Why must candidates/politicians lie to voters about outsourcing?

[ksen]

so much faith

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Why do voters want to ban outsourcing?

But when voters vote against outsourcing by electing someone who enacts laws to punish companies for this, they are imposing their will onto consumers who want the benefits of cheap foreign imports. It's not just a personal choice by the voter, but a dogma that they are imposing onto consumers which curtails the choices of consumers and forces them to pay higher prices.

Your blind worship of the consumer is getting ridiculous. Consumption doesn't exist in a vacuum, and people impact other people's choices by their choices more than you think.

You haven't pointed out any harm consumers do to others by having access to lower-priced foreign imports. Since this is a benefit everyone can take advantage of, as it's in their interest, it's good for the whole economy, not any one interest group.

Whereas to protect uncompetitive workers who could be replaced by cheap labor or by machines is something that benefits only a small percent of the population and imposes costs onto everyone.

How is society at large made better off by giving to a small class such a subsidy that everyone else has to pay for?

Another example: Is a drug addict who spends all his money on crack cocaine "always right" . . .

If it's criminal, maybe not. But that's not what we're talking about. Obviously criminal behavior is wrong, whether committed by a consumer or by a wage-earner or by an investor or by a welfare recipient or whoever. We're not talking about that.

Criminal activity is just something that government says is not allowed. In democracy that ultimately means the voters, at least in principle. So why should the wishes of voters trump the consumer in this case, but not in some other case?

The voters can make anything illegal, or rather, vote for a candidate who could make it illegal. But why should they make something illegal? Why should they vote that way? Why should they vote to ban evolution? or to behead atheists? The voters need to have a reason for wanting such a thing. Anything they want to ban they should have to have a reason for banning.

Why should they ban outsourcing? It's not good enough to just say this is what they want. You have to give a REASON WHY it or anything else should be banned or why certain people should be beheaded or tortured or whatever someone wants to do to them.

There are reasons for the drug laws. Every country in the world puts restrictions on addictive drugs. So the principle that consumers should have whatever they want does not apply to something like that. Some of the drug laws may be wrong, but that's not the topic here. In general it's legitimate to have some drug laws, and reasons are given for these restrictions, such as why it's wrong to give them to children and so on.

So let's restrict the debate here to why consumers should be denied something. If you think there is damage to society by letting companies outsource jobs, then tell us what the damage is. Don't just say that some voters want this. Explain why they want it, or what the harm is from the outsourcing that we should vote to have it banned.

You are just arbitrarily picking and choosing where you think the consumer is right, and when the voter is right.

It's not arbitrary that some restrictions should be put on drugs, including selling them. Likewise alcohol and so on. These are debatable as to what the restrictions should be. But there are reasons, and so it is not arbitrary.

But you have to give the reasons. You can't just say that voters want this or that. The question is: WHY do they want it? If they want to burn witches, we have to ask them why, don't we? We don't just agree with anything the voters want, no matter what it is.

So, why do they want to ban outsourcing? There has to be a reason beyond just saying that the voters want to ban this.

Why should ANY consumers, or even ONLY ONE consumer, ever be forced to pay a higher price than necessary, if there is a less costly way to produce that product or service?

The fallacy here is that just paying someone less doesn't make the production any more efficient, all other things being equal.

It does make it "more efficient" in that it makes the cost lower and thus the price to the consumer lower, which is an essential element of what "efficient" means.

The cost stays the same, it's just paid by someone else.

I.e., it's paid by that "someone" who is paid less. And what's wrong with that? Aren't there times when someone's value decreases and so they're paid less? Why shouldn't they be paid less if their value goes down? Why shouldn't the price paid to a seller, or the price paid for anything, go up or down as the value of what is sold changes?

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The "consumers" = everyone, not any one special class, such as wage-earners.

It's not a win when the consumer doesn't have the money to buy the cheaper goods.

If those with less money are poorer because they were replaced by a machine/robot/computer, this makes most consumers better off, because of the lower prices due to the new technology and lower cost of production.

This benefit to all consumers offsets the income loss to those workers who got replaced.

So the overall net effect is that consumers generally have MORE spending power as a result of the improved production and lower costs and lower prices.

The higher real income to consumers due to improved technology more than offsets the income loss to a small number of uncompetitive workers who lost their jobs.

And this same economic "win" also applies in the case of outsourcing, which produces the same economic benefit of lower cost and thus lower prices to consumers.

Except, of course, if consumers all get their money from picking money trees, which is what certain people seem to believe.

I.e., the wage-earners = the consumers, which is not true.

Wage-earners are not the consumers any more than right-handers are the consumers. Just because a certain class of humans are the majority of the population does not mean that that class is identical to the consumers.

 

[arkirk]

Politicians have to 'lie' (i.e. say things you disapprove of) because they have to deal with the real world as it actually is, rather than a right-wing fantasy economy. They're relatively sophisticated, and have to deal with a much more complicated world.

Maybe if they didn't have to buddy up with campaign funders, they would better reflect the needs of the people they represent. Lumpenproletariat's OP on outsourcing only points to politicians. It is really big business interests...like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that constantly commits lies of omission. What pisses me off is politicians like Diane Feinstein and Hillary and Franken who talk a fairly good talk till it comes time for them to work on real problems. Then they becone war hawks. death penalty advoctes and environmental nit wits.

 

[Bomb#20]

if outsourcing is so great why don't ceo positions get outsourced?

They do. I outsourced the ceo-of-a-car-company position every time I bought a Japanese car.

 

[Bomb#20]

So, if people as voters want to keep the jobs for factory workers, what are you complaining about?

But I'm asking WHY they want to keep those uncompetitive jobs instead of enjoying the benefits of the lower prices we gain from increased trade and competition and outsourcing.

Two reasons.

(1) A voter is more afraid of losing his job than he is of having to pay a higher price for some good or service. The utility of money and the disutility of risk are nonlinear, so the fact that the overall practice of outsourcing has a positive expected value to him in dollar terms doesn't necessarily mean it isn't negative in utility terms.

(2) An American voter is almost certainly a member of the 5%; if he's educated then he's probably a member of the 1%. His monkeysphere consists of others like himself: other 1%ers and 5%ers. Outsourcing is the practice of 0.1%ers in America trading directly with the 95% who are in foreign countries but are competitors of 5%ers in America, thereby cutting the 5% out of the deal. To outlaw outsourcing is to force the 0.1% to trade with the 5% instead of trading with the 95%, thereby transferring a great deal of wealth from the 0.1% and from the 95% into the pockets of the 5%, and especially into the pockets of the 1%. Of course they choose to do this. This is not based on hatred or bigotry against the 95%; the hatred and bigotry is reserved for the 0.1%. The interests of the 95% are neglected simply because there are too many of them and they are too far away to be part of the 5%'s monkeysphere.

If you aren't familiar with the monkeysphere concept, it bears reading up on.

"What do monkeys have to do with war, oppression, crime, racism and even e-mail spam? You'll see that all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense once we go Inside the Monkeysphere."

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Are voters incapable of knowing why they choose A rather than B?

The purpose is to provide to people what they want, as much as possible.

So, if people as voters want to keep the jobs for factory workers, what are you complaining about? That's just another way of providing to people what they want.

But I'm asking WHY they want to keep those uncompetitive jobs instead of enjoying the benefits of the lower prices we gain from increased trade and competition and outsourcing.

Two reasons.

(1) A voter is more afraid of losing his job than he is of having to pay a higher price for some good or service. The utility of money and the disutility of risk are nonlinear, so the fact that the overall practice of outsourcing has a positive expected value to him in dollar terms doesn't necessarily mean it isn't negative in utility terms.

But then why don't these same voters want to crack down on companies that replace workers with machines/robots/computers? Why aren't they afraid of losing their job when it's a machine that replaces them, just as they are if it's cheap foreign labor that will replace them?

Are candidates demagoguing against companies that replace workers with machines? Surely there is a lot of this replacing of workers going on, just as there is outsourcing of the jobs. Yet there is no campaign against companies for replacing workers with machines. The voters are not poised to respond impulsively to demagoguery against companies for this, and yet they respond to the outsourcing demagoguery like wolves pouncing on red meat tossed to them.

A complete answer to our question here has to explain this difference. What is driving the voters to hate companies for outsourcing jobs (replacing workers with cheap foreign labor) but not for eliminating jobs with new technology? Why are voters afraid of one form of job elimination but not the other?

(2) An American voter is almost certainly a member of the 5%; if he's educated then he's probably a member of the 1%. His monkeysphere consists of others like himself: other 1%ers and 5%ers. Outsourcing is the practice of 0.1%ers in America trading directly with the 95% who are in foreign countries but are competitors of 5%ers in America, thereby cutting the 5% out of the deal. To outlaw outsourcing is to force the 0.1% to trade with the 5% instead of trading with the 95%, thereby transferring a great deal of wealth from the 0.1% and from the 95% into the pockets of the 5%, and especially into the pockets of the 1%. Of course they choose to do this. This is not based on hatred or bigotry against the 95%; the hatred and bigotry is reserved for the 0.1%. The interests of the 95% are neglected simply because there are too many of them and they are too far away to be part of the 5%'s monkeysphere.

This of course is not what the voter would say in answer to the question. This is a kind of psycho-analysis of the voters to explain what drives them, and is not the explanation the voters themselves would give.

Perhaps the voters are incapable of ever explaining why they vote this way or that, and instead are driven by some kind of impulse they could never understand. Perhaps there is really never any "reason" for voters to vote one way or another. They just react like Pavlovian dogs that salivate when the bell rings.

This kind of answer to the question -- why does someone choose A rather than B? -- seems to undermine ever asking any question about decision-making, or any questioning of any choice or judgment anyone ever makes. Because the answer is always that the choice springs from impulses unknown to the one being asked, and so no one is ever capable of answering why they make any choice or judgment about anything.

Further, this answer still skips over the point about replacing workers with machines. This monkeysphere analysis should also lead to the result that voters would respond to a candidate who demagogues companies for replacing workers with machines. And yet they do NOT respond do this (or would not), or they are not in a state of mind to vote for a candidate who would choose to demagogue against companies for this, whereas they are responsive to candidates who demagogue companies for outsourcing.

Why this difference?

If you aren't familiar with the monkeysphere concept, it bears reading up on.

"What do monkeys have to do with war, oppression, crime, racism and even e-mail spam? You'll see that all of the random ass-headed cruelty of the world will suddenly make perfect sense once we go Inside the Monkeysphere."

Do these same monkeys prompt us to go on the Internet and post our opinions on message boards? Is the monkeysphere the real answer to every issue posted here? Is it the real answer to all the questions posed in Plato and Descartes and Marx and so on?

I'm not sure this kind of answer will do.

What monkeys were driving the publishers of the above website to come up with this theory?

 

[Jayjay]

Fuck the consumers

Your blind worship of the consumer is getting ridiculous. Consumption doesn't exist in a vacuum, and people impact other people's choices by their choices more than you think.

You haven't pointed out any harm consumers do to others by having access to lower-priced foreign imports. Since this is a benefit everyone can take advantage of, as it's in their interest, it's good for the whole economy, not any one interest group.

Whereas to protect uncompetitive workers who could be replaced by cheap labor or by machines is something that benefits only a small percent of the population and imposes costs onto everyone.

How is society at large made better off by giving to a small class such a subsidy that everyone else has to pay for?

How is society made better by punishing a small minority to give everyone else an insignificant subsidy? That's a textbook definition of tyranny of the majority.

As for harm cause by outsourcing (not "lower-priced foregn imports" as you are trying to change the subject), there is unemployment which strains welfare programs and in turn requires higher taxes, there is ncreased social tension that harms everyone, there is potential of brain drain and losing competitiveness in long term. That's not to say that all outsourcing is always bad, but that it's not the magical cure-all that you are pretending it to be.

Another example: Is a drug addict who spends all his money on crack cocaine "always right" . . .

If it's criminal, maybe not. But that's not what we're talking about. Obviously criminal behavior is wrong, whether committed by a consumer or by a wage-earner or by an investor or by a welfare recipient or whoever. We're not talking about that.

Criminal activity is just something that government says is not allowed. In democracy that ultimately means the voters, at least in principle. So why should the wishes of voters trump the consumer in this case, but not in some other case?

The voters can make anything illegal, or rather, vote for a candidate who could make it illegal. But why should they make something illegal? Why should they vote that way? Why should they vote to ban evolution? or to behead atheists? The voters need to have a reason for wanting such a thing. Anything they want to ban they should have to have a reason for banning.

And why should consumers be exempt from this criticism?

Take pharmaceutical companies for example. There is more money spent developing drugs for male erectile dysfunction, depression, weight loss and other 1st world problems than there is for cheap AIDS vaccination. There are over a miliion people dying of AIDS in Africa every year, but drug manufacturers use their resources for boner pills instead. This is a choice made by consumers, not by legislators or voters. Your contention that nothing consumers ever do is obviously wrong, even in cases where we are talking about perfectly legal activities.

Yes, there are reasons for banning certain drugs. But there are also good arguments for legalizing some if not all drugs. Manrijuana for example. And what about alcohol? Coffee? The legality is not an issue here, it's morality. You can't in one breath claim that consumers can do no wrong, and then claim that consumers can do wrong if they do something that voters decided is against the law... as long as the law is not arbitrary. But if laws are to any degree arbitrary, then the opposite is also true: that some things that should be illegal are in fact legal. And there are a lot of issues where good arguments can be made for both for and against.

Why should ANY consumers, or even ONLY ONE consumer, ever be forced to pay a higher price than necessary, if there is a less costly way to produce that product or service?

The fallacy here is that just paying someone less doesn't make the production any more efficient, all other things being equal.

It does make it "more efficient" in that it makes the cost lower and thus the price to the consumer lower, which is an essential element of what "efficient" means.

Bullshit. Just moving money from one pocket to another is not more efficient.

The cost stays the same, it's just paid by someone else.

I.e., it's paid by that "someone" who is paid less. And what's wrong with that? Aren't there times when someone's value decreases and so they're paid less? Why shouldn't they be paid less if their value goes down? Why shouldn't the price paid to a seller, or the price paid for anything, go up or down as the value of what is sold changes?

How does their value go down, if as you said, the quantity and quality of the work being done stays the same, and the demand for the product stays the same?

 

[Jayjay]

There's no way to identify exactly how much of the price reduction was due to outsourcing and how much to other cost-saving factors. Obviously the improved technology makes much of the cost-savings possible.

But it is a virtual certainty that some of the price reduction is due to outsourcing. All cost savings contribute to the lower prices. It's not due to any one factor alone.

You'd have to show that HP increased its outsourcing during between the time when you bought the printers . . .

I.e., that it continued its outsourcing, which of course it did. Outsourcing is not something that happens only once. The time period was from about 1990 to 2010. Obviously HP did lots of continued outsourcing during this period. And the company obviously saved on costs by doing this, and it is virtually impossible for this savings not to have contributed to lower prices or keeping down prices.

You used the word "obviously" three times without actually showing anything. Of course outsourcing is a continued activity, not a one-time thing. But the point is you'd have to show that HP increased outsourcing and fired people during that time period to make printers cheaper. Sure, they may have done that. But you have not demonstrated it in any way. You might as well have claimed that the price reduction was "obviously" due to sun spot activity.

Also you have not speculated how much of the price reduction could be attributed to it... the example of using $1500 printer vs. $30 printer is irrelevant if in the end the savings from outsourcing amount to $5 and the rest is due to automation and technology.

. . . and that the cheaper price is not fully explained by increased automation in HP plants, better processes, or more advanced technology becoming available.

EVERY cost savings contributes to lower prices. It's silly to say that price savings has to be due to only one factor. There's no reason to believe that lower prices is "fully explained" by any one factor alone.

And that is not what I said, as I listed several other factors that have contributed to reduced cost of printers. You are the one who used the example and tried to insinuate that the price drop was "obviously" due to outsourcing.

You could disprove my theory about HP printers if you could show that HP reduced its outsourcing during the time period of 1990-2010. I.e., that they reduced the number of foreign workers doing the same work as American workers, or reduced the foreign jobs while increasing the American jobs. I.e., if you could prove Sen. Barbara Boxer was lying when she accused Fiorina of outsourcing jobs during her term as CEO of HP.

Well it's a fact they increased number of people employed in America. But there were also huge layoffs after the merger with Compaq to get rid of duplicate functions. As for outsourcing, the issue is not whether HP outsourced. It's whether it affected the prices of its printers in a significant way. Besides, I don't have to disprove squat. The burden of proof is on you when you are making a positive claim, not for me to prove a negative.

Example one: you brought up Samoa in another thread as an example where minimum wage caused measurable unemployment. Yet in other studies minimum wage increase does not cuase measurable unemployment.

But those "other studies" do not prove that there is no increase in unemployment. Only that the increased unemployment cannot be measured.

In Samoa the evidence is clear that there were higher unemployment levels as a result, because the impact was so great. Whereas in all the cases you're referring to the impact on the workforce is too small to be able to measure the impact on the unemployment level. Which doesn't mean there was no impact, but only that the impact was probably small. But, as in Samoa, the net impact overall is probably negative or an overall net harm to the economy.

And by analogy, isn't it possible that the effect of outsourcing to consumer prices is also "too small to be able to measure"? You can make a theoretical claim that outsourcing reduces prices because otherwise companies wouldn't do it. But if the price increase is insignificantly small, it means that other effects can dominate both the decision making process, as well as overall impact to society in terms of side effects of increased unemployment for example.

Example two: Outsourcing as brain drain. When you move a factory to China for cheap labor, it means that eventually the Chinese will pick up how to make your products at least as well as you do . . .

Even so, consumers are made better off. Whatever benefits consumers is what matters. The whole function of business is to serve consumers.

You keep repeating that as a article of faith. But I say, to hell with the consumer. You getting $5 off your HP printer if it means laying off 30,000 people is not worth it.

The purpose of businesses is not to serve consumers. The purpose is to serve society. Or to make profit, which is the more immediate motivation. But your worship of the consumer is neither.

. . . and thus you are less competitive than you would have been otherwise.

We can trust companies to do whatever makes them more competitive and not less competitive. They know how much outsourcing is good for the company and how much is too much. The profit motive is all that is necessary to drive them to make the right decisions about this.

Most of the complaining about outsourcing does not come from a concern about the long-term health of the companies or their competitiveness, but rather from an obsession on the workers who get laid off and a fear that these will rise up in anger and go on a rampage.

We can trust companies to try to make profit. But we can't trust that companies making profit is always the best for society, the company, or even best for consumers. That's why there are laws and regulations, but they can never be perfect. In my example, which you cut in a dozen pieces to try to obfuscate the point, I showed that sometimes a short term profit motive may cause long term loss of competitiveness, for example.

 

[Jayjay]

Bollocks. Nobody here is advocating that inane analogy except you. And I addressed the fallacy in this post already: Outsourcing is not equivalent to replacing workers with machines. It's equivalant to just paying workers less.

In terms of the impact on the economy the two are equivalent. There is no change in the economy from outsourcing that is not also the case with replacing the workers with machines. Workers lose their jobs, the company's costs are reduced, and consumers benefit from lower prices than there would have been without the cost savings

All cost savings are good, as long as the same quality and quantity of production is maintained. Or if the quality or quantity is increased without any increase in cost, or the cost per unit is reduced.

Clearly, the two are not the same. Because a machine does not replace a person, it adds to it. If the person previously employed can find other employment, even if less paid, the total productivity of the economy increases. And if he doesn't find a job and just stays unemployed, the total productivity stays the same and we have one more person with 40 more hours of free time.

When you take one job away from a person and give it to a different person, the productivity stays the same (assuming as you said quality and quantity is maintained). if the new person happens to be paid less, it's just money transfer away from the two workers to the end consumer (or the middle man).

Let's say worker A is paid $5 by business owner B who sells the product to consumer C for $6. B takes $1 profit for himself.

If B replaces A with a machine that costs $4 to rent and operate, he can lower his price to $5 and still make the same profit. A is fired and has to get a job elsewhere that pays less than $5 (because if he could get such a job before, he wouldn't have been working for B the first place). Or maybe he doesn't get a job and just enjoys some extra free time. In either case, the benefit to the economy is twofold: the consumer gets its product cheaper, and the total productivity is increased.

But A is pissed off because he now has to go on welfare or whatever, the same as if he had been replaced by a worker who is paid less.

Where do you think worker B comes from? That's right... he is taken away from "welfare or whatever". So the total impact to global economy is still the same. You could consider of course local economy, but then that's just a transfer from local welfare payments and tax payer burden increasing, and the foreign equivalent decreasing. So the benefit to consumers would be coming from tax payers.

However if B simply reduces A's salary to $4 without using a machine, the consumer gets the product $1 cheaper but this isn't inherently better for the economy.

Of course it's better for the economy. The function of the business is to serve the consumers, and a lower price for consumers is always better for the economy. As long as the worker continues to do the job at the lower wage it's better for the economy. The only downside would be if the worker quits and cannot be replaced so that needed work fails to get done.

According to that logic, slavery was better for the economy than non-slavery.

Total productivity stays the same, A does not get any more free time, and he is just pissed off for losing 20% of his salary. This is nothing more than transfer of money from the worker to the consumer.

An uncompetitive worker SHOULD get a reduction.

Then why doesn't he?

Your example here changes the scenario from outsourcing to wage-reduction. You're not comparing outsourcing to the replacing of the worker by a machine. So there's no argument here to show that outsourcing does any more harm than replacing the worker with a machine. In both cases the worker is replaced by something that does the work cheaper and is pissed off. But in both cases the consumers are better off.

My example did not change the scenario, it showed that wage reduction and outsourcing are equivalent in terms of economic effect (globally anyway), wheras automation and outsourcing are not. Clearly consumer is better off in both cases, but in case of outsourcing it's a zero-sum game, whereas adding machines to do the work increases productivity and is a net gain.

 

[barbos]

Irony is, outsourcing is delaying robotization.
Without unsustainably cheap chinese labor we would have had more and more robots in manufacturing.
So outsourcing is a step back in terms of efficiency and technology.
Of course robots will get cheaper than Chinese labor eventually. Question is, will they be chinese or american

 

[lpetrich]

Except, of course, if consumers all get their money from picking money trees, which is what certain people seem to believe.

I.e., the wage-earners = the consumers, which is not true.

Wage-earners are not the consumers any more than right-handers are the consumers. Just because a certain class of humans are the majority of the population does not mean that that class is identical to the consumers.

So {wage earners} and {consumers} are disjoint? Is there nobody who is both a wage earner and a consumer?

If {wage earners} and {consumers} are disjoint, then consumers must not get their money from wages, and that's why I talk about them getting their money from money trees. Each day, they go into their yards and pick money off of the money trees.

 

[Bomb#20]

Two reasons.

(1) A voter is more afraid of losing his job than he is of having to pay a higher price for some good or service. The utility of money and the disutility of risk are nonlinear, so the fact that the overall practice of outsourcing has a positive expected value to him in dollar terms doesn't necessarily mean it isn't negative in utility terms.

But then why don't these same voters want to crack down on companies that replace workers with machines/robots/computers? Why aren't they afraid of losing their job when it's a machine that replaces them, just as they are if it's cheap foreign labor that will replace them?

A number of reasons. At any given time, most people can't be replaced by a machine. There are only a few jobs that are at the cutting edge of automation's capabilities. But most people could be replaced by foreigners. Seeing a stranger replaced by a machine makes us think "Sucks to be him"; seeing him replaced by a different stranger makes us think "That could be me."

Also, people like their cell phones. Most of us understand that the advance of technology is a two-edged sword -- that we can't reasonably expect to get new technological goodies unless other people get new technological goodies too, even if that means the market for somebody's skill set goes away. There's a reason the Luddites have a bad reputation. People see a societal upside in the replacement of workers with labor-saving equipment that they don't see in the replacement of workers with different workers.

Also, people compartmentalize. Human thought is mainly pattern-matching. Firing a worker because there's a machine that does his job triggers different neuron bundles from firing a worker because a different guy will work cheaper. The fact that the two are in some sense economically equivalent won't even be noticed by people who haven't studied economics. Which is most people.

(2) An American voter is almost certainly a member of the 5%; if he's educated then he's probably a member of the 1%. His monkeysphere consists of others like himself: other 1%ers and 5%ers. Outsourcing is the practice of 0.1%ers in America trading directly with the 95% who are in foreign countries but are competitors of 5%ers in America, thereby cutting the 5% out of the deal. To outlaw outsourcing is to force the 0.1% to trade with the 5% instead of trading with the 95%, thereby transferring a great deal of wealth from the 0.1% and from the 95% into the pockets of the 5%, and especially into the pockets of the 1%. Of course they choose to do this. This is not based on hatred or bigotry against the 95%; the hatred and bigotry is reserved for the 0.1%. The interests of the 95% are neglected simply because there are too many of them and they are too far away to be part of the 5%'s monkeysphere.

This of course is not what the voter would say in answer to the question. This is a kind of psycho-analysis of the voters to explain what drives them, and is not the explanation the voters themselves would give.

Perhaps the voters are incapable of ever explaining why they vote this way or that, and instead are driven by some kind of impulse they could never understand. Perhaps there is really never any "reason" for voters to vote one way or another. They just react like Pavlovian dogs that salivate when the bell rings.

This kind of answer to the question -- why does someone choose A rather than B? -- seems to undermine ever asking any question about decision-making, or any questioning of any choice or judgment anyone ever makes. Because the answer is always that the choice springs from impulses unknown to the one being asked, and so no one is ever capable of answering why they make any choice or judgment about anything.

Well, it's good to know the real answer even if it isn't the answer you were hoping for. If you get the answer the voter would have given it will be a reality-avoiding rationalization, so what use is it to you? Besides, if you know the real reason there's at least some prospect of making the unknown impulses known to the voter, and then he might decide he doesn't much like them. It seems to me if you can draw 5%ers attention to the existence of the 95% and to what effects votes in America have on them, some fraction of the 5%ers might rethink the thought processes that led them to imagine that inequality is a sin which there's a moral imperative to remedy by redistribution from the 0.1% to the 5%.

Do these same monkeys prompt us to go on the Internet and post our opinions on message boards? Is the monkeysphere the real answer to every issue posted here?

Only to some of them. A lot of what we do here is just wanking.

Is it the real answer to all the questions posed in Plato and Descartes and Marx and so on?

Marx? Absolutely. Plato and Descartes, I don't know, maybe 50%?

What monkeys were driving the publishers of the above website to come up with this theory?

Just one monkey, David Wong. The publishers amplify his voice because he's clever and wildly entertaining, so he brings them lots of web traffic. If you're asking why he's broadcasting his theory, I don't know, maybe wanking? That's undoubtedly why he wrote his novel, John Dies At The End. Highly recommended!