£50 A Week Dole

[Boom Boom]

So, slave ownership is just a "social paradigm" now? I think you will find that there is active co-ercion and violence meted out to slaves, i.e. thaft of their liberty and labour.

Now it's all very nice to say that poor workers are equivalent to slaves but the key test is whether they are free to offer their labour to other people, to accept the best offer they can get, or to walk away.

If people are trapped by a system that offers them violence if they walk away (tax demands, exclusive land ownership, border controls, etc) that is another matter again.

Anyway the slave owner gives food and lodging. If the slave produced less value than that they would be disposed of.

And the worker would be sacked.

[wonderpup]

That value added = replacability is just an economic law.

Not a social construct.

Social constructs can recognise facts such as these or try to ignore them. Facts they will remain.

But replacability itself can be defined in terms of a social construct. Want to murder 5 million? First define them as untermensch. My point is that the replacability of the employee is achieved by first defining him as subhuman.

If we go into business as partners and you turn out to be useless I cannot easily eject you from the enterprise.

If I hire you as an employee and you turn out to be useless I can easily fire you.

It's the same you in both cases- but the social/legal construct that frames you is different. So, as an employee you are more replaceable than as a partner- see how that works?

The purpose of the Employer/Employee construct is to define the employee as a commodity and not a person. Why? Because persons have rights that commodities do not.

[Injin]

But replacability itself can be defined in terms of a social construct. Want to murder 5 million? First define them as untermensch. My point is that the replacability of the employee is achieved by first defining him as subhuman.

No, it isn't.

You ae assuming that by default other people have value for each other and that anythign else is deviant. This isn't so. By default nobody cares about you at all. Your whole existence is meaningless to others, they don't care that you live or die or what you do - until you impact their existence in some way or other. The default is uncaring indifference.

If we go into business as partners and you turn out to be useless I cannot easily eject you from the enterprise.

But you will want to. This is what I mean when I say that it's a law of economics.

If I hire you as an employee and you turn out to be useless I can easily fire you.

And this is correct. If anyone wants to stop dealing with someone else, they shoudl be able to.

To say otherwise doesn't make any sense.

It's the same you in both cases- but the social/legal construct that frames you is different. So, as an employee you are more replaceable than as a partner- see how that works?

Yes, the partner has too much adhesion.

The purpose of the Employer/Employee construct is to define the employee as a commodity and not a person. Why? Because persons have rights that commodities do not.

No, it's to preserve the ability to stop talking and dealing with someone.

The problem is with the difficulty of dropping people one no longer wants to spend time with, not with the adhesion.

And as you can see, this si a law of economics - people want to say goodbye but "social constructs" mean they can't.

[wonderpup]

I have informed knowledge that there is a relationship between what people do and how much they get paid.

Employers bid to buy skills off prospective employees using wages, bonus structures etc as their currency. Employees will stay with a given employer only if the recompense they receive remains competitive and attractive.

I think that you may have the relationship the wrong way around – this will not help when you are negotiating employment packages with prospective employers. You sound quite young and idealistic though so this kind of experience will probably come with time.

The people that fall outside the model I detail above are the people with no skills to offer. If you have no skills, and can only provide manual labor, you are essentially a commodity and employers will bid to buy commodities at the lowest possible price.

Sadly I am neither young nor idealistic. But I do wonder how you reconcile the idea that people who take risks therefore deserve to be rewarded with the idea that people are just commodities to be purchased.

For example, if I take the risk of robbing a bank and get away with it, does this mean I deserve the money I stole? Clearly not. So what you seem to mean is that there exists a moral link between the creation of wealth and the right to keep that wealth.

But if you then pay someone based on how easy they are to replace, are you not breaking that moral link? For example- suppose I run a sweatshop in india and pay the workers a tiny fraction of the profits their work creates- have I not cheated them of the wealth they created?

Or does the link between wealth creation and wealth accumulation only apply to those with the power to enforce it?

[Boom Boom]

But replacability itself can be defined in terms of a social construct. Want to murder 5 million? First define them as untermensch. My point is that the replacability of the employee is achieved by first defining him as subhuman.

If we go into business as partners and you turn out to be useless I cannot easily eject you from the enterprise.

If I hire you as an employee and you turn out to be useless I can easily fire you.

It's the same you in both cases- but the social/legal construct that frames you is different. So, as an employee you are more replaceable than as a partner- see how that works?

The purpose of the Employer/Employee construct is to define the employee as a commodity and not a person. Why? Because persons have rights that commodities do not.

The argument from utility is morally dubious, and this can be demonstrated very definitively by asking...

Should murdering someone of greater use to society carry a harsher punishment than murdering someone with less?

Clearly if we are in the business of valuing people on the basis of the ease with which they can be replaced, then surely the legal system should have a sliding scale of punishment for murder depending on the utility provided by the person murdered.

Edited August 6, 2010 by Boom Boom

[Injin]

The argument from utility is morally dubious, and this can be demonstrated very definitively by asking...

Should murdering someone of greater use to society carry a harsher punishment than murdering someone with less?

Clearly if we are in the business of valuing people on the basis of the ease with which they can be replaced, then surely the legal system should have a sliding scale of punishment for murder depending on the utility provided by the person murdered. Any ideology seeking to categorise a certain section of the population as mere things

Well no, because if we are valuing people based on how easily they are replaced, there shouldn't be a legal system at all as it's non voluntary.

[Boom Boom]

Well no, because if we are valuing people based on how easily they are replaced, there shouldn't be a legal system at all as it's non voluntary.

Complete non sequitur

[wonderpup]

So, slave ownership is just a "social paradigm" now? I think you will find that there is active co-ercion and violence meted out to slaves, i.e. thaft of their liberty and labour.

Now it's all very nice to say that poor workers are equivalent to slaves but the key test is whether they are free to offer their labour to other people, to accept the best offer they can get, or to walk away.

If people are trapped by a system that offers them violence if they walk away (tax demands, exclusive land ownership, border controls, etc) that is another matter again.

Anyway the slave owner gives food and lodging. If the slave produced less value than that they would be disposed of.

Slavery was a social institution backed by law- those that practised it were law abiding men.

You say the key test is whether people are free to offer their labour to other people- this is a strange definition of freedom. Why would you sell yourself when you could choose to participate as an equal?

You have so internalised the Employer/Employee paradigm that you mistake it for liberty, it is not. I view the employee as a modification of the slave to the extent that in both cases the human being is commoditised and forced to accept a definition of themselves as a lesser being.

The meaning of the contract of employment you sign is clear- you are a subordinate- not a slave I agree, but an inferior being. And the most important right you give up is the right to make a moral claim on the profits of the business- even though you have laboured to create them.

Selling yourself to other people for money is not freedom.

Edited August 6, 2010 by wonderpup

[Injin]

Complete non sequitur

Not at all.

You have assumed that the people in the legal system have different rules than those you stated.

if we are assuming that peopel are judged on the basis of their replacability, then that will include people in the legal system, which immediately meake the whoel thing history.

Logic is fun.

[Injin]

Slavery was a social institution backed by law- those that practised it were law abiding men.

You say the key test is whether people are free to offer their labour to other people- this is a strange definition of freedom. Why would you sell yourself when you could choose to participate as an equal?

You have so internalised the Employer/Employee paradigm that you mistake it for liberty, it is not. I view the employee as a modification of the slave to the extent that in both cases the human being is commoditised and forced to accept a definition of themselves as a lesser being.

No they aren't. You can just say no, just like Zammo.

The meaning of the contract of employment you sign is clear- you are a subordinate- not a slave I agree, but an inferior being. And the most important right you give up is the right to make a moral claim on the profits of the business- even though you have laboured to create them.

Selling yourself to other people for money is not freedom.

but having to give people things that you own which you don't want to is freedom?

Don't think so.

I offer you a pound to clean my house.

You accept.

What's the problem?

[Boom Boom]

Not at all.

You have assumed that the people in the legal system have different rules than those you stated.

if we are assuming that peopel are judged on the basis of their replacability, then that will include people in the legal system, which immediately meake the whoel thing history.

Logic is fun.

You're talking rubbish as usual.

[Injin]

You're talking rubbish as usual.

Where is the logical flaw?

Always happy to be corrected, this ad hominem stuff is kinda lame though.

[DTMark]

This thread is a bit like the communist manifesto. Communism always fails in the end, on any large scale; communist societies are also almost always dictatorships.

It fails because it is based on a faulty first premise - that is, that everyone would like to participate in "society" and fulfil some useful role. That's simply not true. Humans are cleverer than this, and a fair percentage of humans will take advantage of others if permitted to.

It's even true in the animal world; although a slightly trite example: cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests and leave the other bird to rear their young for them. Seagulls like to steal food from each other rather than seek it out for themselves.

Communes do work provided everyone pulls together. However even in that system the individual does not have freedom. There is an expectation that they will work for the commune and if they do not they will be ejected eventually and sent on their way.

At a country level should we eject people from the country and put them on boats and send them out to sea if they don't shape up?

Or, should we have a system whereby to a reasonable degree - and it's by no means perfect, but about as good as it gets - you have a labour market and everyone is free to equip and expand their skills so as to gain greater reward if they wish, or, if they wish to sit on their backside, they have the freedom to starve to death (yes, that's part of the freedom).

You want a house built. You contract a builder who wants £200k. You agree and a contract is formed. When the house is completed, it's worth 300k, say. How much of that additional equity is the builder entitled to? Nil. How much should they be entitled to? Nil.

I take a risk being self employed and have variable income. I ask someone to assist me and offer them £1000 to do a piece of work. They agree. A contract is formed. I sell the total piece for £10k. How much of the difference is my employee entitled to? Nil. How much should they be entitled to? Nil.

If you do not want to be an employee, you have the freedom not to: you can run your own business, which might or might not involve employing others.

If you want guaranteed accomodation, food, water and so on, then you rely on others to help you. If you want a health service, police, your kids educated, and so on: you pay others for their services to you. The state organises the basics (under a Conservative government, anyway - left wing governments like to organise everything), then you have the discretion to employ others as you see fit (lawyer, private healthcare, dentist, etc).

So you have to have money to pay for this, you have to work (unless you have a Labour government). That is not the same as slavery and the comparison is simply daft.

There are parts of the world where rather than grouping together and agreeing to live as a society, you can go and live like a nomad if you want to. You might thrive, you might die from a bad harvest or an infection. You might well be murdered, because the freedom everyone has to do what they want means there's no society, no police, no law and order, no education. You do have the freedom to make that choice if you want to. However most people don't and would find the idea unthinkable; we've moved on from that in the West.

[Guest Noodle]

Your post demonstrates succinctly why we in Britain are going to struggle and why perhaps less than ten years from now, we might have rioting in the streets.

Come on Mr P, try and explain what sort of life a semi skilled Brit is going to have when competing with the above?

The EE has a vested interest in coming here when you see the differential compared to his country (he is at a financial advantage straight away), the unemployed semi skilled Brit can't go any where and can't compete against him.

It's pure economics, the Eastern European's cost base is lower the unemployed Brits isn't.

I'm sure he'll thank you for your concern.

Moving on:

http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=158810

I have just watched this on ITV Player about attempting to revive our manufacturing industry. It is galling to hear James dyson go on about high skilled jobs for 1300 people when he moved his manufacturing base off shore to the far east!

And the presenter didn't pull him up on this point.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_(company)

I don't honestly know.

I was insulting called a skilled professional by my old crews, I was disgusted by it personally, always lived on-site, drove an old car and wore clothes not fit for the bin. Could be because I talk a lot of old shite. Quite often site cabin wasn't plumbed to mains sewerage so would have to flush to a bucket outside and slop.

I never lived like normal people do there so I don't have much of a reference point to tell you.

Quite a few Polish chaps lived the same as me. Would live in their motor car, same as me. I remember one old boy, he lived in his big Peugeot estate car. He was a professional, had the windows blacked out, all set up for the comfortable living. Strong this fella, tough. Ate like a horse, would love the two-for-one deals round the local, scoff the lot.

Here, everyone seems to do okay but this country is not India or even China, it's living standards are probably much higher.

Life's not much good anywhere if you're on the bottom of the pile, which most people are I guess.

I've forgotten what we're talking about . . . .

What are we talking about?

[Frank Hovis]

I don't honestly know.

I was insulting called a skilled professional by my old crews, I was disgusted by it personally, always lived on-site, drove an old car and wore clothes not fit for the bin. Could be because I talk a lot of old shite. Quite often site cabin wasn't plumbed to mains sewerage so would have to flush to a bucket outside and slop.

I never lived like normal people do there so I don't have much of a reference point to tell you.

Quite a few Polish chaps lived the same as me. Would live in their motor car, same as me. I remember one old boy, he lived in his big Peugeot estate car. He was a professional, had the windows blacked out, all set up for the comfortable living. Strong this fella, tough. Ate like a horse, would love the two-for-one deals round the local, scoff the lot.

Here, everyone seems to do okay but this country is not India or even China, it's living standards are probably much higher.

Life's not much good anywhere if you're on the bottom of the pile, which most people are I guess.

I've forgotten what we're talking about . . . .

What are we talking about?

Mr P considers a career in waste reclamation and mixing with those sort of people:

[Guest Noodle]

Mr P considers a career in waste reclamation and mixing with those sort of people:

Never been posh. All the paddy's liked me so no way I was ever posh.

[Injin]

Never been posh. All the paddy's liked me so no way I was ever posh.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DukZxJ4wS4A&feature=related

[Guest Noodle]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DukZxJ4wS4A&feature=related

That's how it was for me dealing with the stuck-up-but-absolutely-useless types. Painful.

Got a police ASP now, so in future I'll just put some manners on 'em.

[PopGun]

That value added = replacability is just an economic law.

Bogeys could replace many of the overpaid managers I've encountered in the last 10 years.

[Guest Noodle]

The slow lingering death of the British working (and lower) classes via globalisation.

Oh yeah. You're all going starve to death in the gutter because you don't grow enough carrots. Shall we set the date for around next Wednesday, does 2pm suit, how's your diary fixed?

I just don't know to be honest.

[Frank Hovis]

The slow lingering death of the British working (and lower) classes via globalisation.

Yes, it was never going to end well. All that talk of unique British creativity innovation and added value was just so much guff and, to their credit, most newspapers have always nailed this for the lie it is.

[Frank Hovis]

Changing the subject, you purchased this £10k dream motor of yours yet Frank?

Oh yes, P. Still getting used to it though. 2 litre TDi 140bhp Seat Leon. A better-looking VW Golf. It can certainly shift but I'm struggling to get the revs right in 1st and 2nd.

[Guest Noodle]

Changing the subject, you purchased this £10k dream motor of yours yet Frank?

I'll put that in context for you. My local shopkeeper here just bought a brand new top of the line Toyota Vigo (£15k) . . . for cash.

Believe me, the wealth gap between Blighty and here isn't that great. It used to be, but not so much now. Look I'm one of the only people in this village that doesn't own a scooter, I ride a push bike.

The wealth gap will close up fast, especially as so much of the costs in these other countries are externalised (waste, environment, health) and that will catch up with them soon. Costs will rise.

I wouldn't worry too much.

[Frank Hovis]

Are you stalling it then?

I've stalled it twice, once holding up a whole queue of traffic whilst I worked out that to restart I hard to turn off then on rather than just ratchet up again as on my last one (though everybody was too polite to hoot), but they were both due to the short-throw gearbox meaning that I was trying to start in third.

There doesn't seem to be a proper first, I could (if careless) get up to about 30 in 1st in my petrol Astra, this has nothing like that flexibility in the low gears but is better in 3rd & 4th.