Alcohol & Welfare Programs: Topics on today's show

[jeremiah]

right on man, thanks for posting that stevef. sounds a lot like my own experience, sans anyone in my family running for office.
(you weren't the only one who read through kaufmann's posts)

i've noticed a sort of overlap in reasoning among friends and others i've talked to who think deeply through socialism/capitalism and still remain passionately for one but against the other. one will say america is becoming far too socialistic, but still considers america a capitalist nation thinking it worth a fight to restore her to the purer form she once thrived in. another will generally scoff at what they see as a few lame attempts at social reform or just grimly grant any socialist policies in america to be somewhat of a start, but a less diluted form must me instituted for america to indeed flourish.

i found it interesting how both groups are unsatisfied with america's last 3-5 decades. and both point to a more pure form of their respective ideologies as the redress. only this unadulterated form they long for has never been experienced by anybody. then both readily agree on the corruptibility of the humans who govern these systems.

many disagree, but i think this is reason enough to circumspectly reconsider what both sides are saying and make serious steps towards concession unto community. as wholes, socialism and capitalism may seem like oil and water, but i think their components may be interchanged and assimilated to compensate all.


grace and peace...

[kaufmannphillips]

steve7150 wrote:
Socialist countries one by one are learning they have uncompetitive economies in a competitive world. You can't have nanny states and expect to maintain your standard of living except by borrowing debt and then hiding the debt. The game is up and the socialist house of cards is collapsing. There are a few socialist success stories if a country happens to have abundant natural resources already in place, but if a socialist country actually has to manufacture and produce it's own goods it can't do it competitively. The unions are to strong, the pension plans are to lucrative, the retirement ages to young, the birth rates to low and a general anti business sentiment.

A decent country, that treats its workers and its citizens well, may find it hard to match prices head-to-head with indecent countries that exploit their workers and their citizens. And so it behooves decent countries to develop strategies that take this into account: e.g., maximizing their capacities to meet the needs of their citizens internally; positioning their industries shrewdly to address areas of demand that are not easily met by exploitative societies; forming trade alliances with other like-minded societies; and of course, working to expand the influence of their social philosophies, so that there might be fewer and fewer competitors who are willing and/or able to exploit their own people.

I emphatically support unions as a counterweight to imperial employers. But it must be recognized that unions can exploit the economic system, just like any other player in the system who acquires too much leverage over against its competitors.

It seems desirable to develop an economic construct where labor and shareholders are not in competition with each other; when laborers comprise a major portion of the shareholders in a company, then they are more naturally poised to embrace balanced priorities, and not just apply themselves to a perpetual push for higher wages and more generous benefits.

steve7150 wrote:Of course the opposite end of the spectrum with unrestrained capitalism leaves to many workers in misery, so some form of responsible capitalism may strike the best balance. I like our form of government which dissipates centralized power from the executive branch although it often produces inaction and gridlock. I think resisting centralized power is worth the price of an apparently slow moving government.

It might be hard to manage a form of responsible capitalism, without meeting a certain threshold of centralized power to pose against irresponsible capitalists.

I am not a purist: I am open to considering and trying out different policies that are not utterly socialist. For example, I could support a system of corporate development that is somewhat similar to our patent system: the entrepreneurial shareholders are entitled to profits from a start-up for x number of years; after that period, the corporation is surrendered to the ownership of its employees (and/or, perhaps, to the state).

[kaufmannphillips]

thrombomodulin wrote:
History does show miserable working conditions, but I don't see how it makes the case you are stating. Unions and minimum wage laws were not the reason for the improvement for workers well being. One of the strongest arguments of economics is that minimum wage laws hurt the very people it is intended to help, and unions do nothing more than benefit what group of workers at the expense of forced exclusion of another group of workers. The true cause of improved working conditions over the past centuries is the progress made in the "division of labor" and "capitial accumulation", it should not be attributed to unions or minimum wage laws.

Which is why countries without unionization and decent pro-worker legislation boast comparable working conditions to those in the US. I hear factories in China are every bit as pleasant and munificent as those in... oh wait, um, nevermind.

[kaufmannphillips]

SteveF - Thank you for your kind response. It is important to hear multiple sides to issues. {cf. Proverbs 18:17}

[steve7150]

A decent country, that treats its workers and its citizens well, may find it hard to match prices head-to-head with indecent countries that exploit their workers and their citizens. And so it behooves decent countries to develop strategies that take this into account: e.g., maximizing their capacities to meet the needs of their citizens internally; positioning their industries shrewdly to address areas of demand that are not easily met by exploitative societies; forming trade alliances with other like-minded societies; and of course, working to expand the influence of their social philosophies, so that there might be fewer and fewer competitors who are willing and/or able to exploit their own people.








We have seen this experiment in action, it's called the Euro-Zone. These decent socialist countries borrowed money well beyond their means to maintain the decent citizens life styles as the decent politicians wanted to maintain their power and status. Eventually the decent citizens felt more and more entitled to work less, retire earlier, have less children but more material things and have their decent big socialist big daddy government pay for everything by borrowing more and more until one day the party ends.
Anyway these centralized run economies always look great in theory and on paper but are unsustainable over time in the real world.

[jeremiah]

hello steve,

Anyway these centralized run economies always look great in theory and on paper but are unsustainable over time in the real world.

might you agree that on the other hand this sword can cut both ways, whether centralized or privatized? neither of these systems are without negative pitfalls if checks are not kept on the lurking avarice of humans, whether collectively in governments, or personally in ourselves.

grace and peace...

[thrombomodulin]

thrombomodulin wrote:
Unions and minimum wage laws.

Which is why countries without unionization and decent pro-worker legislation boast comparable working conditions to those in the US. I hear factories in China are every bit as pleasant and munificent as those in... oh wait, um, nevermind.

It strikes me as being ad-hoc to attribute the working conditions in China relative to the USA to lack of unions and labor laws. It seems that one could just as well attribute it to the socialist system their country has been subjected to, the size of the population relative to the abundance of natural resources, or one of any other of the thousands of differences between the USA and China.

It is simply not possible to discern cause and effect of particulars from the observation of a series of historical events where there are multitudes of influences. After all, who can prove that the influence of one particular factor was dominate over all others (e.g. that labor unions did more or less for workers than any other factor?). Rather, whether one recognizes it or not, each person has various aprori assumptions about cause and effect and interprets historical events accordingly - as you have done here.

Since historical events are not subject to controlled experiments***, and since human beings make choices, it is prudent to take a deductive, praxeological approach rather than inductive approach to discerning cause and effect in the realm of human action in general and economics in particular.

*** From what I have read, even those cases which come closest to a controlled experiment - namely, the division of east and west Germany, or North and South Korea are replete with differences between the countries despite the similarity of language, culture, geography, etc,. If you wish affirm the appropriateness of an inductive methodology, then I expect you would be able to find reasons why the more socialistic of these pairs of nations had not performed as well economically, lest one otherwise reach the conclusion that a more socialist State is economical worse than a less socialistic State.

[kaufmannphillips]

steve7150 wrote:
We have seen this experiment in action, it's called the Euro-Zone. These decent socialist countries borrowed money well beyond their means to maintain the decent citizens life styles as the decent politicians wanted to maintain their power and status. Eventually the decent citizens felt more and more entitled to work less, retire earlier, have less children but more material things and have their decent big socialist big daddy government pay for everything by borrowing more and more until one day the party ends.
Anyway these centralized run economies always look great in theory and on paper but are unsustainable over time in the real world.

Some of the "decent socialist countries" in Europe have been doing just fine economically. Others have not.

I do not claim that every socialist country has been well-run. And I suppose you might not claim that every capitalist country has been well-run. Nations quite simply can be managed badly.

But consider this: on one hand, we have a socialist society that has been overly indulgent and has reached the end of their credit-line; on another hand, we have a capitalist society where 95+% of the citizenry lacks the resources to influence or seriously challenge exploitation by the wealthy elite. Which society is more likely to make significant corrections?

When a socialist country runs out of cash flow, it inexorably has to make timely adjustments. But when a capitalist country is an exploitative oligarchy, it can continue on rather indefinitely.

[kaufmannphillips]

Perry wrote:
Leave the thinking to people who are smarter than you. Also, let them spend your money too... you're not smart enough for that either.

The real question, of course, is not whether brody or Perry might be charitable with their fistfuls of dollars in a way that is smart enough and generous enough. The real question is whether or not our society as an aggregate would be likely to meet the aggregate needs of the poor, absent some manner of coordination and compulsion.

If you think that our society would meet these needs under a laissez-faire paradigm, then try to mount a convincing argument for why that is plausible. Do you think that, if our government gets out of the welfare business, Americans are likely to increase their voluntary giving to the needy by five-and-a-half times (cf. my posting to brody above)?

And beyond this practical question, there are further dimensions. When decent people shoulder the lion's share of the cost of providing for the needy, and indecent persons shrink from contributing to that cost, what is likely to happen to the balance of monied power and influence? Who is going to have more money to influence the marketplace? Who is going to have more money to apply to influencing voters?

Perry wrote:
You just be a good Boxer and keep pulling the plow. Napoleon knows best.

Yeah, the real problem was that Napoleon had a coordinated and compulsory system for meeting the needs of vulnerable animals. That's what Orwell was pillorying.

[Perry]

Yeah, the real problem was that Napoleon had a coordinated and compulsory system for meeting the needs of vulnerable animals. That's what Orwell was pillorying.

No, the problem was that, once empowered, Napoleon made all the decisions, and he didn't care a whit for the other animals. If you think that a socialist system is less likely to lead to an empowered elite who control a disenfranchised majority, then you're forgetting that, once he get's the dogs on his side, he does whatever he bloody well wants to do. And the harder Boxer works, the quicker he's rewarded with a trip to the glue factory.

Of you can keep bleating that socialism, which does nothing to reward productivity, is good, and the meritocracy of capitalism is baaaaaad, and I expect you will.