"throw capitalism at it" ad absurdum

[coloradoatheist]

I thought we wanted to look at this morally.

You simply want to claim the current morality is beyond examination.

For us to look at this morally, we'd have to agree on a shared moral premise. You think I'm either amoral or immoral. I think the same about you.

It's interesting that most societies have defined stealing, but it's never been defined as consenting parties being underpaid for work.

 

[Elixir]

Their pay should be what you would expect for the same work, not other work.

Is it "moral" to look at 'their' pay and neglect MY pay?
I would expect at least twice what I draw if I was doing the same work for someone else. But if I drew that much, I'd have to fire three other people.
Moral is as moral does, and it ain't always the same thing, simpler though that would make it. Exploiting others to the full extent of the law doesn't even begin to figure into it in my case.
FWIW, my pay while flipping burgers is <$0, as I have to pay for the burgers and get no compensation for flipping them.

There are some posters here who appear to me to be morally bankrupt, but Jason is not one of them.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

For us to look at this morally, we'd have to agree on a shared moral premise. You think I'm either amoral or immoral. I think the same about you.

It's interesting that most societies have defined stealing, but it's never been defined as consenting parties being underpaid for work.

Most societies include non-consensual as part of the definition of most crimes.

According to people like unter, the way I can become a billionaire business tycoon is to hire people and underpay them. I don't need to hire them to do anything in particular, I don't need to sell any particular product or service to willing or unwilling customers. All I need to do is underpay my employees, and they are by definition underpaid because they are employees. Once I hire enough of these underpaid employees then I'll be a dictator billionaire tycoon the following week.

 

[Elixir]

According to people like unter, the way I can become a billionaire business tycoon is to hire people and underpay them. I don't need to hire them to do anything in particular, I don't need to sell any particular product or service to willing or unwilling customers. All I need to do is underpay my employees, and they are by definition underpaid because they are employees. Once I hire enough of these underpaid employees then I'll be a dictator billionaire tycoon the following week.

Unter obviously means well, and he probably harbors some utopian vision wherein his moral dictates make sense. In this non-alt reality though, his attempts to describe it come off as emotional rage against The Machine. Kinda sad, really.

 

[coloradoatheist]

According to people like unter, the way I can become a billionaire business tycoon is to hire people and underpay them. I don't need to hire them to do anything in particular, I don't need to sell any particular product or service to willing or unwilling customers. All I need to do is underpay my employees, and they are by definition underpaid because they are employees. Once I hire enough of these underpaid employees then I'll be a dictator billionaire tycoon the following week.

Unter obviously means well, and he probably harbors some utopian vision wherein his moral dictates make sense. In this non-alt reality though, his attempts to describe it come off as emotional rage against The Machine. Kinda sad, really.

And the societies that started with that vision turned out horribly wrong.

 

[untermensche]

I thought we wanted to look at this morally.

You simply want to claim the current morality is beyond examination.

For us to look at this morally, we'd have to agree on a shared moral premise. You think I'm either amoral or immoral. I think the same about you.

Fine.

What gives one the moral right to dictate over another? Excluding adults dictating over children.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

For us to look at this morally, we'd have to agree on a shared moral premise. You think I'm either amoral or immoral. I think the same about you.

Fine.

What gives one the moral right to dictate over another? Excluding adults dictating over children.

Freely given mutual consent of all adult parties involved. I start my moral basis with freely given mutual consent, and proceed from there. There are some exceptions to my use of that principle; criminals no doubt would never say they consent to going to jail, and children do not have adult agency to give consent.

 

[Elixir]

Unter obviously means well, and he probably harbors some utopian vision wherein his moral dictates make sense. In this non-alt reality though, his attempts to describe it come off as emotional rage against The Machine. Kinda sad, really.

And the societies that started with that vision turned out horribly wrong.

Well yeah - they generally begin with the premise "everyone has to be kind, honest and - just like ME!".
It would be easy to build airplanes if metals were lighter than air.

 

[untermensche]

Fine.

What gives one the moral right to dictate over another? Excluding adults dictating over children.

Freely given mutual consent of all adult parties involved. I start my moral basis with freely given mutual consent, and proceed from there. There are some exceptions to my use of that principle; criminals no doubt would never say they consent to going to jail, and children do not have adult agency to give consent.

Is consent free if there is no other reasonable option?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Freely given mutual consent of all adult parties involved. I start my moral basis with freely given mutual consent, and proceed from there. There are some exceptions to my use of that principle; criminals no doubt would never say they consent to going to jail, and children do not have adult agency to give consent.

Is consent free if there is no other reasonable option?

I don't consider facts of nature to be coercion. It is a fact that to acquire food, a person has to either raise it or buy it. One can be given the food, but that means that the giver has to raise it or buy it. Raising it is work, and to buy it you need money to buy it, and to acquire that money requires work. That is a fact of nature.

If I want to fly from New York to London, I need to board an airplane. No matter how much I wish I could fly like Superman, I am not coerced into getting on the airplane.

 

[untermensche]

Is consent free if there is no other reasonable option?

I don't consider facts of nature to be coercion. It is a fact that to acquire food, a person has to either raise it or buy it. One can be given the food, but that means that the giver has to raise it or buy it. Raising it is work, and to buy it you need money to buy it, and to acquire that money requires work. That is a fact of nature.

If I want to fly from New York to London, I need to board an airplane. No matter how much I wish I could fly like Superman, I am not coerced into getting on the airplane.

Is having to be in a dictatorship to get food a fact of nature?

Could one not also be in a democratic workplace and get food?

If one has no reasonable choice to be in a democracy is choosing a dictatorship a free choice?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

You see unter, unlike you I think the carrot and the stick are two different things. I hope you are familiar with the analogy I'm making. In behavior psychology they equate to reinforcement and punishment. With regards to reinforcement and punishment, you have a grand total of four options: apply reward, withhold reward, apply punishment, withhold punishment. To encourage a desired behavior, you can either apply reward or withhold punishment. To discourage an undesired behavior, you can either withhold reward or apply punishment.

The government is that entity with a legal monopoly on punishment, applying the stick. Criminals also have sticks, but they have them outside the monopoly. Businesses, outside government interference, do not have any sticks with which to motivate people, they only have carrots. They can either apply or withhold the carrot. No matter how badly you want that carrot, it is still not a punishment to withhold the carrot. Your option is to find a way to convince that business to apply the carrot, or if you cannot to go to another business and see if they will apply the carrot instead.

I do not see withholding carrots as necessarily immoral, but as amoral instead. It is immoral to steal a carrot. Applying the carrot can be moral, I have no revulsion to generosity, but that generosity must be freely given.

I do not consider the workplace environment to be dictatorial. Dictators have the power of the stick. The ability to say "you aren't doing your job, therefore no more carrots" is not a stick.

 

[Axulus]

I don't consider facts of nature to be coercion. It is a fact that to acquire food, a person has to either raise it or buy it. One can be given the food, but that means that the giver has to raise it or buy it. Raising it is work, and to buy it you need money to buy it, and to acquire that money requires work. That is a fact of nature.

If I want to fly from New York to London, I need to board an airplane. No matter how much I wish I could fly like Superman, I am not coerced into getting on the airplane.

Is having to be in a dictatorship to get food a fact of nature?

Could one not also be in a democratic workplace and get food?

If one has no reasonable choice to be in a democracy is choosing a dictatorship a free choice?

Ways to acquire food in our society:
-Apply for food stamps and use that
-Go to a food bank
-Earn money to buy it, either as an employee or working for yourself. You can even work for a nonprofit or a co-op company.
-Find and join a collective and work on a collective farm
-Ask your parents or other relatives
-Ask your neighbors
-Go to a soup kitchen

"They are forced to work or starve to death" is a false dichotomy. No one dies from starvation in our society. It is a completely baseless statement.

 

[untermensche]

You see unter, unlike you I think the carrot and the stick are two different things. I hope you are familiar with the analogy I'm making. In behavior psychology they equate to reinforcement and punishment. With regards to reinforcement and punishment, you have a grand total of four options: apply reward, withhold reward, apply punishment, withhold punishment. To encourage a desired behavior, you can either apply reward or withhold punishment. To discourage an undesired behavior, you can either withhold reward or apply punishment.

The government is that entity with a legal monopoly on punishment, applying the stick. Criminals also have sticks, but they have them outside the monopoly. Businesses, outside government interference, do not have any sticks with which to motivate people, they only have carrots. They can either apply or withhold the carrot. No matter how badly you want that carrot, it is still not a punishment to withhold the carrot. Your option is to find a way to convince that business to apply the carrot, or if you cannot to go to another business and see if they will apply the carrot instead.

I do not see withholding carrots as necessarily immoral, but as amoral instead. It is immoral to steal a carrot. Applying the carrot can be moral, I have no revulsion to generosity, but that generosity must be freely given.

I do not consider the workplace environment to be dictatorial. Dictators have the power of the stick. The ability to say "you aren't doing your job, therefore no more carrots" is not a stick.

The power to fire somebody at will is a stick. A pretty big stick. To be fired in today's economy can be a major disaster.

You can say that a clear dictatorial power structure is not a dictatorial power structure all you want. It is absurd.

But you very quickly gave up a moral examination of the situation and sank back into pure opinion.

If the only power structure a person reasonably can find to meet their need to eat is a dictatorial power structure is joining one a free choice? Yes or No?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So if I were to start a business with my own capital/credit and hired you to work for me, why should you be given a say in how that business is run?

Can you meet your goals without another human?

If not that human is as essential as you are.

But ultimately if people had a real choice between working in a democratic institution vs working for a dictator, the want-to-be dictators would have no workers.

Obvious nonsense.

I build space widgets. A widget will produce 10,000N of thrust forever when energized by 1 watt of power. I'm the only guy who knows how to build them. It takes me 500 hours of effort to build one widget.

However, one step in the process requires three hands to correctly insert the thingamajig. I need 10 minutes of work from an assistant to do this, no special training required.

Are you really saying the assistant is as valuable as I am?

 

[untermensche]

Is having to be in a dictatorship to get food a fact of nature?

Could one not also be in a democratic workplace and get food?

If one has no reasonable choice to be in a democracy is choosing a dictatorship a free choice?

Ways to acquire food in our society:
-Apply for food stamps and use that
-Go to a food bank
-Earn money to buy it, either as an employee or working for yourself. You can even work for a nonprofit or a co-op company.
-Find and join a collective and work on a collective farm
-Ask your parents or other relatives
-Ask your neighbors
-Go to a soup kitchen

"They are forced to work or starve to death" is a false dichotomy. No one dies from starvation in our society. It is a completely baseless statement.

What about people that want to enter a specific field? Work at something interesting to them. And they have no capital.

What are their options?

Can they always chose a nonprofit?

Can they find any democratically run work environments?

Are they making a free choice?

 

[untermensche]

Can you meet your goals without another human?

If not that human is as essential as you are.

But ultimately if people had a real choice between working in a democratic institution vs working for a dictator, the want-to-be dictators would have no workers.

Obvious nonsense.

I build space widgets. A widget will produce 10,000N of thrust forever when energized by 1 watt of power. I'm the only guy who knows how to build them. It takes me 500 hours of effort to build one widget.

However, one step in the process requires three hands to correctly insert the thingamajig. I need 10 minutes of work from an assistant to do this, no special training required.

Are you really saying the assistant is as valuable as I am?

If they are needed for final production they are as essential.

Not in some inferior position because there is a division of labor. With as much an ownership of profits as all who labor.

Remember this is human morality. Treating human labor as the thing of greatest value.

And that includes intellectual labor. But owning while others manage is not intellectual labor.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Your definition of stealing is different than anybody else's definition of stealing. If one kid wants to mow my lawn for $7 and one kid wants to do it for $10 I am not stealing $3 from the one kid. There are many businesses that aren't operating at a profit, so is it immoral in that case that workers are "stealing" from the company?

If the kid that only takes $7 does so because he will starve unless he takes it you are not stealing.

You are corrupt though. Taking advantage of dire circumstances.

If there is some operation that makes money that money belongs to all who labored for it.

And how it should be divided should not be decided by a few dictators at the top who take the most for themselves. That is theft.

Capitalist theft takes place within capitalist institutions.

Not in your backyard.

You are looking at this through your biases, not at reality.

Nothing says the $7 is stealing. It could be the kid wanting $10 is simply being greedy, the market price is $7.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The power to fire somebody at will is a stick. A pretty big stick. To be fired in today's economy can be a major disaster.

The power to withhold carrots is absolutely not a stick. It is the very essence of immorality to confuse the two.

If the only power structure a person reasonably can find to meet their need to eat is a dictatorial power structure is joining one a free choice? Yes or No?

If the only power structure one can choose is that of sticks, it is deeply immoral.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Morality plays a point, but we are talking the difference between an agreed upon choice compared to a non agreed choice. Rape is having sex with someone who says no, but having consensual sex isn't. He's trying to say that consensual sex is rape.

The transaction is moral if you pay what you think you would deserve for the same service.

Not when you pay as little as current conditions allow.

1) If you pay what you would do it for why would you ever pay anyone to do it? Your world will have no trade of any kind. Welcome to the stone age.

2) You are committing the standard leftist fallacy of thinking everyone is identical except for what society does to them. We know better. Like coloradoatheist I'm allergic to grass. When I take the weed eater to the grass that grows under the trees I have to wear an unpleasant N100 mask (I'm not talking about the cheap ones you find in the hardware store that don't even carry a rating!) and those are only good for one use only--to stop and take a drink would mean using a new one.

3) You are assuming there are no other factors involved. Perhaps the $7 kid is next door, the $10 kid is 4 blocks away and wants and additional $3 for the time spent hauling the mower back and forth.