- Capitalism and Alternatives -

You actually rewrote my post? - Incredible!

Posted by: Stuart Gort ( USA ) on October 14, 1999 at 16:27:56:

In Reply to: Anyone more interesting to debate with around here? (better draft) posted by Stoller on October 13, 1999 at 16:12:08:

:: Half of the businesses in this country employ less than 20 people. Those businesses employ a full 20% of the work force. Sorry if numbers like 50% and 20% seem anecdotal to you but none of these businesses can function at all utilizing the practices [skill, variety of skills, and the higher wages they would command] you just described.

My point was and still is that a small business of less than 20 employees cannot function by focusing discreet tasks with single employees. Only an idiot would set up a small business to operate like that. And frankly, Barry only ignorance upholds your confidence in this matter. Work flow halts in a small business when people are not cross-trained and proficient in many facets of the business due to attendance problems.

It's pretty easy to win arguements when all you have to do is rewrite my posts and blather the rest. Perhaps you consider me the debating equivalent of catnip but I certainly expect more from you than this.

If 20% of the work force and 50% of all businesses cannot function using the evil, profit focused methodology you lament, how can your assessment of reality be accurate and why should anyone listen to you?

:: Exactly. That's why 'those businesses' have to go! Mindless repetition of simple, discrete tasks is why your productivity is so high---and why your workers are 'worth' so little! TINA ('There is no alternative') is simply the voice of the status quo capitalists defending the degrading work conditions that produce their profits.

You live in a dream world, Barry. You haven't the least idea what goes on in my business. How is it you have such strong opinions of things you have no clue about? All my craftsmen are cross-trained in as many things as I have had time to teach them. They work four days a week if they want and are paid handsomely by the piece. The ones that are good at it like the job and make good money. The ones that aren't good at it quit rather quickly. I'm sure they all find alternatives.

:: I will not listen to your rambling anecdotes. Do I force mine on you? What could any of them prove? It's what the majority of people experience that counts. Or at least in a democracy, it's supposed to be...

Yeah, that's the thing. The majority of people develop rather quizzical looks on their faces when you start preaching. My anecdotes are a direct and irrefutable rebuttal to your generalized nonsense but you dismiss them by ignoring or rewriting them to suit yourself.

Stu: If I take unpaid labor, I'm stealing from the proletariat. Well my employees and I made a deal.
Barry: You haven't heard any thing I've said in the last several posts have you? The 'deal' is predicated upon the employee's lack of ownership of anything except his or her labor power. If 'employees' owned some the means of production, they wouldn't give you the time of the day. They’d work for themselves. Is this concept really all that difficult to grasp?

What stops them from obtaining it? Absolutely nothing! Nothing stopped me from obtaining it - never having made over $38,000 and remaining uneducated by your standards I'm building a business. What you advocate is the redistribution and theft of my property. You wish to twist morality to suit yourself so you can steal from me because you lack the initiative to work for yourself. That sir, is immoral. Better for you to get very hungry and find out what a blessing that menial job really is.

:: Freedom to or freedom from? Your freedom---to extract as much surplus from your workers as possible---is what oppilates their freedom to be the same 'success' as you!

I am the rebuttal. You're wrong and your argument is built on nothing more substantial than keystrokes. You do not discredit or debunk the facts as I present them. You just ramble on as if your booklearned idealism is axiomatic. But when you are old and weary, you will realize that it would have been better just to tend to your garden or be about your business rather than strive your whole life for nothing more than a hopeless ideal.

:: You lost the argument several posts ago, Stuart. You just don't know it.

:: Anyone more interesting to debate with around here?

Yet you continue to answer my posts. I don't expect you will continue on much longer because eventually you'll need to actually address the facts as I presented them about the stock market or ignore them completely because of their disconcerting, disquieting tenacity.

Stuart Gort


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