We hear a lot about how 'greed' is destroying America. Primarily the "Greedy Capitalist". Actually, it's not the greedy Capitalist that's destroying our economies, but the Greedy Consumer. Yesterday I was with a friend who was buying a new flat screen TV. He'd done his research. Walked right past the Sony, Samsung and LG flat screens and went to an off brand TV. I asked why he was going for that one. Oh, it's made by LG he said. Only they make in China. And the remotes made in China. I'm not going to pay those greedy bastards one extra cent. What greedy bastards? LG he said. It's not the companies that are greedy. The companies are desperate to SERVE YOU. You are the greedy ones. Always looking for the cheapest 'best' deal. Never happy to buy anything made anywhere but where it gives YOU the best product for the cheapest amount of money. Almost everything is made in China. It has to be made in China - because of YOU. Not because of the business owner. Not because of the Chinese. Not even because of the banks. It's because of you. YOU the Greedy Consumer. You're to cause for the property bubble too. Not happy to live in a house, you had to flip one. You also had to trade up. You also demand not only the cheapest shit (forcing all production overseas) you then demand your politicians give you everything. They then turn to the only means they have to supply you your greedy shit - the banking system. Hence our debt. Also, you demand a job. Not that you're going to go out and create a job or start a business. You just think your entitled to work. So you politicians blow bubbles in the only sector YOU can't force overseas - construction. You're to blame. No one makes you buy the cheapest deal. But you always go for it. You don't have to. But you always do. Which is why we have Wallmarts all over the world now. You put the mom and pop stores out of business. You are the reason good cheese is dying out (a pet peeve of mine) and we have ugly orange cheep plastic cheese 'product'. Want to know why organic costs me so much? Because YOU would rather get a pound of cheese flavored vegetable oil rather than a 100 grams of good cheese for the same price. No company forces you to buy their products, no one forces you to work for them. YOU are free to start your own company and you are free to buy ONLY from American companies ... or simply refuse to buy until it's made in the USA again. But you don't. Because you're a Greedy SOB. On and on you go about the Greedy Corporations... like LG and Sony and Samsung and GM and Toyota. Talk about twisted logic. They do everything and anything for YOU. You treat them like shit demanding more for less. Never appreciative. You even tax them to pay for your healthcare - as if it's their privilege to design and make you shit, but they then have to pay your other life expenses. All we hear is on and on about the GREED! Oh, Capitalism is sooooo greedy. Who makes this shit up? It doesn't even make ANY logical sense. The consumer choose freely what he or she wants to buy. It's not the companies fault everyone wants the best for the least amount. That's the Greed of the Consumer. You. You are to blame. And we all know I'm right because this is exactly what we do every single time we're shopping. Always comparing prices. Comparing items. Looking to buy what we think is best. So, the next time you're in the mall or at the stores, remember whose the REAL greedy one in your monetary exchange.
ah another post from the great prophet micheal of the great religion libertaranism. oh my greed its so greedy to want to get the most out of your money. funny how when its corporations and the economic powerful who do its good but when its the little guy its the root of all our problems. your you piece of work blaming those who keeping get paid less to do more trying to make ends meet. yeah micheal the homeless unemployed just going to create a job out of thin air. do you have any fucking idea just how fucking expensive it is to create a buisness or a job. minimul it cost around half a mill. in other words 10 times the median income. your everyday person can't afford to just he fuckit andstart a buisness. not to mention banks are leery to loan to small buisness due to the failure rate. yeah its all our fault even though we can't do what you our great lord prophet of the great religion libertarianism demands of us. hey jerk off I worked for a year in a restaurant. I helped build from the ground up from a space that had naked concrete. the owner and investers who dropped the money for it spent I believe around 750,000 dollars. not including anything for the first batch food and employee paychecks. so tell how is your everyday person supposed to get that kind of money.
But Michael they are not necessarily providing you with the best, they are simply providing you with the cheapest. Walmart is not known for its premium items, the clothes are not the best made they are simply the cheapest, the kind you will have to replace after a few washes. Also if I wanted american made sneakers and waited around for an american company to make them I would be waiting a mighty long time. Also these companies didn't go overseas because they wanted to make things cheaper for the american consumer, they went overseas because it was cheaper for them to produce and the mark up gives them a fantastic profits. Chinese workers working for Walmart suppliers have been reported to pay their workers less than 55 cents per hour. If I wanted the best, I certainly wouldn't go into a Walmart. And those specialty stores selling the good cheese? They're abound but they certainly will not be the cheapest. The fact is most Americans cannot afford "the best", especially when it comes to food.
Ah hA! So, here we potentially have a problem starting a business because it costs too much 'money' and a problem buying good food because ... again, 'too much money'. Well big shock, the Federal Reserve doesn't work. This monetary system does NOT work for the average American. However, it IS the consumer that decided to buy shoes cheaply made in China. They could have chosen to buy American. We ran ads for YEARS trying to get Americans to buy American. They didn't want to. They wanted cheap. First it was toys, then our cars, then electronics, now it's everything that isn't nailed down. Even a bridge in Francisco is being made in China. If Americans bought good food, then the price would be cheaper. They by crap food and so that's what's cheap. I mean, we have MORE than enough food. It's a matter of choosing quality over quantity. Again, the blame rests squarely with the consumer.
@Michael Well I've actually known a few americans who really don't know what good quality food is never mind fresh food. To a Frenchman a baguette is something you buy fresh everyday and eat before the day its out otherwise it will get hard. Americans buy bread and it can hang around for days and stays perfectly soft (so its convenient. Americans love convenience. No time to run to the boulangerie every day). Its the same thing with meat and fish, no butcher in sight its to the supermarket for food that supposed to sit around in a freezer. Cans of this, frozen that, no one cares (or rather they don't even know) that there's monsanto rbgh in the milk or whether their beef is raised on grain, ground up cow or good old fashioned grass. Chickens doped up on hormones never see the light of day never mind walk. Depending on your community you may or may not have a farmer's market of fresh organic locally grown produce. Most americans eat processed food full of GMO's which they also know nothing about. I've seen mother's with their little ones on a morning commute in NYC giving their lieblings purple liquid in a plastic container and a bag of potato chips, I'm sure they're well intentioned and don't know any better or too fagged out to cut a green apple into fours. There is so much corn syrup and other malicious sweeteners added to foods and drink that anything without sugar tastes lacking; same thing goes for salt. So if that is what your exposed to for a generation, perhaps two or more, then you cannot expect people to recognize good food from edible food. It takes effort to create wholesome meals and it takes time (did I mention no one has time?), the culture doesn't make room for the effort. Listen I had an Italian friend who's family is from Calabria. If you visit her homeland her mother would put out a big spread full of fresh olives, homemade pasta and sausage etc. She does this everyday for her family, and not she doesn't work. This woman woke up to prepare a fresh breakfast and when she was finished she would go right into preparing lunch because to put out a big spread of fresh this that and the other, homemade pasta etc takes TIME. And because it takes so much time everyone is expected to sit at the table and leisurely eat and drink and relax and talk, not shove something in their mouth and rush off to do whatever, eat in front of the tv or computer. Eating in that culture is something that takes time and is about community. Asians don't eat alone, ever notice that? Your analysis doesn't account for culture, only economic drives. America doesn't have a food culture it only has, what Quad once referred to as "American foodstuff". Can you imagine a frenchman or an asian referring to their cuisine as "foodstuff"? I tell you reading that told me everything I needed to know about the mentality towards food. Also your analysis doesn't take into account consumer knowledge, you assume everyone knows what good food is, that there is a cultural knowledge of food when for many there isn't. The analysis doesn't take into account access to these good healthy fresh foods. There are supermarkets yes, that doesn't mean its filled with the best. I can go to the local Stop and Shop because its closer because the marvelous Whole Foods is miles away. There may not be a food co-op or farmer's market available etc. In this sense PJ is correct that you are blaming the consumer without taking a look at how the consumer is limited by the way his world is organized. A documentary recently showed this hispanic family of five. The parents would love to buy vegetables and fruit from their local supermarket but they just couldn't afford to feed the family sufficiently because of the cost of fresh healthy food, they eat at McDonalds a lot, not because they wanted to but because it was the cheapest alternative. Its arrogant to speak of giving up quality over quantity when for many people these aren't even their choices. Here's a question, what makes you think that if americans bought good food the price would be cheaper?
Actually BUSINESSES went looking for cheaper ways to make their products to earn more revenues for themselves and their stockholders. Americans could not make the businesses any higher profits with what businesses were paying American workers here so businesses went overseas to get cheap labor and to take advantage of easier ways to start up a company without so many REGULATIONS which impeded businesses in America to earn greater profits. No environmental agency, no child labor laws no minimum wages to pay, it was a paradise for American businesses to move overseas and gain more revenue for their own interests, not the American public. Businesses were not constrained by TARIFFS or DUTY FEES when they brought their merchandise back to America which made their products cheaper and when anyone sees they can SAVE MONEY they will, especially if it is the same product they are looking to buy. The government never tried to prevent businesses from keeping a level playing field in any laws they could have made insuring a even playing field but instead took bribes to look the other way while businesses just kept bringing in more goods made cheaper than American companies could compete with. All in all it is the government who could have prevented this whole thing from happening but alas it was so corrupted that it did'nt give a damn about what happened to the American worker , it only wanted its bribes that it could get from businesses one way or another. Usually businesses just waited until Congress people were not in office any longer to give them their well deserved payoffs which no one said anything about since it was perfectly legal to do so. So there in a nutshell is really the problem of the economic downturn in America, letting businesses take advantage of the system by never allowing a fair and balanced playing field in which completion and values could happen. The government has always been sleeping with big businesses and this goes to show it is the real problem and will remain that way forever because no one can stop greedy, self serving, corrupt people who run things down the gutter.
Well, yes. To do that you'd need to eliminate about 90% of the government, and that's not going to happen until bankruptcy forces it to happen.
not to mention that the lack of time to do that comes from the right wing and libertarian ideal of companies push their workers more and more for less and less.
Even a bankrupt society will still have the government trying to keep control of everything they can. So those in charge would still be in charge until a revolution takes them out of power and new leaders are elected.
I'll have to get back to this thread. But, sticking with the theme of: It's the Customer Stupid (IOWs at the end of the day, the customer freely CHOOSES where to put his or her money). As for food: 7-11 has a new instant Mash Potatoes And BBQ Gravy machine that, for $1 and with the push of a button barfs out a lukewarm potato paste and then squeezes a warm brown watery substance on to the top. [video=youtube;n0vXoRrTe_Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0vXoRrTe_Q&feature=related[/video] I work 60 hours a week, typically. I put in weekends too. I still make the time to make my own food at home. Even when I want to just buy something (like fresh grilled chicken, cooked in front of me, which is probably fine if business is brisk). I cook at home. I make yogurt at home. I make cream cheese at home. I make my own pizza dough. I make my own bagels and bread. I've made my own noodles. A 50 pound of wheat flour is $10. Don't tell me food is cheaper than made at home. It's not. You can eat healthy and cheaply EVEN when pressed for time. The reason that machine exists is NOT because of Maggie. It's not because of 7-11 either. It's because the fat lazy cheap-ass greedy consumer want's his fast cheap bowl of potato and gravy for $1. Then he wants ME to pay for his healthcare. Tell me how that figures. Just because I happen to work in the same "Nation" I owe him his healthcare? Jesus, I already spend day and night working on the medicine he'll use. Training the doctors that'll deal with his noncompliance when he has a heart attack and refuses to live healthy. That may sound harsh, but, in a just world the limited resources would go to the people who really DO need them. And my money, if I had my way, would go towards more research into health and education. How many people here take aspirin? If you are over 40 you should consider taking 70mg/day(religiously). It's literally a health miracle pill. Aspirin cost next to nothing. A bottle of 1000 pills is what? $3.50 at the most. Why aren't people taking it? It would cut our health care bills in half! So, again, we need a market to push the greedy lazy consumer into taking the 'economical' action that betters society.
@Michael Are you comparing your single childless life full of frequent flyer miles, a medical PHD and expat lifestyle with the average working class American? If your opinion is simply that "its the consumer stupid" without taking into any other consideration except your idea of economic incentives then I don't know why you are bothering to go on about these subjects. I say that because such an opinion isn't helpful. You should just get on with the life of a consumer who makes "right choice" and ignore the idiots you hold in contempt. In other words you're not being insightful and your analysis is narrow. Michael: In a just world resources would go to the people who really DO need them. Who really needs them Michael? Tell me which groups or individuals are deserving and which ones are not? What's the criteria? Because based on your qualifications those who are deserving would not be in need would they? They would have gone to medical school and make noodles at homePlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! And your 50 pound bag of wheat flour? Your prices are really off: http://store.honeyvillegrain.com/allpurposeflouru50lb.aspx Cheaper brands? http://www.nextag.com/flour-50-lb/stores-html
where are you pulling these costs from. a 50 pound bag of wheat flour cost over 10 dollars wholesale. OTC pain meds cost more than $3.50 for 1000
Its even more than that. His analysis is completely narrow and simplistic on this topic and doesn't account for a variety of factors.
No I don't think that's the reason at all. Being libertarian doesn't necessarily entail having a myopic point of view. Actually Wanderer did a much better job, remember the thread What About Bob? http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?32212-What-About-Bob He at least took culture into account and didn't simply boil it all down to one element namely economic drives even though he worked this: "Bob only displays skepticism at the corner grocery store where he is doubtful if this is the best price he can get. Bobs skepticism begins and ends in his wallet." and this: "Bob has plenty. Bob is fat on the products of his work. His very definition of happiness entails plentiful resources. It is therefore impossible for Bob to ignore his instincts. He eats often, even if it will eventually kill him." into the narrative.
Theory and Practice Capitalist, communist, "consumerist", "corporatist", Christian, Jew, Muslim, creationist, "evolutionist" .... If one attempts to apply a theory in such a manner as to ignore the fact that nature is not behaviorally reliable, the results will be problematic. Adam Smith and Karl Marx, for instance, are not the dualistic opposites the modern "capitalist" vs. "socialist" debate expects. In my lifetime, at least, the capitalistic political definitions of Marx, communism, socialism, &c., have dominated the discussion. Consider the transition between the five-year and thirty-year loan to purchase a home. By making the loan a thirty-year proposition, the market suddenly opened to a multitude of new buyers. On paper, at least, the proposition should work. But nature doesn't always behave according to the textbook. If all the elements behave according to expectation, then the theory will work out as expected. Recalling my youth, let us say the 1980s and into the '90s, the question of real wages was often viewed as something of a pinko talking point. At the level of the average voter or consumer, none of the experts taking part in the public discourse would dare to project that wages would stagnate as history now informs they did. P. J. O'Rourke, the conservative humorist, in the 1980s published an article in Harper's called, "Ship of Fools". He discussed a summertime cruise, sixteen days long, "from Rostov north up the Don, through the Don-Volga canal, and on up the Volga River to Kazan". Of the one hundred sixty pasengers, all American, "Most were antinuke actiists and peace-group organizers with sixties leftover looks. Others were products of the Old Left." As you might imagine, P. J. did not take kindly to the leftists. This transcription is from the 1987 book, Republican Party Reptile: .....During a brief moment lacuna, Marya said, "Do any of you have questions that you would like to ask about the Soviet Union?" ....."Where can I get a—" But the leftists beat me to it. ....."What is the cost of housing in the Soviet Union as a percentage of worker wages?" asked one. ....."What is the retirement age in the Soviet Union?" ....."What pension do retired Soviet workers receive as a percentage of their highest annual work-life salary?" ....."Is higher education free in the Soviet Union?" ....."What about unemployment?" .....Marya answered, pointed out a few more monuments, and asked, "Do any of you have other questions you would like to ask about the Soviet Union?" .....Exactly the same person who'd asked the first question asked exactly the same question again. I thought I was hearing things. ....."What is the cost of housing in the Soviet Union as a percentage of worker wages?" .....And that flipped the switch. ....."What is the retirement age in the Soviet Union?" ....."What pension do retired Soviet workers receive as a percentage of their highest annual work-life salary?" ....."Is higher education free in the Soviet Union?" .....Marya answered the questions again. The third time it happened she began to lose her composure. I could hear her filling up empty places in the sightseeing landscape. "Look, there's a building! And there's another! And over there are several buildings together! And here [sigh of relief] are many monuments." .....All the time we were in Russia, at every opportunity, the questions began again, identical questions with identical wording. I'm proud to say I don't remember a single one of the answers. Except for the one about unemployment. "There is no unemployment in the Soviet Union. The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job." A pretty scary idea, I'd say. .....Later in the trip, when I'd fled the bus tours and was wandering on my own, the lumpier kind of Russian would come up and ask me questions—not the "You are foreign?" sort of questions, but rapid, involved questions in Russian. Perhaps because my hair was combed and I wore a necktie (two Soviet rarities) they thought I had special access to the comb-and-necktie store and must therefore be a privileged party official who knew what was what. I've wondered since if they were asking me, "What is the cost of housing in the Soviet Union as a percentage of worker wages?" For most of my life, concerns like the portion of income devoted to housing expenses were either a cold fact of life, or some sort of tip that you were dealing with a communist. They certainly were not questions that the public discourse regarded as deserving of serious consideration. Now, of course, in a period of economic upheaval, the American discourse frequently turns its focus to how much of the family income is taken up by rent or mortgage, insurance, gasoline, and even food. As it turns out, very little went according to plan. Certes, consumers did their duty, racking up huge debts to keep our economy moving, but something eventually had to give. But as it seemed anathema at the time to consider the prospect that wages would stagnate, the point seems to have caught the financial world off guard. By the time we got around to nina (No Income, No Assets) loans, people should have been able to figure out something was up. And, well, some of the bankers knew, as they diced up the loans into incomprehensible securities to sell off, and then promptly bet against them. In this particular tale of woe, one can reasonably wonder if maybe things would not have gone so badly had real wages kept pace with economic growth. As with any societal hypothesis, as long as all the elements behave according to the projections required to bring about the desired outcome, there is a good chance that the outlook will prove correct. But things so rarely go that way. In truth, even the Sharia laws we find so repugnant for murdering gays, or rape survivors, and such, would probably work out just fine if there were no homosexuals, or if nobody ever raped anyone else. Even Jesus' famous, "Turn the other cheek," is suspect given the tendency for aggressors to take the opportunity to smack someone a second time, and a third, and so on. Loan sharking for black-market gambling would probably work just fine, except that people can't or won't always pay their debts. Any hypothesis can prove itself true if the elements examined behave according to expectation. But nature is simply not so accommodating. (Say what you will about irresponsible hypotheses with unrealistic expectations, but I intend a consideration so proximal and generalized as to respond that, well, exactly—nature is not necessarily going to accommodate.) As such, I'm not certain it's necessarily a context that has anything to do with no wife, no kids, frequent flyer miles, and living in Japan. I'm pretty sure you could find a married, small-business owning parent in Indiana who will make similar mistakes to Michael's. Or even working-class economic conservatives dreaming of Horatio Alger who believe that if we just get rid of all the Nazi communist anti-colonial liberals constantly meddling in the economy, their lives will get better and their bank accounts fatter. Of course, nature is not so accommodating, and it is likely that they will find the capitalistic utopiates unwilling to relinquish sufficient market-share as to allow the hypothesis to prove true. And Michael is simply trying to blame nature for not behaving according to his needs. It is not that voters, consumers, citizens, people—call them what you want according to the needs of any given discussion—are without fault, but it's kind of like when people remind me that enforced solutions to racial and ethnic bigotry only create more resentment. Well, sure, but if only those pesky human beings would behave consistently according to my expectations ... er ... yeah. You know? For Michael's hypothesis to work, people would long ago have screwed the bourgeoisie to the wall. Consider the Wisconsin labor fight; the Republicans argued that union workers at the state level were overpaid. Compared to what? Well, compared to the nonrepresented workers whose wages have stagnated for decades. Now, if only those pesky corporateers had paid people proper wages .... Again, you know ... yeah, right. It didn't work out that way. Life goes on, for the living. Meanwhile, each of our utopiate dreams are nothing more than that. Reality has a nasty habit of disagreeing with our best hopes. ____________________ Notes: O'Rourke, P. J. Republican Party Reptile. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.
@Tiassa Except, to go by Michael's reasoning, that "married, small-business owning parent in Indiana" would still be the "stupid consumer" because he/she buy's their goods from Costco and own a Chinese made TV set.:shrug: The analysis blames lower and middle class people for not having the means to afford not to be so strapped they have to buy the cheapest goods. It blames them for all they do not know and all they cannot attain and to boot it places the onus of how one is formed or informed on the individual as if most are able to rise above the cultural matrix that imparts the knowledge of how people ought to live or the norms & values of their society. Its unrealistic. Some do rise above this, many cannot. So instead of asking how to change those values so there aren't all these "stupid consumers" who fail to take their daily dose of aspirin, he simply chose to narrow it down consumer choice as if they really always have a choice. Its as if he's saying they are knowingly fat and sick and eat a sub-par diet because its cheaper. He doesn't question their knowledge or what informs them, which is a huge part in making "choices", nor does he account for access, another important part of choice.
To wit: WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net. Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections. The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965. Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth. "The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy. He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs. "I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said. http://news.yahoo.com/us-poverty-track-rise-highest-since-1960s-112946547--finance.html So yes Michael the economy is failing, it isn't working but the blame goes beyond just that of the "stupid consumer"
No its not. The definition of libertarian is a person who advocates liberty, especially with regard to thought or conduct.
