We need to form a left-wing militia

Mott the Hoople said:
I'm sorry but I don't agree. Luck and circumstances come into play some times but not always and even when they do one must have the skills required to capitalize on the luck and circumstances which may arize. With out the productives skills to do that luck and circumstances mean very little. Even those who inherit wealth and do little of productive use to create wealth (other than for themselves) they still have to have the skills neccessary to protect and preserve that wealth or it will simply dissappear. Luck and circumstances certainly come into play but you can't divorce those from the productive ability and hard work required to create wealth. By your definition of luck and circumstances wealth is a static thing. It is not. It must be produced.
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What I meant was luck and circumstance play a larger role than hard work. The examples I gave, the location of a business or whether a big box store moves into the neighborhood and decimates a small business or developers move into an area increasing land value has nothing to do with hard work.

Take an ice cream shop. Two shops located in the same small town. The first one is staffed by a man and a woman , say in their mid-30's, while the other is staffed by two 18-25 year old girls. The latter shop is going to make more money, much more money. Young people, the main purchasers of ice cream products, are going to frequent the latter shop. What difference, work-wise, did the owners do when hiring staff? Even assuming the older couple are more mature, have more business sense, are more competent, the latter shop will be a better success.

While knowing the market, the customers, is vital to a business' success my point is acquiring wealth is not a matter of hard work in the sense not acquiring wealth means one is lazy. The same applies to acquiring a job. The same applies to those struggling. The same applies to the homeless. It's the attitude that those who don't succeed are at fault, that they're lazy, when that is unually not the case.

In today's economy there are 50 or more people applying for one job. Rather than some folks realizing one has a 1 in 50 chance of "success" they blame the person who was not hired. Whether they apply for 10 jobs or 100 jobs their chance still remains 1 in 50 each time they apply as opposed to someone thinking if an individual applies for 50 jobs and the odds are 1 in 50 they're guaranteed to get hired. Their application rate is not cumulative and that's why, as a society, we have to help those less fortunate instead of blaming them.
 
apple0154 said:
What I meant was luck and circumstance play a larger role than hard work. The examples I gave, the location of a business or whether a big box store moves into the neighborhood and decimates a small business or developers move into an area increasing land value has nothing to do with hard work.

Take an ice cream shop. Two shops located in the same small town. The first one is staffed by a man and a woman , say in their mid-30's, while the other is staffed by two 18-25 year old girls. The latter shop is going to make more money, much more money. Young people, the main purchasers of ice cream products, are going to frequent the latter shop. What difference, work-wise, did the owners do when hiring staff? Even assuming the older couple are more mature, have more business sense, are more competent, the latter shop will be a better success.

While knowing the market, the customers, is vital to a business' success my point is acquiring wealth is not a matter of hard work in the sense not acquiring wealth means one is lazy. The same applies to acquiring a job. The same applies to those struggling. The same applies to the homeless. It's the attitude that those who don't succeed are at fault, that they're lazy, when that is unually not the case.

In today's economy there are 50 or more people applying for one job. Rather than some folks realizing one has a 1 in 50 chance of "success" they blame the person who was not hired. Whether they apply for 10 jobs or 100 jobs their chance still remains 1 in 50 each time they apply as opposed to someone thinking if an individual applies for 50 jobs and the odds are 1 in 50 they're guaranteed to get hired. Their application rate is not cumulative and that's why, as a society, we have to help those less fortunate instead of blaming them.
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I know there are 5-8 jobs for every person applying in my field.
 
all this whining and bitching about 'luck and circumstances' is smoke and mirrors. stop protesting the 1% on wall street and go after the real shakers and changers (also known as deciders and choosers) when it comes to who wins and loses in the economy........congress.
 
SmarterThanYou said:
all this whining and bitching about 'luck and circumstances' is smoke and mirrors. stop protesting the 1% on wall street and go after the real shakers and changers (also known as deciders and choosers) when it comes to who wins and loses in the economy........congress.
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Yes, my new right wing comrade, we must fight the true enemy. I realize that now.
 
All right, I'm going to back off a bit from my initial hyperbole that wealth has nothing to do with talent. I do not deny that Bill Gates has talent and merit. Do I think that he has talent that is a million or so times better than many other engineers, as his relative wealth would indicate? No, I do not. Where does Bill Gates wealth come from? Well, he just happened to be a kid who was lucky enough to be in a relatively wealthy family that could provide him with access to computers at a time when they were relatively rare, and he happened to get kind of obsessed over them. Luckily for him, this industry that he had an obsession with just randomly turned out to take off in a huge way. Because he was there from early on, he was able to leverage his wealth for more wealth, on and on and on. So, really, even though he was talented, it was, again, primarily ownership that gave him his current wealth.

That's the problem I have with this system - it allows actors who were simply in the right place at the right time to snowball up one comparative advantage after the other until they basically can't be fought. And then they DO use this wealth to take a scrape off the earning of those below them who, barring some strange turn of events, really have no other choice but to serve. The argument that it were purely based on merit, with some sort of direct 100% correlation between talent and wealth, would have more merit if you couldn't look at the current computer industry and see that it was dominated by figures who simply happened to be lucky enough to be relatively computer savvy in this key time frame. But it is. Are you seriously going to tell me that all of the talented people just happened to be born right then, and that, oddly enough, almost no one with any talent comparable has emerged since?

I do not advocate total equality of wealth. I think it is reasonable that more educated people are paid more. And that's why I try hard to highlight the general "productive forces", and don't favor farmers or workers like some Maoist idiot. I'd even be fine with some people having relative fortunes. I just don't think that it's wrong for society to try to bring things in to line, and make the wealth in our society more proportional to talent, rather than to being in the right place at the right time. And I think the best way to accomplish this is not through some central government committee making all of these decisions, which would be horrendously inefficient and arbitrary. I think it would be best accomplished via heavy progressive taxation targeted towards the threshold between where the most educated and talented members of the productive class (such as doctors) start fading out and the most grotesquely overpaid members of the owning class start fading in - around 300k - 500k. 50% would be a moderate top rate, but I think that 70% or so would be just fine as well. It worked just fine in the past, it will work fine now. All it will do is discourage owners from choosing to increase their own fat salary instead of investing back into their business or paying their workers more.

I'd like to make it clear that I don't hate the rich at all. Besides the worst cases (mostly, again, inheritors and bankers) they are generally at least somewhat talented. I don't imagine them cackling in some evil lair and planning to enslave the working class. They merely do what is natural, and who can really blame them? Some of them even question the system, such as Warren Buffet. For those who don't, well, I doubt they are under anything other than the honest impression that they really do contribute that much to society. And when we do put heavy progressive taxes in place, they should be free to leave all they want. I think we'll find that we're quite fine without them, and I think they'll find that without the comparative advantages we've allowed them to build up here, they won't actually be thousands of times more valuable than their workers, after all.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Similiar thing in my field. That's understandable. How in their right fucking mind wants to work with hazardous waste? LOL
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Yeah but my field is CNC. For all the people who piss and moan about America not manufacturing stuff, they sure as fuck aren't the ones learning how to do it.
 
Emperor Nero said:
I think it would be best accomplished via heavy progressive taxation targeted towards the threshold between where the most educated and talented members of the productive class (such as doctors) start fading out and the most grotesquely overpaid members of the owning class start fading in - around 300k - 500k. 50% would be a moderate top rate, but I think that 70% or so would be just fine as well. It worked just fine in the past, it will work fine now. All it will do is discourage owners from choosing to increase their own fat salary instead of investing back into their business or paying their workers more.
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Not only did it not work in the the past, but it didn't work because no one actually was stupid enough to pay that much money when they could simply find ways around it.
 
Emperor Septimius Severus said:
Yeah but my field is CNC. For all the people who piss and moan about America not manufacturing stuff, they sure as fuck aren't the ones learning how to do it.
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That's my brother inlaws business. He built a pole barn on his property and installed a couple of CNC machines and some other automated tools and does conctract work.

You do have a point about people learning how to do or make stuff. I spent a lot of time learning my craft. When I moved from operations into the corporate environment I was shocked not only at how few skilled people there were but how they don't even really care. It's all about building business relationships. I wouldn't recomment a corporate environment for any professional who doesn't come from a business or legal background. You make good money but the career satisfaction part of it sucks big time. I spend so much time holding the hands of sales people who couldn't organize a bun fight in a whore house when I'm not covering for their lies or keeping their promises for them.
 
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