From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 10 1998 - 13:40:00 MDT
Nico MYOWNA wrote:
>Dan Fabulich wrote:
>> Care to tell that to all those who support the American Confederacy? You
>> can only "leave and split the community" (aka secede) if the voting
>> majority hasn't forbidden it.
>If there is "new land" you can move away legal or just illegal.
>> *I* don't agree with most of Congress's laws, but it's still illegal for me
>> to sit in my house and secede from the USG. Try it yourself.
>
>Yes, thats true in our time. But there are people in this world who work
>to make this split legal....
If it's illegal, then I have proven my claim that "once your direct
democracy has made a decision, it has to force its operations on the
minority who disapprove." The fact that people have to WORK in order to
CAUSE it to be legal to do this is proof that majority-level democracy is
not what you claim.
Your "new land" claim made sense back when there was new land to go to...
however, the only area currently which (to my knowledge) has no government
is Antarctica, and IMO the costs of living there are far too great to
outweigh the privledges this would allow me.
>> And if my delegate misrepresents me? See above.
>Than all decisions are illegal because the groups have to acept voluntary
>the decisions of all delegates.
Who are the groups? And what if my delegate gets outvoted by a factious
majority?
>> Plus, since both participants agree on the "vote" beforehand,
>> they will almost never need to be forced to agree with themselves (except
>> when they change their minds after voting). Now imagine people calling
>> these votes "contracts" and calling this system "the free market."
>
>Okay, but I think there is a diffrent between a contract and a consensus
>decision. A consensus decision ends if the participant in this consensus
>cannot longer agree with this consensus. But a contract is a peace of pa-
>per who can force you to agree with yourself and your old decision if you
>have mutual agreed in a time sequence where you are obligated by the
>contract.
This is true at the moment, but again, this is only in the case where
people change their minds and try to violate contracts which they have
already made. The majority of contracts, however, are fulfilled without a
hitch, without force nor threat of force because both parties agree to its
terms. And smart contracts and other similar systems may well be able to
obviate the use of force in contracts altogether in the near future.
>> So they are competetive. Fortunately, in the case of companies, they're
>> competing to see who can perform the services which are worth the most to
>> the most people... note that each and every buyer co-operates voluntarily
>> when they buy goods, and that the company which performs services which are
>> not worth enough to enough buyers eventually goes out of business.
>
>I see, you havn't had thought about it.
You couldn't possibly see this. Don't make presumptions about what I'm
thinking. ("Unless otherwise specified, I'm not telling you everything I
know.)
>I havn't told from competetion. I
>have asked if you noticed the inner structure of industrial companies to
>make decisions and not their relationship to buyers/customers.
What? That they're hierarchical? Yes, I had noticed this. This is
because they are in competition. However, they differ in their essense for
the reasons I just got through telling you.
>See above. Therefore this statement is wrong. Workers and their managment
>inside the industrial world are forced to co-operate: the managment have
>to co-operate with their workers because they cannot produce without wor-
>kers and the workers have to co-operate with the managment, because they
>need their wages to survive and therefore they have to acept that the ma-
>nagment have command of their work.
Ah, the Marxist fallacy: that the workers cannot survive without the firm's
wages.
I know you're probably opposed to the very idea, but try reading an
introductory neo-classical microeconomics textbook. (It's important to
understand the language of your enemy. ;) Hell, I've read _Capital_.)
Anyway, this theory of labor would be true if, and only if, the firm could
offer any wages it wanted. This is not the case however, and would be true
if, and only if, it were the only buyer of labor (a monopsony). You see,
when firms are in competition, workers will tend to apply for jobs which
offer higher wages. As a result, a firm which offers higher wages can
afford higher quality workers, and offer a better product. In theoretical
"perfect competition," firms cannot set wages at all, but rather must
accept the market price: by setting wages any higher, they wouldn't make
any money, and by setting them any lower, they wouldn't have any workers.
When there is only ONE buyer of labor, however, the firm has complete
freedom to set the price of labor to be whatever it wants, which workers
must accept because there is no one else to whom they can sell labor. This
is how Marx viewed the labor market, and it is clearly wrong, which we can
observe empirically: there are MANY different firms out there, each
offering different wages and producing goods of different quality.
Even under a monopsony, however, workers can increase their wages through
investment; in this case, strikes. In this form of wage investment,
workers forego today's earnings in exchange for an increase in wages from a
firm; this can even take place under a monopsony. Marx presumed that this
would be impossible because the proletariat are property-less (or nearly
so) and therefore too destitute to survive a strike.
But thanks to the competition which does exist, workers are NOT destitute,
and do not depend entirely on one firm's wages to survive. Using their own
savings, (which Marx presumed would not exist under capitalism,) workers
can and do successfully invest in their own wages by striking. If the
labor market looked as you suggest it does, then this would be totally
impossible.
Workers do not depend on a firm's wages for their living. They can sell to
other firms, and they can strike, and the firm cannot legally stop either
of these from happening under l-f capitalism.
>The structure of the military is as well hirarchically as the structure of
>the industry. Both have structures where competence and responsibility are
>split from the top to the bottom; the people on the top make the decisions
>and have a high responsibillity whereas the people at the bottom carry out
>orders with a low responsibillity; only the managment -- the industrial ge-
>neral staff -- could change the production and the structure of the firm
>and have command of this structure of working.
This is true; many have argued this is the best way to organize when you
must compete against others. I am unconvinced, but I do not specialize in
this sort of thing.
>> >Once the managment have made a decision, it have to force its operations
>> >on the majority of workers.
>>
>> This is completely wrong. Under capitalism, corporations can't (legally)
>> force their employees to do anything. All of the employees volunteer to
>> work in a corporation. All those who don't volunteer to do what the CEO
>> wants don't have to work there at all. How is this force?
>
>Because workers and human beings like Bill Gates or Rockefeller are *not*
>on the same level. Rich people have enough money to build up a firm; there-
>fore for them are to work for wage or to work for their own firms a real
>alternativ; but if you have to work for wage and must spend most of your
>wage for your survive you are not able to earn enough money to build up
>your own firm. Therefore you are forces to earn wage your hole life.
>
>Every costs of interests of all firms who produce, transport or sell a
>product are part of the price of this product. Every buyer of a product
>have to pay the price -- and all costs of interests inside. Rich people
>could invest there money and could earn this costs of interests back which
>they have to pay inside the prices -- or they earn more. But poor people
>who cann't invest their money because they need this money to survive can-
>not earn cost of interests back. Therefore they are not on the same level
>with the firm- and capital-owners. And therefore they cannot co-operate
>voluntary on the same level.
>>
>> >Therefore capitalism in its dayly reality
>> >isn't much closer to "spontaneous order" than democracy.
>
>Sincerely,
>Nico
>
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