Oh, and I'm sorry about the situation you described earlier. The biggest and most frustrating thing about the world is that it really isn't fair and some of the worst things happen to the nicest people.
Actually, to me, the worst thing about it is that near as I can tell, back during the civil war the Republicans used their emergency war powers to start this cycle. Back then of course, they were trading wage slavery for chattel slavery- which is a bad deal for the slave, since he goes from being provided with his bare needs to not earning enough to provide himself with his bare needs.
Here's hoping you can find a way to get out from wage-slavery (that's what it really is, even for well-paid wage-slaves) and to a state of independence.
I will- it may take me 10 years and it might take me away from the United States since there is no REAL opportunity left here, but I will find it.
My dream though is to actually redesign the system so that there is more opportunity and less danger.
I'm trying to do that very thing, and I'm doing my honest personal best not to screw anyone over in the process of achieving independence. The day to day reality of working for a wage in a job that I dislike just so I can pay the bills tires me out. One of these days, I'm hoping that all of this work in the evenings to make something better for myself (and others) will pay off.
Good luck! I don't know if it's actually possible anymore- it's not like fair trade items are actually on store shelves. I started by cutting my fees down to something more reasonable- about half what everybody else is making doing the same job- for my "outside of wage slave work". Trouble is, it's still twice to three times what somebody in India gets for the same job- so I concentrate on the thing I'm actually worst at: personal customer service. I've gone from being a $105/hr software engineer consultant to cutting firewood, lawns, and installing home networks, plus contracting with the state at $35/hr to pay the bills- but the fact of the matter is, it will be VERY hard to beat that 8% bill that we've been saddled with thanks to the con artists on wall street and in Washington DC.
I assert that the value of money comes from the value added to resources and products, expressed through the differences in the costs that go into the product and the revenues captured when the product is sold. The difference is measured as profit, which is aggregated into the value of the enterprise as measured by its investors.
In other words- for the employees and the consumers, there is no value to money at all- it's something reserved entirely for the investor class.
If there are 1000 investors who each put $1000 into a new enterprise, then before any work is done, the company is worth one million $US. Everyone agrees that their shares are all worth $1000. That company then makes a product and a few years later is moderately successful. By coincidence, after covering payroll and all of the debts it has, there's just about a million dollars in the bank. At this point, let's assume that other eager investors are offering $5000 per share to anyone willing to sell and some investors do sell. The stock price is now $5000 and the company's value is five million. What happened there? Where did the difference between the earlier $1000 and the new price of $5000 come from?
From the con artists and liars who convinced the other investors that the stock was worth $5000- when in reality it's just paper and worth nothing. That is EXACTLY what I mean when I say you can't get rich without making someone else poor- you can't get $5000 for stock that's really only worth $1000 without lying.
What was worth one million is now worth five million, but nobody at the company has been making funny money in the back.
Yes they have- they've been lying about the potential of the company- the stock itself becomes the "funny money".
Somehow, the value of a constructed thing, a company, gained four million dollars.
Yes- through a lie.
And there's a million dollars in the bank to pay back everyone's original investment, so this four million dollar increase is a bonus, some sort of excess.
But since there isn't an additional $4 million in the bank to pay back the NEW investors- they get lied to and stolen from.
What happened was the company demonstrated a profit, a difference between its costs and its revenues, and the total expected sum of those profits for the rest of time is what those potential investors are valuing at four million more than the money in the bank.
In that case the potential investors are either idiots or have been lied to- because POTENTIAL isn't REAL. It's a lie, a con game- nothing more. A fake. The factory could burn down tomorrow and there'd be no more profits. You'd think they'd have learned that lesson in 1929- but some people are stupider than others and need to be protected from their own stupidity.
The four million dollars was created in the potential profit from the value added by the company in its product or service.
There is no such thing as "potential profit" because nobody can predict the future. All it would take is somebody to start building the same item in a cheaper labor market to make all that "potential profit" disapear. It's a lie- and you should know it's a lie.
Other places where the value of money is created is in the changing value of natural resources, including raw materials and real estate.
Also mainly due to lying- but at least there, there's effort put in. Any profit realized from the changing value of natural resources and real estate is actually wages stolen from the workers who changed the value of the resources and the real estate.
This value now held by the company is not only from the workers, however. The investors who provided the original investment that bought the offices and equipment where the work could be done provided value.
No they didn't- they removed value. The offices and equipment could just as easily have been leased with money from sales of the items cr
I don't expect to be able to convince them- that's the beauty of distributism- I don't have to. All I need to do is convince enough people to change the tax structure to make small, completely autonomous communities possible. From there- everyone gets to be their own government.
Yes, but it still does. My point is that it's not a labor problem, and sending people off to farm won't help. It will hurt.
And yet- if they had more food they wouldn't be starving- which makes US selfish for wanting our computers and educations and broadband connections and whatnot while there are still people starving.
I can't quite follow you here. You're telling me the reason developed-world population growth is flat or negative is because they have free trade? Then wouldn't it follow that we should get those subsistence farmers some free trade as well?
Actually it's the reverse- because we've forced free trade on them, they have to have larger families to be able to make their farms compete in the marketplace with our agribusinesses- and when their farms fail anyway we stop sending them food, causing famine.
Actually, in the long run it should cost less. People not getting what they need have their economic productivity stunted due to malnutrition, poor education, and so on. Fix that and you can make everybody richer. That's one of the keys to the virtuous circle that allowed the developed nations to pull so far ahead of the undeveloped ones.
Of course, even in your so-called developed nations, millions starve every year, thanks to the high price of food in relation to labor.
Note also that you're asking a lot of people to abandon their wants to pursue something you want.
Not at all- I'm asking a lot of people to give up their luxury to provide for more people to be able to create more luxury in the long run.
I happen to share those wants, but I don't quite see why I should be able to use force to impose my wants on others.
Then you should read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights- an interesting idea, and a treaty we signed and are failing at (doesn't matter much, no other country is doing it either).
And if you saw how thick my natural language interpreter source code for my senior project back in 1995 was, you'd know that I'm not scared by complexity of a relatively simple file format.
I'd still have to say that by asking for specialization in a FILE FORMAT you've painted your box a bit narrow.
Whoops. All the gold standard did was tie the dollar to a quantity of a somewhat rare mineral.
Thus- to quote the website I linked to in the other response- providing an OBJECTIVE VALUE FOR MONEY based on scarcity instead of labor.
If we were on a gold standard and all of the people died tomorrow, how much gold would a gallon of milk be worth? The gold standard doesn't change the answer to your question.
True enough- but it's better than always changing the value of things due to some people having more money than others.
Economics is always about an agreed upon valuation. Which you're calling a myth because you think that gold has intrinsic value. But it doesn't, so that theory's kinda kaput.
It actually does- due to it's scarcity. At least, it's a far more objective value than labor is.
And whew! Talk about an unstable system. The current system offers a lot more of a tie to "reality" than the gold standard ever did.
Really? And what reality is that? The reality of made up information?
But the real price of the goods needed for survival, as a fraction of income, has been going down for all of recorded history (with some local bumps around depressions, recessions, revolutions, wars, etc.). Which means that the amount of effort needed to obtain the same minimal standard of living has been decreasing over the centuries, at the same time that the population has been going up and up (and UP). So something's not right about your assertion...
And it also means that a parasite class has arisen that is able to do no work at all to get their basic needs.
Nothing has "real objective inherant[sic]" value. Even the simplest of natural resources has to be identified as useful and put to use before it has intrinsic value. As soon as everyone (or even just two people) agree that something has value, it has economic value. Just because economic value is a piece of information instead of a piece of matter doesn't make it any less real.
Actually, yes it does- it's the difference between software and hardware. One is easy to copy, the other is hard to copy.
If you're insisting on some objective measure of economic value, it is even more clear why you think economics is all a sham. You really need to do a little reading on the subject, because your argument starts from your ignorance, and as a result, you aren't even speaking the same language as the people you're discussing economics with in this thread.
That's a good thing- language is the biggest oppressor of ideas ever created. The best way to kill an idea is to not have a word for it.
You're SOOOO close! All you have to do is look around and understand that most of the activity you see happens because of the power behind that "shared myth" to start to grasp what's going on in economics... You're sooo close. Just give up on the "objective" bit and you'll be on your way...
The point behind the objective bit isn't to point out that we should have an objective value system. It's to point out that the economic system is an INVENTION- an ARTIFACT of mankind. That changes it from a force of nature to something we can, and should, tinker with until it becomes usefull to everybody as opposed to just the few.
Rather than just slam you, I'll give you a great pointer to getting started on that reading. A great start to learning what economics is all about might be "Economics in One Lesson". If you're in western LA, reply to this and I'll lend you my copy.
I'm afraid I'm in Oregon- and it's been about 6 years since I read that book. In that time, something changed for me- I went from being a highly educated individual enjoying the fruits of my hard work to an oppressed wage slave barely able to survive. It happened in under a week- and it didn't help that my mother in law died two weeks previous to that.
It was then that I learned the secret that most econmists have yet to learn- that the United States is NOT a free market.
I see what you're trying to say- that labor is the basic value of money, thus things that are harder to create cost more. But that's not so- the stockbroker and the banker are paid the best of any employee in this economy, but they produce no actual goods. Likewise the stockholder and the venture capitalist are extremely well paid for produceing no products at all.
I agree with you and with Marx that the value of money comes from the labor of the people. But in the last 150 years, a small minority of people have been working very hard to change that- by use of cartels, monopolies, and multinational corporations. And they've succeeded- we've lost the war for a free market. The market is called a free market, but it hasn't been for some time now. Thanks to a phrase in your above post, I found this. In fact, I suspect you might be the same person. What most free marketeers fail to see is that we haven't had a free market in the United States since the 1840s. In fact, near as I can tell there hasn't been a free market anywhere in the world since the invention of the Steam Engine allowed what I call "foreign influences" to interfere in local markets. As long as those foreign influences exist- the net result of the free market will be capitalism and communism- not freedom.
I suggest you try to understand where the value behind money comes from. When I say "the value behind money", I'm referring to everyone's ability to make consistent (but not identical) pricing decisions ($3 can be exchanged for a gallon of milk most places in the continental US). Why is $3 worth about the same as a gallon of milk? It is clear from your remark that you lack understanding of that very important economic process.
That's because there is no reality behind this economic process- it's a myth. If all the human beings died tomorrow, would milk still be worth $3/gallon?
I suspect that you feel that the whole thing is a house of cards with no foundation.
That's because it IS a house of cards with no foundation- and hasn't had one since we left the gold standard behind in the 1950s.
While there are some assumptions being made, that if incorrect, could destabilize the system (if arabian oil field stocks are much closer to depletion than is currently being estimated), but most of it actually is built on a sane foundation.
No it isn't- there's no sanity to a shared myth, there's only a myth.
just not the easiest foundation to understand. The value of money comes from somewhere. It has to represent something, otherwise there would be nothing for people to agree on, especially in currency exchanges (leading to the highly related question: What might be happening behind the scene when currency traders to decide the dollar gained or lost value against another currency?)
Near as I can tell, it's only a con game to make more money out of thin air- and that there is no actual reality in currency exchanges. It's all a fake designed to steal from the poor to give to the rich.
Cirque de Soleil employees and investors have made money without forcing anyone into the poorhouse.
Except for of course the third world people who make the fabric for their costumes, the farmers who make food cheap enough for them to do what they're doing, the people who make their props, etc.
Their ticket buyers do not exchange their ability to pay the rent and stay off the street with the decision to go see Cirque tonight. Typical circuses have been in decline in North America for decades and Cirque did not alter that trend in the slightest. And yet, wealth was created... (Oops, I almost gave away the answer!)
There's a ton of people out there related to the Cirque that you failed to take into account though. A very large supply chain indeed. Are you trying to tell me that NOBODY in that supply chain is being taken advantage of?
Economics is not a zero sum game in all time frames except for the VERY long term (your point about limited resources does put an eventual limit on the sum, assuming we don't go off-planet and eventually open up the entire universe to economic exploitation).
And that long term is apparently running out rather quickly at this point- given the poverty rates have been rising all over the world for the last 150 years, and the percentage of wealthy people has been shrinking for the same time period (as a percentage of the total population of the planet).
If you're actually interested in joining in this discussion from a more informed perspective, you really should learn where the value behind money comes from. The answers might suprise you and restore a little of what appears to be lost faith in the economic system.
I understand the value behind money- because I see usury every day. The "time value of money" for instance, aka interest, is based on a lie to begin with.
You want that milk to be worth something else? Put in a minimum wage of $.10/hr and a maximum wage of $100/hr and that milk will be revalued very quickly to fit within those limits. There's no objective reality to it- just a shared myth. And you even admit it in the last line- you need FAITH to accept the economic system because there is no scientific proof behind it. When we have an economic system that is based in reality, that will be the first step towards wiping out poverty once and for all.
Not infinite, no, but as plentiful as they have always been on the earth, and as plentiful as they are likely to be for a long time yet. Check out the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy. What we consider a "resource" and what we consider "waste" fluctuates in response to supply and demand.
And thus, when you have more people, the per capita share of resources goes DOWN, not up. Thus you can't increase your personal share of resources without taking those resources from somebody else.
We'd have to define some terms to make progress here, but I can say I'm a good deal richer now than I was twenty years ago. Whom did I make poorer?
Well, probably the $.34/hr Chinese slave labor that now makes your clothes (as opposed to the $8/hr wage slave labor that used to, all of whom have now lost their jobs so that you can have cheaper clothes). Just an example of course.
Or looking at it from a macro point of view -- it seems to me the human race collectively has a whole lot more wealth now than when our ancestors climbed down from the trees, or out of the caves, or whatever they did.
No, in fact we don't- there's a hell of a lot less oil under the ground for instance, we've used up quite a bit of our natural resources- and even the trees are gone in some places.
Since we all started with nothing, who got poorer?
We didn't all "start out with nothing"- we started out with a world and a climate we evolved into. Over the last 10,000 years or so, we've been very good at destroying that climate we evolved into, and moving into areas we didn't evolve into, and destroying the land there as well. On average, we're a lot poorer per capita than we were when there was still 10,000 acres of land for every human being on the planet.
No, it does mean physical goods, or more precisely, the value added in creating physical goods (and delivering services).
There are only so many atoms in those physical goods- what did you do that any robot couldn't do better in rearranging them?
In other words, there is more wealth inherent in a computer than in its raw material components -- silicon, metal, plastic, etc.
Only because we claim it is- a shared myth. There really isn't anything there that wasn't there to begin with- we just SAY it has value with no real objective inherant value at all.
Doesn't have to be infinite. People aren't infinite either. There's roughly the same amount of raw material on the earth now as has always been here. Wealth comes from manipulating the raw material into useful things.
And to manipulate that raw material, you have to first take it away from somebody else, thus making that person poorer.
You said that you deserve a broadband connection to the net and a computer- I'm just asking what makes you think you deserve those things while there are people starving in the world.
The world already produces enough food. This is not because we've devoted a large portion of our labor to that.
Tell that to the people of Niger- they certainly don't think that the world already produces enough food. Or to the Mexicans forced to come here as illegal immigrants because the American agribusinesses have forced them off their land. If anything, we aren't devoting even 1/10th as much effort to producing food as we could be.
If we followed your everybody-back-to-the-land approach, agricultural productivity would plummet. The net result would be more starvation, not less. And as a kicker, population would shoot up, causing more starvation still. Don't believe me? Look at population growth rates for people in developed countries versus subsistence farmers.
Did it ever occur to you that could possibly be due to free trade?
And of course, people would put up with your approach for about 30 seconds before pursuing their wants again.
If we achieve no more need- then I have no problem with people pursuing their wants. It will cost more to pursue their wants, of course, but that's why those are WANTS and not NEEDS.
I don't object to that per se (the benefits part, anyway) -- it's a matter of proportion. There are 24 hours in a day and CNN gives three of them to Lou Dobbs. Yeah, the border needs to be tightened. Is that such a problem that 12.5% of the day needs to be devoted to complaining about Mexicans?
According to Border Patrol statistics, only 7.5% of the time is spent complaining about Mexicans. Dobbs spends the other 5% complaining about OTMs- illegal immigrants that come across the Southern Border that aren't Mexican (40% of our illegals coming across the southern border are NOT Mexicans- they're either South Americans or increasingly Arabic.)
If you kept the jobs in the US, then no one would be able to afford them. Right now, a shirt made by slave labor costs about $15. How much would it cost if it were made by USians getting paid $8 an hour?
About $15- the price did not go down significantly when the manufacture went overseas. The real difference is that the retailer now makes a 200% profit instead of a 10% profit on the same shirt.
On top of that, no one really *wants* to make shirts in the US. People want jobs, but not thoes kinds of jobs.
Tell that to the textiles union- which has been testifying in Congress for the last 40 years to try to protect the jobs of the 500,000 Americans who used to make shirts. They failed because of people like you.
Offshoring is a way to make sure that the US will continue to get better. We look at the shittiest jobs out there and find a way to send them overseas. Then our workforce trains for better jobs.
At which point the better jobs leave before they can even finish training.
Picking fruit, makinf shoes, and writing code are all in the same bucket; no one wants to do it at the price customers are willing to pay. So we offshore it.
And what is left?
Retrain for something better and stop bitching already.
What's better? I want to know what the next target for offshoring is- I've got a bunch of Indians who are perfectly willing to train to do it....
Exactly right- while I don't agree with forcing other people to work to satisfy your needs, you should have the *basic human right* to go out in the field, grab a nice cucumber, some wheat, go to the cow and get some milk, bake yourself some bread and make yourself a sammich.
I'm begining to think you're right- given that other guy's testimony that US-OJT'd IITers can now quit being H-1bs and make 1.92 lakhs back in the home country (yes, this means that if you could get a fake Indian citizenship and sneak in as a illegal immigrant there- you too could be a millionaire).
WOW! He must be going back to be a project manager. But if they're making that kind of money, that gives even me hope....let's see 4x48, that's 1.92 lakhs a year in rupees.
Centuries of historical evidence suggest otherwise. If you want to offer people the choice between being a 21st century "wage slave" (interesting oxymoron) and a 13th century peasant, by all means do so,
Yeah, right- like we're allowed to offer people that choice. Every time it's been done, the IRS and the local government steps in and confiscates the land for back taxes on income that was never actually created.
but the growth of goods and services production in the 1st world countries over the last 150 years has been staggering,
And the gap between the rich and the poor in the 1st world countries has been equally staggering. Just because YOU don't see the poverty doesn't mean that the poverty doesn't exist.
and certainly represents much more than the fruits of a zero-sum game.
In reality what it represents is large countries stealing resources from smaller countries. Per capita, your first world rich people use 40 times the number of resources of a substinence farmer in a third world country- which means that 40 people are starving for that one person to be supported in luxury.
Congradulations to the first world- the war on terror proves that way of life is not sustainable.
Oh! Well then, as a representative of the world's 7-year-olds, perhaps you can be a bit more precise.
How more precise do you need to be to say that every human being needs to have food, clothing, shelter, clean water, and medical care for basic survival?
It turns out that each one of those allegedly obvious needs comes in a variety of forms.
So what? We care about the people who have NO form of that obvious need, not SOME form of that obvious need.
If we're going to optimize the economy for needs only, we'll need to know exactly where to draw the dividing line between needs and wants.
How about nobody gets to choose their form of any of the above until everybody on the planet has at least one form of all of the above?
Which foods, exactly, should we be producing?
Whatever will grow locally so that it doesn't have to be shipped.
And how much medical care is the amount you really need?
How about we start with disease prevention and basic survival- and then when we have that for everybody on the planet we can move on to wants?
Personally, I'm going to miss education, human contact, and intellectual stimulation.
Yes- but these are luxuries you can live without.
And, come to think of it, clean air.
Where would air pollution come from if our economy is concentrated on producing food for 7 billion people?
And to be economically productive, I thought I needed a computer and some bandwidth.
That's nice- but it's also a luxury you can live and be productive without- try growing a plant instead. Perferably food producing plants only.
But if all the world's seven-year-olds (plus at least one Marxist) are sure I don't need those, how can I argue with that?
You can't- which makes me wonder why you're even trying. What makes you think that YOU deserve to live a life of luxury built upon the poverty of others?
Oh, yeah, right- like you failed 2nd grade social studies. The basic human needs are: food, clothing, shelter, clean water, and medical care. Every 7 year old on the planet knows that one.
The economy is not- but resources ARE. The earth is finite, it's impossible to have infinite resources in it.
In order for me to become rich, I do not have to make someone else poor.
Prove it- do it. I've yet to see anybody become rich without making somebody else poor.
Economic activity generates wealth.
True enough- if by "wealth" you mean the useless digits in federal reserve computers and not actual physical goods.
There is not a fixed-size "pie" that must be distributed in chunks.
Oh really? And where do you find the infinite resources for this bottomless pit of wealth of yours?
When the economy is booming, everybody is better off (in theory).
I've yet to see that happen- near as I can tell the poor get poorer when the economy is booming, and the poor get poorer when the economy is not booming. Likewise the rich get richer when the economy is booming, and the rich get richer when the economy is not booming. The only thing that ever changes this is forcible governmental redistribution of wealth OR the outright invention of wealth through the con games of revaluing currency and usury.
During a recession, everybody loses money.
Money is not wealth- money is a myth that is constantly revalued with no relation to reality.
By encouraging economic activity, everybody will benefit.
Never seen this happen yet in the entire history of the world- at least, not without massive governmental fiddling.
Sure, there are situations where people can and will be exploited, and some are too greedy and too willing to take advantage of these people.
And a free market just gives free reign to such people- but I'm not even talking about them.
But a free market economy requires individuals to take responsibility for their own situation and find something they can do to make money to support themself.
And then takes it away the second it's not making even more money for the rich.
Waiting around for someone else to hand you a well paying job is a losing strategy.
Absolutely- but trying to create a job for yourself will just get you bankrupt. The rich aren't about to give you any of the resources they're hoarding without you giving them more in return.
Anyone who wants to flood his dead tree to a company that he knows nothing about, for a job that he knows nothing about, is generally not worth the time to even spend 5 seconds skimming said dead tree before dropping it in the trash.
In this climate of job scarcity (and despite everything everybody is telling you, jobs are scarce) anything is better than nothing.
Here's a hint, Sparky: companies that aren't running ads on Monster or your local paper are hiring right now; they're looking for the right candidate, and the right one isn't a resume spammer. In fact, the smart candidate doesn't even need a resume to get an interview.
Really? Then how does the smart candidate get an interview without going through the HR process?
After looking at the Introduction to DICOM I think your problem is that DICOM is not a programming language, but is rather a file format, and thus you can't hire a "DICOM Programmer". Any code monkey experienced in basic object oriented work from any higher level language ought to be able to handle all the DICOM work you want- I'd suggest advertising for a Visual Basic programmer if your shop is mainly Windows, or a Java programmer if your shop is mainly Linux. Any higher level programmer can use the freeware and OSS tools linked to from the page above to do whatever you want- you don't actually NEED any experience in DICOM whatsoever to work with the DICOM file format.
Let me know when Indian programmers are making US Minimum Wage of $5.13/hr for this work...that's when we'll see companies either jumping out of India for cheaper climes or the possibility of wage parity actually happening.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and I'm sorry about the situation you described earlier. The biggest and most frustrating thing about the world is that it really isn't fair and some of the worst things happen to the nicest people.
Actually, to me, the worst thing about it is that near as I can tell, back during the civil war the Republicans used their emergency war powers to start this cycle. Back then of course, they were trading wage slavery for chattel slavery- which is a bad deal for the slave, since he goes from being provided with his bare needs to not earning enough to provide himself with his bare needs.
Here's hoping you can find a way to get out from wage-slavery (that's what it really is, even for well-paid wage-slaves) and to a state of independence.
I will- it may take me 10 years and it might take me away from the United States since there is no REAL opportunity left here, but I will find it.
My dream though is to actually redesign the system so that there is more opportunity and less danger.
I'm trying to do that very thing, and I'm doing my honest personal best not to screw anyone over in the process of achieving independence. The day to day reality of working for a wage in a job that I dislike just so I can pay the bills tires me out. One of these days, I'm hoping that all of this work in the evenings to make something better for myself (and others) will pay off.
Good luck! I don't know if it's actually possible anymore- it's not like fair trade items are actually on store shelves. I started by cutting my fees down to something more reasonable- about half what everybody else is making doing the same job- for my "outside of wage slave work". Trouble is, it's still twice to three times what somebody in India gets for the same job- so I concentrate on the thing I'm actually worst at: personal customer service. I've gone from being a $105/hr software engineer consultant to cutting firewood, lawns, and installing home networks, plus contracting with the state at $35/hr to pay the bills- but the fact of the matter is, it will be VERY hard to beat that 8% bill that we've been saddled with thanks to the con artists on wall street and in Washington DC.
I assert that the value of money comes from the value added to resources and products, expressed through the differences in the costs that go into the product and the revenues captured when the product is sold. The difference is measured as profit, which is aggregated into the value of the enterprise as measured by its investors.
In other words- for the employees and the consumers, there is no value to money at all- it's something reserved entirely for the investor class.
If there are 1000 investors who each put $1000 into a new enterprise, then before any work is done, the company is worth one million $US. Everyone agrees that their shares are all worth $1000. That company then makes a product and a few years later is moderately successful. By coincidence, after covering payroll and all of the debts it has, there's just about a million dollars in the bank. At this point, let's assume that other eager investors are offering $5000 per share to anyone willing to sell and some investors do sell. The stock price is now $5000 and the company's value is five million. What happened there? Where did the difference between the earlier $1000 and the new price of $5000 come from?
From the con artists and liars who convinced the other investors that the stock was worth $5000- when in reality it's just paper and worth nothing. That is EXACTLY what I mean when I say you can't get rich without making someone else poor- you can't get $5000 for stock that's really only worth $1000 without lying.
What was worth one million is now worth five million, but nobody at the company has been making funny money in the back.
Yes they have- they've been lying about the potential of the company- the stock itself becomes the "funny money".
Somehow, the value of a constructed thing, a company, gained four million dollars.
Yes- through a lie.
And there's a million dollars in the bank to pay back everyone's original investment, so this four million dollar increase is a bonus, some sort of excess.
But since there isn't an additional $4 million in the bank to pay back the NEW investors- they get lied to and stolen from.
What happened was the company demonstrated a profit, a difference between its costs and its revenues, and the total expected sum of those profits for the rest of time is what those potential investors are valuing at four million more than the money in the bank.
In that case the potential investors are either idiots or have been lied to- because POTENTIAL isn't REAL. It's a lie, a con game- nothing more. A fake. The factory could burn down tomorrow and there'd be no more profits. You'd think they'd have learned that lesson in 1929- but some people are stupider than others and need to be protected from their own stupidity.
The four million dollars was created in the potential profit from the value added by the company in its product or service.
There is no such thing as "potential profit" because nobody can predict the future. All it would take is somebody to start building the same item in a cheaper labor market to make all that "potential profit" disapear. It's a lie- and you should know it's a lie.
Other places where the value of money is created is in the changing value of natural resources, including raw materials and real estate.
Also mainly due to lying- but at least there, there's effort put in. Any profit realized from the changing value of natural resources and real estate is actually wages stolen from the workers who changed the value of the resources and the real estate.
This value now held by the company is not only from the workers, however. The investors who provided the original investment that bought the offices and equipment where the work could be done provided value.
No they didn't- they removed value. The offices and equipment could just as easily have been leased with money from sales of the items cr
I don't expect to be able to convince them- that's the beauty of distributism- I don't have to. All I need to do is convince enough people to change the tax structure to make small, completely autonomous communities possible. From there- everyone gets to be their own government.
Yes, but it still does. My point is that it's not a labor problem, and sending people off to farm won't help. It will hurt.
And yet- if they had more food they wouldn't be starving- which makes US selfish for wanting our computers and educations and broadband connections and whatnot while there are still people starving.
I can't quite follow you here. You're telling me the reason developed-world population growth is flat or negative is because they have free trade? Then wouldn't it follow that we should get those subsistence farmers some free trade as well?
Actually it's the reverse- because we've forced free trade on them, they have to have larger families to be able to make their farms compete in the marketplace with our agribusinesses- and when their farms fail anyway we stop sending them food, causing famine.
Actually, in the long run it should cost less. People not getting what they need have their economic productivity stunted due to malnutrition, poor education, and so on. Fix that and you can make everybody richer. That's one of the keys to the virtuous circle that allowed the developed nations to pull so far ahead of the undeveloped ones.
Of course, even in your so-called developed nations, millions starve every year, thanks to the high price of food in relation to labor.
Note also that you're asking a lot of people to abandon their wants to pursue something you want.
Not at all- I'm asking a lot of people to give up their luxury to provide for more people to be able to create more luxury in the long run.
I happen to share those wants, but I don't quite see why I should be able to use force to impose my wants on others.
Then you should read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights- an interesting idea, and a treaty we signed and are failing at (doesn't matter much, no other country is doing it either).
And if you saw how thick my natural language interpreter source code for my senior project back in 1995 was, you'd know that I'm not scared by complexity of a relatively simple file format.
I'd still have to say that by asking for specialization in a FILE FORMAT you've painted your box a bit narrow.
Whoops. All the gold standard did was tie the dollar to a quantity of a somewhat rare mineral.
Thus- to quote the website I linked to in the other response- providing an OBJECTIVE VALUE FOR MONEY based on scarcity instead of labor.
If we were on a gold standard and all of the people died tomorrow, how much gold would a gallon of milk be worth? The gold standard doesn't change the answer to your question.
True enough- but it's better than always changing the value of things due to some people having more money than others.
Economics is always about an agreed upon valuation. Which you're calling a myth because you think that gold has intrinsic value. But it doesn't, so that theory's kinda kaput.
It actually does- due to it's scarcity. At least, it's a far more objective value than labor is.
And whew! Talk about an unstable system. The current system offers a lot more of a tie to "reality" than the gold standard ever did.
Really? And what reality is that? The reality of made up information?
But the real price of the goods needed for survival, as a fraction of income, has been going down for all of recorded history (with some local bumps around depressions, recessions, revolutions, wars, etc.). Which means that the amount of effort needed to obtain the same minimal standard of living has been decreasing over the centuries, at the same time that the population has been going up and up (and UP). So something's not right about your assertion...
And it also means that a parasite class has arisen that is able to do no work at all to get their basic needs.
Nothing has "real objective inherant[sic]" value. Even the simplest of natural resources has to be identified as useful and put to use before it has intrinsic value. As soon as everyone (or even just two people) agree that something has value, it has economic value. Just because economic value is a piece of information instead of a piece of matter doesn't make it any less real.
Actually, yes it does- it's the difference between software and hardware. One is easy to copy, the other is hard to copy.
If you're insisting on some objective measure of economic value, it is even more clear why you think economics is all a sham. You really need to do a little reading on the subject, because your argument starts from your ignorance, and as a result, you aren't even speaking the same language as the people you're discussing economics with in this thread.
That's a good thing- language is the biggest oppressor of ideas ever created. The best way to kill an idea is to not have a word for it.
You're SOOOO close! All you have to do is look around and understand that most of the activity you see happens because of the power behind that "shared myth" to start to grasp what's going on in economics... You're sooo close. Just give up on the "objective" bit and you'll be on your way...
The point behind the objective bit isn't to point out that we should have an objective value system. It's to point out that the economic system is an INVENTION- an ARTIFACT of mankind. That changes it from a force of nature to something we can, and should, tinker with until it becomes usefull to everybody as opposed to just the few.
Rather than just slam you, I'll give you a great pointer to getting started on that reading. A great start to learning what economics is all about might be "Economics in One Lesson". If you're in western LA, reply to this and I'll lend you my copy.
I'm afraid I'm in Oregon- and it's been about 6 years since I read that book. In that time, something changed for me- I went from being a highly educated individual enjoying the fruits of my hard work to an oppressed wage slave barely able to survive. It happened in under a week- and it didn't help that my mother in law died two weeks previous to that.
It was then that I learned the secret that most econmists have yet to learn- that the United States is NOT a free market.
I see what you're trying to say- that labor is the basic value of money, thus things that are harder to create cost more. But that's not so- the stockbroker and the banker are paid the best of any employee in this economy, but they produce no actual goods. Likewise the stockholder and the venture capitalist are extremely well paid for produceing no products at all.
I agree with you and with Marx that the value of money comes from the labor of the people. But in the last 150 years, a small minority of people have been working very hard to change that- by use of cartels, monopolies, and multinational corporations. And they've succeeded- we've lost the war for a free market. The market is called a free market, but it hasn't been for some time now. Thanks to a phrase in your above post, I found this. In fact, I suspect you might be the same person. What most free marketeers fail to see is that we haven't had a free market in the United States since the 1840s. In fact, near as I can tell there hasn't been a free market anywhere in the world since the invention of the Steam Engine allowed what I call "foreign influences" to interfere in local markets. As long as those foreign influences exist- the net result of the free market will be capitalism and communism- not freedom.
I suggest you try to understand where the value behind money comes from. When I say "the value behind money", I'm referring to everyone's ability to make consistent (but not identical) pricing decisions ($3 can be exchanged for a gallon of milk most places in the continental US). Why is $3 worth about the same as a gallon of milk? It is clear from your remark that you lack understanding of that very important economic process.
That's because there is no reality behind this economic process- it's a myth. If all the human beings died tomorrow, would milk still be worth $3/gallon?
I suspect that you feel that the whole thing is a house of cards with no foundation.
That's because it IS a house of cards with no foundation- and hasn't had one since we left the gold standard behind in the 1950s.
While there are some assumptions being made, that if incorrect, could destabilize the system (if arabian oil field stocks are much closer to depletion than is currently being estimated), but most of it actually is built on a sane foundation.
No it isn't- there's no sanity to a shared myth, there's only a myth.
just not the easiest foundation to understand. The value of money comes from somewhere. It has to represent something, otherwise there would be nothing for people to agree on, especially in currency exchanges (leading to the highly related question: What might be happening behind the scene when currency traders to decide the dollar gained or lost value against another currency?)
Near as I can tell, it's only a con game to make more money out of thin air- and that there is no actual reality in currency exchanges. It's all a fake designed to steal from the poor to give to the rich.
Cirque de Soleil employees and investors have made money without forcing anyone into the poorhouse.
Except for of course the third world people who make the fabric for their costumes, the farmers who make food cheap enough for them to do what they're doing, the people who make their props, etc.
Their ticket buyers do not exchange their ability to pay the rent and stay off the street with the decision to go see Cirque tonight. Typical circuses have been in decline in North America for decades and Cirque did not alter that trend in the slightest. And yet, wealth was created... (Oops, I almost gave away the answer!)
There's a ton of people out there related to the Cirque that you failed to take into account though. A very large supply chain indeed. Are you trying to tell me that NOBODY in that supply chain is being taken advantage of?
Economics is not a zero sum game in all time frames except for the VERY long term (your point about limited resources does put an eventual limit on the sum, assuming we don't go off-planet and eventually open up the entire universe to economic exploitation).
And that long term is apparently running out rather quickly at this point- given the poverty rates have been rising all over the world for the last 150 years, and the percentage of wealthy people has been shrinking for the same time period (as a percentage of the total population of the planet).
If you're actually interested in joining in this discussion from a more informed perspective, you really should learn where the value behind money comes from. The answers might suprise you and restore a little of what appears to be lost faith in the economic system.
I understand the value behind money- because I see usury every day. The "time value of money" for instance, aka interest, is based on a lie to begin with.
You want that milk to be worth something else? Put in a minimum wage of $.10/hr and a maximum wage of $100/hr and that milk will be revalued very quickly to fit within those limits. There's no objective reality to it- just a shared myth. And you even admit it in the last line- you need FAITH to accept the economic system because there is no scientific proof behind it. When we have an economic system that is based in reality, that will be the first step towards wiping out poverty once and for all.
Not infinite, no, but as plentiful as they have always been on the earth, and as plentiful as they are likely to be for a long time yet. Check out the Law of Conservation of Mass/Energy. What we consider a "resource" and what we consider "waste" fluctuates in response to supply and demand.
And thus, when you have more people, the per capita share of resources goes DOWN, not up. Thus you can't increase your personal share of resources without taking those resources from somebody else.
We'd have to define some terms to make progress here, but I can say I'm a good deal richer now than I was twenty years ago. Whom did I make poorer?
Well, probably the $.34/hr Chinese slave labor that now makes your clothes (as opposed to the $8/hr wage slave labor that used to, all of whom have now lost their jobs so that you can have cheaper clothes). Just an example of course.
Or looking at it from a macro point of view -- it seems to me the human race collectively has a whole lot more wealth now than when our ancestors climbed down from the trees, or out of the caves, or whatever they did.
No, in fact we don't- there's a hell of a lot less oil under the ground for instance, we've used up quite a bit of our natural resources- and even the trees are gone in some places.
Since we all started with nothing, who got poorer?
We didn't all "start out with nothing"- we started out with a world and a climate we evolved into. Over the last 10,000 years or so, we've been very good at destroying that climate we evolved into, and moving into areas we didn't evolve into, and destroying the land there as well. On average, we're a lot poorer per capita than we were when there was still 10,000 acres of land for every human being on the planet.
No, it does mean physical goods, or more precisely, the value added in creating physical goods (and delivering services).
There are only so many atoms in those physical goods- what did you do that any robot couldn't do better in rearranging them?
In other words, there is more wealth inherent in a computer than in its raw material components -- silicon, metal, plastic, etc.
Only because we claim it is- a shared myth. There really isn't anything there that wasn't there to begin with- we just SAY it has value with no real objective inherant value at all.
Doesn't have to be infinite. People aren't infinite either. There's roughly the same amount of raw material on the earth now as has always been here. Wealth comes from manipulating the raw material into useful things.
And to manipulate that raw material, you have to first take it away from somebody else, thus making that person poorer.
Funny, I missed where I said that.
You said that you deserve a broadband connection to the net and a computer- I'm just asking what makes you think you deserve those things while there are people starving in the world.
The world already produces enough food. This is not because we've devoted a large portion of our labor to that.
Tell that to the people of Niger- they certainly don't think that the world already produces enough food. Or to the Mexicans forced to come here as illegal immigrants because the American agribusinesses have forced them off their land. If anything, we aren't devoting even 1/10th as much effort to producing food as we could be.
If we followed your everybody-back-to-the-land approach, agricultural productivity would plummet. The net result would be more starvation, not less. And as a kicker, population would shoot up, causing more starvation still. Don't believe me? Look at population growth rates for people in developed countries versus subsistence farmers.
Did it ever occur to you that could possibly be due to free trade?
And of course, people would put up with your approach for about 30 seconds before pursuing their wants again.
If we achieve no more need- then I have no problem with people pursuing their wants. It will cost more to pursue their wants, of course, but that's why those are WANTS and not NEEDS.
I don't object to that per se (the benefits part, anyway) -- it's a matter of proportion. There are 24 hours in a day and CNN gives three of them to Lou Dobbs. Yeah, the border needs to be tightened. Is that such a problem that 12.5% of the day needs to be devoted to complaining about Mexicans?
According to Border Patrol statistics, only 7.5% of the time is spent complaining about Mexicans. Dobbs spends the other 5% complaining about OTMs- illegal immigrants that come across the Southern Border that aren't Mexican (40% of our illegals coming across the southern border are NOT Mexicans- they're either South Americans or increasingly Arabic.)
If you kept the jobs in the US, then no one would be able to afford them. Right now, a shirt made by slave labor costs about $15. How much would it cost if it were made by USians getting paid $8 an hour?
About $15- the price did not go down significantly when the manufacture went overseas. The real difference is that the retailer now makes a 200% profit instead of a 10% profit on the same shirt.
On top of that, no one really *wants* to make shirts in the US. People want jobs, but not thoes kinds of jobs.
Tell that to the textiles union- which has been testifying in Congress for the last 40 years to try to protect the jobs of the 500,000 Americans who used to make shirts. They failed because of people like you.
Offshoring is a way to make sure that the US will continue to get better. We look at the shittiest jobs out there and find a way to send them overseas. Then our workforce trains for better jobs.
At which point the better jobs leave before they can even finish training.
Picking fruit, makinf shoes, and writing code are all in the same bucket; no one wants to do it at the price customers are willing to pay. So we offshore it.
And what is left?
Retrain for something better and stop bitching already.
What's better? I want to know what the next target for offshoring is- I've got a bunch of Indians who are perfectly willing to train to do it....
Exactly right- while I don't agree with forcing other people to work to satisfy your needs, you should have the *basic human right* to go out in the field, grab a nice cucumber, some wheat, go to the cow and get some milk, bake yourself some bread and make yourself a sammich.
I'm begining to think you're right- given that other guy's testimony that US-OJT'd IITers can now quit being H-1bs and make 1.92 lakhs back in the home country (yes, this means that if you could get a fake Indian citizenship and sneak in as a illegal immigrant there- you too could be a millionaire).
WOW! He must be going back to be a project manager. But if they're making that kind of money, that gives even me hope....let's see 4x48, that's 1.92 lakhs a year in rupees.
Centuries of historical evidence suggest otherwise. If you want to offer people the choice between being a 21st century "wage slave" (interesting oxymoron) and a 13th century peasant, by all means do so,
Yeah, right- like we're allowed to offer people that choice. Every time it's been done, the IRS and the local government steps in and confiscates the land for back taxes on income that was never actually created.
but the growth of goods and services production in the 1st world countries over the last 150 years has been staggering,
And the gap between the rich and the poor in the 1st world countries has been equally staggering. Just because YOU don't see the poverty doesn't mean that the poverty doesn't exist.
and certainly represents much more than the fruits of a zero-sum game.
In reality what it represents is large countries stealing resources from smaller countries. Per capita, your first world rich people use 40 times the number of resources of a substinence farmer in a third world country- which means that 40 people are starving for that one person to be supported in luxury.
Congradulations to the first world- the war on terror proves that way of life is not sustainable.
Oh! Well then, as a representative of the world's 7-year-olds, perhaps you can be a bit more precise.
How more precise do you need to be to say that every human being needs to have food, clothing, shelter, clean water, and medical care for basic survival?
It turns out that each one of those allegedly obvious needs comes in a variety of forms.
So what? We care about the people who have NO form of that obvious need, not SOME form of that obvious need.
If we're going to optimize the economy for needs only, we'll need to know exactly where to draw the dividing line between needs and wants.
How about nobody gets to choose their form of any of the above until everybody on the planet has at least one form of all of the above?
Which foods, exactly, should we be producing?
Whatever will grow locally so that it doesn't have to be shipped.
And how much medical care is the amount you really need?
How about we start with disease prevention and basic survival- and then when we have that for everybody on the planet we can move on to wants?
Personally, I'm going to miss education, human contact, and intellectual stimulation.
Yes- but these are luxuries you can live without.
And, come to think of it, clean air.
Where would air pollution come from if our economy is concentrated on producing food for 7 billion people?
And to be economically productive, I thought I needed a computer and some bandwidth.
That's nice- but it's also a luxury you can live and be productive without- try growing a plant instead. Perferably food producing plants only.
But if all the world's seven-year-olds (plus at least one Marxist) are sure I don't need those, how can I argue with that?
You can't- which makes me wonder why you're even trying. What makes you think that YOU deserve to live a life of luxury built upon the poverty of others?
Oh, yeah, right- like you failed 2nd grade social studies. The basic human needs are: food, clothing, shelter, clean water, and medical care. Every 7 year old on the planet knows that one.
The economy is not a zero-sum game.
The economy is not- but resources ARE. The earth is finite, it's impossible to have infinite resources in it.
In order for me to become rich, I do not have to make someone else poor.
Prove it- do it. I've yet to see anybody become rich without making somebody else poor.
Economic activity generates wealth.
True enough- if by "wealth" you mean the useless digits in federal reserve computers and not actual physical goods.
There is not a fixed-size "pie" that must be distributed in chunks.
Oh really? And where do you find the infinite resources for this bottomless pit of wealth of yours?
When the economy is booming, everybody is better off (in theory).
I've yet to see that happen- near as I can tell the poor get poorer when the economy is booming, and the poor get poorer when the economy is not booming. Likewise the rich get richer when the economy is booming, and the rich get richer when the economy is not booming. The only thing that ever changes this is forcible governmental redistribution of wealth OR the outright invention of wealth through the con games of revaluing currency and usury.
During a recession, everybody loses money.
Money is not wealth- money is a myth that is constantly revalued with no relation to reality.
By encouraging economic activity, everybody will benefit.
Never seen this happen yet in the entire history of the world- at least, not without massive governmental fiddling.
Sure, there are situations where people can and will be exploited, and some are too greedy and too willing to take advantage of these people.
And a free market just gives free reign to such people- but I'm not even talking about them.
But a free market economy requires individuals to take responsibility for their own situation and find something they can do to make money to support themself.
And then takes it away the second it's not making even more money for the rich.
Waiting around for someone else to hand you a well paying job is a losing strategy.
Absolutely- but trying to create a job for yourself will just get you bankrupt. The rich aren't about to give you any of the resources they're hoarding without you giving them more in return.
Tell it to the guy above who claims that people don't even need resumes to get jobs at his company.
Anyone who wants to flood his dead tree to a company that he knows nothing about, for a job that he knows nothing about, is generally not worth the time to even spend 5 seconds skimming said dead tree before dropping it in the trash.
In this climate of job scarcity (and despite everything everybody is telling you, jobs are scarce) anything is better than nothing.
Here's a hint, Sparky: companies that aren't running ads on Monster or your local paper are hiring right now; they're looking for the right candidate, and the right one isn't a resume spammer. In fact, the smart candidate doesn't even need a resume to get an interview.
Really? Then how does the smart candidate get an interview without going through the HR process?
After looking at the Introduction to DICOM I think your problem is that DICOM is not a programming language, but is rather a file format, and thus you can't hire a "DICOM Programmer". Any code monkey experienced in basic object oriented work from any higher level language ought to be able to handle all the DICOM work you want- I'd suggest advertising for a Visual Basic programmer if your shop is mainly Windows, or a Java programmer if your shop is mainly Linux. Any higher level programmer can use the freeware and OSS tools linked to from the page above to do whatever you want- you don't actually NEED any experience in DICOM whatsoever to work with the DICOM file format.
Let me know when Indian programmers are making US Minimum Wage of $5.13/hr for this work...that's when we'll see companies either jumping out of India for cheaper climes or the possibility of wage parity actually happening.
I'd venture to say an Indian is 10x more likely to emigrate to the US than an American to India.
Only because India wants $3 million in bribes for their equivalent of the H-1b visa. If we did that too, you'd see a lot fewer Indians here.