Replies to arguments

Replies to arguments
introductory point: i am talking about something to increase the happiness of everyone, you included - we are all in very deep doodoo - do i need to remind you? - we must be making *some* mistake - so a serious sincere discussion, a willingness to hear opinions of what that mistake is, is appropriate - a lack of confidence, an atom of doubt in our set ways is appropriate, an admission that there may be a flaw in our views - hey, are we perfect in wisdom, do we have perfect sight, can we see all sides, are we small and the world very very big, has no one ever been affected by bias? - none of this is our fault, we didn't make ourselves, but we can accept that pursuit of happiness involves pursuit of reality, because we are all bears of little brain - none of us *knows* in a perfect sense - our knowledge is the same as the knowledge of the people who were sure the sun went round the earth - let us put our heads together to figure this out as best we can, with light not heat - cool heads rescue themselves better

argument to risk: businessmen should be paid for risk - this argument is widespread - businessmen take risks, yes, they risk a sprat to catch a mackerel *for themselves* - workers risk their *lives* - and sometimes pay with their lives, which businessmen rarely do - why is there no thought of paying workers for risk? - businessmen risk money, to make money for themselves - a gambler risks money to make money for himself - but he doesn't complain that he should be paid for risk - it is impossible that there can be payment for risk: risk is risk of losing money - or life - businesspeople risk their money, and if they make money, they justify it with, among other things, the risk they took - they feel the risk they took, the risk takes a psychological toll on them, they wish compensation - but is risk measured? is risk measurable? if risk was measurable, can a dollar value be put on dollar recompense per unit of risk? - and who should pay for this risk? - others are paying for this risk - why? - is there a national acceptance that risk should be paid for? - have people agreed to pay for risk? - no - and it is risk of money to get money for oneself - isn't that the individual's business, the individual's choice? - and if risk is to be paid for, shouldn't risk of everyone be measured, a dollar amount fixed per unit of risk, and everyone be paid for risk in proportion to their risk? - the businessman, or some of them, are pleading their own case, at the expense of others, and not pleading the case of others who are risking more - sometimes risk is low and rewards high, sometimes risk is high and rewards low, this is risk - who can pay for it? - who should pay for it? - life is risky, money can be risked and lost - that's life - crossing the street is risk, living is risk - who can pay for it? - workers are humble, they take on risk, and don't demand payment for it - they absorb the costs of risk themselves without a murmur - without an option - do we pay fishermen for risk? - 'i'm going to try to catch a fish for my dinner - can you pay me now, i might not catch you later' - we defer to the businessman - he has money - he might hire us - he says he deserves payment for his risk - better give it to him - if he makes a lot of money, well, he deserves it, because he is a hero, risking - we aren't risking - we are just workers - the businessman is just over-self-esteeming, the worker is under-self-esteeming

the boss does plain oldfashioned hard work:
work should be paid for - justice in pay is equal pay for equal work - hours of work can be measured - hours of work can be paid for - working 20% harder produces 20% more goods, so taking out 20% more goods, by getting paid 20% more money, is just and good and right - but again, there is special pleading - are people willing to allow equal pay for equal work for everyone? - or is 'hard work' unique to businessmen? - and should 20% harder work be paid 20% more, or is it to be an excuse for limitless overpay? - that is, putting in 20% more and getting out up to 100,000 times more? - every businessperson is supporting the right to unlimited pay for hard work, risk, etc - but the pool of wealth is limited to nature's bounty [which everyone has an equal right to] and to work, and everyone's contribution to the pool by work is limited, not unlimited, so unlimited fortunes for what is necessarly limited work is overpay, which causes underpay, which causes violence, which gets to everyone, rich and poor, and which escalates, and grows weaponry and war and crime, which after 3000 years has reached 60 times PDC [planet death capability] which is not good for anyone - America was founded on the sound principle of democracy and freedom by prevention of unllimited fortunes, which are also unlimited power, which is tyranny and undemocracy, unfreedom, which Americans fought to get free from - so is there not a connection between our attitude that it is good to go for all we can get, and the terrible state we are in? - money is the joker good, good for all things, so underpay is theft of virtually all good things, and therefore causes violence, resentment - is pay justice our friend or our enemy? - can we all dip into the vast but limited, not unlimited pool of wealth, grabbing as much as we can, and not end up fighting everyone all the time? - is justice good because it saves us all from perpetual violence? - isn't it our self-interest to avoid pay injustice, to weed out these excuses for overpay, for pay for no work, like unlimited pay for limited work, like pay for risk? - if we look further down the track of everyone grab all, so we see doom for all? - globally, pay ranges from $30 a year to $30 billion a year - and globally, war has grown for 1000s of years to the present great danger - we were far safer defenseless against the tiger than we are now, defenceless against the bomb - wars have grown to world wars - thanks to e=mc2, we have multiplied our power to kill people by 60,000 in the last 50 years - is there not a connection between pay injustice, the all-grab-all philosophy, the Horatio Alger go out there,boy, and grab!, resulting in super-super-extreme pay injustice, and violence, the growth of weaponry and war? - remembering that money is the joker good, good for all necessities and desires? - the businessman stays later than the workers, perhaps, and says to himself, they don't know what work is - but if the boss does 20% more work, he produces 20% more, and deserves 20% more, not unlimited profits

bosses provide jobs, the worker suckles from the teat feeding him -
it seems that the businessperson provides jobs - he sets up a company, he hires people, and pays them - but this overlooks the fact that the people paid pay for this pay with work - the businessman pays them, he hands over money, but they hand over work, workproducts to the businessman, they pay him, usually more - there is no gifting from the businessman to the workers - there is, if you like, mutual gifting - and sometimes the gifting is greater on one side than the other - what provides the jobs is demand for the products - no demand, no jobs - the businessman is a worker, contributing to the providing of goods - he ought to be paid for his work, like everyone - the demand enables the business to be set up, enables the workers and businessperson to be paid for their work providing goods in demand - it is only the businessperson's self-inflation that makes him think he is doing a kindness to anyone - is a unique sort of person, entitled to privileged treatment - he is working, and being paid - part of his work is hiring and paying people - with money he gets for the goods that the workers have made - the workers, including the businessman, have made the wealth they get - justice is equal pay for equal work - anything else is theft - unequal pay for equal work, which is theft, some getting too much, others getting too little - theft - theft of the joker good - theft of everything, theft of everything money buys - causing resentment, violence, which necessarily escalates, as both sides try to prevail, as both sides ever-seek bigger weaponry to prevail, which necessarily escalates endlessly, or till justice, or extinction of all, which no one wants - and no one wants the war and crime that builds to extinction - you can poohpooh extinction by nuclear winter, but will your poohpooh be heard? - will reality heed? - have we grown inequality, war and weaponry for 3000 years to 60 times PDC or not? - and still growing - ratio of highest to lowest pay per year's work IS one billion - world average pay, if we pay housewives and students too IS US$40 an hour, US$100,000 a year per worker, US$200,000 per family without student - did the first world rob and enslave the third world for 500 years? - did the conquistadors steal and slaughter and plunder? - was the cotton wealth of America made by slaves? - Would you resent being on 100th to 10,000th of world average pay per hour, as 5 billion are? - is the first world sucking $200 billion a year out of the third world, as the Secretary-General of the UN says, although the economy of africa is smaller than italy's? - is everyone in danger? - is there a connection between everyone going for all we can get, and positive all we get is ours, and violence? - does overpay exist? - did Bill Gates earn $500,000 for every hour he worked, or was he paid for scarcity of new technology? - it takes only a profit rate of 40% pa to turn his startup money of $5 million into $50 billion in 30 years

competition:
competition brings prices down *towards* equity - but may take two decades to do so - especially with new technology supported by 70-year patents creating a monopoly, inhibiting competition - Japan has 2-year patents - new technology has built-in scarcity, meaning people pay for the absence of goods, while the industry is gearing up to demand - or they pay for their high demand for the goods, or for the lack of factories - scarcity is not work by anyone - but we pay for it - pay billions, which then suck $100 million a year for every billion at 10% - every year, forever, for no work - suck $100 million of goods others, including businessmen, have created - pay injustice seems good as long as you think only of being on the 'winning' end - but there are no winners - violence gets to everyone - every empire in history has fallen, and has been maintained for a time only with great effort and cost - bigger banks have stronger vaults because they need them - and the money in them is not necessarily justly got - the free market has great advantages over central planning, but it is not just, it is not sufficient to preserve us all from universal escalating violence - we need justice for that, we need mechanisms that counter the pays for no work like scarcity.

haven't the guts to be boss:
yes, it takes guts to be boss - but who provides the guts to be boss, the boss or mother nature? - who provides the aptitude, the inclination, the guts, the nature, to be boss? - nature, not the boss - the boss does not *work* to have those guts or that inclination or temperament - there is nothing wrong with choosing to be a worker and not a boss - there is no inferiority in being a worker - the worker creates goods, and is properly paid for them - it is an honourable and noble thing - contempt for the worker and arrogation of superiority is a disease - George Pullman [of Pullman cars fame] said that the worker deserves to suffer first from economic downturn because he contributes nothing to the industry - this is mental disease, megalomania, pride gone made, arrogance enthroned - wealth begets insolence, said the Greeks - with this arrogance, the wealthy rise and fall - Ceausescu, the late Roman emperors, Napoleon, Caesar, Richard III, Hitler - it keeps them from discovering their loneliness and unhappiness - history is loaded with the troubles and falls of the super-overpaid, the pleonectic, the great stealers - pride is the enemy, the deceiver, not anyone's friend.

law of mutually beneficial exchange, exchange wouldn't take place if either party thought that weren't getting any gain -
it is this which has disabled people from seeing the reality, that exchange necessarily involves a little injustice [which then grows with every transaction and causes ever-escalating violence, war, crime and weaponry] - the exchange seems to be voluntary, and how can voluntary be bad? - but is it voluntary? - a person cannot volunteer to do something without knowing what that something is, and no one knows the exact value of both items in the exchange, and, given a choice between paying fairprice [paying for all the work in the item bought] and overprice, everyone will choose the fairprice - but people don't have that choice - there is not always a cheaper competitor right next door - there is usually not a fairprice alternative offered - no one can calculate the fairprice - although the fairprice exists, no one can know it - the theft is often unconscious on both sides - but injustice has occurred - a shift of wealth from one to other has occurred, just from exchange, which should not cause a shift of wealth - and that drop of injustice will, over trillions of transactions create an ocean of injustice, violence and loss of quality of life for everyone - there is a gap between what people might think, and what is real - the person may not care if the other gains a bit for no work, on top of his pay for his work - but the drop of injustice will still cause ever-growing violence when accumulated - both gain from the transaction in that both lose something they can't use and get something they can use - but that is beside the point, which is that drop of injustice - both will feel equally happy with their exchange if the exchange is fair-exchange-no-robbery - the happiness of getting something they both want cannot justify injustice, a transfer of value from one to the other in the difference in value - your argument to competition shows that you support correction of prices towards equality - or permit it - but how efficient is competition? - not perfectly - and there is monopoly, and who can root out all monopoly elements in the economy? - patents are monopolies - the customer is constrained in choice by distance to competitor - cost in time or money or fuel in getting to the competititor - and there is nothing to stop two competitors from both overcharging - and, in our mindset, of get as much as possible, never mind justice, and ignorant of the connection to violence, there is every motive to do so - there are price cartels, and these may be implicit - without actual collusion - just independent decisions by competitors to share the market at the higher price - and then there is the fact that the motive to underprice a competitor decreases as the fairprice is approached - the drive to undercut a competitor is small when the rewards are small - so price fall with competition slows with approach to fairprice - which no one exactly knows - so undercutting may take the competitor unbeknownst into underpricing - a system which allows all the myriad, uncalculable injustices in the economy, but which corrects for their accumulated, endlessly growing injustice and violence effects, by redistributing super-overfortunes to everyone, saves us from violence, and yet leaves us with the great advantages of the so-called free market, which is less than perfectly free and fair - you say there can't be anything wrong with transaction, because it is voluntary - you say both gain - but mere exchange cannot increase value - and the two things cannot be equal - so one must lose and the other gain - a drop of inequality, which with every transaction grows to an ocean - they both gain in the sense that one has money and wants bread, and the other has bread and wants money [to buy lettuce to go with the bread he has made all day] - but not in value - by realising the drop of inequality, we can with sense of justice oppose the ocean it produces - of violence, and inequality of power which is corrupting and tyrannous, and dangerous to overpaid and underpaid - with nuclear weapons, fatal to the whole human race

profit as the difference between costs and perceived value by the customer -
not good enough to prevent injustice and violence - the state built on injustice cannot stand, roman saying - justice is the purpose of government, james madison - because justice is what makes society stand, which everyone wants - the customer has no way of perceiving the exact value of the product - prices in excess of the full costs of the product, including fairpay for owners, *have* to be [unconscious or conscious] theft, have to belong to overcharged customers, underpaid workers or underpriced raw materials [which is ultimately work by people further back in the line of production]. Have to be, by logic - can't belong to owners, who get it - because, by definition, they have been fully paid for their work out of costs - it is obvious that incomes [revenues, prices] can be different from full costs - can be more or less - but the accumulated effect is that 1% are getting 98% of world income, while doing less than 1% of the work - this is a side-effect of trade which can be neutralised by, for example, making everyone equal heirs of large deceased estates, or by increasing the money supply 1% per month and giving equal shares to everyone [ inflation is not bad when everyone gets the new money instead of the banks] - the inflation effect reduces ovefortunes and the equalshares lifts the underpay, saving us from ever-growing violence and its huge costs in happiness and fairpay. Justice is the friend of everyone. The overpaid are saved from endless attack, paranoia, nervousness and sure doom, and the overpaid get no reduction in happiness from fairpay, because fairpay, US$100,000 per worker, $200,000 per family, is above the level where money adds to happiness [US$50,000, according to studies]. Desires are limited, and fairpay satisfies all needs and desires. Satisfaction waits on appetite. The overpaid have no more stomachs for food, bodies for clothes, for bed, feet for shoes, etc. The body is limited, its desires are limited. Equality, with its gifts of belonging, social trust, peace, amity, fraternity, social cohesion, safety, friendliness, drastic limitation of war and crime, nuclear winter, removal of overbearing tryannical government by superoverpaid, removal of warmongering and cannonfoddering, etc is far more valuable than money for food with a full stomach, money for more rooms than you can inhabit, etc.

profit is kept by the producer as payment for undertaking the production and for risk -
see above on risk - and whatever the producer does, it ought to be paid for by fairpay, not by unlimited reward - the work of the producer is a certain amount, and the fairpay is a certain amount, not any amount that profits turn up -

do something more cheaply and you get rich -
again, there is the ignoring of the amount of work the person does and the appropriate compensation for the sacrifice of time and energy - there is just: i'm a good fellow, providing a service by lower prices, so my reward should be unconfined - no, it should be equal pay for equal work - you are saving people money, yes - relative to the higher prices - but not necessarily relative to justice - you may be merely less overpaid by your profits than the higher-price person - liberty and justice for all - and the most important justice is pay justice, because money is the joker good, good for all things money can buy, which is just about everything, including necessities and desires - and the most dangerous injustice is pay injustice, because it is injustice in just about everything - the desire to be a good boy or to be a well rewarded boy, or a congratulated boy, and the impossibility of anyone determining the exact workvalue of anything, assist the open grab on the social pool of wealth - but that pool has been formed by work [and nature's bounty, of which everyone has equal share rights] and nothing can entitle taking out except putting in by work.

producer wins a big prize [profits] for his ingenuity -
his sense of right in holding on to overpay is stoked by his love of selfcongratulation - ignoring all the congratulation shares others deserve - his ingenuity is unmeasured, uncertain, and is in any case a gift of nature - or of study, which should be paid for - but not by unlimited reward

the textile manufacturers made money hand over fist as well they should have because they made so many people's lives better -
the appropriation of praise to self again - the manufacturers did no more work than others - they should be paid for their work contribution - and others should too - the manufacturer has contributed to making people's lives better - contributed whatever work they did - the fact that profits end up on a table in front of him, does not mean he did a great deal more work than others - he did not make others' lives better alone - you manage to completely ignore even the makers of the machines! - but the makers of the machines, and the manufacturers, would be helpless without the workers - the amount of work people do and what arrives on their plate because of trade are not the same - if I make a pill that makes everyone 100 times happier, and for which people are willing to pay big bucks, I deserve to be paid for all my work, not for the money that people spill for the pill - because if I get huge amounts, I then buy huge amounts of stuff others have worked to make - I have done X work and I have got 1000X work in the products I can buy - or 1,000,000X work - and that means others get work without pay, slavery, robbed, angry - and righteously angry - I have taken out more than I put in - this system, with millions of people being overpaid for their ideas which have made people happier, has resulted in the draining of the pool of wealth, with 90% getting between 100th and 10,000th of fairpay, and violence proportional - 757s in your skyscraper window - the inventors of the tetrapak are richer than the queen - all this error is why the american middle class are now being sucked, and why america is on the verge of revolution - 50% of people in the first world have less than zero net assets - it seems to people that unlimited fortunes for limited effort is better than limited fortunes for limited effort - forgetting that overfortune cannot happen without underfortune - only 1% make a net benefit from unlimited fortunes - 99% pay for those overfortunes, for taking out more than you put in - the pool of wealth may expand, with machines and computers, but it is always finite - grabbing from nature is fine, because nature doesn't mind, doesn't object - but grabbing from people is cause of violence, which must ever-grow - who contributes when many people benefit from machine textiles, electricity, computers? - mostly nature, in providing materials and putting ideas in people's heads - and also all the people who contribute by their work - the first person learns to handle and use fire - a tremendous benefit - who contributes? - nature and those who use and handle fire - could anyone make the wood or the properties of wood? - the person having the idea and developing it should be paid for every bit of his or her work - sacrifice of time and energy - loss - while he is having the idea and developing it, he cannot hunt, tend fields, gather food.

If Al Gore made billions making cars that get 500 mpg and reduced carbon emissions, who would mind him getting billions - I don't care if each cancer-cure pill costs $1 to make and costs $10,000 to buy, I am happy to pay -
you are happy happy happy!!! - a cancer cure is worth $1,000,000 to you! - $10,000 is a bargain! - but look further down the track, see the big picture - you pay him for his work, say 20 years developing the cure at $40 an hour, 20 yrs x 2500 hrs x $40, $2,000,000, divided by the number of pills, and then what do you pay him for? - if you pay for everything that is worth something to you, you will be out of money - if you had to pay for air - what is air worth to you? - who did the work, to give you something worth $1,000,000 or more to you? - not the developer - you paid him, and every other human involved in the developing marketing packaging transporting advertising accounting patenting out of the $1 - the rest of the value was obviously put in it by mother nature - the chemicals, the intelligence of the developer, the disease, the cure, the esophagus which transports the pill, and all the rest of your body - and this euphoria largesse, this gift for nothing, this $9,999, is power to the developer, and $9,999 less power for you - what if you have 20 diseases, and only $20? -

equal opportunity -
shame on saying this, thinking this - there is only equal opportunity with equal pay for equal work - you say to yourself: it doesn't matter if there is unequal pay for equal work, it doesn't matter if some are taking out 100,000 times the average pay per hour and others 10,000th of average - it doesn't matter if every billion is sucking $100 million a year for no work, meaning others producing $100 million of goods without pay - everyone is equally free to struggle, to climb - what a great system - superfortunes are possible for everyone - but are they equally possible? - no, you overlook that - you were just looking for a way to preserve the system that permits unlimited fortunes for limited contribution - the system that robs from 99% and gives to 1%, and which robs everyone, from top to bottom, of peace, of fraternity, of human fellowship and equality, of decency, of a future. how long do you think you can go on growing violence, when you have 60 times PDC [planet death capability]? - how long do you think you will remain at the level you are now? - everyone is snakes and ladders with this system - Ceausescu, down the snake - the third world is at 51% of world income, and is rising 10% every 30 years - 81% by 2098 - probably more, because they will accelerate as they get stronger - and population 100 billion at 2100 - and world topsoil at zero by 2100 - oil perhaps zero by 2050 - do you think you can weather this huge fruit of all-grab-all, and devil take the hindmost? - do you think that you will not feel the currents of this great situation? - will you feel that equal opportunity exists when you are being paid 10-1c an hour as a billion are now, when all would be paid US$100,000 a year with equality? - wake up and smell the uranium! - you say you will fight, if someone tries to take anything from you - who will pay you for your risk then? - you have such confidence - do you think your economics professors are gods? - do you think they are immune to error, to overlooking things? - people are too dangerous to annoy! - they, like you, will never tolerate slavery - the underpaid have lost many battles, they have never lost the war: every empire, every plutocracy has fallen - the underpaid can only throw grains of sand, but sand erodes rocks - every empire has fallen - and the overpaid can get no more happiness from overpay than from fairpay! - do you think solid gold taps are incredibly pleasant? - how much more pleasant is a $4000 plate of truffles than a $1 meatball? - how many chairs can the overpaid sit in? - how many shoes can they wear, with just two feet? - wake up and smell the folly!