Thursday, June 25, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
LadyAttis v VTV
"I hope to format this to make it easier to read because it's interesting what the Venus Project folks purport as "scientific" in their "radio shows" and "videos" yet none of them seem to have a background in economics, or even a broad based background in any industry (or industries). They seem more hellbent on beating up on the rich than explaining why their position is better.
Here's the first real exchange between me and Leveer13, regarding the nature of the pricing mechanism."
Leveer13: I don't agree with the price mechanism being a good way to distribute resources. The profit motive corrupts this system very quickly. Furthermore, I see no evidence at all to support that the teams would fail. I do know that the profit motive does an excellent job of maintaining that a minority will possesses most of the resources while the majority get a fraction of it. The fact that a small percentage of the population has forty percent of the world's wealth proves this.
Me: You can't do that without resulting in a calculation problem. The price mechanism is the means by which people can compute both subjectively and objectively what is necessary or wanted for a given span of time. Whether it's a cheese burger or a cargo vessel, the price mechanism regulates resources effectively within the limited nature of computation of supply and demand.
Furthermore, the videos regarding the interdisciplinary teams as described regarding the Venus Project would also fail to be able to compute wants, needs, and future conditions with any degree of accuracy without some price mechanism. In essence, you got two problems that will hit you between the eyes: lack of surface measures via prices and lack of depth measures via subjective valuations of all market actors (rational and non-rational). If you wish to know more: http://feeds.mises.org/~r/MisesMedia/~5/_g6sBe9aDvY/HumanAction_05.mp3 and http://feeds.mises.org/~r/MisesMedia/~5/4k6-A17-jEU/HumanAction_06.mp3 both illustrate the issue better than I.
"It went further on, where he tried his "scarcity" card on me, which I pointed out was a non-starter."
Leveer13: The USSR did not address scarcity correctly. That is why the Venus Project is not communism. Or socialism for that matter. You can determine supply and demand without any form of currency at all. People will request what they need and it will be produced accordingly. In most cases many things will simply be produced in quantity enough to be used whenever needed and given back. The need for personal property becomes less and less when most common items become available to everyone until they don't need it. If you go to a park and want a bicycle, you just take one of the bicycles and return it when your done. Did you watch the presentation video?
Once again thank you for your debate.
Now, I do feel that corruption absolutely does have something to do with the price mechanism when companies manipulate prices for their goods to maximize profit with as little quality as they can get away with. Planned obsolesence is a critical point to this.
Me: Corruption has nothing do the with the price mechanism and has everything to do with the nature of social interactions and reciprocity. As for there being no evidence for my claims: look at how the USSR attempted to monkey the market process by use of mock "competition" and mock pricing, and still couldn't do it right. And the fact is they did so because they admit in their own internal memorandums that the given action of pricing is essential in any economy, especially in the distribution of sector. Without it, they had no clue what was needed to be made. They knew things like power had to be provided, they knew that basic food was necessary too, but they simply couldn't evolve it into heavy industries and such complex fields.
As for the minority having the majority of resources, that's again non-issue with regard to economics. In as much as it illustrates some people are just good at saving resources, and underconsuming it. Wealth is created, not sliced up. Rocks in the ground containing coal or precious metals is no more inherently valuable than wheat in the field. It takes time plus preference to evolve value from them both of objective and subjective qualities. Equality in outcome and even equality in opportunity don't factor in beyond the simple observation that some are better than others at the profit motive (especially in savings and underconsumption).
"Then, he decides to pull out his imaginary "new concept" of cyclical consumption, which in itself isn't what he purports it to be (it's a sociological phenomena that explains why old furniture and baseball cards from ages past still are traded for as extremely valuable goods and not one which is this evil cycle of consumption (Oh so evil materialism!)."
Leveer13: As cyclical consumption breaks down, there are people who cannot just be "better at conserving resources or underconsuming". The ability to do this becomes impossible when you have reached a state of poverty that cannot be recovered from because you don't have the capital to make more capital. "You have to spend money to make money". And if you cannot find employment you cannot secure new capital either. The standard for labor is being reduced to that of the near-slave labor conditions of the third world. And only then because that is the last kind of human labor that can compete with total automation. It is not an "if" when it comes to when this causes an economic crash. It is a "when".
Me: Cyclical consumption isn't what you define it to be. In fact, Cyclical consumption is a human phenomenon in which some things are conserved longer over other things (antique furniture vs modern furniture). As such, you're not even using a common language which is well known.
Also as for unemployment due to technology is in itself a fallacy for at least one good case: cars. When cars were finally developed, specifically trucks, they came at a time when many urban centers were quite literally smothered in horse shit as the truck (and car) weren't yet in use, where as horses and carriages were. This meant an entire sub-economy was devoted to the equine and the accessories required (switches, carriages, stables, hay, and etc). When the truck/car came to be utilized in common throughout the West, no one decried it. Why? Because the reality was that the man hours devoted to the horse now could be devoted to other industries. Crops would be sowed for human consumption rather than equine consumption. Roads could be designed for human uses, rather than equine uses. Cities could be less dense, more spread out if not landlocked. And so on. Technological advances do not historically lead to underemployment. In fact, they lead to 'over' employment in further specialized fields. This is well known throughout human history from the first pyramids to the skyscrapers of today. Thus, you have the entire sum of human history to refute to make your case, not me.
"He keeps harping on the whole Cyclical Consumption idea, thinking it a voodoo doll of win. And he also tries to Jedi handwave the whole point of historical analysis out of the way, but with no real counter examples."
Leveer13: Your claim that Cyclical Consumption is not what I am defining it to be really doesn't change the point at all. When unemployment rises due to automation and outsourcing the cycle breaks down. That is simply a fact.
And when your talking about history it's just that. History. The phenomena you are describing back when the cotton gin was the pinnacle of technology is in no way applicable to what science can do today. You cannot go to archaic sources to claim that something that is going on now is a fallacy. I already debunked all of that on my radio show.
Me: Horseshit (figuratively), dude! It has nothing to do with the level of impact that makes technology positive for everyone, it's the fact that it leads to more gains of productivity for each man hour of work. Consider the average 'poor' American today. They have a house or apartment that has heating/AC, clean running water and plumbing, more food per calorie, and even accessories that make their time more 'fun' (PCs, cell phones, cars, TVs, and etc). And compare to the poor of 500 years ago, which didn't even have clean water to drink. Technological advances do not equal permanent unemployment. They equal natural changes in the economy. So, you don't have any basis for your claims don't have any intellectual solvency. Your radio show is crap, it's not peer reviewed, it's not based on historical analysis. And it's certainly not a valid authority reference.
"Next he gets mad at me for pointing out the invalidity of his radio show, claiming it was an ad hom (problem, ad homs for attacking the person, not his show or its irrelevance). Equally, he can't even make his own so-called ad hom a valid ad hom either (All aboard for the fail boat!)."
Leveer13: So now your just going to reduce yourself to simple ad hominem. I am sorry sir but you just failed. I had hope for you till just now. I already pointed out that what went on in history is not relevant in this instance to what is going on now because what technology is capable of now is things that were previously not even thought possible. Rather then attempt to debate that you just go on to try and say that my radio show is somehow inferior because it is not "peer reviewed". If we were going to go down that road I could just point out that the vast majority of economists feel that Austrian theory is "crap".
Leveer13: Honestly you seem to spit out a lot of fluff with very little substance. You attacked my radio show, you just called me naive. You are trying to attack the sources rather then arguing the actual meat of the debate. You just claim I am "wrong" because I am "wrong" and really offer nothing but outdated ideas that do not prove anything you have said. You said that we would fail to be able to react to the needs of people just because we would "fail" with no real logical reasoning at all. Was your youtube response "peer reviewed"? Obviously not. Does that make the arguments you presented somehow invalid? Obviously not. Yet you tried to discredit it based on that alone.
Your analogy of the automobile is so far out of date to what technology is capable of now you might as well be using the wheel. The fact is that technological unemployment was in fact caused even then was revealed in the book claiming to be stating it was a fallacy. The author flat out admitted that the invention of a machine that was making sweaters put 50k people in a state of poverty they did not recover from for over forty years. The inhumane attitude that capitalism reaches when people who claim to be great thinkers call that an "acceptable loss" is just as evil as the things that Fascists justify in pursuit of their goals.
Technology used to require more men to build. You are comparing something that took place before robots could do everything that a man can do cheaper and more efficient in the auto industry. You say I have no basis for my claims? I LIVE in Michigan where this very effect has destroyed the local economy. It's not theory. It's happening right before my eyes. I talked to hundreds of people during my campaign for Congress and they all told very similar stories.
You clearly have a big vocabulary. The problem I am starting to see is that it looks to me as though you are someone who is so smart that they become blinded by their own intelligence. It is when intellect gives way to arrogance. You don't have any basis for your claims that I don't have any basis for my arguments. You just seem to think you can declare yourself "right" with next to no reasoning.
Me: Your claim that I stated an ad hom isn't even valid because it wasn't attacking you as a person, but rather me attacking your appealing to an invalid authority, which is perfectly acceptable in terms of argumentation. Also, your claim that history doesn't matter is naive at best as historical analysis is always important in the understanding of the nature of many things. Whether it's social changes or economic changes. Or even scientific changes. History teaches us the truly challenging lessons. Technological progress leading to prosperity is one of them. As for the Austrian School being "crap" according to many economists, that's fine, it's not even the basis for my arguments so far. In fact the majority of my arguments up to this point are purely *NEO-CLASSICAL SYNTHESIS* in nature (with a bit of Friedmanite/Stiglerite slants of historical empirical analysis). Thus, your assertions so far don't even come close to disproving my claims even in an orthodox school of economics. You have a mountain of economic theories (which btw, the Austrian school provided the very basis of them via the Marginal Revolution (see Karl Menger)) to disprove. And you haven't done so. So, stand and deliver the refutations as such, or admit you have no sound basis in any formal theory for your claims. There is no grey area for this argument or any.
"He keeps trying to say that technological innovation has magically changed in the last five thousand years, but never explains why. I still try again with illustrating why it hasn't fundamentally changed the nature of economics."
Leveer13: Also, your "known facts" about the price mechanism don't take into account the direction that technology is taking. A great deal of it is just the opinion of one school of thought.
Me: Strawman much? I never stated you were wrong because you were, but because your assumptions don't reflect the known facts about the pricing mechanism in an economy (mixed or non). Both in empirical analysis and simulations pricing mechanisms do not reflect any suboptimality as you have suggested. Furthermore, peer review is very important in as much as the source material that I'm utilizing comes from actual economists (both Austrian and Neo-Classical), who have published in actual journals on these issues of the pricing mechanism.
Also, the assertion that magically technology changes in the nature of productivity is flat out wrong. All that fundamentally changes with each successive technological advancement is the ratio of productivity versus total cost of the advancement (materials, labor, time, etc). You simply don't understand the nature of technology at all based on your assertion also that that some how that I'm some Fascist (do you even know what a Fascist is, sir? Here's a hint: read any of Mussolini's books from the 1920s/30s on it, as he's the father of modern Fascism.) because I accept there will always be a level of unemployment. Just as there will always be a level of people dying each day. These are constants for their time, for the parameters of Nature. Or in simpler terms, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
As for me taking a step back? I don't have to do anything, you have *not refuted a single argument* that I have presented. In fact, I will probably post all of the messages passed along so far to illustrate how you have *misrepresented* and *misunderstood* my arguments thus far. I'm not being intellectual thug or even an intellectual "nice guy," I'm simply stating an argument, for which you haven't rebutted/refuted or even properly responded to. And it is *going no where* as you will not go to the next step and argue your case. You simply pull out your Shawn-Hannity-like buzzwords and non-answers (go to my forum, and such) to my voluminous arguments. You simply *will not even listen*.
Consider this the *last response* until you properly rebut my video posts and my PMs properly.
Furthermore, your assertions of Michigan being worse off because of them thar technological advances. Here's a pro-tip: cars are polluting the planet at a rate unprecedented. There are KIDS BORN in Mexico City with ASTHMA because of the sheer density of the air pollution from cars! If some super genius came along and invented a device that could allow people to travel for less energy and less pollution that would make Michigan have to change from cars to farms or even to something like private space ship building, then I'm all for it!
I'll also point out that I live in Wichita Kansas, which is the AIR CAPITAL of the world, which means I live in a very volatile economy. It changes much like the weather here, so I'm no little suburban flower chilling in a posh domain here. I live with the very same problems you do. We're still hurting even from the changes in the 1990s from the Dot Com bubble. And we're still changing to adapt to that and other conditions. And we're not on the horn with DC demanding welfare for corporate fuckups (Hint: Honda knew the future was in electric cars and already has been refitting their own factories to go electric by 2010! GM didn't do the same, it IGNORED the market, so it should suffer some losses to learn a lesson to listen to it.).
So, there's no emotional argument you can make to make me feel that my argument is wrong, you're going to have to do the honest way, which is ANSWER MY ARGUMENT WITH A COUNTER ARGUMENT.
"Even though I meant it to be my last response, the sheer ignorance of his replies keep getting my goat to the point that I wonder if he's an epic troll of level 20 infamy, but I still respond (getting inadvertently trolled none the less)."
Leveer13: "First, there's no such thing as slave labor. At least not in the context of legal/legitimate forcible labor for the Western nations. Second, low wage jobs themselves are not slave labor either as their wages are pegged to the productive capacity of a person for the given process."
Workers whom you give as little as possible with only concern for them being able to survive are slaves.
You say that wages are pegged to the productive capacity of a person for the given process as if that is some kind or law of physics that employers are forced to adhere to. They are not. It is in the interest of the employer to pay as little as he can possibly get away with.
'the wage will grow (this has been well known since the days of the Marginal Revolution in economics).'
That was true before. The trend has changed to minimize wages as much as you can possibly get away with. Control a local economy to the point that the workers have no choice but to work for whatever you will offer them. Once again it is absurd to just state that wages will increase on their own. It is not in the best interest of an employer to raise wages when they don't have to.
'Third, your assertions about outsourcing are quite inaccurate, many of these countries standard of living are increased by outsourcing, and equally so their economic activity.'
My research says otherwise. Some of which comes directly from people who live in those countries. It is not profitable for businesses to do anything more then they absolutely have to.
'So, many countries depend on our natural resources to just get their industries going (such as coal, iron ores, and even silica sand). Also, many of our expert fields are growing despite the decline in degrees awarded to naturalized or born American citizens taking up the degrees required (as these fields grow with each successive productivity gain).'
As people are getting degrees, the industry actually employs people who's entire purpose in any given company is to research ways to remove the need for those degrees.
'Also, I pointed out *BEFORE* in the horse-to-truck conversion in urban environments still applies to this argument as such. When horses and the accompanied subeconomies were outmoded by trucks, these people involved didn't die of starvation, nor were they out of work forever, rather they retrained, and realigned themselves in the economy to produce more human centric goods and services. Robots being utilized in car manufacturing or other repetitive tasks means more people that will work to make the robots better, or to even work on something completely new and unpredicted. Plus, these people's standard of living will go up as the productive costs vs the productive capacity reduces, thus the same car will COST LESS than it did before. This is very true for computers and robots themselves, that's why you can buy a roomba at a wal*mart and it doesn't cost you millions of dollars (or nearly countless man hours of labor to acquire). If we were to abandon technological innovation, the cost of everything from a bushel of wheat to a house would cost *MORE* as more man hours would be required to produce it (thus more people have to be maintained).'
And as I pointed out *BEFORE* your analogy is still irrelevant. Your talking about a time when there was still places for these people to go and work after they were being replaced. You are failing to answer the point that businesses of today have endeavored to remove the need for workers as much as possible. This is what downsizing is all about. The only people gaining jobs from this process are the experts who are good at eliminating workers. As machines become more and more sophisticated the human element of labor will be removed. It is only profitable. And therefore, is absolutely going to be the trend. Particularly as this effect causes downturns in the economy when the unemployed stop consuming. That in turn leads to even more lay offs and even more downsizing.
Me: First, there's no such thing as slave labor. At least not in the context of legal/legitimate forcible labor for the Western nations. Second, low wage jobs themselves are not slave labor either as their wages are pegged to the productive capacity of a person for the given process. If new techniques are devised to make the same capacity grow, the wage will grow (this has been well known since the days of the Marginal Revolution in economics). Third, your assertions about outsourcing are quite inaccurate, many of these countries standard of living are increased by outsourcing, and equally so their economic activity. As such, wealth is created, which means further advances for all adjacent economies due to the fact that resources on Planet Earth are not equally distributed (this ball of mud is stratified...). So, many countries depend on our natural resources to just get their industries going (such as coal, iron ores, and even silica sand). Also, many of our expert fields are growing despite the decline in degrees awarded to naturalized or born American citizens taking up the degrees required (as these fields grow with each successive productivity gain). Thus, the economy is never zero sum as you're suggesting. What we have today is more than what we had yesterday (and what will have tomorrow will be more than what we have today). Unless you have proof that the wealth created today is the same wealth we created in the past, your assertions as such don't fit the facts.
Also, I pointed out *BEFORE* in the horse-to-truck conversion in urban environments still applies to this argument as such. When horses and the accompanied subeconomies were outmoded by trucks, these people involved didn't die of starvation, nor were they out of work forever, rather they retrained, and realigned themselves in the economy to produce more human centric goods and services. Robots being utilized in car manufacturing or other repetitive tasks means more people that will work to make the robots better, or to even work on something completely new and unpredicted. Plus, these people's standard of living will go up as the productive costs vs the productive capacity reduces, thus the same car will COST LESS than it did before. This is very true for computers and robots themselves, that's why you can buy a roomba at a wal*mart and it doesn't cost you millions of dollars (or nearly countless man hours of labor to acquire). If we were to abandon technological innovation, the cost of everything from a bushel of wheat to a house would cost *MORE* as more man hours would be required to produce it (thus more people have to be maintained).
Unless you have a historical case that refutes this trend, which even mainstream economists have backed up their own historical analysis and empirical (present/modern) studies, then you need to admit you have no basis for your neo-ludditism.
Here's the first real exchange between me and Leveer13, regarding the nature of the pricing mechanism."
Leveer13: I don't agree with the price mechanism being a good way to distribute resources. The profit motive corrupts this system very quickly. Furthermore, I see no evidence at all to support that the teams would fail. I do know that the profit motive does an excellent job of maintaining that a minority will possesses most of the resources while the majority get a fraction of it. The fact that a small percentage of the population has forty percent of the world's wealth proves this.
Me: You can't do that without resulting in a calculation problem. The price mechanism is the means by which people can compute both subjectively and objectively what is necessary or wanted for a given span of time. Whether it's a cheese burger or a cargo vessel, the price mechanism regulates resources effectively within the limited nature of computation of supply and demand.
Furthermore, the videos regarding the interdisciplinary teams as described regarding the Venus Project would also fail to be able to compute wants, needs, and future conditions with any degree of accuracy without some price mechanism. In essence, you got two problems that will hit you between the eyes: lack of surface measures via prices and lack of depth measures via subjective valuations of all market actors (rational and non-rational). If you wish to know more: http://feeds.mises.org/~r/MisesMedia/~5/_g6sBe9aDvY/HumanAction_05.mp3 and http://feeds.mises.org/~r/MisesMedia/~5/4k6-A17-jEU/HumanAction_06.mp3 both illustrate the issue better than I.
"It went further on, where he tried his "scarcity" card on me, which I pointed out was a non-starter."
Leveer13: The USSR did not address scarcity correctly. That is why the Venus Project is not communism. Or socialism for that matter. You can determine supply and demand without any form of currency at all. People will request what they need and it will be produced accordingly. In most cases many things will simply be produced in quantity enough to be used whenever needed and given back. The need for personal property becomes less and less when most common items become available to everyone until they don't need it. If you go to a park and want a bicycle, you just take one of the bicycles and return it when your done. Did you watch the presentation video?
Once again thank you for your debate.
Now, I do feel that corruption absolutely does have something to do with the price mechanism when companies manipulate prices for their goods to maximize profit with as little quality as they can get away with. Planned obsolesence is a critical point to this.
Me: Corruption has nothing do the with the price mechanism and has everything to do with the nature of social interactions and reciprocity. As for there being no evidence for my claims: look at how the USSR attempted to monkey the market process by use of mock "competition" and mock pricing, and still couldn't do it right. And the fact is they did so because they admit in their own internal memorandums that the given action of pricing is essential in any economy, especially in the distribution of sector. Without it, they had no clue what was needed to be made. They knew things like power had to be provided, they knew that basic food was necessary too, but they simply couldn't evolve it into heavy industries and such complex fields.
As for the minority having the majority of resources, that's again non-issue with regard to economics. In as much as it illustrates some people are just good at saving resources, and underconsuming it. Wealth is created, not sliced up. Rocks in the ground containing coal or precious metals is no more inherently valuable than wheat in the field. It takes time plus preference to evolve value from them both of objective and subjective qualities. Equality in outcome and even equality in opportunity don't factor in beyond the simple observation that some are better than others at the profit motive (especially in savings and underconsumption).
"Then, he decides to pull out his imaginary "new concept" of cyclical consumption, which in itself isn't what he purports it to be (it's a sociological phenomena that explains why old furniture and baseball cards from ages past still are traded for as extremely valuable goods and not one which is this evil cycle of consumption (Oh so evil materialism!)."
Leveer13: As cyclical consumption breaks down, there are people who cannot just be "better at conserving resources or underconsuming". The ability to do this becomes impossible when you have reached a state of poverty that cannot be recovered from because you don't have the capital to make more capital. "You have to spend money to make money". And if you cannot find employment you cannot secure new capital either. The standard for labor is being reduced to that of the near-slave labor conditions of the third world. And only then because that is the last kind of human labor that can compete with total automation. It is not an "if" when it comes to when this causes an economic crash. It is a "when".
Me: Cyclical consumption isn't what you define it to be. In fact, Cyclical consumption is a human phenomenon in which some things are conserved longer over other things (antique furniture vs modern furniture). As such, you're not even using a common language which is well known.
Also as for unemployment due to technology is in itself a fallacy for at least one good case: cars. When cars were finally developed, specifically trucks, they came at a time when many urban centers were quite literally smothered in horse shit as the truck (and car) weren't yet in use, where as horses and carriages were. This meant an entire sub-economy was devoted to the equine and the accessories required (switches, carriages, stables, hay, and etc). When the truck/car came to be utilized in common throughout the West, no one decried it. Why? Because the reality was that the man hours devoted to the horse now could be devoted to other industries. Crops would be sowed for human consumption rather than equine consumption. Roads could be designed for human uses, rather than equine uses. Cities could be less dense, more spread out if not landlocked. And so on. Technological advances do not historically lead to underemployment. In fact, they lead to 'over' employment in further specialized fields. This is well known throughout human history from the first pyramids to the skyscrapers of today. Thus, you have the entire sum of human history to refute to make your case, not me.
"He keeps harping on the whole Cyclical Consumption idea, thinking it a voodoo doll of win. And he also tries to Jedi handwave the whole point of historical analysis out of the way, but with no real counter examples."
Leveer13: Your claim that Cyclical Consumption is not what I am defining it to be really doesn't change the point at all. When unemployment rises due to automation and outsourcing the cycle breaks down. That is simply a fact.
And when your talking about history it's just that. History. The phenomena you are describing back when the cotton gin was the pinnacle of technology is in no way applicable to what science can do today. You cannot go to archaic sources to claim that something that is going on now is a fallacy. I already debunked all of that on my radio show.
Me: Horseshit (figuratively), dude! It has nothing to do with the level of impact that makes technology positive for everyone, it's the fact that it leads to more gains of productivity for each man hour of work. Consider the average 'poor' American today. They have a house or apartment that has heating/AC, clean running water and plumbing, more food per calorie, and even accessories that make their time more 'fun' (PCs, cell phones, cars, TVs, and etc). And compare to the poor of 500 years ago, which didn't even have clean water to drink. Technological advances do not equal permanent unemployment. They equal natural changes in the economy. So, you don't have any basis for your claims don't have any intellectual solvency. Your radio show is crap, it's not peer reviewed, it's not based on historical analysis. And it's certainly not a valid authority reference.
"Next he gets mad at me for pointing out the invalidity of his radio show, claiming it was an ad hom (problem, ad homs for attacking the person, not his show or its irrelevance). Equally, he can't even make his own so-called ad hom a valid ad hom either (All aboard for the fail boat!)."
Leveer13: So now your just going to reduce yourself to simple ad hominem. I am sorry sir but you just failed. I had hope for you till just now. I already pointed out that what went on in history is not relevant in this instance to what is going on now because what technology is capable of now is things that were previously not even thought possible. Rather then attempt to debate that you just go on to try and say that my radio show is somehow inferior because it is not "peer reviewed". If we were going to go down that road I could just point out that the vast majority of economists feel that Austrian theory is "crap".
Leveer13: Honestly you seem to spit out a lot of fluff with very little substance. You attacked my radio show, you just called me naive. You are trying to attack the sources rather then arguing the actual meat of the debate. You just claim I am "wrong" because I am "wrong" and really offer nothing but outdated ideas that do not prove anything you have said. You said that we would fail to be able to react to the needs of people just because we would "fail" with no real logical reasoning at all. Was your youtube response "peer reviewed"? Obviously not. Does that make the arguments you presented somehow invalid? Obviously not. Yet you tried to discredit it based on that alone.
Your analogy of the automobile is so far out of date to what technology is capable of now you might as well be using the wheel. The fact is that technological unemployment was in fact caused even then was revealed in the book claiming to be stating it was a fallacy. The author flat out admitted that the invention of a machine that was making sweaters put 50k people in a state of poverty they did not recover from for over forty years. The inhumane attitude that capitalism reaches when people who claim to be great thinkers call that an "acceptable loss" is just as evil as the things that Fascists justify in pursuit of their goals.
Technology used to require more men to build. You are comparing something that took place before robots could do everything that a man can do cheaper and more efficient in the auto industry. You say I have no basis for my claims? I LIVE in Michigan where this very effect has destroyed the local economy. It's not theory. It's happening right before my eyes. I talked to hundreds of people during my campaign for Congress and they all told very similar stories.
You clearly have a big vocabulary. The problem I am starting to see is that it looks to me as though you are someone who is so smart that they become blinded by their own intelligence. It is when intellect gives way to arrogance. You don't have any basis for your claims that I don't have any basis for my arguments. You just seem to think you can declare yourself "right" with next to no reasoning.
Me: Your claim that I stated an ad hom isn't even valid because it wasn't attacking you as a person, but rather me attacking your appealing to an invalid authority, which is perfectly acceptable in terms of argumentation. Also, your claim that history doesn't matter is naive at best as historical analysis is always important in the understanding of the nature of many things. Whether it's social changes or economic changes. Or even scientific changes. History teaches us the truly challenging lessons. Technological progress leading to prosperity is one of them. As for the Austrian School being "crap" according to many economists, that's fine, it's not even the basis for my arguments so far. In fact the majority of my arguments up to this point are purely *NEO-CLASSICAL SYNTHESIS* in nature (with a bit of Friedmanite/Stiglerite slants of historical empirical analysis). Thus, your assertions so far don't even come close to disproving my claims even in an orthodox school of economics. You have a mountain of economic theories (which btw, the Austrian school provided the very basis of them via the Marginal Revolution (see Karl Menger)) to disprove. And you haven't done so. So, stand and deliver the refutations as such, or admit you have no sound basis in any formal theory for your claims. There is no grey area for this argument or any.
"He keeps trying to say that technological innovation has magically changed in the last five thousand years, but never explains why. I still try again with illustrating why it hasn't fundamentally changed the nature of economics."
Leveer13: Also, your "known facts" about the price mechanism don't take into account the direction that technology is taking. A great deal of it is just the opinion of one school of thought.
Me: Strawman much? I never stated you were wrong because you were, but because your assumptions don't reflect the known facts about the pricing mechanism in an economy (mixed or non). Both in empirical analysis and simulations pricing mechanisms do not reflect any suboptimality as you have suggested. Furthermore, peer review is very important in as much as the source material that I'm utilizing comes from actual economists (both Austrian and Neo-Classical), who have published in actual journals on these issues of the pricing mechanism.
Also, the assertion that magically technology changes in the nature of productivity is flat out wrong. All that fundamentally changes with each successive technological advancement is the ratio of productivity versus total cost of the advancement (materials, labor, time, etc). You simply don't understand the nature of technology at all based on your assertion also that that some how that I'm some Fascist (do you even know what a Fascist is, sir? Here's a hint: read any of Mussolini's books from the 1920s/30s on it, as he's the father of modern Fascism.) because I accept there will always be a level of unemployment. Just as there will always be a level of people dying each day. These are constants for their time, for the parameters of Nature. Or in simpler terms, you cannot have your cake and eat it too.
As for me taking a step back? I don't have to do anything, you have *not refuted a single argument* that I have presented. In fact, I will probably post all of the messages passed along so far to illustrate how you have *misrepresented* and *misunderstood* my arguments thus far. I'm not being intellectual thug or even an intellectual "nice guy," I'm simply stating an argument, for which you haven't rebutted/refuted or even properly responded to. And it is *going no where* as you will not go to the next step and argue your case. You simply pull out your Shawn-Hannity-like buzzwords and non-answers (go to my forum, and such) to my voluminous arguments. You simply *will not even listen*.
Consider this the *last response* until you properly rebut my video posts and my PMs properly.
Furthermore, your assertions of Michigan being worse off because of them thar technological advances. Here's a pro-tip: cars are polluting the planet at a rate unprecedented. There are KIDS BORN in Mexico City with ASTHMA because of the sheer density of the air pollution from cars! If some super genius came along and invented a device that could allow people to travel for less energy and less pollution that would make Michigan have to change from cars to farms or even to something like private space ship building, then I'm all for it!
I'll also point out that I live in Wichita Kansas, which is the AIR CAPITAL of the world, which means I live in a very volatile economy. It changes much like the weather here, so I'm no little suburban flower chilling in a posh domain here. I live with the very same problems you do. We're still hurting even from the changes in the 1990s from the Dot Com bubble. And we're still changing to adapt to that and other conditions. And we're not on the horn with DC demanding welfare for corporate fuckups (Hint: Honda knew the future was in electric cars and already has been refitting their own factories to go electric by 2010! GM didn't do the same, it IGNORED the market, so it should suffer some losses to learn a lesson to listen to it.).
So, there's no emotional argument you can make to make me feel that my argument is wrong, you're going to have to do the honest way, which is ANSWER MY ARGUMENT WITH A COUNTER ARGUMENT.
"Even though I meant it to be my last response, the sheer ignorance of his replies keep getting my goat to the point that I wonder if he's an epic troll of level 20 infamy, but I still respond (getting inadvertently trolled none the less)."
Leveer13: "First, there's no such thing as slave labor. At least not in the context of legal/legitimate forcible labor for the Western nations. Second, low wage jobs themselves are not slave labor either as their wages are pegged to the productive capacity of a person for the given process."
Workers whom you give as little as possible with only concern for them being able to survive are slaves.
You say that wages are pegged to the productive capacity of a person for the given process as if that is some kind or law of physics that employers are forced to adhere to. They are not. It is in the interest of the employer to pay as little as he can possibly get away with.
'the wage will grow (this has been well known since the days of the Marginal Revolution in economics).'
That was true before. The trend has changed to minimize wages as much as you can possibly get away with. Control a local economy to the point that the workers have no choice but to work for whatever you will offer them. Once again it is absurd to just state that wages will increase on their own. It is not in the best interest of an employer to raise wages when they don't have to.
'Third, your assertions about outsourcing are quite inaccurate, many of these countries standard of living are increased by outsourcing, and equally so their economic activity.'
My research says otherwise. Some of which comes directly from people who live in those countries. It is not profitable for businesses to do anything more then they absolutely have to.
'So, many countries depend on our natural resources to just get their industries going (such as coal, iron ores, and even silica sand). Also, many of our expert fields are growing despite the decline in degrees awarded to naturalized or born American citizens taking up the degrees required (as these fields grow with each successive productivity gain).'
As people are getting degrees, the industry actually employs people who's entire purpose in any given company is to research ways to remove the need for those degrees.
'Also, I pointed out *BEFORE* in the horse-to-truck conversion in urban environments still applies to this argument as such. When horses and the accompanied subeconomies were outmoded by trucks, these people involved didn't die of starvation, nor were they out of work forever, rather they retrained, and realigned themselves in the economy to produce more human centric goods and services. Robots being utilized in car manufacturing or other repetitive tasks means more people that will work to make the robots better, or to even work on something completely new and unpredicted. Plus, these people's standard of living will go up as the productive costs vs the productive capacity reduces, thus the same car will COST LESS than it did before. This is very true for computers and robots themselves, that's why you can buy a roomba at a wal*mart and it doesn't cost you millions of dollars (or nearly countless man hours of labor to acquire). If we were to abandon technological innovation, the cost of everything from a bushel of wheat to a house would cost *MORE* as more man hours would be required to produce it (thus more people have to be maintained).'
And as I pointed out *BEFORE* your analogy is still irrelevant. Your talking about a time when there was still places for these people to go and work after they were being replaced. You are failing to answer the point that businesses of today have endeavored to remove the need for workers as much as possible. This is what downsizing is all about. The only people gaining jobs from this process are the experts who are good at eliminating workers. As machines become more and more sophisticated the human element of labor will be removed. It is only profitable. And therefore, is absolutely going to be the trend. Particularly as this effect causes downturns in the economy when the unemployed stop consuming. That in turn leads to even more lay offs and even more downsizing.
Me: First, there's no such thing as slave labor. At least not in the context of legal/legitimate forcible labor for the Western nations. Second, low wage jobs themselves are not slave labor either as their wages are pegged to the productive capacity of a person for the given process. If new techniques are devised to make the same capacity grow, the wage will grow (this has been well known since the days of the Marginal Revolution in economics). Third, your assertions about outsourcing are quite inaccurate, many of these countries standard of living are increased by outsourcing, and equally so their economic activity. As such, wealth is created, which means further advances for all adjacent economies due to the fact that resources on Planet Earth are not equally distributed (this ball of mud is stratified...). So, many countries depend on our natural resources to just get their industries going (such as coal, iron ores, and even silica sand). Also, many of our expert fields are growing despite the decline in degrees awarded to naturalized or born American citizens taking up the degrees required (as these fields grow with each successive productivity gain). Thus, the economy is never zero sum as you're suggesting. What we have today is more than what we had yesterday (and what will have tomorrow will be more than what we have today). Unless you have proof that the wealth created today is the same wealth we created in the past, your assertions as such don't fit the facts.
Also, I pointed out *BEFORE* in the horse-to-truck conversion in urban environments still applies to this argument as such. When horses and the accompanied subeconomies were outmoded by trucks, these people involved didn't die of starvation, nor were they out of work forever, rather they retrained, and realigned themselves in the economy to produce more human centric goods and services. Robots being utilized in car manufacturing or other repetitive tasks means more people that will work to make the robots better, or to even work on something completely new and unpredicted. Plus, these people's standard of living will go up as the productive costs vs the productive capacity reduces, thus the same car will COST LESS than it did before. This is very true for computers and robots themselves, that's why you can buy a roomba at a wal*mart and it doesn't cost you millions of dollars (or nearly countless man hours of labor to acquire). If we were to abandon technological innovation, the cost of everything from a bushel of wheat to a house would cost *MORE* as more man hours would be required to produce it (thus more people have to be maintained).
Unless you have a historical case that refutes this trend, which even mainstream economists have backed up their own historical analysis and empirical (present/modern) studies, then you need to admit you have no basis for your neo-ludditism.
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