The more people who want their money to stay local, the less long-distance trading, harming the economy through reduced economies of scale, division of labour and specialisation.
The US killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
As in, American soldiers have directly and intentionally killed at least 200,000,000 innocent people in Iraq? Do you have any objective source for that?
I'm not going to have a discussion about the value of said lives.
Have you tried here to provide a textbook illustration of straw-man fallacy? No one is arguing about the values of Iraqi lives. I am simply pointing out the gross, astronomical hypocrisy of most anti-Americans. They scream day and night against the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and about the wars of Vietnam and Iraq, while conveniently forgetting that their pet ideology - Marxism - has left behind 100,000,000 bodies, as well as widespread torture, terror, repression, censorship, general societal decay and darkness.
Check the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Comparing the US with PRC is so absurd that it is very hard to believe that it is done honestly.
Every country has a level of attractiveness to investment. One of the key characteristics is the availability of cheap labour. Another is the productivity of said labourers. Chinese workers are probably not very productive due to low education and poor infrastructure. But companies find it is economical to manufacture in China because the low wages compensate for the small productivity. If consumers demand higher wages, then China would lose that attractiveness and companies would simply relocate to more developed countries.
It's already happening
And if consumers increase their demand for higher wages, it will happen faster, thus harming Chinese workers.
At least it would also harm the evil totalitarian PRC government.
The problem with slavery is that people were violently captured, shipped to America, then kept working there by force.
If the slave owners refrained from buying them, the lives of the would-be slaves would be better.
On the other hand, if we boycott poor countries because their labourers receive low wages, then the companies will relocate to more developed countries, and the poor countries will be worse off.
True, they have 'part 1' of that process down, but it is questionable if China will be able to make the transition from 'fast growing with essentially slave labor' to 'stable well rounded economy'. We managed to transition because of labor unions and public outrage
I don't want to argue that unions had no part on this process, but for you to argue that it was caused solely by labour unions and public outrage is highly misleading.
People know that labourers compete with each other for a job spot, but they forget that entrepreneurs also compete with each other for labourers.
This process naturally rises wages according to the productivity of the labourers (which depends on their skill, on the infrastructure, on available capital, on managerial skills, etc.).
Second, "evil is all relative"!? Really? So you don't believe in absolute morality, including universal human rights? You don't believe in inalienable rights?
I meant *Third*. I typed that in a hurry. There may be other errors.
Eh. The US killed a few hundred thousand innocent Iraqis for no good reason. Evil-ness is all relative.
Even if you disagree with the Iraq war (I don't intend to defend it) and want to criticise it, at least do it honestly and get your facts straight: 1) While many people argue that the Iraq War didn't have *enough* reasons, saying it happened for "no good reason" - as in "Bush found it fun to watch a war from the television" or "he did it for profit" - is simply a lie. 2) The high casualties count include all excess deaths, including those caused by insurgent terrorists. This is much higher than the number of people that the US military intentionally killed
Again, I'm not here to defend the war, I just want those who argue about the war to do it honestly instead of regurgitating propaganda from a certain fat, lying, rich, arrogant, conspiratorial uneducated moron who goes by the name of Michael Moore.
Second, do you really want to compare the evil of the Iraq War with the evil of the Great Leap Forward, or the Cultural Revolution, or the violent One-Child policy? Even you must know that they do not even begin to compare.
Second, "evil is all relative"!? Really? So you don't believe in absolute morality, including universal human rights? You don't believe in inalienable rights?
I think the idea is that if one Asia corp paid high wages and we all bought from it, then that company would grow and engulf the competition, or otherwise convince the competition to raise their wages to join the buyer's whitelist and prevent extinction.
Every country has a level of attractiveness to investment. One of the key characteristics is the availability of cheap labour. Another is the productivity of said labourers. Chinese workers are probably not very productive due to low education and poor infrastructure. But companies find it is economical to manufacture in China because the low wages compensate for the small productivity. If consumers demand higher wages, then China would lose that attractiveness and companies would simply relocate to more developed countries.
Your argument is a bit like the slave owners who stated that their slaves were damn glad to have their job and get fed, too. Exploitation is exploitation, regardless if one can find some good to come from it or not.
But slaves had no choice at all. They were captured by force, sent to America and then were kept working there by force. If the slave-owners refrained from buying slaves, the life of the would-be slaves would improve. On the other hand, if you boycott a poor country because their labourers aren't paid much, then those people will lose their jobs and become worse off.
If by "capitalism" you mean "voluntary economy", this should not be subject to a vote, as it is a human right (right to freedom, right to property).
The USA actually restricts the economy more than it should.
Note: I am not an anarcho-capitalist, but I do support a small, decentralised, efficient government that doesn't intrude too much into people's freedoms.
But even that runs into problems. The modern world is built on spending - that's how the economy works. It must always grow, or else it falls apart. If enough people lived as you suggested, and stopped throwing money away on unneeded luxuries, what happens to all those who work in the factories that produce those luxuries, and those who mine the resources to feed those factories, and the workers in retail who sell them? All unemployed, which means they have no money to buy even essentials, which leads to more unemployment in a positive feedback loop that will destroy civilization. The economy depends upon wasteful spending, and civilization depends upon the economy. So you can't even advise people not to spend at all.
First, most people buy too much and are dangerously into debt. This means that, with any mild recession, they become unable to pay their bills and default, thus increasing the crisis. Those few and rare responsible people who don't buy more than they can pay help the economy.
Second, your scenario of mass unemployment is impossible in a voluntary economy. In a voluntary economy, people would only stop working if there was no work to do - meaning that all human wants are satisfied. This scenario is impossible, and, even if it happened, would actually be a good thing - a post-scarcity Utopia.
Another product that should awake peoples consciences is oil.
Oil comes from very oppressive and aggressive places - Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran. By buying oil we fund a future Jewish genocide. We engage Israel's enemies militarily (thus enlarging the already excessive US military, and feeding anti-Americanism) with our right hand and throw bags of money at them with our left hand. This is *extremely* counter-productive; it would be very funny if it wasn't so tragic. The government should overtax gas-guzzlers (including SUVs!), subsidise economic cars and lift the barriers on Brazilian ethanol.
Ever since Tienanmen Square, I've wanted to avoid buying anything Chinese.
If you think the PRC's government was evil in its handling of the Tienanmen Square affair, then check out the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. It involves deaths by the dozens of millions. It includes Marxist ideologues brainwashing children into spying in their own homes and reporting their parents to the authorities for not being Marxist enough. And while people focus on China's current growth, they forget the decades of economic disaster (including catastrophic famines) that followed the Marxist Coup d'état in 1949. They also forget that Taiwan has 7 times the GDP percapita of the PRC. If the Coup d'etat had never happened, the Chinese people would be today enormously better, both in material terms but most importantly in human rights terms.
And the evil continues.
The PRC's government applies the death penalty for crimes as mild as tax evasion, and keeps the executions as a state secret. It is estimated that 5,000 people were executed in the PRC in 2009 (while the US executed 43 people in 2011). See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hFQaRjQMjW42oMtQteJRcaFeor4Q [google.com] It censors democratic ideologies, criticism to their government, and religion. It uses very heavy-handed tactics (including throwing women into vans and aborting their babies against their will) to dictate how many children a couple can have. It protects some of the most evil governments in human History, such as North Korea.
PRC is not Pinochet-style of evil. It is Pol Pot-style of evil.
What angers me the most? Left-wing psychopaths praising China for "lifting people from poverty", and capitalist morons (useful idiots) praising China for attracting investment.
IMAO the worst problem is funding a totalitarian Marxist dictatorship.
The PRC's government applies the death penalty for crimes as mild as tax evasion, and keeps the executions as a state secret. It is estimated that 5,000 people were executed in the PRC in 2009 (while the US executed 43 people in 2011). See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hFQaRjQMjW42oMtQteJRcaFeor4Q It censors democratic ideologies, criticism to their government, and religion. It uses very heavy-handed tactics (including throwing women into vans and aborting their babies against their will) to dictate how many children a couple can have. It protects some of the most evil governments in human History, such as North Korea.
The PRC is, by far, the most evil government among big countries.
Organic food and beverage sales represented approximately 4 percent of overall food and beverage sales in 2010. Leading were organic fruits and vegetables, now representing over 11 percent of all U.S. fruit and vegetable sales.
And it grew by a factor of 26 from 1990 to 2010. In 2010 it grew 7.7% (if it keeps this 7.7% growth rate, it will double every 9.3 years)
At this growth rate, it will soon reach 10% of the market, and this far more than enough (remember, the market is huge) to ensure genetic variability, not to mention the facts that Monsanto has many competitors (private companies, government agencies all over the world), including ones who design high-yield seeds with conventional artificial engineering. And the fact that plant varieties are catalogued and preserved. Really, your nightmare scenario cant happen.
Please reconsider. You may campaign against plant patents, or against their excessive duration (AFAIK it is two decades). You may campaign against Monsanto's practice of suing farmers who allegedly benefited from their seeds without paying - you may advocate legal reform to stop this practice. But please stop demonising GMOs!
If the government mandated their products to be labelled as:
WARNING: this product had contact with an unusual amount of feces
?
It is all about consumer choice, right? No consumer will ever have a irrational uninformed fear when he reads a FDA warning, right? People do never assume that "warnings" indicate danger, right?
"Mutated" beats "engineered to allow increased pesticide use".
First, there are also GMOs designed to use *less* pesticide, or to simply produce higher yields, or to be healthier.
Second, if you have a problem with pesticides, then lobby for a law that either bans the exaggerated use of pesticides, or mandate labelling products which used much pesticide. Why specifically pick on GMOs?
Slashdot Mirror
I like the fact that my money stays local
The more people who want their money to stay local, the less long-distance trading,
harming the economy through reduced economies of scale, division of labour
and specialisation.
Because over all it requires less energy, duh.
Assuming that the local farmer is as energy efficient as the distant farmer, which we have no reason to assume.
and come on von mises is a ron paul level kook i wouldn't link to him to support an argument bro.
Austrian School economists have won Nobel prizes. And the link above speaks for itself, with logical arguments.
The US killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
As in, American soldiers have directly and intentionally killed at least 200,000,000 innocent people in Iraq? Do you have any objective source for that?
I'm not going to have a discussion about the value of said lives.
Have you tried here to provide a textbook illustration of straw-man fallacy? No one is arguing about the values of Iraqi lives. I am simply pointing out the gross, astronomical hypocrisy of most anti-Americans. They scream day and night against the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and about the wars of Vietnam and Iraq, while conveniently forgetting that their pet ideology - Marxism - has left behind 100,000,000 bodies, as well as widespread torture, terror, repression, censorship, general societal decay and darkness.
Check the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
Comparing the US with PRC is so absurd that it is very hard to believe that it is done honestly.
Every country has a level of attractiveness to investment. One of the key characteristics is the availability of cheap labour. Another is the productivity of said labourers. Chinese workers are probably not very productive due to low education and poor infrastructure. But companies find it is economical to manufacture in China because the low wages compensate for the small productivity.
If consumers demand higher wages, then China would lose that attractiveness and companies would simply relocate to more developed countries.
It's already happening
And if consumers increase their demand for higher wages, it will happen faster, thus harming Chinese workers.
At least it would also harm the evil totalitarian PRC government.
Produce? I can have a garden, or again, buy local.
Why would you buy local (assuming it is not cheaper)?
Please see http://www.mises.org/books/defending.pdf, chapter 23 - The Importer
Importers make the economy grow.
Produce? I can have a garden, or again, buy local.
Why would you buy local (assuming it is not cheaper)?
Please see http://www.mises.org/books/defending.pdf , chapter 23 - The Importer
Importers make the economy grow.
The problem with slavery is that people were violently captured, shipped to America, then kept working there by force.
If the slave owners refrained from buying them, the lives of the would-be slaves would be better.
On the other hand, if we boycott poor countries because their labourers receive low wages,
then the companies will relocate to more developed countries, and the poor countries will
be worse off.
True, they have 'part 1' of that process down, but it is questionable if China will be able to make the transition from 'fast growing with essentially slave labor' to 'stable well rounded economy'. We managed to transition because of labor unions and public outrage
I don't want to argue that unions had no part on this process, but for you to argue that it was caused solely by labour unions and public outrage is highly misleading.
People know that labourers compete with each other for a job spot, but they forget that entrepreneurs also compete with each other for labourers.
This process naturally rises wages according to the productivity of the labourers (which depends on their skill, on the infrastructure, on available capital, on managerial skills, etc.).
Second, "evil is all relative"!? Really? So you don't believe in absolute morality,
including universal human rights? You don't believe in inalienable rights?
I meant *Third*. I typed that in a hurry. There may be other errors.
Eh. The US killed a few hundred thousand innocent Iraqis for no good reason. Evil-ness is all relative.
Even if you disagree with the Iraq war (I don't intend to defend it) and want to criticise it, at least do it honestly
and get your facts straight:
1) While many people argue that the Iraq War didn't have *enough* reasons, saying it happened
for "no good reason" - as in "Bush found it fun to watch a war from the television"
or "he did it for profit" - is simply a lie.
2) The high casualties count include all excess deaths, including those caused
by insurgent terrorists. This is much higher than the number of people that the US military intentionally killed
Again, I'm not here to defend the war, I just want those who argue about the war to do it honestly instead of regurgitating
propaganda from a certain fat, lying, rich, arrogant, conspiratorial uneducated moron who goes by the name of Michael Moore.
Second, do you really want to compare the evil of the Iraq War with the evil of the Great Leap Forward, or
the Cultural Revolution, or the violent One-Child policy? Even you must know that they do not even begin
to compare.
Second, "evil is all relative"!? Really? So you don't believe in absolute morality,
including universal human rights? You don't believe in inalienable rights?
I think the idea is that if one Asia corp paid high wages and we all bought from it, then that company would grow and engulf the competition, or otherwise convince the competition to raise their wages to join the buyer's whitelist and prevent extinction.
Every country has a level of attractiveness to investment. One of the key characteristics is the availability of cheap labour. Another is the productivity of said labourers. Chinese workers are probably not very productive due to low education and poor infrastructure. But companies find it is economical to manufacture in China because the low wages compensate for the small productivity.
If consumers demand higher wages, then China would lose that attractiveness and companies would simply relocate to more developed countries.
Your argument is a bit like the slave owners who stated that their slaves were damn glad to have their job and get fed, too. Exploitation is exploitation, regardless if one can find some good to come from it or not.
But slaves had no choice at all. They were captured by force, sent to America and then were kept working there by force.
If the slave-owners refrained from buying slaves, the life of the would-be slaves would improve.
On the other hand, if you boycott a poor country because their labourers aren't paid much,
then those people will lose their jobs and become worse off.
On the other hand you get damn near free labor from live prisoners.
Capitalism wins!
Were you being sarcastic?
Do you oppose prison labour? Why?
If by "capitalism" you mean "voluntary economy", this should not be subject to a vote,
as it is a human right (right to freedom, right to property).
The USA actually restricts the economy more than it should.
Note: I am not an anarcho-capitalist, but I do support
a small, decentralised, efficient government that doesn't intrude too much into people's freedoms.
Oh, so you're an ignorant teabagger then.
By lowering the level of the discussion like that, you just prove you have no real argument.
But even that runs into problems. The modern world is built on spending - that's how the economy works. It must always grow, or else it falls apart. If enough people lived as you suggested, and stopped throwing money away on unneeded luxuries, what happens to all those who work in the factories that produce those luxuries, and those who mine the resources to feed those factories, and the workers in retail who sell them? All unemployed, which means they have no money to buy even essentials, which leads to more unemployment in a positive feedback loop that will destroy civilization. The economy depends upon wasteful spending, and civilization depends upon the economy. So you can't even advise people not to spend at all.
First, most people buy too much and are dangerously into debt. This means that, with any mild recession, they become unable to pay their bills and default, thus increasing the crisis. Those few and rare responsible people who don't buy more than they can pay help the economy.
Second, your scenario of mass unemployment is impossible in a voluntary economy. In a voluntary economy, people would only stop working if there was no work to do - meaning that all human wants are satisfied. This scenario is impossible, and, even if it happened, would actually be a good thing - a post-scarcity Utopia.
Why focusing only on low-paid labour from China?
Another product that should awake peoples consciences is oil.
Oil comes from very oppressive and aggressive places - Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran. By buying oil we fund a future Jewish genocide. We engage Israel's enemies militarily (thus enlarging the already excessive US military, and feeding anti-Americanism) with our right hand and throw bags of money at them with our left hand. This is *extremely* counter-productive; it would be very funny if it wasn't so tragic. The government should overtax gas-guzzlers (including SUVs!), subsidise economic cars and lift the barriers on Brazilian ethanol.
Ever since Tienanmen Square, I've wanted to avoid buying anything Chinese.
If you think the PRC's government was evil in its handling of the Tienanmen Square affair, then check out
the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
It involves deaths by the dozens of millions. It includes Marxist ideologues brainwashing children into spying
in their own homes and reporting their parents to the authorities for not being Marxist enough.
And while people focus on China's current growth, they forget the decades of economic disaster (including
catastrophic famines) that followed the Marxist Coup d'état in 1949. They also forget that Taiwan has 7 times the
GDP percapita of the PRC. If the Coup d'etat had never happened, the Chinese people would be today enormously
better, both in material terms but most importantly in human rights terms.
And the evil continues.
The PRC's government applies the death penalty for crimes as mild as
tax evasion, and keeps the executions as a state secret. It is estimated
that 5,000 people were executed in the PRC in 2009 (while the US executed
43 people in 2011).
See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hFQaRjQMjW42oMtQteJRcaFeor4Q [google.com]
It censors democratic ideologies, criticism to their government,
and religion. It uses very heavy-handed tactics (including throwing women into
vans and aborting their babies against their will) to dictate how many children
a couple can have. It protects some of the most evil governments in human History,
such as North Korea.
PRC is not Pinochet-style of evil. It is Pol Pot-style of evil.
What angers me the most? Left-wing psychopaths praising China
for "lifting people from poverty", and capitalist morons (useful idiots)
praising China for attracting investment.
IMAO the worst problem is funding a totalitarian Marxist dictatorship.
The PRC's government applies the death penalty for crimes as mild as
tax evasion, and keeps the executions as a state secret. It is estimated
that 5,000 people were executed in the PRC in 2009 (while the US executed
43 people in 2011).
See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hFQaRjQMjW42oMtQteJRcaFeor4Q
It censors democratic ideologies, criticism to their government,
and religion. It uses very heavy-handed tactics (including throwing women into
vans and aborting their babies against their will) to dictate how many children
a couple can have. It protects some of the most evil governments in human History,
such as North Korea.
The PRC is, by far, the most evil government among big countries.
See http://www.ota.com/organic/mt/business.html
Organic food and beverage sales represented approximately 4 percent of overall food and beverage sales in 2010. Leading were organic fruits and vegetables, now representing over 11 percent of all U.S. fruit and vegetable sales.
And it grew by a factor of 26 from 1990 to 2010. In 2010 it grew 7.7% (if it keeps this 7.7% growth rate, it will double every 9.3 years)
At this growth rate, it will soon reach 10% of the market, and this far more than enough (remember, the market is huge) to ensure genetic variability, not to mention the facts that Monsanto has many competitors (private companies, government agencies all over the world), including ones who design high-yield seeds with conventional artificial engineering. And the fact that plant varieties are catalogued and preserved. Really, your nightmare scenario cant happen.
Please reconsider. You may campaign against plant patents, or against their excessive duration (AFAIK it is two decades). You may campaign against Monsanto's practice of suing farmers who allegedly benefited from their seeds without paying - you may advocate legal reform to stop this practice. But please stop demonising GMOs!
I still do not understand why your nightmare scenario applies to GE but not to conventional artificial selection.
I also made other objections in http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2875183&cid=40116659.
If the government mandated their products to be labelled as:
WARNING: this product had contact with an unusual amount of feces
?
It is all about consumer choice, right? No consumer will ever have a irrational uninformed fear when he reads a FDA warning, right?
People do never assume that "warnings" indicate danger, right?
"Mutated" beats "engineered to allow increased pesticide use".
First, there are also GMOs designed to use *less* pesticide, or to simply
produce higher yields, or to be healthier.
Second, if you have a problem with pesticides, then lobby for a law that either
bans the exaggerated use of pesticides, or mandate labelling products which
used much pesticide. Why specifically pick on GMOs?
here:
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09371.html
Organic food is inefficient. Its popularity is due to irrational fears.