How has winning the election been working out for you?
If you want politicians to care about your vote, you need to give them a reason to want it. If you're already giving it to them, then they don't need to fight for it. There's no such thing as incorruptible politician, but they can still be taught. If giving favors to special interest groups started costing them elections, they'd be much less inclined to do it.
Instead of good people being elected, the slime balls who can most effectively sway the opinion of the ignorant masses gets elected -- and then has to spend their time playing politics to keep that position.
As opposed to your alternate scheme, where fools elect conmen who then somehow manage to appoint supergeniuses to govern us all. How does that work, exactly?
The phrase "interstate commerce" does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The exact wording is (emphasis mine):
The Congress shall have Power... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes....
The purpose of this power was to allow the Federal government to intervene whenever a state imposed a trade restriction upon commerce with other states.
Still, one imagines the world would be a better place if all leaders were honestly working to improve the world for its people, rather than pursuing self-preservation, taking from other countries to better one's own, following religious nonsense, etc.
I might submit to absolute rule by angels, but all we have is men. We should expect no more from our leaders than from any other person, and base our decisions on how much power we grant to them accordingly.
If I cannot sell it, then I don't own it, and therefore it does not belong to me. It may not belong to you either, but that doesn't mean you weren't the one to take it away from me.
If politicians are universally corrupt, then any law passed by politicians to regulate political corruption ought to be viewed with extreme suspicion, since it will almost certainly have the opposite effect.
A private security service would claim legitimacy in the use of aggressive force but would not otherwise perform the duties of a state. How would you describe the people against whom that force is exercised, if not "governed"?
Indeed, perhaps my argument could be better phrased as:
"Everyone imagines himself trying to make a better world; the problem is that statistically, you're guaranteed to be one of the ones suffering in someone else's attempt."
I think you need to distinguish between government and the state. Government of one form or another will always exist. If no other people were alive except yourself, you would still be governed by the laws of nature. The state, a single entity entrusted with a monopoly on the use of force and charged with a broad range of duties, is but one form of government.
A majority has no more understanding of, nor tolerance for, my best interests than a group of oligarchs. How I am governed matters; who is doing the governing is irrelevant except insofar as it determines the how.
Everybody imagines a perfect world governed by himself. The problem is that statistically, you're guaranteed to be one of the ones suffering in another guy's perfect world.
People talk out of one side of their mouths that elections are the definitive voice of the people, and then complain out the other side that they don't like the outcomes. Money isn't the problem, people are. Governments have been allowed to accrue extraordinary powers in the name of "helping" people, but those powers can be turned to any purpose. Any power you grant to the government is one that your opponents can use against you.
For a nonprofit, the tying up of working capital in unprofitable enterprises isn't a concern at all.
But it is a concern when we're talking about calling "profit a religious thing". There are opportunity costs whether people care about them or not and there are government-imposed restrictions that induce significant distortions in the functioning of the economy. The gist of this discussion has been that profit is unnecessary and therefore for-profit enterprises can be replaced with nonprofits at essentially no cost.
The people who know best how to exploit capital in a particular place and time (call them "entrepreneurs") and the people who have excess capital to be exploited (call them "investors") are rarely the same. But there are many potential entrepreneurs and many potential investors; the demands of the former for capital far exceed the supply of capital from the latter. Through what mechanism do you propose to allot the available capital to be most effectively exploited, if not the arrangements that individuals among the two groups decide for themselves to form?
Nonprofits may be a part of the picture, and I fully concede that they can and do exist for some purposes, and may be effective at achieving their goals. However, that does not provide in any way a sufficient argument for the restriction of for-profit enterprises, and certainly not for their elimination altogether.
There are numerous examples of nonprofits that spend the majority of their revenues on activities other than fundraising. For example Oxfam and the American Heart Association. Oxfam raised 918M Euros and spent 77M on fundraising. AHA raised $674M in 2012 and spent $80M on fundraising.
A fair counterpoint, although Oxfam is not that old. Just because it works for some organizations does not mean it would work for all of them, though.
By profit, I mean in a general sense an increase in the net value of an enterprise, accruing to the benefit of the owners of that enterprise.
Fair enough, but the sentence I was asking about does not make any more sense given that definition.
You can imagine a nonprofit doing almost anything, including manufacturing, distributing and selling goods to the public.
Yes, I can imagine it. So, you want to run a nonprofit making computers and I want to run a for-profit making computers, we should both be allowed to do so. Your enterprise may be more successful, or mine may be. But if mine succeeds where yours fails, wouldn't that mean that your nonprofit was the entity "tying up working capital that could [have] be[en] profitably engaged elsewhere"?
In the United States and many other countries, such an organization might not be eligible for tax exemption because the laws governing tax exempt organizations are restrictive.
So... we should eliminate taxes so that everyone can run their nonprofit or other businesses in the manner of their choosing without interference?
Not for profits can continue to run indefinitely without ever making a profit
Nonprofits that "run indefinitely" spend the majority of their revenues on fundraising and compensation, not on accomplishing their tasks. The ones that actually try to do something quickly discover that their revenues fluctuate wildly, making planning and retention virtually impossible. So they either morph into the fat and lazy kind of nonprofit or else they perish.
Most companies, however, must make a profit to justify their tying up working capital that could be profitably engaged elsewhere. [emphasis mine]
What is "profitably" if not "as evidenced by the ability to make a profit"? Through what mechanism do you propose that "working capital" be allocated more effectively? Also, are we taking about profit as the arbitrary but precise quantity of currency determined by the subjective process of accounting, or profit in an abstract sense as the surplus of capital between what was created and what was expended to create it?
There's nothing simple about the global climate, a fact that ought to be reflected in the extreme difficulty knowledgeable, dedicated people have had in making accurate models of it.
That of course has nothing to do with what I said nor the reason why I said it. If you believe that man's existence must be having a strongly negative effect on the world, then you are adhering to a set of tenets which holds that some arbitrary condition of the world is superior and mankind is responsible for deviating from that condition.
Science does not take a position on what should be, only on what is, and even then limited only to what can be observed to be true.
It would be really nice, wouldn't it, if someone getting something wrong the first time meant they couldn't possibly be right about it ever again?
The data and the methods keep changing, but the conclusion stays the same: drastic modifications of human behavior, imposed by fiat from our academic and political betters. None of the models with dire predictions have had any actual, demonstrable predictive power yet we are supposed to take them seriously?
I could smoke and eat nothing but steak and eggs.
Only one of those activities would be bad for you. Seriously, the lipid hypothesis is bullshit.
No one would have to worry about the deficit.
An odd point to bring up in a discussion about increasing government involvement. Roughly speaking, the deficit can be viewed as the difference between what it costs to operate the government and what people are willing to pay for what they get. Imposing carbon controls will only increase the deficit.
The amount of carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere is going to have an effect.
That is a statement of religious belief, not fact.
Economy, as I said before, we fuck that up so often and so thouroughly, that why not do it for a good reason for once?
Some alternate phrasings of your argument:
"I don't care that people suffer, as long as they suffer for the right reasons!" "Modern economics is a total fraud, but not when we use it for the right purposes!" "We've never managed to control people the way we want before, but this time it will work because we have the right intentions!"
How about if my neighbour needed to take care of her live-in father, who has Parkinson's?
Prior to the development of modern medicine, your neighbor's father would simply have died. The treatment for Parkinson's disease is expensive. Someone has to pay that cost; if your neighbor decides that it's worth her time to pay it, that's her prerogative. But what right does she or he have to conscript the rest of us to pay for his treatment?
You seem to think naively that humans are rational economic actors and we have complete control over our situations in life. I'm not so sure.
Your lack of control over some of your circumstances does not extend to you the right to take control over some of mine.
The same companies that avoids tax by funnelling funds to overseas subsidiaries and by making complicated financial transactions to shelter income from the tax authorities?
No one is obligated to pay any more tax than the tax man is capable of collecting.
The same companies that get millions of dollars of tax breaks from the state so that they can open up a massive distribution center that brings one or two hundred minimum wage jobs?
Perhaps you ought to ask your elected officials why they have created such onerous taxes that businesses are only inclined to open shop when they are given discounts from those taxes.
Companies should pay for workers, not the taxpayer.
The companies are paying the workers, and they are paying taxes. But the government is taking a greater sum of money from the company than it is paying back to its workers in the form of welfare. So in effect, the government is actually restricting the company's ability to pay its employees more. Then you turn around and blame the company for not paying enough?
Not in million dollar tax breaks in exchange for low-paid jobs.
The alternative to those low-paid jobs is no work. Is that better? Who is going to fund the welfare program when no companies can afford to operate? Moreover, we are rapidly approaching the point where automation will be more cost effective than most forms of menial labor. Your solution to this problem is to accelerate the transformation by driving the cost of labor up? Or will you levy a "robot tax" in order to ensure an economic death spiral?
Definitely not for companies that rake in huge profit
Do you know what profit is? It's reward for investment. Without investment, there is no economic activity. The great famines and purges of the early Soviet Union were a reflection of what happens when you eliminate profit: no one is inclined to do anything because there is no longer any potential for reward. If the workers are worth a greater share of that reward, then it is entirely their prerogative to either bargain with their employer or form a competing company. I always find it funny to see a poster where a "greedy capitalist" who contributes nothing is laughing while he "steals" 90% of the value of a hard-working man's labor. If his labor is so essential to the process, then why does the laborer do it so cheaply?
That's the opposite of what I said.
What you said is that you don't care if more people become unemployed, because unemployed people deserve the benefits they receive. That's question-begging at best (they "need it" because you forced them to), and at worst it is exactly what I said: you don't care if more people become poor (dependent on welfare) as long as they are all equally poor (their standard of living being determined by the welfare benefits). There will always be relative poverty; no matter how much you pay people on welfare, presuming that it is more less uniform and based upon "need", then the group of people who is dependent upon it will always be the poorest group of people.
Slashdot Mirror
How has winning the election been working out for you?
If you want politicians to care about your vote, you need to give them a reason to want it. If you're already giving it to them, then they don't need to fight for it. There's no such thing as incorruptible politician, but they can still be taught. If giving favors to special interest groups started costing them elections, they'd be much less inclined to do it.
Never let principles get in the way of your pettiness.
Your contempt for the human race is duly noted.
Instead of good people being elected, the slime balls who can most effectively sway the opinion of the ignorant masses gets elected -- and then has to spend their time playing politics to keep that position.
As opposed to your alternate scheme, where fools elect conmen who then somehow manage to appoint supergeniuses to govern us all. How does that work, exactly?
The phrase "interstate commerce" does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. The exact wording is (emphasis mine):
The Congress shall have Power ... To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes ....
The purpose of this power was to allow the Federal government to intervene whenever a state imposed a trade restriction upon commerce with other states.
Still, one imagines the world would be a better place if all leaders were honestly working to improve the world for its people, rather than pursuing self-preservation, taking from other countries to better one's own, following religious nonsense, etc.
I might submit to absolute rule by angels, but all we have is men. We should expect no more from our leaders than from any other person, and base our decisions on how much power we grant to them accordingly.
If I cannot sell it, then I don't own it, and therefore it does not belong to me. It may not belong to you either, but that doesn't mean you weren't the one to take it away from me.
If politicians are universally corrupt, then any law passed by politicians to regulate political corruption ought to be viewed with extreme suspicion, since it will almost certainly have the opposite effect.
If you care more about winning the election than about making a statement, you can hardly complain when you get what you wanted.
A private security service would claim legitimacy in the use of aggressive force but would not otherwise perform the duties of a state. How would you describe the people against whom that force is exercised, if not "governed"?
Indeed, perhaps my argument could be better phrased as:
"Everyone imagines himself trying to make a better world; the problem is that statistically, you're guaranteed to be one of the ones suffering in someone else's attempt."
I think you need to distinguish between government and the state. Government of one form or another will always exist. If no other people were alive except yourself, you would still be governed by the laws of nature. The state, a single entity entrusted with a monopoly on the use of force and charged with a broad range of duties, is but one form of government.
A contradiction, surely?
That is the point, yes..
In my perfect world, governed by myself, no-one suffers. Hence 'perfect'.
But it cannot exist, so why bother conceiving of it?
A majority has no more understanding of, nor tolerance for, my best interests than a group of oligarchs. How I am governed matters; who is doing the governing is irrelevant except insofar as it determines the how.
Everybody imagines a perfect world governed by himself. The problem is that statistically, you're guaranteed to be one of the ones suffering in another guy's perfect world.
Let's say you hold a patent on something.
I build that something, with my own time and materials.
Now you get to steal it from me, in the name of your patent.
And you have the nerve to tell me I stole it from you?
Don't like money in politics? Don't vote for politicians who are easily bribed.
People talk out of one side of their mouths that elections are the definitive voice of the people, and then complain out the other side that they don't like the outcomes. Money isn't the problem, people are. Governments have been allowed to accrue extraordinary powers in the name of "helping" people, but those powers can be turned to any purpose. Any power you grant to the government is one that your opponents can use against you.
For a nonprofit, the tying up of working capital in unprofitable enterprises isn't a concern at all.
But it is a concern when we're talking about calling "profit a religious thing". There are opportunity costs whether people care about them or not and there are government-imposed restrictions that induce significant distortions in the functioning of the economy. The gist of this discussion has been that profit is unnecessary and therefore for-profit enterprises can be replaced with nonprofits at essentially no cost.
The people who know best how to exploit capital in a particular place and time (call them "entrepreneurs") and the people who have excess capital to be exploited (call them "investors") are rarely the same. But there are many potential entrepreneurs and many potential investors; the demands of the former for capital far exceed the supply of capital from the latter. Through what mechanism do you propose to allot the available capital to be most effectively exploited, if not the arrangements that individuals among the two groups decide for themselves to form?
Nonprofits may be a part of the picture, and I fully concede that they can and do exist for some purposes, and may be effective at achieving their goals. However, that does not provide in any way a sufficient argument for the restriction of for-profit enterprises, and certainly not for their elimination altogether.
There are numerous examples of nonprofits that spend the majority of their revenues on activities other than fundraising. For example Oxfam and the American Heart Association. Oxfam raised 918M Euros and spent 77M on fundraising. AHA raised $674M in 2012 and spent $80M on fundraising.
A fair counterpoint, although Oxfam is not that old. Just because it works for some organizations does not mean it would work for all of them, though.
By profit, I mean in a general sense an increase in the net value of an enterprise, accruing to the benefit of the owners of that enterprise.
Fair enough, but the sentence I was asking about does not make any more sense given that definition.
You can imagine a nonprofit doing almost anything, including manufacturing, distributing and selling goods to the public.
Yes, I can imagine it. So, you want to run a nonprofit making computers and I want to run a for-profit making computers, we should both be allowed to do so. Your enterprise may be more successful, or mine may be. But if mine succeeds where yours fails, wouldn't that mean that your nonprofit was the entity "tying up working capital that could [have] be[en] profitably engaged elsewhere"?
In the United States and many other countries, such an organization might not be eligible for tax exemption because the laws governing tax exempt organizations are restrictive.
So... we should eliminate taxes so that everyone can run their nonprofit or other businesses in the manner of their choosing without interference?
Meanwhile the other group fronted the capital to start the business and infused capital to keep the business running.
So wages paid to employees and profit paid to investors is really the same thing: reward for doing something to help the business.
Not for profits can continue to run indefinitely without ever making a profit
Nonprofits that "run indefinitely" spend the majority of their revenues on fundraising and compensation, not on accomplishing their tasks. The ones that actually try to do something quickly discover that their revenues fluctuate wildly, making planning and retention virtually impossible. So they either morph into the fat and lazy kind of nonprofit or else they perish.
Most companies, however, must make a profit to justify their tying up working capital that could be profitably engaged elsewhere. [emphasis mine]
What is "profitably" if not "as evidenced by the ability to make a profit"? Through what mechanism do you propose that "working capital" be allocated more effectively? Also, are we taking about profit as the arbitrary but precise quantity of currency determined by the subjective process of accounting, or profit in an abstract sense as the surplus of capital between what was created and what was expended to create it?
There is a difference between wages and profit.
Only on paper. What is the material difference between income paid as wages and income paid to investors?
There's nothing simple about the global climate, a fact that ought to be reflected in the extreme difficulty knowledgeable, dedicated people have had in making accurate models of it.
That of course has nothing to do with what I said nor the reason why I said it. If you believe that man's existence must be having a strongly negative effect on the world, then you are adhering to a set of tenets which holds that some arbitrary condition of the world is superior and mankind is responsible for deviating from that condition.
Science does not take a position on what should be, only on what is, and even then limited only to what can be observed to be true.
It would be really nice, wouldn't it, if someone getting something wrong the first time meant they couldn't possibly be right about it ever again?
The data and the methods keep changing, but the conclusion stays the same: drastic modifications of human behavior, imposed by fiat from our academic and political betters. None of the models with dire predictions have had any actual, demonstrable predictive power yet we are supposed to take them seriously?
I could smoke and eat nothing but steak and eggs.
Only one of those activities would be bad for you. Seriously, the lipid hypothesis is bullshit.
No one would have to worry about the deficit.
An odd point to bring up in a discussion about increasing government involvement. Roughly speaking, the deficit can be viewed as the difference between what it costs to operate the government and what people are willing to pay for what they get. Imposing carbon controls will only increase the deficit.
The amount of carbon we're pumping into the atmosphere is going to have an effect.
That is a statement of religious belief, not fact.
Economy, as I said before, we fuck that up so often and so thouroughly, that why not do it for a good reason for once?
Some alternate phrasings of your argument:
"I don't care that people suffer, as long as they suffer for the right reasons!"
"Modern economics is a total fraud, but not when we use it for the right purposes!"
"We've never managed to control people the way we want before, but this time it will work because we have the right intentions!"
How about if my neighbour needed to take care of her live-in father, who has Parkinson's?
Prior to the development of modern medicine, your neighbor's father would simply have died. The treatment for Parkinson's disease is expensive. Someone has to pay that cost; if your neighbor decides that it's worth her time to pay it, that's her prerogative. But what right does she or he have to conscript the rest of us to pay for his treatment?
You seem to think naively that humans are rational economic actors and we have complete control over our situations in life. I'm not so sure.
Your lack of control over some of your circumstances does not extend to you the right to take control over some of mine.
The same companies that avoids tax by funnelling funds to overseas subsidiaries and by making complicated financial transactions to shelter income from the tax authorities?
No one is obligated to pay any more tax than the tax man is capable of collecting.
The same companies that get millions of dollars of tax breaks from the state so that they can open up a massive distribution center that brings one or two hundred minimum wage jobs?
Perhaps you ought to ask your elected officials why they have created such onerous taxes that businesses are only inclined to open shop when they are given discounts from those taxes.
Companies should pay for workers, not the taxpayer.
The companies are paying the workers, and they are paying taxes. But the government is taking a greater sum of money from the company than it is paying back to its workers in the form of welfare. So in effect, the government is actually restricting the company's ability to pay its employees more. Then you turn around and blame the company for not paying enough?
Not in million dollar tax breaks in exchange for low-paid jobs.
The alternative to those low-paid jobs is no work. Is that better? Who is going to fund the welfare program when no companies can afford to operate? Moreover, we are rapidly approaching the point where automation will be more cost effective than most forms of menial labor. Your solution to this problem is to accelerate the transformation by driving the cost of labor up? Or will you levy a "robot tax" in order to ensure an economic death spiral?
Definitely not for companies that rake in huge profit
Do you know what profit is? It's reward for investment. Without investment, there is no economic activity. The great famines and purges of the early Soviet Union were a reflection of what happens when you eliminate profit: no one is inclined to do anything because there is no longer any potential for reward. If the workers are worth a greater share of that reward, then it is entirely their prerogative to either bargain with their employer or form a competing company. I always find it funny to see a poster where a "greedy capitalist" who contributes nothing is laughing while he "steals" 90% of the value of a hard-working man's labor. If his labor is so essential to the process, then why does the laborer do it so cheaply?
That's the opposite of what I said.
What you said is that you don't care if more people become unemployed, because unemployed people deserve the benefits they receive. That's question-begging at best (they "need it" because you forced them to), and at worst it is exactly what I said: you don't care if more people become poor (dependent on welfare) as long as they are all equally poor (their standard of living being determined by the welfare benefits). There will always be relative poverty; no matter how much you pay people on welfare, presuming that it is more less uniform and based upon "need", then the group of people who is dependent upon it will always be the poorest group of people.