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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Does Automation Take Jobs Away?
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 1994 15:42:13 GMT
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In article <30us2b$53n@tribune.usask.ca>, Henry Choy <choy@cs.usask.ca> wrote:
>Richard Steven Walz (rstevew@armory.com) wrote:
>: >The whole basis of the free enterprize based economy, which we so
>: >grandly congradulate ourselves, it its ability to adapt.  Our recent
>: >"victory" over certain communist nations is not based on a superior
>: >political system, as some of our polititions would have you believe,
>: >but the ability of our economic system to addapt in a way that
>: >centrally controlled communism cannot do.  
>: ------------------------------------------
>: That's not true. We just had a more advanced and sooner industrial
>: revolution than Russia had. They have more untapped resources, except
>: established infrastructure for manufacturing and housing and training.
>: We got the brand new untouched farm land with two FEET of top soil, and
>: they got a lot of land which was occupied by farmers MUCH longer, and had
>: about two INCHES of top soil!! A much greater proportion of their GNP had
>: to go to defense to hold US at bay. WE built the iron curtain around them
>: out of paranoia and in a turn of the century fit of pique at our robber
>: barons not being allowed to scourge their people like we did ours. WE cut
>: off trade and made alliances against them when they wanted trade and
>: openness after the revolution. Instead WE invaded the central USSR with US
>: troops as part of a desparate thrust to defeat the red army by bolstering
>: the greed ridden whites!! We failed, and they didn't forget!!! Look it
>: up!! A centrally controlled system which cleans up after the assininity of
>: the robber barons is what we finally and Europe finally had to start
>: building, as well as legal curbs on them, but our socialism didn't progress
>: as well as Europe's because we seemed to have all this illusion of
>: "freedom" and a seemingly inexhaustible land and timer resource in a good
>: climate!!! They average 15 degrees latitude north of us. Not as easy to
>: plant and build and accomplish out of doors. And their people didn't have
>: the bounty of America which allowed schooling the young except through just
>
>: a few weeks of harvest!!! Nor did they have the machinery!!!
>
>So they needed machinery.......
-----------------------------------------
Coreect. Their lack of mechanical infrastructure was the only reason they
"failed" and we "won". Other way, and it would have done fine because their
people and their defense budgets would have been smaller and their standard
of living better and their weapons better!!! They were paranoid because
they knew they were always playing catch up with us and losing!! With nukes
it's enough to make anybody paranoid!
-Steve

>: They were cut
>: off, and have now finally folded. But when you talk about some capitalist 
>: "victory" over them, remember that we started the bad feeling and that we
>: have paid a huge price for it, and yet we are going to become socialist!!!
>: Our enormous military debt was all accumulated in response to the ever
>: hugely increasing arms race with them, and which ruined them and almost
>: ruined us!!! We HAVE no money now to pursue space! We HAVE no money now for
>: either prisons OR schools, (those eternal pay me now or pay me later
>: costs!). We have no money now for national health care, while Europe made
>: good from our help with their "defense" while they were taking that
>: opportunity to even trade with the USSR!!!! They built strong and
>: sustainable economies of scale, while we were one boom then bust after
>: another, and we don't know how to do it any other way!!! AND we have No
>: money to really begin paying our national debt to our children!!! And so we
>: build cheap prisons and hire cheap guards, instead of teachers in the inner
>: city, and we think we are wonderful, while we have more homeless on our
>: streets that many third world countries!!! 
>
>The way out: work. Go figure.
-------------------------------------
But you don't realize that we have a limited ability to work when we are
starving. It's a non-stable state! If this were always the answer, then the
people in Ethiopia could simply make signs saying, "Will work for Food!".
Wrong.
-Steve

>: >Now for the cold part.  If we accept the proposal that our econimic
>: >system is superior to others, then we must accept the fact that our
>: >economic system requires periodic adjustments or changes.  This is
>: >true from the highes order to the lowest.  The Mega-corps must be
>: >flexable or they get stomped on, and individuals must be flexable or
>: >they get stomped on.
>: ---------------------------
>: Flex-"i"-ble. And individuals at the bottom end of the pay scale have no
>: such luxury!!! Only the more affluent do!!! If we paid hard-working people
>: equally all this time, instead of that fiction of whatever the market (or
>: the government) will bear, then they could afford that, but instead we
>: create poverty among people who work the hardest because they are the
>: least organized and the most replacable, just because we intentionally
>: KEEP a number of them sick and desparate and out of work to do the shit
>: jobs!!!
>
>The way out is to work. To get a grip on yourself. You can't speculate
>what people will do if they were paid equally. You can't say "if
>only...". You can only say "if..." If you work hard from now on.... If
>you take the initiative to learn.... If you take the initiatiave to
>avoid temptations and keep your nose to the grindstone.... If you can
>propose to do the shit jobs better than others....
----------------------------------------------
If people were paid equally, I wouldn't care what they did!!! It would
simply be fair!!! No one is fit to judge hourly worth of another!!! Nor
vice versa, thus must be fair by being equal per hour!! Market doesn't make
the rules. People make the rules!!! People can CHANGE the rules!
-Steve

>: Ever actually see a time in this country when we had overemployment
>: among the poor and people wanted a slow down?? Not during THIS century!!
>
>: A person's productivity cannot and should not be measured in the
>: market by how replaceable they are but by their actual handling of the
>: product and its construction!!!
>
>The market is the market. You play by the rules.
---------------------------------------------
I repeat. The market doesn't make the rules, the People make the rules!!
They can CHANGE the rules!!
-Steve

>: But that's what we let business get away
>: with, blackmail!!!: Work for nothing, or as close to nothing as we can be
>: allowed, and then when we fire you, pull yourself up, that's not OUR look
>: out, even if we paid you nothing toward that cost of you doing "business"
>: as a laborer, and just because we could get away with it!!! 
>
>It's not that tough! You can be a nice, generous person and still make
>it. Resources are SCARCE. You just have to be tough and wily.
-----------------------------------------
But people have always banded together for insurance against failure of
their solitary efforts. Same with socialism. People spread out the failure
so that none fail completely or even substantially. Some will say "no
incentive then". I say, incentive is what other people want from you to feed
you! WE decide what it is!!
-Steve

>: >In other words, it is no me who decides what to "do" with displaced
>: >workers, but me the displaced worker that decides what to do.  That
>: >means that I am always expecting the inevitable layoff.  I am always
>: >financially preparing for it.  I try to practice life long learning, I
>: >keep current, and just one step a head of the next guy.
>: ----------------------------
>: Yeah, and you're a lucky shit who's blind to poverty, shut up and sit down!
>
>Even the unlucky ones were blind to poverty. Some people are
>complacent. They work and don't think about being laid off but they
>get laid off.
>
>Ok, poor people don't have much flexibility to handle self training
>and all that stuff, but they can always reach out. They have to be
>willing to say "student loan" or "business loan".
------------------------------------
Toothless man with stinking clothes walks into bank, says "Business Loan".
How likely!?? Be real. 
-Steve

>: >What can others, including the government do to help this process.  I
>: >would suggest that the single biggest thing would be universal health
>: >care, and better education oportunities.
>: ---------------------------------
>: Finally, the punch line!!! What you have just expressed is what everybody
>: says, but nobody wants to give up anything to accomplish it!!! There's NO
>: MONEY left to do these "other things", as JFK said in his moon speech,
>: because "they are hard!" (-JFK, ibid).
>
>Well, it's hard. It takes will power.
---------------------------------------
The "other things" in his "Moon" speech were his beginning of the War on
Poverty, and the biggest increase in socialist protections ever in the USA.
THAT's what is hard. Giving up wealth because you know your wealth was not
fairly earned and kept!!! Rich Democrats knew that and voted against their
own wallet so that other cities did not go up in flames like the Watts
riot! Repub's never figured it out, but they were outvoted!! They will be
again!
-Steve

>: And nobody wants to simply be
>: deprived to prevent themselves from a mob someday cutting their throats and
>: taking it away from them!!! They don't think that can happen, so they put
>: it on the rich, when if you took all the money of the multi-millionaires it
>: wouldn't do that job!!! The people who will find that THEY have the lion's
>: share of wealth in this country are the upper middle class, the ones who
>: own the rentals and enough in their IRA's to actually retire!!! (A luxury
>: which will be denied to over 2/3rds of Americans because they have less
>: than two month's savings for hard times!!!) (Look it up, damnit!!! Get a
>: damned Almanac and see it plain!!)
>
>It's easy to fall behind. Just let it all go. Where there's a will,
>there's a way. The game isn't over. Who knows the score?
>--
>        Henry Choy                       "Math class is hard" - Barbie
>e-mail: choy@cs.usask.ca                  I AGREE!
----------------------------------------------------
"It doesn't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." -Dylan
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

