> At 01:40 PM 4/9/98 -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>
> >What starts flame wars is to immediately label your opponent an extremist,
> >trying to make yourself look reasonable. Take your own advice.
>
> and a while later, not taking his own advice, remarked:
>
> >Socialists know that their fondest dreams
> >require guns to people's heads by government goons to make reality. Those
> >that don't are either liars or fools.
>
> But suppose one were to comment, pari passu,
>
> < Capitalists know that their fondest dreams
> require guns to people's heads by hired goons to make reality. Those
> that don't are either liars or fools >
Yes I was expecting that, but I was more paraphrasing a quote by someone else
that I can't remember.
However, you are calling a mercantilist a capitalist, which is not the same
thing. a Capitalist does not beleive in the use of government to enforce one's
own advantage, while many mercantilist types and oligarchists call themselves
capitalists, erroneously.
> My experience suggests that both these accounts, while strictly true only
> in extreme but exemplary cases, go a long way toward explaining the world I
> live in. In the last couple of days, a conservative government-supported
> stevedoring company sacked more than 2000 unionists on Australian wharves
> simply for being members of the union, locking them out and patrolling the
> wharves with private muscle and rottweilers. Workers rallying in protest
> have been attacked illegally by irritant gas, which is as close to a gun
> against the head as one might wish to see in industrial practice at the
> close of the 20th century. This argues, incidentally, against the claim
> that workers can invest on equable terms by command of their own labour.
In a buyers market, commodity products will always come cheaply. Manual,
unskilled labor will always be the cheapest to be had. Unions and immigration
rules seek to artificially restrict the supply of manual labor, which is why
unions always support immigration restrictions.
If your union there is anything like the Teamsters here, I can understand why
the owners are using security to keep former employees off their property. That
they have successfully ended the artificial labor supply restrictions they were
suffering under is actually good for the economy in general, no matter how much
short term difficulty the workers may face. I can pretty much guarrantee that
within 1-2 years, if you economic/technical growth is anything like here, most
of those shut out people will be making even more money than they were under
the unions seniority system in jobs that develop greater skills than just
lugging cargo.
I have no pity for these signs of the obsolescence of high paid human laborers
when a high tech economy needs their brains so much more....
As an example, in 1990 up to 1992, Boeing Aircraft Company laid off some 15,000
imployees, over 10% of its work force, most of whom lived in the Seattle area,
and they had some of the highest paid manufacturing jobs around. This big
layoff definitely had a ripple effect in the rest of the economy, no doubt
about it, as the real estate boom of the 80's died a quick death, and the
Federal Gov'ts huge excise tax on boats effectively killed the marine industry
in the area. Now 6-8 years later, Boing has hired back less than 5,000 workers,
but is producing more planes than before. The unemployment rate is lower now
than before the layoffs, so this means that those 10,000 other laid off workers
got jobs elsewhere (many of whom started businesses), and the fact that the
average income in the area is higher now indicates that those 10,000 workers
are likely not making less money than they did before.
Free economies are much more dynamic than centrally planned economies, no doubt
about it. That is not a point of debate. That people aren't guarranteed
lifetime employment means that they will take responsibility to keep their
skills up to date or face the consequences of their actions, or lack thereof.
More dynamic economies do not suffer fools gladly, and they demand efficiency
and technical advancement to keep up the pace of competition. It is no wonder
at all that the most technologically advanced nations are the most economically
dynamic, and that those with the greatest knowledge skills will migrate to
those economies. The US has probably a greater percentage of foreign trained
individuals working in their universities and corporations than any other
industrial nation. It is also indicative that those who live in hidebound
socialist economies but who develop a pride in acheivement will generally seek
to migrate to countries like the US, where their skills are more appreciated.
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?