Government Specific UUs

[Teabeard]

http://www.hrw.org/about/initiatives/corp.html
http://www.senser.com/01-03-08.htm
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11442

You'd be surprised. BP for example has been charged with funding Columbian death squads. In some factories, Nike has demanded five signatures as proof that an employee was sick. Coca Cola has knowingly purchased sugar made with child labour. Just put your favourite company name and "human rights abuse" into google and read.

Child labor is a symptom of developing countries but not developed countries. In those countries the families have to make the choice between starving to death and having their children work, so inevitably the children work. Would you rather they starve to death? Unfortunately resources are limited. In a perfect world children wouldn't have to work, but unfortunately the third world is not perfect. Don't worry, because child labor will go away once those countries become developed and people there start making decent wages, just as has been the case in the developed world. The alternative to child labor is entire families starving to death.

And yes, death squads should be illegal. I don't know of any businesses which have death squads, though. All I have seen have been run by governments - the same people you want to regulate the marketplace.

 

[dh_epic]

Some people aren't free to leave their employer and work anywhere else. When you work for 20 cents an hour, you really can't do much worse except to be unemployed. And in a society where being unemployed is an option that looks almost as good as working, that society begins to fall apart. It's true in welfare states, and it's true in unrestricted free markets.

You need to have minimums. It's one of many checks and balances. If you have a floor, then all the levels of society can be built on top of it. But with no floor, things can fall as far as people want.

And not to discuss theology, because we are all religious in our own ways. But Charles Darwin was terrified that when he came across the theory of evolution that people would embrace it as a prescriptive way for how we ought to live our lives. John Stuart Mill, the founder of utilitarianism, came up with this important quotation to reassure Darwin that we'd be smarter than that.

"If there are any marks at all of special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals.... If Nature and Man are both the works of a Being of perfect goodness, that Being intended Nature as a scheme to be amended, not imitated, by Man."

A mixed economy is our necessary amendment to Nature. It may not always work perfectly, but to imitate Nature and leave it unchecked is much more dangerous.

 

[rhialto]

Teabeard, you say child labour is a characteristic of developing countries. Not necessarily true. I have known of illegal factories in England in my lifetime that employed underage children.

 

[Commissar_Yari]

You misunderstand me. I do not believe in unrestrained capitalism. I do favor some regulation. I was just trying to point out that Marx was full of BS, and in fact that he had an ulterior agenda. I was also trying to point out errors in your interpretation.

He was only "full of BS" if you don't actually know what you'rre talking about, and love making stuff up when talking about his writing.

But does wealth really end up in fewer and fewer hands? It is not always the case. It depends on circumstances. I would also question what you mean by "unfairness". You need to provide concrete examples.

I have never heard of a case where it doesn't end up in fewer and fewer hands.

No, Marx was much more specific than you are being. Marx started with the labor theory of value. From this he concluded that the workers MUST be being exploited and not getting their fair due. He believed the managers did no real work.

First of all, you obviously haven't read any of "what he started with." Second, he did not believe the managers "do no real work", what he believed was that their work is not any more important than that of the worker's themselves, and that the managers get paid a hell of a lot more than they should be getting paid, which is also true.

I foget his exact logical progression but he also concluded that the wages must fall and fall until the bare substince level needed to keep workers alive.

Wrong again.

Thus, all his specific predictions failed. His theory is utter BS.

Now if you want to say that in a totally unrestrained system there will be revolution for whatever reason then you can but that is not what Marx said. In fact, I personally believe that capitalism has instabilities that are likely to lead to revolutions and/or self-destruction but for reasons completely different from Marx's. Marx said it would happen in a specific manner, in specific countries, for specific reasons.

No he didn't, he said it COULD happen in certain ways for certain reasons, but he was never strictly specific about any of them, and he never said they WILL happen that way, and he was never country-specific in that.

Marx's theory has been as completely falsified as the flat-earth theory or Lamarckianism and yet it is astonishing how many continue to want to believe in Marxism. It strikes me as quite similar to creationism.

Capitalist theory was completely falsified 400-500 years ago, and the Round Earth theory was completely falsified when that came out, but look at what happened with those.

The responses are the bolded paragraphs.

 

[Teabeard]

Teabeard, you say child labour is a characteristic of developing countries. Not necessarily true. I have known of illegal factories in England in my lifetime that employed underage children.

Well, I don't know about those illegal factories. Were those children living in poverty? As bad as we may think child labor is, it is not as bad as the children and their families starving to death.

 

[rhialto]

In most cases, the children were either illegal immigrants or children of recent legal immigrants. In BOTH cases, the UK welfare system guarantees that children are never in an economic situation where they have to work to survive. So while they were probably living in overty by the UK legal definition, that is still a far cry from starvation or not having a roof over their head.

 

[Teabeard]

In most cases, the children were either illegal immigrants or children of recent legal immigrants. In BOTH cases, the UK welfare system guarantees that children are never in an economic situation where they have to work to survive. So while they were probably living in overty by the UK legal definition, that is still a far cry from starvation or not having a roof over their head.

Just to clarify things a bit: I believe the sole function of government is to protect it's citizens from force and fraud. If people are enslaved, then yes I oppose that because it is the use of force. I oppose death squads because those are also the use of force. I do not however support minimum wage laws or other regulations. Things like minimum wage sounds good, but keep in mind inflation and the fact it causes unemployment whenever it is raised. This is why jobs are outsourced.

 

[dh_epic]

I think you miss the fact that if the role of government was strictly to protect its citizens from force, and you privatized everything, and allowed companies complete economic freedom, then ...

Companies would consolidate to the point where there is only one mass corporation. Companies who are wealthy would buy out other profitable but smaller companies. They would leverage the synergies between this huge ubercorporation to put other smaller corporations out of business. And without competition, the economic organism stagnates, like a fungus sucking up all the air so nobody else can breathe. Plus imagine a world where there is only one toothpaste manufacturer, only one car manufacturer, only one MEDIA company controlling all your news.

Wealth would be more valuable than hard work and ability. A rich man would have the connections to get his son hired wherever he wanted, despite his grades and ability. It would only take someone to say "Hey, I invested $50,000 in your company. Hire my kid." This would work to the detriment of a poor man who worked through school as hard as he could and become quite talented.

Speaking of school, because education would be completely privatized, the wealthiest would send their kids to best schools, become the most qualified, and get the best jobs, and accumulate the most wealth, and so on. The poorest wouldn't be able to send their kids to a good school, if a school at all, would be qualified only for low end jobs, and remain in the lowest bracket, and so on. The cycle continues.

These may seem like extreme cases, but some of these things already happen to a degree right now. Competition is stifled by mass consolidation, nepotism pushes out qualified people, and kids with great potential slip through the cracks of an imbalanced education system. Not to say that the answer is a social state, far from it. But you need to mix complete economic freedom with certain regulations to keep competition fair and healthy for everybody. Again, I point you to JS Mills and what he said about amending nature.

The degree to which you need to mix freedom with regulation is always a matter of discussion, as seen by the numerous different governments with different approaches around the world.

 

[Tholish]

Just mod a gov specific building to produce the unit.