[p2p-research] "Pennsylvania pie fight," etc.

[Michel Bauwens]

Hi Kevin,

not sure I can respond to the thai question, but here's an attempt.

My sense is that there is an underlying social contract of 'industrious
development', it is similar to what happened in the soviet system, but
involves real work as opposed to the fake jobs in the soviet system.

what it means is the following: thai businesses pay very low wages, but
always hire an excess amount of labour, so that the work pressure, despite
the long hours, is actually quite low to western standards. I would estimate
the ratio of workers to a particular job as being a factor of 3. Bear in
mind this is not scientific, but based on my observations in the
construction industry, in the restaurant business, in banks and shopping
malls, i.e. the things I can see, but I've never been in a factory for
example, though I strongly suspect it would be similar.

This system has some advantages: many more people have a job, but they don't
have to work so hard at it, and have ample time for socialising in the work
sphere. For the privileged, it means cheap labour, but also especially cheap
services (nannies, and generally very cheap personal services such as
haircuts, massage, etc...). A typical middle class family, even it if earns
say a quarter of its western counterpart, would have a lifestyle quality
that is a quantum leap better than anything available in the West, as long
as they don't spent their money abroad.

For the workers, it means they can take informal days off when their sick,
take their children to the job, and many other pragmatic advantages.

The lack of regulation also means that anybody which has not formal job, can
offer food, sell goods in small quantities, or go into personal services.

So in my view it's part of a package deal which makes the extreme
inequalities sufferable in normal times, and it works well, as long as the
normal economy keeps growing.

Michel

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 9:42 AM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 4/16/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm republishing this on the 19th, with the following intro, which I
> would
> > like you to address:
> >
> > I find this argument addresses one of the elements of the dynamism of
> East
> > Asia, where in many countries, these regulations either do not exist or
> do
> > not apply. In a country like Thailand, where I live, this gives nearly
> > everyone a job with a living wage (or nearly so), though at the same
> time,
> > wherever it is applied, it is impossible to protect higher living
> standards
> > for any professions based on monopoly rents, making the system not
> > attractive for any country where a professional middle class exist thanks
> to
> > such protective regulations. It insures that there are many taxis, but
> none
> > of the taxi drivers are able to make a good living because anyone can
> join
> > their ranks, bringing any market prices down to the lowest possible
> level.
>
> Thanks, Michel.
>
> I don't know enough about social and economic conditions in Thailand
> to analyze the situation there.
>
> But generally speaking, the elimination of occupational licensing and
> scaling back of zoning and "safety" codes would work best in synergy
> with a removal of similar constraints on subsistence production for
> home consumption, and on microproduction for a barter network
> organized as a community of producers.
>
> Everything I've said about removing licensing and regulation as an
> imposition of minimum overhead levels on microenterprise assumes that
> commercial microenterprise in the money economy would coexist with
> full freedom to produce in the household economy, or for informal
> exchange with other producers via barter networks.
>
> The primary context of all my discussions of low-overhead
> microenterprise is the general goal of removing barriers to direct
> production for use, and all barriers to free production for exchange
> in the social economy of networked producers.  The general idea is to
> enable people to meet as many of their own needs as possible, and
> thereby to remove dependence on wage employment as much as possible.
>
> That would assume, in particular, a society in which small-scale
> ownership of housing and land predominates.  In a society where most
> people are landless, urban proletarians living in shantytowns, the
> balance of power would be altered so that those engaged in
> microenterprise would be dependent on it as their primary source of
> sustenance, and selling their labor in a buyer's market.  My goal,
> rather, is a society in which 1) people meet as many of their needs as
> possible by producing for themselves or for barter using their own
> land and property, 2) sale of one's services in the larger commercial
> economy is a source of discretionary, supplemental income, and 3)
> informal and household production provides a fulcrum for bargaining
> power so that people can hold out for the most advantageous terms in
> participating in the large money or wage economy.
>
> It's a fairly common rule that if only one form of monopoly is
> eliminated, the remaining forms of monopoly will shift the overall
> bargaining power of classes so that the nominal elimination of
> monopoly is actually twisted to the advantage of those who retain
> possession of the remaining monopolies.
>
> Perhaps you can elaborate on how elimination of occupational licensing
> and the like fits in as part of an overall package deal in Thailand.
>
> Best,
> Kevin
>
> --
> Kevin Carson
> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
> http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>



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