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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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Re: libertarianism [Re: GazzBut]
    #1928389 -

Say you owned a business producing tea cosies which u sold for $10 a throw. Would you feel right paying the people who made them 20cents and hour just because you could get away with it? Wouldnt you feel like you were exploiting them just a little bit?

it would depend on alot of factors. how much competition is there? how are sales? what's the bottom line? are workers complaining of little pay? what's our employee turnover rate?

if times are tight, competition is, high, and we're barely getting by, i'd say no, i wouldn't have any problem paying those wages.

if business was booming, competition was scare, workers were frequently leaving to find new work or complaining about the pay, then i'd probably boost their pay.

it depends on the situation... but we're not talking about what's "right" to pay or what's "wrong" to pay based on my opinion or yours, or anyone else's. we're talking about whether it's right or wrong for the state to obstruct a mutual agreement between two consenting individuals.

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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1928647 -

I would hire the workers for the lowest pay they will accept (the free-market price), and then I would share my profits with the most economically disadvantaged people. The workers might be included among these, but then again they might not be. At any rate this is a very different decision from the decision about what price to pay for labor.

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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1928719 -

I think it would be great if the state werent involved but thats only going to work if one of the parties involved isnt blatantly ripping off the other party just because they can.


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Always Smi2le

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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1928862 -

if business was booming, competition was scare, workers were frequently leaving to find new work or complaining about the pay, then i'd probably boost their pay.

So what's your take on Nike with business booming and still paying slave wages?


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Re: libertarianism [Re: Xlea321]
    #1929123 -

So what's your take on Nike with business booming and still paying slave wages?

it's too bad that nike pays as little as they do. it'd be nice if they allocated a little more to the workers. but who am i to decide? nike and the workers have a voluntary agreement. it's none of my business, and it's none of yours.

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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1929201 -

I guess that's where we disagree. I don't like people being exploited and abused.


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Re: libertarianism [Re: Xlea321]
    #1929296 -

neither do i. there's alot of things i don't like seeing but which i wouldn't forcefully interfere with.

i don't like seeing a man be laid off from his job.

i don't like seeing a woman with 3 young kids and no job be divorced.

i don't like seeing parents teach their children that evolution is wrong.

i don't like seeing people waste their lives away hooked on drugs.

i don't like seeing people eat fast food every day.

i don't like it when people drive ugly cars.

i don't like it when women have sex with men for material ends.

i don't like it when... blah.

we've all got things we don't like, don't we? it's quite subjective.

initiating force on behalf of our personal preferences is absurd.

government means force, and the only rightful use of force is in defense from force.

if there was no such thing as coercion, we wouldn't need government. government would actually be impossible in that case.

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Re: libertarianism [Re: GazzBut]
    #1929492 -

Another slow day?

You asked...
"Say you owned a business producing tea cosies which u sold for $10 a throw. Would you feel right paying the people who made them 20cents and hour just because you could get away with it? Wouldnt you feel like you were exploiting them just a little bit? "

I answered....
"Depends."

And then followed up with a bunch of questions, which while rhetorical in nature, were not answered. Some before you accuse me of being senile, look in the mirror.

I'd have thought you'd be tired of being wrong by now and would be more careful. I guess I was wrong.


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You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for that my dear friend is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it. ~ Adrian Rogers

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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1929844 -

Quote:
It's difficult to imagine a truly libertarian world beacuse we have never had one

we were pretty close to it in the early days of our nation's history.



Not so sure about that. The federal response to the Whiskey Rebellion took care of that. And much of our growth as a nation was behind the wall of tarifs.

Another concern I have with libertarian ideas is that they might get implemented halfway, with deregulation that doesn't go all the way and just increases the power of the companies - like cable deregulation did. It just allowed rising prices and hasn't really given rise to competition anywhere i have lived. This isn't a libetarian fault, I know - I just want to say that sometimes libertarian and deregulation gets all tied up and it just leads to badness.

Thanks for explaining that the idea that the FDA would still be around in some form. Sometimes it's hard to tell if even that would be tolerated, or is tolerated by libertarian societies/proponents.

I will say this - libertarians do have one of the best approach to civil liberties and the drug war. And for that we should glad.


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trying to lose the monkey mind a little bit

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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1929853 -

here... you guys seem to be having some trouble so i'll throw you a bone...

taxation is an initiation of force. in a libertarian system, funding for the functions of government is supposed to come from non-coersive sources. now... while that may possibly work during times of peace and prosperity, i doubt that the government would be able to support its functions through peaceful means during something like an invasion, rebellion, or legitimate foreign war. i'm not sure how this would be dealt with.

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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1930439 -

mushmaster said:
So what's your take on Nike with business booming and still paying slave wages?

it's too bad that nike pays as little as they do. it'd be nice if they allocated a little more to the workers. but who am i to decide? nike and the workers have a voluntary agreement. it's none of my business, and it's none of yours. 


well, If youu are going to sponcer a given political party, you should agree with the outcome of their policisies, no?

If liberatarianism allows wage slavery, then it would be a reason for somone who does not support wage slavery not to vote for liberatarianism. That is why i think he was bringing this up, and I think I would have to agree with him that this is a reson to concider the merits of liberatarianism.

  At our current point in time, with corperations set up as they are, i could see this as possible. The existence of Unions would be a reason why this argument would be less true, but the government would need to provide some sort of protection, or possibly the unions would be able to handle their own shit becuase of the lack of gun control.  :evil:

In the end, its hard to say, but I think Liberatarianism is worth a shot, and is less risky than going for a marxist revolution :tongue: 

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Re: libertarianism [Re: domite]
    #1930595 -

The whole "wage slavery" crap is just that -- crap.

It is just one more of a seemingly endless list of examples of linguistic inflation -- the deliberate attempt to apply the harshest possible term to a situation, with no regard for accepted definitions. In this case, paying a wage less than what the perenially indignant feel is acceptable (to the perenially indignant, of course -- heaven forbid the people looking for work be allowed to give their opinion on it) is termed "slavery" when it is in fact not even close. The words "slave" and "slavery" have clear and unambiguous definitions. A man who freely enters into an employment contract at an agreed-upon wage; a man who may quit his employment at will, is hardly a "slave".

Minimum wage laws, apart from the fact that they violate individual rights, are also bad economic practice. They cause unemployment and they keep the poor and unskilled in a poor and unskilled state.

Another bizarre theory associated with lack of minimum wage laws is that it inevitably leads to a "race to the bottom" -- that employers will pay less and less each year to their workers rather than more and more. The proponents of this theory ignore a couple things --

1) Minimum wage workers almost never stay minimum wage workers. Something like 9 out of 10 who made minimum wage two years ago are above that today -- sometimes substantially above that.

2) A very small percentage of workers older than teenagers make minimum wage, even in non-unionized workplaces. If the law requires that an employer pay minimum wage, why would any employer voluntarily pay his workers more than that? And yet they do.

pinky


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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1931064 -

initiating force on behalf of our personal preferences is absurd

I have a personal preference that corporations shouldn't be allowed to exploit and abuse people, destroy the environment and kill anyone who attempts to form a union or defend their people against exploitation. If that's absurd, then I'll have to be absurd I'm afraid.

If it takes an "initation of force" to stop people being murdered, abused and used as slaves then that's fine by me.

And if you can find me anyone happy to work for 10 cents an hour with no rights whatsoever please do so. Don't confuse the fact that there are people desperate enough to do something with the idea that they "must be happy" doing it.


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Re: libertarianism [Re: Xlea321]
    #1931662 -

I have a personal preference that corporations shouldn't be allowed to exploit and abuse people, destroy the environment and kill anyone who attempts to form a union or defend their people against exploitation. If that's absurd, then I'll have to be absurd I'm afraid.

alex, do you know the meaning of the word "initiate"? i said it was absurd to initiate force on behalf of one's personal preferences. i said that force was only to be used in response to force.

with one exception (the one i was refuting) all of your above charges would use force in defense from force, not initiate it.

If it takes an "initation of force" to stop people being murdered, abused and used as slaves then that's fine by me.

ah... it seems that indeed you don't understand what "initiate" means.

And if you can find me anyone happy to work for 10 cents an hour with no rights whatsoever please do so. Don't confuse the fact that there are people desperate enough to do something with the idea that they "must be happy" doing it.

is there an option to work elsewhere for better pay?

if not, you've got a hard case to prove that they are worse off with their job at company x than without it.... if they would be better off without the job, they can just leave. if they're better with it, they can stay and work. it's called voluntary association.

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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1931720 -

As long as people exploit other justs because they can get away with it i.e Paying 10c an hour becuae they know their workers cant earn more elsewhere, then povery will continue the world over and an ever decreasing minority will become obscenely rich. Oh what fun.


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Always Smi2le

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Re: libertarianism [Re: GazzBut]
    #1932384 -

you won't eliminate poverty by forcing employers to pay more. you'll eliminate jobs. money is a means for exchanging wealth. it is not wealth.

this has gotten to the point of straw-grasping. your above statement is empty liberal buzzphrasing. it's a vague, untestable prediction with no foundation in economic theory.

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Re: libertarianism [Re: ]
    #1932550 -

you won't eliminate poverty by forcing employers to pay more. you'll eliminate jobs

Nope. Another libertarian myth I'm afraid.

You really think paying 20 cents an hour instead of 10 cents is going to put corporations out of buisness?


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Re: libertarianism [Re: Xlea321]
    #1932562 -

One cannot answer that without having knowledge of the expenses and income of a company.


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"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."
-- Mark Twain

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Re: libertarianism [Re: Autonomous]
    #1932608 -

Looks like Nike could afford to pay a little more:

Poor wages are by far the worst aspect of the sweatshop. Workers in China manufacturing Nike and Adidas trainers earn as little as 16 cents (US) a day, while the trainers sell for $100 or more in the US. More crucially, these workers are paid far less than the cost of living in their own countries. Development experts define a living wage as an amount, per hour, where a worker can afford to feed themselves and perhaps children, pay for basic clothing and accommodation, and have a little to spare to save or help with ageing parents. In China, these basics can be bought for just 87 cents an hour. The worker sewing shoes on a Nike assembly line is paid less than a quarter of that. Workers making Disney jackets and cuddly toys at the Megatex factory in Haiti make $2.15 a day, while their basics cost $6.12 a day.

Conditions in far off factories that manufacture goods for western consumption are notoriously harsh. Reports emerge of beatings, rape, fires and forced labour. Everyday conditions, which in the West would horrify, are more or less taken for granted: bans on socialising or even talking, monitored toilet breaks for which wages are deducted, stuffy and poorly ventilated factories, no protective gloves or masks, short term contracts with no consideration for sickness or redundancy pay.


Despite spending big bucks on a PR campaign to shed its sweatshop image Nike continue to subcontract in Indonesia, El Salvador and China. Labour abuses in these factories include low wages, excessive hours, including forced overtime and illegal wage deductions. For example, on International Women's Day in 1997 fifty six women working at a Nike factory in Vietnam were forced to run around the site in the hot sun as punishment for failing to wear regulation shoes. Nike recorded a profit of $8.7 billion in 1999.


http://www.ethicalmatters.co.uk/articles.asp?itemID=44&title=Exploitation


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Don't worry, B. Caapi

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Re: libertarianism [Re: Xlea321]
    #1932710 -

The point is, you cannot look at Nike and generalize to all businesses. Many businesses operate on a much thinner profit margin. I have one friend who was forced to close his business because of government mandated expenses - it was no longer profitable for him. ALL the people who worked for him became unemployed and had to try to find work elsewhere. Is this the result that you desire? Granted this does not happen every time, but there is a consistent trait of many on the left when looking at economic issues to exhibit an inability or refusal to address unintended consequences.

A couple more...
1) What if instead of complying with a government mandate to raise wages, an employer determines it is more economical to automate processes and lay off employees?
2) Employers comply with the government mandate and raises wages. To cover expenses, they also raise the price of products and/or services. Price hikes work their way through every sector of the economy, the end result being that the higher wages received have the same purchasing power as before. A benefit (for the government) is that some people have been pushed into higher tax brackets - in real terms, their purchasing power has been reduced although they make more money.


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"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination."
-- Mark Twain

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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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