“But the workers who are left will get paid more. Assuming there are any left. Is that risk worth it?”
The workers do get paid more but I think that this would be an unjust profit. This is because it was gained through coercion and instilling fear into other workers and businessmen. So ethically, I don’t think that this gain is really a gain worth keeping -if .50 cents is enough subjectively, then everything is just and a rise in wages due to violence is unjust, since it ignores the social will of others embodied in prices.
Yes, I know they make an arbitrary distinction and exception for consumption goods to be “possessed” since they have too. When a Marxist refers to property, they are usually referring to capital goods which makes discussions difficult since so many terms are defined differently. This also ties into anarchism. An Ancap would define Anarchism as a society that is “Stateless” or the absence of a coercive monopoly. Wheras the communists define it as a “Classless” society with the absence of private ownership in capital goods. With so many different terms and definitions, it’s no wonder there is never any meaningful discussions between the two groups.
Of course this distinction between private property and private possession is contradictory since it is ultimately all too true that capital can be possessed -that is, your above mentioned butt scratcher can be an object of possession. So theft would be private possession and thus a contradiction ensues if I’m reading you right.
Uhh I thought all the jobs in china were basically government controlled. With the so-called free market corporations essentially under control of the state.
If someone’s alternative is starvation, you don’t have to pay them very much or treat them very well. Its competition between entrepreneurs that raises the standard of living for employees. I guess its missing.
It’s called supply and demand. There is a high supply of low skilled Chinese labor and a relatively low demand for them. Thus, wages and working conditions are low. If government intervened to somehow “better” working conditions or increase real wages, then some of these workers would inevitably be laid off and would be unable to find jobs elsewhere. So, quite frankly, their alternatives are working for low real wages voluntarily or starving to death due to government intervention.
“Uhh I thought all the jobs in china were basically government controlled. With the so-called free market corporations essentially under control of the state.”
Disregard my ignorance when it comes to understanding modern China. I didn’t know that a lot of the jobs there are government owned. Is there a source I can go to learn more about this? So does Microsoft deal directly with the Chinese government then?
You are absolutely right, this has been written about ad nauseum by AE author’s for decades.
Yes this would turn every problem into the modern problems with government institutions.
We are not educating our kids well → more money
not enough apples → more money
never do they say, hey what about the way we are spending our money, what about the way capital is being allocated etc
I’ll tend to agree that this is a major problem, but we must also keep in mind that nearly every nation (no matter how little or how much of a free market they have) goes throug ha stage like this–assuming the Chinese government gives up a lot of control between now and 30 years down the road, I’d be willing to bet anything that once it does the Chinese worker’s standard of living will explode and these work conditions would evaporate without government say-so.
If I recall, the government partly owns nearly all the businesses, though I could be blatantly wrong, in this regard.