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shots shots shots posted:I posted a study earlier and most ARRA money went to people switching jobs, not unemployed. And all that extra money that those skilled workers own would go...?
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| # ? Apr 27, 2013 04:21 |
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| # ? May 25, 2013 02:37 |
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Radbot posted:And all that extra money that those skilled workers own would go...? To be fair, shots never said whether it was a good or bad thing, just that it would not necessarily (directly) help those its supposed to.
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| # ? Apr 27, 2013 04:32 |
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Perhaps a dedicated thread to just the ethics of employment issues would be justified? Discussing it here is one thing when nothing is happening, but I'd like to hear what people have to say about the Taibbi article and it got kinda buried among the last 100+ post about when it is moral to ignore certain applicants. Additionally, "biggest financial scandal ever" would seem to be an important discussion point, no?
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| # ? Apr 27, 2013 15:33 |
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asdf32 posted:I see his referal to free enterprise as just "business". And for the sake of this discussion I see no problem recognizing business as a group with certain properties and interests. There is no doubt that business in our society is massively influential which means, in my opinion that they deserve a lot of credit for the good as well as the bad. I found it dissapointing at first that you come out so strong here, "exceptionally ugly and brutal", although it serves to immediately frame where you're coming from, which I suppose is fine. Well I thought that some of the examples I supplied, such as the current working conditions in Saipan, which contemporary pro-business politicians regularly describe as beings exactly the kind of working conditions that they think should be brought to the mainland USA. Another article on the Marianas islands: quote:A year earlier, the Department of the Interior -- which oversees federal policy toward the U.S. territory -- presented a very different picture of life for Chinese workers on the islands. An Interior report found that Chinese women were subject to forced abortions and that women and children were subject to forced prostitution in the local sex-tourism industry. Likewise, the campaign in the 1970s to illegally bust unions and depress wages is pretty sinister to me. So are setting up trade agreements that were explicitly intended to force domestic workers into competition with low wages workers in the third world. If you want this to be a real dialogue then I think you need to explain to me why you don't find some of the stuff I've already pointed out alarming. It certainly seems ethically atrocious to me. quote:I guess I'll take your word for this although I i'm skeptical that in the 18th century what they were envisioning is anything like the type of large enterprises we have today and thus that they properly anticipated the problems that would arise. The economy was primarily agrarian and businesses that did exist, besides comprising a much smaller percentage of the economy were also smaller individually. Obviously post civil war is when larger scale manufacturing, railroads and other larger scale enterprises began cropping up. This isn't entirely accurate. Britain and its empire did have some very large crown created corporations who enjoyed monopolies on trade and production in specific fields, and one of the earliest debates in the newly fashioned USA was whether or not to charter a national bank. So while you're right that the economic conditions were rather different, especially in the South, that doesn't mean that the Founders weren't already anticipating the conflict that would arise between commercial interests and the good of the Republic. From wikipedia: Wikipedia - Republicanism in the United States posted:Founding Fathers quote:I don't really deny this. Although there is a strong component of altruism within people it's also true that if people are incentivised to do X, some of them will always do X. In this case that means companies pushing for lower pay, lower rights etc. However there are many factors involved that overpower this. There are, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith used to refer to them in the US postwar context as "countervailing powers" (wiki link), but I think what you are missing is the degree to which businesses in America have been actively coordinating and working to destroy any institutional challenges to their position. Essentially I feel like the world you're describing is broadly analagous to the one that existed between the Second World War and the crisis of the 1970s. During this period we see a huge push for civil rights, for greater regulation of corporate behaviour, and for better pricing of externalities like pollution. And these trends are exactly what provoked Powell and his ilk to start pouring billions of dollars a year into defunding unions and Public Interest Research Groups, buying friendly press in the newspapers, promoting pro-business MBA programs over traditional educations, etc. Basically the countervailing powers you allude to were systematically stripped of their power or bought off. That culminated in the Democratic Party being taken over by DLC types like Clinton and Gore in the 1980s. Its worth noting that there is also a direct line of continuity - in terms of people, fundraising, organizations, etc. - between the struggle to suppress unions and civil rights groups in the First World, and the backlash against socialism and social democracy in the third world. The same interests that were coordinating how to destroy American unions were also providing assistance to Pinochet's coup. In fact the first fully formed examples of Neoliberal economics don't show up in the first world, they first show up in places like Chile, where it was possible for the military to simply overthrow the existing government and then disappear any troublesome opposition figures. In addition to supporting guys like Pinochet, or the "freedom fighting" terrorists in Nicaragua, these interests were also huge supporters of South African apartheid. In fact you'll generally find that in virtually every post World War II conflict that American businesses interests and the American government consistently support dicators and oligarchies against rebellions from below. And in cases where the people had already won a degree of representation in government, American businesses and the government are always eager to destabilize those regimes economically and politically. In some cases this resulted in genuinly shocking levels of brutality, even by the standards of the 20th century. Following a poorly conceived attempted communist coup in Indonesia, for instance, the US government sat by and even provided logistical support to the Indonesia government as they rounded up somewhere between 500,000 and 1.5 million people and murdered them. Perhaps we can agree that some of these problems predate US involvement. And certainly third world brutality would exist without US support. But its a well documented fact that major American thinkers - primarily on the right, but also in the liberal centre - have consistently viewed the defense of American businesses, and the need to keep markets open for American corporations (and, in many cases, closed to corporations from rival countries) has been viewed as a perfectly legitimate motive for supporting genocidal dictators, or horrific landlord backed oligarchies. So when we say that business has incentives to reduce wages, we aren't going far enough. In many conditions businesses have incentives to actively undermine democratic government - by violence if necessary - and we have ample historical precedent to believe that many of them will do exactly that when they feel their backs are against the wall. quote:As for political action this is where again, I rest my perspective on underlying factors. When people reach a certain standard of living will naturally demand rights and they'll succeed. The interesting part here isn't the tactics of their political organization it's their underlying economic circumstances. There is obviously variability among nations with similar economic output but it's not nearly as wide as that between countries with differing economic circumstances. That is, when the economics are in place labor rights follow. I don't see it being the other way around. I'd point to this as one of our core disagreements. Well unless you want to supply some historical examples for us to dissect I'm not sure what to tell you. In every western country with high living standards that I can think of, a huge labour movement or an external communist threat - and usually both - were necessary ingredients for better rights. Certainly in the USA its absurd to argue that higher living standards just sort of created an electorate who asked for better services which politicians then supplied through legislation. That is a neat story, but it isn't what actually happened. In fact it was in the depths of the Great Depression that most of the contemporary American regulatory and welfare state were forged, which would seem to falsify your argument. Certainly there is some connection between better living standards and the ability to demand better political institutions. After all, people who are starving have trouble organizing to fight for better working conditions. But may I suggest that this is part of why American businesses were ultimately compelled to break the so called "treaty of Detroit"? Basically, higher rates of growth and better living conditions during the 1950s and 1960s did help lead to a much more aggressive labour movement, and also contributed to Civil Rights and the anti-war movements. This is, perhaps, part of the reason that corporations became so interested in outsourcing. To quote Arthur Young, who wrote back at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, when most of our contemporary economic dynamics were already in place but when the ruling class was more blunt and honest: Arthur Young posted:Everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor or they will never be industrious. I do not mean that the poor in England are to be kept like the poor of France; but the state of the country considered, they must be (like all mankind) in poverty or they will not work. If you want a contemporary example of this, just look at how upset employers get when they are in a full employment economy. quote:With a 4.5% unemployment rate, Alberta’s labour woes are eclipsed only by Saskatchewan where unemployment is at a low of 3.8%. Skilled labour in Alberta is in short supply while unskilled labour has often been described as “entitled” by business owners fed up with what they see as workers devoid of basic work ethics. Workers who feel they can easily get a job elsewhere are "entitled" and not sufficiently deferential. In fact full employment in that article is literally described as an example of "labour woes". Frankly, I don't want the most powerful interest group in our society to be people who has an institutional and vested interest in keeping living standards low for workers. I think that mild labour discipline problems - which should be dealt with via better wages, better management, etc. - are far less of a problem than unemployment, and it makes me sick to my stomach to think contemporary newspapers are comfortable taking such an unabashadly pro-business and anti-worker perspective. But that is the society we live in. quote:But saipan? Your two examples in here, saipan and Guatemala are both pretty well tread. A tiny island in a very unique position isn't a great place to examine the properties of capitalism. That said, I'm not sure how unique it is compared to any other developing economy. Saipan / the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (Saipan being the largest of those islands) are technically part of the United States. That is why I am citing them: they are an example of a completely contemporary labour regime inside US jurisdiction. Furthermore, they are actively praised as being the future of capitalism by senior Republicans. You're correct that the conditions described in Saipan and elsewhere in the CNMI are pretty typical for third world sweatshops. That should alarm you. The point here is that progress isn't linear. A country doesn't reach a certain level of economic development where it suddenly permanently is guaranteed good jobs and safe workplaces. If the political forces inside society are improperly balanced, you get a return to sweatshop conditions. This is happening in the United States right now. quote:Your lack of hatred for, and understanding of markets is one reason I appreciate your point of view. I find that rare here among socialists who often like to dump on markets and every aspect of them almost any chance they get. Not that SA is necessarily a good representation of socialists. Studying economic and social history is literally what made me a socialist. If I'm less sceptical of markets then that is because I understand their underlying appeal. It was only after a long period of thinking that I reached the conclusions I'm pushing now about the incompatibility of strong commercial interests and democratic government. In particular, my thinking has been heavily influenced by Joseph Schumpeter, an ultra conservative but exceptionally brilliant Austrian economist who developed a very insightful body of literature surrounding entrepreneurship and its role in economic development. Another major influence on my thinking was the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, another reactionary. So while I stand firmly on the left in terms of my politics, some of my most important intellectual influences were far right. As a result I've always tried to avoid slipping into doctrinaire thinking. Of course I should point something else out here: I'm an exceptionally privileged individual. I have a great life so why should I hate the market? It hasn't hurt me in the way it has hurt a lot of the other posters on these forums. My relative insulation from the economic catastrophe perhaps allows me to take a more nuanced perspective. People who hate the market aren't just being irrational: they are responding to very real events in their lives, and their feelings are entirely legitimate. quote:Again I don't exactly deny this. What's at stake is how successful they can be. I'd say they've been extremely successful in the contemporary United States (elsewhere as well, but for simplicity I'm confining this discussion to the USA for now). Right now the richest 400 Americans have as much wealth as the poorest 50% of Americans, and social mobility is on the decline. One study by economist Gregory Clark suggests that it usually takes as long as 300-500 years before the child of a wealthy parent has the same chance of ending up poor as the child of a poor person does. In America in particular, though, a lot of conscious policy has resulted in a growing stratification of wealth. Its not for nothing that California has stopped building schools but ramped up the number of prisons. From The Economist The Economist posted:This is happening throughout the rich world, where elites have proved remarkably adept at passing on privilege down the generations (see article). But it is most acute in America. Back in its Horatio Alger days, America was more fluid than Europe. Now it is not. Using one-generation measures of social mobility—how much a father’s relative income influences that of his adult son—America does half as well as Nordic countries, and about the same as Britain and Italy, Europe’s least-mobile places. America is particularly exposed to the virtuous-meritocracy paradox because its poor are getting married in ever smaller numbers, leaving more children with single mothers short of time and money. One study suggests that the gap in test scores between the children of America’s richest 10% and its poorest has risen by 30-40% over the past 25 years. quote:This is where you somewhat lose me and it stems from your conclusion that business is mostly bad. Again I'll say that business is hugely important within society and thus deserves a lot of credit for positive things. Business today produce everything we need to live and employs us. It's not all bad. I can address this in great depth if you like, but I think that your claim here is contradicted by the historical record. Markets certainly have their place in spurring certain kinds of innovation - its hard to imagine a contemporary government department developing the iPad for instance - but when it comes to primary research the market has a terrible record. For instance, into the 19th century factories did not have the technology to develop interchangeable parts. That mean that equipment built in one factory didn't necessarily fit with the parts that were made in a different factory. This generated huge inefficiencies and presumably created opportunities for an entrepreneur to step, bring the technology for interchangeable parts to market, and then collect the Schumpeterian rents that would have resulted. But this didn't happen. Instead governments were required to step in and socialize the costs of such developments. An early attempt to develop interchangeable parts was conducted in France in the eighteenth century. In the 19th century the US government, mostly the departments of War and the Navy, spent a lot of money financing Eli Whitney's innovations. Wiki again (sorry for all the wiki links, but that encylopedia is just a lot more convenient than hunting through google books or my old notes for citations): Wikipedia - Interchangeable parts posted:Eli Whitney and an early attempt These crucial investments in manufacturing, plus the huge investments made by 19th century governments in building rail-roads, canals, roads and schools, were crucial to the development of industry. So were the massive industrial tariffs, and the huge stimulus given to industry by government financing during the Civil War. In the 20th century this pattern is even more pronounced. The Second World War and the Cold War were the necessary stimulus for the government to make massive investments in computers and aerospace technology, as well as the development of new fabrics, plastics, etc. From the internet to modern biotech you cannot take the government out of the equation - it by far played a more significant part than private business. This is especially true when you consider how dependent modern corporations in the USA are on publicly financed Universities. Sadly this growing dependence on publicly financed R&D has lead to a systematic corruption of the university system. Scientists now compete for grant money and are compelled to copy right their research (in the rare occasions when it isn't owned outright by a corporation). In the tech industry patent trolls are flourishing, and firms like google and Apple spend as much money buying patents as they do on research and development. In the drug world there have been numerous cases of university researchers being forced to suppress findings that put drug companies and their products in a bad light. So I absolutely cannot agree with the notion that the good things in our life come from business. Pretty much all the major innovations of our economy and the infrastructure that made those innovations possible was supplied at public expense, since the profit motive would have made these innovations impossible. Even worse, the profit motive has increasingly creeped into the delivery of public services and into the university system which is the incubator for most innovation. Far from having a positive impact, this is a massively negative one: its the privatization of knowledge and the socialization of costs. Now all that having been said, there are cases where market innovation plays a more benign role. The iPhone and iPad are examples of products that are arguably thanks to the market. However, my favourite example of private entrepreneurship would be Ida Rosenthal, the young Russian Jewish immigrant to America who developed the modern brasiere and founded Maidenform. Rosenthal started out as a seamstress. In the course of her work she started to develop custom fit bras so that her client's dresses would fit better. The bras became so popular that women started asking for them specifically. Eventually Rosenthal dropped out of garment making altogether to specialize on underwear. Talk to any woman and they will tell you the difference in comfort between a corset and a brassiere. Its a humble seeming innovation that had huge implications for the comfort of everyday people, and it was developed in the private marketplace. The trouble is that while the market can be pretty great at developing and then incrementally improving something like a bra or an iPhone - making them cheaper, more durable, more comforatble, etc. - the market has an absolutely terrible record at making long term investments. Its also worth noting that since the period when Powell was writing, powerful businesses have started to get much better at cornering their markets. An important change in Regan era regulation was to shift the US government's official stance on monopolies. Previously the US government had a strong mandate to break up monopolistic markets, since it was widely understood that monopoly power in a private marketplace would result in worse outcomes for consumers. Under Reagan, however, monopolies were re-imagined as being necessary to fund corporate R&D. This change in stance has allowed contemporary corporations to corner their markets through mergers and acquisitions, resulting in a much more paltry record of corporate innovation. So even in cases where the market does ok, the growing political power of Big Business has outweighed this effect and has killed or slowed down a great deal of innovation. quote:Yes, it's unremarkable and this is where I want you to address perspective. This is "bad". That said, a world superpower messing with its neighbors is utterly uninteresting in the scope of history. The only interesting things about this are 1) how recent it was and 2) it stands in contrast to a narrow, naive, but popular presentation of America's history. The bad things that the U.S. has done were interesting to me when I was a senior in high school and ceased to be interesting around the same time when I incorporated them into my world view. The only appropriate thing to do is to compare America, and events like this to contemporary (Soviet Union) and historical (Britian, Spain, Rome etc) examples of behavior by other superpowers. In that comparison I think America and modern capitalism come out in, overal, very positive light. Support for brutal regimes isn't something from the distant past, its ongoing. Hell, it was only a few years ago that the Obama administration told Haiti not to raise its minimum wage. The US government and major US corporations are consistent enemies of democracy and of any national liberation movement that won't commit itself to remaining a low wage and high oppression economy. The rare examples of economies that have developed themselves while inside the US sphere of influence is almost exclusively confined to previously rich countries (Europe) or countries that completely ignored the advice of the US and the World Bank (i.e. Korea and Japan). Anyway, my point here isn't to say: "Look at all the bad things America has done!" Rather what I'm saying is that the same people who domestically were focused on destroying the labour movement and rooting out any leftist sentiment in university's and newspapers were also the crowd of people who supported vicious anti-communist dictators abroad. There's a disturbing line of continuity here. The struggles of workers in the third world and the struggles of workers in America are intimitely linked. The destruction of their rights and the degradation of their living standards goes hand in hand with the assault on American workers. Besides which, if you compare America to the Soviet Union then I'm not convinced the USA comes off much better. You'd have to take into account the literal genocide of the native Americans and the brutality of the slave trade in any fair comparison. And even if we grant that the USSR was more openly brutal toward its internal populations (they developed themselves in about a fifth of the time that the USA did so their brutality was far more concentrated and couldn't be dispersed over two centuries) there's a pretty good case to be made that the USSR tended to support the 'right' side in anti-colonial struggles. From Asia to Africa the USSR tended to support national liberation movements whereas the US came down on the side of fascistic oligarchies. Obviously both countries were acted in their own self interest, and on the balance the USSR was a massively flawed totalitarian regime with its own long register of crimes and follies, but I think now that the Cold War is over we need to start dispensing with these silly myths about how the USSR was some uniquely evil caricature. While its a problematic measurement in certain ways, try comparing Haiti to Cuba if you want an example of how the socialist development model contrasts with the development of countries that never escaped US influence. Even today the USA continues to interfere in Hait's affairs on behalf of its domestic garment manufacturers. The Obama administration fought hard a couple years ago to keep the Haitian minimum wage at 31 cents an hour. So I don't really buy into the "all big countries are equally evil" argument. America takes specific actions that are wrong, and obviously wrong. It supports brutal dictators. It conspires to suppress wages. It invades countries and assassinates foreign leaders as it pleases. And it so so to protect a "free enterprise system" that does not deserve protection. I'm afraid I can just shrug that off. quote:Again the overly sinister part is what's at stake here so I don't love seeing it being presented this way. I mean first you can't entirely blame Guatemala on business, our democratically elected officials had their part as well. Second, while I admitted the you have to expect some corporations to push for lower labor standards, corporations are simultaneously responible for designing and manufacturing many things that have been immensely positive - agricultural developments, computing, medical equipment etc and these things can't be hand-waved away - they are part of the package. Corporate innovation is exaggerated. It isn't none existent, but its almost always the last stage on what was previously a socially financed project. In the contemporary era I think out of control patent laws and the monopolistic nature of most markets means that corporate innovation is far less than what it was in the past. I also don't think iPads are a great trade off for a sham democracy where powerful vested interests are eternally conspiring to degrade wages and safety standards. quote:So concluding, I don't think you addressed perspective and I think that's a huge point of difference. You reveal what appears to be a very negative view of capitalism and society in general today. How do you reconcile this with the improvements in standard of living that happened within, and as a result of this system. Mostly I don't think they are a result of capitalism, i.e. the private ownership of capital. Mostly we're seeing scientists or inventors who were motivated by their desire to innovate or their love of knowledge, and who rely on capitalist financing because otherwise they wouldn't get financed at all. I think if we switched over to a system of public financing we'd be far more innovative, especially if we could move beyond the insanity of the modern copyright and patent system. This branches out into an entirely different discussion, but basically I don't think contemporary 21st century capitalism has a great record on the innovation front. I honestly think we'd probably be better off if we massively taxed the rich and corporations, abolished most intellectual property law, and made huge investments into university R&D. If you want to have a discussion about the economic dynaism of capitalism then I'll elaborate, but for now I'll leave it at that since my post is already excessively long. quote:Also, notably you failed to address my henry ford question. The picture of the late 19th century you painted wasn't much different when Henry Ford started fighting against labor and ultimately lost. I think this speaks directly to the power labor has in an economy where they're in demand and why I credit global economic changes for their decline, as opposed to the political power of business. Labour was much better organized back then. Unions were strongly rooted in local ethnic communities or neighbourhoods, they had their own newspapers, their own leaders. The Democratic party, while corrupt, also prevented a workable vehicle for advancing working class interests. Businesses were far less organized and hadn't fully discovered its institutional power. The constellation of think tanks and chambers of commerce had not emerged yet and many wealthy individuals - including Franklin Delano Roosevelt - viewed capitalism and commerce with a certain amount of disdain and scepticism, instead adhering to a more aristocratic sense of nobless oblige. The situation is very different today. Also, I really don't think the workers "won" against Ford. He doubled their wages because turnover at his factory was extremely high and it was interfering with the efficiency of the production line. The fact he raises his wages so that he could retain people longer doesn't constitute a massive victory in my opinion. quote:In general, I think you credit business with having more power than it does. It's easy to look at big companies like Wal-Mart as being almost unassailable but history tells us they are. Wal-Mart's predecessors include Woolworth's (gone) and Sears (in rough shape). Plenty of other previously powerful companies are gone. Although I admit businesses like oil which intersect heavily with regulation and government will always remain troublesome. But this speaks directly to the power people have as consumers and I think this power is significant and often overlooked. Overall I see this as a significant and effective check to the power of business. (first of all, I'd emphasise that people don't have power as consumers, they have power as producers.) I'm talking about capitalists as a class more than I'm talking about individual businesses. Individual firms rise and fall, much in the way that individual noble houses rose and fell in medieval Europe, but the capitalist system powers ahead. In fact one of the most interesting elements of the business counter revolution of the 1980s is that, from a certain perspective, businesses lost out. The people who really won were the CEOs, who started to grow increasingly powerful and influential. These days the wealthy aren't tied down to specific corporations, they've developed a system where they jump from one corporate empire to the next, slashing pension funds and collective fat bonus payments as they cheerily deindustrialize America and ship all the decent jobs overseas. So you're right that individual firms can be rather fragile. However, the domination of the ruling classes, the so called 1 percenters, is firmer than it has been in a hundred years. And we should all be frightened about that. Most of your comments seem like they come from another era, some forty years ago, when there were strong institutional checks on the power of business and also specific actors in the media who took on the perspective of the middle and even the working class. That is all gone now. quote:I'll also note that it's ultimately people that vote for politicians, not business. I think many people take business's power over government for granted and forget that it's forced to exersice that power, ultimately, by influencing people (or give money to politicians which have to do the same). I tend to think socialists overestimate the power of media, marketing etc to shape people and politics (partly, as you know because of my view of human nature). I think you're really underestimating the degree to which political institutions have been captured by corporate interests. If you want to get elected in America you must have a shitload of money. Congressmen literally spend the majority of every day dialling for dollars as though they were cheap telemarketers. And I don't just mean during elections - once you get elected to Congress you immediately start soliciting money for the next campaign. Corporate money is absolutely necessary to buy political advertising, which is absolutely crucial to getting your message to voters. The result is that the only options presented to voters are the ones that will attract big donors. In addition to this, each corporate donor can give far more than the average voter can give. Even worse, corporations can easily coordinate their donations, and they can adsorb the cost of monitoring politicians for compliance. A regular voter is less able to constantly scrutinize a politician to make sure the politician is keeping their promises, whereas a corporate donor or a wealthy individual can genuinely punish a politician who steps out of line. That's why even when Americans register high support for policies like single payer healthcare or background checks on firearms, corporate interests tend to win the day. The only cases where voters are really offered a choice between candidates are when substantial blocs of industry end up on opposite sides of an issue. If you're interested in discussing how corporate money distorts election results then I can elaborate. You should look up the work of Thomas Ferguson on the 'investment theory of party competition'. I think I have a pdf chapter from his book 'Golden Rule' if you're interested. Another author you should really check out is Jeffrey Winters, who wrote a very interesting book on the nature of Oligarchy and how one can plausibly argue that the contemporary USA is dominated by an oligarchy. I can try to preproduce some of his findings for you if you'd like. I realize some of my remarks here have been limited by space, but I'm happy to elaborate on specific parts of my post where necessary. In particular, I'm going to hold off on elaborating specific solutions for the time being, and return to the point of my previous post: this is about power. The working class needs more, the monied classes should have less. Specific fixes to local problems are obviously part of that conversation, but they cannot overshadow the broader reality that our political system is driven between a class struggle that the workers have been losing for several decades. Before we talk about strategies for fighting the war, we need an army. I don't share the liberal perspective that our system can be fixed by tinkering with aggregate demand or implementing slightly more rigorous financial regulations. Those particular policies will swiftly be undone unless there are institutional forces supporting them. If I can borrow a metaphor from ecology, the situation we're in is somewhat like that of a forest that has been clear-cut. The entire ecosystem has been devastated, the soil is no longer held by the roots and therefore blows away, the nutrients that used to be put back into that soil by dead plants and animals is all used up and there's nothing to replace it, etc. etc. In that situation, simply trying to replant trees doesn't work. The entire ecosystem must be rehabilitated, which is a much longer and more agonizing process. In our case that means recreating the left wing 'ecosystem' that existed some time ago. That means getting different groups of marginalized people talking to each other again. It means developing instituional voices for those people, developing a presence in the media, developing a strong academic and theoretical voice, developing political representation. It means seizing on local struggles and trying to deliver victories to those people, so that they are motivated to fight harder in future struggles. I could talk about specific policies that would improve our current situation, but they don't hold my interest in the way they once did. I mean there are some great policies that would be adaptable to our current paradigm and which would certainly improve people's lives. For instance, Germany's work sharing program could and should be adapted and implemented to the USA, and that's the kind of policy that could be implemented immediately if the political will existed. However, over the last couple years I've come to doubt that such solutions would truly solve anything as long as the USA is effectively controlled by an oligarchy.
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| # ? Apr 27, 2013 21:14 |
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Here is a useful images for visualizing how the post 1970s landscape has been highly unfavourable to workers. Arguably this graph leaves out the internationalization of supply chains and the opening up of vast new reservoirs of low wage labour in Asia, but it certainly puts the dramatic decline of working class living standards into stark relief, and it does a good job of showing how government taxation policy plays a very large role in the explosion of inequality in the USA.
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| # ? Apr 27, 2013 21:38 |
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Matt Taibbi's Friday blog post was pretty remarkable this week: http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...illion-20130426 Turns out the entire robosigning settlement was a total sham. To wit: "All of this just confirms what we already suspected about the foreclosure settlement. This whole enterprise was conceived by the government solely as a means of dealing with the explosive problem of containing the private liability of these "systemically important" companies. Not only are we not prosecuting these firms anymore, we're also actively in the business of protecting them from litigation." God bless Elizabeth Warren, even though there's really gently caress-all she can do about this stuff. Nothus fucked around with this message at Apr 28, 2013 around 11:52 |
| # ? Apr 28, 2013 01:38 |
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Why there are not riots in the streets at this point I just do not know.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 04:32 |
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Its a very good but particularly rage inducing and depressing article since it so clearly displays the corruption between the banks and bank regulators like the OCC and how there is little or nothing even possible to be done about it. Everybody should read it, just put away and lock up any sharp/blunt objects and freeze the keys in a bowl of ice before doing so.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 04:35 |
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Oracle posted:Why there are not riots in the streets at this point I just do not know. People would rather not get gunned down by an M4 wielding police officer in full tactical gear?
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 04:59 |
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If you go back two years ago, earlier posts by DM, there was a lot of controversy over MERS.  Whatever happened to that? I'm amazed there's not a single mention of it in that robosigning settlement, when banks were using that to arbitrarily swap collateral and collection with other banks.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 05:40 |
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IIRC there are still ongoing legal fights with MERS. They lost a big case in late 2012 for instance. quote:Perhaps most interesting is that MERS has taken to settling cases where it gets wind the court might rule against it, deliberately skewing the record to create the impression that its procedures and legal structure enjoy more acceptance from courts than they actually do. Given its recent conservatism, I wonder what led them to hazard a high profile loss. It might be that Washington’s deed of trust is distinctive enough that they thought they could take the chance, in that they could take the position that its implications for other states are very limited. We’ll see soon enough if that assumption is valid.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 06:51 |
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Radbot posted:People would rather not get gunned down by an M4 wielding police officer in full tactical gear? It isn't fear, it's ignorance.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 08:30 |
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Typical Pubbie posted:It isn't fear, it's ignorance. You're right to a degree, but I think most folks know poo poo is hosed up, they just can't do anything about it. Not to start an Occupy derail, but before it devolved into irrelevance, the largest rally in my city (Denver) had over ten thousand people marching - and the homeless and hippies didn't make up a majority of that number. When the consequence of a minor instance of protesting is getting gassed or beaten, and when what you protested for barely even gets mentioned over media insistence that you're a loser, most folks won't bother next time.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 14:56 |
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Helsing posted:^^^ I wrote this post before I read your comment but here I attempt to explain why I think its relevant to bring up racist hiring practices. It all comes down to the fact that employers use relatively simple heuristics to sort through eligible employees, and that these heuristics are clearly often irrational (i.e. ignoring a black person's qualifications just because of their name, but paying attention to the qualifications of a white person). This is a great post and I'm sorry it has taken me so long to respond. I think racism in hiring is an interesting topic, but a red herring when talking about the rationality of hiring practices, because no employer in the U.S. uses racism as a hiring practice and virtually all employers actively discourage it. Unfortunately racist stereotypes are harder to dislodge so they may still have effects, but no employer is choosing to be racist while some employers are choosing to discriminate against the long term unemployed. Thinking through the hiring process from the employer's POV gives a different take on the challenges and on rationality, IMO. If you're an employer advertising a position, you get X number of resumes of which you can only evaluate a fraction of those applicants. A resume itself tells you very little about a candidate. At best it conveys accurate information about an applicant's technical qualifications, while minimizing any of the applicant's relevant faults. At worst, it's total bullshit. It's a marketing document, not an objective assessment written by a neutral observer. You don't have the time or resources to conduct a thorough background check on every resume or even most of them, but you still need to narrow the candidate pool to what you can actually handle, so what policies do you adopt to do that? Are those policies irrational even though in a more perfect world you could certainly do better? I think employers act rationally on the scant information they have. If they could feasibly truth-check and objectively evaluate all applicants they would do that. I realize the conversation has moved on a bit, but I didn't want your effort post to go unanswered. I think everything you wrote about what topics draw responses is true and it's something I wish I knew how to change. There's only so much to talk about when we all mostly agree on a topic.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 15:23 |
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wateroverfire posted:This is a great post and I'm sorry it has taken me so long to respond. I think this kind of a citation needed a bit, as their is evidence that they do use racist criteria, you cant just shift it to something slightly different and then handwave it away. It's lazy. Though it is relevant. If they are using something irrational (which was the point of bringing racism up) then it is directly relevant to whether employers are rational or not. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 15:31 |
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CharlestheHammer posted:I think this kind of a citation needed a bit, as their is evidence that they do use racist criteria, you cant just shift it to something slightly different and then handwave it away. It's lazy. Though it is relevant. If they are using something irrational (which was the point of bringing racism up) then it is directly relevant to whether employers are rational or not. It's illegal to have an explicitly racist hiring policy in the U.S., so no company does it and most companies are proactive about avoiding the appearance of racism. The point of the name study is that racist attitudes still persist because racist stereotypes are still a thing.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 15:37 |
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Oracle posted:Why there are not riots in the streets at this point I just do not know. I think I might have mentioned this before in this thread, but, as it stands, capitalism in the Western world is able, to a certain extent, to "subsidize the poor." This isn't done directly (through providing direct subsidies, etc.), but through the ability to exploit foreign countries, thus providing impoverished American workers with the ability to still partake in consumerist culture. Think of Bangaladesh: It is only through the abominable conditions that the Bangladeshi worker suffers through that a poor worker in America is able to purchase relatively cheap shirts/pants/etc. Combined with relative food surpluses that enable the government to keep everyone away from complete starvation, and the proliferation of a mass popular culture, there is less of a desire to truly unite in order to seek better working conditions. One can hardly blame a person nearly working themselves to death for choosing to spend what limited additional energy they have on some sort of pleasure; but this sort of condition also therefore perpetuates the problem. As Radbot mentioned (and I think Helsing has mentioned in other threads), there's also a certain element of apathy towards large, popular protests. For a lot of younger people (who have always formed the vanguard of popular movements), there is no popular protest in the Western world within their lifetimes that has created effective social change. The protests against the Iraq War did nothing of note in terms of altering policy; and the Occupy movement, while briefly raising awareness over social issues, has not maintained significant traction in the popular discourse. The formation of a popular protest movement is almost inconceivable, especially with the heavy militarization of the police. A protest movement that is unwilling or unable to resist outside violence is usually easy to quell, especially in the modern world of LRADs, tear gas, and elite-controlled media that has a vested interest in ensuring that the population-at-large is unable to fully comprehend the scope of what is going on. (I'm also at least a little swayed by Zizek's argument in his tribute to Thatcher, where he notes that what the left has been missing for quite some time is an effective political leader - a "Master" - who can allow the people to, through him/her, "discover what they 'really want.'" I'm certainly not a "great man" theorist, but it's hard to imagine many popular protests without the iconic persons that defined and provided inspiration for them.)
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 15:39 |
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wateroverfire posted:It's illegal to have an explicitly racist hiring policy in the U.S., so no company does it and most companies are proactive about avoiding the appearance of racism. The point of the name study is that racist attitudes still persist because racist stereotypes are still a thing. Its illegal to be explicit and the general weakness of the regulatory body in the US, plus the fact that stopping people from hiring on racist criteria itself is rather difficult outside of the more obvious (which at this point anyone who is worth anything will be able to hide it better) makes this difficult to believe. Though how you can separate racist hiring policies from racist stereotyping is beyond me. Those two are intertwined and for all real purpose are the same thing.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 15:43 |
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wateroverfire posted:It's illegal to have an explicitly racist hiring policy in the U.S., so no company does it and most companies are proactive about avoiding the appearance of racism. The point of the name study is that racist attitudes still persist because racist stereotypes are still a thing. When it wasn't illegal, there was no need to have "don't hire blacks except as janitors" as a written policy. Also many companies do have explicitly racist hiring policies; they are just passed down verbally from management rather than being codified in a handbook.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 15:50 |
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wateroverfire posted:It's illegal to have an explicitly racist hiring policy in the U.S., so no company does it and most companies are proactive about avoiding the appearance of racism. The point of the name study is that racist attitudes still persist because racist stereotypes are still a thing. I work for a social justice program that aggregates stocks from various clergy to make stock resolutions to try and uncover horrible business practices, and half the companies we speak to, despite being owners, refuse to provide any information on hiring policies or breakdowns of type of job and gender/race. If it's this hard for a company owner, how would an employee who ultimately needs that information to press suit find out? If no one sues no regulatory body will come.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 15:51 |
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CharlestheHammer posted:Its illegal to be explicit and the general weakness of the regulatory body in the US, plus the fact that stopping people from hiring on racist criteria itself is rather difficult outside of the more obvious (which at this point anyone who is worth anything will be able to hide it better) makes this difficult to believe. Though how you can separate racist hiring policies from racist stereotyping is beyond me. Those two are intertwined and for all real purpose are the same thing. The EEOC is very active and employers work to stay within the law. No employer wants this headache. For that matter, why would you think employers want to be crafty subtle racists? I mean...really, what is in it for them? How does that even make sense to you? Here's the difference - it's really easy. If the employer has a company policy of discriminating against X race, that's a racist hiring policy. If an HR manager believes "Jamal" has no work ethic so he doesn't get a call back, that is racist stereotyping by the HR manager, and if it gets identified by the company that manager is hosed.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 15:57 |
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mugrim posted:I work for a social justice program that aggregates stocks from various clergy to make stock resolutions to try and uncover horrible business practices, and half the companies we speak to, despite being owners, refuse to provide any information on hiring policies or breakdowns of type of job and gender/race. If it's this hard for a company owner, how would an employee who ultimately needs that information to press suit find out? If no one sues no regulatory body will come. Why would any company ever even consider giving you that information?
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:01 |
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mugrim posted:I work for a social justice program that aggregates stocks from various clergy to make stock resolutions to try and uncover horrible business practices, and half the companies we speak to, despite being owners, refuse to provide any information on hiring policies or breakdowns of type of job and gender/race. If it's this hard for a company owner, how would an employee who ultimately needs that information to press suit find out? If no one sues no regulatory body will come. I don't know your specific business, but I imagine it's a combination of not having that data conveniently on hand and of no business you're investigating having any incentive or desire to give a busybody NGO information with which to make trouble for it (regardless of whether there's anything there to make trouble about) that makes it so difficult to get information. An employee will be in a better position to document instances of discrimination by virtue of already being in the company and (possibly) being subject to that discrimination. The EEOC seems pretty active, as suggested by their charge statistics, so it seems like a bunch of people are suing.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:05 |
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Harry posted:Why would any company ever even consider giving you that information? Because our organization holds a massive amount of their stock so by law they are required to answer our petitions.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:07 |
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wateroverfire posted:I don't know your specific business, but I imagine it's a combination of not having that data conveniently on hand and of no business you're investigating having any incentive or desire to give a busybody NGO information with which to make trouble for it (regardless of whether there's anything there to make trouble about) that makes it so difficult to get information. An employee will be in a better position to document instances of discrimination by virtue of already being in the company and (possibly) being subject to that discrimination. Instances of discrimination are not the same as racially tinted hiring policies.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:08 |
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shrike82 posted:The thing after affirmative action at the university and the workplace is that it's a band-aid that allows liberals to ignore the wider discrimination taking place in society, and pat themselves on the back. You have no idea what it allows liberals to do. Please prove how a limited hiring/acceptance policy like affirmative action *causes* liberals to think that racism is not a problem. Please, I'd love to see some kind of research.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:11 |
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mugrim posted:Instances of discrimination are not the same as racially tinted hiring policies. Pre-employment discrimination is still the EEOC's bag.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:11 |
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wateroverfire posted:The EEOC is very active and employers work to stay within the law. No employer wants this headache. For that matter, why would you think employers want to be crafty subtle racists? I mean...really, what is in it for them? How does that even make sense to you? wateroverfire posted:Here's the difference - it's really easy. If the employer has a company policy of discriminating against X race, that's a racist hiring policy. If an HR manager believes "Jamal" has no work ethic so he doesn't get a call back, that is racist stereotyping by the HR manager, and if it gets identified by the company that manager is hosed. See that is not because stereotyping and racist polices are different, that is an argument that is between macro and micro policies. CharlestheHammer fucked around with this message at Apr 28, 2013 around 16:18 |
| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:15 |
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wateroverfire posted:The EEOC is very active and employers work to stay within the law. No employer wants this headache. That's not "very active" - there's thirty million businesses in the US, and less than a hundred thousand charges per year. And those are just the charges filed; the number of cases that actually make it to court number in the hundreds. Besides, it's not illegal to only hire white people and never hire minorities, even if the white people are less qualified than the minorities. It's only illegal if you're specifically doing it because of their race and their race is the primary reason behind those hiring decisions, and it's only actionable if the company openly admits it to someone willing to tell the EEOC about it. wateroverfire posted:For that matter, why would you think employers want to be crafty subtle racists? I mean...really, what is in it for them? How does that even make sense to you? Because they think minority workers are worse than white workers, or that the minority workers' qualifications are worth less than an equivalent white person's qualifications, or that minority workers are more prone to crime or misconduct, and so on? wateroverfire posted:Here's the difference - it's really easy. If the employer has a company policy of discriminating against X race, that's a racist hiring policy. If an HR manager believes "Jamal" has no work ethic so he doesn't get a call back, that is racist stereotyping by the HR manager, and if it gets identified by the company that manager is hosed. What if the company owner is the one refusing to hire Jamal because he thinks black people have no work ethic? Not every hiring decision is made by middle management, especially at smaller businesses and franchises.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:16 |
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CharlestheHammer posted:See that is not because stereotyping and racist polices are different, that is an argument that is between macro and micro policies. One is a policy, the other is a random person acting on their personal racist beliefs in a way that will get them canned if it is identified because that is against policy. Those are totally different things, and saying companies are applying racist hiring policies when their policies are explicitly not racist and make identifiable racism a fireable offense is irrational.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:21 |
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wateroverfire posted:One is a policy, the other is a random person acting on their personal racist beliefs in a way that will get them canned if it is identified because that is against policy. Those are totally different things, and saying companies are applying racist hiring policies when their policies are explicitly not racist and make identifiable racism a fireable offense is irrational. Yes, that is what I said. The macro being from up high while the micro being from lower management. Of course you have to give some evidence that this is the case. You just seem to be assuming it is.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:28 |
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Radbot posted:You're right to a degree, but I think most folks know poo poo is hosed up, they just can't do anything about it. Not to start an Occupy derail, but before it devolved into irrelevance, the largest rally in my city (Denver) had over ten thousand people marching - and the homeless and hippies didn't make up a majority of that number. I will never cease to be amazed that the hardcore Occupiers managed to be so unpleasant and offputting that they actually convinced people that "healthcare should be reasonably priced and student loan debt is pretty lousy" wasn't the right position to take on the issues.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 16:43 |
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wateroverfire posted:One is a policy, the other is a random person acting on their personal racist beliefs in a way that will get them canned if it is identified because that is against policy. Those are totally different things, and saying companies are applying racist hiring policies when their policies are explicitly not racist and make identifiable racism a fireable offense is irrational. I already explained to you that racist hiring policies exist and are passed down directly from managers and company owners verbally. If you do not have enough life experience or have not read enough to know of specific examples that is your problem.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 17:03 |
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Top Bunk Wanker posted:I will never cease to be amazed that the hardcore Occupiers managed to be so unpleasant and offputting that they actually convinced people that "healthcare should be reasonably priced and student loan debt is pretty lousy" wasn't the right position to take on the issues. I find it amazing that some people banging drums and being jerks actually discouraged others from taking the position "healthcare should be reasonably priced and student loan debt is pretty lousy" publicly. I guess you don't feel that strongly about something when Erin Burnett cherrypicking some loser from a crowd can convince you debt serfdom is the preferable road. Of course, what you posit isn't actually what happened, because Americans aren't spineless idiots like you assume they are. Instead, it's a combination of the inefficacy of protest in the modern world and fear of police violence/a criminal record in a weak labor environment.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 17:41 |
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wateroverfire posted:One is a policy, the other is a random person acting on their personal racist beliefs in a way that will get them canned if it is identified because that is against policy. Those are totally different things, and saying companies are applying racist hiring policies when their policies are explicitly not racist and make identifiable racism a fireable offense is irrational. What practical difference does this make to whether business, on the whole, practices an inefficient form of behavior that would falsify your rational-actor hiring hypothesis? I really doubt you would accept the point even if some major chain had a "blacks will not be served and Irish need not apply" sign. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at Apr 28, 2013 around 17:55 |
| # ? Apr 28, 2013 17:52 |
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| # ? May 25, 2013 02:37 |
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This thread has gotten a lot too broad and a lot too big: feel free to start threads on any individual issues being discussed.
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| # ? Apr 28, 2013 17:59 |
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