Cuomo's Brownshirts put squeeze on AIG

[FlamingMoe]

If you can't manage a project any better than to hire a boob, if you don't have the sense to check his work, you shouldn't be in business because you suck at it. By your logic, you should be able to tell a supplier that his paint was no good, so you are cancelling your check and not fear any repercussions.

I see nothing wrong with your paint example. If a supplier sent me the wrong paint, I would at the very least expect a refund and if that was refused, I would cancel the check. If the work received does not fulfill the requirements of the job requested, payment is not obligatory. If I go to a steakhouse and order well-done and I get a bloody chunk of meat that could still have a heartbeat, I am under no obligation to pay for the piece of flesh they delivered to my table.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I'd like to say I am beginning to question lefty's Marxist credentials. I think he is just an anti-capitalist who lifted some terminology.

 

[dirtywick]

If you can't manage a project any better than to hire a boob, if you don't have the sense to check his work, you shouldn't be in business because you suck at it.

This was an incredibly weak response.

I have to tell you, it's fine that you think a day's worth of work should be worth something, in fact in most cases I agree. But, in this case, the guy didn't do a day's worth of work, he spent his day at the job site and he was doing something, but you hired him to provide a brick wall and got something else. Where we disagree is merely showing up to work and doing something should be worth a day's pay; you hired him to build a wall, not play blocks.

By your logic, you should be able to tell a supplier that his paint was no good, so you are cancelling your check and not fear any repercussions.

If the paint is demonstrably no good, then yes. Of course by your logic I should open a paint store and sell empty cans, much more efficient use of this finite wealth I keep hearing about. That way I get money and keep my paint.

 

[BPSCG]

If you can't manage a project any better than to hire a boob, if you don't have the sense to check his work, you shouldn't be in business because you suck at it.

So am I correct in interpreting the above to be your acknowledgment that some work is not worth a day's worth of food, clothing and shelter?

 

[mhaze]

I'd like to say I am beginning to question lefty's Marxist credentials. I think he is just an anti-capitalist who lifted some terminology.

Correct.

Ad hoc redefines Maxx as perversely as Adam Smith.

 

[leftysergeant]

So am I correct in interpreting the above to be your acknowledgment that some work is not worth a day's worth of food, clothing and shelter?

Less often than a year's financial services are worth a hundred or more times what a factory or construction worker makes.

 

[Skeptic]

The big mistake on leftysergeant's part is the usual one -- namely, the belief that there is such a thing as inherent value, what some service or product is "really" worth, and to pay less, or charge more, than what it's "really" worth is "evil exploitation".

This shows that leftysergeant's doesn't understand the first thing about economics (duh, otherwise he wouldn't be a wannabe marxist). There is no such thing as value. There is only how much what people are willing to pay for a good or service. Sorry. If I make solid gold dog collars and people are not willing to pay more for them than the (say) $10 they pay for regular dog collars, those solid gold dog collars are WORTH $10, no matter how much gold they have.

Whenever some dictator tries to force people to pay what the work is "worth", or charge no more than the product is "worth" (experience shows only dictatorship, either of a beurocracy or of an actual dictator, can try and force such nonsense on a population) then -- naturally -- all capital flees from that country, since any employer or manufacturer who could possibly do so would rather leave and go "opress the workers" somewhere else. This leaves the country is dire poverty -- while the government rants about how the "greedy capitalists" won't stay and just let their money go to the people who REALLY deserve it, that is, the party beurocracts.

What's more, the only manufacturing or business left in that country is the government-run factories and stores that pay "fair wages" and charge "fair prices" mandated by the government. Since there is no motivation for innovation or efficiency or anything else, the result is that the only thing they produce is shoddy "goods" nobody wants -- if they produce anything at all. Who cares? It's not like they gain anything by working harder to make better goods.

In short: the result of government-mandated "regulated capitalism" is inevitably (a) dictatorship, (b) poverty, and (c) scarce, shoddy goods. (To all except the champions of the people, those who REALLY deserve a higher standard of living -- the high-ranking government beurocrats who might, if lucky, live on the same level as a lower-middle-class "exploited worker" in the evil capitalist countries.)

This is what happened in every single communist country. It isn't an aberration, a mistake that will be corrected next time. It is the inevitable result of leftysergeant's ideas of justice and equality.

The truth, as Mandeville realized in "The Fable of the Bees", and Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations", is that it is PRECISELY the evil, greedy exploitation for filthy lucre by the disgusting capitalists that creates his wealth and prosperity.

(Leftsergeant is just as much as a capitalist greedy pig as the rest of us: he too lives in the corrupt, evil west, and won't in a million years live in the "non-exploiting" communist world, or in what's left of it. He only TALKS about how evil it is so he will FEEL superior to others, under the mistaken -- if common -- assumption that the more outraged and angry one seems to be, the more correct and just one's view surely is.)

 

[leftysergeant]

The big mistake on leftysergeant's part is the usual one -- namely, the belief that there is such a thing as inherent value, what some service or product is "really" worth, and to pay less, or charge more, than what it's "really" worth is "evil exploitation".

There is one thing of inherent value, without which no wealth can be accumulated. That is labor. Gold has value because it is useful. It has extremely high value because it represents and enormous amount of human labor spent in locating, extracting, refining and shaping it.

If I make solid gold dog collars and people are not willing to pay more for them than the (say) $10 they pay for regular dog collars, those solid gold dog collars are WORTH $10, no matter how much gold they have.

The gold is still worth what you paid for it, unless you are dirt-dumb and got taken by a con artist on the purchase. You just have not added any value to it by hiring someone to craft it. The craftsman has still expended the effort on your behalf, which is to say, transferred something of value to you.

If you have paid him less than a living wage for a day's output of collars, you have, in effect, made him subsidize your stupidity. Don't even try to pretend that there is any morality in that.

In short: the result of government-mandated "regulated capitalism" is inevitably (a) dictatorship, (b) poverty, and (c) scarce, shoddy goods. (To all except the champions of the people, those who REALLY deserve a higher standard of living -- the high-ranking government beurocrats who might, if lucky, live on the same level as a lower-middle-class "exploited worker" in the evil capitalist countries.)

Actually, from everything I have seen and read, most of Europe, especially the Scandinavian countries, have much more stringent, pro-labor laws and higher taxes and all that rot that the right wing insists will destroy the very fabric of industrial society. I don't see a lot of their capitalists beating a path to our door, and they seem to be eating our lunch at the moment.

It is such disconnects as these from reality that lead me to believe that Friedmanism is a mental disorder.

 

[Skeptic]

There is one thing of inherent value, without which no wealth can be accumulated. That is labor.

Is that your final answer?

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!

WRONG!

Labor doesn't have an "inherent value" more than anything else.

Thanks for playing, Mr. Marx.

You are the weakest link.

Goodbye.

(Hmmmm... is mixing the catch-phrases of two different game shows a mixed metaphor?)

 

[Skeptic]

Mandeville and Smith got it mainly right: it isn't labor or resources or anything else that "produce wealth", it is all those things TOGETHER WITH the all-important ingredient of the capitalist's greed and the free market that allows them to become wealth.

This additional ingredient, the capitalists' desire for profit and having a free-market system that allows it to succeed -- is the secret ingredient, the one without which no wealth is created, no matter how much labor or resources you have.

That missing ingredient is the reason the USSR and China -- countries with FAR more labor and natural resources than the USA -- created no wealth, and had everybody live in dire poverty. This missing ingredient is the reason the same thing occured in every other communist country (or any other country that didn't have a free market, for that matter).

Marx and Rand both got it wrong. Marx believed it was only labor that made wealth. Billions of people were pauperized before his idiot followers were finally convinced that's not true -- and some, as we can see, are still not convinced. Rand believed that it was only the desire for profit in itself without anybody to do work or exploit the resources that will be enough -- wrong again.

By the way, while I think that Mandeville and Smith got it mostly right and Rand and Marx mostly wrong, this doesn't mean I think Marx and Rand are stupid. In fact both were extremely interesting and important philosophers -- they were often very keen observers, if nothing else. The problem with both is that:

1). Both said many correct things, but each was wrong, in a different way, on the most central point of all -- how wealth is actually created.

2). Their idiot followers, on both sides, totally ignored the many correct things they both said, and instead made "Marxism" or "Objectivism" fervent belief in precisely that point that Marx or Rand got totally wrong.

Ah well. As Kant said, out of the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight was ever made...

 

[dirtywick]

Gold has value because it is useful.

It's good for small electronics components. Compared to a lot of things it's not really very useful in anything practical though.

The gold is still worth what you paid for it, unless you are dirt-dumb and got taken by a con artist on the purchase. You just have not added any value to it by hiring someone to craft it. The craftsman has still expended the effort on your behalf, which is to say, transferred something of value to you.

If you have paid him less than a living wage for a day's output of collars, you have, in effect, made him subsidize your stupidity. Don't even try to pretend that there is any morality in that.

This is such *********.

The craftsman labors and is compensated at a rate he's willing to accept to create a good you can sell that covers the cost of the materials, the labor, and compensates you for the effort of obtaining the materials and selling the collars. The craftsman always has the option not to work at the wage if he finds it unacceptable or obtain the materials, do his thing, and sell the collars himself.

But just like nobody will buy a gold dog collar for more than X amount of dollars, no craftsman will make them for less than Y amount of dollars. If Y is less than a living wage, it's entirely within the control of the craftsman; but make no mistake, if you don't pay more than Y no gold collars will be made and there's not anything anyone can do to change that...except maybe adopt communism and let the government set Y.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

What the hell does this even mean? What, exactly, are "a day's provisions"?

If 10 loaves of bread and a measure of beer was good enough for the pyramid builders, it's good enough for me.




(sorry, this thread desperately needed some intensional levity )

 

[BPSCG]

So am I correct in interpreting the above to be your acknowledgment that some work is not worth a day's worth of food, clothing and shelter?

Less often than a year's financial services are worth a hundred or more times what a factory or construction worker makes.

I'll take that answer as a "That's correct; some work is not worth a day's worth of food, clothing and shelter."

Now that you have acknowledged that some work is not worth a day's provisions, please tell us at what point a day's work crosses over from not being worth a day's provisions to being worth a day's provisions. To put it another way, how should an employer and an employee determine the value of a day's work?

 

[BPSCG]

If 10 loaves of bread and a measure of beer was good enough for the pyramid builders, it's good enough for me.

(sorry, this thread desperately needed some intensional levity )

Actually, the pyramid builders were noted for eating unleavened bread.

(Getting to Passover a bit early here...)

 

[BPSCG]

There is one thing of inherent value, without which no wealth can be accumulated. That is labor. Gold has value because it is useful.

Labor has inherent value?

If I hire you to tear down a building that's been gutted by fire and come back later in the day to discover dozens of dazed people in wheelchairs all over the street because you have torn down the nursing home next door, what is the inherent value of the work you have done?

Scene:
A large posh office. Two clients, well-dressed city gents, sit facing a large table at which stands Mr. Tid, the account manager of an architectural firm.

Mr. Tid: Well, gentlemen, we have two architectural designs for this new residential block of yours and I thought it best if the architects themselves explained the particular advantages of their designs.

(There is a knock at the door)

Mr. Tid: Ah! That's probably the first architect now. Come in.

(Mr. Wiggin enters)

Mr. Wiggin: Good morning, gentlemen.

Clients: Good morning.

Mr. Wiggin: This is a 12-story block combining classical neo-Georgian features with the efficiency of modern techniques. The tenants arrive here and are carried along the corridor on a conveyor belt in extreme comfort, past murals depicting Mediterranean scenes, towards the rotating knives. The last twenty feet of the corridor are heavily soundproofed. The blood pours down these chutes and the mangled flesh slurps into these...

Client 1: Excuse me.

Mr. Wiggin: Yes?

Client 1: Did you say 'knives'?

Mr. Wiggin: Rotating knives, yes.

Client 2: Do I take it that you are proposing to slaughter our tenants?

Mr. Wiggin: ...Does that not fit in with your plans?

Client 1: Not really. We asked for a simple block of flats.

Mr. Wiggin: Oh. I hadn't fully divined your attitude towards the tenants. You see, I mainly design slaughter houses.

Clients: Ah.

Mr. Wiggin: Pity.

Clients: Yes.

Mr. Wiggin: (indicating points of the model)
Mind you, this is a real beaut. None of your blood caked on the walls and flesh flying out of the windows incommoding the passers-by with this one.
(confidentially)
My life has been leading up to this.

Client 2: Yes, and well done, but we wanted an apartment block.

Mr. Wiggin: May I ask you to reconsider.

Clients: Well...

Mr. Wiggin: You wouldn't regret this. Think of the tourist trade.

Client 1: I'm sorry. We want a block of flats, not an abattoir.

Mr. Wiggin: ...I see... Well, of course, this is just the sort of blinkered philistine pig-ignorance I've come to expect from you non-creative garbage. You sit there on your loathsome spotty behinds squeezing blackheads, not caring a tinker's cuss for the struggling artist. You excrement, you whining hypocritical toadies with your colour TV sets and your Tony Jacklin golf clubs and your bleeding Masonic secret handshakes...​

I love the last rant. If I didn't know better, I would have sworn it was taken from a leftysergeant post.

I hope Mr. Wiggin at least got a decent day's provisions for the inherent value of his labor.

 

[mhaze]

I'll take that answer as a "That's correct; some work is not worth a day's worth of food, clothing and shelter."

Now that you have acknowledged that some work is not worth a day's provisions, please tell us at what point a day's work crosses over from not being worth a day's provisions to being worth a day's provisions. To put it another way, how should an employer and an employee determine the value of a day's work?

Amusing side issue.

Hypothetical:

I know how to make minimum cost bridges that do not fail.

How do those in Lefty's world induce me to do so, except by pointing a gun at my family?

Society needs what I can do badly. But what do I need from them? EG, why should I not just "Go Galt"?

 

[BPSCG]

Hypothetical:

I know how to make minimum cost bridges that do not fail.

How do those in Lefty's world induce me to do so, except by pointing a gun at my family?

Society needs what I can do badly. But what do I need from them? EG, why should I not just "Go Galt"?

Because, in leftysergeant's world, if you "Go Galt," they will point a gun at your family. That's what communism always ends up doing.

 

[mhaze]

Because, in leftysergeant's world, if you "Go Galt," they will point a gun at your family. That's what communism always ends up doing.

The ultimate problem with this is that it happens that those who can do things such as build the minimum cost and safe bridge, happens to also be the ones who can build the better guns.

This dialectic is not obselete and cannot be. But today we recognize that "better guns" can and does mean "technological inversions". Suddenly, and without advance notice, we find ourself on a new playing field.

The Soviet empire could not withstand the simple fax machine. The fax machine, before the PC moved information in a fashion that Soviet central propaganda could not surmount. Suddenly, Central Command was as useless as the horse calvary in WW1.

Such inversions are and will be happening more rapidly. Any centralized planning is by nature incapable of dealing with rapid change. So dynamic adaptation occurs of necessity in Russia and China, with the resulting benefits to the populations. Was our gift to these nations the concepts of ideal capitalism, or the technological inversions which to a major extent, required a capitalistic playing field? Perhaps with that playing field, we dreamed of things that people wanted that benefited them greatly, and as these products found there way into collective societies, the societal matrix itself had to adapt and change to a similar playing field to utilize them?

Question to Lefty. In a time of serious economic difficulties, Tesla took the only job he could find. Digging ditches. With a shovel in hand he conceived of the electric alternator, while a thousand others used the shovel, and saw only dirt and mud.

What if he had gone Galt?

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Actually, the pyramid builders were noted for eating unleavened bread.

(Getting to Passover a bit early here...)

Heh. Good catch. I was a bit myopically focused on the amount of beer they distributed since I can only eat so much bread but I can deink as mych beer ao O wany beofre it... well, you get the idea.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

What if he had gone Galt?

Apart from mental masturbation and wondering why no one was doing any work? Nothing, and they all would have starved to death on a monument to Ayn Rand built long ago when people actually built stuff instead of imagining objectivist utopias.