Capitalism

[creativesoul]

obsidian,

Just out of curiosity, would you like for me to go back through this thread and *directly* address ALL of your claims/counters? I certainly do not want you to feel as though I am ignoring them. Or, perhaps there are some in particular which you would like for me to analyze?

 

[creativesoul]

obsidian earlier wrote:

capitalism is about cooperation- figuring out the most efficient way for people to cooperate with each other without having the fruits of their labor taken from them by force. a single industrialist is useless- he needs to trade with others, goods and ideas, and everyone is better off for it. the poor get jobs, and products, that they wouldn't have the resources or ingenuity to create themselves. and the industrialists get rich. is it perfect? hell no. but to say that it is anti-cooperation is a butchering of the facts.

i would question the use of the term "social responsibility" (since when do i have a responsibility to other people that i haven't chosen to take on) but the thing with capitalism is- its completely agonostic on the issue. it doesn't *force* people to fulfill responsibilities that they never accepted in the first place, yet it *allows* people to do so if they wish.

and yes, it is inherently individualistic, but we are inherently individuals. i can't think or eat for anyone else. we are better off when we cooperate, which is why we should as much as possible. but enforced cooperation is a different animal entirely.

you speak of labor being devalued as if it has some *intrinsic* value- it doesn't. value implies a process of valuation. someone decides how much my labor is worth to them. they offer me a job with a given wage. i either accept or reject based on whether or not their valuation of me is acceptable in my eyes.

Do these stand alone, or do they necessarily need contextual development?

 

[creativesoul]

Ever heard of 'planned obsolescence'?

 

[obsidianavenger]

i put off replying to this because i wanted to figure out how to make my distinction clearer. though you mentioned that it's a side issue that we need to get past, in my opinion, it is the crux of our disagreement. you say that the fruits of someone's labor are being stolen, because you define the fruits as the financial value of the final product, which is sold to the customer. what i have been trying to get at is that the employee's labor is not the only effort that went into the final product. the owner also contributes. i will try to explain this in terms of your example.... given an invoice with a labor charge of 50 dollars and a materials charge of 10 dollars- the total is 60. but say the owner of this business only paid his employee 20 dollars for the work he did. assume, even, that the type of work is irrelevant. the employee physically went and did whatever it was that needed doing. the owner, however, advertised the service, arranged the job, procured the materials and arranged for them to be available to the employee, etc. were it not for this person, the laborer and customer would never have been in contact and the job would never have been done. all of this takes effort, though not of the physical sort. nonetheless, this effort was essential to the final product. thus the final product is *partially* the fruit of the owner's labor as well as the employee's. you falliciously assume that only the employee's labor goes into the final product, when that is not the case. perhaps their labor is more unpleasant, but it doesn't follow that from it being unpleasant their contribution is greater.

Right!

If the labor is being sold for 10 dollars, it does not follow that it is *worth* any other amount. If material cost is included and/or absorbed into the labor charge, then that amount is being dishonestly represented as something other than what it is to begin with. Dishonesty is immoral isn't it?

That is another point which I have yet to have made concerning capitalism today. We're getting there.

sorry, i think you misread me here. "it" referred to the final product not the labor. my fault for being unclear.

if you mean the case of an owner writing on an invoice a labor charge of 10 dollars when, in fact, he only paid his employee 5, that would be dishonest, yes. and that is immoral. but "capitalism" as such does not reward such behavior in the long run, because those who artificially inflate their costs lose money and market share to those who don't.

Your traveling into a domain outside of my example, and therefore the above does not apply to it. However, the above *IS* quite representative of capitalism today and so it should be addressed accordingly, especially considering how it had been briefly touched upon earlier. The underlying aspect of the above is the implementation of machinery into a previously man-made process and how that changes the manufacturing process itself.

Would you agree here?

while i think it *could* fit your example, since no actual job or method was specified in it, yes, i would say your analysis is otherwise accurate.

1.) Not true. One example of lean manufacturing principles being put into place after the consumer cost has been established equating to a lower consumer cost would support your claim. I would be willing to bet that you cannot supply one.

2.) Thus, the mutual benefit comes into question, and is determined by the owner's sense of ought.

1. not necessary. the assertion that a less skilled laborer generally makes less than a more skilled laborer can be ascertained simply by comparing pay scales for workers of different skill levels. my point was not about LMP specifically but the relationship between skill level and pay scale generally.

2. again, because the owner has controlling rights over his property. he doesn't pay the employee out of a sense of charity... he does so due to the employee's percieved value. his "objective value" as you have been attempting to define it is a gross overestimation, because that number fails to take into account other factors and actions that lead to the creation of the final product. the labor is not the *only* contributing factor and thus the "fruits" of that labor cannot be determined through simple arithmetic.

Your equivocating between the 'fruits of one's own labor', which has been irrefutably shown as the customer labor charge, and the worker's actual wage. The two are not the same thing, and the amount of that particular difference is determined by the owner's sense of ought... legally so.

no, what i am saying is that according to *your* logic, in order to be moral, a capitalist must pay a more skilled and less skilled worker the same amount if the final product they contribute to is worth the same amount (as determined by amount paid by a customer for a product), regardless of how much actual labor the workers in question put in.

And hence, we must focus upon *exactly* who is benefitting from this implementation - and HOW. If the two types of work are not *worth* the same amount to the owner, then why IS the customer being charged as though they are while the worker's receive less of that charge?

Because the owner can blatently increase the profit margin by disregarding the inequality of everyone else's mutual benefit. Abuse of power.

That was one of my points. Capitalism necessarily rewards immoral behavior.

capitalism in fact does *not* reward ever increasing profit margins, because at some point customers will abandon you for those who sell a product at a cheaper price. furthermore, your assertion that the owner owes something to the consumer is an even greater stretch than assuming they owe something to the employee. the vast majority of services and products encompassing the economy are completely unnecessary. people want them and they are willing to pay for them. for that small number of things that are necessary (food, clothing...) none of them fit your example of the invoice with a labor charge on it, and further, competition is fierce. profit margins in the grocery industry (net) average out around 6%.

I am saying that the objective *worth* of the labor itself is equal to what that labor is being sold for. That is irrefutable. I am also saying that that amount is the only measure which *objectively* constitutes the total 'fruits of one's labor' in modern society. Therefore, in the example I have provided, I have objectively established not only how the 'fruits principle' is being deviated from, but also *exactly* how and why that has legally become the case. I have shown you *exactly* how capitalism necessarily rewards unnecessary immoral behavior.

and i am saying that this "worth" is refutable, because the labor is *not* the only factor that goes into the final product. if an employer wishes to lie on their invoice and claim that labor cost them more than it did to increase profits that is their prerogative. however, in competition with other businesses, this is *not* a good long term strategy because customers will seek out cheaper products, and thus it is *not* an immoral behavior that is rewarded necessarily in a capitalistic system.

Ever heard of 'planned obsolescence'?

indeed. its rather f*cked up. but, again, not a smart long term strategy, because people will gravitate away from products that self destruct. granted, if all manufacturers participate in such behaviors, theres not much choice. however, theres not much motivation for *all* manufacturers to stick to such a plan because the rewards for making your product even a little bit sturdier than the competition are great.

 

[creativesoul]

obsidian,

The misunderstanding is now apparent. My example uses a limited example, usually of highly skilled labor, to prove my point. There *are* industries which *do* have a specific itemized charge called the customer labor charge in the billing process. It *is* what the customer is charged - per hour - for the labor involved in the manufacturing of the product.

That being said, there *are* other points which I need to address.

 

[creativesoul]

creativesoul wrote:

1.) Not true. One example of lean manufacturing principles being put into place after the consumer cost has been established equating to a lower consumer cost would support your claim. I would be willing to bet that you cannot supply one.

2.) Thus, the mutual benefit comes into question, and is determined by the owner's sense of ought.

obsidian replied:

1. not necessary. the assertion that a less skilled laborer generally makes less than a more skilled laborer can be ascertained simply by comparing pay scales for workers of different skill levels. my point was not about LMP specifically but the relationship between skill level and pay scale generally.

It is obvious that a less skilled worker normally receives a lower wage than a highly skilled one. That was not in question. You claimed this in an attempt to claim that society benefitted from my example...

... he(the owner) also generally sells the product made by the less skilled laborer for less money.

The point was that when LMP are put into place, it very rarely - if ever - results in a lower consumer cost, therefore - not true. I asked for an example, because I have yet to have witnessed that being the case. The consumer cost is normally long since established, and therefore the public had become accustomed to that cost. The owner pockets the difference. That is the point in the implementation of LMP. It affords the owner the ability to replace highly-skilled workers with less skilled ones while keeping the consumer cost the same, thereby increasing the profit margin. That is THE purpose.

The consumer sees no increase in benefit. The worker sees no increase in benefit. The fundamental principle of forming a society is to increase the benefit of all in that society through cooperative means. The cost could be reduced and the profit margin still be greater. The cost could remain the same along with the pay scales, and the profit margin *still* become greater, therefore what actually happens is unnecessary.

2. again, because the owner has controlling rights over his property. he doesn't pay the employee out of a sense of charity... he does so due to the employee's percieved value.

The business owner can deliberately and intentionally take measures which increase the margin by decreasing the necessary skill level of the employees without purchasing new technology. Those individual steps in the process are actually *worth* more to the owner because they become more profitable by efficiency improvement alone yet it necessarily devalues the employee.

creativesoul wrote:

Your equivocating between the 'fruits of one's own labor', which has been irrefutably shown as the customer labor charge, and the worker's actual wage. The two are not the same thing, and the amount of that particular difference is determined by the owner's sense of ought... legally so.

obsidian responded:

no, what i am saying is that according to *your* logic, in order to be moral, a capitalist must pay a more skilled and less skilled worker the same amount if the final product they contribute to is worth the same amount (as determined by amount paid by a customer for a product), regardless of how much actual labor the workers in question put in.

Not according to my logic. My logic says that in the cases where the owners quantify a specific amount for a labor charge, when you subtract the owners actual cost to employ that individual from that the remainder should not equal a greater amount - per hour - then the worker receives as compensation.

I understand that in today's day and age this is not as common as when LMP actually first began, because the manufacturing and building trades sectors have long since been diminishing as a direct result of such measures, along with the so-called global market-place. That is also a point that becomes relevent in this discussion.

I wrongfully stated earlier that there was no universal formula to establish a workers 'fruits' in any and all cases. I think that there actually is.

creativesoul wrote:

And hence, we must focus upon *exactly* who is benefitting from this implementation - and HOW. If the two types of work are not *worth* the same amount to the owner, then why IS the customer being charged as though they are while the worker's receive less of that charge?

Because the owner can blatently increase the profit margin by disregarding the inequality of everyone else's mutual benefit. Abuse of power.

That was one of my points. Capitalism necessarily rewards immoral behavior.

obsidian responded:

capitalism in fact does *not* reward ever increasing profit margins, because at some point customers will abandon you for those who sell a product at a cheaper price.

Your presupposing several things here obsidian.

1.) There is a significant difference in pricing.

2.) That if competition(usually overseas) becomes 'too fierce' in the owners eyes, that they will not just close the business and keep the profits made up until that point.

3.) That anything else changes other than the profit margin being increased because the wages are lowered and the customer cost remains the same or continues to increase in accordance to the previously established/accepted cost of living increases.

furthermore, your assertion that the owner owes something to the consumer is an even greater stretch than assuming they owe something to the employee. the vast majority of services and products encompassing the economy are completely unnecessary. people want them and they are willing to pay for them. for that small number of things that are necessary (food, clothing...) none of them fit your example of the invoice with a labor charge on it, and further, competition is fierce. profit margins in the grocery industry (net) average out around 6%

Your right in that my example is not based upon the absolute necessities. That changes nothing. Regarding this response though...

Do you *really* believe that food and clothing are the only necessary things in order to successfully function in today's society? The margin in the grocery industry - assuming your correct - along with the puchasing leverage of the Wal-Marts in this world is probably the reason why few choose that particular business adventure, dontcha think? It is good that capitalists cannot charge unreasonable amounts for food.

There are much larger margins than that available.

 

[obsidianavenger]

It is obvious that a less skilled worker normally receives a lower wage than a highly skilled one. That was not in question. You claimed this in an attempt to claim that society benefitted from my example...

actually, benefit to society (or lack thereof) due to LMP was not my object at all. i was attempting to point out how your logic led me to believe that a less skilled and a more skilled worker were worth the same, and giving my agreement to your statement that they obviously aren't. the second half isn't about LMP but the difference between, say, chips ahoy cookies and "made from scratch" fresh cookies in a local bakery. the "artisan" cookies are more expensive.

The point was that when LMP are put into place, it very rarely - if ever - results in a lower consumer cost, therefore - not true. I asked for an example, because I have yet to have witnessed that being the case. The consumer cost is normally long since established, and therefore the public had become accustomed to that cost. The owner pockets the difference. That is the point in the implementation of LMP. It affords the owner the ability to replace highly-skilled workers with less skilled ones while keeping the consumer cost the same, thereby increasing the profit margin. That is THE purpose.

again i wasn't really trying to dispute this. i just don't see it as immoral that the individual would attempt to increase their profit margin. while such actions *can* provide benefit to society to lower prices, the fact that they rarely do is immaterial to my argument, which is focused on the deliniating what the "fruits of one's labor" *actually* are.

The consumer sees no increase in benefit. The worker sees no increase in benefit. The fundamental principle of forming a society is to increase the benefit of all in that society through cooperative means. The cost could be reduced and the profit margin still be greater. The cost could remain the same along with the pay scales, and the profit margin *still* become greater, therefore what actually happens is unnecessary.

yes indeed, the "purpose" of society is for people to cooperate to mutual benefit, and that is what occurs in the employer/employee relationship. the employer has something the employee wants, and vice versa. they trade for it. what it appears you are saying is that when the employer puts in motion changes that decrease his wants in relation to the employee (ie he wants less from him) this is immoral. to that i can only refer you to other voluntary human relationships by way of analogy. is it immoral to fall out of love with someone? get a divorce? is it immoral to cease trading with someone over some petty argument you're having? is it immoral to refuse to help someone because you don't like them? is it immoral to quit your job?

in all these cases, a voluntary relation holds between two people, and either can terminate this relation at any time they choose. the fact that such a choice has repercussions due to nature and human physiology does not make the choice involuntary. it simply provides a good motivation for not making the choice spuriously.

The business owner can deliberately and intentionally take measures which increase the margin by decreasing the necessary skill level of the employees without purchasing new technology. Those individual steps in the process are actually *worth* more to the owner because they become more profitable by efficiency improvement alone yet it necessarily devalues the employee.

yes it devalues the employee by increasing the employer imput to the final outcome by the proxy of technology.

say i am blind and i hire someone to help me perform my daily tasks, take me places, etc. now say my family purchases me a seeing eye dog- i have less need of the person i previously hired (once i become aquainted with it/learn how to use it/etc) and have thus devalued them, while increasing my own benefit (ie i get to keep the money i would have paid them and use it for something else).

this is of the same logical structure as your argument (as far as i can tell at least) and yet i find it hard to believe you would call such an action immoral.

Not according to my logic. My logic says that in the cases where the owners quantify a specific amount for a labor charge, when you subtract the owners actual cost to employ that individual from that the remainder should not equal a greater amount - per hour - then the worker receives as compensation.

I understand that in today's day and age this is not as common as when LMP actually first began, because the manufacturing and building trades sectors have long since been diminishing as a direct result of such measures, along with the so-called global market-place. That is also a point that becomes relevent in this discussion.

ok- so- first, are you arguing that the immorality of capitalism is inherent *only* in situations where a labor charge is specified on a invoice? because if you are not, which i suspect is the case, my prior point still stands.

as for the case of the labor charge specifically, the most you can prove there is that the employer is lying as to how much the labor is costing him in order to increase his profits. which, as i said in my last post, is *not* necessarily rewarded by capitalism. in the short term, perhaps, the employer makes more than he otherwise would off that single transaction. but in the long term he is hired for fewer and fewer tasks because other people can do the same job more cheaply. it is *not* to the employer's long term benefit to increase profit margins out of control.

I wrongfully stated earlier that there was no universal formula to establish a workers 'fruits' in any and all cases. I think that there actually is.

what is it?

Your presupposing several things here obsidian.

1.) There is a significant difference in pricing.

2.) That if competition(usually overseas) becomes 'too fierce' in the owners eyes, that they will not just close the business and keep the profits made up until that point.

3.) That anything else changes other than the profit margin being increased because the wages are lowered and the customer cost remains the same or continues to increase in accordance to the previously established/accepted cost of living increases.

1. no. preexisting price differences are unnecessary. all that is required is the possibility of competition, which is inherent in capitalism. unless employers are colluding to keep prices at artificial levels, which *is* immoral, anyone charging their customers an excessive amount without compensating through some added value in another sphere will lose out to someone who can do the same task more cheaply. even in a case where there is collusion between competitors, the whole thing can be shattered by one dissenter or newcomer offering a better price. i am saying that price differences arise naturally through a capitalistic system and that capitalism rewards, over the long term, those that can offer a better product for a cheaper price than their competitors.

2. is that really to their benefit? why would a company completely close down unless they were losing money rather than making it? even a small profit is better than no profit. beyond that however, having a large short term profit margin is actually less beneficial than having a smaller one over a longer time period.

3. yes, i think the interrelatedness of market factors is a given- iow that competition exists and at least partly restrains employers from doing whatever they want in relation to profit margins and pricing.

Do you *really* believe that food and clothing are the only necessary things in order to successfully function in today's society? The margin in the grocery industry - assuming your correct - along with the puchasing leverage of the Wal-Marts in this world is probably the reason why few choose that particular business adventure, dontcha think? It is good that capitalists cannot charge unreasonable amounts for food.

now we come up against the elastic meaning of the term necessary. imo food is the only *real* necessity, in that if you don't have it you die. period. other circumstances are, in this case, strictly irrelevant. clothing is generally a necessity because without it we are subject to the elements and, depending on climate, also become liable to injury or death. other "necessities" grade further and further from here, the relation between a lack thereof and death getting weaker and weaker. any line you draw, one side being necessary, the other not, is arbitrary. but thats rather beside the point.

what i was trying to illustrate is that employers do not have the complete and unrestrained freedom to increase profit margins barring all other considerations. after a certain point, increasing profit margins actually becomes *unrewarding* because it causes customers to go elsewhere for the same product only cheaper. because food is such a necessity it is a huge business with fierce competition. this competition is what keeps profit margins low.

There are much larger margins than that available.

of course. i was trying to preemptively challenge the claim that consumers need what is produced and thus the manufacturers "owe" them a lower price. the thing we need most, food, is actually priced extremely low from the standpoint of profit margins. i was responding to this:

"If the two types of work are not *worth* the same amount to the owner, then why IS the customer being charged as though they are while the worker's receive less of that charge?"

by pointing out that they customer doesn't *have* to purchase any product if they don't wish to do so at exorbitant prices

 

[creativesoul]

creativesoul wrote:

It is obvious that a less skilled worker normally receives a lower wage than a highly skilled one. That was not in question. You claimed this in an attempt to claim that society benefitted from my example...

obsidian responded:

actually, benefit to society (or lack thereof) due to LMP was not my object at all. i was attempting to point out how your logic led me to believe that a less skilled and a more skilled worker were worth the same, and giving my agreement to your statement that they obviously aren't. the second half isn't about LMP but the difference between, say, chips ahoy cookies and "made from scratch" fresh cookies in a local bakery. the "artisan" cookies are more expensive.

I am recognizing a pattern here obsidian. I make a claim. You address some irrelevent aspect of it. I re-address your response. The original claim is forgotten... not really.

:wink:

When contemplating whether or not something is moral by societies standards, those standards must be used as a measure. Our measure is the founding principles of THE primary historical example of capitalism being implemented in a free society - the US - in addition to the common sense ideas of why society exists to begin with. If a case exists where a business owner greatly improves his/her own benefit - at the unnecessary expense of the workers and the public - then it cannot possibly be considered to be 'right' or 'moral'.

Can it?

creativesoul wrote:

The point was that when LMP are put into place, it very rarely - if ever - results in a lower consumer cost, therefore - not true. I asked for an example, because I have yet to have witnessed that being the case. The consumer cost is normally long since established, and therefore the public had become accustomed to that cost. The owner pockets the difference. That is the point in the implementation of LMP. It affords the owner the ability to replace highly-skilled workers with less skilled ones while keeping the consumer cost the same, thereby increasing the profit margin. That is THE purpose.

obsidian responded:

again i wasn't really trying to dispute this. i just don't see it as immoral that the individual would attempt to increase their profit margin. while such actions *can* provide benefit to society to lower prices, the fact that they rarely do is immaterial to my argument, which is focused on the deliniating what the "fruits of one's labor" *actually* are.

Increasing profit margin becomes immoral when it intentionally and deliberately takes benefit from workers and the rest of society for the sole purpose of increasing personal wealth.

'The fruits of one's labor' equates to the *exact* amount that the labor is sold for. In cases where it is not an easily measured item, of which there are many, it is not so easy to ascertain.

creativesoul wrote:

The consumer sees no increase in benefit. The worker sees no increase in benefit. The fundamental principle of forming a society is to increase the benefit of all in that society through cooperative means. The cost could be reduced and the profit margin still be greater. The cost could remain the same along with the pay scales, and the profit margin *still* become greater, therefore what actually happens is unnecessary.

obsidian replied:

yes indeed, the "purpose" of society is for people to cooperate to mutual benefit, and that is what occurs in the employer/employee relationship. the employer has something the employee wants, and vice versa. they trade for it. what it appears you are saying is that when the employer puts in motion changes that decrease his wants in relation to the employee (ie he wants less from him) this is immoral.

If it were only as simple as that, huh? This is a sticking point which needs a proper foundation. We are talking about applied morality, ethics.

Using your logic, *anything* considered to be a 'benefit' to an employee would constitute a 'mutual benefit'.The workers' benefit remains loosely defined as wages - when compared to 'nothing'. The public benefit is identified through having access to a product - also being compared with 'nothing'. Those wages and that product may be considered a 'benefit' when compared to 'nothing', but 'nothing' IS NOT an adequate comparison. US workers no longer have to compare themselves to those with 'nothing' - DO THEY? If so, then we should</I><i></i> also measure the owners' benefit to 'nothing'! There needs to be a level playing field when it comes to comparing benefit.

... to that i can only refer you to other voluntary human relationships by way of analogy. is it immoral to fall out of love with someone? get a divorce? is it immoral to cease trading with someone over some petty argument you're having? is it immoral to refuse to help someone because you don't like them? is it immoral to quit your job?

I'll tell you why these examples are red herrings.

Although it has not yet been openly stated as such - the underlying immoral element which capitalism not only rewards but along with the current laws in place, fosters and perpetuates the existence of, is <I>greed. It's obvious effects on a capitalistic society I would hope need not be explained here. There are many who feel that one can never have enough money. It is when greed fosters one's ability to be able to justify the deliberate disregard of those who are directly affected by one's actions that capitalism is used for immoral purposes and the benefit of society and the workers are all but lost in the big picture. It is when a business owner can legally and knowingly increase his/her own wealth to a tremendous degree through deliberate actions which unnecessarily cause the opposite financial situation to happen to the very people from which the wealth is being gained that it is *obviously* not a mutual benefit</B><i></i> situation.

...in all these cases, a voluntary relation holds between two people, and either can terminate this relation at any time they choose. the fact that such a choice has repercussions due to nature and human physiology does not make the choice involuntary. it simply provides a good motivation for not making the choice spuriously.

This is utterly illogical, are you are saying that because a worker can quit his/her job without facing legal action, that that</B><i></i> makes the modern day implementation of capitalism moral? Morality does not stand or fall based solely upon that kind of 'voluntary' action.

<B>creativesoul wrote:

The business owner can deliberately and intentionally take measures which increase the margin by decreasing the necessary skill level of the employees without purchasing new technology. Those individual steps in the process are actually *worth* more to the owner because they become more profitable by efficiency improvement alone yet it necessarily devalues the employee.

obsidian:

yes it devalues the employee by increasing the employer imput to the final outcome by the proxy of technology.

say i am blind and i hire someone to help me perform my daily tasks, take me places, etc. now say my family purchases me a seeing eye dog- i have less need of the person i previously hired (once i become aquainted with it/learn how to use it/etc) and have thus devalued them, while increasing my own benefit (ie i get to keep the money i would have paid them and use it for something else).

this is of the same logical structure as your argument (as far as i can tell at least) and yet i find it hard to believe you would call such an action immoral.

Not the same!

Your example does not have the purpose of devaluing the worker for the result of increased profit margin. Your example does not decrease everyone elses benefit needlessly.

<B>creativesoul wrote:

Not according to my logic. My logic says that in the cases where the owners quantify a specific amount for a labor charge, when you subtract the owners actual cost to employ that individual from that the remainder should not equal a greater amount - per hour - then the worker receives as compensation.

I understand that in today's day and age this is not as common as when LMP actually first began, because the manufacturing and building trades sectors have long since been diminishing as a direct result of such measures, along with the so-called global market-place. That is also a point that becomes relevent in this discussion.

obsidian:

ok- so- first, are you arguing that the immorality of capitalism is inherent *only* in situations where a labor charge is specified on a invoice? because if you are not, which i suspect is the case, my prior point still stands.

No. I am not arguing that immorality is inherent in capitalism. I am saying that according to the needs and purpose of society, capitalism - as it stands - is not always of a mutual benefit. The 'fruits principle' being deviating from is a major issue here and has had historically far reaching consequences.

...as for the case of the labor charge specifically, the most you can prove there is that the employer is lying as to how much the labor is costing him in order to increase his profits. which, as i said in my last post, is *not* necessarily rewarded by capitalism. in the short term, perhaps, the employer makes more than he otherwise would off that single transaction. but in the long term he is hired for fewer and fewer tasks because other people can do the same job more cheaply. it is *not* to the employer's long term benefit to increase profit margins out of control.

It is not so much that the owner is 'lying'. Again your assuming *real* competition. That is not always the case, my friend.

obsidian:

1. no. preexisting price differences are unnecessary. all that is required is the possibility of competition, which is inherent in capitalism. unless employers are colluding to keep prices at artificial levels, which *is* immoral, anyone charging their customers an excessive amount without compensating through some added value in another sphere will lose out to someone who can do the same task more cheaply. even in a case where there is collusion between competitors, the whole thing can be shattered by one dissenter or newcomer offering a better price. i am saying that price differences arise naturally through a capitalistic system and that capitalism rewards, over the long term, those that can offer a better product for a cheaper price than their competitors.

In theory.

...2. is that really to their benefit? why would a company completely close down unless they were losing money rather than making it? even a small profit is better than no profit. beyond that however, having a large short term profit margin is actually less beneficial than having a smaller one over a longer time period.

Re-invest elsewhere, where there is no need for employees, and yet there is the possibility for a greater yield.

creativesoul wrote:

Do you *really* believe that food and clothing are the only necessary things in order to successfully function in today's society? The margin in the grocery industry - assuming your correct - along with the puchasing leverage of the Wal-Marts in this world is probably the reason why few choose that particular business adventure, dontcha think? It is good that capitalists cannot charge unreasonable amounts for food.

obsidian responds:

now we come up against the elastic meaning of the term necessary. imo food is the only *real* necessity, in that if you don't have it you die. period. other circumstances are, in this case, strictly irrelevant. clothing is generally a necessity because without it we are subject to the elements and, depending on climate, also become liable to injury or death. other "necessities" grade further and further from here, the relation between a lack thereof and death getting weaker and weaker. any line you draw, one side being necessary, the other not, is arbitrary. but thats rather beside the point.

what i was trying to illustrate is that employers do not have the complete and unrestrained freedom to increase profit margins barring all other considerations. after a certain point, increasing profit margins actually becomes *unrewarding* because it causes customers to go elsewhere for the same product only cheaper. because food is such a necessity it is a huge business with fierce competition. this competition is what keeps profit margins low.

I find it interesting how 'the bar' is lowered when it comes to assessing the workers' needs and benefits, and yet there is *no bar* when assessing the owners'.

:wink:

creativesoul wrote:

"If the two types of work are not *worth* the same amount to the owner, then why IS the customer being charged as though they are while the worker's receive less of that charge?"

obsidian:

by pointing out that they customer doesn't *have* to purchase any product if they don't wish to do so at exorbitant prices

The prices remain stable. The goings on between the owner and the workers is not transparent.

 

[obsidianavenger]

I am recognizing a pattern here obsidian. I make a claim. You address some irrelevent aspect of it. I re-address your response. The original claim is forgotten... not really.

:wink:

or you just misunderstood my purpose in this instance?

When contemplating whether or not something is moral by societies standards, those standards must be used as a measure. Our measure is the founding principles of THE primary historical example of capitalism being implemented in a free society - the US - in addition to the common sense ideas of why society exists to begin with. If a case exists where a business owner greatly improves his/her own benefit - at the unnecessary expense of the workers and the public - then it cannot possibly be considered to be 'right' or 'moral'.

Can it?

what are the standards in question? life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. what is liberty? the freedom to act as one sees fit in relation to oneself and one's property, so long as those *same* rights are not restricted in others. which is *exactly* the situation in capitalism. people freely associate with one another based on desires that converge in purpose. once these desires cease to converge, there is no reason for the relationship between these individuals to continue in the same way. to say that the relationship *should* continue in the same way is to limit the freedom of one man due to another man's need.

as i said above (first of all) need is a nebulous concept. to chain one man's action to the needs of another is to make that man a slave. its sounds silly and melodramatic, i know. but say we take the premise to its logical conclusion. its undisputed that everyone needs to eat to live. say my country only has 100 people in it, and i declare that it is illegal to allow a man to starve within my borders. any new additions- from birth, immigration, anything- *must* be taken care of according to this law. to say otherwise is to be inconsistent (why are locals "more valuable" than strangers? why people living right now but not their children? etc). what happens when the population explodes? there are a ton of needy (read: hungry) people. and all of them are entitled to the fruits of the MANUFACTURERS labor because he has more than them and will not starve by feeding them. no matter how hard he works, *his* profits will be stolen from him- literally!- to provide for those with less. he has no choice in the matter.

now, replace this "law" with moral precept. what you end up with is a theorem stating that it is immoral to have more than someone else has. this is inimical to the pursuit of happiness since such action requires resources. if there are enough people such a theorem even becomes inimical to *life* since there may, in the final tally, simply not be enough to support all of us.

your premise, taken to its furthest logical conclusion, violates the three major ideals of this country. iow: if it is immoral for an individual to seek their own benefit and in the process harm someone by withholding funds that could help them to serve a personal interest, then it is immoral to have more than someone else. if you follow the logic this is where it goes.

Increasing profit margin becomes immoral when it intentionally and deliberately takes benefit from workers and the rest of society for the sole purpose of increasing personal wealth.

'The fruits of one's labor' equates to the *exact* amount that the labor is sold for. In cases where it is not an easily measured item, of which there are many, it is not so easy to ascertain.

so if you ask the owner what their purpose was and they say the good of society its ok? in any case the *direct* motive- the end- was not to devalue the workers but to increase profit. the restructuring resulting in less payment to the workers is a means to that end. and it is the means employed in all technological advance, as i have been harping on about for the whole thread. so. either technological advance is immoral or your calculus is somehow flawed...

If it were only as simple as that, huh? This is a sticking point which needs a proper foundation. We are talking about applied morality, ethics.

Using your logic, *anything* considered to be a 'benefit' to an employee would constitute a 'mutual benefit'.The workers' benefit remains loosely defined as wages - when compared to 'nothing'. The public benefit is identified through having access to a product - also being compared with 'nothing'. Those wages and that product may be considered a 'benefit' when compared to 'nothing', but 'nothing' IS NOT an adequate comparison. US workers no longer have to compare themselves to those with 'nothing' - DO THEY? If so, then we should</I><i></i> also measure the owners' benefit to 'nothing'! There needs to be a level playing field when it comes to comparing benefit.

first of all, you have a very narrow conception of benefit. look around you- its not just wages gained by the worker. its comfortable homes, television, all sorts of entertainments, access to knowledge, etc. modern society offers extreme benefits in relation to our hunter-gatherer state.

second, yes, benefit is compared to nothing- that which is gained if the cooperation is not undertaken. just because you don't like the comparison, that doesn't make it invalid. 10 dollars an hour *is* better than nothing, even if it doesn't get me much.

also, the owner's benefit is also measured in comparison to nothing is it not? without employees they would have no business, no profits, no benefit. so i don't know what you are getting at.

Although it has not yet been openly stated as such - the underlying immoral element which capitalism not only rewards but along with the current laws in place, fosters and perpetuates the existence of, is <I>greed. It's obvious effects on a capitalistic society I would hope need not be explained here. There are many who feel that one can never have enough money. It is when greed fosters one's ability to be able to justify the deliberate disregard of those who are directly affected by one's actions that capitalism is used for immoral purposes and the benefit of society and the workers are all but lost in the big picture. It is when a business owner can legally and knowingly increase his/her own wealth to a tremendous degree through deliberate actions which unnecessarily cause the opposite financial situation to happen to the very people from which the wealth is being gained that it is *obviously* not a mutual benefit<i></i> situation.

there are two senses of the word greed- desire for the unearned, and desire for the maximum which can be earned. the first is vicious and immoral, the second is the wellspring of technological advance, cultural advance, and modern society. the first is stealing, the second progress.

the only reason the workers wealth is decreased through such practices is because they become unnecessary, or less necessary. nothing is being stolen from them. if you get fired, you are left in the exact position you would have been in had the company never existed- looking for a means of supporting yourself.

you also continually make the fallacious claim that it is the workers that add *all* the value to the final product, that they are the *sole* cause of the owner's increasing wealth. but that is clearly not the case. the owners efforts, at building a factory, hiring people, contracting with customers, managing supply, getting product distrubuted properly, etc- all of these also add value. and sure, the owner can hire people to do all of those things too, so he's simply "letting his money work for him"- but in so doing he loses a *lot* of potential profit viz what he wouldn't have to pay all those people who are actually running his operation.

This is utterly illogical, are you are saying that because a worker can quit his/her job without facing legal action, that that<i></i> makes the modern day implementation of capitalism moral? Morality does not stand or fall based solely upon that kind of 'voluntary' action.

not in all cases, but when all actions concerned are voluntary any negative effect experienced by one party is not the direct result of an intentional action on the part of another and thus this other cannot be held morally responsible for the outcome.

Not the same!

Your example does not have the purpose of devaluing the worker for the result of increased profit margin. Your example does not decrease everyone elses benefit needlessly.

nor do lean manufacturing principles. in both cases the *purpose* is to save money, in both cases cutting back on expenditures in the form of employee pay are the means to this end.

No. I am not arguing that immorality is inherent in capitalism. I am saying that according to the needs and purpose of society, capitalism - as it stands - is not always of a mutual benefit. The 'fruits principle' being deviating from is a major issue here and has had historically far reaching consequences.

you said it necessarily rewards immoral behavior. that means that immorality is inherent in capitalism does it not? if something is the necessary result of capitalism it follows that in every case that capitalism arises, immorality follows.

It is not so much that the owner is 'lying'. Again your assuming *real* competition. That is not always the case, my friend.

...

In theory.

and what leads to unfair/unreal competition? monopolies? price collusion? government interference? hehe. have you seen me advocate *any* of these? no.

further, in many industries the effects of competition are readily apparent. see my example of the grocery industry again.

Re-invest elsewhere, where there is no need for employees, and yet there is the possibility for a greater yield.

and what field might this be?

the fact that its possible capitalism rewards immoral behavior in the short term, or even in the long term, doesn't mean that the immorality is necessary or that it is an immoral system. in the same way, one could tell a lie and never get caught, but it doesn't follow that social relations are immoral because of that.

I find it interesting how 'the bar' is lowered when it comes to assessing the workers' needs and benefits, and yet there is *no bar* when assessing the owners'.

because its not a question of need at all. its a question of available resources (property) and freedom of action. both of which capitalism preserves.

The prices remain stable. The goings on between the owner and the workers is not transparent.

relevance? again my only point was to preclude any attempt on your part to claim anything is owed to the consumer on the part of the business. businesses simply offer products and attempt to attract customers based on the quality and price of said products. why *shouldn't* a business be able to charge what they please for a product if people are willing to pay that price?

finally, i will ask again: what is the *objective* measure of a workers value that holds in all cases, since you have claimed such a relation exists.

 

[creativesoul]

Now we're getting somewhere.

 

[creativesoul]

I am taking my time here...

This *really* needs to count.

 

[creativesoul]

creativesoul wrote:

I am recognizing a pattern here obsidian. I make a claim. You address some irrelevent aspect of it. I re-address your response. The original claim is forgotten... not really.

obsidian:

or you just misunderstood my purpose in this instance?

It matters not whether it is being done on purpose.

creativesoul wrote:

When contemplating whether or not something is moral by societies standards, those standards must be used as a measure. Our measure is the founding principles of THE primary historical example of capitalism being implemented in a free society - the US - in addition to the common sense ideas of why society exists to begin with. If a case exists where a business owner greatly improves his/her own benefit - at the unnecessary expense of the workers and the public - then it cannot possibly be considered to be 'right' or 'moral'.

Can it?

obsidian:

what are the standards in question? life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. what is liberty? the freedom to act as one sees fit in relation to oneself and one's property, so long as those *same* rights are not restricted in others. which is *exactly* the situation in capitalism. people freely associate with one another based on desires that converge in purpose. once these desires cease to converge, there is no reason for the relationship between these individuals to continue in the same way. to say that the relationship *should* continue in the same way is to limit the freedom of one man due to another man's need.

Your logic here is preposterous. You're abusing the idea of liberty by wrongfully using it to justify the deliberate and intentional blatant disregard of others in society. Liberty does not mean the ability to freely use and abuse the less financially fortunate members of society just because they are workers and are basically legally at the mercy of the owners, yet your logic justifies that.

...as i said above (first of all) need is a nebulous concept. to chain one man's action to the needs of another is to make that man a slave. its sounds silly and melodramatic, i know. but say we take the premise to its logical conclusion. its undisputed that everyone needs to eat to live. say my country only has 100 people in it, and i declare that it is illegal to allow a man to starve within my borders. any new additions- from birth, immigration, anything- *must* be taken care of according to this law. to say otherwise is to be inconsistent (why are locals "more valuable" than strangers? why people living right now but not their children? etc). what happens when the population explodes? there are a ton of needy (read: hungry) people. and all of them are entitled to the fruits of the MANUFACTURERS labor because he has more than them and will not starve by feeding them. no matter how hard he works, *his* profits will be stolen from him- literally!- to provide for those with less. he has no choice in the matter.

It is so much better to legally chain a worker's share of the fruits from their own labor to an owner's sense of ought?

Your assuming that the owner did not steal the fruits of another's labor to begin with.

your premise, taken to its furthest logical conclusion, violates the three major ideals of this country. iow: if it is immoral for an individual to seek their own benefit and in the process harm someone by withholding funds that could help them to serve a personal interest, then it is immoral to have more than someone else. if you follow the logic this is where it goes.

What premise? :roll: I said it is immoral to deliberately disregard another human's wellbeing. I was specifically talking about business owners and their workers. I say it is immoral for a business owner to become extremely wealthy while unnecessarily keeping their employees' pay scale at a level which is below the current standard required to be able to successfully function in society without government assistance.

creativesoul wrote:

Increasing profit margin becomes immoral when it intentionally and deliberately takes benefit from workers and the rest of society for the sole purpose of increasing personal wealth.

'The fruits of one's labor' equates to the *exact* amount that the labor is sold for. In cases where it is not an easily measured item, of which there are many, it is not so easy to ascertain.

obsidian:

so if you ask the owner what their purpose was and they say the good of society its ok? in any case the *direct* motive- the end- was not to devalue the workers but to increase profit. the restructuring resulting in less payment to the workers is a means to that end. and it is the means employed in all technological advance, as i have been harping on about for the whole thread. so. either technological advance is immoral or your calculus is somehow flawed...

Or you cannot find *real* fault in my argument regarding LMP, which does not necessarily use new technology.

Carry technological advance a little further. If the machinery can be ran by a trained monkey who would accept a little food for their 'labor'...

creativesoul wrote:

If it were only as simple as that, huh? This is a sticking point which needs a proper foundation. We are talking about applied morality, ethics.

Using your logic, *anything* considered to be a 'benefit' to an employee would constitute a 'mutual benefit'.The workers' benefit remains loosely defined as wages - when compared to 'nothing'. The public benefit is identified through having access to a product - also being compared with 'nothing'. Those wages and that product may be considered a 'benefit' when compared to 'nothing', but 'nothing' IS NOT an adequate comparison. US workers no longer have to compare themselves to those with 'nothing' - DO THEY? If so, then we should also measure the owners' benefit to 'nothing'! There needs to be a level playing field when it comes to comparing benefit.

obsidian:

first of all, you have a very narrow conception of benefit. look around you- its not just wages gained by the worker. its comfortable homes, television, all sorts of entertainments, access to knowledge, etc. modern society offers extreme benefits in relation to our hunter-gatherer state.

All of which require money... you know, wages? :|

...second, yes, benefit is compared to nothing- that which is gained if the cooperation is not undertaken. just because you don't like the comparison, that doesn't make it invalid. 10 dollars an hour *is* better than nothing, even if it doesn't get me much.

You're right, my liking or disliking does not invalidate the comparison, the comparison itself does.

:lol: A worker receiving at least 50% of 'the fruits from their own labor' - compared to 100% , not zero - is not only 'better' than less than that, it is also directly in line with one of the primary founding principles of this country.

also, the owner's benefit is also measured in comparison to nothing is it not? without employees they would have no business, no profits, no benefit. so i don't know what you are getting at.

Did you not claim earlier that labor was cheap and easy to come by? :roll: The above is misleading anyway, it presumes that the employess are getting paid what their worth. It also disregards the owners' ability to use LMP and technology in order to intentionally reduce the workers' pay while actually increasing the worth of the steps in question. Technology can be used to increase the supply of *hungry* workers while simultaneuosly decreasing acceptable wages. Look around.

Hmmm.... increase the divide.

You're systematically confirming ozy's earlier points...

creativesoul wrote:

Although it has not yet been openly stated as such - the underlying immoral element which capitalism not only rewards but along with the current laws in place, fosters and perpetuates the existence of, is greed. It's obvious effects on a capitalistic society I would hope need not be explained here. There are many who feel that one can never have enough money. It is when greed fosters one's ability to be able to justify the deliberate disregard of those who are directly affected by one's actions that capitalism is used for immoral purposes and the benefit of society and the workers are all but lost in the big picture. It is when a business owner can legally and knowingly increase his/her own wealth to a tremendous degree through deliberate actions which unnecessarily cause the opposite financial situation to happen to the very people from which the wealth is being gained that it is *obviously* not a mutual benefit situation.

obsidian:

there are two senses of the word greed- desire for the unearned, and desire for the maximum which can be earned. the first is vicious and immoral, the second is the wellspring of technological advance, cultural advance, and modern society. the first is stealing, the second progress.

Define 'earned'.

Rationalization! So, if I desire to have a 'trust fund' given to me, that is vicious and immoral? Your logic here is faulty, my friend. Charity and goodwill is vicious and immoral? You are waaaaay out in left field with this one.

Desiring the maximum which can be earned is not the wellspring of technological advance. Human ingenuity *is*. You're equating cultural advance to earnings. That alone is absurd. Wealth does not equate to cultural advance - knowledge does. Wealth can, however, equate to a tremendous cultural divide if a system is in place which legally allows those fortunate ones to be able to intentionally and deliberately take advantage of those less fortunate.

...the only reason the workers wealth is decreased through such practices is because they become unnecessary, or less necessary. nothing is being stolen from them. if you get fired, you are left in the exact position you would have been in had the company never existed- looking for a means of supporting yourself.

The ability to provide for their family by the only means that they are capable of *is* being stolen from them.

...you also continually make the fallacious claim that it is the workers that add *all* the value to the final product, that they are the *sole* cause of the owner's increasing wealth. but that is clearly not the case. the owners efforts, at building a factory, hiring people, contracting with customers, managing supply, getting product distrubuted properly, etc- all of these also add value. and sure, the owner can hire people to do all of those things too, so he's simply "letting his money work for him"- but in so doing he loses a *lot* of potential profit viz what he wouldn't have to pay all those people who are actually running his operation.

Look, there are enough holes in my own argument without you wrongfully making claims for me. Strawman.

:lol:

I have never made THAT claim.

creativesoul wrote:

This is utterly illogical, are you are saying that because a worker can quit his/her job without facing legal action, that that makes the modern day implementation of capitalism moral? Morality does not stand or fall based solely upon that kind of 'voluntary' action.

obsidian:

not in all cases, but when all actions concerned are voluntary any negative effect experienced by one party is not the direct result of an intentional action on the part of another and thus this other cannot be held morally responsible for the outcome.

Say what? :|

Again, your logic is faulty here. There are a couple of problems in your thoughts. All actions being voluntary does not deny the fact that one's voluntary actions can have a deliberate and direct negative consequence upon another. You're presupposing that both parties actions are transparent and agreed upon by the other. Using your logic...

A worker can 'voluntarily' be employed. The owner can 'voluntarily' kill the worker without the worker knowing, and be 'free' from moral responsibility.

Obviously invalid.

creativesoul wrote:

Not the same!

Your example does not have the purpose of devaluing the worker for the result of increased profit margin. Your example does not decrease everyone elses benefit needlessly.

obsidian:

nor do lean manufacturing principles. in both cases the *purpose* is to save money, in both cases cutting back on expenditures in the form of employee pay are the means to this end.

Sugar-coating it are you?

'Saving money' *is* increasing profit margin. With LMP, that is done through deliberately restructuring the manufacturing procedure so that a much less skilled worker can complete each individual operation in the process without needing to know how to perform as many or possibly any of the other required operations. The owner increases his/her own benefit and if the cost does not reflect some of that savings then only the owner has increased benefit - at the unnecessary expense of the others who are effected. The consumers' benefit goes unchanged, although it could be increased through a price reduction, the workers' benefit is decreased through a decrease in wages, and the only thing left to consider is how the owner comes to morally justify this plan.

creativesoul wrote:

No. I am not arguing that immorality is inherent in capitalism. I am saying that according to the needs and purpose of society, capitalism - as it stands - is not always of a mutual benefit. The 'fruits principle' being deviating from is a major issue here and has had historically far reaching consequences.

obsidian:

you said it necessarily rewards immoral behavior. that means that immorality is inherent in capitalism does it not?

No, it does not. It means that capitalism has no 'morality check', and therefore rewards and/or punishes behavior based upon other criteria - regardless of it's moral content. It can also reward moral behavior.

if something is the necessary result of capitalism it follows that in every case that capitalism arises, immorality follows.

Immorality is not the necessary result of capitalism. Financial consequence is. Reward is a favorable kind of consequence. Immoral actions, such as the ones I have described, which follow capitalistic guidelines are being necessarily rewarded despite the immoral content. 'Capitalism necessarily rewards immoral behavior' does not mean that it *only* rewards immoral behavior, or that it rewards all immoral behavior. Knives necessarily kill people if used for such an immoral purpose, it does not follow that in every case where a knife is used it is immoral.

...the fact that its possible capitalism rewards immoral behavior in the short term, or even in the long term, doesn't mean that the immorality is necessary or that it is an immoral system. in the same way, one could tell a lie and never get caught, but it doesn't follow that social relations are immoral because of that.

Never said it did, or was.

creativesoul wrote:

I find it interesting how 'the bar' is lowered when it comes to assessing the workers' needs and benefits, and yet there is *no bar* when assessing the owners'.

obsidian:

because its not a question of need at all. its a question of available resources (property) and freedom of action. both of which capitalism preserves.

I beg to differ my man. A society needs to keep in mind what is in the best interest for all of it's members. Capitalism is supposed to be a tool for the benefit of the people, not the other way around. Mutual benefit is in question for the average working member of society.

 

[obsidianavenger]

It matters not whether it is being done on purpose.

of course it does. it makes a huge difference whether i meant to state the obvious- that less skilled labor is worth less money and generally leads to products of less monetary value- or i meant to make a claim about the effects of LMPs. the difference is: in the first instance i didn't squirm out of anything, in the second i did.

Your logic here is preposterous. You're abusing the idea of liberty by wrongfully using it to justify the deliberate and intentional blatant disregard of others in society. Liberty does not mean the ability to freely use and abuse the less financially fortunate members of society just because they are workers and are basically legally at the mercy of the owners, yet your logic justifies that.

do you have a better definition of liberty? one that is actually consistent? workers are not being "used" or "abused" at all. they are voluntarily contracting with someone else to provide X service for Y dollars. if they don't think that performing service X is worth Y dollars then they don't take the job.

It is so much better to legally chain a worker's share of the fruits from their own labor to an owner's sense of ought?

Your assuming that the owner did not steal the fruits of another's labor to begin with.

i've not assumed it, isn't that what most of the last few pages has been about? you have *still* not been able to objectively define the "fruits" of someone's labor in an objective way that will stand up to scrutiny. you specifically said two posts ago that you believe there is an objective measure of them in all cases and you have not provided it. since you have not proposed an alternative, the fruits at this point remain "the wage an employer is willing to pay for a given job"

What premise? :roll: I said it is immoral to deliberately disregard another human's wellbeing. I was specifically talking about business owners and their workers. I say it is immoral for a business owner to become extremely wealthy while unnecessarily keeping their employees' pay scale at a level which is below the current standard required to be able to successfully function in society without government assistance.

and what is "deliberately disregarding another human's wellbeing" but acting in one's own interest without regard for the interest of others? you are claiming that if an action is beneficial to me and harmful to someone else then it is immoral. but *every* act that is beneficial to me is harmful to someone else. every act that benefits me comes with an opportunity cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

it makes no difference if the other person is an employee of mine- the employee/employer relationship is simply a voluntary association between individuals with specific terms. the terms are irrelevant to the moral conclusion being drawn since they are agreed to by both parties. this is the relevant fact.

Carry technological advance a little further. If the machinery can be ran by a trained monkey who would accept a little food for their 'labor'...

then that would be an enormous cost saving measure would it not?

i highly doubt that the monkey is reliable enough to trust in the working on complex machinery though. not to mention there are issues of consent, in that monkey's aren't qualified to give it. but thats far outside the scope of this debate.

All of which require money... you know, wages? :|

yes. and anyone who has a job which pays them wages earns enough to at least keep themselves in food and shelter, normally with some luxeries also. for example, i make about 12,000 dollars a year. it doesn't get much more pathetic than that, lol. and yet i am able to keep myself in room and board and internet, and even attend school on the side. granted i have an arrangement where my rent is especially cheap, but i don't recieve financial aid at all so i think it balances out. POINT: i would not by any stretch of the imagination be able to built a house or a computer on the basis of my own efforts. not in a lifetime. thus society has benefited me DRASTICALLY already. indisputably.

] A worker receiving at least 50% of 'the fruits from their own labor' - compared to 100% , not zero - is not only 'better' than less than that, it is also directly in line with one of the primary founding principles of this country.

again and again you define the "fruits" of one's labor as what the owner makes from the labor. and yet you mock me later on for pointing out that the total amount of money received by the owner is not due entirely to the labor. since you admit this, i ask again- how can you *define* the fruits of the labor precisely enough to proclaim they are being stolen?

Did you not claim earlier that labor was cheap and easy to come by? :roll: The above is misleading anyway, it presumes that the employess are getting paid what their worth. It also disregards the owners' ability to use LMP and technology in order to intentionally reduce the workers' pay while actually increasing the worth of the steps in question. Technology can be used to increase the supply of *hungry* workers while simultaneuosly decreasing acceptable wages. Look around.

that rather depends on the availability of labor, doesn't it? a large population of unemployed folks exerts a downward pressure on wages. a minimum wage actually increases unemployment by making some jobs economically infeasible. hmmm. you do the math

Define 'earned'.

earned: to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered. included in this definition would be "earning" someone's love or "earning" a grade in addition to more concrete instances.

Rationalization! So, if I desire to have a 'trust fund' given to me, that is vicious and immoral? Your logic here is faulty, my friend. Charity and goodwill is vicious and immoral? You are waaaaay out in left field with this one.

only if the current owner of the trust fund is not willing to give it to you! if he is willing then, in his eyes, you earned it!

Desiring the maximum which can be earned is not the wellspring of technological advance. Human ingenuity *is*. You're equating cultural advance to earnings. That alone is absurd. Wealth does not equate to cultural advance - knowledge does. Wealth can, however, equate to a tremendous cultural divide if a system is in place which legally allows those fortunate ones to be able to intentionally and deliberately take advantage of those less fortunate.

and what is the motivation for human ingenuity? dispassionate pursuit of knowledge? or the desire for increased physical comforts? can both not be the case? whatever other motives obtain, i think it obvious that almost all people wish for an improvement of the material conditions of their lives. ingenuity is one path to this improvement, and the desire for material gain is a strong one. it is this motivational relationship that i was hinting at.

The ability to provide for their family by the only means that they are capable of *is* being stolen from them.

which means, taken to its logical conclusion, that a company *not* employing the maximum numbers of workers it can afford at any given time is immoral. because it has the means to provide for some unemployed or underemployed individuals to provide for their families and yet are doing nothing about it. this is absurd.

Look, there are enough holes in my own argument without you wrongfully making claims for me. Strawman.

:lol:

I have never made THAT claim.

it does follow necessarily from what you have said about the "fruits" of a workers labor though. unless you can define it more precisely that is exactly what you are arguing.

Say what? :|

Again, your logic is faulty here. There are a couple of problems in your thoughts. All actions being voluntary does not deny the fact that one's voluntary actions can have a deliberate and direct negative consequence upon another. You're presupposing that both parties actions are transparent and agreed upon by the other. Using your logic...

A worker can 'voluntarily' be employed. The owner can 'voluntarily' kill the worker without the worker knowing, and be 'free' from moral responsibility.

Obviously invalid.

and obviously a false analogy. the worker did not agree to subject himself to capricious killing by the owner. the worker agreed to perform a specific task for a specific wage, and that agreement is held to. if it is not, the worker has legal recourse and is compensated.

Sugar-coating it are you?

'Saving money' *is* increasing profit margin. With LMP, that is done through deliberately restructuring the manufacturing procedure so that a much less skilled worker can complete each individual operation in the process without needing to know how to perform as many or possibly any of the other required operations. The owner increases his/her own benefit and if the cost does not reflect some of that savings then only the owner has increased benefit - at the unnecessary expense of the others who are effected. The consumers' benefit goes unchanged, although it could be increased through a price reduction, the workers' benefit is decreased through a decrease in wages, and the only thing left to consider is how the owner comes to morally justify this plan.

its clever of him isn't it?

say i am on a football team. far and away, i am a much better player than all the others (this symbolizes a disparity in wealth; it isn't a statement about the value or ability of rich vs poor people). if i play, my team wins. if i don't play, they are hopeless. i lead my team to the championship. the night before the big game, i find out that i have been drafted by the NFL, and that i will need to fly to tampa (for some reason tampa reminds me of football, hehe) right away to start training with my new team. unfortunately, this means i will need to abandon my team and leave them to compete in the championship without me. if i do this, i know they will get creamed. is it immoral for me to do this?

its an action completely to my benefit, completely dismissive of the benefit of the rest of the team. i am disregarding them to further my own aims. and yet.... why do i owe them a part of my life? why should their need dictate the course of my actions? *if* i care about them more than i care about being in the NFL than of course i should stay (and no doubt i would). however, it makes no sense to say that it is immoral for me to care about them more than i care about myself.

No, it does not. It means that capitalism has no 'morality check', and therefore rewards and/or punishes behavior based upon other criteria - regardless of it's moral content. It can also reward moral behavior.

that being the case, you are actually arguing that capitalism is a-moral not immoral. a completely different claim.

I beg to differ my man. A society needs to keep in mind what is in the best interest for all of it's members. Capitalism is supposed to be a tool for the benefit of the people, not the other way around. Mutual benefit is in question for the average working member of society.

[/quote]

i am a woman

and a society, having no mind, can keep nothing in it.

as i demonstrated above, individuals benefit immensely from society as it stands. you wish to prescribe a specific level of benefit. as far as i can see you haven't provided proper justification for that.

 

[creativesoul]

creativesoul wrote:

It matters not whether it is being done on purpose.

obsidian:

of course it does. it makes a huge difference whether i meant to state the obvious- that less skilled labor is worth less money and generally leads to products of less monetary value- or i meant to make a claim about the effects of LMPs. the difference is: in the first instance i didn't squirm out of anything, in the second i did.

To me... it made no difference.

creativesoul wrote:

Your logic here is preposterous. You're abusing the idea of liberty by wrongfully using it to justify the deliberate and intentional blatant disregard of others in society. Liberty does not mean the ability to freely use and abuse the less financially fortunate members of society just because they are workers and are basically legally at the mercy of the owners, yet your logic justifies that.

obsidian:

do you have a better definition of liberty? one that is actually consistent? workers are not being "used" or "abused" at all. they are voluntarily contracting with someone else to provide X service for Y dollars. if they don't think that performing service X is worth Y dollars then they don't take the job.

Denial.

creativesoul wrote:

It is so much better to legally chain a worker's share of the fruits from their own labor to an owner's sense of ought?

Your assuming that the owner did not steal the fruits of another's labor to begin with.

obsidian:

i've not assumed it, isn't that what most of the last few pages has been about? you have *still* not been able to objectively define the "fruits" of someone's labor in an objective way that will stand up to scrutiny. you specifically said two posts ago that you believe there is an objective measure of them in all cases and you have not provided it. since you have not proposed an alternative, the fruits at this point remain "the wage an employer is willing to pay for a given job"

Except in the cases where there *is* a specific labor charge. You never answered this...

It is so much better to legally chain a worker's share of the fruits from their own labor to an owner's sense of ought?

creativesoul wrote:

What premise? I said it is immoral to deliberately disregard another human's wellbeing. I was specifically talking about business owners and their workers. I say it is immoral for a business owner to become extremely wealthy while unnecessarily keeping their employees' pay scale at a level which is below the current standard required to be able to successfully function in society without government assistance.

obsidian:

and what is "deliberately disregarding another human's wellbeing" but acting in one's own interest without regard for the interest of others? you are claiming that if an action is beneficial to me and harmful to someone else then it is immoral. but *every* act that is beneficial to me is harmful to someone else. every act that benefits me comes with an opportunity cost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost

More financial capitalist justification for not caring about anyone but one's self. :roll: Pay attention here, because *this* is important!

One need not blatantly disregard another's interests in order to seek out their own *unless* those two interests necessarily oppose one another...THAT *is* inherent in capitalism - specifically regarding the owner/worker relationship.

That is an inherent contradiction, one of which I believe you asked for earlier.

...it makes no difference if the other person is an employee of mine- the employee/employer relationship is simply a voluntary association between individuals with specific terms. the terms are irrelevant to the moral conclusion being drawn since they are agreed to by both parties. this is the relevant fact.

And a starving person will voluntarily do a tremendous amount of work for a single meal. As I clearly proved earlier, whether or not an action is moral does not completely depend upon it being voluntary. Being voluntary requires the consent of both. So, while the above is true, it does not capture the totality of the idea itself. I am going to appeal to reason here - and sticking to the transparent knowledge aspect of capitalistic theory - go waaaaaay out on a limb to say that in order for one to even be considered as having giving their consent to something, they must first be aware of *exactly* what it is that they are giving consent for. In addition, I would also like to add the fact that one can only choose among the available options legally given to them. Now, considering these things in addition to your 'voluntary' claim, I hold that a worker does not necessarily have a choice in the matter, and therefore the fact that it may be a voluntarily agreed upon arrangement does not make it moral.

creativesoul wrote:

Carry technological advance a little further. If the machinery can be ran by a trained monkey who would accept a little food for their 'labor'...

obsidian:

then that would be an enormous cost saving measure would it not? i highly doubt that the monkey is reliable enough to trust in the working on complex machinery though. not to mention there are issues of consent, in that monkey's aren't qualified to give it. but thats far outside the scope of this debate.

No mention of the immorality of the very possibility of replacing a productive member of society by something less than, strictly for a cost savings which is not necessarily passed on to the consumer?

:?

If it can be done, there will be a greedy person who will do it. Such is the case with overseas outsourcing as we speak. The market is such that if company 'A' does not do it, then company 'B' will and by doing so undercut the price and exceed the profit margin simultaneuosly while placing the very people that they depend upon to purchase their products out of work. God bless the double edged - negatively self-perpetuating - Walmart sword. Parden me while I take a few steps backwards in time to revisit an old song...

Souplines...

free loaves of bread...

five pound blocks of cheese...

bags of groceries...

so-shullllllll secur-i-ty has run out on you and me...

we do whatever we can...

ya gotta duck when the *shit* hits the fan!

creativesoul wrote:

All of which require money... you know, wages?

obsidian:

yes. and anyone who has a job which pays them wages earns enough to at least keep themselves in food and shelter, normally with some luxeries also. for example, i make about 12,000 dollars a year. it doesn't get much more pathetic than that, lol. and yet i am able to keep myself in room and board and internet, and even attend school on the side. granted i have an arrangement where my rent is especially cheap, but i don't recieve financial aid at all so i think it balances out. POINT: i would not by any stretch of the imagination be able to built a house or a computer on the basis of my own efforts. not in a lifetime. thus society has benefited me DRASTICALLY already. indisputably.

You missed the point. You denied the idea that the worker's benefit is expressed in wages. You gave several 'different' examples of how benefit was supposed to be not about wages, but in each and every case you gave - it required wages. Seeing how a common worker's wage represents their financial ability to even be able to access such benefits, the wage is in direct focus.

creativesoul wrote:

] A worker receiving at least 50% of 'the fruits from their own labor' - compared to 100% , not zero - is not only 'better' than less than that, it is also directly in line with one of the primary founding principles of this country.

obsidian:

again and again you define the "fruits" of one's labor as what the owner makes from the labor. and yet you mock me later on for pointing out that the total amount of money received by the owner is not due entirely to the labor. since you admit this, i ask again- how can you *define* the fruits of the labor precisely enough to proclaim they are being stolen?

Since when does never become "again and again"???

I *have* given a clear cut example that you continue to deny, but one of which that *still* exists in today's capitalistic society, and was actually the beginning of the common workers' plight which has become more than apparent to anyone with a sense of what is going on today in America.

The founding fathers wrongfully presupposed a sense of national kinship along with 'brotherly love' and grossly underestimated American greed.

creativesoul wrote:

Did you not claim earlier that labor was cheap and easy to come by? The above is misleading anyway, it presumes that the employess are getting paid what their worth. It also disregards the owners' ability to use LMP and technology in order to intentionally reduce the workers' pay while actually increasing the worth of the steps in question. Technology can be used to increase the supply of *hungry* workers while simultaneuosly decreasing acceptable wages. Look around.

obsidian:

that rather depends on the availability of labor, doesn't it? a large population of unemployed folks exerts a downward pressure on wages. a minimum wage actually increases unemployment by making some jobs economically infeasible. hmmm. you do the math

Did you forget this piece of your own writing?

...also, the owner's benefit is also measured in comparison to nothing is it not? without employees they would have no business, no profits, no benefit. so i don't know what you are getting at.

No. The owners' benefit is not ever compared to 'nothing'. It *IS* compared to what they already have. Owners can be greedy. Owners can blatantly disregard their workers' own lives, families, and livlihoods. Therefore, if the opportunity to increase their profit margins becomes available by means of a new and 'improved' method which requires little to no human labor, they will... legally so, and evidently justifiably so as well, seeing how we cannot 'force' another to care about their fellow citizens...

Taken to it's logical conclusion.

:|

Check.

creativesoul wrote:

Rationalization! So, if I desire to have a 'trust fund' given to me, that is vicious and immoral? Your logic here is faulty, my friend. Charity and goodwill is vicious and immoral? You are waaaaay out in left field with this one.

obsidian:

only if the current owner of the trust fund is not willing to give it to you! if he is willing then, in his eyes, you earned it!

Being intellectually honest with one's self is tough, huh?

creativesoul wrote:

Desiring the maximum which can be earned is not the wellspring of technological advance. Human ingenuity *is*. You're equating cultural advance to earnings. That alone is absurd. Wealth does not equate to cultural advance - knowledge does. Wealth can, however, equate to a tremendous cultural divide if a system is in place which legally allows those fortunate ones to be able to intentionally and deliberately take advantage of those less fortunate.

obsidian:

and what is the motivation for human ingenuity? dispassionate pursuit of knowledge? or the desire for increased physical comforts? can both not be the case? whatever other motives obtain, i think it obvious that almost all people wish for an improvement of the material conditions of their lives. ingenuity is one path to this improvement, and the desire for material gain is a strong one. it is this motivational relationship that i was hinting at.

Is there another choice available?

Motivation is as diverse as those who are being motivated. There is no dispassionate pursuit of knowledge, but there *is* a pursuit of wealth(among other things) which require 'knowledge'. Without the appreciation of the knowledge itself, it can be wielded in dangerous ways in order to pursue other things.

History shows that being solely motivated by wealth has devastating consequences if there is no moral precept which holds others with high regard... as valuable.

creativesoul wrote:

The ability to provide for their family by the only means that they are capable of *is* being stolen from them.

obsidian:

which means, taken to its logical conclusion, that a company *not* employing the maximum numbers of workers it can afford at any given time is immoral. because it has the means to provide for some unemployed or underemployed individuals to provide for their families and yet are doing nothing about it. this is absurd.

I want you to show *exactly* how my claim logically ends there.

Ok?

creativesoul wrote:

Look, there are enough holes in my own argument without you wrongfully making claims for me. Strawman. I have never made THAT claim.

obsidian:

it does follow necessarily from what you have said about the "fruits" of a workers labor though. unless you can define it more precisely that is exactly what you are arguing.

Again, you - evidently - are confused. Here is what you wrote that fostered that particular response from me...

...you also continually make the fallacious claim that it is the workers that add *all* the value to the final product, that they are the *sole* cause of the owner's increasing wealth.

That does not follow from my claim, nor have I stated such a thing, nor would I state such a thing.

creativesoul wrote:

Say what?

Again, your logic is faulty here. There are a couple of problems in your thoughts. All actions being voluntary does not deny the fact that one's voluntary actions can have a deliberate and direct negative consequence upon another. You're presupposing that both parties actions are transparent and agreed upon by the other. Using your logic...

A worker can 'voluntarily' be employed. The owner can 'voluntarily' kill the worker without the worker knowing, and be 'free' from moral responsibility.

Obviously invalid.

obsidian:

and obviously a false analogy. the worker did not agree to subject himself to capricious killing by the owner. the worker agreed to perform a specific task for a specific wage, and that agreement is held to. if it is not, the worker has legal recourse and is compensated.

You're squirming again...

The falseness is due to following your logic. Legal recourse plays no role in what you claimed. You claimed that if an agreement is voluntarily entered into between two people then because it is a 'voluntary' agreement, there is no moral responsibility. The absurdity in my analogy *is* evident. The analogy necessarily follows what you wrote, therefore I merely demonstrated the aburdity in your claim for you... Here it is again...

you wrote THIS...

but when all actions concerned are voluntary any negative effect experienced by one party is not the direct result of an intentional action on the part of another and thus this other cannot be held morally responsible for the outcome.

Voluntary action does not negate causality of said action.

Patently absurd, my friend.

creativesoul wrote:

Sugar-coating it are you?

'Saving money' *is* increasing profit margin. With LMP, that is done through deliberately restructuring the manufacturing procedure so that a much less skilled worker can complete each individual operation in the process without needing to know how to perform as many or possibly any of the other required operations. The owner increases his/her own benefit and if the cost does not reflect some of that savings then only the owner has increased benefit - at the unnecessary expense of the others who are effected. The consumers' benefit goes unchanged, although it could be increased through a price reduction, the workers' benefit is decreased through a decrease in wages, and the only thing left to consider is how the owner comes to morally justify this plan.

obsidian:

its clever of him isn't it?

Or her...

... it makes no sense to say that it is immoral for me to care about them more than i care about myself.

You're right, that is why I have not said that.

creativesoul wrote:

No, it does not. It means that capitalism has no 'morality check', and therefore rewards and/or punishes behavior based upon other criteria - regardless of it's moral content. It can also reward moral behavior.

obsidian:

that being the case, you are actually arguing that capitalism is a-moral not immoral. a completely different claim.

Yup! That has already been covered, and I thought you were already 'there' as well.

creativesoul wrote:

I beg to differ my man. A society needs to keep in mind what is in the best interest for all of it's members. Capitalism is supposed to be a tool for the benefit of the people, not the other way around. Mutual benefit is in question for the average working member of society.

obsidian:

i am a woman

I should have known that.

...and a society, having no mind, can keep nothing in it.

What does that even mean?

as i demonstrated above, individuals benefit immensely from society as it stands. you wish to prescribe a specific level of benefit. as far as i can see you haven't provided proper justification for that.

A dog can be said to 'benefit immensely' by the living conditions provided by his/her owner as well, regardless of the fact that it is on a chain for it's entire life and receives just enough to subsist.

 

[obsidianavenger]

of course it does. it makes a huge difference whether i meant to state the obvious- that less skilled labor is worth less money and generally leads to products of less monetary value- or i meant to make a claim about the effects of LMPs. the difference is: in the first instance i didn't squirm out of anything, in the second i did.

To me... it made no difference.

uh... not to be rude.. but.. you just said the truth makes no difference to you. should we be having this conversation? :/

Denial.

so you contend that the current system is a violation of the principle of liberty and yet you can't tell me what liberty is..... except that it isn't what i say it is?

Except in the cases where there *is* a specific labor charge. You never answered this...

sure i did. remember? the part about lying? writing on an invoice "labor charge" doesn't make the labor worth that amount. since economic calculation is actually a function of the market and not of individuals, the owner trying to assign "value" in some objective sense to the labor by delineating it in such a manner is kidding themselves. and possibly screwing their customer but since the customer is completely free to *not* purchase goods or services from this person i fail to see the "immorality". furthermore, up to this point i have taken it as a matter of course that such invoices exist, but you have yet to specify an industry or example where this "labor charge" would occur. you also fail to consider the fact that "labor charge" could in part cover the work the *owner* did in facilitating the interaction between the customer and the laborer. you also haven't made it clear how any of this reasoning applies when there is no specified labor charge.

More financial capitalist justification for not caring about anyone but one's self. :roll: Pay attention here, because *this* is important!

One need not blatantly disregard another's interests in order to seek out their own *unless* those two interests necessarily oppose one another...THAT *is* inherent in capitalism - specifically regarding the owner/worker relationship.

That is an inherent contradiction, one of which I believe you asked for earlier.

first of all "opportunity cost" was not meant to imply anything in an economic sense, at least not directly, though it is a concept taken from economics. its a principle of action. any time i choose to do something, i am prevented from doing something else. absolutely. its an undeniable fact: i can do only one thing at a time. thus, every time i do anything that is beneficial to myself i am necessarily not benefiting someone else- i am disregarding them to my own benefit. this is a *necessary consequence* of acting in my own interest. it holds in every case. it is a principle inherent in life, not in capitalism.

as for this so called contradiction, capitalism actually eliminates direct antagonisms in favor of mutually beneficial relationships. without a system of market exchange, the scarcity of resources leads people to fight over them. whoever is strongest or cleverest benefits and everyone else gets nothing except through the charity of the "winner". in a market society, everyone pursuing their own selfish interests indirectly benefits everyone else. as consumers, people seek out the best product at the cheapest price, leading producers to try to make their production as efficient as possible. efficiency in market affairs means that the least amount of resources- which are limited- go to waste.

you may say that competition doesn't hold "in practice" but thats simply not true. not "perfect competition" perhaps. but any time there is market exchange, and people seeking their selfish benefit, a kind of self-regulating feedback loop appears. the effectiveness is related to how smoothly it is allowed to run.

And a starving person will voluntarily do a tremendous amount of work for a single meal. As I clearly proved earlier, whether or not an action is moral does not completely depend upon it being voluntary. Being voluntary requires the consent of both. So, while the above is true, it does not capture the totality of the idea itself. I am going to appeal to reason here - and sticking to the transparent knowledge aspect of capitalistic theory - go waaaaaay out on a limb to say that in order for one to even be considered as having giving their consent to something, they must first be aware of *exactly* what it is that they are giving consent for. In addition, I would also like to add the fact that one can only choose among the available options legally given to them. Now, considering these things in addition to your 'voluntary' claim, I hold that a worker does not necessarily have a choice in the matter, and therefore the fact that it may be a voluntarily agreed upon arrangement does not make it moral.

and who's fault is it that they are starving? certainly not mine... probably not theirs. if anything i would say its the parents who chose to have children they can't afford to support. i know it sounds cold, but the alternative is- anyone who is starving is entitled to whatever non-starving people possess that could go towards their welfare. and if there are enough starving children this means everyone dies.

note the premise at issue here: either strangers are responsible for one another's welfare or they are not.

No mention of the immorality of the very possibility of replacing a productive member of society by something less than, strictly for a cost savings which is not necessarily passed on to the consumer?

:?

If it can be done, there will be a greedy person who will do it. Such is the case with overseas outsourcing as we speak. The market is such that if company 'A' does not do it, then company 'B' will and by doing so undercut the price and exceed the profit margin simultaneuosly while placing the very people that they depend upon to purchase their products out of work. God bless the double edged - negatively self-perpetuating - Walmart sword. Parden me while I take a few steps backwards in time to revisit an old song...

companies do not exist to benefit their employees, or to give them work. they exist to give the consumers what they want at a price they are willing to pay. generally this requires labor, which handily provides consumers for producers in other fields, allowing people to benefit from a whole plethora of goods they wouldn't have had access to as autonomous agents. the fact that a specific firm doesn't require the same level of labor as it once did, or can get that labor for cheaper, is no crime; its a fact of a changing economic landscape. sure it entails short term losses for some, but so what? the employers aren't responsible for their employees.

You missed the point. You denied the idea that the worker's benefit is expressed in wages. You gave several 'different' examples of how benefit was supposed to be not about wages, but in each and every case you gave - it required wages. Seeing how a common worker's wage represents their financial ability to even be able to access such benefits, the wage is in direct focus.

i apologize if my point was not clear. you focus on the fact that the wage is low compared to the amount of money the business is making overall as if this negates the benefit people get from living in a society. it doesn't. "benefit" is something that actually can be measured objectively- simply compare the luxuries available to someone living in a capitalist society to someone who isn't. the difference is clearly due to society....

Since when does never become "again and again"???

page 7:
So, a worker's wage is determined according to the owner's own 'brand' of morality and is legally binding. I am arguing that the actual worth *is* the amount of profit margin received by the owner as a direct result of that workers' own labor.

Hence, the relationship between the owners profit margin and the workers wage being one of which that depends upon and is legally bound by the owners sense of ought.

page 8:
What is the customer charged for the labor itself? Subtract from that the owner's actual expense, and THAT is exactly what the worker's labor is *worth* - in monetary terms - to the owner. No subjectivity necessary. Follow me yet?

Customer labor charge.

Why does the owner get to decide *how much* of the customers' LABOR charge is 'too much' for the workers to have? IOW Why does the owner get to determine *how much* of the fruits of one's own labor - the totality of which has already been established as THE labor charge - they get to receive?

The customer labor charge - which is most often clearly indicated on the customer invoice/spreadhsheet - is the owner's actual labor cost times at least 2...

This clearly and objectively establishes the actual *worth* of the worker's labor. No subjectivity needed.

Page 9:
The objective amount can be established. It *is* a dollar amount and it *is* obtainable through simple math - regardless of the specific billing methods, that is of course assuming that an owner knows what his/her costs are... You're squirming... Infrastructure and/or other overhead costs are not factored into what I am claiming. There is no need.

The actual monetary *worth* of a worker's labor *IS* the 'fruits of their labor'.

The *worth* of the worker's labor can be objectively shown.

. An employer can legally and knowingly pay an employee less than half of what s/he charges the customer for the worker's labor.

The objective *worth* of the labor is determined by what it is sold for.

That labor *is* a dollar amount - THE SPECIFIC charge for the labor. That charge objectively constitutes the 'total' fruits and is based upon an hourly amount. That is what the labor is worth, in objective monetary terms - because that is what the labor, itself, is being sold for.


i think thats enough.

point: even with the term "labor charge" on an invoice this does not objectively determine the worth of the labor. "labor" could include the cost of tools, transportation, the owner himself's labor; further he could just be inflating his costs to try and make a buck.

remember- the consumer does not *have* to purchase a particular item from a particular vendor. if they are willing to pay the inflated prices fine, but it doesn't mean that anything is being stolen.

The founding fathers wrongfully presupposed a sense of national kinship along with 'brotherly love' and grossly underestimated American greed.

as long as the role of force is limited to retaliatory use by the gov't, selfishness will get you where you wanna go

no love required but self love!

No. The owners' benefit is not ever compared to 'nothing'. It *IS* compared to what they already have. Owners can be greedy. Owners can blatantly disregard their workers' own lives, families, and livlihoods. Therefore, if the opportunity to increase their profit margins becomes available by means of a new and 'improved' method which requires little to no human labor, they will... legally so, and evidently justifiably so as well, seeing how we cannot 'force' another to care about their fellow citizens...

Taken to it's logical conclusion.

:|

Check.

owners can consume all their wealth until they are broke. great. just because their "need" is less immediate doesn't mean that their actions are free of negative consequences.

Being intellectually honest with one's self is tough, huh?

nope! i am being perfectly consistent.

History shows that being solely motivated by wealth has devastating consequences if there is no moral precept which holds others with high regard... as valuable.

not quite. history shows that being motivated by anything and willing to resort to force to get it has devastating consequences.

creativesoul wrote:

The ability to provide for their family by the only means that they are capable of *is* being stolen from them.

obsidian:

which means, taken to its logical conclusion, that a company *not* employing the maximum numbers of workers it can afford at any given time is immoral. because it has the means to provide for some unemployed or underemployed individuals to provide for their families and yet are doing nothing about it. this is absurd.

I want you to show *exactly* how my claim logically ends there.

Ok? [/quote]

sure.

1. a worker's ability to provide for their family is stolen from them when company Q pays them less than X dollars
2. if a worker is unemployed, company Q is paying them less than X dollars.
3. company Q could employ the worker at a salary of X dollars without going bankrupt
//therefore, company Q is stealing the unemployed workers ability to provide for their family

The falseness is due to following your logic. Legal recourse plays no role in what you claimed. You claimed that if an agreement is voluntarily entered into between two people then because it is a 'voluntary' agreement, there is no moral responsibility. The absurdity in my analogy *is* evident. The analogy necessarily follows what you wrote, therefore I merely demonstrated the aburdity in your claim for you... Here it is again...

you wrote THIS...

but when all actions concerned are voluntary any negative effect experienced by one party is not the direct result of an intentional action on the part of another and thus this other cannot be held morally responsible for the outcome.

Voluntary action does not negate causality of said action.

Patently absurd, my friend.

you're still not getting it. the worker does not form an agreement with the employer to get paid a fraction of whatever the owner's business makes. the worker agrees to do specific work for a specific wage, and that relationship is upheld. the worker does not form an agreement with the owner that he may be killed at a whim. so your analogy fails.

... it makes no sense to say that it is immoral for me to care about them more than i care about myself.

You're right, that is why I have not said that.

to the contrary. you have repeatedly stated that their "need" should take precedence over my desire to earn and keep a profit. in order for me to be moral anyhow....

Yup! That has already been covered, and I thought you were already 'there' as well.

meh. you stated that the system necessarily rewards immoral behavior several times. you also said that the system itself takes no action, people do. perhaps that was meant to imply that capitalism is a-moral, but the two together, to me, implied that capitalism was immoral since it necessarily rewards immoral behavior.

...and a society, having no mind, can keep nothing in it.

What does that even mean?

that society is nothing but an aggregate of individuals; that there is no such thing as "society's interest" except the aggregated interest of every member of society. that society needn't (indeed can't) "keep in mind "the interests of all its members in the sense of ensuring them all since those interests necessarily conflict to some degree.

A dog can be said to 'benefit immensely' by the living conditions provided by his/her owner as well, regardless of the fact that it is on a chain for it's entire life and receives just enough to subsist.

slavery metaphors don't make it slavery. seriously. people voluntarily go to work. this means they would rather enjoy the benefits of society than go it on their own in the wild and *not* have to work for someone else. theres no chains.

 

[creativesoul]

obsidian:

uh... not to be rude.. but.. you just said the truth makes no difference to you. should we be having this conversation? :/

:facepalm:

No... I didn't. Try again.

:roll:

obsidian:

so you contend that the current system is a violation of the principle of liberty and yet you can't tell me what liberty is..... except that it isn't what i say it is?

I can't... or...

I haven't?

Try again.

creativesoul wrote:

Except in the cases where there *is* a specific labor charge. You never answered this...

It is so much better to legally chain a worker's share of the fruits from their own labor to an owner's sense of ought?

obsidian:

sure i did. remember? the part about lying? writing on an invoice "labor charge" doesn't make the labor worth that amount. since economic calculation is actually a function of the market and not of individuals, the owner trying to assign "value" in some objective sense to the labor by delineating it in such a manner is kidding themselves. and possibly screwing their customer but since the customer is completely free to *not* purchase goods or services from this person i fail to see the "immorality". furthermore, up to this point i have taken it as a matter of course that such invoices exist, but you have yet to specify an industry or example where this "labor charge" would occur. you also fail to consider the fact that "labor charge" could in part cover the work the *owner* did in facilitating the interaction between the customer and the laborer. you also haven't made it clear how any of this reasoning applies when there is no specified labor charge.

None of that answers the question being asked. Try again.

creativesoul wrote:

More financial capitalist justification for not caring about anyone but one's self. Pay attention here, because *this* is important!

One need not blatantly disregard another's interests in order to seek out their own *unless* those two interests necessarily oppose one another...THAT *is* inherent in capitalism - specifically regarding the owner/worker relationship.

That is an inherent contradiction, one of which I believe you asked for earlier.

obsidian:

first of all "opportunity cost" was not meant to imply anything in an economic sense, at least not directly, though it is a concept taken from economics. its a principle of action. any time i choose to do something, i am prevented from doing something else. absolutely. its an undeniable fact: i can do only one thing at a time. thus, every time i do anything that is beneficial to myself i am necessarily not benefiting someone else- i am disregarding them to my own benefit. this is a *necessary consequence* of acting in my own interest. it holds in every case. it is a principle inherent in life, not in capitalism.

Nonsense.

Your 'undeniable fact' is anything but... I can do more than one thing at a time. I can *most certainly* do things which not only benefit myself, but also others... simultaneuosly. Taking action towards one's own benefit does not require not benefitting someone else, *unless* the two are at odds with one another.

Try again.

...obsidian:

as for this so called contradiction, capitalism actually eliminates direct antagonisms in favor of mutually beneficial relationships.

:facepalm: Yeah, and Hitler was a Social Darwinist 'Christian' who did the same... according to him.

Capitalism has an inherent adversarial relationship contained within it. The profit margin(the owners wage) and the pay scale(the workers wage) necessarily adversely effect one another.</B><i></i>

THAT is a fact. An axiom, as it were...and it gives sound</B><i></i> logical justification for an owner to intentionally and deliberately keep the workers pay as low as possible.



Try again.

obsidian:

...without a system of market exchange, the scarcity of resources leads people to fight over them. whoever is strongest or cleverest benefits and everyone else gets nothing except through the charity of the "winner".

Capitalism replaces brute strength with paper currency.

... in a market society, everyone pursuing their own selfish interests indirectly benefits everyone else.

Not necessarily.

...as consumers, people seek out the best product at the cheapest price, leading producers to try to make their production as efficient as possible. efficiency in market affairs means that the least amount of resources- which are limited- go to waste.

Consumers are not the only driving force behind capitalism. Consumers need adequate wages in order to be able to purchase goods too. Many consumers *are* manual laborers with a minimum education who are quickly losing ground with the current system in place, through no fault of their own...

...you may say that competition doesn't hold "in practice" but thats simply not true. not "perfect competition" perhaps. but any time there is market exchange, and people seeking their selfish benefit, a kind of self-regulating feedback loop appears. the effectiveness is related to how smoothly it is allowed to run.

Who cares about 'perfect'? How about an equal opportunity to even be able to compete in this so-called 'free market'?

creativesoul wrote:

And a starving person will voluntarily do a tremendous amount of work for a single meal. As I clearly proved earlier, whether or not an action is moral does not completely depend upon it being voluntary. Being voluntary requires the consent of both. So, while the above is true, it does not capture the totality of the idea itself. I am going to appeal to reason here - and sticking to the transparent knowledge aspect of capitalistic theory - go waaaaaay out on a limb to say that in order for one to even be considered as having giving their consent to something, they must first be aware of *exactly* what it is that they are giving consent for. In addition, I would also like to add the fact that one can only choose among the available options legally given to them. Now, considering these things in addition to your 'voluntary' claim, I hold that a worker does not necessarily have a choice in the matter, and therefore the fact that it may be a voluntarily agreed upon arrangement does not make it moral.

obsidian:

and who's fault is it that they are starving? certainly not mine... probably not theirs. if anything i would say its the parents who chose to have children they can't afford to support. i know it sounds cold, but the alternative is- anyone who is starving is entitled to whatever non-starving people possess that could go towards their welfare. and if there are enough starving children this means everyone dies.

Care to address the *real* point? Try again.

creativesoul wrote:

No mention of the immorality of the very possibility of replacing a productive member of society by something less than, strictly for a cost savings which is not necessarily passed on to the consumer? If it can be done, there will be a greedy person who will do it. Such is the case with overseas outsourcing as we speak. The market is such that if company 'A' does not do it, then company 'B' will and by doing so undercut the price and exceed the profit margin simultaneuosly while placing the very people that they depend upon to purchase their products out of work. God bless the double edged - negatively self-perpetuating - Walmart sword. Parden me while I take a few steps backwards in time to revisit an old song...

obsidian:

companies do not exist to benefit their employees, or to give them work. they exist to give the consumers what they want at a price they are willing to pay. generally this requires labor, which handily provides consumers for producers in other fields, allowing people to benefit from a whole plethora of goods they wouldn't have had access to as autonomous agents. the fact that a specific firm doesn't require the same level of labor as it once did, or can get that labor for cheaper, is no crime; its a fact of a changing economic landscape. sure it entails short term losses for some, but so what? the employers aren't responsible for their employees.

This is very shortsighted... Follow the logic to the end. The cognitively less fortunate members who must do manual labor or some other low paying job in order to survive, legally get just enough to subsist, cannot afford the 'best', have no opportunity to acquire such a thing and subsequently *will* become rather aggravated with what is being 'forced' upon them against their will and through no fault of their own.

Why?

Because they are not as intelligent. The elite have demanded that public schools go underfunded, while their priveleged children get a private education. The irony here lies in the comparison of the funding which goes towards a prison inmates annual cost and the annual cost of a student of public education. Do you have any idea what that is??? There are a whole lot of working class members of society whose careers are being outsourced for profit and profit alone. There *has to be an acceptable niche* for these people to fill that allows them to feel as though they have some kind of self-worth and self-direction. That is being downsized to a dangerous extreme. Capitalism is beginning to fail *terribly* in that sense. A system must keep the poor 'dumb' people happy too, because just like rich 'dumb' people, there are a whole lot of them too, and they cost all of us a whole lot more in the penitentiary than they would as productive members of society.

Education is *not* meant just for those born wealthy.

creativesoul wrote:

You missed the point. You denied the idea that the worker's benefit is expressed in wages. You gave several 'different' examples of how benefit was supposed to be not about wages, but in each and every case you gave - it required wages. Seeing how a common worker's wage represents their financial ability to even be able to access such benefits, the wage is in direct focus.

obsidian:

i apologize if my point was not clear. you focus on the fact that the wage is low compared to the amount of money the business is making overall as if this negates the benefit people get from living in a society. it doesn't. "benefit" is something that actually can be measured objectively- simply compare the luxuries available to someone living in a capitalist society to someone who isn't. the difference is clearly due to society....

Your point is irrelevent. So what, a civilized society benefits people. Being civilized presupposes regard for others. Try again.

Whether or not something can be considered a benefit requires a frame of reference. Benefit, itself, does not stand alone - it stands in comparison. When comparing different members of the same society, we do so by comparing them to other members of that society, NOT</I><i></i> to a third world country. So your comparison means *shit* in terms of this particular discussion. If one - in this society - has no money, then they cannot partake in such benefits. The ability for one to be able to make enough money to afford the benefits in question is paramount.

I mean, there is probably no better place to be 'homeless' either, but so what?

<B>creativesoul wrote:

Since when does never become "again and again"???

obsidian:

page 7:
So, a worker's wage is determined according to the owner's own 'brand' of morality and is legally binding. I am arguing that the actual worth *is* the amount of profit margin received by the owner as a direct result of that workers' own labor.

Hence, the relationship between the owners profit margin and the workers wage being one of which that depends upon and is legally bound by the owners sense of ought.

page 8:
What is the customer charged for the labor itself? Subtract from that the owner's actual expense, and THAT is exactly what the worker's labor is *worth* - in monetary terms - to the owner. No subjectivity necessary. Follow me yet?

Customer labor charge.

Why does the owner get to decide *how much* of the customers' LABOR charge is 'too much' for the workers to have? IOW Why does the owner get to determine *how much* of the fruits of one's own labor - the totality of which has already been established as THE labor charge - they get to receive?

The customer labor charge - which is most often clearly indicated on the customer invoice/spreadhsheet - is the owner's actual labor cost times at least 2...

This clearly and objectively establishes the actual *worth* of the worker's labor. No subjectivity needed.

Page 9:
The objective amount can be established. It *is* a dollar amount and it *is* obtainable through simple math - regardless of the specific billing methods, that is of course assuming that an owner knows what his/her costs are... You're squirming... Infrastructure and/or other overhead costs are not factored into what I am claiming. There is no need.

The actual monetary *worth* of a worker's labor *IS* the 'fruits of their labor'.

The *worth* of the worker's labor can be objectively shown.

. An employer can legally and knowingly pay an employee less than half of what s/he charges the customer for the worker's labor.

The objective *worth* of the labor is determined by what it is sold for.

That labor *is* a dollar amount - THE SPECIFIC charge for the labor. That charge objectively constitutes the 'total' fruits and is based upon an hourly amount. That is what the labor is worth, in objective monetary terms - because that is what the labor, itself, is being sold for.


i think thats enough.

point: even with the term "labor charge" on an invoice this does not objectively determine the worth of the labor. "labor" could include the cost of tools, transportation, the owner himself's labor; further he could just be inflating his costs to try and make a buck.

Indeed that *is* enough! Which one of those equate to what you said here, Hmmmm???

...again and again you define the "fruits" of one's labor as what the owner makes from the labor.

:facepalm:

I have never defined the 'fruits of one's labor' as what the owner 'makes' from<i></i> the labor. That is merely one part of it. I *have* given a clear cut example in that.

<B>creativesoul wrote:

Being intellectually honest with one's self is tough, huh?

obsidan:

nope! i am being perfectly consistent.

Consistency does not indicate intellectual honesty.

...not quite. history shows that being motivated by anything and willing to resort to force to get it has devastating consequences.

How many more examples of 'force' do you need to see before you come to realize that <I>some people are being 'forced' to make others rich because of the fact that they must be employed in order to survive, and that that opportunity is even being taken as well.

creativesoul wrote:

The ability to provide for their family by the only means that they are capable of *is* being stolen from them.

obsidian:

which means, taken to its logical conclusion, that a company *not* employing the maximum numbers of workers it can afford at any given time is immoral. because it has the means to provide for some unemployed or underemployed individuals to provide for their families and yet are doing nothing about it. this is absurd.

No, it means that capitalism - without regard for workers - is counterproductive and when taken to it's logical conclusion - removes it's own consumer base.

creative:

I want you to show *exactly* how my claim logically ends there.

Ok?

obsidian:

sure.

1. a worker's ability to provide for their family is stolen from them when company Q pays them less than X dollars
2. if a worker is unemployed, company Q is paying them less than X dollars.
3. company Q could employ the worker at a salary of X dollars without going bankrupt
//therefore, company Q is stealing the unemployed workers ability to provide for their family

The primary premise is wrong.

obsidian:

to the contrary. you have repeatedly stated that their "need" should take precedence over my desire to earn and keep a profit. in order for me to be moral anyhow....

Repeatedly requires being at least once, doesn't it? Quote me.

meh. you stated that the system necessarily rewards immoral behavior several times. you also said that the system itself takes no action, people do. perhaps that was meant to imply that capitalism is a-moral, but the two together, to me, implied that capitalism was immoral since it necessarily rewards immoral behavior.

I already addressed this.

[/b]obsidian:[/b]...

that society is nothing but an aggregate of individuals; that there is no such thing as "society's interest" except the aggregated interest of every member of society. that society needn't (indeed can't) "keep in mind "the interests of all its members in the sense of ensuring them all since those interests necessarily conflict to some degree.

And so because of this we disregard whose?

creativesoul wrote:

A dog can be said to 'benefit immensely' by the living conditions provided by his/her owner as well, regardless of the fact that it is on a chain for it's entire life and receives just enough to subsist.

obsidian:

slavery metaphors don't make it slavery. seriously. people voluntarily go to work. this means they would rather enjoy the benefits of society than go it on their own in the wild and *not* have to work for someone else. theres no chains.

And a starving person would enjoy a slice of molded bread if it was all that was avaliable. We have control over what is avaliable.

 

[obsidianavenger]

"try again"- i am going to be as aggravating as possible without making any points. once again this ceases to be worth the trouble.

telling me that all my inferences and statements are wrong without explaining *why* they are wrong is just petulant.

goodbye capitalism thread. this time for good. feel free to believe that you crushed me with the weight of your evidence.

 

[creativesoul]

A point being made does not require your comprehension of *it* in order for *it* to be valid.

It *is* interesting how you presuppose my intent, one of which you believe doesn't keep your person in mind, yet the basis of your argument requires such a thing to be morally acceptable.



Thanx for the dialogue.

 

[albertwigs]

From the concern information ,I come to know about the basic information regarding the Capitalism.As I repeatedly have pointed out, the criterion "disregard for others" is applied inconsistently across the board. your definition makes anyone who chooses to have a latte at starbucks immoral since by their action they deprive another of something they need.If you want to be a little more specific i will have an easier time addressing this point.

 

[DerGegner]

The way I see it, capitalism softly implements a darwinian system of natural selection in the market. As long as you can keep government corruption out of the picture, I think it's practically the most perfect economic system conceivable. It annoys me that people get so hasty to interfere in it when they see even the slightest issue, blowing it out of proportion and assuming it won't smooth itself out.

Immoral? Quite the opposite. It imparts deserved wealth upon citizens, and deserved consequences too. It's quite the opposite of immoral from a utilitarian, consequentialist viewpoint.

Well

Sometimes

We all work regardless of the market type. It's what we as animals do. And it's what every animal does. We aren't renting our bodies out, we're doing what comes naturally and what evolution has naturally prepped us to do.

Please explain why the descriptive truth of evolution should become a normative foundation for morality

Many thoroughly sleazy people have gotten rich because of, not in spite of their sleaziness, so you're going to have to do better than indulge in a naturalistic fallacy

The free market should,at best,be considered a "necessary evil"