The vanguard of the Caravan is already in Mexico City, more than halfway to the border

[Loren Pechtel]

There ain't no money to hire any workers.

View attachment 19324

The rich need it for hoarding.

What you fail to understand is that the rich don't actually have that sort of money sitting around. That "wealth" is mostly in the form of businesses--in other words, the means of production. It's not money that could be used to pay workers.

Unless of course the businesses were not owned by the rich but by the workers, but I guess that's just my magic wand talking again. To put it another way, the fact that only rich people own the means of production is not an excuse for paying workers less, it's a reason to change who owns the means of production.

We've been through that in other threads--when the workers own a high-capital business it's impossible to bring on more workers. It's one of these leftist fantasies that has nothing to do with reality.

 

[untermensche]

Isn't it amazing that the dictators of wealth spend the absolute perfect amount on labor?

They could not possibly spend more.

How amazing is their perfection?

The problem is and always will be too few with too much power and wealth.

When that happens millions are shut out of the game. They are superfluous to the needs of the few.

And all is set up to service the needs of the few.

 

[Bomb#20]

I take the inviolable humanity of others as a force of unalterable natural law that must be accommodated, even to the detriment of markets.

That's the difference between a liberal and a leftist.

Yes, if there's one thing leftists are famous for, it's taking the inviolable humanity of others as a force of unalterable natural law that must be accommodated.

Oh no not skulls you shattered my worldview

EDIT: fine, I should have said libertarian leftist. Happy now? Talk to a doctor about that jerking knee of yours.

Dude, you haven't been making generic democratic socialist Bernie Sanders style arguments. You've been making Marxist arguments.

All ideologies wrap themselves in self-congratulatory mythology to avoid too much self-knowledge. Marxists think of themselves as respecting the inviolable humanity of others for exactly the same reason anti-gun-control pro-capital-punishment anti-abortion Christians think of themselves as pro-life: it's a way to feel like the heroes of their own narratives. But people like Lenin and Mao weren't put in power by mass movements of Stalinists. They were put in power with the cooperation of millions of ordinary libertarian leftist Marxists. Those people had the excuse that they didn't know having Marxists in charge was a formula for totalitarianism, mass murder and famine. What's your excuse? You know perfectly well how incredibly dangerous Marxism is to the lives and human rights of the very people you think of yourself as trying to help, and yet you're pushing it anyway. You're like a frustrated doctor trying to get around anti-vaxxers by genetically engineering a measles vaccine into a Spanish flu virus. If you really took the inviolable humanity of others as a force of unalterable natural law that must be accommodated, not just in self-contemplation but in practice, then you would not make Marxist arguments.

 

[ZiprHead]

He said he'd be murdered if deported. He was.

Chirino is one of more than 60 people who have been killed or harmed after being deported, according to Columbia University’s Global Migration Project; the government doesn’t keep track of what happens to asylum-seekers who are deported.

 

[Mumbles]

Meanwhile, failed republican House Speaker Paul Ryan wants more visas for...Irish people.

So, any republicans here, um...do you hear your leaders? Do you understand how they come across?

 

[Max Rockatansky]

Meanwhile, failed republican House Speaker Paul Ryan wants more visas for...Irish people.

So, any republicans here, um...do you hear your leaders? Do you understand how they come across?

I have no problem with work visas, regardless of nation, as long as there is reciprocity as mentioned in the article:
"The bill would give the Irish access to unused E-3 visas, which currently are available only to Australians in "specialty occupations" that require a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent. In return, Ireland would offer additional work visas to Americans, among other concessions.

“The idea here is that this is going to be reciprocal,” said John Deasy, an Irish special envoy to the U.S. “We think it’s important that the flows in the workplace continue between the two countries.”

A single GOP senator is blocking the legislation, the GOP aide said. That represents apparent progress from earlier this month, when six Republicans had put a hold on the bill, according to an Irish-American news website."


https://www.uscis.gov/working-unite...-specialty-occupation-professionals-australia

 

[PyramidHead]

Oh no not skulls you shattered my worldview

EDIT: fine, I should have said libertarian leftist. Happy now? Talk to a doctor about that jerking knee of yours.

Dude, you haven't been making generic democratic socialist Bernie Sanders style arguments. You've been making Marxist arguments.

I'm well aware of that. Bernie Sanders is not what I'm advocating here.

All ideologies wrap themselves in self-congratulatory mythology to avoid too much self-knowledge. Marxists think of themselves as respecting the inviolable humanity of others for exactly the same reason anti-gun-control pro-capital-punishment anti-abortion Christians think of themselves as pro-life: it's a way to feel like the heroes of their own narratives. But people like Lenin and Mao weren't put in power by mass movements of Stalinists. They were put in power with the cooperation of millions of ordinary libertarian leftist Marxists. Those people had the excuse that they didn't know having Marxists in charge was a formula for totalitarianism, mass murder and famine.

That's a lot of nonsense. They were put into power by Bolsheviks, first of all, who were often quite ardently opposed to libertarian socialists and anarchists. The central point of contention between them was that Bolsheviks (and later, Lenin) were of the mind that "Marxists in charge" was not a contradiction in terms. Libertarian communists and anarchists view any separate class or body of authority "in charge" as antithetical to Marx and ultimately self-defeating.

What's your excuse? You know perfectly well how incredibly dangerous Marxism is to the lives and human rights of the very people you think of yourself as trying to help, and yet you're pushing it anyway. You're like a frustrated doctor trying to get around anti-vaxxers by genetically engineering a measles vaccine into a Spanish flu virus. If you really took the inviolable humanity of others as a force of unalterable natural law that must be accommodated, not just in self-contemplation but in practice, then you would not make Marxist arguments.

It's almost as if Marxist thought encompasses more than the top-down single-party manifestation of it that was never advocated by Marx himself.

 

[PyramidHead]

Unless of course the businesses were not owned by the rich but by the workers, but I guess that's just my magic wand talking again. To put it another way, the fact that only rich people own the means of production is not an excuse for paying workers less, it's a reason to change who owns the means of production.

We've been through that in other threads--when the workers own a high-capital business it's impossible to bring on more workers. It's one of these leftist fantasies that has nothing to do with reality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

The Mondragon Corporation is a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. It was founded in the town of Mondragon in 1956 by graduates of a local technical college. Its first product was paraffin heaters. It is the tenth-largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people in 257 companies and organizations in four areas of activity: finance, industry, retail and knowledge.[3] By 2015, 74,335 people were employed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

The Mondragon Corporation is a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. It was founded in the town of Mondragon in 1956 by graduates of a local technical college. Its first product was paraffin heaters. It is the tenth-largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people in 257 companies and organizations in four areas of activity: finance, industry, retail and knowledge.[3] By 2015, 74,335 people were employed.

Please note that I said "high capital".

You're describing a company that works in old low-tech areas.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You missed the whole point of what I said. Poor immigrants have no capital, thus the factory doesn't have any more capital to provide tools for the workers.

What factory are you imagining where workers have to bring their own tools? What century are you living in?

I said nothing of the kind. I'm talking about the ratio of workers to capital.

You very clearly stated: Poor immigrants have no capital, thus the factory doesn't have any more capital to provide tools for the workers. Were you imagining a world where some idiot businessman hires workers unnecessarily and at the expense of tools for them to work with?

Lets take a stable society and add 20% poor immigrants.

So, America, iow, as we've always operated since we stole the land in the first place.

Businesses hire those additional workers but they don't have any more capital with which to buy tools, space etc.

Wow. You actually are arguing that there are idiot businessmen out there who would look at their ledgers and their equipment and their factory space, then say, "We are somehow forced to hire more employees for no coherent reason, but we also need additional equipment for those employees, so we're hopelessly stuck in a binary either/or proposition that no one can resolve by budgeting, because our capital is a closed system and always balances out perfectly to the point where we never make profit and/or can never leverage/manage credit or debt."

 

[PyramidHead]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

The Mondragon Corporation is a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. It was founded in the town of Mondragon in 1956 by graduates of a local technical college. Its first product was paraffin heaters. It is the tenth-largest Spanish company in terms of asset turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country. At the end of 2014, it employed 74,117 people in 257 companies and organizations in four areas of activity: finance, industry, retail and knowledge.[3] By 2015, 74,335 people were employed.

Please note that I said "high capital".

You're describing a company that works in old low-tech areas.

You'll stoop as low as it takes to make sure those boots are licked clean, won't you? It's like I'm talking to a flowchart written by Thomas Malthus.

 

[untermensche]

Please note that I said "high capital".

You're describing a company that works in old low-tech areas.

View attachment 19378

You'll stoop as low as it takes to make sure those boots are licked clean, won't you? It's like I'm talking to a flowchart written by Thomas Malthus.

You're talking to an elitist ass kisser.

Yes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I said nothing of the kind. I'm talking about the ratio of workers to capital.

You very clearly stated: Poor immigrants have no capital, thus the factory doesn't have any more capital to provide tools for the workers. Were you imagining a world where some idiot businessman hires workers unnecessarily and at the expense of tools for them to work with?

Lets take a stable society and add 20% poor immigrants.

So, America, iow, as we've always operated since we stole the land in the first place.

Businesses hire those additional workers but they don't have any more capital with which to buy tools, space etc.

Wow. You actually are arguing that there are idiot businessmen out there who would look at their ledgers and their equipment and their factory space, then say, "We are somehow forced to hire more employees for no coherent reason, but we also need additional equipment for those employees, so we're hopelessly stuck in a binary either/or proposition that no one can resolve by budgeting, because our capital is a closed system and always balances out perfectly to the point where we never make profit and/or can never leverage/manage credit or debt."

We're back to the same old thing of assuming business can afford any leftist pipe dream.

The reality is wages will drop until society approaches full employment. The workers get hurt.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Please note that I said "high capital".

You're describing a company that works in old low-tech areas.

View attachment 19378

You'll stoop as low as it takes to make sure those boots are licked clean, won't you? It's like I'm talking to a flowchart written by Thomas Malthus.

You're taking something that works in certain cases--low capital, low skill jobs and trying to apply it to situations where it utterly fails--very high capital, or things with a great range in the skill levels required. Just because your fantasy says it should work doesn't mean it will.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You very clearly stated: Poor immigrants have no capital, thus the factory doesn't have any more capital to provide tools for the workers. Were you imagining a world where some idiot businessman hires workers unnecessarily and at the expense of tools for them to work with?

So, America, iow, as we've always operated since we stole the land in the first place.

Businesses hire those additional workers but they don't have any more capital with which to buy tools, space etc.

Wow. You actually are arguing that there are idiot businessmen out there who would look at their ledgers and their equipment and their factory space, then say, "We are somehow forced to hire more employees for no coherent reason, but we also need additional equipment for those employees, so we're hopelessly stuck in a binary either/or proposition that no one can resolve by budgeting, because our capital is a closed system and always balances out perfectly to the point where we never make profit and/or can never leverage/manage credit or debt."

We're back to the same old thing of assuming business can afford any leftist pipe dream.

Wtf are you talking about? Deal with the points made, not these idiotic evasions. No business is obligated to hire anyone; they hire based on need. The overwhelming majority of "poor immigrants" that come to this country take menial labor jobs that no one in America will take. They aren't all highly skilled technicians that replace any currently employed people, but if they were, then Capitalism says, "Good for you!" And the less skilled employees get fired and the better skilled new employees get hired as it has always been in this country.

The reality is wages will drop until society approaches full employment.

What "reality" are you basing this upon? Certainly not anything that has historically happened in America, such as when an influx of Irish or Italian immigrants flooded our shores. They too took the menial jobs no one wanted, but wages certainly didn't drop "until society" approached "full employment."

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We're back to the same old thing of assuming business can afford any leftist pipe dream.

Wtf are you talking about? Deal with the points made, not these idiotic evasions. No business is obligated to hire anyone; they hire based on need. The overwhelming majority of "poor immigrants" that come to this country take menial labor jobs that no one in America will take. They aren't all highly skilled technicians that replace any currently employed people, but if they were, then Capitalism says, "Good for you!" And the less skilled employees get fired and the better skilled new employees get hired as it has always been in this country.

You assume that the money to upgrade the equipment will be there if there are the workers to hire. That's nothing like reality.

The reality is wages will drop until society approaches full employment.

What "reality" are you basing this upon? Certainly not anything that has historically happened in America, such as when an influx of Irish or Italian immigrants flooded our shores. They too took the menial jobs no one wanted, but wages certainly didn't drop "until society" approached "full employment."

We have never seen it because we've never been so stupid as to put ourselves in that position.

 

[Bomb#20]

I'm well aware of that. Bernie Sanders is not what I'm advocating here.

All ideologies wrap themselves in self-congratulatory mythology to avoid too much self-knowledge. Marxists think of themselves as respecting the inviolable humanity of others for exactly the same reason anti-gun-control pro-capital-punishment anti-abortion Christians think of themselves as pro-life: it's a way to feel like the heroes of their own narratives. But people like Lenin and Mao weren't put in power by mass movements of Stalinists. They were put in power with the cooperation of millions of ordinary libertarian leftist Marxists. Those people had the excuse that they didn't know having Marxists in charge was a formula for totalitarianism, mass murder and famine.

That's a lot of nonsense. They were put into power by Bolsheviks, first of all, who were often quite ardently opposed to libertarian socialists and anarchists.

Just how many Bolsheviks do you think there were? Are you seriously arguing that 200,000 ardent opponents of libertarian socialism took control of 85 million people without help? Oh, wait a sec. Are you one of the approximately a gazillion ignoramuses who think the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar?

In the 1917 election, Lenin got 9 million votes. (And no, those 9 milllion weren't ardently opposed to libertarian socialists and anarchists; they were mostly voting single-issue for Lenin's "End the war now!" policy.) Chernov's libertarian Socialist-Revolutionary party got 21 million votes. Unfortunately the SR had an internal schism and one side went into coalition with the Bolsheviks. Of course, elections aren't everything -- Lenin's power base was the factory workers' councils. But those weren't packed with ardent opponents of libertarian socialism either until 1918, when the new government kicked the non-Bolsheviks out of the councils.

So yes, Lenin was absolutely put in power with the cooperation of millions of ordinary libertarian leftists. To the Bolsheviks, people who thought like you were useful idiots.

The central point of contention between them was that Bolsheviks (and later, Lenin) were of the mind that "Marxists in charge" was not a contradiction in terms. Libertarian communists and anarchists view any separate class or body of authority "in charge" as antithetical to Marx and ultimately self-defeating.

What's your excuse? You know perfectly well how incredibly dangerous Marxism is to the lives and human rights of the very people you think of yourself as trying to help, and yet you're pushing it anyway. You're like a frustrated doctor trying to get around anti-vaxxers by genetically engineering a measles vaccine into a Spanish flu virus. If you really took the inviolable humanity of others as a force of unalterable natural law that must be accommodated, not just in self-contemplation but in practice, then you would not make Marxist arguments.

It's almost as if Marxist thought encompasses more than the top-down single-party manifestation of it that was never advocated by Marx himself.

It's almost as if the fact that historical Marxists never ever delivered the kind of society they promised when they were allowed to reorganize society is imagined by modern Marxists to be an argument in their favor.

"A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. ... In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.

What shall we say of him? Surely this, that he was verily guilty of the death of those men. It is admitted that he did sincerely believe in the soundness of his ship; but the sincerity of his conviction can in no wise help him, because he had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him. ...​

William K. Clifford, THE ETHICS OF BELIEF​

Marx was that shipowner. So are you. If you took seriously the inviolable humanity of others as a force of unalterable natural law that must be accommodated, you would not try to subject them to such a high-risk experiment as Marxism.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

You assume that the money to upgrade the equipment will be there if there are the workers to hire.

Again I must ask, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? The jobs the immigrants fill are ones no one else will do (e.g, menial labor; service industry positions). In regard to skilled labor—such as that required by modern day manufacturing—those jobs are entirely determined by the industry, not by the labor pool.

Iow, all workers find their own jobs; all employers offer only the jobs they need filled. If you can’t get a job at the factory, then you will have to come up with some other means to work, such as taking the jobs that no other Americans (iow, “white people”) will take or start your own business, which is what has traditionally been the role most immigrants have filled (entrepreneurial). Precisely because other positions had already been filled.

You seem to be under the impression that industry is somehow required to hire everyone that shows up.

The reality is wages will drop until society approaches full employment.

What "reality" are you basing this upon? Certainly not anything that has historically happened in America, such as when an influx of Irish or Italian immigrants flooded our shores. They too took the menial jobs no one wanted, but wages certainly didn't drop "until society" approached "full employment."

We have never seen it because we've never been so stupid as to put ourselves in that position.

Horseshit. Until only relatively recently—1921 to be precise, with the passage of the Emergency Quota Act—we have had an essentially open border policy when it came to immigrants. It is in fact what built America from its earliest colonists up until 1921.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Again I must ask, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? The jobs the immigrants fill are ones no one else will do (e.g, menial labor; service industry positions). In regard to skilled labor—such as that required by modern day manufacturing—those jobs are entirely determined by the industry, not by the labor pool.

Iow, all workers find their own jobs; all employers offer only the jobs they need filled. If you can’t get a job at the factory, then you will have to come up with some other means to work, such as taking the jobs that no other Americans (iow, “white people”) will take or start your own business, which is what has traditionally been the role most immigrants have filled (entrepreneurial). Precisely because other positions had already been filled.

You seem to be under the impression that industry is somehow required to hire everyone that shows up.

The reality is wages will drop until society approaches full employment.

What "reality" are you basing this upon? Certainly not anything that has historically happened in America, such as when an influx of Irish or Italian immigrants flooded our shores. They too took the menial jobs no one wanted, but wages certainly didn't drop "until society" approached "full employment."

We have never seen it because we've never been so stupid as to put ourselves in that position.

Horseshit. Until only relatively recently—1921 to be precise, with the passage of the Emergency Quota Act—we have had an essentially open border policy when it came to immigrants. It is in fact what built America from its earliest colonists up until 1921.

Industry isn't required to hire everyone who shows up. However, when the supply of workers exceeds the demand wages drop considerably until there isn't a big surplus anymore. We saw some of that in 2008. Open borders would make 2008 seem like a utopia.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Industry isn't required to hire everyone who shows up.

Great, so you can dispense with that nonsense.

However, when the supply of workers exceeds the demand wages drop considerably until there isn't a big surplus anymore.

Which would only be true for skilled labor, not menial labor. Menial labor always pays poorly and the number of such jobs can never exceed demand as menial labor is primarily service oriented. Iow, people with money will always need someone without money to do shit that the people with money don’t want to do.

We saw some of that in 2008.

No, actually, we didn’t. What happened in 2008 was certain businesses took advantage of the market collapse—and everyone’s fears relating to it—in order to force one worker to do the job of five for the same salary. The result was businesses predictably failing because their workforce was overburdened and fucking things up, which is precisely why we saw an increase in hirings—continuing to today—throughout Obama’s administration.

Iow, management saw an opportunity and/or were forced to cut back on employees, but to the respective company’s detriment. That detriment in turn forced company’s to expand and hire again or fail. In most instances, it was not a necessity; it was a choice—and a poor one at that—that in turn resulted in a realization among management that their businesses could not sustain an overburdened work force.

The last piece of that self-correction has been wage rates, but those too are finally on the rise as these same companies further realize that not only can they not simply cut their workforce in fifths and still turn out a viable product or service, but they must also pay those people precisely because they have employment options again.

Open borders would make 2008 seem like a utopia.

Horseshit. Once again, just as with 2008, everything will simply find its level and normalize. It would be identical to what we have now only no children dying. Those who could make the trek would simply fill menial jobs no one else wants. Those with any skills will be in competition for existing jobs. The rest will have to create their own enterprises just like everyone else.

This is no different from making Pueto Rico a state. Or Kansas, for that matter.