"Does communism work after all?"

[Captain Nemo]

Well I would say no, because as the article points out, many party intellectuals fear that their country is already drifting inexorably towards capitalism. For China to be as successful as it has and for this to grow, it has had to embrace capitalism. As for the poor remaining poor and the rich getting richer (Avon Lady) isn't that what capatilism is really all about? In the UK for example, go back a hundred years or so and you could say a similar situation happened here. It was only with the help of the Trade Unions and subsequently the Labour Party back in the early 20th Century that living standards for the working class got much better over time.

Nemo

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Captain Nemo

Well I would say no, because as the article points out, many party intellectuals fear that their country is already drifting inexorably towards capitalism. For China to be as successful as it has and for this to grow, it has had to embrace capitalism. As for the poor remaining poor and the rich getting richer (Avon Lady) isn't that what capatilism is really all about? In the UK for example, go back a hundred years or so and you could say a similar situation happened here. It was only with the help of the Trade Unions and subsequently the Labour Party back in the early 20th Century that living standards for the working class got much better over time.

Nemo

I agree. And today we can see the gap between the poor and the rich widening fast again, both on western national and international levels. More and more wealth on the globe is massed in few and fewer hands, and with that, power.

Another view on it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6211250.stm

The bad habit of holding shares does not help in this. Morally, something is seriously flawed in that system. Demanding to get payed by workers doing the real tough work becasue I once lend their employer some money? Sounds like a parasite's behavior to me. It certainly helps to blow up the bubble.

And yes, I always rejected to buy shares.

If an apple costs one dollar, and you have three dollars, how many apples can you buy then? Maths, first class. That is what solid economizing is about.

[Letum]

I prefer to measure a countries worth by net happiness and not net produce.

It's interesting to see what countries score high.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Letum

I prefer to measure a countries worth by net happiness and not net produce.

Only as long as their happiness does not come at YOUR cost and you are the one to pay their bills.

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Only as long as their happiness does not come at YOUR cost and you are the one to pay their bills.

Last time I saw, countries that were the most happy were the first conquered throughout history. :p Everyone seems to want what they've got, and since they built all their happyness on happy things, they forgot about war. The people looking in however never forgot about war, and marched right on in!

-S

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Demanding to get payed by workers doing the real tough work becasue I once lend their employer some money? Sounds like a parasite's behavior to me. It certainly helps to blow up the bubble.

Perhaps that's because you seem to see the company and it's employees as two separate entities whereas they should all be on the same team.

A person who buys stock in a company does not lend it to an employer, he lends it to the company so they can use it to modernize and inprove their operation and products thereby keeping their people employed.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

Perhaps that's because you seem to see the company and it's employees as two separate entities whereas they should all be on the same team.

A person who buys stock in a company does not lend it to an employer, he lends it to the company so they can use it to modernize and inprove their operation and products thereby keeping their people employed.

Needless to say that I strongly disagree with that description. Sounds like the garden Eden of stockmarketing. But when the management of a company earns let'S say 1000 times as much money than it's factory employees, if the managers grant themselves a 30% increase in their already million-heavy incomes while at the same time they made decisons that brought their company into trouble so that employees get fired or have to accept loan-cuts, than I know what to make of that saying that they are all sitting in the same boat. Thinking of George Orwell: some are more equal than others. you base on the idealized theory, August. But it is an utopia only. Reality in 4 out of 5 companies (at least) looks far, far worse.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Needless to say that I strongly disagree with that description. Sounds like the garden Eden of stockmarketing. But when the management of a company earns let'S say 1000 times as much money than it's factory employees, if the managers grant themselves a 30% increase in their already million-heavy incomes while at the same time they made decisons that brought their company into trouble so that employees get fired or have to accept loan-cuts, than I know what to make of that saying that they are all sitting in the same boat. Thinking of George Orwell: some are more equal than others. you base on the idealized theory, August. But it is an utopia only. Reality in 4 out of 5 companies (at least) looks far, far worse.

If my theory is utopian Skybird then yours is myopic. 4 out of 5 companies (at least)? Really. If that were even close to being true there would be no stock market at all because investors would be throwing their own hard earned money away (at least) 4 out of 5 times.

Those who purchase stock in a company are looking to see the company grow so they can make a profit on the money they've invested. Allowing management or anyone else (including the workers) to run the company into the ground not only eliminates that profit but most, if not all, of their investment as well.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

If my theory is utopian Skybird then yours is myopic. 4 out of 5 companies (at least)? Really. If that were even close to being true there would be no stock market at all because investors would be throwing their own hard earned money away (at least) 4 out of 5 times.

Those who purchase stock in a company are looking to see the company grow so they can make a profit on the money they've invested. Allowing management or anyone else (including the workers) to run the company into the ground not only eliminates that profit but most, if not all, of their investment as well.

Who cares as long as the first profit earnings were maximized. Common practice is that then you retreat and withdraw your money, and rush to your next victim to suck it's blood. In fact modern investement fonds tend to do especially like this: buy as many shares as needed to gain influence, then enforce business policies that help to get out as much profit as possible in the shortest ammount of time, and then leave it behind. It often includes oa healthy company taking credits and making debts - with which it is left after the investors retreated. There was no interest in the longterm perspective of that company one is investing in from the very beginning. - If you give somebody money and then demand that he should give you regular profit that finally even exceeds your investement, while you do nothing when he does the dirty work with his hands, so that he is effectively working for you and your financial interests, then this is in the end just this: buying a slave. From a moral standpoint, the system is undefendable. - You said investements so that the company can grow and modernize. Well, healthy economizing is if they run their business in that way that they do not give away the profits they make, but use these profits to invest in their modernization. what have other foreigners to do with that? If you do a good job, and produce something that attracts customer's interests, you will not only cover your running costs, but have a profit left. that is not exclusively reserved for the management, but for the workers as well. A part for each of them, and a part for further investment. Solid, and easy. The brother of my grandmother was running a textile company in exactly this way, men's fashion, shirts for the most - no foreign investors, no taking credits, the man said you cannot spend money that you have not earned before. There was a much slower growth than with other companies, but it was a solid increase, a constant continuation of the trend of slow growth - even in times were the branch already started to suffer from imports from Asia, and the general trend of fashion companies in Germany was pointing down. The company was healthy when he sold it. The new management "invested", and vbrought in capital from foreign investors, in order to modernize (whatever that should have meant, for the company obviously was competitive and had slowly increasing profits and offered safe jobs). The new investors ewanted to see quicker profits, the polcies were chnaged, and it became more risdky and less solid, and more and more it all was run with money that the company did not own. It ended how sooner or later every such story must end, if not after years then after decades: the once healthy business collapsed, finacial reserves were transfered into fonds of foreign investors, then bankruptcy, all jobs lost, debts, a social plan for which the state and the tax payer had to come up for. Only winner in this: thoise people who pumped money into it to gain control, take all profit, and once there was no more blood to be sucked out, they left the sinking ship. Fan-tas-tic. Our medias are filled with such stories, since many, many years.

[Skybird]

What has all that to do with China's way of modernizing it's economy?

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Who cares as long as the first profit earnings were maximized. Common practice is that then you retreat and withdraw your money, and rush to your next victim to suck it's blood. In fact modern investement fonds tend to do especially like this: buy as many shares as needed to gain influence, then enforce business policies that help to get out as much profit as possible in the shortest ammount of time, and then leave it behind. It often includes oa healthy company taking credits and making debts - with which it is left after the investors retreated. There was no interest in the longterm perspective of that company one is investing in from the very beginning. - If you give somebody money and then demand that he should give you regular profit that finally even exceeds your investement, while you do nothing when he does the dirty work with his hands, so that he is effectively working for you and your financial interests, then this is in the end just this: buying a slave. From a moral standpoint, the system is undefendable. - You said investements so that the company can grow and modernize. Well, healthy economizing is if they run their business in that way that they do not give away the profits they make, but use these profits to invest in their modernization. what have other foreigners to do with that? If you do a good job, and produce something that attracts customer's interests, you will not only cover your running costs, but have a profit left. that is not exclusively reserved for the management, but for the workers as well. A part for each of them, and a part for further investment. Solid, and easy. The brother of my grandmother was running a textile company in exactly this way, men's fashion, shirts for the most - no foreign investors, no taking credits, the man said you cannot spend money that you have not earned before. There was a much slower growth than with other companies, but it was a solid increase, a constant continuation of the trend of slow growth - even in times were the branch already started to suffer from imports from Asia, and the general trend of fashion companies in Germany was pointing down. The company was healthy when he sold it. The new management "invested", and vbrought in capital from foreign investors, in order to modernize (whatever that should have meant, for the company obviously was competitive and had slowly increasing profits and offered safe jobs). The new investors ewanted to see quicker profits, the polcies were chnaged, and it became more risdky and less solid, and more and more it all was run with money that the company did not own. It ended how sooner or later every such story must end, if not after years then after decades: the once healthy business collapsed, finacial reserves were transfered into fonds of foreign investors, then bankruptcy, all jobs lost, debts, a social plan for which the state and the tax payer had to come up for. Only winner in this: thoise people who pumped money into it to gain control, take all profit, and once there was no more blood to be sucked out, they left the sinking ship. Fan-tas-tic. Our medias are filled with such stories, since many, many years.

Yet for all that there are there are thousands of publically traded companies which have managed to avoid your Faustian fate. Yeah the media loves to cover such stories like they do with anything bad or negative, but only a fool would believe that such stories represent the more than a small percentage of companies out there.

Oh and dude, paragraphs, please. No seriously...

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I agree. And today we can see the gap between the poor and the rich widening fast again, both on western national and international levels. More and more wealth on the globe is massed in few and fewer hands, and with that, power.

Another view on it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6211250.stm

The bad habit of holding shares does not help in this. Morally, something is seriously flawed in that system. Demanding to get payed by workers doing the real tough work becasue I once lend their employer some money? Sounds like a parasite's behavior to me. It certainly helps to blow up the bubble.

And yes, I always rejected to buy shares.

If an apple costs one dollar, and you have three dollars, how many apples can you buy then? Maths, first class. That is what solid economizing is about.

If I work three times as hard as you, does my opinion count three times more than yours?

Originally Posted by Neal Stevens

If I work three times as hard as you, does my opinion count three times more than yours?

What does opinion have to do with how hard anyone works?

[Skybird]

He probably meant to compare opinion, apples and prices for apples. But I did not got what he was after.

If you stand at the assembly production line, and your boss sits in the office - could his work be so much more worth that it is justified that you are paid let's say 2000 dollars per month, while he maybe gets 2 million? And if he makes a bad decision and you loose your job and others must accept loan cuts, while he just is fired, but still is left with 2 million dollars multiplied by the number of months he worked there, is that just?


We need laws that managements must accept legal liabilities for the decisions they make. So far, they only could loose their jobs, as long as they did not act criminally so that they could be brought to court. Incompetence is something you are not held responsible for by your orivate savings. You have no risks in that position. Such new laws of course must include their private savings. It cannot be that the worker when causing the assembly line standing still for the second time is loosing his job and his family faces existential threats, while managers just get fired but taking all the money they made with them - ridiculous sums, often even with payments continuing for months or even years. that'S a way I want to be penalized - not needing to work, but still being payed, at least being left with the hundreds of thousands, or millions that I made! It is easy to make risky decisions and policies if you do not have anything private at stake. If your own existence also is at risk - could you imagine how quickly business would change and become more cautious, and interested in creating soldiity instead of quick profit, unlimited expansion and risky fusions? I can tell you!

As long as managers do not really risk anything themselves, they are just playing - monopoly. They can win real money, but they can only loose nothing. Don't be surprised that they do the way they do, then. when I drive in a race simulation, I do stunts and take risks I never would dare to try when driving a real car - with my own health and wellbeing at risk.

In the example in the beginning, I would like to see a difference in loans between the lowest and the highest jobs in a company i the range of a factor of about 10. I think that does far more justice and is more realistic, when comparing the advanatges and disadvanatges of both kinds of jobs - the administration, and the worker stadning hour for hour at the assembly line.

If I work with my head, and you work with your hands, is my job then more worth than yours? Or the other way around? Imagine the toilet cleaner or the craftsman maintaining your electrical systems, and water, and heating would no longer do their job. You would learn in record time how important they are.

P.S. a psychophysiological fact: the human brain is not able to form real representations of numbers in excess of some twenty only. But managers or politicians easily speak about millions, billions, and losses of these they just wave off. It is fair to say that they really do not know what they are talking about, from a physiologist's standpoint.

[Onkel Neal]

It was a simple joke, as Sky said, on the relationship of apples and opinions. I cannot take Communism seriously, it's a dunderhead theory only supported by those with an appallingly loose grasp of reality and human nature.

If you stand at the assembly production line, and your boss sits in the office - could his work be so much more worth that it is justified that you are paid let's say 2000 dollars per month, while he maybe gets 2 million?

Yes.

The assembly line guy chose his job, he made the choices in education and his character and level of ambition determined where he is. That boss makes decisions that affect the whole company, decisions that could make or lose millions. If it's so easy, go ahead, start your own company, and feel free to pay the line workers $100,000 a year. No one is stopping you, but you.

Maybe instead of one captain running a ship, all the crew should make the decisions.

Next time you need eye surgery, or someone to negotiate a large business deal, get the guy who installs your carpet do do it. And makes sure you pay him the same as you would a surgeon or attorney.