Blair's Book

[spook]

I despise socialism in any form and people should remember that no matter what if they work for someone at the end of the day they are a just as much a tool to be used and discarded when its no longer worth keeping.

 

Also in the same way that you look after tools while theyre useful and needed so a boss will look after a worker but once that use is gone or when the cost is more than its worth out it must go and will go.

 

I see nothing wrong with that, remembering it has been very usefull for me especially when i had some boss whineing about how valued I was. Bollocks. What was valued was what i did. A good message for everyone. It's not YOU thats wanted, its what you do.

I think you are correct in one sense. There is a difference between what people are in society today and what they ought to be. Today it is when they do exist as little more than tools who just shop around, watch TV, go the gym etc. in their free time. Where their productive life is to function as just some tool. But then there is the matter of recognising how things could be.

 

 

Now your getting it. People don’t realise just what little worth as people they have when they work for someone. I got the message when the firm I was working for changed their personal department into a human resources department.

 

Ive used the word tool because it emphersises the point that one resource is just the same as any other resource except how you use it and how you keep it doing its job. If you work for someone else you are just a kind of tool for them to make use of and the moment they don’t need you or your cost is more than your value then out you will go.

 

Never mind how things could be, actually they couldn’t but that’s another matter, just realise how they are.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

No, no. You have argued that you are quite happy with this situation, with people being reduced to tools and existing to be nothing but this.

[Chinahand]

What determines the material value of your work? Nothing but the productive effort of your mind—if you lived on a desert island. The less efficient the thinking of your brain, the less your physical labor would bring you—and you could spend your life on a single routine, collecting a precarious harvest or hunting with bow and arrows, unable to think any further. But when you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

 

When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making, for the work of the scientist who discovered the laws that went into the making of that product, for the work of the philosopher who taught men how to think …

 

The machine, the frozen form of a living intelligence, is the power that expands the potential of your life by raising the productivity of your time. If you worked as a blacksmith in the … Middle Ages, the whole of your earning capacity would consist of an iron bar produced by your hands in days and days of effort. How many tons of rail do you produce per day if you work for [a modern steel mill]? Would you dare to claim that the size of your pay check was created solely by your physical labor and that those rails were the product of your muscles? The standard of living of that blacksmith is all that your muscles are worth; the rest is a gift from [human innovation].

 

Quotation by Ayn Rand - Atlas Shrugged.

 

I have to say that I find Ayn Rand problematic - but I think this is about as good a refutation as you can get of LDV's "the workers make the world go around" simplisities - its a partnership between those who are able to innovate and those realizing that invention - who not only include the workers, but the financiers, the engineers, the managers etc.

 

I always knew why communism only worked in agricultural societies - if you shoot a landlord not alot changes and the peasants can be freed from their bondage; but you shoot an entreupreneur or a factory manager ... well ... the factories still have to be run and good ideas innovated. LDV has a total disregard for these skills and thinks they should just be enslaved for the benefit of those without them - his economics will never work as it doesn't reward those who take on the challenge of changing the world. Believe it or not that's difficult and we can all benefit from a better mouse trap, mouse, PC, Ipod etc.

 

If you uniquely benefit a company you can expect a unique reward, if you do a job anyone else could do, then expect a reward that values your worth. Luckily in an advanced society that is a lot, because even the least skilled can be productive, but if you live in a benighted place without innovation's benefit people can barely labour enough to fill their stomachs.

 

I passionately want capitalism's vibrant innovation to come to such societies - it will enrich them massively - LDV would seem to think they should be protected from exploitation ... and left to starve.

[spook]

No, no. You have argued that you are quite happy with this situation, with people being reduced to tools and existing to be nothing but this.

 

I am. Its progress, its how it is and as long as everybody keeps it in mind and doesn’t buy the bull about how valuable they are to a boss without understanding just what that means, or about loyalty life becomes very much easier all round. It wont change, it cant change.

[P.K.]

Its progress, its how it is and as long as everybody keeps it in mind and doesn’t buy the bull about how valuable they are to a boss without understanding just what that means, or about loyalty life becomes very much easier all round. It wont change, it cant change.

 

To think you'd nearly cracked the "work ethic" thing and then you go and spoil it...

[La_Dolce_Vita]

I have to say that I find Ayn Rand problematic - but I think this is about as good a refutation as you can get of LDV's "the workers make the world go around" simplisities - its a partnership between those who are able to innovate and those realizing that invention - who not only include the workers, but the financiers, the engineers, the managers etc.

This isn't the reality, only the theory of capitalism. When I look at the role of workers in the Manx finance sector, for example, one can question what the nature of this partnership is. Does it really form a fair and voluntary partnership of innovator and those who puts the ideas into practice?

Upon establishing what is innovative what value does it have?

 

I always knew why communism only worked in agricultural societies - if you shoot a landlord not alot changes and the peasants can be freed from their bondage; but you shoot an entreupreneur or a factory manager ... well ... the factories still have to be run and good ideas innovated. LDV has a total disregard for these skills and thinks they should just be enslaved for the benefit of those without them - his economics will never work as it doesn't reward those who take on the challenge of changing the world. Believe it or not that's difficult and we can all benefit from a better mouse trap, mouse, PC, Ipod etc.

I always put down the fact that communism has never been seen except in societies that existed a thousand or more years ago down to the fact that it has never been tried in an industrial society. And it really hasn't, Leninism and Maoism are hardly attempts at communism.

 

But of course, in a capitalist, hierarchical system a Manager who was shot would leave the company 'headless'. But I am not proponent of a hierarchical system with Management. I favour workplace democracy.

 

It would be quite wrong to paint a picture of innovation being solely fuelled by the reward of wealth. I believe there is much scope for innovation in a society that has individuals not motivated by the acquisition of wealth.

 

If you uniquely benefit a company you can expect a unique reward, if you do a job anyone else could do, then expect a reward that values your worth. Luckily in an advanced society that is a lot, because even the least skilled can be productive, but if you live in a benighted place without innovation's benefit people can barely labour enough to fill their stomachs.

Communism has never been seen except in societies that existed a thousand or more years ago because it has never been tried in an industrial society.

 

I do not argue with you in so much as commenting about the method and purpose of reward in a capitalist system, rather I take issue with the very relationship between the worker and those who control the resources for production.

 

I passionately want capitalism's vibrant innovation to come to such societies - it will enrich them massively - LDV would seem to think they should be protected from exploitation ... and left to starve.

I would be interested to know what you mean by enriching. Do you think the West for example has been enriched by capitalism over the past 50 years? I just don't know whether you are equating technological progress, new technology, and (so-called) greater consumer choices with improved quality of life and living standards.

 

You seem to be such a passionate exponent of capitalist yet I keep wondering if you ignore the reality of its inability for the theory to be put into practice. Is it the case you want capitalism to work or do you genuinely believe that (corporatist-led) Globalisation is for the betterment of those you think I would be happy to see starve? I want those people protected from globalisation, most definitely, but not from the innovations that could make their life better. It would be one thing to discuss capitalism and whether the market can really work to improve the lives of people across the world, but there is no free market nor global free trade.

 

I would definitely say I am quite happy for the strides of innovation seen in many aspects of life to be reigned in for the sake of improving the lot of those who workand the damage that capitalist practices are wreaking on society and the environment.

[jimbms]

To quote Reuben Blades - I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.

 

LDV I think it's a sad and stupid thing that you have to proclaim yourself a revolutionary just to be a decent man You seem obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in an obscure fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideals and desires which seems to make you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you have lost all joy of life and all feeling of personality.

[spook]

Socialists are just capitalists who don’t understand capitalism.

[Terse]

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people - Abraham Lincoln.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

LDV I think it's a sad and stupid thing that you have to proclaim yourself a revolutionary just to be a decent man You seem obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in an obscure fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideals and desires which seems to make you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you have lost all joy of life and all feeling of personality.[/font]

Oh yeah, that's really fits the bill. STOP quoting irrelevant crap.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Socialists are just capitalists who don’t understand capitalism.

Explain.

[MilitantDogOwner]

These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people - Abraham Lincoln.

 

Everyone needs a hobby.

[spook]

Socialists are just capitalists who don’t understand capitalism.

Explain.

 

 

Capitalism provides the best way that people with money can improve living standards for people without money by providing them with paid employment so that they can earn money by using their skills.

 

Capitalism also provides the means where people with skills can exploit opportunities to make money in their own right by providing people with money things that want at a price they are ready to pay for them.

 

Capitalism without social connections is incapable of working well.

 

Socialism without involvement with capitalism is a silly pipe dream and can never work.

 

Sensible socialists know this, they know what works and what doesn’t what can be changed fr9o the better and what cant, and keep in mind that at the end of the day they are only resources for capitalists and so everybody wins.

[La_Dolce_Vita]

Spook - I am not quite sure how you are using these terms and their definitions are crucial to understanding what you're talking about - what you are saying about socialism doesn't make much sense to me. What do you mean capitalism and socialism. Do you mean capitalism as theorised, such as by Adam Smith.

[spook]

Spook - I am not quite sure how you are using these terms and their definitions are crucial to understanding what you're talking about - what you are saying about socialism doesn't make much sense to me. What do you mean capitalism and socialism. Do you mean capitalism as theorised, such as by Adam Smith.

 

 

Who? I mean capitalism as it is on the ground today.