no third solution

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Category Archives: Anarchy!

Wages, Revenue & Labor

August 10th, 2010

Without ‘owners’ the workers collect revenue from sales. What the workers keep we might consider “wages” in an accounting sense, but strictly speaking, there are no “wages”, there is just “revenue”.

We might suppose that, in addition to probably cutting out the ‘middleman’ (the capitalist-entrepreneur), worker-owners would allocate revenues over their costs of production differently than would the capitalist ‘owners’. For starters we expect that they would either have, or aim to have, vastly different cost structures in the first place. But that’s a digression we need not follow.

So for the moment let’s forget about this and imagine that the workers have just wrested control from the hands of the “capitalists”, and that the cost structures (imperfect as they are) remain at least for the short- and probably for the medium-term.

Aside from beginning to pink-slip all the bureaucrats (how you identify and defenestrate the bureaucrats, I don’t really care) and turning those dividend checks (previously distributed to absentee shareholders) in to coin in the workman’s pockets, what else do they do differently?

The entirety of disagreement between cappies/commies, boils down to what is essentially a difference of opinion with regard to how sales revenues should be allocated.  Is it really that simple?

Maybe, but probably not. Stay tuned.

The Real Problem

August 1st, 2010

In my estimation this is the only problem that really matters. It’s all encompassing, and it’s practically insurmountable. Commenter Don sums it up succinctly:

These monsters have done things that can never be undone and the total consequences will never be known.

You’re right, Don, but I will go one further: It’s not just depleted uranium or agent orange or Nigerian oil spills that nobody in the developed world ever hears about or the other explicit (albeit hidden) costs of imperialism. The stockpiles of nuclear and other weapons of mass- and indiscriminate destruction; the use of such weapons including depleted uranium, etc., the de facto strip-mining of the Earth’s resources — these are globally existential threats to peace and humanity.

Most people are probably aware of nuclear stockpiles, that cold war remnant with which nobody knows exactly what to do. But there is a reason you’ve probably never heard about the Nigerian oil spills or countless other exploitations of a people and an ecosystem; a reason you’ve probably never heard much about depleted uranium or white phosphorous. They do not want you to know.

And so you don’t.

These aren’t naturally occurring, rather the people at large were manipulated in to sowing the seeds (which will probably one day become the source of our collective destruction), all of these threats had their genesis in the ruling classes’ interests, as a means towards achieving some outcome they desired, consequences be damned.

The issue is this: There are simply no means available to deal with or to mitigate the loss or potential for loss attributable to  many of the problems that the State has created.  Even if we could abolish the state tomorrow, these problems they created which nobody wanted in the first place, remain.

Proof You Are Being Exploited

July 16th, 2010

Ever wonder why we’re still working 40 hours per week? As if that’s some sort of magic equilibrium between labor/leisure that has just organically emerged over the centuries? It’s insanity, really. And evidence that we aren’t free to choose. I touched on this before, commenting that all of our productivity is wasted:

The average worker is several orders of magnitude more productive than he might’ve been a half-century hence… We’ve got more more people doing more jobs, producing more things and still we’re working 40 or 50 or 60 hours a week.

And this doesn’t strike anybody as being just a little bit insane?

In a free market where you aren’t being exploited there is a continuum, a trade-off between labor and remuneration. Let’s say you figure out some way to do your job in a quantifiably better/faster/more efficient manner. Assume for this thought experiment that you are able to double your productivity.

In a free market there is a real tradeoff between labor, leisure, and pay

What would happen in a free market? You could cut your work-week in half and achieve the same output for which you would expect the same remuneration. You could keep your work-week the same, in which case you would expect greater remuneration (perhaps as much as double your current pay). Or any combination along that continuum which would result in some amount of less work, and some amount of relatively (but often absolutely) greater remuneration.

What happens in practice? If you develop some brand new process which, compared to the old process, requires half as much labor, the odds are practically zero that your employer will offer you to begin working a 20-hour work week for the same rate of pay, despite the fact that by working 20 hours you produce the same quality and quantity of output. And it is equally unlikely that they will double your salary, which would justify a 40-hour week because you now produce twice as much and as good of output as before.

Probably what will happen is that some other sap will get canned. You’ll have to absorb at least part of his workload but you will not absorb any of his salary. The corporation will absorb his salary as profit. If you’re fortunate, you’ll get a small raise or spot bonus.

Generally speaking, for a job well-done, under budget, ahead-of-schedule, and to quality, the only reward is more work. We don’t get to enjoy more leisure if we produce more and better and faster, we just have to work even more. For the most part, productivity is severely penalized.

What is the alternative? I do not believe for a second, that given all of the technological advances in the last 200 years, a majority of people in the developed world would continue to work 40 hours a week, if they had any say in the matter whatsoever.  Imagine a 20-hour work week.  Imagine creativity unleashed. Imagine what would happen to progress and productivity, if only people were actually rewarded for the work that they do.

no third solution

Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics