Are americans buying themselves out of jobs?

bonkey

chill wrote:

Despite all the crocadile tears for the third world countries, the truth is that capitalism and market forces are doing more for the poor of the world than the sum total of all of the charity and aid handed out.

Truth, or your opinion?

If the former, please supply linkage to back this up. If the latter, please explain why you feel the charter doesn't apply to you any more.

I'm getting fed up of you stating everything as a fact, and then telling others that this is a place for discussing opinion when you're asked to back up what you say.

We have a charter. It already clarifies our position on this, and you are not exempted from it.

jc

RainyDay

chill wrote:

What we need is less barriers to trade, less barriers to outsourcing of jobs, less barriers to multi nationals setting up manufacturing plants abroad.

I'd take these comments seriously if there was any genuine desire by the multi-nationals for a true free market economy, i.e. no subsidies from welcoming governments to FDI (foreign direct investment), no subsidies to farmers for food production, no tariffs on goods imported etc etc. The multinationals want to pick & choose carefully the areas where the 'free market' applies.

SkepticOne

RainyDay wrote:

I'd take these comments seriously if there was any genuine desire by the multi-nationals for a true free market economy, i.e. no subsidies from welcoming governments to FDI (foreign direct investment), no subsidies to farmers for food production, no tariffs on goods imported etc etc. The multinationals want to pick & choose carefully the areas where the 'free market' applies.

This is true. There is no intrinsic desire for free trade on the part of multinationals except when it suits them. As far as I can tell, it is the poorer countries that are pushing for the lowering of tarifs and other free trade ideas, not the multinationals. For example, the US steel industry lobbies intensively for the maintaining of barriers against cheap imports.

It is important not to confuse corporatism with 'free market' ideals.

Corporations are more than happy to stifle free markets when it suits them and they can get away with it.

chill

RainyDay wrote:

I'd take these comments seriously if there was any genuine desire by the multi-nationals for a true free market economy, i.e. no subsidies from welcoming governments to FDI (foreign direct investment), no subsidies to farmers for food production, no tariffs on goods imported etc etc. The multinationals want to pick & choose carefully the areas where the 'free market' applies.

So ? the multi nationals don't make the rules, people and their governments do. Multinationals are like any company, big or small, and they will seek and accept any subsidy or protection they can.
It's up to people and governments to establsih free access and zero barriers, but the truth is of course that it IS the people that are demanding the barriers... take farmers, steel workers, clothing workers etc....

RainyDay

chill wrote:

So ? the multi nationals don't make the rules, people and their governments do. Multinationals are like any company, big or small, and they will seek and accept any subsidy or protection they can.
It's up to people and governments to establsih free access and zero barriers, but the truth is of course that it IS the people that are demanding the barriers... take farmers, steel workers, clothing workers etc....

Your naivety is touching. You forget that multi-nationals will buy their way into Governments, or just buy the Government. Where do you think Bush funded his reelection campaign? Do you think it is pure coincidence that Haliburton gets $4 billion of business out of the US government in Iraq and Vice President Dick Cheney is a former CEO?

shotamoose

The main problem with the argument that what we're seeing in America is simply the result of free markets and is therefore all for the best is the fact that the American trade deficit (and associated decline of its manufacturing base) has in large part been engineered by certain Asian countries who are effectively manipulating the 'free' market for their own advantage. They've been buying up billions in dollar reserves to keep the dollar strong against their currencies, so their exports would be more competitive in the US market. As a result (though this obviously isn't the only cause), the US has opened up an even bigger trade deficit and now seems to source just about every manufactured item from China or some other Asian country. So while the Asians are building up their manufacturing expertise, America is losing hers.

It won't last, of course. The dollar is already sliding and the Asians might decide they've played the game long enough and gently dump their reserves. At which point, who knows but the American manufacturing base might pick up again. Point is, anyway, that there's perfectly above board ways in which governments can game the system to their own (perceived) advantage.

Sand

No I don't see history repeating because developed countries didn't get there without barriers to trade.

So in arguing to bring up barriers to trade to prevent jobs being lost in the US and won in say, Thailand, youre actually fighting for the cause of the Thai workers who are better either unemployed or reduced to subsistence farming rather than working in a job which is well paid by Thai standards? Who stand a better chance of winning rights in a agrarian economy than an industrialising one? Unlike Britain say? Obviously the Russian route was the better.

All this is nothing we havent seen before in European and American history.

And when did that ever happen (and only tokens even then) without some big media do about poor blind Chinese kids.

I dont think its ever happened or ever been seriously considered - the political spectrum is dominated by the leftist philosophy that the state should solve everything, regulate everything and if theres a problem its because not enough laws have been passed and not enough bureacrats are paid to suggest more regulations. No one trusts individuals to do the right thing.

If I was to argue that Irish people were generally decent people and would not support exploitation of children most people would agree. If I was to argue Irish people would pay say 5% extra for a good if it could be verified that the good they were buying was didnt involve the exploitation of child labour Id be sneered at.

Instead the solution is always seen as how to get the government to pass laws that corrupt bussinesses will try and will no doubt succeed in thwarting. No one would entertain the idea that the solution might be to encourage the consumer to seek verification of "moral" production which would then encourage manufacturers to seek that verification rather than avoid some regulation.

Where's the strawman smiley?

Sorry I forgot youre helping them by arguing for trade barriers to protect american jobs.

...still can't find that strawman smiley.

Make up your mind - youre the one questioning the use of educating a work force. I think its vital, you think its pointless. Unless youre just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing?

No ****...but then you were raving about ending farm subsidies (which all us anti-globalisation nutjobs are against as well) and in the same sentence saying that educating the first world is going to make jobs magically appear.

Youre against those *particular* trade barriers? Well Ive got news for you - American jobs will be lost there too, and the jobs gained in the developing world wont exactly be 9-5, 5 days a week, 4 weeks paid holiday a year either. So whats the problem with American jobs being lost to exterior suppliers in the case of Walmarts suppliers, but not here? Surely we should be fighting for the human rights of developing world farmers by ensuring they cant sell into this market? The conditions these farmers operate under are horrific, we cant exploit them by buying their goods!

By now I'm convinced there needs to be a new strawman smiley....either that or you honestly don't understand my argument.

Well it is tricky to follow inconsistent logic.

OK hands up. Didn't research the minutiae of the market details before I posted that.

Really? Because I thought that youre points about the Irish famine, the PC market, the premiership as a free market, coke and markets that are more competitive leading to monopolies were all really well researched points with a good grounding in understanding what a free market is, or what a competitive market is, which when you think about it are basic terms of the debate.

The point is, as you concede and even that ranter from the New Republic concedes, the Irish peasantry was reduced to absolute dependancy on a single food crop. When a natural disaster wiped that out, that peasantry was doomed.

So on the one hand you argue its laissez faire economics thats at fault because it argues that state *shouldnt* get involved in the market wherever possible. Which blindly ignores the fact that the states involvement via the discrimnatory penal laws *caused* the dependancy, which caused the massive impact of the famine - not the lack of state involvement. Or are you going to argue that laissez faire economics includes state discrimination against Irish Catholics as policy?

You argue that the laissez faire policy meant the market wouldnt react to the famine despite statistics showing that Ireland went from a net exporter of grain to a *massive* net importer of grain inside a single year in 1847. How do you explain that?

And remember youre whole argument has been the state did nothing, that laissez faire economics prevented them from intefering, leading to the massive death toll - so it must have been market forces that led to Ireland becoming a massive importer of grain - reacting to the famine purely via market forces?!?!?

Cheers man, through your grasp the Sinn Fein version of Irish history plus a healthy dose of anti-globalisation rhetoric youve made my case for me. Id have never thought of citing the Irish famine to debunk the supposed benefits of state inteference without your inspiration.

Hairy Homer

Sand wrote:

Really? Because I thought that youre points about the Irish famine, the PC market, the premiership as a free market, coke and markets that are more competitive leading to monopolies were all really well researched points

Hey. When I make a mistake and it's brought to my attention I acknowledge it. But as I said in my reply to Bonkey it doesn't change my overall argument. There are two big players who dominate the PC market. The third and fourth biggest players are a long way behind them. (OK so I got the third-placed one wrong. Embarassing but not fatal) The rest are also rans.

sand wrote:

So on the one hand you argue its laissez faire economics thats at fault because it argues that state *shouldnt* get involved in the market wherever possible. Which blindly ignores the fact that the states involvement via the discrimnatory penal laws *caused* the dependancy, which caused the massive impact of the famine - not the lack of state involvement.

What caused the dependency was the huge economic pressure on the peasantry imposed by the wealthier classes. Their incredible efficiency in feeding themselves did them no good at the end of the day.

And that is why commenting on it was relevant to this post which started off with the example of Wall Mart, a massive retailer forcing a gherkin company to sell its products at a price that was effectively below cost.

Why didn't the Gherkin company tell Wall-Mart to go sling its hook? Why didn't it just withdraw its custom and sell through another outlet? Why didn't it go to the competition? Because Wall Mart was and is such a dominant player in the supermarket arena that it had to be kept onside. It had the power to force on the Gherkin company an 'efficiency' that led to its demise.

Just how powerful is Wall Mart? Look here. I don't know how reliable this source is but it says that Wall MArt has 12 % market share in the supermarket space.

WOW!!! TWELVE PER CENT. Take note Bonkey, that is less than the share Dell or Compaq has in the world wide PC market but it was enough to force the gherkin company to sell its product for next to nothing. So 12 % can be a dominant position. Especially if most of the competition is down at the 1% share level.

sand wrote:

Or are you going to argue that laissez faire economics includes state discrimination against Irish Catholics as policy?

Some dates for you:
Catholic Emancipation 1829
Start of the Famine 1846 (or maybe 1845. I'm not exactly sure but it doesn't change the point)

You argue that the laissez faire policy meant the market wouldnt react to the famine despite statistics showing that Ireland went from a net exporter of grain to a *massive* net importer of grain inside a single year in 1847. How do you explain that?

Repeal of the Corn Laws. Not that it did the peasantry much good. They had another couple of years of misery to go after '47.

sand wrote:

And remember youre whole argument has been the state did nothing, that laissez faire economics prevented them from intefering, leading to the massive death toll - so it must have been market forces that led to Ireland becoming a massive importer of grain - reacting to the famine purely via market forces?!?!?

That's not actually what I said. What I am saying, and one side of the debate at the core of this thread, is that simply relying on market forces to organise the basic functions of society is folly.

The state is not to blame for what it did in reaction to the Famine; it's to blame for what it didn't do before it. ORganising proper backup systems and safety measures so that people were not so vulnerable as to rely on the health of a single food crop. Forcing people on to the margins where they are so much more efficient than those they serve and are punished for it by financial ruin, is madness.

Like I said before, maybe we can forgive the ignorant Victorians, but today's generation has no excuse.

sand wrote:

Cheers man, through your grasp the Sinn Fein version of Irish history plus a healthy dose of anti-globalisation rhetoric youve made my case for me. Id have never thought of citing the Irish famine to debunk the supposed benefits of state inteference without your inspiration.

I'm not a Sinn Feiner, never have been.

I haven't used the famine in this thread to bash Britain. I've used it to bash a simplistic notion of market theory that 'competition is good' and 'markets enforce better efficiency' is in many cases a nonsense.

The Catholic peasantry of the 1840s were incredibly 'efficient' food producers. What good did it do them?

And it's not a case of 'All markets bad, all state intervention good' The real sensible argument should be about when and to what extent we allow the state to regulate markets, or rather to regulate the initial conditions inside which markets can operate freely.

Everyone, even socialists, should recognise (and I think most Lefties now do) that market forces are a fact of life. They do exist, they must be observed and taken account of.

They're a bit like the weather. Only a fool would go out in a rainstorm without a coat or umbrella.

But those who worship market forces as the source of all good and the be all and end all of our civilisation are like those who worship the moon because of its influence on the elements.

The dictionary definition of which is 'lunatic'.

Take a bow, Sand.

Sand

What caused the dependency was the huge economic pressure on the peasantry imposed by the wealthier classes. Their incredible efficiency in feeding themselves did them no good at the end of the day.

Penal laws -> Subdivision of catholic farms -> a long time -> tiny catholic farms -> dependancy on potato crop to ensure *existence*.

Primary school kids learn this stuff for christs sake.

Catholic Emancipation 1829

Oh so the damage wrought by that policy was reversed in 16-18 years? Whats holding up the African Americans - they got emancipated in the 1860s or thereabouts and theyre still having troubles.

Repeal of the Corn Laws. Not that it did the peasantry much good. They had another couple of years of misery to go after '47.

Ah yes the corn laws. Its good of you to bring this up because its another way to sink your attack on market forces.

What were the corn laws?

From here

The first Corn Law was passed in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic War. Although it was called a Corn Law, it legislated about wheat, the most important corn crop. The Corn Law said that cheap foreign wheat could not be imported into Britain until the price of British wheat was more than 80 shillings a quarter. This made wheat, flour and bread more expensive than it could have been.

So the corn laws were government inteference and trade barriers in a market. So the government helped resolve the famine by actually *getting out* of the market not by interfering in it. So again, the only conclusion we can draw is that market forces led to the massive reaction to the famine - once those market forces were allowed to act by the retreat of an interfering government.

So the conditions required for the viciousness of the famine were brought about by the penal laws (government policy outside of market concerns) and the famine was eased by the repeal of the corn laws (the retreat of the government from barriers to trade).

Thanks man, any more points you wish to make on my behalf?

That's not actually what I said. What I am saying, and one side of the debate at the core of this thread, is that simply relying on market forces to organise the basic functions of society is folly.

In the example youve been citing the smartest thing the government did was stop trying to intefere with market forces.

I will give government some credit though - You can wait 50 years for market forces to build railroads, but a government can build it in 5-10 years if they view it as required policy. Government is good at rapid mass infrastructure development - but theyll do so with a lot of baggage attached like political corruption. Some Japanese cities have tremendous infrastructure - far beyond their requirements actually because of government links to the construction companies.

But those who worship market forces as the source of all good and the be all and end all of our civilisation are like those who worship the moon because of its influence on the elements.

Again, the example you cite doesnt bear this out. If government policy was truly laissez faire then they wouldnt have passed penal laws to reduce a particular of society to a subsistence level of existence, which doesnt make any economic sense. If they were truly laissez faire then they wouldnt have passed corn laws which can only have been a favour to British farmers - to protect them from foreign competition by holding the price of wheat artificially high. Both these polices contributed to the effects of the famine.

And the effects of badly thought out government tinkering with the market to accomplish some goal outside of the market continues to this day. Only now the corn laws of today are designed to protect EU farmers rather than just British.

I'm not a Sinn Feiner, never have been.

I didnt say you were a SFer - I said your version of events was a mix of the SF version of Irish history and anti-globalisation rhetoric.

Lennoxschips

They [the protestors] believe that poor countries should rely on the charity of the rich rather than from trade and industry which can cause jobs to be lost in developed countries.

No they don't. They believe that people in the third world should be allowed to enjoy the same rights and benefits as workers in the developed countries.

Pesky things like health care, pensions and human rights in the first world get in the way of profits of companies manufacturing goods in developed countries, so corporations move their operations overseasm, where these pesky things don't exist.

SkepticOne

Lennoxschips wrote:

No they don't. They believe that people in the third world should be allowed to enjoy the same rights and benefits as workers in the developed countries.

Do they enjoy them without such investment?

Pesky things like health care, pensions and human rights in the first world get in the way of profits of companies manufacturing goods in developed countries, so corporations move their operations overseasm, where these pesky things don't exist.

The protesters are terribly concerned about these companies that exploit workers in third world countries? Why is it that these third world countries are crawling over themselves to attract such investment into their countries? Why are the populations of these countries pleased when such investment arrives?

Could it be that the people, seeing as they have little chance of health care and pensions in the first place and see these corporations as a means of improvement in their lives?

Maybe the protesters might think of travelling to these countries and pointing out to the people the error of their ways in this regard. Clearly they have a lot to learn. Instead they protest against the lowering of trade barriers and subsidies against third world countries which those very same countries (as well as many NGOs) are trying to see lifted.

Alternatively, why not give up the pretense. No one likes to see their job moving to India or Morroco. Lets admit that this isn't about 'exploitation' of those workers since those workers are only too happy to take up those jobs given the alternatives in the absence of such 'exploitation'. There is nothing wrong with simply fighting for your own interests.

Lennoxschips

You are failing to make a distinction between fair trade and unfair trade. You are saying that by being against unfair trade, that I am against all kinds of trade with the third world.

I'm not against trade, I'm just against unfair trade. I refuse to buy Nike shoes, but have no problems buying Max Havelaar coffee and tea products.

SkepticOne

Lennoxschips wrote:

You are failing to make a distinction between fair trade and unfair trade. You are saying that by being against unfair trade, that I am against all kinds of trade with the third world.

I'm not against trade, I'm just against unfair trade. I refuse to buy Nike shoes, but have no problems buying Max Havelaar coffee and tea products.

But why would you buy Nike shoes in the first place? Yes, they make excessive profits on shoes while paying little more (if any) than the going rate to third world labour. For me they are simply bad value and I won't be contributing to their profits.

Having said that I won't be contributing to Nike's profits, I may well be wearing clothing that has its origins in third world countries where the working standards are far below Irish or developed country standards. By our standards we may well consider these to be 'sweatshops'. However, to those working in those sweatshops, it matters little whether money is being creamed off by the likes of Nike (or some other corporate) or not. What matters is what they get out of it; whether they can feed their children or not.

If Nike can get workers, then it means that they are at least competitive with whatever other employers there might be in that area.

Like an interview said to Naomi Klien on BBC radio yesterday, "You as a middle-class Canadian might not be terribly impressed by a corporations activities in a developing country, but that might not be the case for someone whose only other option is the rice-paddy".

So for me, the real Nike issue really comes down to someone in a Western developed country not wanting to be ripped off (and possibly embarrasment about being ripped off in the past through the purchase of expensive gimmicky shoes). But so that it doesn't seem like we are doing things for selfish reasons we tack on an unnecessary 'moral' dimension.

This is similar to the jobs aspect I mentioned earlier. We don't like to admit that we want to protect our jobs in the West (at the expense of developing countries) so we tack on the moral aspect of exploitation as a salve to our consciences.

Thus we have the ideas of unfair trade and exploitation.

By the way, I'm not targetting this at you specifically. I'm talking about the overall impression given by the ant-globalist protesters at events like Cancun. Possibly the problem is lack of leadership and lack of the willingness to think things through sufficiently, leaving behind a simplistic pointing of the finger at specific corporations and organisations while the deeper, more complex problems of the world are ignored.

Finally, buying 'fair trade' products, if they pay better money than the going rate to developing country farmers is, of course, a good thing. It is good that out of the pure goodness in peoples hearts in developed countries people are willing to help out the poor in developing countries. It is peoples' charitable nature that makes 'fair trade' coffee possible.

But why is the going rate so low in the first place? Again, we are back to trade barriers and subsidies (both agricultural and non-agricultural) in rich countries and the anti-globalist ideals that have led to these.

Hairy Homer

Sand wrote:

Penal laws -> Subdivision of catholic farms -> a long time -> tiny catholic farms -> dependancy on potato crop to ensure *existence*.

Primary school kids learn this stuff for christs sake.

And this contradicts the paragraph you cited, how?

Sand wrote:

Oh so the damage wrought by that policy was reversed in 16-18 years? Whats holding up the African Americans - they got emancipated in the 1860s or thereabouts and theyre still having troubles.

Given that we're talking about the land of the free with a renowned antipathy to 'big government' and whose constitution declares it a 'self-evident truth' that 'all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That these include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' etc

One for YOU to explain surely.

Sand wrote:

Ah yes the corn laws. Its good of you to bring this up because its another way to sink your attack on market forces.

I'm not attacking market forces. Market forces are a fact of life. I'm attacking an interpretation of the importance of market forces.

Let's not forget what a market is. A market is simply a mechanism which operates freely under certain initial conditions. You set the ground rules and let matters take their course. All government intervention is, or should be, is an adjustment to the ground rules. It's encumbent on all of us to think through what the effect of any adjustments may be, and they don't always achieve what they were intended to, but it's not a question of 'anything the government does is distorting the market so it shouldn't be allowed.'

In certain circumstances, for the better good of everybody, it should be.

Sand wrote:

So again, the only conclusion we can draw is that market forces led to the massive reaction to the famine - once those market forces were allowed to act by the retreat of an interfering government.

OK. Let's say the Penal Laws were 'government intervention' in a market. (They were a lot more strategic than that of course) But for the purposes of this argument let's just say that they were largely responsible for the miserable penury of the Irish peasant. Or is that too Sinn Fein an interpretation for you?

Once those laws were removed, was it right then for the Government to say: 'Hey the Papists are free now. What more do they want?' and just let unfettered market forces for such things as basic accommodation, food, education etc etc operate freely on that subsistence class of people?

Or should it have intervened to try and somehow level the playing field so that some basic amenities and social mobility was made possible among the Catholic peasant class?

Although given the right to vote and allowed entrance to the civil service and professions in 1829, the granting of emancipation only helped the Catholic middle class (which always existed, no matter what Sinn Fein might say). It did little or nothing for the peasantry. With an unregulated market for such matters as farm tenancy and (remember the first two of the '3Fs') little or no fixity of tenure, their freedom to operate was extremely limited. Unlike that of their landlords.

Applying the vigours of the free market on such a huge disadvantaged section of the community led inevitably to the conditions whereby they were forced to the margins of over reliance on a single food stuff.

So Penal Laws made them poor. The free market kept them that way.

sand wrote:

Thanks man, any more points you wish to make on my behalf?

Don't confuse my acceptance of the facts of history with agreement on your interpretation of it. Or Sinn Fein's for that matter.

sand wrote:

I will give government some credit though - You can wait 50 years for market forces to build railroads, but a government can build it in 5-10 years if they view it as required policy. Government is good at rapid mass infrastructure development - but theyll do so with a lot of baggage attached like political corruption. Some Japanese cities have tremendous infrastructure - far beyond their requirements

[plagiarise] 'Thanks man, any more points you wish to make on my behalf?[/plagiarise]

:-)

Sand

And this contradicts the paragraph you cited, how?

Because it explains that tiny Irish catholic tenant farmers dependant on potatos didnt get that way as part of some sort of efficiency drive. They got there due to government intervention. This is something youve been refusing to accept because it questions your use of the famine as a case of the free market gone bad.

One for YOU to explain surely.

Sorry I didnt follow your point beyond the Government of the day not living up to its obligations under the constitution, which only shows we cannot simply trust the government to act "for the better good of everybody".

Let's not forget what a market is. A market is simply a mechanism which operates freely under certain initial conditions. You set the ground rules and let matters take their course. All government intervention is, or should be, is an adjustment to the ground rules. It's encumbent on all of us to think through what the effect of any adjustments may be, and they don't always achieve what they were intended to, but it's not a question of 'anything the government does is distorting the market so it shouldn't be allowed.'

But youre not arguing for minor adjustments to the market. Youre arguing for sabotage of the market to attempt to reverse the outcome of the market and the benefits it has for everyone, and instead seek an advantage for some entrenched interest group - in this case Walmarts suppliers who dont want to face awkward things like competition that force them to be the best for the job, rather than just American. Benefit the few, at the exspense of the many.

The 2nd problem is that governments have been shown to be very poor at thinking out the long term affects of their "tinkering" and the good of the economy - and thus the people in it - comes second to short term political electioneering and cronyism everytime. If you want to look at incompetence youre example of the corn laws is a good example - didnt set out to accomplish what it wanted, but it did prevent corn imports getting in. Incompetence and cronyism all rolled into one. A tradition continued to this day with Independant TDs "selling" their votes to Fianna Fail.

Once those laws were removed, was it right then for the Government to say: 'Hey the Papists are free now. What more do they want?' and just let unfettered market forces for such things as basic accommodation, food, education etc etc operate freely on that subsistence class of people?

Why not? Theres no reason to suggest that the Irish are any less capable of thriving in an market economy. Maybe the first step to help would have been for the government to repeal the Corn laws in 1829 while they were at it to ease the dependancy on potatos. However youve claimed/implied that the famine and its effects were a result of the market and the way it operated, all the while doing your best to ignore the effect of the penal laws which were the real cause of the dependancy and subsitence agrarian economy which was so tragically vunerable to crop failure. Even here you only allow for their effects for the sake of argument, not as the accepted primary factor.

So youre looking at the famine - pointing at the market shouting "look what the market did!!!" and trying to ignore that if the market had been applied without government interference as in the penal laws or the corn laws it is likely the conditions for such a harsh famine would never have come about.

Applying the vigours of the free market on such a huge disadvantaged section of the community led inevitably to the conditions whereby they were forced to the margins of over reliance on a single food stuff.

Ha - the free market wasnt applied to reduce them to a subsistence agrarian economy. It was government intervention. Theres no other way to describe the penal laws. But then, as youve said yourself it was "for the better good of everybody". After all, the Catholics needed to be kept out the market - they were living in appalling conditions. It would have been immoral to trade with them.

bonkey

Sand wrote:

Ha - the free market wasnt applied to reduce them to a subsistence agrarian economy. It was government intervention.

I would agree with this....with the proviso that I would clarify it to say that it was bad government intervention which caused the problem, and that this case is not necessarily an argument against government intervention.

jc

Hairy Homer

Sand wrote:

Because it explains that tiny Irish catholic tenant farmers dependant on potatos didnt get that way as part of some sort of efficiency drive. They got there due to government intervention. This is something youve been refusing to accept because it questions your use of the famine as a case of the free market gone bad.

You're confusing cause and effect. The government did not institute an efficiency drive among the peasantry. The peasantry reacted to the situation they found themselves in--no capital, no security of tenure, tiny small holdings, no regulation of landlords--to put in a system of subsistence which delivered the maximum amount of food and nutrition for the means they had to produce it.

And if I may say so, your idea of the free market seems to be Utopian: that if a perfect situation existed with a level playing field and maximum freedom of entrance to a particular market then a general level of prosperity would ensue. That may well be true, but it's like the old joke about not starting from here. In reality, ideal situations rarely apply. The initial conditions, or 'ground rules' in which a market --any market--is allowed to operate freely are perhaps the most important factor determining how it will pan out.

The situation in which the peasantry found themselves in the 1840s was that they were hopelessly disadvantaged with respect to their landlords who had complete freedom of operation with regard to setting rents and enforcing evictions.

By refusing to alter those initial conditions the government of the day was guilty of creating a precarious position--dependency on a single food crop--which doomed a million people to starvation.

sand wrote:

But youre not arguing for minor adjustments to the market. Youre arguing for sabotage of the market to attempt to reverse the outcome of the market and the benefits it has for everyone, and instead seek an advantage for some entrenched interest group

I never said anything of the kind. I was reacting to quotes like this one

some muppet wrote:

Walmart are one of the greatest successes in the history of the market system and a lesson that demonstrates the success and power of the market system and it's importance to ordinary people

which suggests that any damage caused by Wallmart's aggressive policy to its suppliers must be tolerated because of the 'power of the market system'.

Incidentally I'm still waiting for Bonkey to jump on you for calling Wallmart a monopoly when the only figure I could find for their market share was 12 per cent--less than that for HP and Dell in their industry.

In a sense, of course you're right. It is a DOMINANT player which can exert huge pressure, not always beneficial, on its suppliers. But not a monopolist. It doesn't need to be to get to that stage.

sand wrote:

The 2nd problem is that governments have been shown to be very poor at thinking out the long term affects of their "tinkering"

There is some basis to that claim,but in a democracy it is the duty of the populace to be aware of how market forces operate and to insist on initial conditions that bring the most general good.

Awareness of market forces: good
Slavish adherence to their excesses: bad

sand wrote:

Theres no reason to suggest that the Irish are any less capable of thriving in an market economy. Maybe the first step to help would have been for the government to repeal the Corn laws in 1829 while they were at it to ease the dependancy on potatos.

I refer you to your earlier post when you said that greater availability of corn locally had a miniscule effect on famine relief. And the Corn Laws were not enacted, or even repealed, solely with the Irish peasant farmer in mind. There were other vested interests on either side of that argument.

In fact, what helped pull the Irish peasantry out of its penury was Government Intervention in the form of the Land Acts of the last 30 years or so of the 19th century, culminating in the Wydham Act of 1903. Low-cost government loans to tenants and incentives to landowners to sell helped create conditions where small farmers were able to take more control of their own affairs.

Incidentally those farmers became the backbone of the very class of newly empowered middle class people which founded the original Sinn Fein but that's going off at a tangent.

Hairy Homer

bonkey wrote:

Except that when you say "nromally" you mean "in a few examples - some of which are flawed - that I can provide".....as we will now see.

This[/url] would tend to show that Fujitsu/Siemens are fourth in the world...just behind......IBM. So thats two of your points knocked on the head.

"Dominant" in this case meaning "have approximately one third of the market between them" ??? Indeed, the top 5 have less than 50% of the market between them. Given that you're talking this signifying lack of competition, I think we can safely say that short of the figures I've linked to being totally incorrect, your example kinda undermines your entire argument.

Exactly what I thought when the world's third-largest PC manufacturer was dismissed as being "nowhere", or that two players with "teen-percentage" shares in a market dominated anything.


And what does what I've just posted say about your equivalent knowledge of the subjects you are presenting as "test-cases"???

Hairy Homer is ALWAYS right!!! Even when he's (temporarily) wrong. Look on my musings ye mighty and despair.

Looks like IBM is in fact 'nowhere' in the PC market after all. Although it owns a minority stake in the company that is.

Hate tha'.

Earthhorse

I'm not too sure whether you've read the original article Memnoch linked to Hairy Homer but, if you have, I fail to see why you've linked to another, in which we are told WalMart has 12% market share (of supermarkets) when this really isn't the issue.

We are told in the original article that, "Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company... The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals."

And it is this huge presence, this massive and unparallaled buying power which is unique to WalMart that allows it exert such influence, not market share. So whilst Sand might not be correct to call WalMart a monopoly they have a monopolist's power and, as is mentioned, they are a monoply when it comes to general merchandise and groceries.

You go on to compare IBM, HP and Dell whilst admitting that IBM have remodelled themselves as an IT consultancy firm. HP also engage in such work whereas Dell do not. And by restricting the definition to PC's you leave out the real third player in the market for desktop computers, which is Apple. You're just not comparing like with like and I'm wondering what the relevance of your comparisons are?

In any event, to answer Memnoch's question, I do believe that there are some implications for American jobs if they continue to shop at WalMart. But even the article admits that in Vlasic's collapse, "the gallon jar of pickles...wasn't a critical factor."

It's impossible to stop people shopping for bargains and buying at the lowest price even if there's a resultant loss of jobs in their country. How many people here buy Irish when there's an equivalent quality import product available at a cheaper price? It's just not feasable in the long run and the impact on jobs is ultimately minimal compared to the other factors at play in a country's economic development.

Hairy Homer

Earthhorse wrote:

I'm not too sure whether you've read the original article Memnoch linked to Hairy Homer but, if you have, I fail to see why you've linked to another, in which we are told WalMart has 12% market share (of supermarkets) when this really isn't the issue.

It's what comes of going off on tangents, Earth Horse.

I really don't have the stomach to go over it all again. I was just amused to find that my 'impression' that IBM had slipped so far out of the limelight in the PC business (which is correct) as to not be a major player in it any more (which was incorrect at the time) has now culminated in them disappearing from it altogether.

Hairy Homer is always right.....eventually.

earthhorse wrote:

And it is this huge presence, this massive and unparallaled buying power which is unique to WalMart that allows it exert such influence, not market share.

Surely that's a chicken and egg situation. Its huge market share gives it massive buying power. Just as the huge buying power of the likes of Dell has a major effect on the business models of rival PC makers.

earthhorse wrote:

by restricting the definition to PC's you leave out the real third player in the market for desktop computers, which is Apple. You're just not comparing like with like and I'm wondering what the relevance of your comparisons are?

Arghhhh!!!!! An Apple fan. Hawk Spit. Throw garlic. Wave crucifix and generally run away.

Actually, your statement is factually incorrect, according to the link that Bonkey put up (go check it out for yourself if you like) 'Apple's global market share is 1.7 per cent. Drops out of top 10 vendors.'

Good thing too.

earthhorse wrote:

In any event, to answer Memnoch's question, I do believe that there are some implications for American jobs if they continue to shop at WalMart. But even the article admits that in Vlasic's collapse, "the gallon jar of pickles...wasn't a critical factor."

As I said, I'm not going to repeat it all again. Just my observation that those who worship market forces as the reference point against which all attitudes and morals should be measured are of the same mentality and should be offered the same respect as those who worship the moon.

Loonies.

NB this does not deny the existence of, or the proper importance and respect due to those forces.

Or to the moon.

Earthhorse

I was mostly seeking clarification on some points but again I'm left a little confused. You say that WalMart's, "huge market share gives it massive buying power". Yet they only have a 12% market share if we define the market as supermarket space. But you called up Sand (at least I think it was you) for saying they were a monopoly.

This is the same point I'm making about your PC analagy. It all depends on how you define the market (even if Apple's share of desktops is far lower than I thought).

So the problem isn't that anyone slavishly worships market forces, on this thread or in the real world, but that implementing systems to keep such forces in check is difficult, because defining markets, market shares, and hence abuse of a dominant market position, are far more complex things than you make the out to be.

Earthhorse

http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4049

For the Onion's take on this!

Hairy Homer

Earthhorse wrote:

I was mostly seeking clarification on some points but again I'm left a little confused. You say that WalMart's, "huge market share gives it massive buying power". Yet they only have a 12% market share if we define the market as supermarket space. But you called up Sand (at least I think it was you) for saying they were a monopoly.

This is the same point I'm making about your PC analagy. It all depends on how you define the market (even if Apple's share of desktops is far lower than I thought).

So the problem isn't that anyone slavishly worships market forces, on this thread or in the real world, but that implementing systems to keep such forces in check is difficult, because defining markets, market shares, and hence abuse of a dominant market position, are far more complex things than you make the out to be.

Oh God. You'll have to read the WHOLE thread, carefully attributing each quote to the right person and seeing where they/we diverged before you come close to understanding what each person is trying to say.

Life is too short.

For what it's worth, I think I would probably agree with you. Or be so close to your point of view as makes no difference.

Feel free to PM me if you really want to discuss further.