Scott Olsen "cannot talk" after being hit in the head by a police projectile, according to his friend Keith Shannon.
Olsen woke up yesterday afternoon, having previously been sedated.
"He cannot talk right now, and that is because the fracture is right on the speech center of his brain," Shannon said. "However, they are expecting he will get that back."
Something is happening. There is a thread on Polycount. There are countless news stories. The chairman of the federal reserve bank is making comments on it, and those people out in the street are the tip of the iceberg.
My prediction is that we are about 3 years in to a 7 year slump. If you think things are bad now, just wait.
Are you guys expecting this to do something? I look it like this if someone stood outside your house for a week and lived on your porch...would that stop you from working everyday?
Dood google the history of protests and see how far successful ones have gone in enhancing people's lives. Protests don't magically work right away, but when you talk about something happening across the nation, it's obviously something building up. just be patient.
Are you guys expecting this to do something? I look it like this if someone stood outside your house for a week and lived on your porch...would that stop you from working everyday?
as much fun as it may seem i dont think this is a good idea. there could be legal repercussions of such activity. just be cautious.
I though it could also be interpreted as a form of protest, so it might be protected... it is curious to know if the guy in the video knows about any laws pertaining to what he is advocating.
I didn't see anything in that video that should have any legal ramifications, however, it would most definatley have repercussions because all that extra postage, and the time (re: money) would be billed right back to their customers in the form of banking fee's. Just like all their other bills. So really, while it certainly seems funny in actuality all you'd accomplish is rightly pissing off the poor fucks in the mail room who would be stuck sorting this crap; and costing the average people who bank with them even more money. yay.
I didn't see anything in that video that should have any legal ramifications, however, it would most definatley have repercussions because all that extra postage, and the time (re: money) would be billed right back to their customers in the form of banking fee's. Just like all their other bills. So really, while it certainly seems funny in actuality all you'd accomplish is rightly pissing off the poor fucks in the mail room who would be stuck sorting this crap; and costing the average people who bank with them even more money. yay.
Your missing the point. Its to get people to not support those banks anyways. The consumer has a choice to take their money out of those banks and put them into another one.
You sure about that? Cause there's a difference between missing a point and not explaining one clearly.
So let me try to be clear here, I'm not in any way whatsoever condoning the corporate/banking practices that have lead here but nothing in that video beyond sending back the empty envelope is going to do anything other than cost the wrong people more money.
At the very least 75% of the people who do business with these banks and rely on them for their savings and what small amount of investing they are able to do are not in the 16-35 age group (our parents?) that is primarily involved in OWS and are actually to busy working minimum wages jobs or just trying to find one to sit on a computer watching videos on youtube? which doesn't even begin to question the hypocrisy of just how much money google makes when 55,000+ people are watching said video. But hey just cause Google is a fucking massive corporation with a $600 share price doesn't mean they're evil right? Of course not, Google is a corporation not a person. But Scudz, Shareholders are people aren't they? You bet your sweet sweet ass they are. And you can also bet that same sweet ass that more than a few of them have high ranking positions in wall street. Hmmm, I wonder what else they might be investing in? I'm not trying to rag on google here, I just think it's a little on the ironic side that using solcial media to spread an anti-corporate message ends up earning those people even more money. Example
Anyway however clear that was it's my oppinion, feel free to disagree or not but we've both got art to make.
...which doesn't even begin to question the hypocrisy of just how much money google makes when 55,000+ people are watching said video.
I have seen a few people make this kind of comment before and I think it's kind of dumb. Here is why:
If you saw a person in North Korea protesting the government, and noticed his jumper was produced in a government factory, does that mean he's a hypocrite? Is he supposed to protest naked because that is his only other option, since the government makes all the clothes there?
So your "point" that you can't do anything at all without corporations somehow milking value from it is not some brilliant revelation that everyone is a hypocrite, but rather just confirms what the protesters are saying -- corporations have too much control.
You sure about that? Cause there's a difference between missing a point and not explaining one clearly.
do anything other than cost the wrong people more money.
You haven't made that clear beyond people whom use those commercial banks.
At the very least 75% of the people who do business with these banks and rely on them for their savings and what small amount of investing they are able to do are not in the 16-35 age group (our parents?) that is primarily involved in OWS and are actually to busy working minimum wages jobs or just trying to find one to sit on a computer watching videos on youtube?
Well, first, we can tell right away you are biased with your inherent "slapdown" comment. Second. My parents use credit unions and so can yours. You have not given any reason beyond laziness. What? Their retirement is tied up in it? Start to move it out.
Another argument you don't mention is the money wasted by the banks that affect these same poor 75% you mention to even create, print, pay for databases of consumers, and send that crap out in the first place. Why are you not on the banks about that?
which doesn't even begin to question the hypocrisy of just how much money google makes when 55,000+ people are watching said video. But hey just cause Google is a fucking massive corporation with a $600 share price doesn't mean they're evil right?
Yea, that makes no sense and is the argument of those without any other. Because X cannot do something without partaking of Y in some part where Y in some way is part of what X is attempting to protest. Does not mean that hypocrisy overshadows the message. If the only choice is to live in the boonies not getting your message out at all. Then such arguments are straw man AFAIC.
As it is YOU ASSUME that said person is against all corporations versus the banks. Unless I missed something in that video (didn't watch the whole thing as what he says is not a new idea). I didn't see any mention of sticking to the corporate man in general versus the banks.
Anyway however clear that was it's my oppinion, feel free to disagree or not but we've both got art to make.
You haven't made that clear beyond people whom use those commercial banks.
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here, but I think those were the people I was talking about?
Well, first, we can tell right away you are biased with your inherent "slapdown" comment. Second. My parents use credit unions and so can yours. You have not given any reason beyond laziness. What? Their retirement is tied up in it? Start to move it out.
I'm not "slapping" anyone down and I'm not calling anyone lazy, all I'm saying is that when a bank's costs go up, they increase thier customers service fee's, and the people who have to pay them are the ones who suffer for it. If it was just a matter of the person sending back the envelope getting the bill like Haiasi seem to think then that would be a wonderful world and I would gladly encourage sending them a bunch of crap. As far as moving you're money to a credit union, if that is the best option for you than go ahead, but it is not the best option for everyone and it sure as shit would be bad if everybody tried to do it at the same time, here's a bunch of reasons why.
Another argument you don't mention is the money wasted by the banks that affect these same poor 75% you mention to even create, print, pay for databases of consumers, and send that crap out in the first place. Why are you not on the banks about that?
I was discussing the potential fallout of following the advice in the video, not existing problems with the banks policy's. It's the same reason I failed to mention banks making bad investments or giving themselves undeserved bonuses.
Yea, that makes no sense and is the argument of those without any other. Because X cannot do something without partaking of Y in some part where Y in some way is part of what X is attempting to protest. Does not mean that hypocrisy overshadows the message. If the only choice is to live in the boonies not getting your message out at all. Then such arguments are straw man AFAIC.
Ok, clearly hypocrisy was the wrong word here, my mistake. Maybe it should have been irony, I don't know. I only meant to point out that efforts to spread the message about getting rid of them are, to a degree, helping them.
As it is YOU ASSUME that said person is against all corporations versus the banks. Unless I missed something in that video (didn't watch the whole thing as what he says is not a new idea). I didn't see any mention of sticking to the corporate man in general versus the banks.
To assume there isn't a phenominal level of interaction between the two and that one would be unafeected without the other is naive at best. Yes, there are some "good" corporations out there that aren't in the sole business of making money, but there are many more (including Google, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, etc etc etc) that have to be primarily concerened with a bottom line that appease's the stockholders and answers to a board of directors made up of the people who own the most stocks. That's just the reality of taking a company public. Yes some of them do some great things for the benefit of everybody, like Googles solarcity, and thats great, but have a look at their top investors (That doesn't show the names of the board of directors but it's freely available information and you can even use google to find it) as of right now. You really don't think one would effect the other?
But yes, I do assume. Because that's what an oppinion is, it's an assumption based on fact that may or may not be correct. And it is mine to make without getting all capital letter-y on you.
Let me try this one more time, I am NOT saying the banks should not be responsible for thier actions. I am ONLY saying why I feel that taking the advice of that video would have the opposite effect and, however poorly worded, my oppinion why.
Does that make more sense? I'm not "slapping" anyone, I just think we might not be disagreeing about the same things.
I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here, but I think those were the people I was talking about?
No, below you go into AOL, Google and such. The gentlemen in the video is specifically targeting financial institutions.
and the people who have to pay them are the ones who suffer for it.
Who again have made the CHOICE to do business with such.
If it was just a matter of the person sending back the envelope getting the bill like Haiasi seem to think then that would be a wonderful world and I would gladly encourage sending them a bunch of crap.
Which it is. See below.
As far as moving you're money to a credit union, if that is the best option for you than go ahead, but it is not the best option for everyone and it sure as shit would be bad if everybody tried to do it at the same time, here's a bunch of reasons why.
Sorry, I should have said local banks as well. Just out of multinational and/or Wall Street traded banks. WHICH btw, since the repeal of GlassSteagall Act get most profits outside of actual banking. Customers? Chump Change. Which is why I find your argument against the envelope stuffing so funny and out of touch with reality.
The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, which was in 1999 the largest U.S. bank by assets, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities
I was discussing the potential fallout of following the advice in the video, not existing problems with the banks policy's. It's the same reason I failed to mention banks making bad investments or giving themselves undeserved bonuses.
There is a positive as well to your negative. Don't forget the mail handler at the bank who keeps their job because of the influx of mail as well as the postage worker.
Ok, clearly hypocrisy was the wrong word here, my mistake. Maybe it should have been irony, I don't know. I only meant to point out that efforts to spread the message about getting rid of them are, to a degree, helping them.
Which makes no sense because you cite Google which is not a financial institution. Again, the video is only attacking the financial institutions which in part got us into this mess.
To assume there isn't a phenominal level of interaction between the two and that one would be unafeected without the other is naive at best. Yes, there are some "good" corporations out there that aren't in the sole business of making money, but there are many more (including Google, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, etc etc etc) that have to be primarily concerened with a bottom line that appease's the stockholders and answers to a board of directors made up of the people who own the most stocks. That's just the reality of taking a company public. Yes some of them do some great things for the benefit of everybody, like Googles solarcity, and thats great, but have a look at their top investors (That doesn't show the names of the board of directors but it's freely available information and you can even use google to find it) as of right now. You really don't think one would effect the other?
Good information and argument. If we were arguing such. (Your comment does belong in this thread, just not this particular conversation). At least I am arguing only on the merits of the video with sending back credit card and bank applications and such.
Does that make more sense? I'm not "slapping" anyone, I just think we might not be disagreeing about the same things.
Yes and no. You in a sense having only defended the customer of bank without defending the right of the postage worker or other, show a inherent bias as your not showing both sides. As well as above I have shown that these banks income isn't so much from customers these days as it is from investment and trading. If anything, sending these back would have little effect for these institutions.
good, can't wait to see it.
Can't. NDA. Though I think I can eventually get around with the laxness of the project as well as the potential attention it would bring, and just release a HUGE download of assets for people to use for commercial or none (just not selling on TurboSquid).
Cross posting this from another forum as your post Ganemi made me research the articles in question.
This is interesting. From interviews with some homeless drunks, they were told by police to move to Zuccotti park.. I.E. Having nothing to do with the movement but to disrupt it and/or create bad press (show da bums and druggies versus the real OWS).
Most of the non-participants in turn pitched camp west of there, as far as possible from the workers. That dynamic reinforced itself, as occupiers nervous about their possessions and safety slept by their equipment and each other to the east, while the carnival crowd kept to the other side of Zuccotti.
as the park has taken on a darker tone with unsteady and unstable types suddenly seeming to emerge from the woodwork. Two different drunks I spoke with last week told me theyd been encouraged to take it to Zuccotti by officers whod found them drinking in other parks, and members of the community affairs working group related several similar stories theyd heard while talking with intoxicated or aggressive new arrivals.
Now, in response. The true OWS are getting organized.
If you want to be part of our group, you have to be civilized, said Paul Isaac, 45, who is part of Occupy Wall Streets security team. Unfortunately, some people come to disrupt the peace.
The list includes rules against stealing, sexual harassment and hurting others - including their feelings. The group also put a ban on fuel, weapons or drugs in the park.
Basically, we want people to respect one another, Isaac said.
Unfortunately, I wonder if one of the OWS will get hurt/killed though because the police helped create this tension by "inviting" truly unstable people. You tell the drug dealer to leave, he pulls out a gun and shoots you.*
*Yes, I see the Irony in them creating a security force to kick these "hang ons" from a park where they themselves are not there totally legal. There is a difference thogh between a democratic protest for the first amendment, and someone coming along who simply wants to take advantage of others.** with no intention of being peaceful or respectful
**If you think that's what this is about (I.E. Freeloading student hippies whining), you really aren't paying attention and let other media make your decisions for you.
If anything, I wonder if this might make the movement stronger and in fact become political as they find with the organization they require because of the interference from third parties trying to disrupt them. In short, the disruptive plans by those against the OWS may backfire on them in the long run. As the OWS may be forced to become a parallel to the tea party.
So I kind of didn't want to bring up this up again, but I couldn't stop thinking about it, so at the risk of killing the thread:
Awhile back Poop mentioned that he doesn't like capitalism because of the employer/employee relationship. I wanted to bring up a few points. First, this relationship is a social one, and economics has no meaningful distinction between an employer and an employee. Second, some of the most abusive relationships that happen under capitalism are not between employers and employees, and finally, capitalism could exist without the employer/employee relationship.
There is no meaningful definition of what it means to be an employer or employee within economics. An employer is not a person with capital since everyone with an education has human capital, anyone with an idea has intellectual capital and even a person stranded on an island can invest and own physical capital that helps in production of goods for his own consumption. An employer is not a person who trades money or some other good for other goods or services since this also describes the consumer. An employer can offer goods or services, so that isn't any help either. In fact, all capitalist economic activity is fundamentally the same, in which people trade a good or service for something they want.
Sometimes under capitalism, because it allows a lot of freedom, an employer has too much leverage and can abuse people with that power. This abuse is not because he is an employer, but because he has leverage. Unions can have more leverage than employers, and you can be a small businessman and get totally fucked by your land lord as in variations of sharecropping. As an employee you sometimes have to deal with negotiating from the weaker position, but this is a social problem, not an economic one. Things you can do to have more leverage are: a)stay out of debt, b)don't get tied down in one spot, c)have money saved, d)cultivate a support network. The #1 rule of negotiation is to be able to walk away.
Capitalism doesn't need employers. People can produce food on their personal farm and sell or trade the extra. Physical capital can be rented. Money can be raised directly from the customer/investor through pre-orders or services like kickstarter. Capitalism isn't perfect, and does tend to concentrate wealth, but that is why we have a government -- every capitalist country has government services to help correct this.
Pop quiz: What is a market economy under a government with more social services called?
Answer: Capitalism (which is a point a lot of people out there seem confused about).
One reason I didn't want to dig this up is because I agree with Poop. The employer/employee relationship is often perverse. People expect to be shielded from the risk associated with their chosen profession, or want other people to make the hard choices for them, and so they end up acting like a child that expects the people they work for to take care of them. It's often much easier to work at some job then to make smart choices about your personal finances, face risk, motivate yourself to work, come up with great ideas, make a product and then find a market for it.
In other news:
I am kind of amazed that there are enough OWS protesters to beat up and imprison here in Oklahoma, but apparently there are since they are cracking down on them in Tulsa.
Also, in case you don't know, today the people of Oakland are participating in a general strike today.
@Ninjas - They are arresting people here in Orlando too, but no one's been beat yet. Anyone who stands in the grass from 11pm-6am goes directly to jail though. Only time local news media decides to cover it is when an occupier(s) decide that their right to free speech is more important than park hours. The people there have been extremally respectful of the park hours and march circles on the surrounding sidewalks through the night. The park is clean, organized, and well-stocked yet things like the McRib and Kim Kardashian get more airtime daily. It's sad that only the arrests will get them mainstream publicity.
I'm also going to be watching how that strike in Oakland goes. Several businesses, organizations, and even city officials have announced support:
"Occupy Wall Street protesters in Oakland are preparing for a city-wide general strike today that will include marches, picketing outside banks and an attempt to shut down the nations fifth-largest port. The staffs at two Oakland elementary schools and a small high school had decided to close their campuses for the day due to the strike. City officials also have agreed to allow "non-essential" government workers to use vacation, personal or furlough days to participate in the strike. Meanwhile, the citys police union has slammed Oakland Mayor Jean Quan for her handling of the protests. In an open letter, the police union wrote, "Is it the citys intention to have city employees on both sides of a skirmish line?"" - Democracy Now!
You're muddying the issue with varying forms of capital. The simple truth is, an employer is one who pays another for goods and services over a long term relationship. Customers are not employers because the relationship ends as soon as the transaction is completed. Employment is an ongoing relationship of trading labor for pay. The employer needs the employee as much as the employee needs him/her, but a customer has no need for a particular producer, they can go to anyone who will provide the services and goods they need on a daily whim.
"Capitalism doesn't need employers. People can produce food on their personal farm and sell or trade the extra."
Those two sentences are not correct. Capitalism is a system for employers. It leverages the low wage labor to produce profit for the employer. Producing food for yourself and selling the surplus is not capitalism, it's subsistence farming. There's no profit, only an exchange of value of your labor in the form of selling what you produce yourself. You're not paying someone (typically, some farms do hire people) to produce crops and pocketing excess value beyond the labor and resources, you use your own labor and resources to do that. Just because there is capital involved does not make it capitalism.
"Almost always, countries in crisis need to learn to live within their means after a period of excessexports must be increased, and imports cut"
If everyone is cutting imports and increasing exports, who's buying the surplus exports? This right here makes me dubious of this person's understanding of economics and our money system.
"In that period, the banking panic of 1907 could be stopped only by coordination among private-sector bankers: no government entity was able to offer an effective response. But that first age of banking oligarchs came to an end with the passage of significant banking regulation in response to the Great Depression; the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent."
Of course the bankers were the only ones who could stop it, they created it to initiate a panic so people were more amenable to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the 16th Amendment, which was supposed to stop the "Money Trust" from doing this crap. But they actually wrote the Fed Act and the 16th to finally take complete control of our money system. The 1907 panic was orchestrated to shoehorn the bill in.
If any government entity tried to intervene, the Rothschilds would just sick their lobbyists on them and buy their silence or just eliminate them quietly. That's what happened to Garfield, McKinley, Lincoln, and Kennedy. They all had plans to get rid of the banker's power and all were assassinated. Andrew Jackson was the only one to survive an attack and managed to keep us mostly free from a central bank from 1836 to 1913. No other successful assassinations have happened to US presidents that didn't have any anti-central bank policy on the table.
This whole quotation seems somehow apologetic to the bankers and raises them on a pedestal in terms of their power to "correct" the woes of the economy. They don't fix problems in the economy, they create them to seize power for themselves.
You're muddying the issue with varying forms of capital. The simple truth is, an employer is one who pays another for goods and services over a long term relationship. Customers are not employers because the relationship ends as soon as the transaction is completed. Employment is an ongoing relationship of trading labor for pay.
Haha, sweet definition. I guess if you have a cellphone contract, than ATT is your employee, but if you do day labor than the people who hire you are consumers!
I'm not trying to muddy the waters. I have a vastly better understanding of this stuff than you do, and I'm trying to communicate that information so that you can educate yourself. It's kind of a waste, since I have better things to do than explain basic shit to people who prefer to believe fantasies, but I was caught up in the spirit of helping others for a moment.
"Almost always, countries in crisis need to learn to live within their means after a period of excessexports must be increased, and imports cut"
If everyone is cutting imports and increasing exports, who's buying the surplus exports?
You don't need any economics education for this. Basic reading skills will do. Not every country is in crisis, so they don't all have to do the same thing! "Contradiction" solved.
If every country is in crises then clearly they are just fucked
it is a giant pyramid(like the one on the dollar bill) scheme with trickle down economics.
what capitalism should be ideally and what is actually practiced in society will never be the same as with any other systems. it is just human nature to exploit any functioning system to their benefit at expense of others.
frankly it is too big of a topic for this thread and a dangerous one too.
@Vig Glad you appreciated it! It was written a couple of years ago and it's amazing how that stuff has played out.
I probably come off as an egomaniac when it comes to this stuff, so here is why:
I have noticed that the character of a lot of economic discussion I have is about the same as evolution arguments I used to have with fundamentalist Christians. The basis for my knowledge is from logic, mathematics and personal experience. Much like dubious empirical evidence like that "there is no fossil evidence for transitional species", or logic based on faulty premises like "new species can't occur because the genetic pool for that species is fixed" coming from people with no education in biology, there is no way that weak economic arguments are going to somehow prevail over reason and what I know firsthand. They are the same in another way too.
I don't need to convince people at all. Reality being what it is, if you understand it better than the next guy, you will make better predictions and have better outcomes in life. I will do just fine employing what I understand to the problems I have every day, meanwhile other people will struggle while clutching onto their fantasy reality and not understand why they can't get ahead.
Haha, sweet definition. I guess if you have a cellphone contract, than ATT is your employee, but if you do day labor than the people who hire you are consumers!
I'm not trying to muddy the waters. I have a vastly better understanding of this stuff than you do, and I'm trying to communicate that information so that you can educate yourself. It's kind of a waste, since I have better things to do than explain basic shit to people who prefer to believe fantasies, but I was caught up in the spirit of helping others for a moment.
You don't need any economics education for this. Basic reading skills will do. Not every country is in crisis, so they don't all have to do the same thing! "Contradiction" solved.
If every country is in crises then clearly they are just fucked
Haha, sweet definition. I guess if you have a cellphone contract, than ATT is your employee, but if you do day labor than the people who hire you are consumers!
I'm not trying to muddy the waters. I have a vastly better understanding of this stuff than you do, and I'm trying to communicate that information so that you can educate yourself. It's kind of a waste, since I have better things to do than explain basic shit to people who prefer to believe fantasies, but I was caught up in the spirit of helping others for a moment.
I don't know by what metric you can assert that you have a better understanding when you don't even know me, that just smells of arrogance. I don't see how most people can claim to know much of anything about economics when most of the system is hidden from us so that they can operate with impunity and almost nobody attempts to pierce the veil. I don't claim to know everything, but I know what I know and I can speak with confidence about the things I do know. I defer to those that know more about the things I don't understand, but I will research it to fill in the holes of my knowledge to determine if what they say is fact or just more obscuring rhetoric.
It can't be much of a waste if you felt the impetus to come back here and insult my intelligence because I called you on your inconsistencies. Yes there are varying types of capital, human capital, land capital, monetary capital, and natural resource capital to name a few, but their use doesn't make it capitalism.
Capitalism is a system that leverages any and all forms of capital, then sells the results to the public at a price that is higher than the inherent value of the goods and keeping the excess as profit. A cellphone subscriber does not fit that criteria, but employers do. Although a day laborer would fall into the category of employee, if only a temporary one, but they work through temp agencies, which are their employer.
You're trying to blur the definition and create a false dichotomy between capitalism and employers. You can't have capitalism without employers, it is a system uniquely designed for them. Take away capitalism system from a business and you have an autonomous collective of workers that take home the value of their labor through the sale of the goods/services they produce, there is no profit because there is no reason for it. They get paid the exact value of the goods and services their labor and resources produce. Profit is for the guy standing in the middle controlling the transaction between the producers and the consumers, an employer.
You don't need any economics education for this. Basic reading skills will do. Not every country is in crisis, so they don't all have to do the same thing! "Contradiction" solved.
Ah, but you do, or else you're just taking their "facts" on their say-so.
Not every country is in crisis, but many are, which is going to get worse if they take this person's advice. What he's suggesting is exactly what the banks did before the mortgage bust happened. It will just result in the bottom falling right out of the whole thing.
The simple truth is, an employer is one who pays another for goods and services over a long term relationship. Customers are not employers because the relationship ends as soon as the transaction is completed. Employment is an ongoing relationship of trading labor for pay.
I would like to amend that statement by saying that the employer also sells that labor for profit. Customers are just the end of the chain, they don't sell anything for profit, they consume the goods and services. Employers invest in labor for future potential profit, customers do not.
I would like to amend that statement by saying that the employer also sells that labor for profit. Customers are just the end of the chain, they don't sell anything for profit, they consume the goods and services. Employers invest in labor for future potential profit, customers do not.
But employers also buy things do they not? Every company has to buy materials, and buy work-time from employees. So then every employer is also a customer. And likewise, when you work you're trading your time for money. Obviously the money is more important to you than your time, you value it more, so you do make a profit. Last I checked, money is profit.
That's with every exchange. In every (free) exchange, each person trades something they value less for something they value more. So both sides make a profit.
This is why your definition doesn't really fit.
The only definition of an employer is the one that primarily buys work-time from people with money. But so what? He's still essentially right, you can still have capitalism without employers. It doesn't change anything. And just because someone is an employer, that doesn't mean he has significant power. He could, but it's not necessarily the thing. It's just leverage, and all sorts of people could have leverage.
Things you can do to have more leverage are: a)stay out of debt, b)don't get tied down in one spot, c)have money saved, d)cultivate a support network. The #1 rule of negotiation is to be able to walk away.
A: ) Our current form of capitalism relies on this though to work.
B: ) Is somewhat against modern human nature.* If a system of economics requires this to keep things in part "equal" between the employee and employer. Isnt that system setting up for failure off the bat.
If any government entity tried to intervene, the Rothschilds would just sick their lobbyists on them and buy their silence or just eliminate them quietly. That's what happened to Garfield, McKinley, Lincoln, and Kennedy. They all had plans to get rid of the banker's power and all were assassinated. Andrew Jackson was the only one to survive an attack and managed to keep us mostly free from a central bank from 1836 to 1913. No other successful assassinations have happened to US presidents that didn't have any anti-central bank policy on the table.
You went off the deep end with that. You get into the realm of conspiracies. Which, to many including me devalues your viewpoint. I'm not saying it did or did not happen. I'm saying by claiming such with little or no evidence while trying to argue about another topic all together to prove how "evil" the topic is. Does not help your position.
A: ) Our current form of capitalism relies on this though to work.
B: ) Is somewhat against modern human nature.* If a system of economics requires this to keep things in part "equal" between the employee and employer. Isnt that system setting up for failure off the bat.
*No on can ever have families.
a)yes, our current form of capitalism needs some work. It is kind of fucked.
b)So I think those tips for leverage are kind of a guide, you don't have to do them all but they help, and you could do all of them or none of them and it still isn't a sure thing either way in terms of leverage in a given situation. Having the time to wait out a good situation is one of the main benefits of leverage. Of course, another form is to go out in the street and shut down a major port in Oakland That is a whole other post...
*I don't think it would be hard to have a family if you work mostly online, but then I was homeschooled, and have no intention of sending my kids to public school (if/when I have kids). It does make it a bit harder to maybe buy a house or something.
You went off the deep end with that. You get into the realm of conspiracies. Which, to many including me devalues your viewpoint. I'm not saying it did or did not happen. I'm saying by claiming such with little or no evidence while trying to argue about another topic all together to prove how "evil" the topic is. Does not help your position.
That is not a "conspiracy", it's a pattern of facts that make a very clear point. The fact is, there has never been a successful assassination of a US president that hasn't had some kind of monetary reform plan. It's not fringe, the facts are there.
But employers also buy things do they not? Every company has to buy materials, and buy work-time from employees. So then every employer is also a customer. And likewise, when you work you're trading your time for money. Obviously the money is more important to you than your time, you value it more, so you do make a profit. Last I checked, money is profit.
That's with every exchange. In every (free) exchange, each person trades something they value less for something they value more. So both sides make a profit.
This is why your definition doesn't really fit.
The only definition of an employer is the one that primarily buys work-time from people with money. But so what? He's still essentially right, you can still have capitalism without employers. It doesn't change anything. And just because someone is an employer, that doesn't mean he has significant power. He could, but it's not necessarily the thing. It's just leverage, and all sorts of people could have leverage.
And those employers use those purchased materials and labor to produce goods to profit from. But you are right that employers can be customers. You can't have capitalism without employers. As I said, if you take out capitalism, nobody is taking a profit. If there's nobody taking profit, it's not capitalism. There's the possibility of subsistence businesses that pay everybody exactly what their labor is worth but capitalism that sells goods for more than it's inherent value, while taking excess revenue as profit for the employer. The first example is shows an employer that is not a capitalist and the second is. If there's no employer, who's taking the profit? You can have employers without capitalism, but not capitalism without employers. Any business that is capitalist always has an employer (a.k.a owner) taking a profit. No profit, no capitalism.
Although, I should use the term consumer rather than customer. A consumer doesn't resell the goods and labor of others to make a profit, consumers are not employers, even though they are customers. Employers do though, even as customers. If I buy goods from the local WalMart, I'm a consumer and a customer, but I am by no means an "employer". If WalMart buys lots of clothing to have their store workers sell, they are customers and employers, but they are not consumers.
You can't have capitalism without employers. As I said, if you take out capitalism, nobody is taking a profit. If there's nobody taking profit, it's not capitalism.
This was already discussed earlier in this thread. At this point all I can say is, Agree to Disagree? There's no point going in circles over this. I just disagree with that notion.
And I don't even get the punchline here. So ok, say someone makes a profit. And? You make it sound as if there's something wrong with that. Like it's an inherent flaw of the system or something. So if I go and spend my time working and I make money (read: profit off of my work) that's fine. But if in the process I also hire other people, then all of a sudden it's a different class of profit? Like some kind of evil-capitalism-profit or something?
What's the overall point being made here? Is there even one?
Otherwise I'm afraid this thread is starting to outlive its usefulness, in my opinion.
This was already discussed earlier in this thread. At this point all I can say is, Agree to Disagree? There's no point going in circles over this. I just disagree with that notion.
And I don't even get the punchline here. So ok, say someone makes a profit. And? You make it sound as if there's something wrong with that. Like it's an inherent flaw of the system or something. So if I go and spend my time working and I make money (read: profit off of my work) that's fine. But if in the process I also hire other people, then all of a sudden it's a different class of profit? Like some kind of evil-capitalism-profit or something?
What's the overall point being made here? Is there even one?
Otherwise I'm afraid this thread is starting to outlive its usefulness, in my opinion.
You're confusing profit with revenue. Revenue is what you get for the goods and labor you sell, which pays wages and costs. Profit is the money made beyond the value of your goods and labor. If my labor is worth $20 per widget and my material costs are $100 per widget, then the value of the good is $120. That's $100 for the costs and $20 for my work. Profit would be like adding an additional $10 to the price that isn't part of the inherent value of the good. That would be $20 earned in labor and $10 in profit, leaving you with $30 of income. It's the $10 that's the problem.
It's not part of the value of the work that went into that good. It's purely unearned profit. Like interest, it generates nothing of value but makes the recipient wealthy. The people that take in that profit used the valuable labor of the people whom made the goods and sold it for more than the value of the goods so that anything that isn't wages and costs goes to the employer's pocket. They're not generating any additional value for the goods, they're just controlling it so they can make money from work that other people did.
There's nothing evil in people getting just compensation for the value of their work, but exploiting the labor while skimming profit from the revenue without adding an equal amount of value to it is just parasitic.
You're confusing profit with revenue. Revenue is what you get for the goods and labor you sell, which pays wages and costs. Profit is the money made beyond the value of your goods and labor. If my labor is worth $20 per widget and my material costs are $100 per widget, then the value of the good is $120. That's $100 for the costs and $20 for my work. Profit would be like adding an additional $10 to the price that isn't part of the inherent value of the good. That would be $20 earned in labor and $10 in profit, leaving you with $30 of income. It's the $10 that's the problem.
How is that a problem? Those $10 go towards something don't they? You're just making an arbitrary decision that anything over the cost of labor+materials is waste. It's not waste. It goes into all sorts of things, like say R&D, expanding, hiring more people, etc etc... Surely you don't think those things are all a problem do you?
You have a very specific problem in mind, and you're dancing around the issue. The problem in your mind is materials+labor costing $120, and the owner selling the product for $130, and pockets the extra $10 for his own selfish wallet. He then goes on to live like a king, while the people he took the $10 from are essentially $10-poorer.
Why dance around that? Just say you don't like the notion of people making more money than they "should".
It's not part of the value of the work that went into that good. It's purely unearned profit.
It's not unearned. You just call it that because you don't like it. This is where some more than basic knowledge of economics would help you.
See, money does more than just let you know how much to pay for things. Among its many functions, it's also a way for people to vote with their wallets. When you buy something, by definition you didn't buy something else.
You may think that Apple sells iPhones for ridiculous amounts of money. But the fact of the matter is that the public voted. And they voted that they like iPhones better than Motorolla's Razor.
The part that you call "unearned", that's the part that someone previously invested in stuff like R&D. Just like how your time is worth money, so does his when he develops something new that everyone likes.
Of course reality doesn't work like that. But I'm talking about an ideal situation, as you're arguing about the merits of capitalism.
Like interest, it generates nothing of value but makes the recipient wealthy. The people that take in that profit used the valuable labor of the people whom made the goods and sold it for more than the value of the goods so that anything that isn't wages and costs goes to the employer's pocket. They're not generating any additional value for the goods, they're just controlling it so they can make money from work that other people did.
There's nothing evil in people getting just compensation for the value of their work, but exploiting the labor while skimming profit from the revenue without adding an equal amount of value to it is just parasitic.
Again, I'm going to have to go back to economics here. This is a bit beyond basics, but still pretty simple. Interest isn't "nothing". That you think it's nothing, just like you think money is just a number that tells you how rich you are, you're showing your lack of understanding here.
Interest represents the risk involved with giving someone else your money. You may think that your business idea is awesome. But if I'm not careful and I lend you money, and your business actually sucks, guess what? I lost all my money.
Interest represents a counter-balance to that risk.
Yeah, I have money, but why should I lend it to you so that you can start a business and get rich? Because you pay me interest, and it makes sense to do it.
Again, reality isn't like this. This is an idealized situation. In reality, people (banks) take ridiculous risks with artificially low interest, then when that risk doesn't pan out, the government bails them out. If it does pan out, they keep the money. That's a win-win situation.
Capitalism doesn't do that. In a free-market, if you take a bad gamble, you go bankrupt.
Replies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/28/occupy-oakland-scott-olsen-police-live
Scott Olsen "cannot talk" after being hit in the head by a police projectile, according to his friend Keith Shannon.
Olsen woke up yesterday afternoon, having previously been sedated.
"He cannot talk right now, and that is because the fracture is right on the speech center of his brain," Shannon said. "However, they are expecting he will get that back."
Horrible isn't the right word. Scary is.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/doj-occupy-crackdown/
Listen to NPR, there's reports on this every day
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My prediction is that we are about 3 years in to a 7 year slump. If you think things are bad now, just wait.
It's attitudes like the above that will for sure get nothing done.
Dood google the history of protests and see how far successful ones have gone in enhancing people's lives. Protests don't magically work right away, but when you talk about something happening across the nation, it's obviously something building up. just be patient.
Let Chris Hedges explain it to you.
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as much fun as it may seem i dont think this is a good idea. there could be legal repercussions of such activity. just be cautious.
dude you should check this out!
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I though it could also be interpreted as a form of protest, so it might be protected... it is curious to know if the guy in the video knows about any laws pertaining to what he is advocating.
Even though the Nazi party was not involved in any way, and just found an opening for their own warped goals.
Your missing the point. Its to get people to not support those banks anyways. The consumer has a choice to take their money out of those banks and put them into another one.
So let me try to be clear here, I'm not in any way whatsoever condoning the corporate/banking practices that have lead here but nothing in that video beyond sending back the empty envelope is going to do anything other than cost the wrong people more money.
At the very least 75% of the people who do business with these banks and rely on them for their savings and what small amount of investing they are able to do are not in the 16-35 age group (our parents?) that is primarily involved in OWS and are actually to busy working minimum wages jobs or just trying to find one to sit on a computer watching videos on youtube? which doesn't even begin to question the hypocrisy of just how much money google makes when 55,000+ people are watching said video. But hey just cause Google is a fucking massive corporation with a $600 share price doesn't mean they're evil right? Of course not, Google is a corporation not a person. But Scudz, Shareholders are people aren't they? You bet your sweet sweet ass they are. And you can also bet that same sweet ass that more than a few of them have high ranking positions in wall street. Hmmm, I wonder what else they might be investing in? I'm not trying to rag on google here, I just think it's a little on the ironic side that using solcial media to spread an anti-corporate message ends up earning those people even more money. Example
Anyway however clear that was it's my oppinion, feel free to disagree or not but we've both got art to make.
Also, these banks send shit to you even if you're not an account holder.
Just don't include anything in the letter that as your name on it.
I love this idea.
I have seen a few people make this kind of comment before and I think it's kind of dumb. Here is why:
If you saw a person in North Korea protesting the government, and noticed his jumper was produced in a government factory, does that mean he's a hypocrite? Is he supposed to protest naked because that is his only other option, since the government makes all the clothes there?
So your "point" that you can't do anything at all without corporations somehow milking value from it is not some brilliant revelation that everyone is a hypocrite, but rather just confirms what the protesters are saying -- corporations have too much control.
You haven't made that clear beyond people whom use those commercial banks.
Well, first, we can tell right away you are biased with your inherent "slapdown" comment. Second. My parents use credit unions and so can yours. You have not given any reason beyond laziness. What? Their retirement is tied up in it? Start to move it out.
Another argument you don't mention is the money wasted by the banks that affect these same poor 75% you mention to even create, print, pay for databases of consumers, and send that crap out in the first place. Why are you not on the banks about that?
Yea, that makes no sense and is the argument of those without any other. Because X cannot do something without partaking of Y in some part where Y in some way is part of what X is attempting to protest. Does not mean that hypocrisy overshadows the message. If the only choice is to live in the boonies not getting your message out at all. Then such arguments are straw man AFAIC.
As it is YOU ASSUME that said person is against all corporations versus the banks. Unless I missed something in that video (didn't watch the whole thing as what he says is not a new idea). I didn't see any mention of sticking to the corporate man in general versus the banks.
I'm done for the day.
I'm not "slapping" anyone down and I'm not calling anyone lazy, all I'm saying is that when a bank's costs go up, they increase thier customers service fee's, and the people who have to pay them are the ones who suffer for it. If it was just a matter of the person sending back the envelope getting the bill like Haiasi seem to think then that would be a wonderful world and I would gladly encourage sending them a bunch of crap. As far as moving you're money to a credit union, if that is the best option for you than go ahead, but it is not the best option for everyone and it sure as shit would be bad if everybody tried to do it at the same time, here's a bunch of reasons why.
I was discussing the potential fallout of following the advice in the video, not existing problems with the banks policy's. It's the same reason I failed to mention banks making bad investments or giving themselves undeserved bonuses.
Ok, clearly hypocrisy was the wrong word here, my mistake. Maybe it should have been irony, I don't know. I only meant to point out that efforts to spread the message about getting rid of them are, to a degree, helping them.
To assume there isn't a phenominal level of interaction between the two and that one would be unafeected without the other is naive at best. Yes, there are some "good" corporations out there that aren't in the sole business of making money, but there are many more (including Google, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, etc etc etc) that have to be primarily concerened with a bottom line that appease's the stockholders and answers to a board of directors made up of the people who own the most stocks. That's just the reality of taking a company public. Yes some of them do some great things for the benefit of everybody, like Googles solarcity, and thats great, but have a look at their top investors (That doesn't show the names of the board of directors but it's freely available information and you can even use google to find it) as of right now. You really don't think one would effect the other?
But yes, I do assume. Because that's what an oppinion is, it's an assumption based on fact that may or may not be correct. And it is mine to make without getting all capital letter-y on you.
Let me try this one more time, I am NOT saying the banks should not be responsible for thier actions. I am ONLY saying why I feel that taking the advice of that video would have the opposite effect and, however poorly worded, my oppinion why.
Does that make more sense? I'm not "slapping" anyone, I just think we might not be disagreeing about the same things.
good, can't wait to see it.
No, below you go into AOL, Google and such. The gentlemen in the video is specifically targeting financial institutions.
Who again have made the CHOICE to do business with such.
Which it is. See below.
Sorry, I should have said local banks as well. Just out of multinational and/or Wall Street traded banks. WHICH btw, since the repeal of GlassSteagall Act get most profits outside of actual banking. Customers? Chump Change. Which is why I find your argument against the envelope stuffing so funny and out of touch with reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act#Repeal
There is a positive as well to your negative. Don't forget the mail handler at the bank who keeps their job because of the influx of mail as well as the postage worker.
Which makes no sense because you cite Google which is not a financial institution. Again, the video is only attacking the financial institutions which in part got us into this mess.
Good information and argument. If we were arguing such. (Your comment does belong in this thread, just not this particular conversation). At least I am arguing only on the merits of the video with sending back credit card and bank applications and such.
Yes and no. You in a sense having only defended the customer of bank without defending the right of the postage worker or other, show a inherent bias as your not showing both sides. As well as above I have shown that these banks income isn't so much from customers these days as it is from investment and trading. If anything, sending these back would have little effect for these institutions.
Can't. NDA. Though I think I can eventually get around with the laxness of the project as well as the potential attention it would bring, and just release a HUGE download of assets for people to use for commercial or none (just not selling on TurboSquid).
I did do it already for one here.
This is interesting. From interviews with some homeless drunks, they were told by police to move to Zuccotti park.. I.E. Having nothing to do with the movement but to disrupt it and/or create bad press (show da bums and druggies versus the real OWS).
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/occupy-wall-street-central-a-rift-growing-east-west-sides-plaza-article-1.969320#ixzz1cMQgzEFA
Now, in response. The true OWS are getting organized.
Unfortunately, I wonder if one of the OWS will get hurt/killed though because the police helped create this tension by "inviting" truly unstable people. You tell the drug dealer to leave, he pulls out a gun and shoots you.*
*Yes, I see the Irony in them creating a security force to kick these "hang ons" from a park where they themselves are not there totally legal. There is a difference thogh between a democratic protest for the first amendment, and someone coming along who simply wants to take advantage of others.** with no intention of being peaceful or respectful
**If you think that's what this is about (I.E. Freeloading student hippies whining), you really aren't paying attention and let other media make your decisions for you.
If anything, I wonder if this might make the movement stronger and in fact become political as they find with the organization they require because of the interference from third parties trying to disrupt them. In short, the disruptive plans by those against the OWS may backfire on them in the long run. As the OWS may be forced to become a parallel to the tea party.
Awhile back Poop mentioned that he doesn't like capitalism because of the employer/employee relationship. I wanted to bring up a few points. First, this relationship is a social one, and economics has no meaningful distinction between an employer and an employee. Second, some of the most abusive relationships that happen under capitalism are not between employers and employees, and finally, capitalism could exist without the employer/employee relationship.
There is no meaningful definition of what it means to be an employer or employee within economics. An employer is not a person with capital since everyone with an education has human capital, anyone with an idea has intellectual capital and even a person stranded on an island can invest and own physical capital that helps in production of goods for his own consumption. An employer is not a person who trades money or some other good for other goods or services since this also describes the consumer. An employer can offer goods or services, so that isn't any help either. In fact, all capitalist economic activity is fundamentally the same, in which people trade a good or service for something they want.
Sometimes under capitalism, because it allows a lot of freedom, an employer has too much leverage and can abuse people with that power. This abuse is not because he is an employer, but because he has leverage. Unions can have more leverage than employers, and you can be a small businessman and get totally fucked by your land lord as in variations of sharecropping. As an employee you sometimes have to deal with negotiating from the weaker position, but this is a social problem, not an economic one. Things you can do to have more leverage are: a)stay out of debt, b)don't get tied down in one spot, c)have money saved, d)cultivate a support network. The #1 rule of negotiation is to be able to walk away.
Capitalism doesn't need employers. People can produce food on their personal farm and sell or trade the extra. Physical capital can be rented. Money can be raised directly from the customer/investor through pre-orders or services like kickstarter. Capitalism isn't perfect, and does tend to concentrate wealth, but that is why we have a government -- every capitalist country has government services to help correct this.
Pop quiz: What is a market economy under a government with more social services called?
Answer: Capitalism (which is a point a lot of people out there seem confused about).
One reason I didn't want to dig this up is because I agree with Poop. The employer/employee relationship is often perverse. People expect to be shielded from the risk associated with their chosen profession, or want other people to make the hard choices for them, and so they end up acting like a child that expects the people they work for to take care of them. It's often much easier to work at some job then to make smart choices about your personal finances, face risk, motivate yourself to work, come up with great ideas, make a product and then find a market for it.
In other news:
I am kind of amazed that there are enough OWS protesters to beat up and imprison here in Oklahoma, but apparently there are since they are cracking down on them in Tulsa.
Also, in case you don't know, today the people of Oakland are participating in a general strike today.
P.S. This is a great article about what is actually going on with the US economy: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/7364/
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11961
Also, the inevitable rap video in support of OWS. Rappin' wit facts, yall!
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@Ninjas - They are arresting people here in Orlando too, but no one's been beat yet. Anyone who stands in the grass from 11pm-6am goes directly to jail though. Only time local news media decides to cover it is when an occupier(s) decide that their right to free speech is more important than park hours. The people there have been extremally respectful of the park hours and march circles on the surrounding sidewalks through the night. The park is clean, organized, and well-stocked yet things like the McRib and Kim Kardashian get more airtime daily. It's sad that only the arrests will get them mainstream publicity.
I'm also going to be watching how that strike in Oakland goes. Several businesses, organizations, and even city officials have announced support:
You're muddying the issue with varying forms of capital. The simple truth is, an employer is one who pays another for goods and services over a long term relationship. Customers are not employers because the relationship ends as soon as the transaction is completed. Employment is an ongoing relationship of trading labor for pay. The employer needs the employee as much as the employee needs him/her, but a customer has no need for a particular producer, they can go to anyone who will provide the services and goods they need on a daily whim.
"Capitalism doesn't need employers. People can produce food on their personal farm and sell or trade the extra."
Those two sentences are not correct. Capitalism is a system for employers. It leverages the low wage labor to produce profit for the employer. Producing food for yourself and selling the surplus is not capitalism, it's subsistence farming. There's no profit, only an exchange of value of your labor in the form of selling what you produce yourself. You're not paying someone (typically, some farms do hire people) to produce crops and pocketing excess value beyond the labor and resources, you use your own labor and resources to do that. Just because there is capital involved does not make it capitalism.
"Almost always, countries in crisis need to learn to live within their means after a period of excessexports must be increased, and imports cut"
If everyone is cutting imports and increasing exports, who's buying the surplus exports? This right here makes me dubious of this person's understanding of economics and our money system.
"In that period, the banking panic of 1907 could be stopped only by coordination among private-sector bankers: no government entity was able to offer an effective response. But that first age of banking oligarchs came to an end with the passage of significant banking regulation in response to the Great Depression; the reemergence of an American financial oligarchy is quite recent."
Of course the bankers were the only ones who could stop it, they created it to initiate a panic so people were more amenable to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the 16th Amendment, which was supposed to stop the "Money Trust" from doing this crap. But they actually wrote the Fed Act and the 16th to finally take complete control of our money system. The 1907 panic was orchestrated to shoehorn the bill in.
If any government entity tried to intervene, the Rothschilds would just sick their lobbyists on them and buy their silence or just eliminate them quietly. That's what happened to Garfield, McKinley, Lincoln, and Kennedy. They all had plans to get rid of the banker's power and all were assassinated. Andrew Jackson was the only one to survive an attack and managed to keep us mostly free from a central bank from 1836 to 1913. No other successful assassinations have happened to US presidents that didn't have any anti-central bank policy on the table.
This whole quotation seems somehow apologetic to the bankers and raises them on a pedestal in terms of their power to "correct" the woes of the economy. They don't fix problems in the economy, they create them to seize power for themselves.
@Polygoblin
Nothing boosts ratings like real-life drama. OWS isn't dramatic enough until violence or arrests start happening.
Haha, sweet definition. I guess if you have a cellphone contract, than ATT is your employee, but if you do day labor than the people who hire you are consumers!
I'm not trying to muddy the waters. I have a vastly better understanding of this stuff than you do, and I'm trying to communicate that information so that you can educate yourself. It's kind of a waste, since I have better things to do than explain basic shit to people who prefer to believe fantasies, but I was caught up in the spirit of helping others for a moment.
You don't need any economics education for this. Basic reading skills will do. Not every country is in crisis, so they don't all have to do the same thing! "Contradiction" solved.
If every country is in crises then clearly they are just fucked
what capitalism should be ideally and what is actually practiced in society will never be the same as with any other systems. it is just human nature to exploit any functioning system to their benefit at expense of others.
frankly it is too big of a topic for this thread and a dangerous one too.
1) You're suicidal for agreeing with poop, he'll rip you apart.
2) That's a great read, thanks for sharing!
I probably come off as an egomaniac when it comes to this stuff, so here is why:
I have noticed that the character of a lot of economic discussion I have is about the same as evolution arguments I used to have with fundamentalist Christians. The basis for my knowledge is from logic, mathematics and personal experience. Much like dubious empirical evidence like that "there is no fossil evidence for transitional species", or logic based on faulty premises like "new species can't occur because the genetic pool for that species is fixed" coming from people with no education in biology, there is no way that weak economic arguments are going to somehow prevail over reason and what I know firsthand. They are the same in another way too.
I don't need to convince people at all. Reality being what it is, if you understand it better than the next guy, you will make better predictions and have better outcomes in life. I will do just fine employing what I understand to the problems I have every day, meanwhile other people will struggle while clutching onto their fantasy reality and not understand why they can't get ahead.
I don't know by what metric you can assert that you have a better understanding when you don't even know me, that just smells of arrogance. I don't see how most people can claim to know much of anything about economics when most of the system is hidden from us so that they can operate with impunity and almost nobody attempts to pierce the veil. I don't claim to know everything, but I know what I know and I can speak with confidence about the things I do know. I defer to those that know more about the things I don't understand, but I will research it to fill in the holes of my knowledge to determine if what they say is fact or just more obscuring rhetoric.
It can't be much of a waste if you felt the impetus to come back here and insult my intelligence because I called you on your inconsistencies. Yes there are varying types of capital, human capital, land capital, monetary capital, and natural resource capital to name a few, but their use doesn't make it capitalism.
Capitalism is a system that leverages any and all forms of capital, then sells the results to the public at a price that is higher than the inherent value of the goods and keeping the excess as profit. A cellphone subscriber does not fit that criteria, but employers do. Although a day laborer would fall into the category of employee, if only a temporary one, but they work through temp agencies, which are their employer.
You're trying to blur the definition and create a false dichotomy between capitalism and employers. You can't have capitalism without employers, it is a system uniquely designed for them. Take away capitalism system from a business and you have an autonomous collective of workers that take home the value of their labor through the sale of the goods/services they produce, there is no profit because there is no reason for it. They get paid the exact value of the goods and services their labor and resources produce. Profit is for the guy standing in the middle controlling the transaction between the producers and the consumers, an employer.
Ah, but you do, or else you're just taking their "facts" on their say-so.
Not every country is in crisis, but many are, which is going to get worse if they take this person's advice. What he's suggesting is exactly what the banks did before the mortgage bust happened. It will just result in the bottom falling right out of the whole thing.
I would like to amend that statement by saying that the employer also sells that labor for profit. Customers are just the end of the chain, they don't sell anything for profit, they consume the goods and services. Employers invest in labor for future potential profit, customers do not.
But employers also buy things do they not? Every company has to buy materials, and buy work-time from employees. So then every employer is also a customer. And likewise, when you work you're trading your time for money. Obviously the money is more important to you than your time, you value it more, so you do make a profit. Last I checked, money is profit.
That's with every exchange. In every (free) exchange, each person trades something they value less for something they value more. So both sides make a profit.
This is why your definition doesn't really fit.
The only definition of an employer is the one that primarily buys work-time from people with money. But so what? He's still essentially right, you can still have capitalism without employers. It doesn't change anything. And just because someone is an employer, that doesn't mean he has significant power. He could, but it's not necessarily the thing. It's just leverage, and all sorts of people could have leverage.
A: ) Our current form of capitalism relies on this though to work.
B: ) Is somewhat against modern human nature.* If a system of economics requires this to keep things in part "equal" between the employee and employer. Isnt that system setting up for failure off the bat.
*No on can ever have families.
You went off the deep end with that. You get into the realm of conspiracies. Which, to many including me devalues your viewpoint. I'm not saying it did or did not happen. I'm saying by claiming such with little or no evidence while trying to argue about another topic all together to prove how "evil" the topic is. Does not help your position.
a)yes, our current form of capitalism needs some work. It is kind of fucked.
b)So I think those tips for leverage are kind of a guide, you don't have to do them all but they help, and you could do all of them or none of them and it still isn't a sure thing either way in terms of leverage in a given situation. Having the time to wait out a good situation is one of the main benefits of leverage. Of course, another form is to go out in the street and shut down a major port in Oakland
*I don't think it would be hard to have a family if you work mostly online, but then I was homeschooled, and have no intention of sending my kids to public school (if/when I have kids). It does make it a bit harder to maybe buy a house or something.
That is not a "conspiracy", it's a pattern of facts that make a very clear point. The fact is, there has never been a successful assassination of a US president that hasn't had some kind of monetary reform plan. It's not fringe, the facts are there.
@Big John And those employers use those purchased materials and labor to produce goods to profit from. But you are right that employers can be customers. You can't have capitalism without employers. As I said, if you take out capitalism, nobody is taking a profit. If there's nobody taking profit, it's not capitalism. There's the possibility of subsistence businesses that pay everybody exactly what their labor is worth but capitalism that sells goods for more than it's inherent value, while taking excess revenue as profit for the employer. The first example is shows an employer that is not a capitalist and the second is. If there's no employer, who's taking the profit? You can have employers without capitalism, but not capitalism without employers. Any business that is capitalist always has an employer (a.k.a owner) taking a profit. No profit, no capitalism.
Although, I should use the term consumer rather than customer. A consumer doesn't resell the goods and labor of others to make a profit, consumers are not employers, even though they are customers. Employers do though, even as customers. If I buy goods from the local WalMart, I'm a consumer and a customer, but I am by no means an "employer". If WalMart buys lots of clothing to have their store workers sell, they are customers and employers, but they are not consumers.
This was already discussed earlier in this thread. At this point all I can say is, Agree to Disagree? There's no point going in circles over this. I just disagree with that notion.
And I don't even get the punchline here. So ok, say someone makes a profit. And? You make it sound as if there's something wrong with that. Like it's an inherent flaw of the system or something. So if I go and spend my time working and I make money (read: profit off of my work) that's fine. But if in the process I also hire other people, then all of a sudden it's a different class of profit? Like some kind of evil-capitalism-profit or something?
What's the overall point being made here? Is there even one?
Otherwise I'm afraid this thread is starting to outlive its usefulness, in my opinion.
You're confusing profit with revenue. Revenue is what you get for the goods and labor you sell, which pays wages and costs. Profit is the money made beyond the value of your goods and labor. If my labor is worth $20 per widget and my material costs are $100 per widget, then the value of the good is $120. That's $100 for the costs and $20 for my work. Profit would be like adding an additional $10 to the price that isn't part of the inherent value of the good. That would be $20 earned in labor and $10 in profit, leaving you with $30 of income. It's the $10 that's the problem.
It's not part of the value of the work that went into that good. It's purely unearned profit. Like interest, it generates nothing of value but makes the recipient wealthy. The people that take in that profit used the valuable labor of the people whom made the goods and sold it for more than the value of the goods so that anything that isn't wages and costs goes to the employer's pocket. They're not generating any additional value for the goods, they're just controlling it so they can make money from work that other people did.
There's nothing evil in people getting just compensation for the value of their work, but exploiting the labor while skimming profit from the revenue without adding an equal amount of value to it is just parasitic.
How is that a problem? Those $10 go towards something don't they? You're just making an arbitrary decision that anything over the cost of labor+materials is waste. It's not waste. It goes into all sorts of things, like say R&D, expanding, hiring more people, etc etc... Surely you don't think those things are all a problem do you?
You have a very specific problem in mind, and you're dancing around the issue. The problem in your mind is materials+labor costing $120, and the owner selling the product for $130, and pockets the extra $10 for his own selfish wallet. He then goes on to live like a king, while the people he took the $10 from are essentially $10-poorer.
Why dance around that? Just say you don't like the notion of people making more money than they "should".
It's not unearned. You just call it that because you don't like it. This is where some more than basic knowledge of economics would help you.
See, money does more than just let you know how much to pay for things. Among its many functions, it's also a way for people to vote with their wallets. When you buy something, by definition you didn't buy something else.
You may think that Apple sells iPhones for ridiculous amounts of money. But the fact of the matter is that the public voted. And they voted that they like iPhones better than Motorolla's Razor.
The part that you call "unearned", that's the part that someone previously invested in stuff like R&D. Just like how your time is worth money, so does his when he develops something new that everyone likes.
Of course reality doesn't work like that. But I'm talking about an ideal situation, as you're arguing about the merits of capitalism.
Again, I'm going to have to go back to economics here. This is a bit beyond basics, but still pretty simple. Interest isn't "nothing". That you think it's nothing, just like you think money is just a number that tells you how rich you are, you're showing your lack of understanding here.
Interest represents the risk involved with giving someone else your money. You may think that your business idea is awesome. But if I'm not careful and I lend you money, and your business actually sucks, guess what? I lost all my money.
Interest represents a counter-balance to that risk.
Yeah, I have money, but why should I lend it to you so that you can start a business and get rich? Because you pay me interest, and it makes sense to do it.
Again, reality isn't like this. This is an idealized situation. In reality, people (banks) take ridiculous risks with artificially low interest, then when that risk doesn't pan out, the government bails them out. If it does pan out, they keep the money. That's a win-win situation.
Capitalism doesn't do that. In a free-market, if you take a bad gamble, you go bankrupt.