- 06 Apr 2021 18:42
#15165070
Yes they do, the reality is that functional societies must rely on functional value systems. That is the reality of it. How does one create functional value systems? Every society has values. Which are the ones in each nation? Why is there corruption and or people not following the rules? Why is there crime? Why is it less in some nations and not in others? You study the circumstances, conditions lived, and the values emphasized, and you also have to deal with contradictions in human nature what is called in Marxian analysis the dialectic. Internal contradictions based on the historical, criteria of circumstances dealt with, in a particular set of environments. It is complex and nothing easy. But? My point of view has to do with the underlying value system, that all human beings are potentially capable of achieving great things--if given the right circumstances, opportunities and, not wasting their human potential battling mightily in nations where they have slavery wages or so abysmally low wages, that they wind up rationing their calories per day, and wind up being chronically ill and unproductive. For example, see a documentary from a group of global development grad students trying to live on Indigenous Mayan people in rural villages in Guatemala (One Dollar a Day). It becomes crystal clear that trying to live on that and trying to get credit to get out of that circumstance is nearly impossible. This is why there are almost if not impossible circumstances, for getting out of those conditions. The next question is "Why is that allowed to happen?" Because United Fruit company uses desperation to keep the wages so low that the pool of exploitable Indian poverty labor is never-ending and more profit for them. They pay off local politicians to make sure wage hikes never happen. And the USA never intervenes in a country that is an ally because the local government is all pro-USA capitalism at all costs ass-kissing traitors to their own nation. As long as the wealthy Ladino families make money? Who gives a fuck about some Mayan Indians eh? Union organizers in the '80s and beyond were outright murdered in front of their families and burned alive or worse. No one was worried about this dastardly deed in the USA because the ones in charge were pro the USA. A just superpower worrying about human rights in China. Fucking hypocrites are what they are @wat0n and racists to boot. They don't protest according to gruesome human rights violations. They respond to GREED. Greed. Then you wonder why the Republicans are so anti-democratic and take huge greed bribes from these corporations who get away with this in Latin American nations? It is a value system that has been allowed to grow in power for decades. It should not have been allowed. But? Capitalist apologists keep thinking that the system just needs a bit of tweaking. It doesn't foster GREED as the foundational principle. What are property rights but the power fights over who gets to dictate societal values anchored in economic controls if that is not what it is ultimately about? Does human society have to make a decision about which value overrides making money? In the USA recently nothing overrides making money. Including democracy and equality and human rights. That is the truth. The Fake Socialists are out there. They don't believe in true socialism. They believe in giving crumbs and growing rich. They do massive damage. I think it is about value systems. The capitalists don't even discuss the possibility of allowing the working class to have majority power with one man and one vote. They subjugate the entire society to GREED only. Which do I think has a possibility for progress and change? The socialist one. Not the capitalist one. Greed with environmental degradation is a death sentence for all of us automatically. The socialist one needs humanist socialists and not fake authoritarians and who get their jollies telling others which books are allowed or what music is approved of. That shit is STUPID in the extreme. Asi es.
They need to be free. In my parents era the university system in the state of California was free and that is where they got their graduate degrees and my mother got her graduate degree without student debt. She also got a scholarship at a private uni in San Francisco for free as well. Got to be with great academic performance though but it can happen for people who want to pursue it. But with her lack of funds in the current system? No way at all is it going to happen. She would be burdened with $250k in student loans and debt for sure for something similar. It is terrible. That is a reality today. 2021. Not in my mother's time of 1975. The Right and the Reagan era loved limiting higher education to the poor. They reveled in it. Another reason to combat the Republican party.
Look I got an errand to run @wat0n but the rest is all about answering you with concrete examples. I got to answer and run. I have a Mexican friend from Veracruz over here crying her eyes out about something....this whole pandemic thing and not seeing anyone doesn't work for sure!
They should be free in all fifties states and all state universities and half of all private ones subsidized.
But more importantly, you can also find countries (in Latin America) that will give you free or almost free college/university, and that still don't fix their social mobility issues. Often, poor people won't be admitted to them or they will, but will fail in the first years and drop out because they have big gaps in their K-12 education, so the ones who will studying and graduating for free are those in the upper and middle classes, not the ones who have the greatest problems to afford higher education. That is, the issue goes beyond simply throwing money to the problem.
Yes, I don't disagree with you on most points there - indeed, informal work by illegal immigrants is also problematic because then their work is effectively being subsidized since they don't have to pay payroll and other taxes. But how would you solve this? I would guess that the solution would be a combination of making legal immigration easier and making illegal immigration harder. Right?
The only part where I disagree with you is that it's only because of business interests. I mean, Trump for example didn't care about them when he slapped tariffs on Chinese imports (this definitely hurt some business interests). There's more to illegal immigration than just business interests.
But for instance, how do you explain corruption in the former Soviet Union and other countries in the socialist world? They did have a social safety net, even if they were poorer than the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Western Europe.
As an anecdote, my maternal family moved to Israel at some point in the early '70s. My grandfather is an eye doctor, and he once told me that, while working there, he would sometimes have recent immigrants from Romania that would offer him bribes to be able to get care promptly. He would tell them something along the lines "oh no, this is your right, please don't do that". They'd have trouble believing it.
I agree, but does a broad social safety net really solve this? In practice, corruption can be seen in other ways too. For instance, certain groups may get more benefits than the rest, under the law, for whatever reason. Or some of the tax money can be used to pay bribes in exchange for support (e.g. a government bribing union leaders in exchange for a docile labor). Or tax money can be used to fund useless or expensive stuff in exchange for bribes or political support (e.g. governments procuring stuff from the most expensive supplier, offering some rather useless services or hiring people based on political or family connections). You can definitely see this kind of stuff, even in the developed countries - and the problem seems to be worse in Latin America.
I think one reason for this, is that in Latin America there is not a very well developed civil service that makes operational (rather than strategic) decisions in a relatively autonomous manner. Instead, these positions are often politicized, particularly when it comes to those who head the departments or institutions tasked with these tasks but in some more extreme cases even the rank-and-file hiring is political instead of being based on merit/competence/experience. This also helps to explain why does the government sometimes works poorly, since the civil servants are the ones who run the day-to-day operations of the government. This of course often extends to state owned enterprises, public schools, public hospitals, etc.[/quote]
wat0n wrote:There's a problem with that, however: Those things (cronyism, lack of opportunity, etc) also happen in socialist systems. So it's not as simple as that.
Yes they do, the reality is that functional societies must rely on functional value systems. That is the reality of it. How does one create functional value systems? Every society has values. Which are the ones in each nation? Why is there corruption and or people not following the rules? Why is there crime? Why is it less in some nations and not in others? You study the circumstances, conditions lived, and the values emphasized, and you also have to deal with contradictions in human nature what is called in Marxian analysis the dialectic. Internal contradictions based on the historical, criteria of circumstances dealt with, in a particular set of environments. It is complex and nothing easy. But? My point of view has to do with the underlying value system, that all human beings are potentially capable of achieving great things--if given the right circumstances, opportunities and, not wasting their human potential battling mightily in nations where they have slavery wages or so abysmally low wages, that they wind up rationing their calories per day, and wind up being chronically ill and unproductive. For example, see a documentary from a group of global development grad students trying to live on Indigenous Mayan people in rural villages in Guatemala (One Dollar a Day). It becomes crystal clear that trying to live on that and trying to get credit to get out of that circumstance is nearly impossible. This is why there are almost if not impossible circumstances, for getting out of those conditions. The next question is "Why is that allowed to happen?" Because United Fruit company uses desperation to keep the wages so low that the pool of exploitable Indian poverty labor is never-ending and more profit for them. They pay off local politicians to make sure wage hikes never happen. And the USA never intervenes in a country that is an ally because the local government is all pro-USA capitalism at all costs ass-kissing traitors to their own nation. As long as the wealthy Ladino families make money? Who gives a fuck about some Mayan Indians eh? Union organizers in the '80s and beyond were outright murdered in front of their families and burned alive or worse. No one was worried about this dastardly deed in the USA because the ones in charge were pro the USA. A just superpower worrying about human rights in China. Fucking hypocrites are what they are @wat0n and racists to boot. They don't protest according to gruesome human rights violations. They respond to GREED. Greed. Then you wonder why the Republicans are so anti-democratic and take huge greed bribes from these corporations who get away with this in Latin American nations? It is a value system that has been allowed to grow in power for decades. It should not have been allowed. But? Capitalist apologists keep thinking that the system just needs a bit of tweaking. It doesn't foster GREED as the foundational principle. What are property rights but the power fights over who gets to dictate societal values anchored in economic controls if that is not what it is ultimately about? Does human society have to make a decision about which value overrides making money? In the USA recently nothing overrides making money. Including democracy and equality and human rights. That is the truth. The Fake Socialists are out there. They don't believe in true socialism. They believe in giving crumbs and growing rich. They do massive damage. I think it is about value systems. The capitalists don't even discuss the possibility of allowing the working class to have majority power with one man and one vote. They subjugate the entire society to GREED only. Which do I think has a possibility for progress and change? The socialist one. Not the capitalist one. Greed with environmental degradation is a death sentence for all of us automatically. The socialist one needs humanist socialists and not fake authoritarians and who get their jollies telling others which books are allowed or what music is approved of. That shit is STUPID in the extreme. Asi es.
But for instance CCs are free in some places. Here in Chicago, you can attend for free. If other states or localities have a different policy, that's their right and people can move to those who have them for free if they want to attend.
They need to be free. In my parents era the university system in the state of California was free and that is where they got their graduate degrees and my mother got her graduate degree without student debt. She also got a scholarship at a private uni in San Francisco for free as well. Got to be with great academic performance though but it can happen for people who want to pursue it. But with her lack of funds in the current system? No way at all is it going to happen. She would be burdened with $250k in student loans and debt for sure for something similar. It is terrible. That is a reality today. 2021. Not in my mother's time of 1975. The Right and the Reagan era loved limiting higher education to the poor. They reveled in it. Another reason to combat the Republican party.
Look I got an errand to run @wat0n but the rest is all about answering you with concrete examples. I got to answer and run. I have a Mexican friend from Veracruz over here crying her eyes out about something....this whole pandemic thing and not seeing anyone doesn't work for sure!
They should be free in all fifties states and all state universities and half of all private ones subsidized.
But more importantly, you can also find countries (in Latin America) that will give you free or almost free college/university, and that still don't fix their social mobility issues. Often, poor people won't be admitted to them or they will, but will fail in the first years and drop out because they have big gaps in their K-12 education, so the ones who will studying and graduating for free are those in the upper and middle classes, not the ones who have the greatest problems to afford higher education. That is, the issue goes beyond simply throwing money to the problem.
Yes, I don't disagree with you on most points there - indeed, informal work by illegal immigrants is also problematic because then their work is effectively being subsidized since they don't have to pay payroll and other taxes. But how would you solve this? I would guess that the solution would be a combination of making legal immigration easier and making illegal immigration harder. Right?
The only part where I disagree with you is that it's only because of business interests. I mean, Trump for example didn't care about them when he slapped tariffs on Chinese imports (this definitely hurt some business interests). There's more to illegal immigration than just business interests.
But for instance, how do you explain corruption in the former Soviet Union and other countries in the socialist world? They did have a social safety net, even if they were poorer than the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Western Europe.
As an anecdote, my maternal family moved to Israel at some point in the early '70s. My grandfather is an eye doctor, and he once told me that, while working there, he would sometimes have recent immigrants from Romania that would offer him bribes to be able to get care promptly. He would tell them something along the lines "oh no, this is your right, please don't do that". They'd have trouble believing it.
I agree, but does a broad social safety net really solve this? In practice, corruption can be seen in other ways too. For instance, certain groups may get more benefits than the rest, under the law, for whatever reason. Or some of the tax money can be used to pay bribes in exchange for support (e.g. a government bribing union leaders in exchange for a docile labor). Or tax money can be used to fund useless or expensive stuff in exchange for bribes or political support (e.g. governments procuring stuff from the most expensive supplier, offering some rather useless services or hiring people based on political or family connections). You can definitely see this kind of stuff, even in the developed countries - and the problem seems to be worse in Latin America.
I think one reason for this, is that in Latin America there is not a very well developed civil service that makes operational (rather than strategic) decisions in a relatively autonomous manner. Instead, these positions are often politicized, particularly when it comes to those who head the departments or institutions tasked with these tasks but in some more extreme cases even the rank-and-file hiring is political instead of being based on merit/competence/experience. This also helps to explain why does the government sometimes works poorly, since the civil servants are the ones who run the day-to-day operations of the government. This of course often extends to state owned enterprises, public schools, public hospitals, etc.[/quote]
La historia de mi amor
se pudiera encontrar
en cada corazón,
en cada soledad.
Silvio Rodriguez
se pudiera encontrar
en cada corazón,
en cada soledad.
Silvio Rodriguez
That is precisely the reason capitalism replaced feudal societies. It was a vastly more productive and efficient system vs chattel slavery and serfdom. 
- By Rancid
- By litwin