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>>I think these outliers demonstrate an inherent flaw in capitalism (among others) where power imbalances dictate capital accumulation. These outlier situation

>>I think these outliers demonstrate an inherent flaw in capitalism (among others) where power imbalances dictate capital accumulation. These outlier situations have properties not present in normal circumstances, regardless of the power imbalance in those normal circumstances. Normal circumstances mean that Apple, despite being worth $2.8 trillion, can only induce me to purchase its product, if it is the best option for me amongst the entire set of options globally available to me. The harmful/coercive effect of the power imbalance vanishes in a free market, because by the ruleset of the free market, Apple cannot use its power to do anything except provide a better quality product for a lower price. >> The rich get richer and the poor get poorer because the rich are in a better negotiating position so the poor must take what they're given. The poor don't get poorer in a free market.. We've seen wages grow over 20 fold since 200 years ago, in 1822. This is after adjusting for inflation, meaning a greater than 20 times material improvement in people's living conditions. The places in the world with the highest wages are precisely those which adhered to the free market ruleset most closely, and for the longest duration of time. >>You don't seem to be engaging with the implications of what I'm saying What you're implying is simply misinformed.

beaconstudios 5y ago
Yes, apple does not have the power to not literally force you to do anything, which is an improvement over feudalism. However, if you take apple alongside all their inputs, what you have is an extractive model where shareholders capture the value created by employees and suppliers, and the employees of those suppliers are often the ones being ruthlessly exploited (the aforementioned cobalt miners, Chinese factory workers, etc). Nowadays the truly horrific exploitation is done abroad. The west barely does any material labour like resource extraction or manufacturing, we just shuffle paper around and live off capital extraction and admimistration. > The poor don't get poorer in a free market.. Real wages in the USA have stagnated since the 1960s [1] as neoliberal (aka libertarian) policies have been implemented. The US has some of the worst rates of education, medical expense, and income inequality in the world. Many cities are unaffordable to the service workers and labourers that those cities require. At the same time, the value of real work being done is extracted from countries in the global South by neocolonial policies. That's not the kind of ethical ideal we should be aiming at. 1: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  >>Yes, apple does not have the power to not literally force you to do anything, which is an improvement over feudalism. However, if you take apple alongside all their inputs, what you have is an extractive model where shareholders capture the value created by employees and suppliers, and the employees of those suppliers are often the ones being ruthlessly exploited (the aforementioned cobalt miners, Chinese factory workers, etc). The activity of Apple is massively beneficial to China, and the other suppliers downstream of it. You're simply accepting the Marxist principle that profit is exploitation, and harmful to society, which is not economically valid, and oblivious to the facts around the impact of foreign investment in countries like China. >>Real wages in the USA have stagnated since the 1960s [1] as neoliberal (aka libertarian) policies have been implemented. This is incredibly misinformed. First of all, that link looks at wages, not compensation. The non-wage component of compensation has grown more rapidly than the wage component of compensation. Looking solely at wages, instead of compensation as a whole, is seemingly a deliberate choice to give people a sense of being victimized. Second, the USA is NOT the world, and it has NOT implemented libertarian policies since 1960. Market rights have been increasingly encroached upon since 1960, as a result of politically instituted government interventions, that according to basic economics, reduce productivity growth, exacerbate income inequality, or both. Two major examples: 1. The rapid rise of social democracy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long... Which is feeding the emergence of a highly paid cadre of government workers: https://www.hoover.org/research/140000-year-why-are-government-workers-california-paid-twice-much-private-sector-workers https://www.hoover.org/research/140000-year-why-are-governme... To say nothing of the rapid expansion of the regulatory bureaucracy, and the barriers to competition it creates for major private sector incumbents, and highly paid consultants/lawyers/lobbyists who know how to navigate it. 2. The rapid increase in land-use restrictions in the major high-productivity population centers, which according to many analyses, has massively increased income inequality, while inhibiting productivity growth. E.g. this study estimates that reducing land-use restrictions in just three cities: New York, San Francisco and San Jose would increase GDP by 36.3 percent: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 This finding was echoed by the White House's Council of Economic Advisers in 2016: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Housing_Development_Toolkit%20f.2.pdf https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/fi... The world at large, which has moved more toward libertarianism since 1990, has seen the most rapid rise in wage growth in human history over the last 30 years: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-on-poverty https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-gl...

beaconstudios 5y ago

Yes, apple does not have the power to not literally force you to do anything, which is an improvement over feudalism. However, if you take apple alongside all their inputs, what you have is an extractive model where shareholders capture the value created by employees and suppliers, and the employees of those suppliers are often the ones being ruthlessly exploited (the aforementioned cobalt miners, Chinese factory workers, etc). Nowadays the truly horrific exploitation is done abroad. The west barely does any material labour like resource extraction or manufacturing, we just shuffle paper around and live off capital extraction and admimistration. > The poor don't get poorer in a free market.. Real wages in the USA have stagnated since the 1960s [1] as neoliberal (aka libertarian) policies have been implemented. The US has some of the worst rates of education, medical expense, and income inequality in the world. Many cities are unaffordable to the service workers and labourers that those cities require. At the same time, the value of real work being done is extracted from countries in the global South by neocolonial policies. That's not the kind of ethical ideal we should be aiming at. 1: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us...

CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>Yes, apple does not have the power to not literally force you to do anything, which is an improvement over feudalism. However, if you take apple alongside all their inputs, what you have is an extractive model where shareholders capture the value created by employees and suppliers, and the employees of those suppliers are often the ones being ruthlessly exploited (the aforementioned cobalt miners, Chinese factory workers, etc). The activity of Apple is massively beneficial to China, and the other suppliers downstream of it. You're simply accepting the Marxist principle that profit is exploitation, and harmful to society, which is not economically valid, and oblivious to the facts around the impact of foreign investment in countries like China. >>Real wages in the USA have stagnated since the 1960s [1] as neoliberal (aka libertarian) policies have been implemented. This is incredibly misinformed. First of all, that link looks at wages, not compensation. The non-wage component of compensation has grown more rapidly than the wage component of compensation. Looking solely at wages, instead of compensation as a whole, is seemingly a deliberate choice to give people a sense of being victimized. Second, the USA is NOT the world, and it has NOT implemented libertarian policies since 1960. Market rights have been increasingly encroached upon since 1960, as a result of politically instituted government interventions, that according to basic economics, reduce productivity growth, exacerbate income inequality, or both. Two major examples: 1. The rapid rise of social democracy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-longrun https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long... Which is feeding the emergence of a highly paid cadre of government workers: https://www.hoover.org/research/140000-year-why-are-government-workers-california-paid-twice-much-private-sector-workers https://www.hoover.org/research/140000-year-why-are-governme... To say nothing of the rapid expansion of the regulatory bureaucracy, and the barriers to competition it creates for major private sector incumbents, and highly paid consultants/lawyers/lobbyists who know how to navigate it. 2. The rapid increase in land-use restrictions in the major high-productivity population centers, which according to many analyses, has massively increased income inequality, while inhibiting productivity growth. E.g. this study estimates that reducing land-use restrictions in just three cities: New York, San Francisco and San Jose would increase GDP by 36.3 percent: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20170388 This finding was echoed by the White House's Council of Economic Advisers in 2016: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images/Housing_Development_Toolkit%20f.2.pdf https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/fi... The world at large, which has moved more toward libertarianism since 1990, has seen the most rapid rise in wage growth in human history over the last 30 years: https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-on-poverty https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-gl...