Re: Here is analogy.

[Durant]

So how do you decide who's having a grip on reality and the best 
solution without having all the options and reasoning offered 
listened to?

Eva


> The point of the whole story is that one CAN make a difference, but one must
> first accept the REALITY of the situation.  People who CAN'T deal with
> REALITY should just get out of the way because they are only increasing
> the body count.
> 
> Jay
> 
> 
> 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: competition/contradiction

[Thomas Lunde]

Dear Eva and friend:

A very good argument and one in which I find more hope and possibilities
than "the survival of the fittest" mentality of the capitalist model.  I
especially liked the comments re language developing because we are
basically a cooperating species.  It makes sense to me.  In the realm of
personal experience, I can say that if I was to analyze my day, both
familial, working, and various relationships, the majority of my time is
spent in cooperative ventures, raising children, working with co-workers,
and even in my business dealings with the world, are much more cooperative
than competitive.  It is only when the accumulation of wealth enters the
picture that a small percentage of the population becomes totally neurotic
and puts their own desires and wants above others, even to the point of
actually causing others pain, hardship, deprivation so that they can have
more jelly beans in their jar.  Personally, it would seem to me a
predilection for the capitalistic model is either the result of propaganda
and cultural programming or outright mental deviance.

Respectfully,

Thomas Lunde

Subject: competition/contradiction


I asked for a contribution in the above themes from a friend of
mine who happens to be Hungarian, married to an
English chap and a socialist, quite like me...
Be sure - there are more useful work-related information
here that in a lot of other posts!
For some reason she started in Hungarian, my english summary
follows these first paragraphs. Eva

...
Termeszetesen semmi koze az erkolcsi normaknak ehhez.  Az
ellentmondas az abbol adodik, hogy a munkasosztaly termeli a javakat, de a
munkaadok csak annyit adnak vissza ebbol amennyire feltetlenul a munkasnak
szuksege van ahhoz, hogy eletben maradjon. Ez a munkaber, ami megfizeti nem
a munkat hanem a munkaerot.  (Not labour but labour power!!)  Hogy mennyit
fizetnek egy munkasnak az fugg sok mindentol, peldaul, hogy milyenek a
piaci viszonyok, a termelekenyseg, mennyire erosek a szakszervezetek,
milyen merteku a munkanelkuliseg stb., stb.  Soha, de soha nem fugg attol,
hogy mennyi erteket termelt a munkas, mert azt soha nem kapja vissza.  Ha
kapna, akkor a munkaadonak nem lenne haszna es bezarna a gyarat.

(Ofcourse there is no link with moral norms. The contradiction is
based on the working class producing the goods, but the employers
only paying back as much as the workers need to survive.
This is the wage; only pays for the worker, not for the work done.
The amount of the wage depends from the markets, from the strength of
the unions, from the level of unemployment, etc, etc, but never from
the value produced. This is never returned, as then the employer
would have no profit and would have to close the workplace.)

Egyike a legalapvetobb ellentmondasnak az, hogy ha a munkas csak egy egesz
kis hanyadat kapja vissza annak az erteknek amit megtermelt, akkor nincs
eleg penze, hogy megvegye azokat a termekeket, amit o keszitett, de a
gyartulajdonos ad el.  Igy a tulajdonos nem tudja bezsebelni a hasznot, es
igy is bezarja a gyarat.

(One of the most basic contradiction is, that if the worker only gets
back a very small portion of the value he produced, than he has not
enough money to buy the necessities to live, sold by the owners of
the factories etc, so these owners cannot make the profits and have
to close down.)


Egy masik ellentmondas az, hogy az evtizedek soran ahogy a kapitalista
rendszer kezdett hanyatlani, a tendencia arra mutatott, hogy mindig tobbet
kellett befektetni ahhoz, hogy egyre kevesebbet kapjon vissza haszonkent.
"The tendency for the rate of profit to fall"  Ez azert van, mert a toke
ket reszre oszlik:

(An other contradiction is that the system started to collapse,
because there is a tendency, that more and more investment was
necessary for  less and less profit, thus "The tendency for the rate
of profit to fall". This happens, because:  )

the means of production (e.g. tools, land etc.)
and labour.  It is the interaction of  these two that create
new goods and the capitalist's profit.
However, because it is only labour that creates profit, only
labour that adds surplus value, in the modern epoch when more and more has
to be spent on modernising the means of production, less and less will be
produced in terms of profit for the same amount of investment.  Crudely
put: if every year you have to spend more and more on throwing away
perfectly good machinery and buy new one, because that is the only way you
can
keep ahead of your competition, and therefore you pay less and less to your
workforce, the organic composition of capital will shift in favour of the
means of production, of capital goods and away from labour.  However, it is
only labour that produces the pofit, so you will rake in less and less.

I know that this is a very difficult concept to grasp, but if you look
around that is what is happening to British Industry.  They have not
invested and they are being left behind.  But if you look at Japan

Re: Here is analogy.

[Brian McAndrews]

 Hmmm... I don't see it that way. What I learned from the movie is what I
see around me everywhere: How we live has a lot to do with how we die. If
we live 'self interest' we push kids out of the way to get on the life
boat. If we live  caring about about others, we may give up our space so
another may live. Victor Frankl writes about this beautifully in his book
_Man's Search for Meaning_ where he describes the behaviour of his fellow
Jewish inmates in a concentration camp.
I happen to believe how we die is important. Another movie which may cause
you to ponder this is 'The Mission'. Robert De Niro and Jeremy Irons die
within minutes of each other. How each of them dies makes all the
difference in the world.(to some)

**
*  Brian McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator*
*  Faculty of Education, Queen's University  *
*  Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 *
*  FAX:(613) 533-6307  Phone (613) 533-6000x74937*
*  e-mail:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]*
*  "The limits of our language means the limits  *
*   of our world"Wittgenstein*
**
**
**

Re: (Humor) Microsoft Democracy(TM)

[Franklin Wayne Poley]

Satire aside, it is obvious that fully developed direct electronic
democracy is just a few years away.
   And we can expect the computer companies to develop special
software to accommodate it.
FWP.

On Wed, 24 Feb 1999, Christoph Reuss wrote:

> [From a Polish website,  http://www.ch.uj.edu.pl/msfc/19.html ]
> 
> Microsoft Announces Microsoft Democracy
> 
> Microsoft has unveiled today Microsoft Democracy, a freeware that will be
> widely available from next month, and included in Windows 96, the Company's
> latest operating system, to be released later this year.
> 
> Microsoft Democracy will enable any Windows-based computer user to vote from
> his home, for any election, including presidential. For new Windows users,
> Microsoft Democracy will come installed automatically with Windows 96,
> without any human intervention needed. The system will use the Microsoft
> Network to connect to governmental databases in order to register these new
> on-line votes. Users will simply have to click on the icon of the candidate
> of their choice on the day of the election, and voting procedure will be
> fully automatic.
> 
> Detractors say it is not fair that the system only includes Bill Gates' own
> icon on startup, but even though the Company wouldn't comment officially,
> sources close to Microsoft say that it should be possible to vote for
> candidates other than Bill Gates with to-be-released upgrades. These
> upgrades should include all the candidates for a given election, and should
> be available at least a week before each election, for as low as $99.99
> (again, voting with just the initial version will be possible anytime).
> In these upgrades, candidate names of more than five characters will also
> be possible, sources say.
> 
> Opponents also complain that installation with Windows 96 is invisible, and
> that some users may not be aware that MS Democracy has been installed, and
> is running in their computer. To that, Microsoft opposes that installation
> is automatic by default, in order to simplify human interventions; automatic
> operation is clearly explained in the MS Democracy User's Manual, available
> on-line through MSN, or on the Internet. Also, the user can turn off default
> voting, just by clicking the "Don't always vote for default candidate" box, in
> the Custom Installation / Other Settings / MS Democracy / Advanced Options
> sub-menu during Windows 96 installation.
> 
> Every voter using the system for the first time will receive a free CD-ROM
> biography of Bill Gates (MS Dangerous Creatures).
> 
> The company expects to distribute 150 million copies of the basic software,
> and about 500 upgrades within the first year.
> 
> 
> 

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Re: The Prosperity Covenant

[Ed Weick]

Tom,

A few comments on your paper: One of the points you make is that an
across-the- board reduction of work time will increase employment (reduce
unemployment) because more efficient firms will have little difficulty
meeting the new situation, but less efficient firms will have to take on
additional labour in order to do so.  What if what really happens is that
the increased cost advantage of the efficient firms becomes so large that
they can significantly reduce prices and drive the less efficient firms out
of the market, thereby increasing unemployment?  Actually, what your model
suggests is that things could go either way: it is possible that the less
efficient firms would, in a reasonable time, become more efficient and stay
in business, or they could prove unable to make the necessary changes and
fail.

There is another point here: this is that the efficient firms, if they could
indeed produce as much in 7 hours as in 8, would probably already have got
rid of their eighth employee before they were required to move from 8 to 7
hours.  If their management was really efficiency oriented, this surely
would have been recognized as putting them into a better competitive
position.

You cite several historic cases in which work time was reduced while output
increased.  But surely not all of this can be attributed to a reduction in
work time.  Some of it would have been based on innovation, the introduction
of new technology and improved methods of undertaking work.  The process may
in fact have been somewhat the other way around.  The motive might have been
to reduce labour costs as labour became more aggressive, scarce and
expensive.  It would not matter to management whether the reduction of
labour costs was done by laying off people or by reducing work time or, as
is most likely, by doing both.  But to cut labour, labour-saving innovation
was needed.  Henry Ford could make grand gestures and pay people six days
for five days of work.  But because of the assembly line, he not only had
far fewer workers, his profits must also have risen considerably because of
much higher productivity.  As Eva would put it, he was simply giving back a
little of what he had taken in the first place.  His poor rivals who
continued to put cars together by hand in small, garage-like shops could not
adapt and went out of business.  I once read that, prior to about 1920,
there were hundreds of shops producing cars in North America.  With the
introduction of the assembly line and enormous savings in labour costs and
economies of scale which resulted, this quickly whittled down to a few
dozen.  I doubt that this increased employment in the automobile industry.

What seems to underlie your paper as an implicit assumption is a
considerable homogeneity of labour.  You appear to assume that you can cut
hours and take on the 8th or 9th worker because he or she will be capable of
quick integration into the firm's productive process.  In many firms, and
for many occupations, this may simply not be so - or at least it is less so
now than it was a few decades ago.  In any bureaucracy, government or
corporate, people vary tremendously in what they can do and in their value
to the organization.  Many people simply have to put in long days because
they are the only ones who can do particular jobs - they simply cannot be
replicated or replaced.  You could not cut their time down to a standard 7
hours without a large loss in productivity.  I'm not arguing against a
reduction in work time where it makes sense, but I do feel that, in a
knowledge based economy, expertise resides with the individual.  Cut his or
her time back, and you could lose a considerable amount of product.  Where
employees do not have specialized knowledge and can be replicated or
replaced, cutting back time and increasing employment is probably possible.
However, such employees are in some danger of being cut out altogether
because of technological replacement.

Generally, then, what you've put forward may still apply to a considerable
part of the work world, but there are some problems.

Ed Weick

Au Revoir

[Caspar Davis]

Dear Friends,

I am regretfully leaving this list because I am just too busy to follow
the lively and interesting conversations going on here. I wish you all
the best, and hope that I will meet you again, here or elsewhere.

Caspar Davis

Focus on the Corporation listserve

[Caspar Davis]

This is one of the most useful listservs. Its weekly posts are quite
short and invariably interesting.

Caspar Davis

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shorter hours essay

[Eva Durant]

A few comments to Tom Walker;

Your essay completely misses an important
word whether he talks about the Canadian or 
any other economy of today; 
businesses need to make PROFITS to survive
in our market system.

- productivity is not linked to profits in
  a climate of over-production and disappearing
  markets.

- management efficiency is not linked to
  profits in a climate of over-production
  and disappearing markets.

- the free flow of investment to countries of
  much lower labour cost makes unemployment grow
  regardless.

- incentives to employers - such as subsidised
  employment of young unemployed did not ork - it
  lead to the redundancy of the more expencive
  type of labour. 
 
- The reduction of labour cost due to reduced 
  insurance/taxes per employee was used to
  increase profits, not to increase the number of
  workers.


Sorry it, seems a well meant but a 
cosmetic, a superficial idea that 
disregards the realities of capitalism.
Try to get out of the framework that cannot
be reformed, only scrapped.
Please refer to the forwarded "competition" post.


Eva

Re: Here is analogy.

[Jay Hanson]

- Original Message -
From: Bob McDaniel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

>> The Titanic (civilization) has just struck the ice --
>
>> I advocate selecting the best "qualified" person to organize a
>> survival and rescue effort as quickly as possible.
>
>But, in this scenario, would it really have made much difference? Or maybe
>that is the point!

[  This is my impression of the facts based on the movie -- I haven't
studied
the matter carefully.  ]

The reason there weren't enough lifeboats in the first place, is because
Titanic was thought to be "unsinkable".  Had the people been emotionally
and physically prepared for REALITY, then nearly everyone could have
been saved.

But even given the terrible situation of an unprepared collision in the ice,
many more could have been saved by quick thinking and strong leadership on
the part of the captain.

The captain appeared to emotionally unprepared for the collision -- walking
around in a daze  -- with the mates confused and operating on their own.

In situations like Titanic found herself, every seaman knows that the
killer is the cold water.  Had the captain moved quickly and forcefully to
build "rafts" out of an anything that would float -- ripped the planks off
the walls, used the furniture, made rafts of life jackets, etc. -- hundreds
of more lives could have been saved.   The key was to keep the people
out of the cold water until a rescue ship arrived.

The point of the whole story is that one CAN make a difference, but one must
first accept the REALITY of the situation.  People who CAN'T deal with
REALITY should just get out of the way because they are only increasing
the body count.

Jay