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Velociryx
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of Candle'Bre
Apr 1999
time: 05:28
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Maybe if you'd stop topic jumping, yes I could, GePap.
Christianity has BEANS to do with capitalism, and you said so yourself earlier (in your comment that it has no particular morality associated with it).
But when you bring thievery into the picture (something that is not, by the way, an economic activity) then yes, being that we were founded by people of a certain belief system, and being that IN that belief system is the notion that thievery is wrong, yes, it comes up.
If you'd pick a topic and stick with it, perhaps? 
-=Vel=-
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:28
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quote:
Originally posted by Velociryx
Maybe if you'd stop topic jumping, yes I could, GePap.
Christianity has BEANS to do with capitalism, and you said so yourself earlier (in your comment that it has no particular morality associated with it).
But when you bring thievery into the picture (something that is not, by the way, an economic activity) then yes, being that we were founded by people of a certain belief system, and being that IN that belief system is the notion that thievery is wrong, yes, it comes up.
If you'd pick a topic and stick with it, perhaps?
-=Vel=- |
You called communism thievery, hence you bring the topic of theft into this discussion Vel.
If economic systems have no morality assigned to them, words liek theft have no place in a dscussion of resource allocation. BUt you used the word theft to reffer to communism, so deal with the consequences of your arguements.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:28
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quote:
Originally posted by Kidicious
Bubbles are another matter. |
A fraud (or more correctly, willful group delusion) driven bubble is the whole matter in Japan. The house of cards finally came down.
quote:
The point is that the productivity was so high in Japan that the system couldn't maintain itself especially after the US starting coying their methods. |
(a) The US only superficially copied some Japanese methods in some industries on a limited scale, because it was fashionable in books. Real copying of Japanese methods would have violated US labor laws, cultural norms (workers would quit), securities laws, banking laws and antitrust laws.
To fully copy Japanese methods, GM would have to found GM bank, open up a GM mining division for raw materials, GM tires, GM appliances, GM aluminimum foil, GM computers, GM semiconductors, GM aircraft, then interdeal between these companies so much, financed by Federally guaranteed loans from GM bank, that nobody could ever see what the real financial condition was. Oh, and GM would own major shares of department stores where customers could never open a door or push an elevator button on their own, and where the salesperson to customer ratio was almost 1 to 1. To encourage worker loyalty (and immobility), GM bank would give shorter term, below market interest rates to employees (of any unit) who bought a GM car.
GM would promise employees lifetime employment, and a pension so high that an aging workforce led to pension costs for retirees approaching half of payroll costs for current employees. Why? Because the employee pension funds were deposited with GM bank, which then used them to finance capital projects at other GM units.
Meanwhile, because shareholders, managers and government ministers all wanted to see growth and improved efficiency, you had hundreds of people who did nothing but figure out how to restate the numbers and exclude costs in order to make sure this year's numbers looked better than last years. In the rare event they couldn't cook that, the managers would apologize to their shareholders for their employees failures to cook the books enough and offer to resign. The shareholders would accept the apology, and dropped the issue, so as not to embarass the managers, and make them humiliate the poor accounting employees who had failed everyone by not adequately cooking the books to get the desired result. After all, harmonious relationships are more important than a little underlying unpleasantry.
Oh, and because GM would disguise it's real costs from itself and everyone else, it would sell at too low a price (or incur too much cost per sales volume, however you'd like to look at it), because it needed to do so in order to compete - and gaining market share in foreign markets in an export driven economy is what it's about, isn't it? 
(b) As I've pointed out repeatedly, and as I know firsthand from living there and doing work there, (I've also met people who worked for all of the major enterprises, and in government and in the financial/economic press, productivity was not high at all, when you included all real costs and inputs.
Last edited by MichaeltheGreat on 17-06-2003 at 02:47
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:28
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quote:
Originally posted by Velociryx
Oh, and I would beg to differ. Societies are built on foundations. Those foundations are oft referred to as the "bedrock." If you don't like the term, pick another one, and we'll use that (cos the term is not entirely accurate, given that over the course of time, societal foundations can and do change....verrry slowly as a rule, but they do).
Nonetheless, they exist whether you acknowledge them, or pay any particular credence to them or not. They serve as the basis for the overall structure of our society.
-=Vel=- |
And in any discussion about the very structure of society (as any discussion of capitalism and communism must envoke), arguing about the bedrock is vital sicne if the assumptions of the bedrock are wrong, or if there are inherent contradictions within the bedrock then the strcuture of soceity should change.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:28
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
If economic systems have no morality assigned to them, words liek theft have no place in a dscussion of resource allocation. BUt you used the word theft to reffer to communism, so deal with the consequences of your arguements. |
You don't need to refer to moral arguments. Capital markets function most efficiently when risks are known and mitigated. If you've ever dealt with large capital finance documents (let's say 7 figures up as a threshhold, even though that's pretty damn small), most of the verbage and conditions aren't about the finance mechanism itself, they're about different forms of risk and the required steps to mitigate that risk.
If I buy something, but have no reasonable assurance against arbitrary seizure, I'm pretty stupid to buy something visible. I either hide my money in fence post banks, or I hire a bunch of mercenary bastards to guard it for me (perhaps I call them knights and squires, with a little levy of footsoldiers to fill out the ranks).
The risk of arbitrary seizure creates an inefficiency, simply because it hinders capital purchases, and hinders all acquisition of assets, not just "excess" acquisition.
Capitalist models of taxation and valuation amount to a partial seizure of capital, but at least the means and the amounts can be predicted beforehand, so the investor / purchaser can easily work with net assets and net after tax returns, and make decisions on that basis.
Asset seizure by the state is effectively a 100% tax, and it was long clear before Marx was ever born that such tax levels were folly.
No "morals" need enter into the issue, just the efficient function of the marketplace.
Last edited by MichaeltheGreat on 17-06-2003 at 03:06
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17-06-2003 02:24
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