Ayn Rand

[East]

What hypocricy. I can respect people whose values are far detached from my own as long as they stand by them without hypocricy and argue well from their standpoints.

I was born and raised in Sweden. By the standards of my country I'm rather right-wing but from a more international perspective I actually do lean more towards being left-wing. I have no issues with a welfare state, but I have seen what happens when it grows too controlling, too generous to the collective and too punishing to the individual and it's not particularly impressive. It gives me the creeps just thinking how my country would have survived the financial crisis under socialist regime.

I won't deny that there are times when I've wondered what would be worse: Rand's cruel and selfish dog-eat-dog world or a world where my freedoms are gradually and systematically stripped away as part of a governmental agenda to benefit the collective. I guess I usually reach the conclusion that number 1 is worse, but I'm still rather ambiguous.

To be fair...we both had an opportunity to confront our hypocricy though I was more honest about it than he was because I admitted it openly whereas he had a problem admitting any kind of failure.

My hypocrisy.....I do not want the government legislating what we do with our bodies. He wanted to know why I thought it was OK to let the government tell him his labor should be enslaved to help anyone else but himself?

He has a point...I know that. Hence...my question to him. He refused to answer instead of acknowledging that I had a point as well....

So I answered both of our questions eventually at once. I told him that if he didn't give a f*ck about other people...cool. Lets try survival of the fittest. He saw himself as one of the "fittest" LOL

When 90% of the people own 10% of the wealth...and 10% of the people own 90% of the wealth...there is this little thing called revolution. Maybe when someone had a knife to his throat he would recognize that self interest extended beyond his Ayn Rand view of life and his contributing to the well being of the whole was essential to his own selfish survival. The End :eating-chinese-food

I am recapping many years of back and forth here so I am missing a lot of the points made along the way....

[Aike]

It's not a matter of mere working hours, but a matter of how these are spent. When I had a part-time job I started out doing the simplest tasks nobody else bothered doing. Eventually as I showed my dedication I was allowed to move upwards with increased salary. I had a fair minimum salary and an additional income directly tied to my achievements. If I managed to pack 1000 boxes of goods during the time it averagely takes to pack 800, whilst still living up to the standards of quality, I got paid more. One of my collegaues who spent his time taking breaks twice as long as permitted and working truly inefficiently naturally didn't get as much compensation as me and one of my friends whose innovations made the work process considerably more efficient was even promoted to a kind of project leader for his good work. Everything was based around the principles of meritocracy. You could say I received medium compensation as an efficient worker, my lazy co-worker received the minimum salary for his lack of dedication and my friend rose higher than me because his innovations and efficiency were worth more to the company than my efficiency alone.

These "meritocratic" systems applied in companies are dealt with in detail by Marx in his section on wages in Capital. What happens with "piece-wages" (as Marx calls them) does not really alter the system in any way. This is because the increased efficiency of workers tends to reduce the rewards paid to them for each product. Say we have a factory producing chairs, which applies piece-wages to pay its employees for their work. For every chair produced a worker gets paid a certain X amount of money. This, of course, encourages workers to produce as many chairs as possible in the shortest amount of time. It all sounds good and very meritocratic. However, as a result of this the employer will soon notice that, on average, there are more chairs being produced in a shorter time than before and, consequently, the costs of hiring people have gone up. What will he do? The logical result is that he will simply reduce the X amount of money paid to workers for each chair: the wage in total remains the same. Your "competitive advantage", being an efficient employee, is lost when everybody else is doing the same things as you are (and your employer will surely keep up with the level of the average efficiency of his workers, firing the inefficient ones and hiring the efficient ones).

@Uneunsae, I would add that an academic setting is certainly not enough to guarantee that the text is not utter BS. I'm thinking here especially of neoclassical economics...

[Uneunsae]

I agree with you.

[HumbleTangerine]

These "meritocratic" systems applied in companies are dealt with in detail by Marx in his section on wages in Capital. What happens with "piece-wages" (as Marx calls them) does not really alter the system in any way. This is because the increased efficiency of workers tends to reduce the rewards paid to them for each product. Say we have a factory producing chairs, which applies piece-wages to pay its employees for their work. For every chair produced a worker gets paid a certain X amount of money. This, of course, encourages workers to produce as many chairs as possible in the shortest amount of time. It all sounds good and very meritocratic. However, as a result of this the employer will soon notice that, on average, there are more chairs being produced in a shorter time than before and, consequently, the costs of hiring people have gone up. What will he do? The logical result is that he will simply reduce the X amount of money paid to workers for each chair: the wage in total remains the same. Your "competitive advantage", being an efficient employee, is lost when everybody else is doing the same things as you are (and your employer will surely keep up with the level of the average efficiency of his workers, firing the inefficient ones and hiring the efficient ones).

@Uneunsae, I would add that an academic setting is certainly not enough to guarantee that the text is not utter BS. I'm thinking here especially of neoclassical economics...

Okay, I don't have enough meat on my bones when debating marxist economy theories, so I'll choose not to take this debate in its entirety. I would like to say however that where I'm from an employer can't simply lower salaries; neither fixed nor non-fixed salaries based on whims without facing consequenses. It seems to me like Marx wants to prove the exploitative and cruel nature of capitalism by pointing out flaws that are easily amended by governmental legislation. Though this is of course my uneducated opinion from having skimmed through his work, I make no pretense of being knowledgeable in this field.

[Uneunsae]

Employers do so all the time. If the salary is fixed, this is not so straightforward, but companies do it by means of cutting things like insurance benefit, time off, office amenities, and things of this nature. Sometimes employees barely get the materials they need to get their work done. Employers will use cheaper suppliers, as well. A very common way of indirectly paying salaried employees less is to demand a great deal more work hours. For example, the typical week might have been an 8 hour day with maybe one 10 hour here and there, or as demand required, but suddenly employees are working constant 10 hr shifts and only 8 on occasion.

[HumbleTangerine]

Employers do so all the time. If the salary is fixed, this is not so straightforward, but companies do it by means of cutting things like insurance benefit, time off, office amenities, and things of this nature. Sometimes employees barely get the materials they need to get their work done. Employers will use cheaper suppliers, as well. A very common way of indirectly paying salaried employees less is to demand a great deal more work hours. For example, the typical week might have been an 8 hour day with maybe one 10 hour here and there, or as demand required, but suddenly employees are working constant 10 hr shifts and only 8 on occasion.

I'm not saying these things never occur, I'm saying they can be amended by legislation and as such don't necessarily constitute valid criticisms of capitalism as a whole, but rather the nature and extent of its regulations. There was a recent case over here where a lot of people from a company were fired and then re-offered jobs with decreased standards and benefits. The union refused to accept it, a strike was conceived and they eventually won.

[Aike]

@Humble,

This is of course what you get in a "pure" state of capitalism without any restrictions to exploitation, which Marx consciously assumes in his theory for the sake of getting to the logic behind the system. Legislation in itself was born as a reaction to these kind of tendencies. Marx deals extensively with the legal restriction to the length of the working day (in his time the so called 10 Hour Act was introduced, restricting the length of the working day to 10 hours).

In general, regulations do not tend to last and over time they tend to weigh heavy on companies, not to mention the fact that companies find ever new ways of dodging them. In fact, OECD countries have witnessed a process of deregulation over the last 3 decades, and workers have lost the many social protections granted to them in the "golden years" of post-WW2 prosperity. Moreover, companies can avoid the regulations imposed on them by moving their operations abroad where labor is cheaper and less covered by regulations.

I don't really believe in the force of regulation. Sure, sometimes it works, but it tends to result in temporary and fragile compromises between two fundamentally opposed interests. So, I remain anti-capitalist and do not believe in the social-democratic utopia of a regulated capitalism. I'm for the abolition of the labor/capital opposition and look towards attempts like co-operatives.

[HumbleTangerine]

* Going to bed soon and then I'll be gone for 26 days but if I remember to I'll resurrect this thread then! *

[Uneunsae]

I'm not saying these things never occur, I'm saying they can be amended by legislation and as such don't necessarily constitute valid criticisms of capitalism as a whole, but rather the nature and extent of its regulations. There was a recent case over here where a lot of people from a company were fired and then re-offered jobs with decreased standards and benefits. The union refused to accept it, a strike was conceived and they eventually won.

Perhaps, in your country, there is a better sense of justice. Here, this is very common and most people look the other way. It is similar to being fired for your sexuality but your company makes up another excuse. In other words, they get away with it. I think it probably happens in your country more than you realize.

I wasn't using that to argue anything, just giving an example that companies CAN afford to reduce salary without much consequence. There are many other reasons why I disagree with capitalism, at least as it is today. I believe that, since capitalism puts money first, that's how it will be. Money will always come first.

Many people think that companies will generally do the right thing because they simply cannot "get away with" doing otherwise. People also think it's only a few companies doing the unethical things, but they don't even know a fraction of the story.

People will say about our capitalist system, "It's not perfect but it's the best we can do..." Do they really believe that?

[Uneunsae]

* Going to bed soon and then I'll be gone for 26 days but if I remember to I'll resurrect this thread then! *

Be well! Look forward to your return.