long as they have to struggle to survive. As you watch economies globalise, you will see levels of child education rise (along with infant mortality, and various other measures), concommittant with rising expectations. Such a scenario is occuring right now in China (and India).
No, you're not, but the net effect of your views if translated into policy would unavoidably be less jobs in the developing world: imposition of foreign labour standards putting the poorest people in the while world at a disadvantage when selling their labour (pretty much their sole resource of value!). And it's not just you, Mr Tea, we have western (well meaning but bad thinking) NGOs, western unions (safe-guarding their interests) and racist right wingers who just want to stay on top of the geo-political game also lining up to try to halt modernisation because they don't approve of the terms upon which it is happening.
IdleRich
IdleRich
One way is enough though.
Interesting - how do you know that I'm not? I'm certainly not the person you think, the reason I said the city is because I used to work in the city (as a trader) and I guess you could say that I'm a landlord of sorts. I'm not totally opposed to capitalism, just some of its excesses.
Edit: So I guess the answer to your question would be because I hated being a trader and I resigned before I got rich.
I still don't see how the censuring by the state matters, especially as those in positions of power are more likely to escape this censure and to have input in to the rules. What I mean is, people can get rich doing bad things whether or not the state approves, that means that widening wealth gaps are not good.
One example that completely escaped state intervention until it collapsed was Enron. A lot of people made a lot of people from that but I doubt you would argue that it benefitted society. Or maybe you would?
Not a complete aggregate apparently.
The problem is that the debate has moved on to an idealised version of capitalism from its original starting point where you argued that in the world we live in now increasing wealth disparity is good.
I'm not arguing for the end of capitalism, I'm saying that wealth disparity is not a pointer that shows a healthy society.
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vimothy
yurp
Will you also bring in some research that shows:
1. Underpayment of workers relative to average national wage in related roles
2. Spikes in child labour use following foreign investment
3. Falling rates of child education following foreign investment
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
No, I probably can't. I'm sure people in third world countries are poor *before* foreign investors turn up, but then exploitative wages will keep them in poverty, rather than allowing them to share in (a little of) the wealth being created by whatever industry is going on there.
This is without going into the externalities involved in, for instance, environmental degradation due to industrial activity or workers' conditions, both of which are bound to be far more laxly legislated, if they are at all, in a poor country than a rich one.
borderpolice
Well-known member
This misses the point. of course one wants the best personal for the jobs, but that does not mean that the system is meritocratic, because people from disadvantaged backgrounds are not competing equally. the children of the wealthy have a headstart, no wonder they are doing better.
Moreover, in many professions (e.g. economics) there is no clearcut criteria of evaluation of merit.
vimothy
yurp
'cept they don't (keep them in poverty, that is). They reduce poverty (& China is the paradigm example - large FDI flows, falling poverty rates).
All of which is true, but there are externalities on your externalities, as it were. One up-shot of stringent, foreign imposed labour, trade and environmental standards is reduced productivity, reduced growth and reduced rates of social mobility (as in people moving out of absolute poverty).