CrowEpistemologist

How can demand be infinite if supply is not infinite? Who is going to buy all of these goods if they don't get paid enough to do so, and/or they don't feel like working enough to do so? In other words, infinite demand implies infinite desire to work in order to obtain desired products, right?

This is an interesting aside. I agree that, thus far, there has not been any data (that I know about anyhow) that establishes any link between technology and unemployment. Maybe it won't happen. However, I worry about the second statement, because it doesn't add up: unless you assume dramatically increasing demand, then increased output will necessarily lead to lower real wages and/or unemployment. Technology can reduce demand if it makes things last longer or have longer-lasting effects (viz. a car that goes 200k miles or a computer that is still relevant after 15 years of use). Put it another way, what is the LVM answer to this? :-)

Last I checked, China is still quite totalitarian, and quite controlled. You cannot freely organize a labor union there, which for workers at that level is practically speaking the only way they can control anything about their existence. That's slave labor in my book. Anyhow, explain the logic that, when workers are free to demand a truly open, market-driven wage, which will necessarily be a lot higher, that we'll somehow pay less for that labor. I guess you're saying that if Foxconn workers were allowed organize, they'd make sure they were paid less with fewer benefits? I guess we're both just crystal-balling here, but my own prediction is the opposite. I think they'd quickly bring their wages up to near-US levels, and the price of the iPhone (et. al.) would skyrocket. And yes, Foxconn, as in the makers of the iPhone, filled with workers suppressed by a totalitarian government. Ergo, slave labor. Not quite to the same degree as other forms of slave labor--and probably unavoidable in our modern world--but yes, slave labor in a sense.

Not in places like China, India, etc. they are most certainly not. In those places (and dozens of other squalors around the world) there is a government which oppresses people and essentially locks them into menial labor for low pay. All I'm saying is, when (if?) that is ever unlocked, and freedom comes to those people, then the price of manufactured goods will skyrocket. And yes, your iPhone is in some sense the product of slave labor. My example of domestic labor was a confusing/incorrect one and actually detracted from my first point--it's a somewhat different topic. Here my concern is that all of the progress we speak of doesn't create net-new jobs (which is somewhat contradictory if you think about it), they simply make life easier for everybody. It's not that everybody will get richer, its that everybody can work less and still survive. That has different implications.

One thing that's always bothered me about thinking about labor issues is this: we need these people. We base our assumptions on the idea that all of them will improve their plight, will get out of those low-paying jobs, and so on. But that begs the question: what happens when they all leave their low-paying jobs? Who is going to flip burgers for us? Mow our lawns? Do our laundry? In the end, the answer is: we're going to need to pay them more. That's what supply and demand dictates. Right now we all enjoy a world where there's lots of extremely cheap labor. Chances are you are typing on a keyboard made by near-slave-labor from China right now. But it was cheap. What happens when all of those workers are free to organize themselves into unions and demand higher wages? Freedom, unfortunately, is not free...

I don't remember any rational, non-insane people I talked to disregarding the role of things like Fanny and Freddy in the last one, or in over-speculation / normal business cycle stuff. Yeah, maybe Alan Greenspan wrote all of those bad loans from the housing bubble himself. Sure, why not. Or some of his agents from the Illuminati wrote them. Or something. Or maybe upturns and downturns are just part of life in a free market. Maybe, just maybe, downturns that only catch morons out is not something that Objectivists should particularly worry about. I certainly don't care.

Because I am not affected by US dollar inflation, nor is anybody who is not a moron. If the US government declared they would execute, without judge or jury, any citizen who stood in the exact location of the Four Corners, that would be a miscarriage of justice. However, it would be pretty easy to avoid. On the other hand, take the WOD. Walk down the street in New York and you will feel the effects: you will be walking down much more dangerous streets since the government has created a war--complete with a war zone--in our streets because of a backward prohibition now fueled by a giant bureaucracy who won't let it go. Then there's Federal intervention into schools, which anybody with kids in public school will directly experience. Oh yeah, and taxes. People say that inflation is "like a tax" which I suppose is true if you keep physical Benji's stuffed in your mattress as your primary savings account. In that scenario you might have lost, what, 10% of your wealth in the last 5 years? I lose more than that in a few months to actual, real, here-and-now taxes. And then there's taxes that not only tax, but actually change economic behavior in huge, inefficient ways. Like all investors (including simple homeowners) I radically alter my behavior to reduce my taxes. That changes the whole complexion of economic (and thus all) life in the USA. There are dozens of huge industries which would not exist, and dozens which do not exist now, all because of tax laws. Hence my ongoing charge here: the preoccupation with "inflation" and the Fed, and all of that stuff is driven by weirdo conservatives from the 60s--who actually invaded my Objectivist Club meetings--and not any real concern. Take away the Illuminati--or the belief in same--and Ron Paul would have never brought up the Fed anymore often than he brings up the Post Office. Annoying sometimes, sure, but hardly a life-changer.

"They misunderestimated me." -- Bush 2.0 "We begin bombing in 5 minutes." -- Regan By comparison, Obama is just boring...

As I understand it, the Illuminati was founded in 1776, not 1910. Can you explain, then, why they haven't used their magic powers in any significance since the 80s? We have a Kenyan Socialist Dedicated to Evil in the White House. Why hasn't he used this power? (Awaiting the inevitable conspiracy theory answer, as all good CT's have an answer to absolutely everything).

Objectivists don't hold that thesis. Maybe that's why there's never been a "rigorous response": usually people don't find much value in defending a thesis they themselves do not hold. Sad that somebody went to all of that trouble to write such a long critique about something that actually doesn't exist...

Um, LP wasn't saying that "all Democrats are racists", he was insinuating that (in your hearing of the tape), "all (or most) non-US resident racists would vote Democrat if they came here". (I continue to struggle to have this conversation at all, as it sounds like we're carefully analyzing a five-year-old's statements about the monster under their bed).

Um, okay.... Do you care to defend LP's thesis here??? Really?

I guess the way I interpreted that is that Obama is identifying strategic races of people throughout the world who will come here and vote Democrat, and he's busy bribing them all to do so. The alternative seems to be that he is going to scour the world to find all of the racists, and bribe them to come here to vote Democrat. Okay, maybe. Both notions are batshit insane...

Well that's just strange. I'm not sure how to argue about an obviously incoherent sentence...

When I said that "races" made the sentence valid, I meant that in a narrow sense. The entire rant didn't make sense externally, and didn't make sense coming from LP...

"For Skye, the saga began back in 2009, when two softball coaches cornered her in the high school locker room, according to the court documents. The coaches then allegedly bullied Skye into admitting that she was gay and told her that she couldn’t play in that day’s game unless she came out to her mother." These coaches should be fired. The school should keep getting sued until they fire these criminals if $77k is not enough to convince them.

Let them brag (and they are just pointing out a fact of electoral math). If Republicans don't get the meaning of, "all Men are created equal" and because of that they lose election after election, then this is a good thing...

Like knowledge, audible and visual perception is contextual. In all likelihood the data itself is non-conclusive when analyzed out of context, which isn't unusual. I heard all of these words at the same time. If you used the words, "racists" or "razes" in that sentence, it would be nonsensical. Using the word, "races" creates a valid sentence and conveys a meaning that agrees with previous statements made by LP--that Mexicans were going to flood over the border and vote Democrat, which would in turn bring about the end of the world, etc.

In the context of the sentence within which he was speaking, "races" makes sense and "racists" doesn't... This just sad on so many levels. The view of the non-US world as a collection of "races" is terrible, but even worse is that the notion that "Obama" is intentionally "enlisting" races to come here and vote Democrat. That last part is simply retarded in theory. In present-day practice, net-immigration from Mexico is now ZERO, and that's a movement which took place under Obama (not that he had anything to do with it...).

Jezus Christ. Ominous Parallels indeed... :-( Detractors of Ayn Rand will have a field day with this...

The argument that I possess such an argument exists only as a little straw-man in your mind.

Exactly the point I was trying to make, but in another way: if Capitalism creates some bad outcomes occasionally--or even a lot--it does not invalidate the system. Moreover, as a human-operated thingy, it's bound to have practical frailties stemming from our lamentable lack of omniscience. So what. To reel it back in, it's fine to judge Bill Gates and Goldman as scoundrels, and even to blame Capitalism on them. It's part of life and better than the alternative.

Perhaps, but the wider point I'm making is this: saying that a free market is the "best" approach does not mean its a "perfect" approach. In all practicality, things like MSFT and Goldman are going to happen, and it's going to be bad. However, a system that would stop them--and inevitably non-bad actors--would be far worse. Bill Gates and Goldman often operate against the best interest of their customers and they don't tell them when they do. If they did, many of their customers would leave them. That's fraud. However, they know the system they are operating within extremely well, and the know the limits of its practicality: they know how not to get caught. By definition, you can't judge this behavior legally--but you can sure judge it morally.

Skylab, save your breath. A completely free market allows (and even encourages) monopolies that thwart innovation to exist for a certain period of time--sometimes even quite a while. To some, like Nicky, this destroys the belief system that allows them to call themselves, "Objectivists" (and what would they do then). To them, belief requires capitalism to have desirable outcomes every single time and in every single context for every single person. If you present evidence that sometimes the outcomes are not perfect (even if, for instance, the alternative system would be much worse), then your evidence is invalid by definition, because in order for it to be true, that would mean Ayn Rand's apparent unconditional (and non-contextual) endorsement of a completely free market might have been incorrect, which of course means that everything else Ayn Rand ever said was false, up to and including "A is A". So Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Goldman Sachs, etc. etc. are all absolutely good. When the employees at Goldman call their customers "muppets" because they see them as marks in their scams, well, they are heroes because they are simply exercising the free market system. Sure, nobody questions the fact that we need to let the three of them happen because the alternative is worse. Some people don't have the cognitive capacity to tell the difference between an entrepreneur who worked hard to bring an innovative shoe polish to market--and then going on to other inventions after the initial product made a good amount of profit--and the inevitable feces emitted from the otherwise healthy body which is the free market: those who exploit loopholes in the system and profit from activities diametrically opposed to the values under which the system was conceived. Which is all to say they don't know shit from Shinola. Save your breath my friend.

Wow, you missed the point of Ayn Rand's novels. I guess we shouldn't be surprised...