[kj] Jaz would nt appreciate this article

[Mark Kolmar]

I need to defend the libertarians.  True libertarians stand for
personal freedoms, free minds, free markets, and classical liberal
values.  Too may self-styled "libertarians" are in fact right-wingers
-- that is, "pro-business".  They favor law and order to the extent
law and order protect property and property-owners from the majority.

A free market would not be what you see today.  All markets have
rules.  That's what makes it a market rather than a chaotic
free-for-all.  A free market would have fairly simple rules that keep
the market balanced and fair.  A free market would not have rules
tilted toward the interests of the wealthiest and most established
interests.  What some people think is a global free market is in fact
a boggling combination of tariffs, import and export restrictions,
worker exploitation, etc.

It's clearly not a free market when a global, U.S.-flag-waving
corporation can move their manufacturing quite easily compared with a
U.S. citizen who is asked to compete on wages with slave laborers in
Asia.  The corporation can go worldwide to get the lowest price for
labor, while the worker has very limited ability to compete for a
higher wage in another nation, even assuming that person is able to
move physically.  In other words, how easy would it be for me with
high-demand skills to work legally in another nation?  And how easy
would it be for a global corporation to set up shop in another nation?

Capitalism makes use of a certain amount of greed because people enter
into business transactions for mutual gain.  But that does not mean
the amount of gain is the same on each side of the deal.  If you have
a set of rules in a market so that the established interests
consistently gain more on every deal than everyone else, the gap will
increase between rich and poor.  Eventually that will correct itself
through creative economic destruction, or revolution and possibly
violent revolution.  Or the market will correct itself through its own
rules.  Even if the established interests set the rules of the market,
those interests would certainly rather have decreased profits than let
the whole fucking thing go up in flames.

It's usually not a good idea to count other people's money.  It's
quite possible top managers or executives are worth the money they can
get, for the deals they know how to make.  But when a guy like
Disney's Eisner takes home the entire profit of all of Disney (as was
the case one quarter, though I can't remember exactly when right now),
something is out of whack.  That again has to do with the rules of the
market -- in this case, corporate governance.  It ought to be possible
to have rules for governance of public corporations to require them to
maximize value for *stakeholders* to some degree, rather than only to
maximize value for *shareholders*.  The corporations are an excellent
way to focus and organize human efforts, but corporate governance
these days seems to favor the abstract institution or some goal of
"efficiency" above the value of human dignity and life on the planet
in general.

As for Bill Gates, the world can withstand a few of these assholes. 
He is the type who will count everyone else's money.  Any money that
anyone else has is money he does not have, and wants.  Billions of
dollars are not enough if you believe life is a zero-sum game, and
that anything anyone else has is something taken from you that is not
yours but could be yours. If anyone else sells anything, that is
something he ought to own and sell instead.  That's not mutual
advantage.  That's a worldview that requires screwing everyone in any
way possible.

But all this has to do with the balance among different people in a
society and balance on each side of transactions, more than it has to
do with being for or against business or wanting truly free markets or
trade.

--Mark

On Apr 6, 2005 7:21 AM, gregslawson at aol.com <gregslawson at aol.com> wrote:
 
> Saying that Bill Gates earned his $ is the most bone-headed, ridiculous
> argument, so lame that it makes Peter look like a genius. Are you saying
> that he works thousands of times harder than another manager? Or tens of
> thousands of times as hard as a factory worker? Or that his precious
> decisions are thousands of times smarter than any other computer geek? With
> your arguments, we all might as well volunteer ourselves for slavery. He
> earned all his $ by LEGALLY STEALING from others, who work for his companies
> for a wage that is a fraction of what these workers produce in value. This
> little fact, which some people either don't realize or justify away (like
> you), is the root of most of the world's problems, like poverty and war
> (since the companies don't pay workers for the full value of their work, the
> workers can't buy all the products and services that these companies make.
> So how do the compa nies make up for it? Go to war to take some other
> countries profits!).