4 ms·

The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of work

by zanny 7y ago

The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of workers is a necessary evil to compete globally. That if you made your nation unto an island with 20 hour work weeks, 2 months paid vacation, a 20 dollar minimum wage (or UBI), public housing, public transit, etc that your economy would rot as capital went places where more exploitation means more profit overall. Not to say that is an inevitability or even a correct interpretation, but it does lean heavily on the argument that a healthy, educated, rational, and free populace can compete with the export yields of wage slaves overdosing on drugs even if they aren't compelled to do work nobody wants to do for a price nobody wants to take. The question is if people wanting things enough to drive an economy over them needing things. Historically almost all wealth was built on exploitations - of land, of resources, and of people. What if preventing the exploitation and suffering of your fellows causes everyone to suffer in the long term from economic stagnation? Its a dystopic way to look at the world but given the major economic powerhouses of this and recent eras I just don't see the evidence that its entirely wrong.

hardwaresofton 7y ago
> The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of workers is a necessary evil to compete globally I disagree -- France does well in terms of GDP per hour worked[0], and is in relative terms a worker's paradise. On a more subjective note, I think this analysis misses the fact that automation is about to absolutely destroy the working class (if it's not already). The world's need for brute force blue-collar workers is shrinking and enabling people who might have done that work to aim for higher pursuits (which generally people only feel able to do when times are good) should be the goal of an economy with long term aspirations. There's a reason countries start with the economic zone model, but then seek to upskill their populace -- humans, no matter how little you pay them, cannot compete with efficient robots. > Not to say that is an inevitability or even a correct interpretation, but it does lean heavily on the argument that a healthy, educated, rational, and free populace can compete with the export yields of wage slaves overdosing on drugs even if they aren't compelled to do work nobody wants to do for a price nobody wants to take. The question is if people wanting things enough to drive an economy over them needing things. That argument doesn't seem to take into account that exports are varied and valued spectacularly diversely. Entertainment is one of America's largest exports and it is very much not a strictly productive endeavor to be entertained (of course you can argue that entertainment is required for productive work so people don't break down). Healthy, educated, rational, and free populaces are most of the time not competing with t-shirt producing sweat shops -- they are more often designing the t-shirts the sweat shops are making. In addition to this, functioning purely free-market economies basically don't exist anywhere. The idea of a sanction against countries that exploit their workers would be unheard for a strictly economics-focused mindset but is very much possible today. > Historically almost all wealth was built on exploitations - of land, of resources, and of people. What if preventing the exploitation and suffering of your fellows causes everyone to suffer in the long term from economic stagnation? Its a dystopic way to look at the world but given the major economic powerhouses of this and recent eras I just don't see the evidence that its entirely wrong. This is true, but it's a spectrum -- in my opinion, aggressive exploitation simply speeds up growth, it is not necessarily a gating factor. I agree in that I think it's not necessarily wrong but still, if it's a spectrum then why don't we turn the dial back a little bit? There are externalized costs that we're ignoring by normalizing exploitation. Also this constant worry of "economic stagnation" -- this is missing the forest for the trees again, it's worrying about GDP over the wellness of the people of a nation. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked#Countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
- ovi256 7y ago
  >France does well in terms of GDP per hour worked The official hours worked figures in France are severely underestimated IMO. For all my career everybody I know worked more than the supposed 35, 39 or 40 hours your contract specifies. All timesheet software I've seen asks you to input your time in fractions of the official work day, not real hours. My guess is only workers who really are paid hourly and thus have to badge in and out have their work hours counted correctly.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    Don't forget various bureaucrats mainly employed by state. Those are often folks who go to massive strikes that cripple economy since they are losing many of those cozy benefits they take for granted, while taking everybody including foreign tourists as hostages. I can tell you from personal experience those are hardly breaking a sweat, and few colleagues who actually live there sometimes end up in proper Catch-22-esque situations with things like taxes or driving license changes. good stories to laugh at but proper nightmare to actually go through. Another topic might be that nobody wants to hire french manual workers, for things like home renovation, unless you have no other option. Little work, long breaks, often way too narrow specialization and often very high prices makes even french people looking for folks from places like Portugal or even Romania. And the costs themselves are only small part of the reasons. But same colleagues tell me that in software companies people do often work hard. Long are gone generous 2-hour lunch breaks. Seems like a great divide depending how safe ones work feel.
jtolmar 7y ago
I think it's entirely possible for a country with such policies to compete globally, but it requires a smaller cut for capital owners, whether via taxes or direct ownership changes. That leaves behind a potential source of new revenue for capital holders if the country's policies can be changed. So the question is: can policy change be forced for less money than what can be gained by opening up the market? Would forcing a regime change by military or intelligence intervention turn a profit? Or, from the perspective of a country trying to enact utopian policies: how can they make external intervention more expensive than it's worth?
CPLX 7y ago
This is nonsense, as anyone who’s spent significant time in Germany, Switzerland, or Scandinavia knows instinctively.
- krageon 7y ago
  Given how obvious and clear these examples are and should be for literally everyone, it is really mystifying to me why the anti-person rhetoric is so prevalent here (among an ostensibly pretty well-educated populace). Do you have thoughts on why that is?
  - cjslep 7y ago
    As an American with a hardcore capitalist entrepreneurial father and now living in Switzerland, I chalk it up to some Americans simply not being able to imagine a society that doesn't enshrine "If I don't exploit, someone else will" race-to-the-bottom mentality, or if they could imagine such a society then they deem it "suboptimal" and therefore "wrong". Edit to add: there's a generational mindset too. Older generations have the advantage of living longer and seeing massive technological change, and have an entrenched mindset of "if I work like a dog and live like shit now, everything deferred will be incredibly rewarded later". Whereas the "proverbial millennial" has not seen as much change and thinks such a mindset is an unbalanced extreme crock of shit, and therefore makes demands of the now, to live a generally fulfilling life; to which older generations think is ungrateful, soft, and demanding, that "because my life was shit, everyone else's should be too, it's only fair". But they'll still tell you they want to leave the world a better place for their kids, which is doublethink. (I'm speaking in very very broad terms)
  - aianus 7y ago
    White collar employees in Germany and Scandinavia are much poorer than their equivalents in Canada and the US. Sure, they get maternity leave and 8 weeks of vacation and whatever but they'll never be able to retire at 35 like an American developer. It is not worth losing over half my income to get these "worker protections" and "social benefits" and it's no wonder that tons of Europeans come to the US to work and very few Americans go to work in Europe.
boomlinde 7y ago
> The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of workers is a necessary evil to compete globally. What is the point of competing if not for the benefit of the people? Is competing globally an end unto itself? That sounds neo-liberal, not conservative.

by zanny 7y ago

hardwaresofton 7y ago

> The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of workers is a necessary evil to compete globally I disagree -- France does well in terms of GDP per hour worked[0], and is in relative terms a worker's paradise. On a more subjective note, I think this analysis misses the fact that automation is about to absolutely destroy the working class (if it's not already). The world's need for brute force blue-collar workers is shrinking and enabling people who might have done that work to aim for higher pursuits (which generally people only feel able to do when times are good) should be the goal of an economy with long term aspirations. There's a reason countries start with the economic zone model, but then seek to upskill their populace -- humans, no matter how little you pay them, cannot compete with efficient robots. > Not to say that is an inevitability or even a correct interpretation, but it does lean heavily on the argument that a healthy, educated, rational, and free populace can compete with the export yields of wage slaves overdosing on drugs even if they aren't compelled to do work nobody wants to do for a price nobody wants to take. The question is if people wanting things enough to drive an economy over them needing things. That argument doesn't seem to take into account that exports are varied and valued spectacularly diversely. Entertainment is one of America's largest exports and it is very much not a strictly productive endeavor to be entertained (of course you can argue that entertainment is required for productive work so people don't break down). Healthy, educated, rational, and free populaces are most of the time not competing with t-shirt producing sweat shops -- they are more often designing the t-shirts the sweat shops are making. In addition to this, functioning purely free-market economies basically don't exist anywhere. The idea of a sanction against countries that exploit their workers would be unheard for a strictly economics-focused mindset but is very much possible today. > Historically almost all wealth was built on exploitations - of land, of resources, and of people. What if preventing the exploitation and suffering of your fellows causes everyone to suffer in the long term from economic stagnation? Its a dystopic way to look at the world but given the major economic powerhouses of this and recent eras I just don't see the evidence that its entirely wrong. This is true, but it's a spectrum -- in my opinion, aggressive exploitation simply speeds up growth, it is not necessarily a gating factor. I agree in that I think it's not necessarily wrong but still, if it's a spectrum then why don't we turn the dial back a little bit? There are externalized costs that we're ignoring by normalizing exploitation. Also this constant worry of "economic stagnation" -- this is missing the forest for the trees again, it's worrying about GDP over the wellness of the people of a nation. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked#Countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

ovi256 7y ago
>France does well in terms of GDP per hour worked The official hours worked figures in France are severely underestimated IMO. For all my career everybody I know worked more than the supposed 35, 39 or 40 hours your contract specifies. All timesheet software I've seen asks you to input your time in fractions of the official work day, not real hours. My guess is only workers who really are paid hourly and thus have to badge in and out have their work hours counted correctly.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Don't forget various bureaucrats mainly employed by state. Those are often folks who go to massive strikes that cripple economy since they are losing many of those cozy benefits they take for granted, while taking everybody including foreign tourists as hostages. I can tell you from personal experience those are hardly breaking a sweat, and few colleagues who actually live there sometimes end up in proper Catch-22-esque situations with things like taxes or driving license changes. good stories to laugh at but proper nightmare to actually go through. Another topic might be that nobody wants to hire french manual workers, for things like home renovation, unless you have no other option. Little work, long breaks, often way too narrow specialization and often very high prices makes even french people looking for folks from places like Portugal or even Romania. And the costs themselves are only small part of the reasons. But same colleagues tell me that in software companies people do often work hard. Long are gone generous 2-hour lunch breaks. Seems like a great divide depending how safe ones work feel.

jtolmar 7y ago

I think it's entirely possible for a country with such policies to compete globally, but it requires a smaller cut for capital owners, whether via taxes or direct ownership changes. That leaves behind a potential source of new revenue for capital holders if the country's policies can be changed. So the question is: can policy change be forced for less money than what can be gained by opening up the market? Would forcing a regime change by military or intelligence intervention turn a profit? Or, from the perspective of a country trying to enact utopian policies: how can they make external intervention more expensive than it's worth?

CPLX 7y ago

This is nonsense, as anyone who’s spent significant time in Germany, Switzerland, or Scandinavia knows instinctively.

krageon 7y ago
Given how obvious and clear these examples are and should be for literally everyone, it is really mystifying to me why the anti-person rhetoric is so prevalent here (among an ostensibly pretty well-educated populace). Do you have thoughts on why that is?
- cjslep 7y ago
  As an American with a hardcore capitalist entrepreneurial father and now living in Switzerland, I chalk it up to some Americans simply not being able to imagine a society that doesn't enshrine "If I don't exploit, someone else will" race-to-the-bottom mentality, or if they could imagine such a society then they deem it "suboptimal" and therefore "wrong". Edit to add: there's a generational mindset too. Older generations have the advantage of living longer and seeing massive technological change, and have an entrenched mindset of "if I work like a dog and live like shit now, everything deferred will be incredibly rewarded later". Whereas the "proverbial millennial" has not seen as much change and thinks such a mindset is an unbalanced extreme crock of shit, and therefore makes demands of the now, to live a generally fulfilling life; to which older generations think is ungrateful, soft, and demanding, that "because my life was shit, everyone else's should be too, it's only fair". But they'll still tell you they want to leave the world a better place for their kids, which is doublethink. (I'm speaking in very very broad terms)
- aianus 7y ago
  White collar employees in Germany and Scandinavia are much poorer than their equivalents in Canada and the US. Sure, they get maternity leave and 8 weeks of vacation and whatever but they'll never be able to retire at 35 like an American developer. It is not worth losing over half my income to get these "worker protections" and "social benefits" and it's no wonder that tons of Europeans come to the US to work and very few Americans go to work in Europe.

boomlinde 7y ago

> The only major conservative / anti-progressive argument on this topic I'd give credence to is that corporate power and influence and the resulting abuse of workers is a necessary evil to compete globally. What is the point of competing if not for the benefit of the people? Is competing globally an end unto itself? That sounds neo-liberal, not conservative.