Topic: Libertarians Are Sociopaths - page 4. (Read 11738 times)

In Mexico, Brazil, China, India, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, and soon Kenya and every other third world country, yes, that eventually becomes the case. With every third-world nation that people have complained about with regards to running sweatshops and exploiting workers for very little wages, that nation eventually (and quickly) reached employment saturation, where the number of cheap jobs greatly outnumbered the number of workers available to exploit. Once that happened, workers started to demand higher wages, and factories started to provide competitive wages and better working conditions to steal workers off each other. Those workers, now earning more money, in turn were then able to get specialized training, get education, move to managerial positions, and start their own businesses. In the end, the economies of those countries, and the quality of life for the workers, had greatly improved. Just compare India, Mexico, and Brazil from 20 years ago to today.
This has happened EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. There is NO REASON it will not continue to happen. So we have REAL WORLD EXAMPLES that what you propose would happen is total bullsh~~.

I answered that question about a dozen times in this thread alone.

But when capitalism itself is more important than its effects on the people and one attributes every single one of its negatives to the government, there's really not much else to say, is there?

Workers don't get exploited because they can choose between 20 other jobs that will exploit them in exactly the same way. That's freedom!

Don't you find it odd that you are unable to answer a simple question without resorting to rabid ad hominems?

Seriously?

Jesus Christ, capitalism really is a religion to you people. Sorry for bashing your faith.

Corruption of what? Exploitation of what? There's no government to corrupt. There's no loopholes to exploit.

I know! Egocentric terms are so ingrained in us it is hard to imagine any other way. However, when reading on different human languages, I was totally blown away to learn that some humans are much less dependent on the concept. They don't even use relative directions like, "On your right side." They would say, "On your north side" or "On your south side" depending on which way you were facing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_direction#Cultures_not_using_relative_directions

---

But anyway, "I am the 1%!"  Just not egocentrically.

Damn, that is an excellent visualization. Makes it pretty obvious that we think mostly in relative terms, doesn't it?

Face it. It is pretty much your responsibility to take care of everyone else on the planet. Why? Because if you are here on this site you are "the rich".

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

Cayman Islands?


If you think workers in exploiting capitalist markets have no choice, please tell that to the business owners who outsourced to Mexico, China, and India. With labor shortages and rapidly rising wages in those countries, I am sure those business owners could use a laugh.

By the way, my parents are poor. They make six figures a year each from their normal jobs, plus own about 4 rental properties, and run a small business from home. Yet their monthly bills are over $20,000 a month, and after all the other expenses (like supporting my younger brother, my grandparents, sending money to family back in our country, paying off loans used for medical expenses for my grandparents, etc), they can't afford any frivolous stuff like eating out, new clothes, car repairs, or most types of groceries. I think they "need" assistance.

I an poor. I make a very (VERY) comfortable income, but after all the money that goes to max out my retirement and savings accounts, I only bring home maybe $600 every two weeks. After all my bills and student loans and money I spend on friends and family to help them or keep them entertained, I can't afford things like cable TV, video game consoles, weekly trips to restaurants or movies, new shoes, and many times even a good lunch. I do litteraly live on $900 or so a month. Less than that even. Maybe I'm poor, and "need" stuff like food stamps. That would make coking dinner much easier, since I won't have to do it from scratch so often.

My ex-bf in KY lives with his wife, and both of them bring home about $1,000 a month after taxes. No 401k's or retirement accounts, practically no savings accounts, and a lot of the money goes to pay off the wife's old credit card loans. They have nice TVs, a PS3 and an X-Box with lots of games, they have a nice collection of DVDs, and go out to the movies often, they eat nice foods, and buy themselves lots of things like clothes, tech toys, and other stuffs. They are also poor and always broke.

But why is it that my poor ex-bf has all that fun stuff he spends money on, and is actually considered poor, while my family and I are usually broke, don't have any of those fun entertaining things, and can't afford to enjoy our lives like he can, but we're supposedly not poor at all? Heck, in the end, he may have free spending cash than we do (moreso, since he's willing to use credit cards) Is it just different priorities?

I should hope it assumes that, rich or poor, kids don't chose what life they were born into, and everyone should be given an equal chance at starting life before they get to a point where they actually can make their own choices, for better or worse.

And you think one guy has any sort of leverage whatsoever against a multi-billion dollar corporation?

Your free market sure gives a lot of illusions of choice, but unless you're an extremely exceptional individual, you effectively have none.

Have no problem with people demanding a particular wage for their labors... We all should negotiate our own pay.

If the employer isn't willing to pay that wage, negotiate to a middle ground, or go look somewhere else. Free market capitalism.

When the gov't intrudes and mandates what the pay should be? Then we got a problem.

-- Smoov

So did the Soviet Union under Stalin and so did China under Mao, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a massive human cost to that development. A cost paid entirely by the poor to benefit the rich in our case. It was those abuses in America and the workers' sometimes violent reaction to them that scared the hell out of politicians and so brought about many of America's most basic safety and labor regulations. I'd rather not go back to the days when a kid would go to work in the mines at 9 or 10 and die of black lung at 30 or 40. Interestingly, our captains of industry back then all said that the economy would be destroyed and they'd all go out of business if they weren't allowed to use child labor - the same excuse they use today when people demand a living wage for their hard work.

There is nothing wrong with a monopoly as long as it emerges from free market.  A coercive monopoly is not compatible with liberalism.

I don't know about the 19th century, but it seems to me that your country has developped quite a lot during this period.

This is the kind of "Mary has three apples" bullshit that never applies in the real world. In the real world, everybody just kind of pays shit. And the more unregulated you get (see late 1800s America), the shittier it is. And in the real world, virtually all industries trend slowly but surely towards monopoly.


I don't bash people based on nationality and I'd honestly rather live in your country than here in the U.S. I just noticed a weird grammatical quirk that I only ever heard from the French roommates I used to have and their friends - that's all.

Because between competing companies there is an equilibrium of forces, and the less greedy finally gets the more customers.

I want to exploit a poor worker by giving him one penny to build a thing that I'll sell one dollar.  Now, comes an other ugly capitalist pig who talks to my worker and offers him two pennies.  My worker resigns and work for my competitor.  Then an other guy offers three pennies, and so on.


Yes, I am.  Please spare me your french bashing.

And for about the tenth time I have to ask, why do you think rampant greed, corruption, exploitation and other unsavory business practices would suddenly cease under a powerless government? Why would you think companies with virtually unlimited resources and no real rules would be the least bit ethical, based on the last 400 years of capitalism?



Are you French? They're the only ones I've ever seen pluralize the word "stuff". Just curious.

Actually, the problem isn't so much with democracy (although, we're supposed to be a republic) in itself.

It has more to do with the personal honor of those we're collectively stupid enough to keep re-electing.

Time and time again, we vote people in for the wrong reasons.

Democracy isn't the problem, we are.

-- Smoov

Capitalism is the private ownership of means of production.  Period.  There is nothing in such a definition about elected morons spoiling other people's property or rich people corrupting those elected morons.  Or other stuffs like that.

The corrupted capitalism you seem to dislike is much more a problem with democracy than with capitalism.

Coincidentally, the "untrue" ones all happen to be the inconvenient ones. Funny how that works out.