Re-Framing Capitalism

[bilby]

It isn't indifference to ethics; it's just that trying to explain ethics to anticapitalists is exhausting and usually futile. They are trapped in a zero-sum-game mentality that got hard-wired into our brains from a million years of living as hunter-gatherers, and ten thousand years of farming hasn't been long enough to wrap their minds around the new reality that zero-sum-game thinking has become hopelessly, unethically, obsolete.

Confusing production and distribution just so one can win.

As to zero-sumism, it's treated as self-evident truth by certain opponents of labor unions. So whether zero-sumism is a fallacy or an absolute truth depends on what will help one win arguments.

Also, businesses operate collectively, especially big businesses, contrary to the individualist fantasies of pro-capitalist ideologues. In fact, such ideologues ought to hate big businesses and try to break them up on the ground that they encourage people to be collectivist.

One can ask how much each employee's work contributes to a business's revenue, and while it is not necessarily an equal amount, it is also not those at the top contributing 100% and everybody else 0%, which is what many capitalism apologists seem to believe.

Not only are corporations almost exclusively collectivist, they are also centrally planned dictatorships, run by a politburo board of directors who are ruthless against dissidents whistle-blowers who attempt to expose any failings to the wider world.

The only difference in governance between any large American corporation and the former USSR is the former's lack of military hardware*





*Difference may not apply to defence contractors. Soviet Union not available after 1991, or if sold out.

 

[Bomb#20]

"Millions of American adults who earn low wages rely on federal programs to meet basic needs, such as Medicaid for health care and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for food.
...
About 70% worked full time
Most worked for private sector employers in places like restaurants, department stores, and grocery stores
Others worked for state governments, public universities, or nonprofit organizations
Some employers in selected states had thousands of beneficiaries in their workforces."

Cool! These are all indications that we as a society have finally started allowing labor supply and demand, employability, public assistance, and self-supportingness to become continuous monotonic functions, instead of the traditional cliffs. This is all to the good. Cliffs create massive inefficiencies and perverse incentives.

Subsidizing firms by subsidizing workers when the business, even though it has the means to pay a decent wage place, doesn't do so because it can get away with it?

What logical justification do you have for claiming that a subsidy to a worker is a subsidy to her employer?

Much the same issue came up in another thread last year. I challenged your subsidy assertion and you walked away.

https://iidb.org/threads/what-do-you-want-to-do-with-the-little-people.23498/page-4#post-883080

 

[JohnG]

It's a mostly "take and very little give" relationship.

They do about 50 B in profit per year.

I am certainly not against capitalism but lets not pretend that the pendulum hasn't swung hard.

Google tells me Mitsubishi's profit margin is about 4%. So 50 B in profits means 1.25 T in revenue. Customers got stuff from Mitsubishi that was worth more than 1.25 T to the customers -- they bought the stuff because they wanted it more than they wanted 1.25 T. Are you counting all that trillion-plus-worth of stuff Mitsubishi gave its customers, when you say "take and very little give"?

I don't think its accurate to say they "gave" products to customers - it traded for as much as it thought the market could bear. From a labor perspective their takeover of our company has been a disaster. Our staffing has shrunk by half, relying on "go getters" to work long hours and extra days. Good people are now leaving. Pay raises have stagnated, and mngmt bonuses are based on how much they produce vs cost - which seems like a good idea on paper, but it's been a shit show.

It's a myth that the private sector doesn't waste money, less corruption (lots of back door deals going on with suppliers) and is more efficient.

 

[Bomb#20]

It isn't indifference to ethics; it's just that trying to explain ethics to anticapitalists is exhausting and usually futile. They are trapped in a zero-sum-game mentality that got hard-wired into our brains from a million years of living as hunter-gatherers, and ten thousand years of farming hasn't been long enough to wrap their minds around the new reality that zero-sum-game thinking has become hopelessly, unethically, obsolete.

Confusing production and distribution just so one can win.

Having faith that production and distribution are separable problems just so one can feel self-righteous, by appeasing one's unexamined hunter-gatherer moral intuition, by forcing farmers to live by it, in the teeth of the empirical evidence that farmers living by hunter-gatherer rules is as sure a recipe for starvation as hunter-gatherers living by farmer rules is. Anticapitalists are a species of creationist. Both because they take for granted that a thing would still exist even in the absence of the material cause of its existence, and also because they run Hume's infamous transition in reverse, imagining they can deduce what is from their convictions about what ought to be.

As to zero-sumism, it's treated as self-evident truth by certain opponents of labor unions.

Any opponent in particular? Or was that just a Trumpian "people are saying"?

Capitalist countries have independent labor unions. Socialist countries invariably prohibit them, for the same reason a government of snake-oil salesmen would prohibit real doctors. A labor union is a group of producers voluntarily coordinating their economic activities for mutual benefit -- which is exactly what a corporation is. Capitalism isn't opposed to labor unions. Labor unions are capitalism in action.

So whether zero-sumism is a fallacy or an absolute truth depends on what will help one win arguments.

Are you suggesting that the existence of disagreement shows truth is subjective? Zero-sumism is a fallacy, full stop.

Also, businesses operate collectively, especially big businesses, contrary to the individualist fantasies of pro-capitalist ideologues. In fact, such ideologues ought to hate big businesses and try to break them up on the ground that they encourage people to be collectivist.

That's on a level with your ludicrous but oft-repeated fantasy that libertarians are pro-slavery. Why on earth would you imagine an individualist pro-capitalist ideologue ought to try to break up big businesses? If other individuals choose to organize themselves into big businesses, that's their individual right whether the individualist hates it or not. Stopping other individuals from making their own choices just because one doesn't like it is a collectivist thing, not an individualist thing. You appear to be drawing conclusions about what people who don't think like you would do by taking for granted that they think just like you.

One can ask how much each employee's work contributes to a business's revenue, and while it is not necessarily an equal amount, it is also not those at the top contributing 100% and everybody else 0%, which is what many capitalism apologists seem to believe.

No it isn't. There are exactly zero capitalism apologists who seem to believe that. You hypothesized that belief and imputed it to capitalism apologists even though they didn't say anything of the sort.

Most likely you did this because they gave explanations for their views that are so completely alien to the way your mind works that you couldn't understand them at all, so you just threw what they actually said in your mental dumpster, and instead of "putting on your listening ears" you just accounted for their opinions to yourself by imagining they believe whatever the bejesus you would need to believe, in order for you to reach their conclusions. I.e., your mental model of the minds of people who disagree with you is a self-contradictory jumble of their conclusions with your premises.

 

[DBT]

"Millions of American adults who earn low wages rely on federal programs to meet basic needs, such as Medicaid for health care and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for food.
...
About 70% worked full time
Most worked for private sector employers in places like restaurants, department stores, and grocery stores
Others worked for state governments, public universities, or nonprofit organizations
Some employers in selected states had thousands of beneficiaries in their workforces."

Cool! These are all indications that we as a society have finally started allowing labor supply and demand, employability, public assistance, and self-supportingness to become continuous monotonic functions, instead of the traditional cliffs. This is all to the good. Cliffs create massive inefficiencies and perverse incentives.

Subsidizing firms by subsidizing workers when the business, even though it has the means to pay a decent wage place, doesn't do so because it can get away with it?

What logical justification do you have for claiming that a subsidy to a worker is a subsidy to her employer?

Much the same issue came up in another thread last year. I challenged your subsidy assertion and you walked away.

https://iidb.org/threads/what-do-you-want-to-do-with-the-little-people.23498/page-4#post-883080

It's not hard to grasp, if workers are paid rates that are so low that it doesn't allow them to pay for the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport, where the shortfall is paid by government subsidy, the government subsidy enables the firm to keep paying their workers sweet fuck all for their time and labour because, well, the government is taking care of it

Is that how capitalism is supposed to work?

Pay fuck all and expect the government to take up the deficit? That's the way of the free market?

Workers, powerless to negotiate a better deal, must be supported by government subsidies? What if that wasn't available? Riots? Revolution? Let them eat cake?

In a society with such great wealth and resources, it's obscene.

 

[Bomb#20]

Not only are corporations almost exclusively collectivist, they are also centrally planned dictatorships, run by a politburo board of directors who are ruthless against dissidents whistle-blowers who attempt to expose any failings to the wider world.

The only difference in governance between any large American corporation and the former USSR is the former's lack of military hardware*

*Difference may not apply to defence contractors. Soviet Union not available after 1991, or if sold out.

Why did you write all that? Were you attempting to persuade anyone to see things your way? Or were you just preaching to the choir of your fellow religionists, fishing for admiration and showing off your considerable literary talents? Your argument is brain-damaged.

When I was a kid, as it happens, my mom helped design military hardware at a large defense contractor. This was back when the Soviet Union was still available. So according to you, there was no difference in governance between her employer and the USSR.

Finland–Russia border

"... The Soviet side had extensive electronic systems and patrols to prevent escapes. Soviet border surveillance began at a great distance from the actual border, and was as extensive as elsewhere along the Iron Curtain. The first surveillance was already in railway stations in cities, where the militsiya monitored potentially suspicious traffic. The border zone began at 120 kilometres (75 mi) from the border. A special permit was required for entry, and the first line of control had electronic alarms. At 60 kilometres (37 mi), there was a raked sand strip (to detect footprints) and a thin alarmed tripwire. At 20 kilometres (12 mi), there was a 3 metres (9.8 ft) tall barbed wire fence, with a top that curved inwards towards Soviet territory (to keep people from leaving the USSR). The fence had an electronic alarm system. However, it was not protected underground and tunnelling under it was possible. ...​

When my mom's boss was replaced by a male chauvinist pig who figured girl weapon designers were secretaries, she eluded the guards, snuck across 120 km of obstacles, dragged a leafy tree branch behind her to erase her footprints, spotted the tripwire, and dug a tunnel under the barbed wire fence. Oh, wait, no she didn't. She just quit. The corporation's governance, in spite of having no lack of military hardware, did not regard itself as entitled to stop its underlings from leaving.

Corporations are almost exclusively individualist. The difference between individualist and collectivist operations is not whether the participants cooperate with another for a shared objective, but whether individual cooperation is voluntary, and whether the governance tries to ensure that the cooperative operation not only benefits the collective, but also benefits each individual participant.

 

[lpetrich]

Confusing production and distribution just so one can win.

Having faith that production and distribution are separable problems just so one can feel self-righteous, ...

Thank you for proving my point.

As to zero-sumism, it's treated as self-evident truth by certain opponents of labor unions.

Any opponent in particular? Or was that just a Trumpian "people are saying"?

I don't want to violate this board's rules against personal attacks.

Capitalist countries have independent labor unions. Socialist countries invariably prohibit them, ...

Define "socialist countries".

This also seems to me an attempt to take credit for what one opposes.

Also, businesses operate collectively, especially big businesses, contrary to the individualist fantasies of pro-capitalist ideologues. In fact, such ideologues ought to hate big businesses and try to break them up on the ground that they encourage people to be collectivist.

That's on a level with your ludicrous but oft-repeated fantasy that libertarians are pro-slavery. Why on earth would you imagine an individualist pro-capitalist ideologue ought to try to break up big businesses? ...

Because they end up dominating the economy and making non-collectivist employment very limited.

The appropriate sort of economy for individualists is an economy of small farmers and artisans and shopkeepers. Because anything larger than a mom-and-pop business is collectivist.

Talking about voluntary agreement to participate in collectivism evades the essential point, and it raises serious questions about the commitment to individualism of those making such agreements.

 

[bilby]

Why did you write all that? Were you attempting to persuade anyone to see things your way?

Duh, obviously I was. That's why pretty much everyone here writes stuff (including you).

You, of course, decided not to do so, apparently because you share with many Americans an inability to distinguish between 'capitalism' and 'freedom'.

If your thesis is that the only important difference between the USSR and a modern American corporation is that in the latter case, people are free to leave, then it's not communism, or socialism, but imprisonment that you oppose. Corporations are centrally planned economies, and many are larger both in economic terms and in terms of population than many nation states. Centrally planned economies clearly work, even (as you point out) without the use of force to keep people from leaving.

We don't disagree that people should be allowed to leave; We do, apparently, disagree on whether this freedom is an attribute of capitalism, or an independent variable that is unrelated to the choice of free markets vs central planning.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's not hard to grasp, if workers are paid rates that are so low that it doesn't allow them to pay for the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport, where the shortfall is paid by government subsidy, the government subsidy enables the firm to keep paying their workers sweet fuck all for their time and labour because, well, the government is taking care of it

Is that how capitalism is supposed to work?

Pay fuck all and expect the government to take up the deficit? That's the way of the free market?

Workers, powerless to negotiate a better deal, must be supported by government subsidies? What if that wasn't available? Riots? Revolution? Let them eat cake?

In a society with such great wealth and resources, it's obscene.

Removing the government support wouldn't make the companies pay more, it would just lower the standard of living of the people in those jobs.

 

[DBT]

It's not hard to grasp, if workers are paid rates that are so low that it doesn't allow them to pay for the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport, where the shortfall is paid by government subsidy, the government subsidy enables the firm to keep paying their workers sweet fuck all for their time and labour because, well, the government is taking care of it

Is that how capitalism is supposed to work?

Pay fuck all and expect the government to take up the deficit? That's the way of the free market?

Workers, powerless to negotiate a better deal, must be supported by government subsidies? What if that wasn't available? Riots? Revolution? Let them eat cake?

In a society with such great wealth and resources, it's obscene.

Removing the government support wouldn't make the companies pay more, it would just lower the standard of living of the people in those jobs.

The point was that there is a power imbalance that prevents many workers from negotiating a better deal for themselves, and this makes it necessary for the government to aid/subsidize people who are working for a living, doing productive work, helping to generate profits for a company, yet are paid so poorly that they cannot meet their basic needs.

Free market economics? "Maximise profits, pay fuck all, the government can take care of them?"

 

[Swammerdami]

Having faith that production and distribution are separable problems just so one can feel self-righteous, by appeasing one's unexamined hunter-gatherer moral intuition, by forcing farmers to live by it, in the teeth of the empirical evidence that farmers living by hunter-gatherer rules is as sure a recipe for starvation as hunter-gatherers living by farmer rules is.

I agree with some of your views, but your view of Stone Age cultures is too reductionist and at best misleading. We have a thread discussing The Dawn of Everything where IIDB experts may comment on the Davids' comparisons of early forager, farmer, and pastoralist societies. (My readings are as yet inadequate for me to post a summary.)

Anyway, why would one want to go back that far? For most of history, most unskilled or semi-skilled workers have endured barely subsistence income.

There is good evidence of English prices and wages. In the early 14th century annual real wages for labor in England had fallen to about £1100 (in 2010 pounds). This rose to £2300 in the late 14th century (partly in response to Black Death-induced labor shortage), but this had fallen back to about £1700 by the 17th and 18th centuries. In fact it was not until the 1830's that wages finally returned to the late 14th century level. In 1880, real wage passed £4000, in 1895 £5000, and in 1924 £6000. This meager wage growth came despite that this was a time of rapid productivity growth due to industrialization, as well as exploitation of the British Raj.

After1924, real annual wage growth in England was faster. It passed £7000 in 1930, £8000 in 1949, £10,000 in 1965, and first passed £23,000 in 2009. We don't need to cross-check to confirm that this rise in real wages coincided with the rise of trade unions and wider suffrage.

 

[Bomb#20]

It's a mostly "take and very little give" relationship.

They do about 50 B in profit per year.

I am certainly not against capitalism but lets not pretend that the pendulum hasn't swung hard.

Google tells me Mitsubishi's profit margin is about 4%. So 50 B in profits means 1.25 T in revenue. Customers got stuff from Mitsubishi that was worth more than 1.25 T to the customers -- they bought the stuff because they wanted it more than they wanted 1.25 T. Are you counting all that trillion-plus-worth of stuff Mitsubishi gave its customers, when you say "take and very little give"?

I don't think its accurate to say they "gave" products to customers - it traded for as much as it thought the market could bear.

Do you think it's accurate to say they "took" money from customers? The customers traded for as much goods and services as they thought the market could bear. If you mean they "took" your company, do you think that's accurate? The previous owners presumably traded it for as much money as they thought the market could bear. Do you have some consistent criterion for what counts as giving and taking, according to which it's a mostly "take and very little give" relationship?

From a labor perspective their takeover of our company has been a disaster. Our staffing has shrunk by half, relying on "go getters" to work long hours and extra days. Good people are now leaving. Pay raises have stagnated, ...

I'm sorry to hear the new owners aren't treating you as well as the old owners did. That happened to me too -- the brilliant founder retired, the board hired a bean-counter to be the new CEO, and a few years later they sold the whole company to a foreign corporation. Then the new owners broke it up and sold off pieces; my division got traded to some random company that was less fun to work for; I ended up quitting. Life, eh? Making a trade, whether it's baseball card for hockey card or it's money for labor, is not a promise that the same trade will remain available forever. Sometimes the people we're trading with want to move on.

It's a myth that the private sector doesn't waste money, less corruption (lots of back door deals going on with suppliers) and is more efficient.

Of course there's waste and corruption everywhere -- welcome to the damned human race. As far as being more efficient goes, how are you measuring efficiency? Was there an Eastern-Bloc state-owned car manufacturer that paid higher wages and made better cars cheaper than a private Japanese car manufacturer?

 

[Bomb#20]

What logical justification do you have for claiming that a subsidy to a worker is a subsidy to her employer?

It's not hard to grasp, if workers are paid rates that are so low that it doesn't allow them to pay for the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport, where the shortfall is paid by government subsidy, the government subsidy enables the firm to keep paying their workers sweet ... all for their time and labour because, well, the government is taking care of it

That appears to be magical thinking. By what cause-and-effect mechanism does the government subsidy enable the firm to keep paying so little?

"Keep paying", you say. That expression refers to continuation of an existing arrangement, which implies before the subsidy was provided the firm was already paying some worker a rate so low that it doesn't allow him to pay for the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport. Apparently that was working for the firm, so why would it have stopped if the worker remained unsubsidized? If you mean the worker would have stopped coming to work, that's not terribly plausible, since he was already making a choice to keep coming to work under those conditions, and his reasons for doing so wouldn't go away just because a government didn't start subsidizing him. And in the event that he does stop coming to work, the firm will presumably just hire somebody else to do the same job, at the wage the market is bearing. Marginal workers are entering and dropping out of the labor market all the time.

The way a government subsidy to poor people is actually likely to affect prices is by changing workers' calculations of what they can afford to do. Some of them will no longer need to work; the ones who still need to work will have a cushion that lets them be choosier about what jobs to take. It will in general make the poor less desperate. Being less desperate improves anyone's negotiating position. And since some will stop working or will keep looking until they find better jobs, the supply of workers filling the demand for people to do low-skill jobs will decrease. Both those effects will drive up the market wage. So a government subsidy will more likely stop firms from paying workers such low rates.

Is that how capitalism is supposed to work?

Pay ... all and expect the government to take up the deficit? That's the way of the free market?

"Free market" is a relative term; it's up to government to decide just how free it wants markets to be. "Capitalism" is just a catch-all term for the freer end of the spectrum -- no government has ever wanted markets completely free. Governments put their thumb on the scale all the time for all manner of reasons -- some honorable, some less so. Subsidies to workers are one of the ways government transfers wealth from the rich to the poor. Stopping workers and employers from making mutually beneficial trades is one of the ways government transfers wealth from the rich and poor to the middle class.

Workers, powerless to negotiate a better deal,

But of course most workers are not powerless to negotiate a better deal. The great majority of workers aren't subsidized and are getting a better deal; and if they need to improve their negotiating power, unionization is legal. Government subsidies are a tool for helping the subset of workers who face personal obstacles to succeeding in the labor market; they're not for keeping the economy viable.

must be supported by government subsidies? What if that wasn't available? Riots? Revolution? Let them eat cake?

Quite possibly, if the number of workers who can't make it on their own is too high. But why would it be that high? Riots, revolution and let them eat cake happened not because France was capitalist -- it wasn't -- but because France blew its budget on wars of choice and paid the bills by suppressing its economy with tariffs and by regressive taxes on the poor that the nobility was exempt from.

In a society with such great wealth and resources, it's obscene.

Yes, if subsidies weren't available it would be obscene. That's why they're available.

You appear to be coming at this from a point of view of ignoring individual circumstance and assuming that the working class is an undifferentiated mass -- as though "Millions of American adults who earn low wages rely on federal programs to meet basic needs" meant a hundred and fifty million. Since some companies aren't paying some workers enough for "the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport", you're arguing as though companies in aggregate aren't paying workers in aggregate enough for "the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport". The latter would create a sustainability problem; but doing it on a case-by-case basis doesn't.

Not everyone knows how to increase an employer's income enough to cover the entire cost of "the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport". Why should such people be prohibited from covering as much of that cost as they can? And why should they be prohibited from learning on the job and thereby upgrading their skills to the point where they do know how to increase an employer's income enough to cover those costs?

 

[steve_bank]

Amazon workers getting food stamps.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's not hard to grasp, if workers are paid rates that are so low that it doesn't allow them to pay for the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport, where the shortfall is paid by government subsidy, the government subsidy enables the firm to keep paying their workers sweet fuck all for their time and labour because, well, the government is taking care of it

Is that how capitalism is supposed to work?

Pay fuck all and expect the government to take up the deficit? That's the way of the free market?

Workers, powerless to negotiate a better deal, must be supported by government subsidies? What if that wasn't available? Riots? Revolution? Let them eat cake?

In a society with such great wealth and resources, it's obscene.

Removing the government support wouldn't make the companies pay more, it would just lower the standard of living of the people in those jobs.

The point was that there is a power imbalance that prevents many workers from negotiating a better deal for themselves, and this makes it necessary for the government to aid/subsidize people who are working for a living, doing productive work, helping to generate profits for a company, yet are paid so poorly that they cannot meet their basic needs.

Free market economics? "Maximise profits, pay fuck all, the government can take care of them?"

You are making the fundamental fallacious assumption that the work is somehow being subsidized. A look at history shows that's not the case--the worker not getting enough to live on doesn't raise wages.

 

[DBT]

What logical justification do you have for claiming that a subsidy to a worker is a subsidy to her employer?

It's not hard to grasp, if workers are paid rates that are so low that it doesn't allow them to pay for the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport, where the shortfall is paid by government subsidy, the government subsidy enables the firm to keep paying their workers sweet ... all for their time and labour because, well, the government is taking care of it

That appears to be magical thinking. By what cause-and-effect mechanism does the government subsidy enable the firm to keep paying so little?

"Keep paying", you say. That expression refers to continuation of an existing arrangement, which implies before the subsidy was provided the firm was already paying some worker a rate so low that it doesn't allow him to pay for the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport. Apparently that was working for the firm, so why would it have stopped if the worker remained unsubsidized? If you mean the worker would have stopped coming to work, that's not terribly plausible, since he was already making a choice to keep coming to work under those conditions, and his reasons for doing so wouldn't go away just because a government didn't start subsidizing him. And in the event that he does stop coming to work, the firm will presumably just hire somebody else to do the same job, at the wage the market is bearing. Marginal workers are entering and dropping out of the labor market all the time.

The way a government subsidy to poor people is actually likely to affect prices is by changing workers' calculations of what they can afford to do. Some of them will no longer need to work; the ones who still need to work will have a cushion that lets them be choosier about what jobs to take. It will in general make the poor less desperate. Being less desperate improves anyone's negotiating position. And since some will stop working or will keep looking until they find better jobs, the supply of workers filling the demand for people to do low-skill jobs will decrease. Both those effects will drive up the market wage. So a government subsidy will more likely stop firms from paying workers such low rates.

Is that how capitalism is supposed to work?

Pay ... all and expect the government to take up the deficit? That's the way of the free market?

"Free market" is a relative term; it's up to government to decide just how free it wants markets to be. "Capitalism" is just a catch-all term for the freer end of the spectrum -- no government has ever wanted markets completely free. Governments put their thumb on the scale all the time for all manner of reasons -- some honorable, some less so. Subsidies to workers are one of the ways government transfers wealth from the rich to the poor. Stopping workers and employers from making mutually beneficial trades is one of the ways government transfers wealth from the rich and poor to the middle class.

Workers, powerless to negotiate a better deal,

But of course most workers are not powerless to negotiate a better deal. The great majority of workers aren't subsidized and are getting a better deal; and if they need to improve their negotiating power, unionization is legal. Government subsidies are a tool for helping the subset of workers who face personal obstacles to succeeding in the labor market; they're not for keeping the economy viable.

must be supported by government subsidies? What if that wasn't available? Riots? Revolution? Let them eat cake?

Quite possibly, if the number of workers who can't make it on their own is too high. But why would it be that high? Riots, revolution and let them eat cake happened not because France was capitalist -- it wasn't -- but because France blew its budget on wars of choice and paid the bills by suppressing its economy with tariffs and by regressive taxes on the poor that the nobility was exempt from.

In a society with such great wealth and resources, it's obscene.

Yes, if subsidies weren't available it would be obscene. That's why they're available.

You appear to be coming at this from a point of view of ignoring individual circumstance and assuming that the working class is an undifferentiated mass -- as though "Millions of American adults who earn low wages rely on federal programs to meet basic needs" meant a hundred and fifty million. Since some companies aren't paying some workers enough for "the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport", you're arguing as though companies in aggregate aren't paying workers in aggregate enough for "the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport". The latter would create a sustainability problem; but doing it on a case-by-case basis doesn't.

Not everyone knows how to increase an employer's income enough to cover the entire cost of "the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport". Why should such people be prohibited from covering as much of that cost as they can? And why should they be prohibited from learning on the job and thereby upgrading their skills to the point where they do know how to increase an employer's income enough to cover those costs?

Magical thinking lies in a company expecting the government to pay a part of their employees wages because they can get away with paying substance rates.

And the point being that without collective bargaining individual workers have little or no power unless they have skills that happen to be in demand. This has been explained numerous times.

 

[DBT]

It's not hard to grasp, if workers are paid rates that are so low that it doesn't allow them to pay for the basics of rent, food, clothing, transport, where the shortfall is paid by government subsidy, the government subsidy enables the firm to keep paying their workers sweet fuck all for their time and labour because, well, the government is taking care of it

Is that how capitalism is supposed to work?

Pay fuck all and expect the government to take up the deficit? That's the way of the free market?

Workers, powerless to negotiate a better deal, must be supported by government subsidies? What if that wasn't available? Riots? Revolution? Let them eat cake?

In a society with such great wealth and resources, it's obscene.

Removing the government support wouldn't make the companies pay more, it would just lower the standard of living of the people in those jobs.

The point was that there is a power imbalance that prevents many workers from negotiating a better deal for themselves, and this makes it necessary for the government to aid/subsidize people who are working for a living, doing productive work, helping to generate profits for a company, yet are paid so poorly that they cannot meet their basic needs.

Free market economics? "Maximise profits, pay fuck all, the government can take care of them?"

You are making the fundamental fallacious assumption that the work is somehow being subsidized. A look at history shows that's not the case--the worker not getting enough to live on doesn't raise wages.

If workers do not get a pay rate that is sufficient to meet their basic needs, therefore require assistance from the government, they are for all practical purposes being subsidized. The company benefits by not having to pay a higher rate.

 

[DBT]

"Millions of Americans employed at some of the country's largest companies have had to rely on food stamps and Medicaid, with giants like Walmart and McDonald's employing the most workers whose income is subsidized by taxpayers, according to a new study.

The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog, released a study commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., last month based on data provided by 11 states.

The report found that, in every state studied, Walmart was one of the top four employers whose workers rely on food stamps and Medicaid. McDonald's is among the most subsidized employers in at least nine states.

Walmart employs about 14,500 workers in Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina, Tennessee and Washington who rely on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, the study showed, while McDonald's employs about 8,780 SNAP recipients in those states.

More than 2% of the Walmart workforce in states like Georgia and Oklahoma have had to rely on Medicaid benefits, a number that rises to more than 3% in Arkansas, where the company is based.

Other corporate giants who have a large number of workers relying on federal benefits included Amazon, Dollar Tree, Dollar General, Burger King, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Subway, Uber...."

Study: Taxpayers subsidize “starvation wages” at McDonald's, Walmart

The study showed that 70% of Americans who rely on food stamps or Medicaid have full-time jobs.

www.salon.com

 

[Bomb#20]

...ten thousand years of farming hasn't been long enough to wrap their minds around the new reality that zero-sum-game thinking has become hopelessly, unethically, obsolete.

Confusing production and distribution just so one can win.

Having faith that production and distribution are separable problems just so one can feel self-righteous, ...

Thank you for proving my point.

Which point of yours did I prove for you? Were you trying to make the point that thinking up an unworthy motive to impute to the other guy is a really easy way to get out of substantively addressing the topic in dispute? You proved that all by yourself; all I did was repay you in like coin.

If you're claiming I proved I was confusing production and distribution, show your work.

As to zero-sumism, it's treated as self-evident truth by certain opponents of labor unions.

Any opponent in particular? Or was that just a Trumpian "people are saying"?

I don't want to violate this board's rules against personal attacks.

I point out leftists exhibiting a zero-sum-game mentality pretty often and it's never been construed by moderators as a personal attack. I'm pretty sure if you simply quote somebody opposing labor unions with a zero-sum-game argument, nobody will see that as a TOU violation.

Capitalist countries have independent labor unions. Socialist countries invariably prohibit them, ...

Define "socialist countries".

Who, me?

"A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. " - Wikipedia

"Socialism is a left-wing to far-left economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership." - Wikipedia​

If you regard Wikipedia as unreliable...

socialism noun 1: "a theory or system of social organization that advocates the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, capital, land, etc., by the community as a whole, usually through a centralized government." - dictionary.com

socialism noun 1: "any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods" - Merriam-Webster

socialism "An economic system in which the means of production are controlled by the state." - OED​

This also seems to me an attempt to take credit for what one opposes.

Um, what is it you say I'm taking credit for that you say I oppose?

Why on earth would you imagine an individualist pro-capitalist ideologue ought to try to break up big businesses? ...

Because they end up dominating the economy and making non-collectivist employment very limited.

The appropriate sort of economy for individualists is an economy of small farmers and artisans and shopkeepers. Because anything larger than a mom-and-pop business is collectivist.

Talking about voluntary agreement to participate in collectivism evades the essential point, and it raises serious questions about the commitment to individualism of those making such agreements.

Well, in the first place, thank you, Humpty-Dumpty. "Individualism" doesn't automatically mean whatever the heck you say it does without regard to what other people use it to mean.

individualism noun 1
"a (1): a doctrine that the interests of the individual are or ought to be ethically paramount
also : conduct guided by such a doctrine
(2): the conception that all values, rights, and duties originate in individuals
b: a theory maintaining the political and economic independence of the individual and stressing individual initiative, action, and interests" - Merriam-Webster​

You are making an argument about petrividualism, not individualism.

And in the second place, even if it were true that individualism implied opposition to anything larger than mom-and-pop businesses, that in no way implies an ideologically motivated individualist ought to try to break up big businesses. Even if he hates them, he is not the only individual, and part of individualism is respect for all individuals' rights, not just for his own individual interests.

This may be a hard thing for authoritarians to wrap their minds around, but not everybody thinks he has a right to make others follow his dictates. For example, I'm for free speech. Communists are against free speech. Going by your reasoning, I as a free speech supporter "ought to" favor censoring communists, since if they get their way they'll censor us all. But that's not how it works. Free speech is for everyone, even communists. If somebody wants to advocate communism, I don't agree with what he says but I'll defend his right to say it.

Likewise, if an individualist hates big businesses, so what? If other individuals' choices to organize themselves into big businesses end up dominating the economy and making what your Humpty-Dumpty language labels "non-collectivist" employment very limited, so what? Rights and duties originating in individuals does not imply other individuals have a duty not to compete with his favorite economic model, and does not imply he has a right to stop other individuals' customers from making their individual choice to buy from a big business instead of a mom-and-pop. So why on earth would that individualist's preference for a mom-and-pop economy trump his commitment to letting other individuals make their own choices in life? "I had to destroy individualism in order to save it?"

Talking about voluntary agreement to participate in "collectivism" is the essential point. "Collectivism" is not a synonym for "cooperation", no matter how much leftists would like it to be. The essential point is who makes the decision about which activities a person cooperates in: the individual or the collective.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You are making the fundamental fallacious assumption that the work is somehow being subsidized. A look at history shows that's not the case--the worker not getting enough to live on doesn't raise wages.

If workers do not get a pay rate that is sufficient to meet their basic needs, therefore require assistance from the government, they are for all practical purposes being subsidized. The company benefits by not having to pay a higher rate.

You are assuming that all workers have the same needs. Look to the distant past--what actually happened is the workers with higher needs starved (or, more likely, their children starved) while the workers with lower needs barely made it. The lack of a government subsidy didn't force higher wages.