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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Does Automation Take Jobs Away?
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 1994 01:21:00 GMT
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In article <318sbp$lbk@tribune.usask.ca>, Henry Choy <choy@cs.usask.ca> wrote:
>Richard Steven Walz (rstevew@armory.com) wrote:
>: >: 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.
>
>Work means everybody has to work. All over the world.
-------------------------------------------
The incentive is always there, such as not getting paid! Of course everyone
has to work, but they must be paid the same for that work. Just as I am not
fit to judge the worth of your work hour, neither are you fit to judge the
worth of my work hour, thus a stalemate, and the obvious practical
solution is not to attempt to!!! Simply pay everyone the same, in hours,
and then they will buy what they will with those hour tokens! If you want
more, you work more hours!! There is no sense paying an engineer more than
a ditch digger. I went through college at my own expense to get to be an
engineer just because I didn't want to be a ditch digger!!! I have done
both jobs in my life!!! The only incentive I needed to get me to do that
was an interest in science, because ditch digging is TERRIBLY boring,
TERRIBLY hard work, and TERRIBLY tiring!!! The incentive of sitting in a
nice warm place where I don't have to strain and get dirty and get tired
and sore and then getting to do interesting fun things with stuff I am
interested in was a heavenly difference that was sufficient to justify the
effort to become educated completely! It would be fair if the state paid
people who worked hard at becoming educated an equal wage with all other
workers, thus defraying the cost of education, because the effort and work
involved in education is condierable. But I wouldn't be at all upset if a
ditch-digger made the same wage as I do per hour, as I am so damned glad
not to be one anymore that I would cede that to him quite pleasantly. I
pity ditch-diggers! They work harder than almost any of us!! And the more
of them who are paid the same, the better chance their children have to
grow and become intelligent people with healthy bodies. Then someday, we
will have built all the equipment necessary so that NOBODY has to be a
ditch digger! But at the pittance day laborers are paid now, their children
and their children's children will still be ditch diggers because their
children won't have the good food or the equipment to learn more.
-S

>: >: >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!!!
>
>They may well do nothing. At any rate, if people are paid equal
>amounts, there would be no need to pay. You just put a giant piggy
>bank in the town square and go get some money whenever, like manna
>from heaven.
-------------------------------------------
I didn't say that people can be trusted automatically to take only what
they need or deserve fairly, when they aren't even being treated fairly
now! I said that they should be paid the same for a work hour. It is the
only fair payment that is not a form of blackmailing a person to work for
less because they have no negotiating position! It is what would happen if
people were entirely unionized.
-S

>: It would
>: simply be fair!!! No one is fit to judge hourly worth of another!!!
>
>No, you just judge the hourly worth of yourself and make whatever
>contract you please.
-----------------------------------------
That would sound fair until one is shown that honest people who have
nothing can be unfairly blackmailed into working for nearly nothing if the
well-off can afford to stall them into starvation. This is unfair
restriction of trade, to starve people to get them to contract with you. It
is collusive duress!
-S

>: 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!
>
>Well they made the rules. If you want to play their game, you have to
>follow their rules.
>It's a good game.
-------------------------------------------------
People CAN change the rules if they finally have been educated enough to
know their power. Without that they can be compelled to contract with you
for an unfair wage. Without the food to wait YOU out until you need THEM,
your efforts are again nothing but collusive duress!! The logical outcome
of a free market in its pure meaning is for one man to trade with another
man their labor, one for anothers in a fair manner. It was meant to
discourage people from continuing to make buggy whips when there were no
more horses, and no demand for buggy whips, but it also presumed a
simplicity of technology and tools that assumed that a man would change
what he made and have the wherewithal to make that decision and embark on a
new product line once he discovered that his buggy whips were no longer
needed. Without an entirely simple product, which materials can be obtained
readily either from the woods or on credit to begin, and without new and
more costly tools necessary to make the new product, your refusal to buy
his buggy whips for a fair price is merely a way to rob an honest man!!!
Nothing humans have ordained as law has been for any purpose other than
ensuring fairness, ultimately. For a long time there were people who did
better than others, either because of inherent skill or ability, and that
was to some degree unfair. But there were also those who could not then
work, because of old age or illness or because of young age and infancy!
We had to find a way to structure our society to care for them because we
knew that we were and would be again unable to work at some point. This
harsh capitalism was offset by the family, once the towns came into being,
and before that, the tribe was both family and society, and people were
known to be self-starters or to need encouragement, or to be quick and
agile or to be unlucky and slow and maybe not as quick mentally or
physically or both. And people made allowances for that without punishing
a large person with less food or a small person with too much work. 
We must change our social structure to preserve the thing that warms our
hearts, even when Robin Hood is an outlaw and a thief and he has broken the
blackmail of the rich! There are innumerable references to illegal acts in
literature and in myth which are heralded as fair and restorative of
fairness and goodness!!! To this heart of fairness I am appealing in
people. Whenever you have seen a law broken for a good cause, realize it!!! 
If you are ever on a jury and you believe the law to be unfair, simply
stonewall that jury into submission. That is your legal right, and you
needn't explain yourself to anyone else or accept being harrassed by the
other jurors or the judge. Once the case goes to you, then YOU are the
judge, with the right to nullify a bad law if you think it unjust!!! There
is NOTHING they can do to you!!! Likewise, when next you vote or write your
congressbeing, tell them that you want fairness economically for all
people of all abilities, and that everyone is worthy of a good income if
they do all they can as well as another. And if there aren't any jobs, then
give the rich incentive to make some by taxing them DOUBLE till they find
some!!! Few capitalists will fail to make jobs if they can lower their tax
by the twice the amount they must pay as a wage!!! Remember when capitalist
bastards use the word incentive they are talking about blackmailing the
poor, and NOT about incentive which should accrue to THEM!!!!!
Vote socialist, and if you have to vote otherwise in self defense, then
TELL your representatives and senators and president that he only BARELY
got your vote because he wasn't socialist ENOUGH!!!! That jerks their
chain, let me tell you!
-S

>: >: 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!!
>
>The people made the market and its rules. Are you going to play or not?
---------------------------------
One plays as one can. One fights for change as one can. One makes an end
run around unfair rules anyway he can!!!
-S

>: >: 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.
>
>So go buy insurance.
-----------------------------------------
I don't need to pay a premium profit to a broker to get rich on if my
thrust is to end wealth!!! I only need to tell enough people that they can
not only "eliminate" the middle man, but that they can destroy the
middleman!!!
-S

>: Some will say "no
>: incentive then". I say, incentive is what other people want from you to feed
>: you! WE decide what it is!!
>
>What if I want something else?
-------------------------------------------
Sounds like tough shit then, Henry. If people don't think your dealings are
fair, I don't think you get to veto them!! Rights emerge from what other
people will accept out of you, not what you think they should.
-S

>: >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. 
>
>So go jump in the shower. Make or break.
---------------------------------------
The man HAS no shower, Henry. You are acting like you're ignorant!
-S

>: >: >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!!!
>
>Make a decision.
-----------------------------
I am beginning to think you are answering this conversation with a script
program of cute phrases.
-S

>        Henry Choy                       "Math class is hard" - Barbie
>e-mail: choy@cs.usask.ca                  I AGREE!
--------------------------
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

