Forum Post: Jobs as a human right
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 12, 2011, 3:32 p.m. EST by dbnyc001
(25)
from New York, NY
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
When all jobs are allocated via capitalist labor markets, unemployment is a symptom of excessive capitalist exploitation and the inherent unfairness (the rich owners of the workplaces always tend to get richer and take ever more for themselves) and fallibility of free markets, ultimately requiring limitation, redistribution and regulation by government to protect the non-owners and the public commons. Part of a good government's responsibility is to arrange for everyone to be protected from damaging levels of economic exploitation, while enabling universal participation in the processes of economic productivity. You do have a human right to meaningful work that earns a living for you and your family. We evolved as hunter-gatherers, with no concept of "work" as anything other than what we had to do to have food and shelter and reasonable comfort for ourselves and our families (including the weaker young and old and hurt among us). We do have a right to that fundamental level of human existence. We do have a right (and a responsibility) to contribute appropriately to the collective social processes of producing goods and services. Capitalism is one technique for arranging this, which acts so as to reward people differentially based on their contribution. If we choose to use capitalism as our production and distribution management method we risk its inevitable devolution in the direction of the current situation and beyond, to where the very few have almost all the resources and the rest of us become deprived to below life-sustaining levels, unless we assert that meaningful employment at a living wage is a human right, and hold the production and distribution system legally and morally accountable for arranging this, under penalty of the government intervening to rearrange things if and when it does not.
Wrong. Capitalism is what free, honest people do to survive in the absence of coercion.
It's all you people running around with guns looking to 'allocate' the fruits of my labor that muck it all up. And then when you muck it all up so bad that a quarter of the people can't find jobs, you propose taking everything over with your guns. It's always all about forcing people to do one thing or another. You think you can take a shortcut and just 'make it so'. It ain't so.
You're gonna need a bigger gun. And a lot more of them than you got now.
Capitalism is also what free, dishonest and greedy people do to take all they can and give nothing back (the Pirates' Creed). I don't ever think guns are a good idea, and I would never advocate taking the hard earned fruits of your labor away, Hank. I'd like us to protect ourselves from the pirates, not with guns but with social agreements about what's allowed in polite society, and make sure you personally and individually always have the option to work for those fruits. If you don't understand economic exploitation you need to raise your consciousness, not your guns, But be assured, I want you to be able to always earn your living honestly and fairly, that's all.
Exploitation can only happen with fraud or force.
Usually it happens with fraud being used to get you to accept force.
Dishonest and greedy people generally have a hard time getting people to work for or with them, and they generally have a hard time getting anyone to buy from them.
Pirates are not capitalists. And neither are fascists!
It takes integrity and trustworthiness to get a skilled man to trust you enough to stake his future on coming to work for you.
Capitalism is a very generic term. What we have today in America is a pay to play, monopoly based, "pull" form of capitalism. Very few investors know anything about the companies they hold stock in. The market is set up so that those with the most marbles, are offered preferred stock which is never made available to the public. Insurance companies take on most of the risk where is gets passed down to the masses. Unless something like the GFC in 2008 happens, all the 1% has to do is collect dividends and profits from insured maturing bonds. They call that "work".
Steve Jobs was a capitalist, while Bill Gates is a mooch. Bill didn't write a single line of Windows. His daddy just happened to be the first patent lawyer to copyright someone else's source code. The success of Microsoft was dependant on the US Government to designate Windows as their default OS. The US Govt. is still MS's largest client.
While Steve Jobs actually worked with his engineers. He led the charge and came up with at least the basic ideas for many of Apple's ground-breaking products. He was their most effective salesman until the day he died.
Both were nice guys but only one was a Free Market Capitalist...Of course I could be mistaken on one point or another. Thanks.
Terms get hijacked. The ploy is to wrap up a concept with another one that has a turd in it, so people will think, 'hey, that stinks', and throw the whole thing out.
Capitalism requires freedom and is the only system that allows freedom.
They've wrapped it up with the criminal behavior of fascism, and blamed all the evil results on your freedom. They want you to voluntarily trash the rest of your own rights. Pretty big payback, just for re-defining a word. They get to rule your life.
What we have today in the U.S. is a fascist system sold with communist slogans.
Seen this one yet? If not, enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVjIR_oai-A
We're on the same page Hank. Well said!
Thanks! What do you think of that little video?
Exploitation happens when someone takes advantage of another's weakness. Real estate agents exploit your lack of knowledge of the housing market, for example. Not all exploitation is necessarily excessive, or inherently damaging. But it does exist in excessive and damaging levels in some places and times and circumstances. It may be more a power differential than the actual application of force, per se, or trickery or better access to resources rather than literal fraud, but the dishonest and greedy investment bankers that sold all those toxic mortgage-backed CDO securities didn't have a hard time getting rich people and managers of other people's money to buy from them. I wish your basically noble outlook were true, but I fear the history of American capitalism is littered with counter-examples, since it's earliest days, and we're not alone.
I don't agree that no pirates or fascists are capitalists, I think these are independent of one anther. Not all pirates are capitalists, but getting a ship took capital and hiring a crew with promises of adventure and plunder seems pretty capitalistic to me. Not to mention Goldman- Sach's behavior short-selling their clients' investments that G-S just sold them. That's both piracy and capitalism, I'd maintain. I'm not sure what you'd be willing to accept as fascist, but if it's mainly excessive authoritarianism, I'd have to point at the Koch Brothers and their recent instructions to their employees as to who the employees were "expected" to vote for, as an example of capitalistic fascism, or fascistic capitalism. But overall I get your point.
Integrity and trustworthiness required? Not if the workers are dirt poor and desperate. Then skilled men and women will work for garbage wages doing things that damage themselves and consider it good luck. That's exploitation.
Your post reminds me of the writings of Robert Heinlein and other libertarian science fiction writers, in your underlying belief in the inherent ability and willingness of people to be honorable, upon which foundation a political orientation and practice can be based that needs little or no regulatory, general welfare or police attributes in its government. If only that were so, but I think it will take a general larger agreement on certain social norms and mores, like being honorable and respecting others and taking personal responsibility not only for your own actions but for your willingness to personally assist others in need, and an underlying assumption of basic economic general equality, without any poverty or aggregations of wealth to temp behavior out of that moral code. Then the apparent cynicism of TAANSTAFL (no free lunch) can be understood to be a personal commitment to integrity and responsibility, an unwillingness to be a freeloader, and a society of like-minded people. I hope we get there, but inequality stands in the way, and unfettered free market capitalism inevitably leads to large inequality.
[Adolf Hitler on Nazism and socialism:] “Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism—not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper . . . .
“[T]he people about us are unaware of what is really happening to them. They gaze fascinated at one or two familiar superficialities, such as possessions and income and rank and other outworn conceptions. As long as these are kept intact, they are quite satisfied. But in the meantime they have entered a new relation; a powerful social force has caught them up. They themselves are changed. What are ownership and income to that? Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”
Which he said to calm the socialist sympathizers in Germany on his path to completely disemboweling them. Nazism, by definition, is anti-liberal, anti-egalitarian, and rabidly anti-communist. Sound familiar?
Yes, intimately familiar.
Our system today is a fascist system sold with communist slogans.
Organized crime is not capitalism.
If you want to redefine the word capitalism by branding it with the injustices of crime and fascism, so that you can throw the whole package out along with the freedom that capitalism both allows and requires, then go ahead and do it.
It's been done before. The main product of any alternative to freedom and private property rights is dead bodies.
Tell that to the Native Americans. Their many dead bodies illustrate that the opposite is sometimes true. I tend to agree with Kris Kristofferson that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." When you are engaged in a complex social environment you are inevitably encumbered by many legitimate restraints. Your freedom to mess things up for other people is basically disallowed, so what freedom(s) are we taking about here? Further, I personally attribute much of human misery to the awful concept of private property, for which people are constantly being killed. Like the native Americans, I question that the earth is anyone's to own. I do recognize the utopian unrealizability of my philosophical position on this, so I won't press the point. Like I said earlier though, read Foley's book "Adam's Fallacy." You endow the words freedom and capitalism with religious-like significance. They mean something special and narrowly specific to you, and I'm not clear what that is, so it's hard to decide how to respond meaningfully.
Thank you for your honest reply.
Freedom, in a political context, has only one meaning: the absence of physical coercion.
Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.
A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context.
The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.
Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.
The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation.
Those are the definitions that inform my judgment. I realize full well that the purpose of most modern education is to subvert these concepts, however these appear to be defensible in that all other constructs eventually end up with someone pointing a gun at me.
See? No religion, no appeal to some authority.
How can you have private property rights that are enforceable without having physical coercion? (Is this a utopian ideal that everyone just agrees to? Why would they agree to someone taking more private property than most other people?) Legal contracts defining specific property rights are enforced by state authority backed by guns. How do you get to have a piece of property that I want instead of me having it, especially if I decide to squat on it like OWS is doing on Zucotti Park? Who decides, without having a fight over it or appealing to a higher social good than the individual? If people have a right to property, and we're not going to use guns how do we decide who gets how much? See, I don't like guns any more than I like private property. I think it would be good to do away with both, since you always get the one if you have the other. Guns exist to protect private property, which requires guns to be maintained privately by the owner. But without private property how could we have capitalism? Well we couldn't but we could still use reasonably efficient market mechanisms to determine production and distribution of resources, using worker-owned and operated firms and auction systems for allocating fungible financial resources like money and use of (now public) land. But hey, it's a utopian fantasy, don't get me started. The rich get richer at everyone else's expense in your system, I'm afraid, because you have to use force to protect the private property even if you only let the police have guns (do you trust them?). It's just like playing Monopoly: eventually by chance someone gets an edge and it steadily increases on average until they have everything. (And by the way, in your system can we sanction a woman's freedom of action too when we establish moral principles?)
Voluntary trading by mutual consent and for mutual benefit. Peaceful and profitable to both parties.
The only reason a free people would voluntarily form a government would be for the purpose of protecting their individual rights. To remove force from the interactions between people, to provide referee services in case of a dispute, and to wield measured force, only in retaliation against those who initiate force. Of course, there's the rub. Government always grows beyond its watchman status, applying its force against some to the detriment of others. But logically the government should protect people with a military to protect against invasion, police to protect against thieves and such, and courts to settle disputes.
Economics is not a zero sum game, like Monopoly. Wealth is created and then consumed. It flows like a river. It is not like a pie. The division of labor allowed by free trade with honest money allows for a great increase in the standard of living beyond what anyone could do by subsistence farming. Those who create greater wealth do not do so at the expense of those who voluntarily trade with them. They do it by providing better products and services to their customers, enhancing their lives. Remember, the trade is voluntary.
Land is property, too. It can be rented, or it can be sold.
No monopoly can exist for long without the government gun supporting it.
A person has a right to their own life, and thus they have a right to the use and disposal of their property. They have the right to defend themselves if need be. This does not infringe on the rights of any potential thief.
The nature of a right means that all persons have the same rights, all stemming from their right to life, and that means that no person can possibly have a right that infringes on any rights of another. That means, nobody gets to decide how much of your property is to be taken from you and given to another.
What's that got to do with sex?
I agree abut the zero sum game, I didn't mean to suggest that modern corporate capitalism is a zero sum game, just that the distribution of the extra value it produces is necessarily, inevitably and inexorably increasingly unequal over time absent government regulation and forced redistribution. So you do believe in guns to protect the private property. If I squat on your land you'll have me shot. OK, what if I drill with fracking for natural gas just uphill of your land and grossly pollute it? I mean by accident, of course I wouldn't do it on purpose, but I did cut some corners to make a few extra bucks of profit, and my gain didn't work out that well for you. Should you sue me and have me shot if you win and I don't pay damages to you? Actually, my corporation will just go out of business after we move the profits offshore. So go ahead, sue the business. I personally haven't violated your rights, we're still friends, right?
Well if I get my utopian vision (ha!), there would be no protection from liability to be gained by using a corporation to cause harm to others. Strict liability and the upholding of property rights would do a lot more good for our environment than a bunch of paid-off corrupt bureaucrats and all their crazy schemes.
Forced redistribution? A disaster. Immoral, too.
"What's that got to do with sex?": "A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. " "can we sanction a woman's freedom of action too?" is my knee jerk reaction to your hopefully unaware and not intentionally sexist use of a gender pronoun
Ha, sorry about that. Gender pronouns are a pain.
No more so than the guns of your policemen. So long as the "fruits of labour" are denied to all workers who labour, coercion remains one of the primary aspects of capitalism.
There's no coercion in agreeing to work for someone at a wage you agree on. If you think you can do better, open your own business and pay more to get better employees. I did it, you can too. No coercion. What it does take is honesty and integrity.
In a situation in which a man has all the apples of the world and another man not a scrap to eat, you'd consider it a free agreement if the man threw apples at the one with none provided he danced for them. But let's be serious: a man does not work by virtue of labour: he works for fear of unemployment. In such a situation one does not exactly have much time to be scrupulous regarding the conditions of their employment. The boss, on the other hand, most certainly does. This doesn't seem like a very even playing field, though.
So you're willing to crush my freedom for a hypothetical example?
Life is unfair. You're born with nothing, and you have to create enough value to survive. Only through cooperation with others, respecting their rights and not stealing what they have produced, can we thrive. If we give up on the principle to not do others harm or take their stuff, then we will all end up miserable. And history proves it.
That fairness argument takes for granted that we already have a pretty assured survival against starvation and the elements. It's easy to not realize how precious and hard-won that is, because it is the environment we grow up in, and fortunately we don't ever get exposed to extreme hardship. But this is not a natural given, our hold on our standard of living is tenuous, and if we forget the principles that allowed us to gain such security as we now enjoy, we will lose that very security and things will get very, very ugly. Not only is it easier to forget these principles when things are relatively easy, but when things are decidedly not easy any more, those principles will be under forcible attack on a daily basis.
There can be no such concept as the right to the product of another man's work. Any more than a thief could have any right to any of your possessions.
Only to the extent your willing to withhold mine.
Yes, we are born with nothing. Odd, seeing we're born into a world with everything. But yes, let us respect others rights, cooperate with each other, and above all not steal from each other. After all, to withhold your property when a community is starved of property, is this not theft from society itself?
Yes, the principles that allow our so-called civil society! Colonialism, exploitation, poverty most miserable. We've forgotten all the coercion and injustice that has led us to our current standing! Look at you, spitting on the principles by which we've functioned.
You cannot say a man has a right to the product of his labour while simultaneously promoting the principles of its expropriation.
To withhold when a community is starving is not theft. You would save your own spouse and children first rather than sacrifice them for the starving masses, and not just because what little you have couldn't save them all if equally divided, but because you value them more.
That coercion and injustice have happened in the past is something I cannot alter. Neither can I endorse it. But it does not change what is right and what is wrong.
I do not promote any principle of expropriation.
I would? Strange, I was not informed. I value them more? Why wasn't I told? Is value then not something we come to individually, but something universally placed by all in a uniform fashion?
Bro, I quote
I've simply stated the principles that allowed us to gain such security, apparently to your dismay. Strange, you seemed to put so much value on them.
OK, I made an unwarranted assumption.
If you wouldn't value your own spouse or children more than strangers, that really is up to you. (You really ought to consider the implications of that. Because your spouse certainly will!)
It seems you believe that peaceful coexistence with freedom and property rights is impossible. At least you are honest about it. Good luck. You already won. You are in the majority. Public schooling has guaranteed that. Your values have been given the force of law and we are living out the consequences. Let's see how that works out for you.
You seem to think I'm against freedom for wanting the abolition of property. What am I then to believe? Property is the only manifestation of freedom? Come off it, even a man with nothing to his name can experience freedom.
You speak of freedom, yet you've really no idea what it is. The only existence you're able to give to a man is his position within economic exchange.
the word property was taken out and happiness took its place in the pre amble most agreed that" life liberty and the pursuit of Property" were the root of all human rights . happiness can never be a right only the pursuit of it can
Property is not the only manifestation of freedom, but ultimately there is no freedom without property rights.
Freedom, in a political context, has only one meaning: the absence of physical coercion.
A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life.
The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.
Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.
The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.
Might want to do a little proofreading, brosephicles. It's a little contradictory to say property is the only freedom, and then say it finds its existence in a different freedom. I get what you're saying and all, but it's still poor form.
Freedom (in its "political context") is simply freedom from "physical coercion"? Then I suppose I ought not care about coercion that exists outside physical space. "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me", I suppose. However, I guess it follows that those who have been hurt by words were not actually hurt by words, but wounded by invisible particles emanating from the mouths of their tormenters.
But all right, let us assume that only what can be perceived through the bodily senses are important. We both agree that the right to life is the fundamental right of all men, right? You, of course, want to guarantee it by the right to property. But this is contradictory. You want to guarantee life by utilizing that which has ended by far the most if it. You want man to do whatever it is he will, without being coerced in any way, something even I would like. So let us look at those who are exemplars of liberty. Korean biofuel corporations, who buy farmland in countries wracked with starvation so they can grow corn and other such ethanol producing crops? Columbian drug cartels using fields for cocaine production? But so long as property rights are being respected all is well in the world, right? But after all, it is not a guarantee that a man will earn property (how can property guarantee the right to life if it can't even guarantee right right to property?), only that he can dispose of his meagre handout in whatever way he sees appropriate.
So, by holding property as our way of guaranteeing the right to life we have denied others of their right to life, reducing right to might. Property is therefore backed by force.
My right to keep what I create is backed by force.
And therefore, no, you don't get a guarantee that I will slave away to guarantee your existence. Better bring a gun.
Because you want to assume ownership of my property, you want a guaranteed existence at my expense.
Your education is complete, those who hold your principles have elevated them to the status of armed force, and they have done their job on the young for many years. You've already won the argument.
There is one little problem with it, though. You see, the mind doesn't work under compulsion. We, the able, won't do it for you. It is happening now. Consumption is running ahead of production, and the entire system is crashing. You can expect the demands to keep increasing as there is less and less to pass around. The tipping point will be when it is either impossible to produce, or it becomes less of a threat to our lives to resist than it is to comply. Those who have assimilated your principles but who aren't quite as well schooled in elucidating them, being utterly dependent on handouts, and thoroughly imbued with the entitlement mentality, having been schooled that their unwilling and unappreciated providers are their enemy, will riot and loot. And then they will start killing each other. We, the able, will have left their environment and will be out of reach. They will be left to their own devices. We will survive, and defend ourselves. And no, we will not feed them any more.
Oh, so it IS backed by force. So, what, you only hold to "inalienable rights" so long as you can do so from behind a loaded gun?
I simply want guarantee existence for all. You want to guarantee it only for yourself, with a bit of superficial moral justification.
I also find it funny how you think I want to assume ownership of your property. Didn't we go over this? I want its abolition.
"We, the able"! oh no! The able won't work! Who will till the soil, assemble the machines, extract the resources of the earth?
Oh wait, those are "The Workers". Who are supposedly unable, despite being the entire basis by which wealth is founded upon. And now you're spouting the plot of Atlas Shrugged as a strawman. Huh.
Property rights have always been backed by the threat of retaliatory force, and there's no escaping it.
If it weren't, there'd be a bunch of people running around trying to abolish it. Kinda tough abolishing my right to keep what I create, without taking it away from me.
Oh, and I make metal. The man who swings that hammer would have a tough life without that metal.
They're guaranteed by more than just retaliatory force: they're guaranteed by COERCIVE force. Which is, of course, the sort of force you're promoting.
Where did my long-winded dissertation on non-coercion give you that idea?
The right to property can only maintain itself coercively I mean, you said it yourself: you're only able to keep it afloat by the barrel of a gun.
You'd be in a tight spot without the metal worker, too. And you'd still furthermore be in a tight spot without the miner. However, the miner and the metal worker together have no need of you.
Err, no, I did say the threat of retaliatory force. You know, just leave me alone if you don't want to trade peacefully with me. And I will leave you alone. But I know what a raiding party is.
And yes, we need to cooperate. I will make deals with others to help me if they wish, on terms acceptable to both of us. I will not force them to do anything. If they don't want to do it, I'll find someone else who will. Or go without, and we'll all go without. But if I know how to make metal, and I save up previous unconsumed wealth to make the tools to produce it with, you nor anybody else has the right to expropriate it from me. I'll smash it before I give it up, and you can start from scratch yourself.
It's not worth it Hank. Call Roark, Galt, Wynand and the rest. These people don't understand.
Ha, a few have gotten the message. That's a lot more than in the past. It's worth a few hours of my time.
Capitalism does not allocate jobs. Citizens choose their jobs, or settle for them when he has made unwise choices in life. Unemployment can be a result of organic demand reverting to it's natural level. It can happen because an individual chose to remain unskilled, ignorant, or refused to provide the labor he agreed to exchange for trinkets(money). The individual employee and employer are the origional union. If their union works they all profit. If a worker thinks he deserves more he has every liberty to go elsewhere. Of course the employer feels entitled to more of the profit. He believes it was his skills which created the profit. It's similar to how many liberals think teachers or firemen should get more. They have a valuable skill that being rewarded for can provide others benefits and an example to also seek out that skill.
Marxism doesn't exploit the worker? So, if I work my butt off to benefit society and my neighbor instead watches tv all day, who is getting exploited? I am. I am being forced to work harder. The results of my labor are being exploited for things I have no desire for.
I recommend that you read "Adam's Fallacy" by Duncan Foley. It will address many of your apparent misconceptions about capitalism. I'm really not a Marxist, but I'd be willing to play one on TV if they'll pay me union wages. Work is not just about money, you should consider. People want security vs. risk depending on their personalities, and have different valuations of contributing to society vs. taking for themselves, so it's too simplistic to cast the right to decent work in rigidly economic terms. It's also misleading to cast everything in terms of employer vs. employee, as for example when you want to be your own employer (start a business) or are forced to be your own employer (being laid off and rehired as a consultant) or the massive difference between having a government job where the society itself is employing you vs. a corporate job where the shareholders are employing you and a managerial or executive job where your work is to get other people to work vs. an assembly line worker paid on a piecework basis. It's also necessary to consider real power differentials between rich people who are owners and executives of firms vs. poor people who are desperate for income, when you frame the discussion of employer vs. employee as if it is a bargaining arrangement between equals. If you don't care about other people, if you're just selfish and greedy, then you can take the position of it's too bad for the poor, tough noogies and I'm glad I'm not one of them, but when you look around today at the millions out of work for no fault of their own, becoming increasingly desperate themselves, and realize it could happen to anyone, even you, and you have some empathy and caring for your fellow people, then you have to think a bit differently about the social arrangements we make that decide who gets what and how much and what for. Has your neighbor really gamed the system so he's a moocher sitting around watching TV all day while you're forced to work harder? Maybe he's just profiting nicely from his investments and you're just working for him and didn't realize it. Does that make it fairer? You're still being exploited for things you have no desire for. Capitalism isn't like God or the laws of physics, it's just a social agreement we make about how to get things done. Sometimes it works fine and sometimes it gets messed up and needs fixing.
Meanwhile, back in the USSR. At least you're straight forward about it.
Any benefit government provides for an individual is based on theft. Would you care about rich corporations if they weren't ripping you off in collusion with government?
It's just a theory that a capitalistic society expands to provide (good) jobs for everyone. What if we simply don't need everyone to work to provide ALL of the goods and services needed by society?
read Kurt Vonnegut's 1952 novel, "Player Piano" if you want a glimpse of society where machines do ALL the work. Are we there yet? or on our way there?
Here's another take on the subject: Are Jobs Obsolete? http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-07/opinion/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete_1_toll-collectors-robots-jobs?_s=PM:OPINION
Capitalism is a victim of it's own success. Productivity gains through machines and computers ever lessen the need for humans. In absence of a growing population, what if we just don't need more stuff? What if we build houses that last 150 years and automobiles that last 20 years? Is there not a point where a level GDP is a good thing?
As a society we are highly productive, but we don't distribute it well at all (this is the heart of the OWS protest). We ALL should be working 20 to 25 hours per week, including the CEO 1%-ers, and spending more time playing with our kids and going to the beach.
The U.S. Constitution does not guarantee you a job as a right. You have a right to pursue a job. You have a right to protect your property. You have a right to tell me I'm wrong. America does not guarantee you or any other citizen a job as a right. So, either get a job in America on your own merits or move to a country that will guarantee you a job. Good luck!
Jobs are not a human right. Those unable to find employment are failures in modern natural selection and are not needed to weaken the human gene pool.
Take away the Monopolies and take the money companies and lobbyist throw at politicians and you would see a very fair system of capitalism. To advocate no capitalism is to promote distatorship with goverment distribution. That will not work . It has not yet. Its called Communism and has fallen and still falling all around the world
OF COURSE jobs are a human right in the 21th century. We are no longer in the 18th century. Today the human species has plenty of technology to provide good jobs to all human beings who are able to work, and provide a decent life to all the 7 billion people on Earth. Only the greed and irrationality of the system prevent the world from being that way.
Philosophy - Reality
Everyone has a great way by which they claim everyone else should get something for free. Nobody has come up with a magical way to do it without taking it from somebody else.
Unless you're going to create something so prosperous, you can provide a job for everyone and you'll happily hand them out, for free? Or unless you plan to give people the option to opt-out of your government if they don't want to be pilfered?
Who gets pilfered from? When people work they create genuine value, that's where value comes from. They pay taxes, they shop, we all get the benefit of whatever they are employed doing, etc. It's not a zero-sum game, new value is created by human labor. If you're worried about your taxes being used to fund government jobs, don't be. The effect of temporary government jobs is to increase net government revenue overall by improving the overall economy. That's what happened in the 1970's with CETA, and it's what happened in the 1930's with the WPA. It's not happening now because the Republican's won't allow it, and we are sinking rapidly.
I can't come to your house and say "give me your money, so I can give it away to charity, for the good of society, or you're going to jail."
So why can the government?
There's no option to pay taxes. You don't "pay" taxes. They "take" taxes from you. If you don't believe me, try not paying.
well yeah, but are you really unwilling to contribute your fair share to the common good?
You sound like a robot. Stop trying to rationalize theft.
I'm sure Wesley Snipes would agree with you. As I see it, if you evade paying taxes you're mooching off the rest of us who paid for the roads, the police and fire protection and garbage cleanup and kids education and public parks and libraries and public health services and a huge amount of basic and applied scientific research, etc. Your desire to be a freeloader (or perhaps you have a misguided willingness to live without any public services) is why we have to make taxes mandatory for you, although we're gonna cut some slack for General Motors and the hedge fund billionaires this year.
You cannot claim as a right that which someone else must provide (in which case you violate their rights). All have the right to do whatever they want, including creating, working for ones self or others, or not -as long you do not harm another or violate their rights. If you claim that someone else must employ you, your next step is using FORCE (your own or by proxy, i.e., government) to back up your assertion. Force by one, or the many, upon another is the antithesis of freedom and freedom is the birthright of everyone.
Collectively as a society we can choose to put decent work into the moral category of a human right. It's not at all about enforcement, it's about collective moral choice, what we agree as a society is the right thing to do. Acting on that perspective we simply have to assign the Dept of Labor or whomever to make arrangements so that everyone who wants to work, can, and that working conditions and pay are appropriate for the work. If the private sector is failing to arrange for this, then (for example) short term public jobs can be created as needed until the economy recovers. No force, just choice that this is the way we want our society to be.
And if you stop showing up for work? Slack off profoundly at work? Make a nuisance of yourself at work? Disrespect your co-workers and customers? Do a poor job? Stop caring about the work you do?
What then? Is your alleged human right a small business owner's burden? What if you own the small business? You going to keep a despicable cretin on the payroll long enough to kill your business because it is a "human right"?
How do you explain this?
Having employment be a human right doesn't mean that being a lousy employee is acceptable. Why would you think that? If you do a poor job because you're lazy, stupid, incompetent or become medically disabled, you might get fired, of course. No individual employer would need to employ any specific individual. That's a gross distortion of the basic idea that we can arrange our society and our economic systems so that everyone who wants to work has a genuine and appropriate opportunity to do so. No need for paranoia, I promise.
OK, so what do you do with the world's worst employee who wants the job that is his human right?
I am amased at how Occupy works. Would like to have your input on the movement to understaqnd it better. I am asking you to answer 10 questions and I am happy to share results if you are interested. Please, take some time for it: Thank you! http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q3NF7QB
There will always be unemployment. Keeping a worker surplus is part of national defense, though never openly stated. In the 21st Century every US Citizen should be entitled to the basic tools needed for the pursuit of happiness. Affordable Housing, Healthcare, Food, Communication, and transportation are the basic staples required in 2011..When we can't reach full employment, education vouchers and small business loans should be available to every US Citizen. all of the major corporations are furnished with the basic tools they need for these times. The 99% should be entitled to the same...Its time to stop lagging behind Europe, Japan, and the rest of the developed world on these issues. How did the people in those countries get it? They practiced Non-Violent Civil Disobedience until all conditions were met.
in soviet russia job gets you
is there anything that isn`t a human right?
Ice cream and tuberculosis are not human rights. Native intelligence is not a human right, although you can make a case that education is or should be. Is this just a silly question or are you really looking for a discussion of the origins and nature of human rights?
Actually, joblessness is when there are more people than jobs, or people are not willing to do the jobs available
fantasy. jobs are a short lived thing anyway. tech will eventually give us what we want, an easier life, but take labor with it. if you really wana talk philosophically, talk about how we are going to function when workers are not needed. it's the next crisis anyway, what better time to start thinking about it.
see my reply to luparb below. I agree with you.
Jobs can be a human right, but you must have a comprehensive strategy to achieve this, and although I'm all in favor of taking down today's ineffective and inefficient Top 10% Management Group of Business & Government, there's only one way to do it – by fighting bankers as bankers ourselves. Consequently, I have posted a 1-page Summary of the Strategic Legal Policies, Organizational Operating Structures, and Tactical Investment Procedures necessary to do this at:
http://getsatisfaction.com/americanselect/topics/on_strategic_legal_policy_organizational_operational_structures_tactical_investment_procedures
Join
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/StrategicInternationalSystems/
if you want to support a Presidential Candidate – myself – at AmericansElect.org in support of the above bank-focused platform.
@Johnny: "...what should happen?" lots of options, e.g. require all jobs to be listed publicly before being filled so everyone has access to info about opportunities (in a true free market everyone has full access to all information); have govt create jobs when the private sector fails (e.g. the CETA program in the 1970's did a great job creating jobs at local levels customized to what local people needed and could do, especially in public works and in non-profits, all at "prevailing wages" so unions didn't get screwed); put all jobs into an open auction system so people can bid what wage they will accept for the ones they want -- the best jobs will become the lowest paid, and the worst jobs the best paid instead of vice versa as it is now. (just a few ideas, as examples) "..criminally prosecuted..; ..taken to the Hague..." Of course not, that's a nonsensical misinterpretation of what I wrote. Sometimes markets fail, so govt has to be empowered to intervene. If you want to work and can't find work in the private market the Labor Dept should find or create one for you. ".. skillset ... of no use.." People who are incompetent to work are a tiny subset, and should receive appropriate training, education and possibly other social and/or health or therapeutic services as needed. Normal people, i.e. the vast majority who concern us in this discussion, all have value and have the capacity and the desire to contribute productively to society. " ... to do what? ..." Use your imagination genuinely instead of being deliberately rhetorically obtuse. Care about the person first, then look at what they can do now and what their potentials are, and then find or create a suitable productive role for them, paid at the prevailing rate for that kind of work, enlisting them as a collaborator in the process. If, as you seem to fear, they don't really want to work or want to be lazy or game the system, then give them a broom and pay them minimum wage. If they fail at this, then apply the previous skillset answer. -- you forgot to ask how do we pay for this: By taxing corporations, (i.e. lowering the profits paid to passive investor shareholders) because it is their failure to behave properly (actually it's the market's failure, but the corporations are the market's implementation, its manifestation as the market's employment mechanism) that caused the problem, so they should be responsible for paying for the needed interventions. Modern corporate capitalism wastes an enormous amount of human productive potential in the process of generating unemployment . You sound like you don't believe people want meaningful work, or that our society isn't creatively capable of using them effectively as workers. When decent work is considered a human right we will simply arrange for people to have it, and all of us will be better off.
"find or create a suitable productive role for them"
What about their responsibility to "find or create" for themselves?
And it really is still possible. I feel bad for people who are struggling in this economy but I've created my own livelihood since 2002 and I know plenty of others like me.
You may not get what you want, but you can still try some time & get what you need : ) as the Rolling Stones once said.
I agree, "find or create for themselves" is the first and best option, always, and our strategies should focus on making that straightforward and achievable. But when the circumstances of the economic system prevent this, as is the case for so many people now, it stops being an option, and that failure of the system is a fundamental social wrong that we have a collective responsibility to mitigate.
Can please explain better what you mean when you say "that failure of the system...that we have a collective responsibility to mitigate"?
As to "our strategies should focus on making that straightforward and achievable", how do you suggest we make this achievable?
Sorry for the parade of questions, just trying to understand you better.
The burden of moral responsibility shifts from the individual to the society when the society will not permit the individual to reasonably find or create a job for themselves (which is where we are now). So, we as a whole society should face into that responsibility and change how we do things so as to restore individuals' capacity to act on their own behalf.
The easiest way to do this fast is to set up a counter-cyclical employment program in which the govt provides funds to localities to hire and retain the unemployed in appropriate govt and no-profit newly created positions that are not competitive or undermining of the private sector or public sector unions, until the private sector revives. The long term solution is to embed this counter-cyclical response into our basic outlook and government structures, and dig a bit deeper into prevention (changing dysfunctional factors in the private sector with laws, regulations and incentives) so unemployment cycles don't get to socially damaging levels, and everyone who wants to work can always find appropriate living wage work in a reasonable time with reasonable effort. It's already the case that the Fed, as reviled as it is lately by everyone but the Obama administration, has as part of its formal charge, the responsibility to manage the money system so as to keep unemployment low. They've just failed at this, and there is no fallback.
"'..criminally prosecuted..; ..taken to the Hague...' Of course not, that's a nonsensical misinterpretation of what I wrote."
But you wrote that a job should be a human right. If someone's human rights are being denied, then clearly a criminal prosecution must result.
I think you may be confusing human rights with civil rights. The latter are encoded in laws that have specific legal sanctions attached. The former are assumptions or stances about fundamental morality. Clearly many human rights are the basis for specific civil rights, but legal sanctions involving violence or its threat as enforcement mechanisms are not part of human rights. Violating a civil right may be punishable, but violating a human right is just wrong.
So if violating a human right is just wrong, then what should be done to the violator?
Who is the violator in this instance?
What responsibility does the alleged victim bear in their circumstance?
Good questions, but not easy ones. I'd suggest looking at the problems societies have had that have been through massive violations of human rights, such as Chile and Uganda and Rwanda, where the approach of truth and reconciliation has been more effective than a course of revenge and punishment. Often the violator is a whole segment of society, e.g. white America's treatment of African slave descendants, or the Hutu's vs. the Tutsi's in Rwanda's genocidal massacres. It starts with agreement that the violations must stop and that they were fundamentally morally wrong. We don't have that agreement in our society yet about decent employment being a human right.
in Cuba and N Korea they have a zero % unemployment rate , everyone works weather they choose to or not its a wonderful system work to eat ... no work no eat ...their governments hae decided for them what a living wage will be . a cup of rice and a few fish heads .if you don`t work you eat the dirt .. so of course a living wage is a right
So what? That's not what I'm proposing. Besides, I'm not sure about Cuba, I think most people there are gainfully and non-coercively employed, and the level of wealth and income inequality is much lower there than here. North Korea is an example of what happens when all the economic power is concentrated at the top, and the government is unconcerned with human rights.
The standard of living in Cuba is pretty low.
I am sympathetic to OWS, in fact at this point I outright support them for the sole reasons being out there protesting & committed to staying.
However - most Americans if not all, would probably be horrified to live as most Cubans do and that's not propaganda. If you're sick you can get medical care, that's the upside.
I suspect that has something to do with the economic embargo the U.S. has enforced against Cuba, and Cuba's challenges with shifting from a tourist and sugar economy after 1959 to a self-sustaining one, especially after having been dependent on Soviet aid for many years.
Great post.
Technological automation poses a problem as labor become increasingly superfluous.
I think jobs as a human right is an interesting approach, however I feel that our productive capacity will not provide the sufficient number of jobs required to support the population, especially once the petrochemical industry has ended and the transition to renewable energy has been made.
We also have to consider environmental sustainability in relation to our productivity. Phenomena such as planned obsolescence will need to cease.
I am interested in the idea of a resource based economy. I think the reality is that in the future, we won't be working to create capital at all, rather our work will be to serve human needs and interests.
I think technology is good, that it will eventually let us move toward a post-scarcity global economy where machines do the gruntwork and people think, interact, make art, music and poetry and go to the beach, and most work is ceremonial or status-related, done for social value not for economic gain. We have a way to go before that, though. I think environmental sustainability is a commons problem, just as our collective productivity is, and suffers the same sort of market exploitation problems that can be largely addressed by making firms pay for the cost of repairing all damage they do and keeping an active government role in stewardship and maintenance of the commons. If we're lucky and thoughful we may be able to use technology to support the transition from petro to renewable energy, at least I suspect that's our best shot at avoiding collapse. Unfettered free market capitalism is a huge barrier here, obviously.
If you believe a job is a human right, then if it's not provided to you, what should happen?
Is someone to be criminally prosecuted for not employing you?
Is someone to be taken to the Hague for Human Rights violations?
If your skillset and your intellect is of no use to anyone, what right do you have to demand that someone employ you anyway?
To do what...sit in a cubicle and twiddle your thumbs for 8 hours?
Excellent point!
A job as a human right?
What about everyone else's right to Liberty?
As Johnny Suburban points out, your supposed "right" to a job inherently lays a claim to someone else's productive effort, for nothing else than the fact that you live. What should happen if someone fails to provide you with a job? Should their rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness be denied?
What of your obligation to provide yourself with a job?
Good Points. Maybe the poster should have written, "a source of income". Everyone agrees that people still need income when the economy contracts, and it always will expand and contract. How about education vouchers, with cash income, or small business and micro loans? The 2 trillion spent on TARP could have created a lot of small businesses, which would have fed into the whole economy.
What is required is called "Welfare" and we need to raise awareness to change people's perception of the word. America is the only country in the world who has a propaganda machine that achieved demonizing the poor, thus making welfare a bad word. Its not like we can all just start growing our own food when times get tough. The hunting grounds are gone and there is no more frontier for homesteading. Its time to move into the 21st century. Thanks
Hunh? How does society arranging itself so that everyone is assured of productive work undermine anyone's liberty? Are you assuming that the value of the work is negative, that if someone works for the government (even in a temporary counter-cylical jobs program) it is actually reducing the total Gross Domestic Product? You're quite wrong if you imagine that to be the case. Your "obligation" (to whom?) to provide yourself with a job is voided when there are literally no jobs to be had. Lots of folks are in that place today. You may, and I would say you do, have an obligation to society to do your best, to not be a mooch and a drag and a freeloader, but that's entirely independent from the question of whether the economy is providing you with employment opportunities. There is no "someone" who is not providing you with a job at that point, it is a broken system of resource production and distribution that is a purely socially defined arrangement, completely open to adaptation and to fixing, that is the problem, and we collectively are the "someone" who have a stake in it and have the choice to fix it or not.
Someone's liberty is undermined because you by virtue of the "guarantee of a job" are laying claim to the productive efforts of someone for the express benefit of someone else. In essence, you are taking from me what I have earned through my productive efforts, and giving to someone else what they have not earned. How else is that "guarantee of a job" paid for?
Again I will ask, "what of your obligation to provide yourself with a job?"
Shouldn't there be some form of negative consequence for that person's lack of productivity becoming a drain on the productive efforts of everyone else? Otherwise you are providing a disincentive for people to take responsibility for the position they find themselves in.
I don't understand why you see having assured access to employment opportunities lays "claim to the productive efforts of someone for the express benefit of someone else." To get a job you look in the job listings, find a job you think you are suited for and apply for it. What difference is it if the job is in the private sector or if it is a counter-cyclical government arranged and paid for job at a non-profit or a govt agency? The economic value of the latter readily repays the tax cost of providing it, by its salutary effect on the economy as a whole, since it was necessitated due to a failure of the private market. When everyone is employed more value is being created than when lots of people are unemployed. That helps us all and lowers taxes. As to the moral hazard argument, that's small-minded marginal nonsense when unemployment is not due to personal moral failure, but to widespread systemic economic failure. If some people successfully game the system, so what? The main thing is most people are protected from the disaster of long term unemployment and society as a whole benefits.