Free trade, automatization and how it affects common people

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NeroNoah wrote:
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
¡So temper your idealism, folks. Freedom very literally isn't free, and the more freedom you intend to grant, the more impossible you may find it to hold onto the more baseline freedoms. That which is most important in law must be prioritized and done well before moving on to relatively trivial matters... and there are going to be things government simply cannot sustain.

Past a certain point, trying to improve things for labor doesn't help, but instead makes things worse.
I agree, but still, I would have different conclusions about what's viable (those are more normative differences than anything). I know it's not possible to make things perfect (I did argue for allowing some questionable stuff), but I still would ask myself how to obtain the better outcome.

We do have ways to predict this stuff (for example, the Solow growth model allows me to predict that the China shock will allow growth in the long run) so it's a good idea to experiment with protections, regulations (and the inverse too, deregulations and labor liberalization). Without trying we won't know.
Well yeah, I said it was an epiphany because I have been asked a lot what makes small-government libertarianism different from no-government anarchism and my answer didn't really satisfy myself because it hinged on the concept of natural rights. I really like the conclusions of natural rights but share thought the reasoning towards said conclusions was bullshit; I found a lot of truth in Carlin's rant that rights don't exist, they're just privileges. If I was more honest I would have just said it was a gut thing and I didn't know.

But I figured it out. I don't want small government for the sake of small government. I want a government which uses its economically-limited power to do a few things extremely well, than a larger amount of things half-assed. Because the most important functions of government, the ones which best protect its people and improve their lives, are too sacred a duty to half-ass. And no, they're not natural or God-given; we need to do it ourselves.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Oct 1, 2016, 10:26:23 AM
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
False.

Money's representation is arbitrary, much like the shape of letters. There are practical limits to how we physically represent letters, and in the same way there are limits to how we physically represent money.

Could I say that words are fictional, they are merely the traditional way to share thoughts, words exist only as long as we believe in them? Not really. Fictional is different from arbitrary, and words are THE medium for sharing thoughts.

But some things can be both arbitrary AND fictional. Arguing that it is arbitrary does NOT mean it cannot also be fictional. But this failing of logic only distracts from deeper issue how money and words are similar.
Words can indeed also be fictional. Words ideally map onto reality as a representation, but there are wildly varying ranges of how well any particular sentence will represent reality. If i say my glass of water is sitting next to me, you may not know it unless you can see it for yourself but i assure you is a very accurate representation of reality.
But that is not to say that a representation of reality IS reality. The words as concepts themselves do not exist other than as arbitrary neural connections, audio waves, ink markings, etc.

Fiat money (not backed by gold) on the other hand, does not directly map onto reality as a representation. It is in a totally different class of concepts than words.
Technically, one could argue for money being nonfictional. With non-fiat economies, money does actually have an objective value similar to an IOU. But it is a minor point in the much bigger and more important discussion which i obviously failed to convey: the current financial system is flawed in many ways, and in the face of major technological advances will collapse.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Money is a representation of productive time.

Hold on, i think this is the root of your problem.
Perhaps in some abstract idealized form taught in some classroom, one could consider this to be true.
When a baker takes grain and makes bread (something which usually requires 'productive time' of a human), money is not being generated. The baker only receives money through selling it. Ahah, you may say, the baker is then being paid for his time. But what about when the entire process of baking the bread is fully automated? Where is the 'productive time' of the owner of that machine who simply has to press a button once and occasionally service the machine (or have other machines service it).

Furthermore, how do you define 'productive'? Is playing a game productive? What is your opinion on streamers? The category of 'productive' must be so broad to include virtually every possible action.

Now lets move on to people in modern day society who take in massive amounts of money who dont actually produce anything. Think about all the investors who simply leverage their existing capital to purchase land just outside of growing communities then sell it for huge profits. How have they provided any sort of utility? How do you justify such a person making millions of dollars for such a minimal amount of his time?

If you were correct, and money is the representation of productive time, then we need to change our economy to actually match that axiom. We would need to require some 'productive time' to income ratio rather than have the market and market manipulators dictate the price of things. And wages should be mandated by how much time the worker invests multiplied by his/her productivity. But everything i have heard from you would be violently opposed to such governmental intervention. How can you really mean "Money is a representation of productive time"? There is serious contradiction in your ideology.
For years i searched for deep truths. A thousand revelations. At the very edge...the ability to think itself dissolves away.Thinking in human language is the problem. Any separation from 'the whole truth' is incomplete.My incomplete concepts may add to your 'whole truth', accept it or think about it
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SkyCore wrote:
Words can indeed also be fictional.
Yes. And money can be counterfeit. Both are problems.
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SkyCore wrote:
What is your opinion on streamers? The category of 'productive' must be so broad to include virtually every possible action.
Not every possible action, but any use of time which is valued by other people. People value streamers enough to give them money, so those people are saying it's productive to stream. People are willing - perhaps too willing - to trade away their time spent working, to spend time being entertained.
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SkyCore wrote:
Now lets move on to people in modern day society who take in massive amounts of money who dont actually produce anything. Think about all the investors who simply leverage their existing capital to purchase land just outside of growing communities then sell it for huge profits. How have they provided any sort of utility? How do you justify such a person making millions of dollars for such a minimal amount of his time?
If the transaction is voluntary and non-fraudulent, then that's the justification. Someone is saying that their work, their time, is worth trading for that thing.

These people who "do nothing productive" are doing something productive in the eyes of their voluntary customers. Otherwise, they wouldn't voluntarily trade with them.

Flipping is a service. Original sellers want their money quickly and conveniently and don't want the trouble of connecting with final buyers.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Oct 1, 2016, 12:27:54 PM
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
But I figured it out. I don't want small government for the sake of small government. I want a government which uses its economically-limited power to do a few things extremely well, than a larger amount of things half-assed. Because the most important functions of government, the ones which best protect its people and improve their lives, are too sacred a duty to half-ass. And no, they're not natural or God-given; we need to do it ourselves.


I think I agree with that way of thinking, but not about how to achieve it (that's the reason I emphatise lean/optimal over small). There are political constraints that would make your style of small government impossible to implement or unsustainable (I mean, see something like NAFTA, that for all purposes was a good idea, a demagogue like Trump then comes and convinces people it's the worst deal ever, and some people left behind because they were particularly harmed by it and they weren't properly assisted end voting for him, and then there is the rest that benefited but are not aware of the facts either way because benefits are the new normal...so you get tariffs and shitty governance...searching small government you get a bigger government). Not sure of how to reconcile both worldviews, really. And that's not even touching the fact that I'm biased towards helping people (that would be more a normative concern, you don't convince anyone that way).

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SkyCore wrote:
If you were correct, and money is the representation of productive time, then we need to change our economy to actually match that axiom. We would need to require some 'productive time' to income ratio rather than have the market and market manipulators dictate the price of things. And wages should be mandated by how much time the worker invests multiplied by his/her productivity. But everything i have heard from you would be violently opposed to such governmental intervention. How can you really mean "Money is a representation of productive time"? There is serious contradiction in your ideology.


I'm sure to have read about this at some point, but I can't really remember what specifically. Must search. I think it's more important to help people get living wages and improving everyone's welfare first rather than worry about matching money and productivity (It's so subjective that it seems hard to implement). Money is more like a storage for value than a representation of productivity.

This article may be interesting. This too.
Add a Forsaken Masters questline
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2297942
Last edited by NeroNoah on Oct 1, 2016, 2:24:59 PM
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NeroNoah wrote:


If the other countries do the same everyone will be worse off overall. Prisoner's dilemma and all that.


Not necessarily. Some countries have access to the resources both material, and labor resources to be more self sufficient than others do. I'd argue that any country that's capable of being somewhat self sufficient is better off being that way. The USA for most of its history was relatively self sufficient.

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Also, Mexico hasn't fucked US as much as many said (NAFTA being a disaster is false, also, many manufacturing jobs were moving to Mexico before that deal, and manufacturing jobs went up immediately after the treaty). See this graph.


Do you even know what that graph means? It only means the output went up. Employment went down for a larger amount of output. Improving technology increased the production with less manpower.

Service sector jobs are mostly low wage jobs. Even a greeter at walmart is a service sector job. Customer service jobs are service sector jobs. Jobs like these don't pay a livable wage. If someone figures out a way for jobs like this to pay liveable wages, then that would be great. But that's not the current reality. Even tech people answering phone calls don't make a livable wage here. These are $8-$10/hr jobs around here. You know what that gets you? A 20 year old trailer if you're lucky, with Jethro, Cletus and Rufus as neighbors who work at the local scrapyard. There's your Murican' dream.

Manufacturing jobs have entry level positions as well, but the majority are semi skilled labor jobs to highly skilled jobs like welders and machinists, or assembly workers all the way up to engineers. Semi skilled labor jobs need to pay a livable wage. They don't. Welders, machinists, and assembly workers should be making a middle class income. A lot of them don't. The ones that do work massive amounts of overtime.

My uncle is a retired machinist. He used to work for IBM. He made $20/hr in 1988, and had great benefits. He says a machinist is lucky to get that in 2016. That's really terrible if you factor in inflation between then and now, and the dramatic cost of living increases. This is why people are mad as hell about the current economy, and jobs market.

I took machining classes in HS. You really gotta know your shit to be able to do a job like that. Totally not for scrubs. Highly technical job. Very easy to make mistakes. You're basically a surgeon, except you work on metal. One little mistake, and your patient is dead. I remember making a bad part because it was 0.2mm off. The tolerance was 0.1mm. You gotta be pretty well versed at trigonometry as well. I couldn't do that kinda work because I'm ADHD. But if I wasn't ADHD, I might consider doing something like this. I like working with machines, I'm not such a delicate little flower that would let a metal splinter or something stop me.

Last edited by MrSmiley21 on Oct 3, 2016, 8:48:14 PM

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