Re: Wal-Mart and Wages?

From: The Trucker (mikcob_at_verizon.net)
Date: 07/23/04 

Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2004 11:33:21 -0700

wilfred wrote:

>
> "Albert" <alwagner@tcac.net> wrote in message
> news:20040722180616.5937dfa2@lfs.mydomain.com...
>> "wilfred" <wilfred@europe.com> wrote:
>> <snip>
>> > > Yes, as a matter of survival, a firm ought to consider their
>> > > effect on the wider economy. As an artifice allowed,
>> > > subsidized and chartered by the host community, they are
>> > > under a moral obligation to play by rules that have a net
>> > > benefit to the host community. When a firm becomes a net
>> > > liability to the host community, then they no longer have any
>> > > justification for existence. They have thereby become a
>> > > parasite reducing overall productivity of the host. The fact
>> > > that cancer cells are cooperating with each other and are
>> > > thriving within the host is no justification for giving them
>> > > carte blanc.
>> >
>> > Ethics, not economics. Not my beef.
>>
>> Economics without ethics is a recipe for kleptocracy. Is *that*
>> your agenda?
>
> As a careful glance up and down the group attests, you can argue about
> ethical points til you're blue in the face, without either side budging an
> inch. Economics, as an ideal, should be reasonably value free, and where
> it takes values as given, ought to be internally consistent. One of those
> assumptions is that rational agents act in order to maximize their own
> benefit, at least as a first order condition. This is a reasonable
> assumption to make, I feel.

But if value is in the eye of the beholder (utility stuff) and there is
no common value then one is left with anarchy as the only economically
viable form of government. People are smarter than that. People plan
and dream and they KNOW that cooperation (division and specialization
of land an labor) maximizes productivity and freedom from toil and
drudgery. They also know that the advent of tools/capital (technology)
will increase productivity and that there is a need for property rights.

So it might be possible for "economics" to be valueless (though I
seriously doubt it) but it is certainly not possible for "political
economy" to be valueless. And the removal of the word "political"
from the name of the field has simply legitimized greed aristocratic
power.

> Economics would be a really dismal science if it started incorporating
> various moral schools into it, it would become mostly subjective,
> unfalsifiable, and therefore not 'scientific'.

But you must have some measure of "good". And thus, you must have some
goal. If you value personal freedom more than you value the latest
shade of lip gloss then the current assumptions of neocons go right
out the window. The maximization of "goods" production is not the
golden fleece. Unfortunately, people sometimes tend to value what
they have been "taught" to value. They value that they are "told"
to value.

> What is it, in detail, that your paragraph argues? That firms should
> account for their acts on the local community rather than maximise profit,
> or that they should be forced to do so by some means? Why is either
> neccesarily more efficient than the market outcome?
>
> What, when it comes down to it, makes you 'right' other than gut feeling?

Nothing makes one person "RIGHT". I don't KNOW what is "right" nor do
you. I truly believe that the definition of "right" IS collective.
But I certainly can't PROVE it or DISPROVE it. I can't even prove that
there is such a thing as "right". 

-- 
http://GreaterVoice.org (a work in progress)

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