After the Revolution?

Cleaver

incher wrote: »

Well, what has made us conditioned to want bigger this or that?

I blame women. All that talk of girth in Cosmo magazine and the like.

You should know with a username such as that.

Cleaver

globalds wrote: »

I must have been in a coma for the years when there was a national shortage of Politicians that caused the inflation busting pay rises they awarded themselves.

You've picked a very specific and unique job there though.

Let's not get in to this again, but I think the MP's salary of 63k is low for the hours they work and responsibility they have. Pick up a good Oracle Database qualification, a few years experience and you can earn that working 9-5 in an office, in your bermuda shorts doing a bit of programming.

(By the way, I don't begrudge Oracle DBAs 60k per annum. I stand by what I say: markets determine rates, and that's that.

incher

Cleaver wrote: »

I blame women. All that talk of girth in Cosmo magazine and the like.

You should know with a username such as that.

My username refers to nothing more than a particular location, I'll have you know!

MyLastFiver

Cleaver wrote: »

You could argue that you have to 'work hard' in any job. I don't do any manual or physical labour in my line of work, but it doesn't mean I work any less hard, am any less tired or don't find my job as physcially or mentally draining than a miner, plasterer or any other manual type of worker.

Me too - I'm a professional myself. But would you accept that a narrowing of the gap between reward for professional services, and reward for hard labour, would be desirable?

It's simply supply and demand though, isn't it? All wages find a natural level in one way or another.

Mad as it may seem, can I suggest that this is another orthodoxy that needs to be challenged? Relying on the free market to fix prices, whether it be for labour, commodities or anything else, will one day be discredited. Have a look at the evidence: The market says that shirts in Primark are worth £6. By pricing so low, Mr Primark is not forgoing profit margin in favour of market share; he is maintaining margin by taking advantage of the fact that the market says that a day's labour sewing shirts is worth a few pence, somewhere else in the world. Orthodox economics calls this efficiency, but actually it's a market failure in a moral sense.

Another, perhaps less emotive example; blackouts in California because a competitive market has forced electricity prices down so low that suppliers cannot afford to generate the power. This is a "free market" that has malfunctioned; in order to compete, firms have cut their costs so low that everyone loses; no-one gets electricity.

A topical example - the market was allowed to set prices for Collateralized Debt Obligations. The difference between the demand-led prices, and the fundamental worth of the assets, has caused a worldwide economic disaster.

In other words, the market does not always know best. The "natural level" of any price, according to the market, is the maximum someone is prepared to pay for it. In other words, price is led by demand and not by fundamentals (costs of production). This differential ("surplus value": Marx)* is the creator of wealth (for those who own the means of production) but also the creator of all exploitation and injustice in the world.

There is another way! At my local farmer's market at the weekend, I bought a black pudding. "50p please". "Is that all?" I said. "This is a yuppie farmer's market. People would pay 3 quid for them." "I know" she said "but I'd feel bad charging that much. It's only pig's blood". And there I saw the future



* I invoke Marx with reluctance, for fear of being labelled some sort of commie dinosaur. But I find many of his paradigms useful when discussing economics, sociology and revolution. Just because I admire Marx does not mean I want to recreate the USSR, just in case anyone wanted to copy and paste in that old argument.

Reaper

In the 1980s Ben & Jerry had a salary rule stating no employee could make more than five times what the lowest-paid worker was paid. I liked that. When I become dictator that will be written into law. And anybody who tries to get round it by splitting off low paid workers into a sub-company will be shot. Simple.

MyLastFiver

incher wrote: »

Well, what has made us conditioned to want bigger this or that? Isn't that how 'progress' has come about - not settling for the status quo?

And which particular needs met would be sufficient for us all to be content, in your opinion?

And I ask all this in the spirit of friendly debate, just in case my questions come across as aggressive, which they are not meant to be!

Sorry Incher I'm having trouble keeping up with the replies. To answer your question about human needs, off the top of my head: Food, shelter, the society and fellowship of others, freedom of thought and expression (in all its forms).

I believe that what we lack is a sense of community and fellowship, and we mistake this desire for a desire for possessions. This is why having more stuff doesn't make us happier; we're not addressing the root of our longing.

To answer your other question, we are conditioned to compete, intellectually and materially, through compulsory education (run and perpetuated by the bourgeoisie), and through the mass media (owned and perpetuated by the bourgeoisie).

Whilst I accept that competition is certainly a biological, evolutionary drive, I believe that capitalism takes advantage of this drive and uses it to sell us sh!te, in the belief that, by owning a flat-screen tell or a shiny silver car we will one day vanquish our competition; the source of our neuroses (Freud) and achieve a blissful nirvana. Gillette. The best a man can get.

You have to concede that this is b0ll0cks, and we are looking for happiness in the wrong place...

Cleaver

MyLastFiver wrote: »

Me too - I'm a professional myself. But would you accept that a narrowing of the gap between reward for professional services, and reward for hard labour, would be desirable?

That's a different, and good, question.

Taking the argument in the complete extreme, it makes no sense whatsoever that a Health Care Assistant on a busy cancer ward who works 40 hours a week and makes the lives of people who are ill infintately more comfortable makes 14k per annum, whereas the reserve goalkeeper for Chelsea makes £2 million per annum. If I look at that situation with no context then it just makes you angry, frustrated and confused where we are a society. But we are where we are: markets set a rate for roles, and if we live in a capitalist society then that's it. I have no idea of another system that works without breaking down.

I guess you're more talking about a less extreme example, perhaps someone working in middle ranking finance compared to a nurse? I know what you mean, I think there is a gap which is not particulary fair. And I agree with you, a lessoning of that gap would be 'desirable'. But I'd still be loathe to mess with the natural order of things: basically, let the market decide.

MyLastFiver wrote: »

Mad as it may seem, can I suggest that this is another orthodoxy that needs to be challenged? Relying on the free market to fix prices, whether it be for labour, commodities or anything else, will one day be discredited. Have a look at the evidence: The market says that shirts in Primark are worth £6. By pricing so low, Mr Primark is not forgoing profit margin in favour of market share; he is maintaining margin by taking advantage of the fact that the market says that a day's labour sewing shirts is worth a few pence, somewhere else in the world. Orthodox economics calls this efficiency, but actually it's a market failure in a moral sense.

I keep saying this on here, but it's lovely when someone argues against you and does it in a way that actually makes you think about your own viewpoint and whether it's right. Take note Mr White Horse.

I would be in favour of a 'minimum cost' for certain products, such as the one you talk of above. Well, a minimum cost isn't the right term. Perhaps a set of standards applying to a product or service, like the minimum wage, which states that you conditions of labour etc. should be of a certain standard. Which I guess we already have.

But, in the shirt example above, the market again sets this price. I'm a bit of a leftie when it comes to shopping: I won't shop in Primark. Mrs Cleaver does, and I don't like it. There's no need for there to be a £3 item of clothing in Primark, Tesco or Wal-Mart. If the public voted with their conscious and refused to buy things made by these companies then there wouldn't be a market for them. The argument I get for this is that then people would lose their jobs, but two wrongs don't make a right in my eyes.

The same goes for apples flown in from Argentina that are sold in places such as Tesco. If no one bought them, and made an effort to only buy from Britain, Tesco would very quickly start investing in British orchards.

I'm starting to rant, but hopefully you see my point.

MyLastFiver wrote: »

Another, perhaps less emotive example; blackouts in California because a competitive market has forced electricity prices down so low that suppliers cannot afford to generate the power. This is a "free market" that has malfunctioned; in order to compete, firms have cut their costs so low that everyone loses; no-one gets electricity.

A topical example - the market was allowed to set prices for Collateralized Debt Obligations. The difference between the demand-led prices, and the fundamental worth of the assets, has caused a worldwide economic disaster.

In other words, the market does not always know best. The "natural level" of any price, according to the market, is the maximum someone is prepared to pay for it. In other words, price is led by demand and not by fundamentals (costs of production). This differential ("surplus value": Marx)* is the creator of wealth (for those who own the means of production) but also the creator of all exploitation and injustice in the world.

There is another way! At my local farmer's market at the weekend, I bought a black pudding. "50p please". "Is that all?" I said. "This is a yuppie farmer's market. People would pay 3 quid for them." "I know" she said "but I'd feel bad charging that much. It's only pig's blood". And there I saw the future

I am in complete and utter agreement with this. When it comes to actually feeling 'local' (a term supermarkets and other big business have stolen to use in the same way as 'organic'), part of a community and like you're in a society that works you feel amazing. I get my sandwich at lunch most days from a place round the corner where, when the women is in a good mood, gives you free soup. Other days she tells me that her husband annoyed her that morning and she couldn't be bothered to make soup, so she doesn't make any. The randomness of this fills me with joy.

Have I gone off topic here?

MyLastFiver

nickmason wrote: »

I don't think you can regulate an ideal society - people will always find ways around the rules to cheat it. The goal must instead be to align individual aspirations to the greater good.

Yes! But I expect that if we examine deeply and honestly our individual aspirations, they converge more than we might imagine. There is a limit to how happy the pursuit of private property can make us.

Cleaver

globalds wrote: »

A maximum wage

Not just a minimum wage

How would you begin to go about setting a maximum wage? For example, what would you set it to in the UK if you were in charge of deciding?

MyLastFiver

Cleaver wrote: »

When it comes to actually feeling 'local',...part of a community and like you're in a society that works you feel amazing.

Thank you so, so much Cleaver because I think you have just made my subsequent point, and I couldn't agree with you more.

What we are missing is not more money, or goods; we are missing a sense of fellowship, community and goodwill. That "amazing" feeling you get from being part of a community, I bet you just can't get that from something you'd buy in the shops.

I would hug you but this isn't the DFW board