When I asked for specific examples of how capitalism is evil and we need the state to protect us from their predations, I got this...
QuoteWell, two notable examples inspired two of the best American novels.
In the early 1900s, there was a meat packer strike in Chicago that led Upton Sinclair to research the conditions in the plants. This led to him writing The Jungle. An independent government audit of meat packing plants led to the conclusion that the details of the story were accurate, which led to the Pure Food Act and eventually the FDA. Not long after, unionization became commonplace in the industry.
Conditions improved, but the recession in the 1980s led a lot of meat packing plants to lower wages and reduced benefits - this downturn caused the 1985 Hormel Meat strike.
There was also the Dust Bowl migration from the central southern states to California, which led John Steinbeck to write Grapes of Wrath. Unlike Sinclair, Steinbeck actually downplayed the terrible conditions of labor camps, and he still got called out as a muckraker. The necessity of making a profit and the absence of jobs left an opening for agricultural profiteers to hire people at less-than-poverty wages and with little or no recourse in the case of injury or sickness.
For a more recent example, look no farther than the 50s, when Cesar Chavez led the migrant worker strikes and boycotts for grape farmers in California - these strikes, unlike the Hormel strike, actually worked out for the laborers, who were afforded better wages and rights through negotiations.
But let's go as back as far as we need to, at least in American history. The market was exceptionally regulation-lax in the beginning of America's colonial era, when you could buy and sell people. And the money made from trampling on those people's rights were a staple of the southern states' economy. I've heard MZ harp about how awful the federal government is, and how much better state and local government is instead, but it took a civil war and a federal takeover before any of the confederate states were willing to give up their "property".
Unregulated business puts profits above human rights. Profits in and of themselves are not evil, but it's been so often the case throughout history that they stand in the way of people receiving even the most basic of necessities.
I already went into how slavery was propagated by the state and all I got was...
QuoteAh yes, room and board. Very expensive to keep up a tiny open-air shack and to feed your slaves veggies and gruel. Much more expensive than paying wages. How long do you suppose it would have taken for the free market to finish the phasing-out it was doing so well? Another 20 years? 50? 100?
Didn't even touch the points I made about how the state propagated slavery so obviously that's just too uncomfortable a point for him to address, oh well...
But as for the evil companies exploiting workers, I have to ask. Who was it who was REALLY complaining about the workers? Was it the workers themselves or some other entity with an ulterior motive?
*facepalms*
Upton Sinclair???
They actually took that propaganda of his seriously?
Wow; shows the level of research used by these folks. :P
I'm not familiar with that story, care to tell me how it really happened?
Well you see, when boy likes a girl very much... Oh wait you ment the other story.
Nevermind... *cough*
Quote from: Lord T Hawkeye on April 20, 2010, 08:40:46 PM
I'm not familiar with that story, care to tell me how it really happened?
I was going to post Fringeelements's video on the subject but couldn't find it. I really wish he'd repose that video of his.
Oh well, I'll just have to go by memory.
Long story short, after he released his book, Congress passed legislation regarding meat packers.
However, Sinclair was actually very upset, because he saw that the regulation just acted as corporatism that choked out the smaller meat packers who couldn't absorb the costs of the regulations; all at the benefit of the big corporate meat packers, giving them closer-to-monopoly status than before.
I don't remember what Sinclair's intentions were, or whether or not he had been trying to get socialism or whatever, but I do know that his book got laws passed that allowed the very people he didn't like to rake it in.
Any evidence? Wikipedia's got nothing.
Quote from: Lord T Hawkeye on April 20, 2010, 09:10:04 PM
Any evidence? Wikipedia's got nothing.
Figures.
I found this http://mises.org/daily/1655 from mises.org, but
1. Sinclair isn't the main focus of the article (I had to do a cltr f of his name) and
2. I love the author of this article, but damn I wish he would source his claims...
Aw well, can't blame a guy for trying. :(
I'll have to ask Fringeelements what his sources are for his points about "The Jungle." and the legislation.
QuoteUnregulated business puts profits above human rights.
Yeah, because governments put human rights on a pedestal, they don't care about power, control, or personal motives at all. They are, and shall always be angles, send to us by Odin himself to protects us from the evil influence of Hades.
How THE FUCK is it possible that the market receives so much shit for this stuff, yet when governments do it ALL THE FUCKING TIME, INCLUDING RIGHT NOW, they don't get any of this criticism? Are Texans going to be like this after 20 years of education with the new textbooks? But instead of the state, they will excuse religion.
This is fucking frustrating.
The Jungle is a work of fiction, and such an astounding array of creationist-level invectives and baseless assertions that it's a complete mystery to me why any skeptic takes it at all seriously.
That bad is it? Okay, note to self, don't ever read it.
Quote from: MrBogosity on April 21, 2010, 06:31:30 AM
The Jungle is a work of fiction, and such an astounding array of creationist-level invectives and baseless assertions that it's a complete mystery to me why any skeptic takes it at all seriously.
Kent Hovind's BhD Thesis bad, or just one of his seminars, bad?
Quote from: VectorM on April 21, 2010, 05:50:39 AMYeah, because governments put human rights on a pedestal, they don't care about power, control, or personal motives at all. They are, and shall always be angles, send to us by Odin himself to protects us from the evil influence of Hades.
How THE FUCK is it possible that the market receives so much shit for this stuff, yet when governments do it ALL THE FUCKING TIME, INCLUDING RIGHT NOW, they don't get any of this criticism? Are Texans going to be like this after 20 years of education with the new textbooks? But instead of the state, they will excuse religion.
This is fucking frustrating.
You noticed that double standard too, huh?
Yeah, I couldn't have said that last part better; it is.
That's why it's called, "The Cult of the Omnipotent State".
Because in their eyes, be it liberal-statist, or conservative-statist; the state cannot do wrong.
Quote from: surhotchaperchlorome on April 21, 2010, 10:26:10 AM
Kent Hovind's BhD Thesis bad, or just one of his seminars, bad?
Not thesis bad, but bordering on seminar bad.
Think about it: one of his accusations is that, occasionally, workers fall into the meat processors and their remains end up on store shelves. Not ONE prosecutor was interested in that? There wasn't ONE test of meat from store shelves showing the presence of human meat (or rat meat/droppings, that was another one)? Not ONE widow to say her husband went to work at the meat plant one day and didn't come back?
I think it's an excellent example of someone making wild accusations without doing the slightest thing to back them up.
I have my students read The Jungle, and they all come away with exactly the same conclusion, that it's fantasism in the service of socialist propaganda. I don't know how any intellectually serious person can read it and not come away with the same idea. It's WHY I have them read it in the first place. Grapes of Wrath is a great story, but to consider it a factual account of the Dust Bowl is stretching reality to the breaking point.
Notice that this guy never actually askes the real questions: WHY did the Dustbowl and the Depression happen? WHY did Polish and Lithuanian immigrants face such a terrible ordeal in Packingtown. They don't ask why because for them, it's a foregone conclusion, they were victims of the bourgeiosie. They never notice, for instance that immigrants in Packington were repressed by a State government machine controlled by Irish Democrats who ran on nepotism and corruption, or the federal agricultural policy that created the conditions for the Dust Bowl, by encouraging deep plowing and over production and then exacerbated it with protectionist policies.