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mvassilev
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posted April 18, 2009 08:28 PM |
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del_diablo:
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Actually, the only reason its capitialistic its because its the way of capitalistic thinking.
Not at all. The free market maximizes utility, which does not necessarily mean money. Money can be one component, but it is by no means the only one.
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If the price goes to low the farmers will go bankrupt, and the spiral leads to less food.
That's ridiculous. What will happen is that the price of food will reach equilibrium. No one will starve.
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Not as in actuall slavery, but more on the lines of bankers and debts.
You know, slavery is involuntary... I wasn't aware that debts were.
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Indeed, they only delayed what was coming.
Seriously? Many of them caused this to happen. Such as the Community Reinvestment Act.
Tyraxor:
The "people who caused the crisis" are primarily in the US, so don't worry about the Netherlands bankers too much.
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And I don't know what you mean with shortages actually?
Sorry, I didn't mean shortage. I mean surplus. As described here. Particularly this: "A price floor set above the market equilibrium price has several side-effects. Consumers find they must now pay a higher price for the same product. As a result, they reduce their purchases or drop out of the market entirely. Meanwhile, suppliers find they are guaranteed a new, higher price than they were charging before. As a result, they increase production.
Taken together, these effects mean there is now an excess supply (known as a surplus) of the product in the market. In order to maintain the price floor over the long term, the government may need to take action to remove it...
This is commonly seen in agriculture. Often the government wishes to maintain high prices of agricultural goods to keep a large number of farmers working. To limit the surplus, however, government will often pay some farmers not to plant crops."
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Eccentric Opinion
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Wolfsburg
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... the Vampire Doc
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posted April 18, 2009 09:53 PM |
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farmers are forced to sell their milk beneath a good price
Price floors are a bad, bad, bad idea. Do you like shortages? I thought not.
Im sorry there, Vassilev, but I wholeheartedly disagree. Thats exactly the kind of forged argument that allows exploitation and slavery to go on. There is nothing catastrophical about assuring farmers they will get enough payment to justify the extenuating ammount of hours worked. Here in Brazil, whenever the police cracks up a farm where semi-slave-handwork is being used, the first respose of the wealthy owners is always: we cannot be competitive enough if we give all those people a raise.
I myself worked voluntarely once in a potato-field, just to get what it was all about. We worked our asses off from 5am till it was dark, hand selecting the potatos, carrying insane loads on our backs, driving tractors around, and god knows what else. At the end of the day, we took those goods to a silo, private, responsible for the potato distribution ammong many supermarkets and stores. After going through a very strict control process, my farmer collegue had a percentage remove on top of all the "unusable" potatoes.
That means: rotten, worm drilled, damaged, too small, too big and odd shaped (yes you read this right). You lose a percentage of the payment for each of this categories they find in the sample. Behind the desk there was this fat guy with a mustache explaining my friend he had a 20% decrease in value because he had too many small and odd shaped potatoes. The explanation is apparently that those do not fit inside the french fried machines of fast-food restaurants.
At the end, after that which was the best crop in 5 years, he only got enough money to pay his workers (damn socialist), and got a ridiculous ammount for himself, just enough to pay for the expenses of the next crop.
Detail: that was in Switzerland. If you'd see what I saw in the fields of Brazil you would have trouble sleeping.
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mvassilev
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posted April 18, 2009 10:17 PM |
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Thats exactly the kind of forged argument that allows exploitation and slavery to go on.
Is anyone forcing these workers to work there? No? Then it's not slavery. Period. This view of "slavery" is offensive to those who are actually slaves.
Are you familiar at all with the concepts of equilibrium and marginal utility? Those workers are being paid little because there is relatively little demand for the labor of each worker.
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Wolfsburg
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... the Vampire Doc
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posted April 18, 2009 10:22 PM |
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That would be a reality-show I'd like to see. Vassilev working for a month in that same potato field I worked in. A single month would do. The grand-finale would be a hidden camera to record his reaction when his payment would be ridiculously diminished because of his potatoes being too big and odd shaped.
Would he tap the moustache guy in the back and thank him and his boss for being active free-market agents? Thank them for working behind a desk as field agents for market's self-regulation?
Or would he for once lose it and say that the odd shaped potatos are costumarely used to feed swines so he and his boss should skip the burocracy and take them all home?
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mvassilev
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posted April 18, 2009 10:24 PM |
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Better a bad job than to starve in the streets or be a thief.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted April 18, 2009 10:29 PM |
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I'm just curious, Wolfsburg. What do you want: to be rewarded for potatoes that have no market value?
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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Wolfsburg
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... the Vampire Doc
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posted April 18, 2009 10:36 PM |
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You will eventually understand that slaving someone through brute force or striping them from all of their possibilities until they have slavery as their only choice is not quite different. Those people are slaves. Its not me saying that. Thats the official therm used by the brazilian government and law-enforcers to define their working conditions.
Lastly, if not being a thief and not starving is the minimum standard we're looking for, I start to see where our ideas collide.
We can do better than that, can we not?
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JollyJoker
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posted April 18, 2009 10:43 PM |
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Not with them, Wolfsburg.
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Corribus
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posted April 18, 2009 10:47 PM |
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@Wolfsburg
You didn't really answer my question, which only required a simple "yes" or "no". I'll ask again: do you expect people to be rewarded for producing a product that has no market value?
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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Wolfsburg
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posted April 18, 2009 10:56 PM |
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Hiya Corribus,
The final price they get payed for the ton is under 5% of the market price. The very company that runs the silos is one of the wealthiest in the business (and not a poor land as you certainly know).
So even excluding the big and the odd shaped potatoes (something which I already consider as pathological behavior), the regular perfect ones will still be looked upon as worthless to the silo owners, simply because they are looking for the broader archiavable margin of profit. While the farmers are the ones assuming all risks, losing crops one after the other, they are the ones who get the crips of the bread at the end.
What I would like to see is not the reward of products claimed as invaluable, but the just distribution of the profits of products that DO have market value.
Thanks for asking. What do you think?
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mvassilev
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posted April 19, 2009 12:21 AM |
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Tell me, Wolfsburg. How good are these farmers at getting goods to their buyers? Would they be nearly as successful at coordinating the distribution of their products? Somehow, I doubt it - or they'd be doing it themselves. At least this way they're able to sell their goods worldwide, instead of to other impoverished villagers.
And the company takes risks too. If a bunch of farmers suffer crop failure, it suffers too.
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Binabik
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posted April 19, 2009 01:01 AM |
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It seems to me that much of the disagreement here about capitalism vs socialism is due to people trying to compare a mature economy with an economy in transistion. The two can't really be directly compared like that.
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del_diablo
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posted April 19, 2009 01:10 AM |
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And the company takes risks too. If a bunch of farmers suffer crop failure, it suffers too.
ACtually thats wrong, unless a entire region suffers crop failure the company is not really losing money nor feeling anything. A small company in someting like that could easly have 5-6 farmers for the supply, if 1-2 of them got bad crops well their still going in +. If 5/6 failed they are still more than capabel of hanging on(they would likely go without bonus but they would not have negatives either).
Binabik: I agree.................
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Corribus
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posted April 19, 2009 01:16 AM |
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Edited by Corribus at 01:18, 19 Apr 2009.
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Hi Wolfsburg -
Ok, let me just see if I can untangle that so that I understand. Basically, what you're saying is that if Farmer A and Farmer B both collected 100 potatoes, but Farmer A's collection is 50% "good", whereas Farmer B's collection is 100% "good", then they should both be paid as if they produced collections that were 75% "good" (an average).* Is that correct?
Please correct anything wrong I wrote there. I don't want to put words in your mouth. Really, I'm not trying to trip you up with a trick question or anything. You're obviously unhappy about your potato experience. I'm trying to find out why, exactly.
*Here we take "good" to mean valuable to the potato distributer (optimum shape, size, characteristics), with a full market value. We'll also assume for argument that non-optimum potatoes are worth nothing.
@diablo
The food distributer also takes on a number of risks the farmer doesn't have to worry about (or at least, not as much). Fluctuating costs of transportation, post-harvest spoilage or pathogens, dealing with regulatory agencies (and included fees/taxes), etc., etc.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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mvassilev
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posted April 19, 2009 01:26 AM |
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BTW, to all who claim that capitalism destroys "moral/spiritual values", read this.
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Binabik
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posted April 19, 2009 01:48 AM |
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One important aspect of capitalism is freedom. It's about both personal freedom and collective freedom. People tend to look at the economy too narrowly. Given the freedom to do so, the economy will naturally gravitate toward some sort of quiescent state.
This capitalistic freedom of economy allows for just about anything. It even allows for socialistic behaviors if those behaviors come about naturally rather than being forced.
This discussion of food production, food distribution, etc. is an excellent case in point. I just happen to be most familiar with the US economy, but I think most people would consider the US to be a capitalist economy. And when it comes to food, there are a lot of socialistic elements in the US. Cooperatives are very common at all levels of the food cycle.
Just about every city and many small towns will have food coops at the retail level. In other words, the grocery stores are owned by the members, and are non-profit.
On a much larger scale, the farms themselves, food processing, and food distribution are heavily reliant on cooperatives. It's far more efficient for a bunch of farmers to get together and jointly own the processing plants, storage silos/warehouses and distribution networks.
For example I worked in the almond industry for a while. At that time, close to 50% of the world supply of almonds were from a single coop, jointly owned by the almond growers themselves. There was no large corporation involved. It was just a bunch of farmers who saw the sense of cooperation in ownership of a processing plant that none of them could afford individually.
A cooperative such as this is highly socialistic, but the capitalist system allows for it. The farmers had the freedom to create such a coop and they did so because it was mutually beneficial.
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Wolfsburg
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... the Vampire Doc
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posted April 19, 2009 01:49 AM |
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Sorry Corribus,
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear on the subject.
No, I dont think both farmer A and B should get payed for 75% of the crops. Nor any other conduct that would in anyway increase ones profit in an undeserved way. But I think, and not only me, that the percentage the farmers get payed is outrageously low in absolute numbers.
The potato standards have gotten so strict that the edge of potatoes with market value got narrower with the time. This means the farmers have to hire extra personal to select the good from the bad potatoes, pay extra hours, and buy new machinery to collect them with more precision. This itself would be ok, but when they have to deal with a slice of less than 5% of the money being made on top of their own products, then I start to get touchy.
What I would see as fit is that Farmer A would get lets say 20% of the final market value of his product times the number of usable potatoes. Even when that means getting this X his meager crop of 50% usable vegetables.
But please, its not like im trying to change Switzerland here. That would be ridiculous. That example was just to illustrate the point. Switzerland has more than a few social tools to support its citizens when the crops go bad.
But the same phenomena happens in Brazil. And if swiss well-educated managers pay such a low percentage to their farmers, just picture how OUR small farmers get through life.
W.
P.S - The experience on the potato field was very interesting. My only really bad experience started as soon as we entered the line of tractors after the gates of the main silo.
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baklava
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posted April 19, 2009 01:49 AM |
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@JJ
Giving surgeons and bar tenders the same wage will neither cure AIDS nor stop the earthquakes.
@MVass
Every sentence in the text which you linked to can open up an all new debate.
"In the first place, there is no such thing as an “economic end.”"
"The greater a man’s income, the greater has been his service to others."
"The consistent altruist must face the fact that monetary income on the market reflects services to others, whereas psychic income is a purely personal, or “selfish,” gain."
"Yet the consistent altruist would have to deny each worker any leisure at all—or, at least, deny every hour of leisure beyond what is strictly necessary to maintain his output."
"The consistent advocates of “consumers’ sovereignty” would have to favor enslaving the idler or the man who prefers following his own pursuits to serving the consumer."
Come on. I don't know whether the person who wrote that has a habit to look outside of his window. The text is basically saying that surgeons, or doctors of any kind, while we're at it, help the society far less than David Beckham.
The text, in addition, systematically presents "consistent altruists" as theoretical fascists, and tries to present everyone as a capitalist deep inside - with no other possible way to go (constantly underlining the only true reason capitalism is so successful - that there are no rational alternatives to it).
That's not a work of science. That's a pamphlet.
Commie demagogues wrote such texts too. I wonder what prestigious Austrian universities would write on their websites had the other side won the Cold war.
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"Let me tell you what the blues
is. When you ain't got no
money,
you got the blues."
Howlin Wolf
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mvassilev
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posted April 19, 2009 01:53 AM |
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Bak:
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The text is basically saying that surgeons, or doctors of any kind, while we're at it, help the society far less than David Beckham.
Obviously this is so - otherwise, why would people be willing to pay David Beckham more than they pay doctors/surgeons?
And I like how you didn't try to refute the main reason I linked that - which is the first sentence you qoted.
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Wolfsburg
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... the Vampire Doc
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posted April 19, 2009 02:04 AM |
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Nicely put Binabik.
As I said before, this dychotomy socialism bad, capitalism good (and vice-versa) is fruitless.
But a sense of community is a necessity for those farmers to survive. And thats pivotal. If a single one of them decides to make extra money by selling his products half so cheap, he will be jeopardizing the whole group, including himself.
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