After Gamestonk will hedge funds now threaten U.S. solvency itself?

TheMysteriousGX

Elite Member
Legacy
Sep 16, 2014
8,300
6,798
118
Country
United States
They were poor before the corporations were there.
Considering the countries we tend to talk about, that's probably true in large part because of how "capitalist" countries have already interacted with them.
Laos would probably be better off if we didn't kill or wound 30% of its population by bombing it harder than we bombed Europe during world war 2.

But hey, then we gave them pocket change to fix it. A little over $1 for every unexploded cluster bomb.
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
They're paying more than the local companies. They also have far greater capacity to pay than most Mexican employers.
You don't know that. They may have moved production to Mexico because they lack the capacity to pay higher wages.
You're on a public forum. And your defences of unregulated, unrestrained capitalism aren't just anathema to communists; they'd be anathema to socialists and even moderate, compassionate capitalists. Adam Smith would find this shit despicable.
I don't defend unregulated capitalism. I quite like good regulations, the sort of regulations that are made with a careful understanding of the practical issues that need solving, rather than an idealized position where all people are paid uniformly across the globe.

How you took me disputing some absolutist socialist talking point and turned it into a defense of unregulated, unrestrained capitalism, i don't know. I don't think "people can be fairly payed different wages in different places" is a social darwinist statement. Like, myself as an example, I lead a quite comfortable life, but good luck to anyone trying to live in a major city off of the same salary. I hope people there get paid more, and I don't feel even the tiniest bit exploited if I make less in central PA.
You're arguing that we should be praising the rich man who gives the starving man a crust of bread, though the rich man is towing a feast behind him. And furthermore opining that the starving man is just has empowered in this transaction because he takes it out of desperation.
You don't know the positions of the people and entities that you're generalizing. Right now, you're acting as though every corporation is hugely profitable and successful and the owners are fat and happy, and that every laborer in Mexico is starving and desperate that they have no option but to take a job doing something like manufacturing cars. You're being unreasonably extreme.
I agree in large part: companies investing to create jobs in poorer countries creates more work and often development in them. But there are caveats.

For instance, international businesses frequently involve the extraction of profits from countries where work is done to countries that invest, and thus it arguably would be better for workers to be exploited by their own elites, who will then likely pump more of the profits back into the same country.

Also, poorer countries frequently have weaker governance and less worker / poor empowerment. This means that large and wealthy corporations are more likely to be able to influence the state, officials, or maintain work condition in ways that increase exploitative practices. We all know corporations do this, and we resent it when they conspicuously do it in our own. It gets even more sinister when we consider that businesses almost certainly lobby our (Western) governments to apply pressure to poorer ones to make it easier for our (Western) businesses to operate there. One of the much-touted complaints about US activity in Latin America is that it facilitates wealth extraction for the Latin American elites and US businesses ahead of human and economic development for the Latin American general populace.
Frankly, I'm generally inclined to blame the Latin American elites, who suck the money out of their own countries to waste on frivolities bought from richer countries, though I would certainly be for businesses who took the moral stance of not doing business with those types of people.

I agree with your caveats, and general comments about corruption. I think targeted responses to those issues is a generally more effective response than "People are paid less in Mexico!? End capitalism forever!" If this was a board full of libertarians, I would be making very different arguments in support of my personal positions.
 

TheMysteriousGX

Elite Member
Legacy
Sep 16, 2014
8,300
6,798
118
Country
United States
You don't know that. They may have moved production to Mexico because they lack the capacity to pay higher wages.
If they lack the capacity to pay higher wages, then they lack the capacity to build, staff, and train a new factory full of laborers.

And all of this is a distraction from the main point that it takes a person in Mexico the same amount of labor to put together a TV, so why aren't we paying them like it?
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
Legacy
Mar 3, 2009
8,598
5,962
118
Frankly, I'm generally inclined to blame the Latin American elites, who suck the money out of their own countries to waste on frivolities bought from richer countries, though I would certainly be for businesses who took the moral stance of not doing business with those types of people.
Oh, the Latin American elites deserve no sympathy. They are the descendants of conquistadors and Spanish / Portugese nobility, who ruled over native American peasants and slaves. Just because they shrugged off the motherlands in the 19th century doesn't mean that they lost that deep-seated sense of superiority and right to rule. They could develop their countries into modern economies, but why bother when they can line their own pockets?

However, the West facilitated and backed them up in the ways that matter most because they ensured the resources and money flowed to us. I wonder how much we have retarded rather than encouraged human development, democracy and rule of law. Possibly quite a lot.

I agree with your caveats, and general comments about corruption. I think targeted responses to those issues is a generally more effective response than "People are paid less in Mexico!? End capitalism forever!" If this was a board full of libertarians, I would be making very different arguments in support of my personal positions.
I don't think we (realistically, mostly the USA) care much about Latin American corruption, just the flow of money and resources.

I read an interesting article from a Nigerian in a newspaper. She freely accepted the corruption in her country, and that it's vast promise of wealth for its people has been stolen and squandered. She wrote about how the British look down on Nigeria for corruption, but then points out - where do these corrupt Nigerians spend all their money? Well, a lot of it in the UK. For all the high-minded talk, the UK knows billions of this stolen wealth ends up in the UK. The UK doesn't ask questions and makes effectively no moves to stop it. It is complicit, and thus itself corrupt.
 

Seanchaidh

Elite Member
Legacy
Mar 21, 2009
5,240
3,062
118
Country
United States of America
If they lack the capacity to pay higher wages, then they lack the capacity to build, staff, and train a new factory full of laborers.

And all of this is a distraction from the main point that it takes a person in Mexico the same amount of labor to put together a TV, so why aren't we paying them like it?
Because they are in a position such that they can be exploited more ruthlessly, and so they are. Three cheers for labor markets!

However, the West facilitated and backed them up in the ways that matter most because they ensured the resources and money flowed to us. I wonder how much we have retarded rather than encouraged human development, democracy and rule of law. Possibly quite a lot.
When you compare the situation of the countries we've deliberately tried to hobble because they have spooky socialist or socialist-adjacent governments to the ones who have supposedly benefited from their relations with the imperial core, it's difficult to find many uniform differences aside from how they and their governments are covered (or not covered) in our media. If indeed we have helped them, you would expect to see the latter group of countries be much better off. Anyway, I'll invite the next person who screeches about Venezuela to go live in Haiti or Colombia.
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
And all of this is a distraction from the main point that it takes a person in Mexico the same amount of labor to put together a TV, so why aren't we paying them like it?
Because the value of labor is, like all things, relative to the time and place it exists in. In places with more labor and less money, labor is worth less money. And people in Mexico, just like everywhere else, are aware of what amount of money is worth their time and effort in the context of their own lives. You aren't.
 

TheMysteriousGX

Elite Member
Legacy
Sep 16, 2014
8,300
6,798
118
Country
United States
Because the value of labor is, like all things, relative to the time and place it exists in. In places with more labor and less money, labor is worth less money. And people in Mexico, just like everywhere else, are aware of what amount of money is worth their time and effort in the context of their own lives. You aren't.
And capitalism will make sure those countries stay poor, because if they didn't stay poor, labor costs would rise and they'd need to pay people more. Hence the funded revolutions and coups in the global south.

Because nobody in the US could afford to pay for a TV without that cheap labor when that cheap labor also allows corporations to keep *our* labor underpaid. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme. Or in the words of a Walmart executive, "Target should pay their labor $15/hr, we should pay ours less"
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
And capitalism will make sure those countries stay poor, because if they didn't stay poor, labor costs would rise and they'd need to pay people more. Hence the funded revolutions and coups in the global south.

Because nobody in the US could afford to pay for a TV without that cheap labor when that cheap labor also allows corporations to keep *our* labor underpaid. Capitalism is a pyramid scheme. Or in the words of a Walmart executive, "Target should pay their labor $15/hr, we should pay ours less"
That's what is commonly referred to as a conspiracy theory.
 

Seanchaidh

Elite Member
Legacy
Mar 21, 2009
5,240
3,062
118
Country
United States of America
In places with more labor and less money, labor is worth less money. And people in Mexico, just like everywhere else, are aware of what amount of money is worth their time and effort in the context of their own lives. You aren't.
Open an economics textbook and learn about the concept of producer and consumer surplus. Please. Even a shitty neoclassical one.
 

tstorm823

Elite Member
Legacy
Aug 4, 2011
6,468
923
118
Country
USA
Another one of those conspiracy theories that the relevant actors readily admit to.

A Banana Republic isn't just a trendy mall store.
I don't deny the US has in the past involved itself in countries to protect it's access to natural resources found in those places, and that is worthy of condemnation. That is claim with a very simple line connecting cause and effect.

That is not the same thing as claiming US corporations are somehow collectively making Mexico perpetually poor so they can pay less for labor. That's not the same thing as believing the US opposes socialism in Venezuela out of fear that socialism might lead to the elimination of cheap labor markets. Like, these are a lot of the same big bad corporations in bed with the CCP, I guarantee nobody is opposing socialism abroad based on a historical precedent of increasing labor costs.
Open an economics textbook and learn about the concept of producer and consumer surplus. Please. Even a shitty neoclassical one.
Don't embarrass yourself trying to talk about basic economics again, you who believe wealth is a fixed number that cannot be mutually gained through trade.
 

TheMysteriousGX

Elite Member
Legacy
Sep 16, 2014
8,300
6,798
118
Country
United States
I don't deny the US has in the past involved itself in countries to protect it's access to natural resources found in those places, and that is worthy of condemnation. That is claim with a very simple line connecting cause and effect.

That is not the same thing as claiming US corporations are somehow collectively making Mexico perpetually poor so they can pay less for labor. That's not the same thing as believing the US opposes socialism in Venezuela out of fear that socialism might lead to the elimination of cheap labor markets. Like, these are a lot of the same big bad corporations in bed with the CCP, I guarantee nobody is opposing socialism abroad based on a historical precedent of increasing labor costs.
I'm not thinking they're some evil, mustache twirling villains cackling as they set up yet another sweatshop because they like inflicting suffering on the poor.

They're the simple, boring, banal evil that turns a blind eye to exploitative wages, labor abuse, and slavery to save a nickel a pound on tomatoes.
 

Silvanus

Elite Member
Legacy
Jan 15, 2013
11,025
5,794
118
Country
United Kingdom
You don't know that. They may have moved production to Mexico because they lack the capacity to pay higher wages.
Yeah, I'm sure Rexnord and Mondelez Int. lack the capacity to pay a proper living wage.

I don't defend unregulated capitalism. I quite like good regulations, the sort of regulations that are made with a careful understanding of the practical issues that need solving, rather than an idealized position where all people are paid uniformly across the globe.

How you took me disputing some absolutist socialist talking point and turned it into a defense of unregulated, unrestrained capitalism, i don't know. I don't think "people can be fairly payed different wages in different places" is a social darwinist statement. Like, myself as an example, I lead a quite comfortable life, but good luck to anyone trying to live in a major city off of the same salary. I hope people there get paid more, and I don't feel even the tiniest bit exploited if I make less in central PA.
If you don't have a problem with companies dropping workplace protections and living wages in order to squeeze every last dime into the profit margin, then I suspect the regulations you'd be happy with are the toothless kind. The kind that exist as window-dressing to protect the industry from scrutiny-- like Ofcom here in the UK.

You don't know the positions of the people and entities that you're generalizing. Right now, you're acting as though every corporation is hugely profitable and successful and the owners are fat and happy, and that every laborer in Mexico is starving and desperate that they have no option but to take a job doing something like manufacturing cars. You're being unreasonably extreme.
Never did I say this applies to every single company. Obviously some companies pay a living wage, and obviously some workers have a reasonable choice.

They're the lucky ones. Public policy is not supposed to look at those who're in a lucky situation, and conclude that nothing needs to be changed because they're doing alright.
 

Seanchaidh

Elite Member
Legacy
Mar 21, 2009
5,240
3,062
118
Country
United States of America
Don't embarrass yourself trying to talk about basic economics again, you who believe wealth is a fixed number that cannot be mutually gained through trade.
I'm well aware of the fact that laborers are trading their ability to generate wealth for the relatively meager sum it takes to sustain their bodies and that, short of any better options, this trade is worth it for the laborer (otherwise they wouldn't do it). And you either haven't thought about it that deeply or you're just entirely unconcerned by a system in which it is exceedingly normal to take advantage of and underpay desperate people in order to get rich. You might think you're being clever by referencing gains from trade, but really what you're doing is hiding behind an abstraction. I've long ago considered what those gains actually are in the cases I'm describing. Also, consumer and producer surplus are literally the terms neoclassical and Keynesian economists use to describe what are the gains from trade, so...

I've got two water bottles, and I only need one to get back to a place where water is more plentiful. I'm in the desert with you, and you have no water bottles. Sign away to me your entire life savings or perish from thirst; we're both gaining from this trade! It's fine! I'm doing the moral thing.
 
Last edited: