303 lines
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303 lines
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From fork-admin@xent.com Mon Sep 23 18:32:29 2002
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17tWA9-00072J-00; Mon, 23 Sep 2002 13:34:21 -0300
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From: Owen Byrne <owen@permafrost.net>
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Cc: Geege Schuman <geege@barrera.org>,
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Gary Lawrence Murphy <garym@canada.com>,
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"Mr. FoRK" <fork_list@hotmail.com>, fork@xent.com,
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Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com>
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Subject: Re: Comrade Communism (was Re: Crony Capitalism (was RE: sed
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/s/United States/Roman Empire/g))
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References: <ILEHJNJFPDLMDEKNIAKCOEINCAAA.geege@barrera.org>
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<p05111a15b9b4120d5486@[66.149.49.6]>
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Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 13:34:16 -0300
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X-Spam-Level:
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R. A. Hettinga wrote:
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>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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>Hash: SHA1
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>
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>At 11:15 AM -0400 on 9/22/02, Geege Schuman wrote:
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>>Most of them seem to have Ivy League educations, or are Ivy League
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>>dropouts suggesting to me that they weren't exactly poor to start
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>>with.
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>>
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>>
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>
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>Actually, if I remember correctly from discussion of the list's
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>composition in Forbes about five or six years ago, the *best* way to
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>get on the Forbes 400 is to have *no* college at all. Can you say
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>"Bootstraps", boys and girls? I knew you could...
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>
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>
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Sure - discussion in Forbes - rigorous research, that. Especially when
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the data in their own list
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contradicts them. I continue to look at the list and all the "inherited,
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growed" entries. I guess if
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I read it enough times my vision will clear.
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>[Given that an undergraduate liberal arts degree from a state school,
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>like, say, mine, :-), is nothing but stuff they should have taught
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>you in a government-run "high" school, you'll probably get more of
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>*those* on the Forbes 400 as well as time goes on. If we ever get
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>around to having a good old fashioned government-collapsing
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>transfer-payment depression (an economic version of this summer's
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>government-forest conflagration, caused by the same kind of
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>innumeracy that not clear-cutting enough forests did out west this
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>summer :-)) that should motivate more than a few erst-slackers out
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>there, including me, :-), to learn to actually feed themselves.]
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>
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>
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>The *next* category on the Forbes 400 list is someone with a
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>"terminal" professional degree, like an MBA, PhD, MD, etc., from the
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>best school possible.
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>
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>Why? Because, as of about 1950, the *best* way to get into Harvard,
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>for instance, is to be *smart*, not rich. Don't take my word for it,
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>ask their admissions office. Look at the admissions stats over the
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>years for proof.
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>
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>
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I, at on point, looked into Stanford Business School. After learning
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that tuition was > 20K,
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no financial aid was available, and part-time work was disallowed, this
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smart person decided
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that I was not willing to spend the $150 application fee
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(non-refundable). During attendance at
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my local business school, I was told repeatedly I should have gone for
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it - to quote a prof, (Northwestern MBA), it
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has nothing to do with the education you receive - in general European
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(and Canadian) business
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schools are better and more innovative - its the connections. He used
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the words "American nobility."
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>Meritocracy, American Style, was *invented* at the Ivy League after
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>World War II. Even Stanford got the hint, :-), and, of course,
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>Chicago taught them all how, right? :-). Practically *nobody* who
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>goes to a top-20 American institution of higher learning can actually
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>afford to go there these days. Unless, of course, their parents, who
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>couldn't afford to go there themselves, got terminal degrees in the
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>last 40 years or so. And their kids *still* had to get the grades,
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>and "biased" (by intelligence :-)), test scores, to get in.
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>
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>
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"invented" being the right word. Dubya went to Yale and HBS. I guess
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"practically" gets you
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around that problem.
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>
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>The bizarre irony is that almost all of those people with "terminal"
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>degrees, until they actually *own* something and *hire* people, or
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>learn to *make* something for a living all day on a profit and loss
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>basis, persist in the practically insane belief, like life after
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>death, that economics is some kind of zero sum game, that dumb people
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>who don't work hard for it make all the money, and, if someone *is*
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>smart, works hard, and is rich, then they stole their wealth somehow.
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>
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>BTW, none of you guys out there holding the short end of this
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>rhetorical stick can blame *me* for the fact that I'm using it to
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>beat you severely all over your collective head and shoulders. You
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>were, apparently, too dumb to grab the right end. *I* went to
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>Missouri, and *I* don't have a degree in anything actually useful,
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>much less a "terminal" one, which means *I*'m broker than anyone on
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>this list -- it's just that *you*, of all people, lots with
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>educations far surpassing my own, should just plain know better. The
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>facts speak for themselves, if you just open your eyes and *look*.
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>There are no epicycles, the universe does not orbit the earth, and
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>economics is not a zero-sum game. The cost of anything, including
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>ignorance and destitution, is the forgone alternative, in this case,
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>intelligence and effort.
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>
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>[I will, however, admit to being educated *waay* past my level of
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>competence, and, by the way *you* discuss economics, so have you,
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>apparently.]
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>
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>
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>
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Its interesting but in this part of the World (Nova Scotia) a recent
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study found that college graduates
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earn less than graduates of 2 year community colleges (trade schools).
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They did decline to mention
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that the demand for some trades is so great that some of
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them are demanding university degrees to get in. Just for the record -
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the average salary for
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a university graduate (including advanced degree holders) here is C$
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21,000 -- < $14,000 US. No wonder
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half of San Francisco has set up here - we have a whole whack of call
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centers that
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have arrived here in the last couple of years - I think they hire some
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entry level IT people for around $10 ($6 US) an
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hour, which of course, fits perfectly for me - my entry level job, in
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1986, paid $11.00 an hour. The fundamental difference
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is that most of the jobs that require a trade are *unionized*.In other
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words, in this part of the world, for the vast majority of people,
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union dues are a better investment than tuition. The counter-argument
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to this is that many college graduates
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leave for better work elsewhere, but the counter-counter argument is
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that we are the thin edge
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(one of several really - prison labor in the US would be another) of
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third-world wages and work practices coming
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to North America.
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I worked at a company that had a 14-year wage freeze. The fact that they
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could maintain that (and prosper) just says
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volumes about the economy in this part of the world. I met many people
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there, like me, who felt that was fine, I can vote
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with my feet. They didn't quite realize that just about every large
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employer in the area has similar, or worse, policies. Anyway
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eventually they started a union drive. During the vote, retired
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employees were brought in by the employer (rumours were
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that they were paid the going rate for a vote around here - a bottle of
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rum) and somehow allowed to vote . The union filed
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a grievance - which was denied - by a Minister of Labour, who, hey,
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guess what - used to be a VP at the company.
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That's free labor markets at work. The business continues to prosper -
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as I was told when I was there - it is a cash cow as long
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as the JOA (Joint Operating Agreement) with the competing paper is in
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place.
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And if you think that any of those wonderful American companies, out of
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some free-enterprise belief in competing for the best talent,
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are going to do anything about that, sorry, most of them received
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generous subsidies, in return, I'm sure, for an understanding about
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the labor markets here.
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>
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>BTW, if we ever actually *had* free markets in this country,
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>*including* the abolition of redistributive income and death taxes,
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>all those smart people in the Forbes 400 would have *more* money, and
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>there would be *more* self-made people on that list. In addition,
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>most of the people who *inherited* money on the list would have
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>*much* less of it, not even relatively speaking. Finally, practically
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>all of that "new" money would have come from economic efficiency and
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>not "stolen" from someone else, investment bubbles or not.
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>
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>That efficiency is called "progress", for those of you in The
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>People's Republics of Berkeley or Cambridge. It means more and better
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>stuff, cheaper, over time -- a terrible, petit-bourgeois concept
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>apparently not worthy of teaching by the educational elite, or you'd
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>know about it by now. In economic terms, it's also called an increase
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>in general welfare, and, no, Virginia, I'm not talking about
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>extorting money from someone who works, and giving it to someone who
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>doesn't in order to keep them from working and they can think of some
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>politician as Santa Claus come election time...
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>
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>
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Much as I like to accept what you say - I do believe in free markets , I
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have difficulty finding any - except of course for
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labor markets, which governments go to great lengths to protect (well
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unless the supply is tight)
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It was a great run with the technology industry - producing most of the
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self-made billionaires on
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the list, but now we've got a government-sponsored monopoly, and the
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concept of "more stuff, cheaper"
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which it has always promised - seems to be disappearing. A particularly
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galling example is
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high-speed internet access. An article I read a couple of years ago that
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it is an area where the pricing
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approaches of the IT industry (cheaper, better or you die) and the
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telecom industry (maintain your
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monopoly through regulation, and get guaranteed price increases through
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the same regulators) meet.
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Sadly to say, the telecom industry seems to have won. The whole
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entertainment industry/RIAA/Palladium thing
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seems to be another instance where actually giving value to the customer
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seems less important than using
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regulation to reduce competition and substitute products in order to
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produce profits for the favored few.
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>
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>In short, then, economics is not a zero sum game, property is not
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>theft, the rich don't get rich off the backs of the poor, and
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>redistributionist labor "theory" of value happy horseshit is just
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>that: horseshit, happy or otherwise.
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>
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>To believe otherwise, is -- quite literally, given the time Marx
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>wrote Capital and the Manifesto -- romantic nonsense.
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>
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>
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I usually agree - but when there's a Republican in office - I feel like
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they're the biggest believers in
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the Manifesto, in reverse. Create a reserve pool of labor, reduce the
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rights of that "proletariat" you've
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just created with bogus "law and order" policies , concentrate capital
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in the hands of a few (ideally people
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who can get you reelected) and the economy will take care of itself. Oh,
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and lie - use
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the word "compassionate" a lot. I guess I tend to believe that a certain
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amount of poverty reduction actually
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helps a modern capitalist state - the basic economic tenet of the
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Republic party seems to be the more homeless under
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each overpass, the more efficient the rest of us will be.
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And the facts are, for most people in the Western world are declining
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standards of living, declining benefits, disappearing social safety net,
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greater working hours, essentially since the entrance of women into the
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work force (not blaming women in any way, they have a right
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to work but its now 2 wage-earners in each family and still declining
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standards of living) is the reality.
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Again to quote that wonderfully liberal document I keep coming back to -
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the CIA world factbook - on the US economy:
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"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to
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the top 20% of households"
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Owen
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