Politics 2020

[Amentep]

2 hours ago, Elerond said:

People who think that the mural in the question should be reserved should offer to buy and reserve it. 

It would be a solid solution to the problem if the university was amenable.  Unfortunately, not every artwork that has a champion or champions and is willing to put money to remove and preserve a piece of artwork are allowed to do so. 

But if the URI alumni banded together to preserve it and the university allowed it, it'd be great.

[Maedhros]

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/09/23/patriot-coalition-far-right-chat-logs-violence/

Leaked chatlogs from far-right group "Patriot coalition"

[Darkpriest]

1 hour ago, Elerond said:

First you want people pay their rent and then you say that those who pay their rent could then collect that rent from them, how that should actually work?

You asked, if you could make money of them as well, so i gave you some example, make them repay your rent or whatever other idea of repaying indebtitude you'd have for it. 

 

[Skarpen]

1 hour ago, Maedhros said:

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/09/23/patriot-coalition-far-right-chat-logs-violence/

Leaked chatlogs from far-right group "Patriot coalition"

Fake news.

I hear more menacing chats in bars.

[Maedhros]

1 hour ago, Skarpen said:

Fake news.

I hear more menacing chats in bars.

It's not fake, but yeah, people like to talk tough and it's probably nothing. I remember people talking about civil war the last couple of elections too depending on the result. There's a slight difference now with Trump showing signs of not wanting to accept the election result if he loses though, which could instigate more violence.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Maedhros

[BruceVC]

46 minutes ago, Maedhros said:

It's not fake, but yeah, people like to talk tough and it's probably nothing. I remember people talking about civil war the last couple of elections too depending on the result. There's a slight difference now with Trump showing signs of not wanting to accept the election result if he loses though, which could instigate more violence.

What more violence than the months of anarchy and lawlessness we see in some US cities.....surly you jest  

I am  not concerned that Trump  will be able to legally prevent a  legitimate Democratic victory but I was watching an interesting discussion on Al Jazeera today and one of the commentators did raise a concern I never considered. On the day of the USA election we will see the normal votes coming in and normally within 24 hours you can see the final result. But this election will be unique in respects both Biden and Trump can initially think they have " won " based on the typical counting of in person votes

But with mail voting the final result could take several weeks due to the mail voting counting logistics, think about all the grandstanding and populism we will see from some people on both sides while we  wait for  the final  outcome. If you think the current US political environment is partisan and antagonistic wait till after the elections while we wait weeks for all votes to be counted  

But once all the votes are counted I expect to see the normal transition as either Trump or Biden wins....its just getting there that is going to be rough

[Elerond]

3 hours ago, Darkpriest said:

You asked, if you could make money of them as well, so i gave you some example, make them repay your rent or whatever other idea of repaying indebtitude you'd have for it. 

 

So company can bring immigrant workers, arrange them to live in some sort compound and feed them what they get affordable and then make those people work them to pay that housing and food. And then in order to ensure that said immigrants follow law company can keep them behind lock and key. Would that be good arrangement to  to you, which causes less problems in society than current immigration policies?

[Hurlshort]

Sadly that isn't far off from the reality. Many agricultural regions have migrant housing tucked into the acreage. Cheap room and board, food from the fields, and little questions asked about immigration status. It sounds close to slavery, but while these parents are working fields, their children are getting an education and a chance at a better life.

So what is the solution? Shut them down? That doesn't really help anybody.

[Darkpriest]

1 hour ago, Elerond said:

So company can bring immigrant workers, arrange them to live in some sort compound and feed them what they get affordable and then make those people work them to pay that housing and food. And then in order to ensure that said immigrants follow law company can keep them behind lock and key. Would that be good arrangement to  to you, which causes less problems in society than current immigration policies?

If you agree to that, who am I to block such an arrangement. I wouldn't, but then again I'm considered a high value specialist, so the company I take a contract from, usually pays high amoubt of cash for relocation, finds new accomodation and pays for the costs of moving and pays good money on top of that. In exchange I provide service, which makes them earn more and it is considered by them a good investment, even with all the paper work needed. 

 

EDIT: and yes, they usually impose additional rules, what I can do and say, and what I cannot and what I should not. And if I break a law, I'm out, and they could also pursue some litigation and push any reimbursement of damages onto me. 

Edited September 27, 2020 by Darkpriest

[BruceVC]

2 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

If you agree to that, who am I to block such an arrangement. I wouldn't, but then again I'm considered a high value specialist, so the company I take a contract from, usually pays high amoubt of cash for relocation, finds new accomodation and pays for the costs of moving and pays good money on top of that. In exchange I provide service, which makes them earn more and it is considered by them a good investment, even with all the paper work needed. 

I tend to agree with that, since there is no  control of some types of illegal immigration I dont think we should get too involved when illegal immigrants accept certain work conditions

In SA we are experiencing this, its called the informal sector where many people, not all, are illegal immigrants and work in small companies or day time labor  that dont follow labor law and the illegal immigrants  are fine with it as they cant get jobs in the formal sector because you must have papers and FICA ( Financial Intelligence Center Act ) documents to work in most countries legally

So the terrible suggestion raised by groups who represent the illegal\undocumented  immigrants  is  " give them papers so they can work legally and contribute towards the tax base like everyone else "....the problem with that well meaning but flawed suggestion is that would mean millions of foreigners can now compete for jobs with actual South African citizens in an economic environment that is terrible ...we have about a 35 % unemployment  rate normally and now  during the virus its 50 %

Imagine now you allow millions of non-South Africans to get jobs that should always be accessible to South Africans and people here with papers ...you will destroy our economic transformation and add to real, unfair but understandable  issues many people have with not controlling immigration or somehow thinking   " our immigration problem  can be fixed if we just allow citizenship to everyone who just arrives in your country  " 

[Malcador]

2 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

the illegal immigrants  are fine with it

Heh.

[BruceVC]

17 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Heh.

They are in the sense they gain access to free public healthcare and free public sector schools  despite the fact we really cannot afford it and some of our public sector institutions are in an appalling state and completely under resourced ..but these services are provided to any person both legal or illegal

And the illegal immigrants do work in the informal sector, its a valid economic definition and not me grandstanding

https://borgenproject.org/the-informal-economy-in-south-africa/

So when I say the   " illegal immigrants are happy with this " they would definitely prefer to be able to work legally but as I explained we cannot give millions of people papers as we simply dont have the resources of economy to sustain this 

Edited September 27, 2020 by BruceVC

[Malcador]

24 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

They are in the sense they gain access to free public healthcare and free public sector schools  despite the fact we really cannot afford it and some of our public sector institutions are in an appalling state and completely under resourced ..but these services are provided to any person both legal or illegal

And the illegal immigrants do work in the informal sector, its a valid economic definition and not me grandstanding

https://borgenproject.org/the-informal-economy-in-south-africa/

So when I say the   " illegal immigrants are happy with this " they would definitely prefer to be able to work legally but as I explained we cannot give millions of people papers as we simply dont have the resources of economy to sustain this 

Ah ok.  We do not have similar in Canada, certainly for health care - you have to have a visa or PR for that.  I suppose relatively they are okay with it, but cannot avoid the sense they are being used.  We do have a TFW program here, though, for when jobs are too crappy for even Canadians to work.

Edited September 27, 2020 by Malcador

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

17 hours ago, ComradeMaster said:

You may be right from a historical standpoint, but the problem here is that there's a lot of political capital in American right wing circles that depressed collage kids/ hipster libertarian artsy types are Marxists.  Therein lies the problem.  Orthodox Marxists in Europe from before the Red Revolution were actually closer to being Anarcho-capitalists then what's commonly attributed to Marxist-Leninism.

You could make an argument that orthodox Marxism originally envisioned is now irrelevant and left-leaning people should move on, but as long as ignorance of the matter remains politically energized it will be impossible to develop meaningful change in society.

I'm right from a historical and current standpoint. When most current Marxists engage in intraleft disputes with their great other, the anarchists, their go to response is quoting "On Authority" and saying something to the effect of "authoritarianism is good, actually". Those that don't have usually managed to formulate an anarchistic politic, often without having read any anarchists.

Your history of the left is lacking and you should read some books instead of wikipedia. 

[BruceVC]

17 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Ah ok.  We do not have similar in Canada, certainly for health care - you have to have a visa or PR for that.  I suppose relatively they are okay with it, but cannot avoid the sense they are being used.  We do have a TFW program here, though, for when jobs are too crappy for even Canadians to work.

Yes and you are  correct there will definitely be examples of abuse but not everyone in the informal sector is abused through unfair labor practice, like underpaying someone 

But we have no real data on the degree of abuse as its the informal sector and in many cases people dont keep records for wages or payments and people dont generally complain as its also to there advantage as I mentioned 

[Hurlshort]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

 

So when I say the   " illegal immigrants are happy with this " they would definitely prefer to be able to work legally but as I explained we cannot give millions of people papers as we simply dont have the resources of economy to sustain this 

I'm not going to speak on SA, but this is BS in the US. Agribusiness rakes in a lot of money for the people at the top. Meanwhile the people doing the work in the fields and plants barely make a liveable wage. We have a ton of inequity and it continues to grow at an alarming rate. The immigrant workforce is not the problem. All the monies are at the tippy top.

[BruceVC]

19 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

I'm not going to speak on SA, but this is BS in the US. Agribusiness rakes in a lot of money for the people at the top. Meanwhile the people doing the work in the fields and plants barely make a liveable wage. We have a ton of inequity and it continues to grow at an alarming rate. The immigrant workforce is not the problem. All the monies are at the tippy top.

You may be right but I think you will find this is a global concern that all countries share around the immigration problem, many people have legitimate concerns around resources and how these resources are allocated to citizens and to people with papers. But all governments have to balance there commitment around integration and allowing legal immigration to there own economic and social commitments to there citizens...but I am not familiar with the US Agribusiness so maybe they should be doing more 

But its more about resources and not  just what people get paid which is definitely part of the debate. You have to consider factors like housing, healthcare and schooling 

[Hurlshort]

This got me thinking...

If I order a bell pepper for $1.50 from Amazon, where does all of that $1.50 go? We have a farmer who owns the field and plants it, a farmworker who harvests it, a plant worker who packages it, a driver who moves it to a warehouse/store, a grocer who sells it, and then another driver who delivers it to my house. Plus people maintaining the website, and of course Jeff Bezos. Who gets what cut?

[Darkpriest]

You need to see margin statements for this product along the supply chain 

[BruceVC]

29 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

This got me thinking...

If I order a bell pepper for $1.50 from Amazon, where does all of that $1.50 go? We have a farmer who owns the field and plants it, a farmworker who harvests it, a plant worker who packages it, a driver who moves it to a warehouse/store, a grocer who sells it, and then another driver who delivers it to my house. Plus people maintaining the website, and of course Jeff Bezos. Who gets what cut?

Its a good question and is different in different types of business but in your example each stage of the product sets its margin\markup\profit but its actual price is dependent on the stage before where applicable because there would generally be a cost for  all stages of the creation of the  bell pepper, like the farmer  who grows and harvests it . But you will find Amazon has large back to back contracts with transport companies and possibly exclusive rights with farms. 

So basically  the farmer sells the pepper to Amazon for $1 but he has costs to produce that pepper like wages, housing, electricity and water so he makes  30c /[pepper 

Amazon can almost absorb all other pepper costs and sells it to us for $1.50 so they make 50c /pepper 

But if this is tied to farm workers both Amazon and the farmers  really have  a legal and ethical responsibility to the farm workers....Amazons is more ethical as the  farm is probably independent 

[Hurlshort]

45 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

You need to see margin statements for this product along the supply chain 

That'd be pretty neat.

Although the easier thing is to just buy local, I suppose. 

Don't get me wrong, Jeff Bezos and any other visionaries deserve a ton of money for their billion dollar ideas. I'm just not sure if it is ideal that it becomes a 200 billion dollar idea, in the midst of a pandemic that is wiping out smaller businesses left and right.

[ComradeYellow]

 

https://llp.joomla.com/about

Some interesting tidbits here on left libertarianism and the false dichotomies going around.

[Darkpriest]

29 minutes ago, Hurlshot said:

That'd be pretty neat.

Although the easier thing is to just buy local, I suppose. 

Don't get me wrong, Jeff Bezos and any other visionaries deserve a ton of money for their billion dollar ideas. I'm just not sure if it is ideal that it becomes a 200 billion dollar idea, in the midst of a pandemic that is wiping out smaller businesses left and right.

You realize that this value does not equal actual money and funds he can use at his whim?

It's the stock market and largely free money printed by FED, which made the publicly traded company, where he has a significant amount of onwnership, that much inflated at valuation.

 The issue is not with those guys per se (they are a symptom of the issue) , but the mechanisms that pump the money into assets owned by shareholders and the expense of debt mechanisms and cash flows, which could help in reforming and stabilizing the middle class. 

There will be always poor and always rich, but the economic health of the society has two major indicators,

wealth gap between top 10% and bottom 10%

size and stability of the middle class

Edited September 27, 2020 by Darkpriest

[Orogun01]

1 hour ago, Hurlshot said:

This got me thinking...

If I order a bell pepper for $1.50 from Amazon, where does all of that $1.50 go? We have a farmer who owns the field and plants it, a farmworker who harvests it, a plant worker who packages it, a driver who moves it to a warehouse/store, a grocer who sells it, and then another driver who delivers it to my house. Plus people maintaining the website, and of course Jeff Bezos. Who gets what cut?

I work for a manufacturer and even though I'm not directly involved with the supply chain planning I still rub elbows with them and look at their actions enough to say, there's a lot of planning involved with pricing.  Now the driving and warehouse costs don't count as much because it is a running cost, unless you specifically have to freight the item separately so that it is stocked. Same with the website maintenance and other operational costs. The big ones are the  production cost or the buying cost, because those are the ones that you can affect. If you can make an item for under a dollar and sell it for $3 then that's over $2 in profit per item sold. You usually work with the seller/factory in order to lower those costs, a farmer will sell lower if he/she doesn't have to transport their goods, that pickup might be handle by a local company that works with a bigger seller like Amazon.

That's one thing people seem to don't know about when it comes to big corporations, they usually subcontract to specialized companies for a lot of their operations. Which creates jobs, for every major company there are a bunch of smaller ones that stay in business because of the bigger ones.

 

[ComradeYellow]

7 minutes ago, Orogun01 said:

That's one thing people seem to don't know about when it comes to big corporations, they usually subcontract to specialized companies for a lot of their operations. Which creates jobs, for every major company there are a bunch of smaller ones that stay in business because of the bigger ones.

That's been obvious for a while now, or else Wal-Mart would only sell products with a Wal-Mart label attached to them (to give a clear, concise example of said practices).

I'm actually thinking about moving to New Hampshire and seeing how a weapons manufacturer operates (Sig Sauer is hiring machinists there).  Even though I make decent money, not really digging the snow plow business here because the management is very strict and hypernationalistic (whilst buying all there parts from cheap labor overseas at the same time, they are truly loving Trump's tax cuts at the expense of the workers lol).