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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Is Christianity the same as socialism
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
You can’t reply, ’oh, it’s because of the money nexus’, because I am showing you that it is the existence of that very 'money nexus'
Actually I could. I could claim that people are so bedazzled by the ideological pull of the money nexus, that they can't imagine any other way of doing things.
It would be a very weak argument, because it is the idealogy of the money nexus that suggests workers should provide their own capital and thus benifit themselves by ridding themselves of what socialists describe as an unneccesary cost
quote:
I do, broadly speaking, think that. But your question confuses me. Are you claiming that a given workers pay money to the capitalist who employs her?
Oh yes. The payment is made in reduced terms for the employee. Consider that workers who tool themselves tend to be paid more. If an employer provides tools so that his employees are able to provide services to him, the employer must pay the producers of that tooling, and so his relationship is less beneficial to him than one in which the workers provide their own tooling and this will be reflected in the wage he is prepared to pay for that situation. If you like, access to capital is bought by workers. Socialism traps itself by dogmatically insisting that capital employs labour.
I'm inviting you to consider these relationships a little more closely than i think you are presently
Now, something else -
Capital and labour are actually, in many ways, the same thing - hold on, bear with me.
If I sell you a spade am i selling you the spade or selling you the convenience of not having to labour to produce a spade yourself? Well, the answer is of course, both; I am selling you the labour that you will free up by not having to produce a spade for yourself or employ another to do so. I can not sell access to this spade to you for more than the inconvenience it saves you, because if I try, you will simply create your own spade. When workers purchase access to capital, they are simply purchasing access to the benefits of past labour and so claiming that capital deserves no cut is tantamount to claiming that labour deserves no cut. Consider a worker who produces a spade himself, he is now, technically, a capitalist. Does he have a right to sell the results of his efforts? Does the buyer of this spade have the right to sell the use of this spade to another worker, so that his work becomes more efficient? of course he does and nobody in this chain is defrauding anyone.
So much for labour and capital being at war, they are actually the same thing! Now, interestingly, we come to the third factor of production - land; which has no cost of production, it is not and cannot be created by labour; it is different from the other two factors of production, and this is where the fraud starts.
quote:
I simply don't think that's true - I think that capitalists extract a surplus on the value of labour, but I don't see that as a monetary payment.
In the same way that workers extract a surplus value off capital?
If workers get a benefit by using the past efforts of others at a price that is beneficial to them, aren't they collecting 'surplus value'?
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Divine Outlaw
Gin-soaked boy
# 2252
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Posted
We're going round in circles here. I simply don't accept that there is the kind of free give-and-take contractual relationship between labour and capital that you seem to assume. I also think that you are taking contingent features of capitalism (notably capital itself!) to be universal. I think, of course, that you are the subject of ideological delusion. As, no doubt, you do me.
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insert amusing sig. here
Posts: 8705 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
It is the “crudeness” of the measurement that causes me to get off the train. There is few “reasonably objective” means by which I am prepared to justify the take. I live in a state where physical risks are absolutely controlled by the state, no need for socialism there, unless you consider that a form of socialism (which I do). Hours worked results in extra pay, a trivial form of socialism that seems also reasonable to me. Stress? Excuse me while I laugh. If I got extra pay for stress I wouldn’t have to work. So would almost any worker. About as subjective as it gets.
By "stress" I am trying to acknowledge that some jobs, such as simultaneous interpreter or heavy manual labour, may require great physical or mental concentration even if the total number of hours worked is comparatively low. AFAIK this is perfectly possible to calculate medically, at least roughly.
But crude though any such measurement may be, why should market forces be any less crude? If the CEO of Burger King earns x times more than his lowest-ranking burger flipper, does it really follow that he does x times as much work, even allowing for stress and financial risks?
And hours worked does not result in more pay - it only results in more pay than those doing a similar job to you.
quote:
The problem as I see it is not with whatever individual programs a socialist system would come up with to help the working class. It is the unintended consequences of those programs that are difficult or can never be controlled for.
Because the free market never has unintended consequences?
Incidentally, I wouldn't call the French riots entirely a consequence of socialism (and it's not as though America never has riots). Other than the things we have mentioned, the issues are 1.) racial discrimination (four out of five companies discriminate at some stage in the hiring procedure according to this report); 2.) cronyism shutting out the marginalised (professional education in France puts great emphasis on internships, and the best internships go to the ones with contacts); 3.) they are twats (everyone in, say, Seine-Saint-Denis has the same problems, but only a minority of them feel the need to burn cars - and I'm entitled to say that because I've worked in one of the relevant districts).
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No real harm is done? That’s a pretty big assumption.
Which is why I specified as long as the taxpayer gets a decent residue.
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Taxation is a form of Harm. If my business goes into a bad spell due to circumstances beyond my control, the 30% taxes I pay sure could save it, but taxes are not optional, they are forced upon me.
No, they aren't - or at least no more than your pay conditions.
If you don't like your tax-bill, you can vote for a government that will reduce it, and if enough voters agree with you then it will go down. If you don't like the going rate for your kind of job, you can negotiate, and if enough of the interested parties in the market agree then the going rate will increase.
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Your not serious….. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Fruit picking and toilet cleaning will always be with us. Those jobs are not fungible, they cannot be shipped out of the area that they are done like say telemarketing.
No, but the number of people looking for that sort of job is variable.
quote:
I have to disagree that the market will ignore the talented over the rich though.
I didn't say it would ignore them totally, only that it would be skewed against them.
I'm pretty sure it has been statistically demonstrated that students from state schools at the highest-ranking British universities on average do better than those from private schools with equivalent grades at A-level. The explanation given being that the relative advantages of a private school helps a mediocre pupil to get ahead at that level and thus enter university, but once at university, where there's a level playing field, the lower innate ability shows through.
Now on the world ranking of Great Injustices Throughout the Ages this hardly registers, but then the gulf between private and state education in the UK is not that wide.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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moron
Shipmate
# 206
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Posted
Great discussion, BTW.
quote:
Because the free market never has unintended consequences?
Obviously it does. How about this:
the 'invisible hand' (i.e. innumerable individual economic decisions) of the free market is at least marginally less likely to screw things up compared to a much more limited group of 'central planners'?
ISTM that could be supported by democratic and Christian principles.
Posts: 4236 | From: Bentonville | Registered: May 2001
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
By "stress" I am trying to acknowledge that some jobs, such as simultaneous interpreter or heavy manual labour, may require great physical or mental concentration even if the total number of hours worked is comparatively low. AFAIK this is perfectly possible to calculate medically, at least roughly.
But crude though any such measurement may be, why should market forces be any less crude? If the CEO of Burger King earns x times more than his lowest-ranking burger flipper, does it really follow that he does x times as much work, even allowing for stress and financial risks?
Let’s give the socialist ideology a massive and entirely undeserved headstart and pretend, for the moment, that we are living in the realm of pixies and we can indeed determine accurately and objectively how much physical and mental discomfort an activity involves. We still have no way of determining how needed the work is. To illustrate this, I can come up with up with some pretty stressful and uncomfortable activities; say standing on one leg, playing Russian roulette, holding my breath underwater, moving sand back and forth all day on a beach - but nobody cares if I do these things or not, so I receive no payment in a capitalist system. In a pure socialist system, I should imagine, people will be paid for holding their breath (after they have filled in the proper application form and subjected themselves to a long and rigorous 'veracity of stress claim enquiry'). It is interesting to note that nobody wants these people to do the things they are now being paid to do. So, without prices and a market, how does the government determine whether an activity is wanted / needed?
The way to determine if an activity is actually warranted is to determine whether anyone is interested in the difference between doing something and not doing something and the way to determine if this difference is worth the effort of conducting the change is to ask them to pay for the costs incurred in the change; then if the change is not worth the cost to anyone, the activity wont happen.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
In a pure socialist system, I should imagine, people will be paid for holding their breath (after they have filled in the proper application form and subjected themselves to a long and rigorous 'veracity of stress claim enquiry').
Why don't you kick that straw man a bit harder? He must still have a bit of stuffing left.
Posts: 2718 | From: East Dogpatch | Registered: Dec 2005
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
In a pure socialist system, I should imagine, people will be paid for holding their breath (after they have filled in the proper application form and subjected themselves to a long and rigorous 'veracity of stress claim enquiry').
Why don't you kick that straw man a bit harder? He must still have a bit of stuffing left.
It's not a straw-man, it is an illustration of the weakness a ludicrous concept by highlighting its ludicrous possibilities. You are invited to explain how a socialist government is going to distinguish between stressful or uncomfortable activities that are also 'work', and so should be remunerated; and those that are simply done for a gas.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
quote:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
In a pure socialist system, I should imagine, people will be paid for holding their breath (after they have filled in the proper application form and subjected themselves to a long and rigorous 'veracity of stress claim enquiry').
Why don't you kick that straw man a bit harder? He must still have a bit of stuffing left.
It's not a straw-man, it is an illustration of the weakness a ludicrous concept by highlighting its ludicrous possibilities. You are invited to explain how a socialist government is going to distinguish between stressful or uncomfortable activities that are also 'work', and so should be remunerated; and those that are simply done for a gas.
Consensus? Common fucking sense? Sheesh!
Posts: 2718 | From: East Dogpatch | Registered: Dec 2005
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
Consensus? Common fucking sense? Sheesh!
I can visualise the queues to apply to be employed as a state registered rock star or male prostitute stretching from here to Moscow.
Perhaps the socialist government would have to pay male prostitutes less because they are being overwhelmed with applications; they don't need anymore. - OOPS..err but that's a market decision based on supply and demand. If the socialist government are going to make decisions on this basis they may as well implement a market in which people buy and sell their labour directly to and from each other.
Of course, there would never be a consensus; those voting for a high wages in a particular arena would not pay that wage and those voting for a low wage would not receive that wage; some people think embroidery, cricket and acid house music are very necessary and very valuable, others do not. Some people may want others to do stressful, but 'unproductive' things simply for their entertainment- is this work? is this productive? In all of this hurly burley of conflicting wants, desires, definitions and preferences there is not one shred of an objective standard of comparison. The market makes sense of this mess by making everyone pay the cost of the things they want done, and so the payer evaluates if it is wanted enough for him to personally bear the cost of doing it.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Teufelchen
Shipmate
# 10158
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Posted
Stars, what you are describing bears no resemblance whatever to any known or proposed socialist community. I'm not sure who will appear to rebut your claims in specifics, since these seem to be challenges directed at no real target.
T.
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Little devil
Posts: 3894 | From: London area | Registered: Aug 2005
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
Stars, what you are describing bears no resemblance whatever to any known or proposed socialist community. I'm not sure who will appear to rebut your claims in specifics, since these seem to be challenges directed at no real target.
T.
I have simply asked a few questions and pointed out some rather obvious problems with the principles i see outlined here. I have deliberately chosen to highlight absurd supply possibilities for comedic effect and to illustrate how absurd the espoused principles are in reality. The actual reality of socialism is far less funny than even my weak attempts at levity. No real 'socialist' society has used the socialistic principles outlined in this thread because they are entirely unworkable. Most socialist experiments simply degraded nearly immediately into outright totalitarian dictatorships with long bread queues. So which do I critique, the reality of totalitarian state run communities, with chronic supply problems, or the unworkable socialistic principles that have never been implemented anywhere because they are a total economic impossibility?
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
It is the “crudeness”; of the measurement that causes me to get off the train. There is few “reasonably objective” means by which I am prepared to justify the take. I live in a state where physical risks are absolutely controlled by the state, no need for socialism there, unless you consider that a form of socialism (which I do). Hours worked results in extra pay, a trivial form of socialism that seems also reasonable to me. Stress? Excuse me while I laugh. If I got extra pay for stress I wouldn’t have to work. So would almost any worker. About as subjective as it gets.
By "stress" I am trying to acknowledge that some jobs, such as simultaneous interpreter or heavy manual labour, may require great physical or mental concentration even if the total number of hours worked is comparatively low. AFAIK this is perfectly possible to calculate medically, at least roughly.
But crude though any such measurement may be, why should market forces be any less crude? If the CEO of Burger King earns x times more than his lowest-ranking burger flipper, does it really follow that he does x times as much work, even allowing for stress and financial risks?
And hours worked does not result in more pay - it only results in more pay than those doing a similar job to you.
The Economist did a special survey on Executive Pay in their Jan. 18 edition Article
I strongly recommend reading through all of it. It even handedly describes the situation which is that the problem is not executive pay being too much so much as lower level pay not keeping up. It says "But the diatribe against executives is mistaken. Poor governance alone cannot readily explain some of the most striking features of pay over the past few years.".... “The lion's share of the executives' bonanza was deserved — in the sense that shareholders got value for the money they handed over. Those sums on the whole bought and motivated the talent that managed businesses during the recent golden age of productivity growth and profits. Many managers have done extremely well over the past few years; but so, too, have most shareholders.”
Keep in mind that money that is brought into the company by whatever means not only means pay, it means jobs. Jobs inside and outside of the company.
It also says “Although overpaying a chief executive on its own is unlikely to bankrupt a company, there are other reasons to care about top pay. One is incentives. The role of pay is not to get executives to work harder (most are workaholics already, toiling towards an appointment with the heart surgeon), but to recruit good managers and get them to take difficult decisions. Shutting a subsidiary, sacrificing a pet project or forgoing a tempting acquisition is not much fun. Without the spur of high pay, managers tend to avoid such things.”
So yes, there are problems with executive pay, and there certainly is with some business ethics in some (Minor) cases. But I am often not prepared to use government, socialist or otherwise, to “fix” it as the solution is nearly always worse than the problem. One need only look at the damage caused by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to numerous smaller corporations in the wake of Enron.
quote:
quote:
The problem as I see it is not with whatever individual programs a socialist system would come up with to help the working class. It is the unintended consequences of those programs that are difficult or can never be controlled for.
Because the free market never has unintended consequences?
Incidentally, I wouldn't call the French riots entirely a consequence of socialism (and it's not as though America never has riots). Other than the things we have mentioned, the issues are 1.) racial discrimination (four out of five companies discriminate at some stage in the hiring procedure according to this report); 2.) cronyism shutting out the marginalised (professional education in France puts great emphasis on internships, and the best internships go to the ones with contacts); 3.) they are twats (everyone in, say, Seine-Saint-Denis has the same problems, but only a minority of them feel the need to burn cars - and I'm entitled to say that because I've worked in one of the relevant districts).
I am not disputing other things are involved, there always is. But it is fairly clear that France is a largely socialist country and that government has resulted in significant issues related to hiring and firing that certainly played into the riots. quote:
quote:
No real harm is done? That’s a pretty big assumption.
Which is why I specified as long as the taxpayer gets a decent residue.
I am not sure what constitutes a “Decent residue”. I know I don’t believe I get much bang for my tax dollars. In fact I am not sure that I want much of the bang I do get (Iraq, lousy Medical programs, etc.) . quote:
quote:
Taxation is a form of Harm. If my business goes into a bad spell due to circumstances beyond my control, the 30% taxes I pay sure could save it, but taxes are not optional, they are forced upon me.
No, they aren't - or at least no more than your pay conditions.
If you don't like your tax-bill, you can vote for a government that will reduce it, and if enough voters agree with you then it will go down. If you don't like the going rate for your kind of job, you can negotiate, and if enough of the interested parties in the market agree then the going rate will increase.
Ah, the old “vote your way out of the problem” play.
Sorry, there are way way way too many things that go into government that are not directly accountable to the voting process. The U.S. is not a direct democracy, it is a Republic. We vote for people, those people then make the call on a vote. If we had a direct democracy, your statement would be true. If we could decrease taxes not by having our representative vote it out, but by a direct vote, we would have less taxes I can assure you. But we generally don’t. Why is that? It’s clearly popular in THIS country.
Well the reasons are numerous and include such things as our system is geared toward spending more money, not less. Our regulators are borrowing us into oblivion, even worse under the current administration. They are addicted to credit basically. They want to show that they are Doing Something. Anything. So they spend money. And many if not most Americans are not economically savvy on the governmental level. And on and on. I can list a thousand reasons, but the bottom line is, it’s not so simple as “Vote the Bastards Out”.
Pay conditions can be voluntarily changed fairly easily. Send out a resume, interview a few times, get an offer, negotiate a better pay rate or benefits, take the job.
Taxation, at least in America, is a one way vector, always increasing and it’s a real bitch to get regulators to not spend money. Basically impossible.
I would also add this, if taxation is not a “harm” than one has to be willing to say you are willing to stand behind anything your government does with those tax dollars in your name. In other words, if everything the government did was good, im my or your opinion, than we would probably not see it as harmful. But you and I both know, that is not how it is.
I am against my money going to Iraq, for example. That is a direct Harm to me. Someone is taking my tax money and spending it where I don’t want them too. That’s a harm.
Nobody at work takes my money from me and spends it where I don’t want. In fact the only people that take money from me at work is the government. Bastards. quote:
quote:
Your not serious….
Fruit picking and toilet cleaning will always be with us. Those jobs are not fungible, they cannot be shipped out of the area that they are done like say telemarketing.
No, but the number of people looking for that sort of job is variable.
Actually it’s variable alright, in an upward direction. As the population grows and ages, we will only need more toilets cleaned and more fruits grown. Italy is having to import its manual labor now as its population is getting so old. quote:
quote:
I have to disagree that the market will ignore the talented over the rich though.
I didn't say it would ignore them totally, only that it would be skewed against them.
I'm pretty sure it has been statistically demonstrated that students from state schools at the highest-ranking British universities on average do better than those from private schools with equivalent grades at A-level. The explanation given being that the relative advantages of a private school helps a mediocre pupil to get ahead at that level and thus enter university, but once at university, where there's a level playing field, the lower innate ability shows through.
Now on the world ranking of Great Injustices Throughout the Ages this hardly registers, but then the gulf between private and state education in the UK is not that wide.
I don’t want to get into the significant differences between the American educational system, and Britains. Our university systems are hugely different as I understand it.
People that graduate from University make something like 60% more over their lifetime than someone with a high school diploma. That statistic did not matter if they were rich or poor while going through Uni.
I am personally in favor of more assistance to get people through university. It is one of the few great investments government can make for us. We get a lot of bang for the buck. Unfortunately, when I think about giving those tax dollars to students, I also realize my tax dollars are being stolen from me for Iraq too.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by 206:
How about this:
the 'invisible hand' (i.e. innumerable individual economic decisions) of the free market is at least marginally less likely to screw things up compared to a much more limited group of 'central planners'?
ISTM that could be supported by democratic and Christian principles.
And indeed many Socialist ones. Even some kinds of Marxist ones. As DoD and Callan said, Marxism (which is only one kind of socialist approach to things and these days probably not a very popular one) is a horse from the same stable as Adam Smith and Ricardo and the rest of the 18th/19th century tradition of British "political economy"
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
I have simply asked a few questions and pointed out some rather obvious problems with the principles i see outlined here.
Outlined here? ![[Ultra confused]](graemlins/confused2.gif) Outlined where?
Who here has suggested state management of prostitution or synchronised swimming or whatever it is that floats your boat?
[ 04. May 2007, 02:04: Message edited by: ken ]
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
I think the nearest was me, for saying that people ought to be paid according to the amount of work they do, and that this should take into account intensity of the work as well as hours worked. It seems to me fairly obvious that this is not what happens under free market capitalism, which means that the rich do not necessarily have an inalienable right to their wealth, which means that it isn't theft if the state pinches a bit.
Certain posters seem to be assuming that by redistributive taxation I'm suggesting the state should take money off the rich and give it to those doing underpaid stressful jobs even if those jobs have no value whatsoever, which is not something I've ever said.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
Incidentally, I should probably add:
- I'm not sure I would personally self-identify as a socialist. At any rate I don't want anyone to think that anything I've said counts as the One True Socialism.
- In world terms the argument over the discrepancies between burger-flippers and the CEO of Burger King is a side-issue, because, if there is an inequitable distribution of wealth, it is primarily that between the First World and the developing world.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
I have simply asked a few questions and pointed out some rather obvious problems with the principles i see outlined here.
Outlined here? Outlined where?
Who here has suggested state management of prostitution or synchronised swimming or whatever it is that floats your boat?
Wage managment is described
Since wages are managed, i should imagine prostitute's wages will be managed..or will prostitution be illegal?
The same problems apply to managing nearly all wages, so you entirely missed a perfectly valid objection and nit picked that nobody had specificaly mentioned prostitution.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
Wage managment is described.
No, redistribution of wealth is justified on the grounds that it is inequitably distributed under pure capitalism, as can be verified by comparing workloads across differing payscales.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
Wage managment is described.
No, redistribution of wealth is justified on the grounds that it is inequitably distributed under pure capitalism, as can be verified by comparing workloads across differing payscales.
Three posts above, you write - "think the nearest was me, for saying that people ought to be paid according to the amount of work they do"
That's wage managment.
I agree that wealth is very unjustly distributed presently, but i don't think you can fix it by managing wages.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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CrookedCucumber
Shipmate
# 10792
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
Since wages are managed, i should imagine prostitute's wages will be managed..or will prostitution be illegal?
Not all models of socialism are such that `wages' is even a meaningful concept. In an ideal world, perhaps, people do what they can in return for what they need. People don't take more than they need, because ownership and consumption aren't linked to status and self-fulfilment as they are for most people now. I concede that people (well, most people) today aren't ready for this kind of thing.
As for prostitution, whether it's legal or not is an ethico-legal problem, not an economic one. However, I concede that it is a more pressing problem where the economy is planned rather than in a free market, because people actually have to face up to the fact that prostitution happens. In a capitalist society we can conveniently sweep it under the carpet.
Posts: 2718 | From: East Dogpatch | Registered: Dec 2005
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
This discussion of prostitution in a socialist society reminds me of the time the Socialist Workers put up a poster offering a discussion of 'The Socialist Answer To The Drug Trade'. Someone scrawled underneath: "Nationalise It!"
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
Since wages are managed, i should imagine prostitute's wages will be managed..or will prostitution be illegal?
Not all models of socialism are such that `wages' is even a meaningful concept. In an ideal world, perhaps, people do what they can in return for what they need. People don't take more than they need, because ownership and consumption aren't linked to status and self-fulfilment as they are for most people now.
Consumption is pleasing to the individual, work is not; this is not some artefact of bourgeois values, it is a simple human fact. If you do not penalise consumption and reward work, then people will simply consume and not work. It is so sad that many socialists are reduced to arguing the toss about this. I should also add that the above fact regarding human nature is not a weakness; it is the result of people thinking and behaving rationally
quote:
I concede that people (well, most people) today aren't ready for this kind of thing.
So socialism is fine, in principle, its people that are the problem?
So, now, rather than socialism being a system that better fits human needs, we have a claim that humans themselves need to change for it
quote:
As for prostitution, whether it's legal or not is an ethico-legal problem, not an economic one. However, I concede that it is a more pressing problem where the economy is planned rather than in a free market, because people actually have to face up to the fact that prostitution happens. In a capitalist society we can conveniently sweep it under the carpet.
And I wonder how a socialist society would face up to the fact..
Should prostitutes have a flat wage, once they have registered their profession? (I can see this causing oversupply)
Should anyone be able to register as a prostitute or should there be an exam to ensure minimum levels of competence?
Perhaps a regular evaluation of the quality of the prostitute’s services should be undertaken so that a sliding wage scale can be created with some prostitutes being paid more than others?
Or should we just leave it up to the market?
Humm tricky
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Teufelchen
Shipmate
# 10158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
Consumption is pleasing to the individual, work is not; this is not some artefact of bourgeois values, it is a simple human fact.
Balls. I enjoy my job - designing web pages - but I still get rewarded for it. Conversely, as an athsmatic, I'm obliged to take medicines that I dislike. This is consumption, and I pay for it (despite our national health service). To assume that all work is unwelcome and all consumption is welcome is to caricature the economic system in a startling way.
I'm sorry you clearly dislike your job so much. Perhaps a socialist government might be able to find you one more suited to your skills?
T.
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Little devil
Posts: 3894 | From: London area | Registered: Aug 2005
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Teufelchen
Shipmate
# 10158
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Posted
Afterthought: The obvious answer for prostitution is not to nationalise it, but to syndicalise it. Dispense with the pimps, and let the prostitutes manage their own business, approve their own new recruits, and so forth. If you wanted an example of an exploitative type of capitalist 'investor', a pimp is fairly canonical.
T.
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Little devil
Posts: 3894 | From: London area | Registered: Aug 2005
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
Consumption is pleasing to the individual, work is not; this is not some artefact of bourgeois values, it is a simple human fact.
Balls. I enjoy my job - designing web pages - but I still get rewarded for it.
Part of the way you enjoy the results of your work is by looking in satisfaction at what you have created
As a developer, myself, I know perfectly well that development happens as psychological cycles of work and play; you concentrate to create an outcome then play by watching your creation unfold. The play is not strictly necessary for the outcome but taking it away makes the concentration and discipline soulless and unrewarding, the effort part is the work
quote:
Conversely, as an athsmatic, I'm obliged to take medicines that I dislike. This is consumption, and I pay for it (despite our national health service).
You obviously enjoy / prefer the medicine
Let me ask you a question, if you were given the choice between consuming the medicine and producing it, which would you choose?
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To assume that all work is unwelcome and all consumption is welcome is to caricature the economic system in a startling way.
It really isn't, the principle is very sound, but it does require a moment's thought to understand it. People will tend to engage in the smallest amount of effort they can to enjoy a particular preferred outcome. This is why low prices are preferred to high prices, but amazingly, socialists contend this.
Tell me, if work is enjoyable, why are low prices preferred to high prices?
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I'm sorry you clearly dislike your job so much. Perhaps a socialist government might be able to find you one more suited to your skills?
If work itself were intrinsically enjoyable there would be no need to compensate people for it but there might be a need to pay people to stop working long enough to consume or we may drown in all the cough medicine being greedily produced.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
Afterthought: The obvious answer for prostitution is not to nationalise it, but to syndicalise it. Dispense with the pimps, and let the prostitutes manage their own business, approve their own new recruits, and so forth. If you wanted an example of an exploitative type of capitalist 'investor', a pimp is fairly canonical.
T.
Here we agree fully
But a pimp doesn't use the power of capital to trap prostitutes into providing services to him for nothing; he uses the power of territory. He 'gives' her access to territory, something that would have entirely existed without his intervention, but without which she cannot work. He actually provides her with an imaginary service - something that was already there but that she can't replace; protection rackets, more or less, work in the same way. Of course, in the 'legitimate' economy the very same territorial power and resultant economic exploitation exists.
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Teufelchen
Shipmate
# 10158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
Consumption is pleasing to the individual, work is not; this is not some artefact of bourgeois values, it is a simple human fact.
Balls. I enjoy my job - designing web pages - but I still get rewarded for it.
Part of the way you enjoy the results of your work is by looking in satisfaction at what you have created
As a developer, myself, I know perfectly well that development happens as psychological cycles of work and play; you concentrate to create an outcome then play by watching your creation unfold. The play is not strictly necessary for the outcome but taking it away makes the concentration and discipline soulless and unrewarding, the effort part is the work
I see your point, but I feel that the distinction you are drawing here is artificial, and leads to the conclusion you draw from it. I know (from experience) that I would still do this sort of thing if I were not paid for it - I'm paid to do it with specific material that I don't care about one way or the other. I can't intellectually separate the 'grind' part of my work from the 'creativity' part - if I cut out the grind, I wouldn't be creative - I'd be idle, which I wouldn't enjoy.
quote:
quote:
Conversely, as an athsmatic, I'm obliged to take medicines that I dislike. This is consumption, and I pay for it (despite our national health service).
You obviously enjoy / prefer the medicine[/QB]
I enjoy not choking to death on the inside of my own throat, but I also happen to consider that a basic right. Taking two different kinds of foul-tasting medication by inhalation I do not enjoy. Just trust me.
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Let me ask you a question, if you were given the choice between consuming the medicine and producing it, which would you choose?
A straight either/or choice? Producing. I always wanted to be a chemist, even a very basic one. I'd much rather do a moderately remunerative production job in chemistry than spend the rest of my life dependent on bad-tasting drugs.
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[QUOTE]
To assume that all work is unwelcome and all consumption is welcome is to caricature the economic system in a startling way.
It really isn't, the principle is very sound, but it does require a moment's thought to understand it. People will tend to engage in the smallest amount of effort they can to enjoy a particular preferred outcome. This is why low prices are preferred to high prices, but amazingly, socialists contend this.[/QB]
Some people take pride in their work. Some (like me) do creative work that is satisfying in its own right. Some (like teachers and priests) work because they have a sense of vocation to serve others. The idea of 'minimum effort' is not a primary, or even significant, concern in many of these cases.
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Tell me, if work is enjoyable, why are low prices preferred to high prices?
Because the enjoyability of some work does not harm the value of money. It also doesn't solve the basic economic problem: limited resources, unlimited wants. If I can exchange the same amount of money (and thus labour - pleasant or unpleasant) for a greater quantity of goods and services, I will, unless I feel that I unfairly abuse another's rights by, for example, purchasing sweatshop products. That aside, I still prefer low prices to high, because I want more stuff, not less.
That is the naive problem with at least some socialist solutions - they assume that people will, at some point, feel content. Generally speaking, people don't feel content unless they're getting more stuff. One can argue that that's a vain desire, but it's there, and it drives many sectors of the economy.
My personal answer is that the fulfilment of people's extraneous wants is not capable of a socialist solution, and to concentrate on providing socialist solutions to problems (like mass transit) where a socialist or syndicalist solution has a hope of working, whilst benefiting both producers and consumers.
quote:
quote:
I'm sorry you clearly dislike your job so much. Perhaps a socialist government might be able to find you one more suited to your skills?
If work itself were intrinsically enjoyable there would be no need to compensate people for it but there might be a need to pay people to stop working long enough to consume or we may drown in all the cough medicine being greedily produced. [/QB]
Not so. Basic economics of the labour market show that beyond a certain point, workers want more leisure time rather than more pay. If there were a job that was more or less wholly pleasurable, yet still generated income for a business, there would come a point where the workers wanted time off, no matter how little pay they were content to accept.
T.
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Little devil
Posts: 3894 | From: London area | Registered: Aug 2005
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Teufelchen
Shipmate
# 10158
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
Afterthought: The obvious answer for prostitution is not to nationalise it, but to syndicalise it. Dispense with the pimps, and let the prostitutes manage their own business, approve their own new recruits, and so forth. If you wanted an example of an exploitative type of capitalist 'investor', a pimp is fairly canonical.
T.
Here we agree fully
But a pimp doesn't use the power of capital to trap prostitutes into providing services to him for nothing; he uses the power of territory. He 'gives' her access to territory, something that would have entirely existed without his intervention, but without which she cannot work. He actually provides her with an imaginary service - something that was already there but that she can't replace; protection rackets, more or less, work in the same way. Of course, in the 'legitimate' economy the very same territorial power and resultant economic exploitation exists.
The more extreme socialists would argue that all capitalism is like this on some level. I disagree, but I do think that society and government have a positive duty to prevent such situations arising.
T.
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Little devil
Posts: 3894 | From: London area | Registered: Aug 2005
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moron
Shipmate
# 206
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Posted
quote:
This discussion of prostitution in a socialist society reminds me of the time the Socialist Workers put up a poster offering a discussion of 'The Socialist Answer To The Drug Trade'. Someone scrawled underneath: "Nationalise It!"
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
Posts: 4236 | From: Bentonville | Registered: May 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Ricardus:
[qb] Three posts above, you write - "think the nearest was me, for saying that people ought to be paid according to the amount of work they do"
That's wage managment.
I agree that wealth is very unjustly distributed presently, but i don't think you can fix it by managing wages.
Ah, I see the confusion.
By "ought to" I meant "it is morally desirable that such should be the case", a point you yourself admit by agreeing that wealth is unjustly distributed at present. Apologies for lack of clarity.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
But a pimp doesn't use the power of capital to trap prostitutes into providing services to him for nothing; he uses the power of territory.
That is a form of capital - a form of ownership.
The pimp has rights of ownership and usufruct that are recognised by others in the same business, even if not by the state.
quote:
He 'gives' her access to territory, something that would have entirely existed without his intervention, but without which she cannot work.
He actually provides her with an imaginary service - something that was already there but that she can't replace;
Economic rent, as it is called. Controlling access to a unique resource (or at least one in short supply) Celebrity is a form of economic rent. Jessica Alba can get paid money for being Jessica Alba. Arguably so are many senior positions in large organisations, including private companies. The CEO of a large company gets more money than they are "worth" in ordinary theories of wages.
quote:
protection rackets, more or less, work in the same way.
To some extent, but they are more like simple extortion.
quote:
Of course, in the 'legitimate' economy the very same territorial power and resultant economic exploitation exists.
Of course! You are not far from enlightenment, little grasshopper! ![[Two face]](graemlins/scot_twoface.gif)
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
[QB][QUOTE]
The more extreme socialists would argue that all capitalism is like this on some level.
But the fact is, it isn't
This is why the right has danced on the economic left's intellectual grave for decades.
Some large portion of the left seem totally and irreversibly committed to showing that white is black and the ideologs of the right run circles around them and the left end up getting tangled up in their own contradictory arguments. If instead of trying to show that somehow trade was intrinsically damaging, or construct absurd argumentations for why people should not have economic liberties, they instead used the right’s definitions of liberty to examine what actually happens to people's liberty when certain things happen, they would perhaps get somewhere.
Here is a for-instance - what would happen to people's liberty if the sun became private property and a private charge were levied on sunlight?
It's an interesting, if theoretical, question
People would, clearly, have had their liberties removed and sold back to them. In fact, every generation that followed would have lost their liberties and the value of those lost liberties would appear in the market price of the sun. Observe how the value of people’s lost liberty appears in the capitalised price?
Now imagine that all the land is taken into private ownership and access sold in a private market. In this situation, the same applies; people have had their natural liberties taken off them then sold back to them. ..an interesting kinda ‘trade’..huh? - not at all like selling someone a pair of shoes or a blow job, which in no way restricts them. This kind of ‘trade’ has an entirely different kind of nature, yet the left miss this distinction in their determination to prove black is white and that capitalism itself is evil.
quote:
I disagree, but I do think that society and government have a positive duty to prevent such situations arising.
Or put another way, government has a duty to defend everyone's liberty
They are doing appalling job, btw
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Telepath
Ship's Steamer Trunk
# 3534
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Posted
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Celebrity is a form of economic rent. Jessica Alba can get paid money for being Jessica Alba.
I would argue that Jessica Alba's celebrity is labour for the following reasons:
- Henry George defined rent as the portion of wealth which is imputed to land, and land as the entire material universe, excluding humans and their activities. It has been alleged that Jessica Alba is human.
- Furthermore, Jessica Alba's celebrity is supported, not only by her own labour, but by a good deal of human labour applied directly to Jessica Alba (makeup artists, stylists, personal trainers, etc etc) and is not sold in the form of Jessica Alba immediately after getting up in the morning.
Since Jessica Alba's celebrity is the product of human labour, the portion of wealth imputed to it (according to Henry George) is wages, rather than economic rent. I believe this can safely be generalized to celebrity as a whole.
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Take emptiness and lying speech far from me, and do not give me poverty or wealth. Give me a living sufficient for me.
Posts: 3509 | From: East Anglia | Registered: Nov 2002
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Stars
Shipmate
# 10804
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
But a pimp doesn't use the power of capital to trap prostitutes into providing services to him for nothing; he uses the power of territory.
That is a form of capital - a form of ownership.
The pimp has rights of ownership and usufruct that are recognised by others in the same business, even if not by the state.
The conservatives agree with you, but I don’t
I would suggest that a distinction should be made, to show that this form of ‘capital’ has a different functional nature (in respect to the economic liberties of people)
Let me make a suggestion: before Marx, land was not called capital. By lumping the two forms into one name, Marx blurred the distinction between them and so the actual nature of land was camouflaged behind people’s intuitive understanding of the type of capital that does not impinge on people’s liberties. Before Marx, land was called ‘land’. It is an important distinction to make because land is not the same as capital and it is not the same as labour
Three factors of production:
Labour
Land
Capital
They all have different natures, but interestingly labour and capital are both the result of human effort but land is not. Labour and capital can be created, but land cannot. Land is the only factor in production that holds a monopolistic power because both capital and labour can be added to the market by anyone prepared to create it; it is in true market competition, unlike land which is held by a cartel of registered owners. Of course, people who wished to camouflage the true nature of land privilege leapt with glee upon Marx’s blurring of the definition and made it their own. Since then, it has been all but impossible to argue for true economic justice because both major political poles are using definitions which have had the justice implications of land ‘removed’, by blurring it with capital. Inadvertently, Marx has probably done more to keep the free ride of the economic elite intact than any single other person.
quote:
Economic rent, as it is called. Controlling access to a unique resource (or at least one in short supply) Celebrity is a form of economic rent. Jessica Alba can get paid money for being Jessica Alba. Arguably so are many senior positions in large organisations, including private companies. The CEO of a large company gets more money than they are "worth" in ordinary theories of wages.
No, to my mind, you are missing the point somewhat
If people want to pay you to stand still for five minutes, it is of the same intrinsic nature as any labour “I pay you to perform x”; the same for a CEO. Importantly, the price Jessica can charge for her actions do not rely on the removal of other people’s liberties. If the high price she were paid relied on the fact that nobody else was allowed to be pretty, or allowed to stand in a particular way, or wear a particular colour or stand in a particular place, she would be commanding a form of (what I would call) economic rent
If we must make a distinction we can say that some rent comes from the removal of other’s liberty and so is of interest to justice and other types of rent do not and so have no implications for justice (an arrangement that does not impinge anyone’s liberty is a non issue) .
It is this confusion that has left the left chasing its tail and tying itself in knots for well over a century
quote:
ken writes:
To some extent, but they are more like simple extortion.
Both examples are extortion, and both use the rationale of a form of territorial ownership
If I hadn’t made myself clear yet, I’m insinuating that territorial ownership (as it is presently instituted) is a form of state legitimized private extortion
stay cool
Posts: 357 | From: England | Registered: Dec 2005
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Telepath
Ship's Steamer Trunk
# 3534
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Posted
quote:
If the high price she were paid relied on the fact that nobody else was allowed to be pretty, or allowed to stand in a particular way, or wear a particular colour or stand in a particular place, she would be commanding a form of (what I would call) economic rent
I think that would be better described as monopoly, which in this case is not the same as rent, since all of the behaviours she might monopolize can be classed as labour.
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Take emptiness and lying speech far from me, and do not give me poverty or wealth. Give me a living sufficient for me.
Posts: 3509 | From: East Anglia | Registered: Nov 2002
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
The Economist did a special survey on Executive Pay in their Jan. 18 edition Article
Thanks, that's quite interesting.
quote:
So yes, there are problems with executive pay, and there certainly is with some business ethics in some (Minor) cases. But I am often not prepared to use government, socialist or otherwise, to “fix” it as the solution is nearly always worse than the problem.
Just to clarify, if I've given the impression that I'm in favour of wage management, it wasn't intentional.
Tell me, though: you have said you're in favour of some kind of social security to help the genuinely incapacitated, and for some other purposes. How would you fund it?
quote:
Pay conditions can be voluntarily changed fairly easily. Send out a resume, interview a few times, get an offer, negotiate a better pay rate or benefits, take the job.
Taxation, at least in America, is a one way vector, always increasing and it’s a real bitch to get regulators to not spend money. Basically impossible.
I would also add this, if taxation is not a “harm” than one has to be willing to say you are willing to stand behind anything your government does with those tax dollars in your name. In other words, if everything the government did was good, im my or your opinion, than we would probably not see it as harmful. But you and I both know, that is not how it is.
Remember my position isn't so much that tax isn't a harm, but that it's no more of a harm than unequal pay conditions. Do low-paid workers have to accept what the rest of the company does with its share of the wealth in order to qualify as happy?
Now, I will acknowledge that no company is involved in anything quite so atrocious as Iraq, but:
quote:
I am against my money going to Iraq, for example. That is a direct Harm to me. Someone is taking my tax money and spending it where I don’t want them too. That’s a harm.
How would you prefer the system to work, given that I believe you have said elsewhere that you'd rather have a state army than private armies?
quote:
I don’t want to get into the significant differences between the American educational system, and Britains. Our university systems are hugely different as I understand it.
Probably a good thing, because I read an article after posting which suggested I was wrong...
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
Consumption is pleasing to the individual, work is not; this is not some artefact of bourgeois values, it is a simple human fact.
Balls. I enjoy my job - designing web pages - but I still get rewarded for it.
Good for you - you're one of the very few that actually enjoy their job. Most of us don't have that luxury. We just have to do what we can.
quote:
Conversely, as an athsmatic, I'm obliged to take medicines that I dislike.
No you're not. You have decided that taking the medicines is better for you than not taking them - no-one has forced you to take them. In this sense you are in the same boat as all of us who have to do jobs we dislike because the consequences of not doing them are worse.
quote:
I'm sorry you clearly dislike your job so much. Perhaps a socialist government might be able to find you one more suited to your skills?
Ha. HAHAHAHA!!!
No, seriously. Do you honestly think a socialist government would be able to give everyone a job they'd enjoy doing? What kind of trip are you on, exactly?
For the record, there's no job in the world I'd enjoy doing. Maybe there are some I'd like more than others, but as long as I had to turn up every day I'd hate it eventually. And not many jobs allow you to only turn up when you feel like it...
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
quote:
Originally posted by Papio:
Stars - I'm going to be ignoring you from now on, make of that what you will. I don't really care.
would it help if i said i'm sorry?
I really have no beef with socialists beyond the fact that their arguments are erroneous, confuse people and so block progress. Their hearts are very often in the right place.
Fair enough, and I may have over-reacted. I don't like capitalism very much, and I suspect that I never will but I can, I hope, usually agree to disagree with people.
See to me, Marvin, the fact that most people hate their jobs and are in jobs that don't exactly match their skills simply is more evidence that capitalism needs to be replaced by something less inhuman.
[ 06. May 2007, 12:03: Message edited by: Papio ]
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Infinite Penguins.
My "Readit, Swapit" page
My "LibraryThing" page
Posts: 12176 | From: a zoo in England. | Registered: Mar 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stars:
This kind of ‘trade’ has an entirely different kind of nature, yet the left miss this distinction in their determination to prove black is white and that capitalism itself is evil.
In which way do "the left miss this distinction" between land ("real property") and personal property? It is a commonplace on the left. John Locke made it. Its even in the bloody Communist Manifesto IIRC.
The people who miss the distinction are those so-called-libertarian conservatives who try to claim that different forms of property all arise naturally and inevitably from personal property, or from human biology, or from natural morality.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
The reason celebrity is like rent is that it is making extra profit from the uniqueness of a thing.
The thing that is unique is the public awareness of the celebrity. They already have space of mind in other people's minds. To cash in on celebrity, the celebrity doesn't have to be the best actor or most skilled musician or most beautiful woman or whatever, just famous for almost any reason, someone that otherew will recognise and pay attention to. Jade Goody? Katie Price? Janet Street Porter? Victoria Beckham? They can all command some celebrity income in the UK, if only daytime TV chatshows and opening village fetes.
Its the reverse of the way communities preserve social order by choosing someone to bully, and when that person is chosen they carry on being bullied regardless of their behaviour. We choose people to be famous from among many candidates, and when famous enough, fame generates fame. That reason might well be skill or achievement or beauty or whatever, but there are always plenty of others with those, but some get to be more famous than others, and advertisers and political campaigners and so on can cash on in that fame, making it worth money.
Jessica Alba may well be a skilled actor, I have no idea (*). But so are plenty of other people. She is certainly good looking. But there are millions of good-looking young women in the world, and only a few hundred with that kind of global product-recognition. Jessica Alba (the product rather than the person) is mainly "consumed" by being viewed in still pictures in posters or magazines or on web pages. People pay her to do things in the hope that other people will pay more attention to them. The reason she gets paid more than some other women whose image is used in a similar way is not because she is better looking (there must be hundreds of thousands if not millions of women in the world who are that good looking) nor is it because of the very real labour that goes into preserving and promoting the image (yes, she has makeup artists - but landlords who rent out apartments sometimes employ interior decorators) but because she is already famous (for whatever reason). The "extra" one of these celebrities can get paid, over what an equally skilled (or equally beautiful) but less famous actor gets paid, is a kind of rent on fame.
This holds true even in fields where there is a strictly quantifiable metric for success. For example professional sport. I think the footballer who commands the highest sponsorship fees is David Beckham - he certainy was up till last year. He is probably amongst the top five professional sports persons in the world for fees, almost certainly the top footballer. He is probably the most famous sportsman in the world who is still playing professionally, in any sport. But he's not the best footballer in the world, in terms of goals scored and how he helps his team to win. He never was the very best, and nowadays he's probably not in the top one hundred. But he is the most famous footballer in the world which is why he gets all that money. Zinedane and Cantona no longer even play, but still get into TV ads.
The reason they get paid more than others is a sort of rent. Rent they can charge on "owning" their pre-existing fame. Name and face recognition are worth something on the market, above and beyond the skill and labour and capital that go into what they do.
(*) That's not meant to be a snide remark, I meant it literally. The only of her films I'm familiar with are Fantastic Four in which she was hardly asked, or given a chance to act (it also starred Ioan Gruffud and Michael Chakris who certainly can act but also don't show it) and Sin City which was so heavily stylised is hard to tell who is responsible for what, and which mostly required her to look young and sexy while being sort of naivly enthusiastic about things, which it might not be the same kind of acting that you need to do Lady Macbeth...
[ 06. May 2007, 15:10: Message edited by: ken ]
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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A Feminine Force
Ship's Onager
# 7812
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by bc_anglican:
One of my friends use to say that Marxism was just a secular form of Christianity. I wonder about this sometimes.
Christianity does emphasize charity and justice for the poor and dispossessed. It also emphasizes an economy based on stewardship and fairness IMHO.
By socialism, I mean any economic system where equality, and not growth is the main priority. Socialism doesn't only mean statist socialism, in which government planning is the principal means of economic growth.
So is Christianity and socialism the same thing?
It's taken me a while to sort out my thinking on this and I've concluded that the answer is NO.
Socialism is an economic theory. Christianity is a way of being. If one embraces the Christian way of being in the company of others who do life the same way, something that looks like socialism will be the result of the internal revolution of those people.
People can only "do" socialism if the commercial laws of the land force them to comply with its economic principles. If the Law of Love is internalized by many, then the result will look like socialism, but it will be an external manifestation of an internal re-thinking (re-pentance, revolution).
LAFF
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
One problem with this thread is that one side sees no moral problem with using private funds to buy the means of production, buying houses to rent at substantial profit, making money simply out of being "famous" etc and the other side does see a moral problem with that.
It's all becoming a bit pointless, IMO.
Mad geo on another thread that capitalism allows you to buy all the local ponds and then charge people rent to fish there. He clearly thinks that is a morally acceptable course of action. I don't.
Where do we go from here?
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
You assume that there is a fixed supply of ponds. In business, that is the exception not the rule. A better analogy would be that people come in and dig hoels and build ponds and take out the monopolist. THAT's business.
Business is an amoral enterprise. All the whining in the world won't make it immoral or moral, only individual businesspeople and corporations will. You're trying to make a rotten apple out of a car.
And some of us are enjoying the thread wherever it takes us. That's where we go from here.
[ 06. May 2007, 18:40: Message edited by: Mad Geo ]
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
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Telepath
Ship's Steamer Trunk
# 3534
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Posted
Jessica Alba has a monopoly on being Jessica Alba, but she does not have a monopoly on celebrity itself, nor any share of it. No-one is forced to pay to consume the celebrity of Jessica Alba, or of anybody else.
The number of ponds that can be dug is in fact finite, because there is a finite amount of land out of which to dig ponds, or engage in any kind of production, or to exist. Furthermore, no-one can choose to forgo usage of land. Even if you live on a houseboat you are required to pay for a mooring; if you work in a skyscraper the skyscraper is still built on land; and if you live on an ocean liner or a space station you are dependent for your existence on resources (fresh water, boat-building materials, etc) that are only obtainable from the land. This is what places landowners in a unique position of monopoly.
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Take emptiness and lying speech far from me, and do not give me poverty or wealth. Give me a living sufficient for me.
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
Technically you are correct. On the other hand, there is a phenomenal amount of vacant land worldwide. You could build ponds in all but the most dense of places such as Britain.
All of this is an analogy, of course. The bottom line is that we are not talking about land, we are talking about business (currently) and that is an open hole ready for ponds.
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Diax's Rake - "Never believe a thing simply because you want it to be true"
Posts: 11730 | From: People's Republic of SoCal | Registered: Jun 2002
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Papio
Ship's baboon
# 4201
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Geo:
Business is an amoral enterprise. All the whining in the world won't make it immoral or moral, only individual businesspeople and corporations will.
Then I hope you understand why I reject it.
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
No I don't understand why you reject it. It's like rejecting your hand because it feeds you. All of your socialist dreams would be nothing without business people participating.
I bet you have at least 30 people you know that are businesspeople. Why don't you go up and tell anyone of them that you think they are immoral bastards and see how that's received.
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Telepath
Ship's Steamer Trunk
# 3534
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Posted
quote:
Technically you are correct. On the other hand, there is a phenomenal amount of vacant land worldwide. You could build ponds in all but the most dense of places such as Britain.
There is also a phenomenal amount of vacant land being held out of use, by landowners anticipating future increases in rent. This is especially true in dense places such as Britain. You would have to pay very high costs for access to any land on which you could productively dig a pond. By forcing you to pay more for better land and to resort to poorer-quality land, landowners effectively impose a tax on production for which producers receive no benefits.
quote:
All of this is an analogy, of course. The bottom line is that we are not talking about land, we are talking about business
The cost of access to productive land is not irrelevant to the business of pond-digging, or any other business. Of course, you can talk about the new living room carpet without talking about the elephant that is standing on it, and you can talk about business without talking about land, but that is how you end up in deadlocks similar to the one that you and Papio seem to be in.
By holding land out of use in order to increase its scarcity, and anticipate and increase future rises in rent, landowners force prices up higher and higher, and force the margin of production further and further out. This is how we end up with (among other things) business functions being outsourced to India, then to China, then to Neptune. This decreases production, raises infrastructure costs, and lowers wages, unnaturally removing the bargaining power of labour.
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Take emptiness and lying speech far from me, and do not give me poverty or wealth. Give me a living sufficient for me.
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Mad Geo
Ship's navel gazer
# 2939
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Posted
We are getting into a problem that is very specific to Britain. One of the joys of living on an island.
I can buy land tomorrow if I want, nearly anywhere I want. We have virtually NO such issues in America.
Yes, land costs money, sometimes more than others. But it is always available. The situation you describe is not a problem if you take into account the global marketplace. At. All.
It's yet again one of the reasons that people immigrate. If socialist practices or even capitalistic practices are not to your liking, Welcome to The World! America and other places are really business friendly. Come in, the pond water is warm and you can build one as you like. No owners with rent required.
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