Solution to poverty - Socialism or Capitalism?

[twiifm]

At a restaurant you trade money against a good meal. Wealth just got created.
You valued your money less than the meal, and the cook valued the meal less than the money. The sum of the difference of valuation is wealth.

Not all trade is equal.  Most of the time there is a power relationship where the strong exploits the weak.

An example is sweatshops.  People who need jobs are willing to allow themselves to be exploited because they need money.  This was common in 19th/ early 20th century before existence of labor unions

how is a sweatshop exploiting anyone if they agree to work there out of their own free will, without the sweatshop they would be worse off.

Do you believe its ethical to exploit desperate people? Free will is just a red herring

[xkeyscore89]

At a restaurant you trade money against a good meal. Wealth just got created.
You valued your money less than the meal, and the cook valued the meal less than the money. The sum of the difference of valuation is wealth.

Not all trade is equal.  Most of the time there is a power relationship where the strong exploits the weak.

An example is sweatshops.  People who need jobs are willing to allow themselves to be exploited because they need money.  This was common in 19th/ early 20th century before existence of labor unions

how is a sweatshop exploiting anyone if they agree to work there out of their own free will, without the sweatshop they would be worse off.

Do you believe its ethical to exploit desperate people? Free will is just a red herring

They are not as desperate as you think. These people can try to get better work or collectively bargen for better wages or work environment.

[CoinsCoinsEverywhere]

The more u think about it, the more it seams that none of the options are good for solving the poverty.
In a world where technology is increasingly replacing human power, there are more and more manpower that is not needed.

It seams that there are simply too many of us, and that a good way to decrease poverty would be to implement rule of regulating birth rate, similar what china has.
Dont know how would that be sustainable when were talking about pension funds tho.

That's a good point.  But it doesn't seem like it has to be that way.  As populations have increased, so has the number of employed people, even with technology replacing some jobs.  But I'm not sure what the answer is.  There needs to be more demand to support more jobs, but you need more jobs to support more demand.  Having a healthy economy is one of the most helpful ways, but can you ever get to the point where there's enough demand to support everyone having a job if they so choose?

[twiifm]

At a restaurant you trade money against a good meal. Wealth just got created.
You valued your money less than the meal, and the cook valued the meal less than the money. The sum of the difference of valuation is wealth.

Not all trade is equal.  Most of the time there is a power relationship where the strong exploits the weak.

An example is sweatshops.  People who need jobs are willing to allow themselves to be exploited because they need money.  This was common in 19th/ early 20th century before existence of labor unions

how is a sweatshop exploiting anyone if they agree to work there out of their own free will, without the sweatshop they would be worse off.

Do you believe its ethical to exploit desperate people? Free will is just a red herring

They are not as desperate as you think. These people can try to get better work or collectively bargen for better wages or work environment.

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

[Full Spectrum]

At a restaurant you trade money against a good meal. Wealth just got created.
You valued your money less than the meal, and the cook valued the meal less than the money. The sum of the difference of valuation is wealth.

Not all trade is equal.  Most of the time there is a power relationship where the strong exploits the weak.

An example is sweatshops.  People who need jobs are willing to allow themselves to be exploited because they need money.  This was common in 19th/ early 20th century before existence of labor unions

how is a sweatshop exploiting anyone if they agree to work there out of their own free will, without the sweatshop they would be worse off.

Do you believe its ethical to exploit desperate people? Free will is just a red herring

They are not as desperate as you think. These people can try to get better work or collectively bargen for better wages or work environment.

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

I wouldn't call it exploitation as they receive capital and jobs that could have been given to a person in the 1st world. But if that's what you call exploitation then sure, that's how the world works, you need a job to obtain wealth. Look at the Japanese, Koreans, and currently the Chinese, they once were "sweatshops" but the foreign capital that was spent on wages and infrastructure has risen salary and living standards for them. So exploitation? No, that would be like calling going to school "exploitation", going to school even if you hate it makes your chances of obtaining more income later in life higher.

But on regards to the original post, I really believe that the unholy hybrid of both Capitalism and Socialism in the form of Cooperatives will solve poverty issues.

[twiifm]

At a restaurant you trade money against a good meal. Wealth just got created.
You valued your money less than the meal, and the cook valued the meal less than the money. The sum of the difference of valuation is wealth.

Not all trade is equal.  Most of the time there is a power relationship where the strong exploits the weak.

An example is sweatshops.  People who need jobs are willing to allow themselves to be exploited because they need money.  This was common in 19th/ early 20th century before existence of labor unions

how is a sweatshop exploiting anyone if they agree to work there out of their own free will, without the sweatshop they would be worse off.

Do you believe its ethical to exploit desperate people? Free will is just a red herring

They are not as desperate as you think. These people can try to get better work or collectively bargen for better wages or work environment.

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

I wouldn't call it exploitation as they receive capital and jobs that could have been given to a person in the 1st world. But if that's what you call exploitation then sure, that's how the world works, you need a job to obtain wealth. Look at the Japanese, Koreans, and currently the Chinese, they once were "sweatshops" but the foreign capital that was spent on wages and infrastructure has risen salary and living standards for them. So exploitation? No, that would be like calling going to school "exploitation", going to school even if you hate it makes your chances of obtaining more income later in life higher.

But on regards to the original post, I really believe that the unholy hybrid of both Capitalism and Socialism in the form of Cooperatives will solve poverty issues.

So you deny that exploitation exist because you have an example where end justifies the mean 

[ajareselde]

At a restaurant you trade money against a good meal. Wealth just got created.
You valued your money less than the meal, and the cook valued the meal less than the money. The sum of the difference of valuation is wealth.

Not all trade is equal.  Most of the time there is a power relationship where the strong exploits the weak.

An example is sweatshops.  People who need jobs are willing to allow themselves to be exploited because they need money.  This was common in 19th/ early 20th century before existence of labor unions

how is a sweatshop exploiting anyone if they agree to work there out of their own free will, without the sweatshop they would be worse off.

Do you believe its ethical to exploit desperate people? Free will is just a red herring

Not everyone whos working for a much lower paycheck is desperate, since the costs of living vary across the globe.
Thats why Indians are working for pennies , and still manage to live on that pretty good.

It is in the hands of the working people to fight for their rights, but they dont do so, they just keep hoping someone else is going to fight their fight, and that is why most of them are poor and unsatisfied.
Its every man for himself, and if ure not though, ull get overruned by stronger ones, just like in wild nature.

[egghead123]

I am sceptical of anything that ends with "ism" as in socialism,communism,capitalism,facism,totatilarism....lets just have a democracy with social justice for all without the will of one dictating the will of many and vice versa.Is there a system called commonsense?Over regulating and making too many ridiculous laws and overjealous political correctness lead down the slippery slope to tyranny.

[trader001]

At a restaurant you trade money against a good meal. Wealth just got created.
You valued your money less than the meal, and the cook valued the meal less than the money. The sum of the difference of valuation is wealth.

Not all trade is equal.  Most of the time there is a power relationship where the strong exploits the weak.

An example is sweatshops.  People who need jobs are willing to allow themselves to be exploited because they need money.  This was common in 19th/ early 20th century before existence of labor unions

how is a sweatshop exploiting anyone if they agree to work there out of their own free will, without the sweatshop they would be worse off.

Do you believe its ethical to exploit desperate people? Free will is just a red herring

Not everyone whos working for a much lower paycheck is desperate, since the costs of living vary across the globe.
Thats why Indians are working for pennies , and still manage to live on that pretty good.

It is in the hands of the working people to fight for their rights, but they dont do so, they just keep hoping someone else is going to fight their fight, and that is why most of them are poor and unsatisfied.
Its every man for himself, and if ure not though, ull get overruned by stronger ones, just like in wild nature.

Have you even been to India and other developing world? Most people in the 3rd world have to struggle constantly to get food on the table in case you do not know.

[pening]

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

Is it ethical to deny people employment opportunities to maintain protectionist trade relations?  Is it ethical to exploit the consumer by only allowing them to buy local produce, at greater expense.  

Or should we separate ethics and economics and address them individually?

[scryptasicminer]

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

Is it ethical to deny people employment opportunities to maintain protectionist trade relations?  Is it ethical to exploit the consumer by only allowing them to buy local produce, at greater expense.  

Or should we separate ethics and economics and address them individually?

Racism, ageism and sexism will always be here. You can't solve every social issue using law alone.

[twiifm]

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

Is it ethical to deny people employment opportunities to maintain protectionist trade relations?  Is it ethical to exploit the consumer by only allowing them to buy local produce, at greater expense.  

Or should we separate ethics and economics and address them individually?

Those examples arent issues of ethics.  I would say things like child labor laws, workers rights are issues of ethics.

Thats why i don't buy the libertarian ideal of "free market is always right".  They ignore the existence of power in reality .  Libertarians can say people cant be exploited because free will.  Common sense says the opposite.  People get scammed or exploited all the time.

[twiifm]

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

Is it ethical to deny people employment opportunities to maintain protectionist trade relations?  Is it ethical to exploit the consumer by only allowing them to buy local produce, at greater expense.  

Or should we separate ethics and economics and address them individually?

Racism, ageism and sexism will always be here. You can't solve every social issue using law alone.

You cant solve w law but law should reflect society's ideals

[CoinsCoinsEverywhere]

I am sceptical of anything that ends with "ism" as in socialism,communism,capitalism,facism,totatilarism....lets just have a democracy with social justice for all without the will of one dictating the will of many and vice versa.Is there a system called commonsense?Over regulating and making too many ridiculous laws and overjealous political correctness lead down the slippery slope to tyranny.

On the surface this sounds great.  It would be nice not to have so many stupid and inefficient laws and methods for doing things.  The problem is that too many people have different definitions for different things.  And there are a lot of people that (at least seem to) lack commonsense.  If you don't spell things out precisely, someone will figure out how to take advantage of it.  I think that the first and perhaps most important prerequisite for something like this to work is that everyone would have to care about other people as much as they do themselves, and they'd need to be willing to sacrifice for them.

[zedicus]

At a restaurant you trade money against a good meal. Wealth just got created.
You valued your money less than the meal, and the cook valued the meal less than the money. The sum of the difference of valuation is wealth.

Not all trade is equal.  Most of the time there is a power relationship where the strong exploits the weak.

An example is sweatshops.  People who need jobs are willing to allow themselves to be exploited because they need money.  This was common in 19th/ early 20th century before existence of labor unions

how is a sweatshop exploiting anyone if they agree to work there out of their own free will, without the sweatshop they would be worse off.

Do you believe its ethical to exploit desperate people? Free will is just a red herring

They are not as desperate as you think. These people can try to get better work or collectively bargen for better wages or work environment.

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

If people are accepting these jobs out of their own free will and when other jobs are available then they are not at all being exploited. Exploiting someone would be when they would be tricked into accepting a job and then paying them much less then what is promised.

[Nicolas Dorier]

Union labor were great when it made economical sense for workers to union for their own benefit, they should do it.
But, in France for example, union labor became very weak when condition of work became better, and workers started to like their job.
The success of their mission cause their own natural death.

As all organization, it tried to defend itself, as a single organism, selfishly.
So what they have done, is to ask to government for subsidies. They got it, and get it every times they create a strikes. (Have you wondered why French people have a reputation of being lazy and always complaining ?)
They also do it, like my mother experienced, by blackmailing workers that do not join them.

These union labor would die without government support, because the condition of work are not so bad now as they were during their full power.

Without these union labors artificially kept alive, creating strikes on tax payer money, and keeping employers on the defense, employers and employee would collaborate better.
It will happen again officially or not, that employers unionize to control wages, then it will slowly become economically profitable to workers to unionize again.
Labor unions would rise again, but this time for a real need, and not artificial one. And it will win again.
It is an eternal balance to equilibrium, the root of the movement is selfishness, we should acknowledge.
The only way to stop selfishness is coercion, but this is not what society wants, and unfortunately there is not other way.

The sooner government realizes that it is not his goal to settle the quarrel between two parties, the better. Except if there is violation of individual property.
Subsidies, tax break, and welfare is a form of justice whose sole judge are politicians. But this is not the goal of the government as it bypass the legal system, rendering justice tradable against favor.

[twiifm]

At a restaurant you trade money against a good meal. Wealth just got created.
You valued your money less than the meal, and the cook valued the meal less than the money. The sum of the difference of valuation is wealth.

Not all trade is equal.  Most of the time there is a power relationship where the strong exploits the weak.

An example is sweatshops.  People who need jobs are willing to allow themselves to be exploited because they need money.  This was common in 19th/ early 20th century before existence of labor unions

how is a sweatshop exploiting anyone if they agree to work there out of their own free will, without the sweatshop they would be worse off.

Do you believe its ethical to exploit desperate people? Free will is just a red herring

They are not as desperate as you think. These people can try to get better work or collectively bargen for better wages or work environment.

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

If people are accepting these jobs out of their own free will and when other jobs are available then they are not at all being exploited. Exploiting someone would be when they would be tricked into accepting a job and then paying them much less then what is promised.

Well too bad for you that in Western world we already have labor regulation in place.  Do propose to undo those regulations?

You dont have to trick anyone to exploit them.  They willingly allow themselves to be exploited when faced w worse options.  However, this doesnt remove the ethical aspect of the exploit itself.  Like i said free will is a red herring

Either you dont know what a sweatshop is or you think it can't exist because free will and free market.  I find this to be naive

[Nicolas Dorier]

Either you dont know what a sweatshop is or you think it can't exist because free will and free market

Do not compare the condition of today with sweatshop of yesterday.
Compare the life of the worker in sweatshop in a city yesterday with the life of the farmer in the country before yesterday.
Sweatshop was a big deal and an improvement on the alternative. You can't say anyone exploited them, nobody put the gun on their head to flee the country side.

It is great that labor union made things better when it was not at the cost of the tax payer. (ie without using state coercion for their own purpose)

[pening]

My question was simple...is it ethical to exploit desperate people.  Even if these people voluntrarly amd free willungly accets the sweathop jobs.  Yes or no?

Is it ethical to deny people employment opportunities to maintain protectionist trade relations?  Is it ethical to exploit the consumer by only allowing them to buy local produce, at greater expense.  

Or should we separate ethics and economics and address them individually?

Those examples arent issues of ethics.  I would say things like child labor laws, workers rights are issues of ethics.

Thats why i don't buy the libertarian ideal of "free market is always right".  They ignore the existence of power in reality .  Libertarians can say people cant be exploited because free will.  Common sense says the opposite.  People get scammed or exploited all the time.

   If thats your point of view, then I don't really think you understand what "ethics" are.  Certainly you've missed that different people hold different ethical views and value assign them different values and priorities.  You apparently hold child labour in far off lands paramount, another might find employment of local population has greater importance. 

The question you pose isn't simple "yes/no", though most would answer "no" to exploitation there are other factors.  Someone might prefer that there isn't child labour in a far off land, but wants to cloth their child or earn a wage, which trumps their objection to sweatshops.

Also, a libertarian view on the "free market is right" is from the point of view of economics.  Not ethics. This illustrates perfectly my point that they should be separated. 

[Rotary Sausage]

Sigh... This thread is depressing. I think if we want a modern solution to what is causing allot of problems for people, then we should
backtrack our history a bit and see what went wrong, and is still wrong. Such as how WWI and II being planned for many years prior
for the ultimate purpose of consolidating wealth, property and assets. Look who benefited most. It's not you, not me. Not even the
majority of billionaires. Only the ultra mega rich insiders to the monopoly child's game have gained the most.

The funny part about this is, these ultra rich type are brick dumb. Can't even tie their own shoes most of them. The main reason they
do what they do is because they are born and bread human predators and are good at targeting people who don't have true passion
about their history. Then when they tell us how history went and we don't like what they said, we get blamed for ending up in an
economic and cultural mess. Then when we or legitimate acting media takes issue with something, we get fed a slew of terms, lingoes or
slogans that label many people as socially undesirable so that we turn on each other and bicker the subject at hand into a puddle
of feces. And not many people would look at a pile of feces for closer inspection, nor do others want to look at a pile of inspected feces.
If we deserve better(and we do), we must prove it by not being mind slaves and getting baited over every cheap psyop pop culture issue.

There will always be rotten people harming others on Earth, but what's worse are the people who adopt the rot pushed onto them
and spreading it to their children, friends and associates. Once we are so dumbed down, the psyops work on autopilot. How about
creating our own psyops, brainwashing ourselves into a more functional naturally existing human form. That would be great, and legitimate
government will follow. How else did formerly A+ rated nations come to exist in the not so distant past? They did things more in
accordance with nature. But tough luck. Many of us are addicted to counterfeit natures and are viciously ignorant. I myself am not
excused from this type of description and I desire to see myself as an uncompromised individual human expression.

Anyway, how the heck did we get all the way to 2014 and the vast majority of people are still not critical thinkers. Or at least have
a deep concern in not making bad critical decisions. Decade after decade, the same mind games are played out on the public and
we gobble it up like a greedy bottom feeding catfish already hooked by 100 other fishers in the same month. And just like a mindless
fish, we do not feel the pain of the hook penetrating our flesh(fish do not contain the anatomical portion in the brain that allows for
the conscious processing of pain. A fish only can process the sensation that there is trauma and it needs to escape, but it is not
deterred from making the same mistake in the future, as there is no pain for it to comply with and no motive to learn). We just
keep coming back for more and more. Bait after bait, hook after hook, net after net. Sounds like mind control because I certainly
don't subscribe to the idea that humans are just too dumb to manage ourselves. 10,000 years of recent human history is something
to stay perpetually excited about and live our lives around. We don't need to live with amnesia like a fish does.