Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Lord Shonus]

That reminds me of talking to local socialists (always the college-age ones, not the older ones).

They claim that we need a revolution because working through the "bourgeois" electoral system can never effect positive change. i.e. the idea of passing laws that have some positive effect is nonsense. But of course they don't contend that bad things can't happen through the electoral process. Logicall if some change in government policy is objectively bad then the inverse policy must be objective good, thus disproving the "socialist" idea that no good things can come from the electoral process.

That's elementary Marxist dialectic. When and where Marx was writing, it was probably quite true, but it's an idea that's more than a century out of date.

[smjjames]

There probably needs to be some sort of Neo-Marxist/socialist person with more up to date ideas.

[Frumple]

There's probably several, it's just that no one's really listening to them anymore.

[Loud Whispers]

God damn commies

[smjjames]

I mean something more in the modern style of 'socialism' with what other countries have that people label as socialsm.

Of course though, when a republican says 'socialist' or 'socialism', they really mean 'DIRTY RED COMMUNIST!!1!'

[Reelya]

Well that's already covered under European Democratic Socialism. Or the "Swedish Model" or any of a nymber of names. But these systems really have little to do with any Marxist ideas and are actually more similar to Bismarck's conservative capitalism + welfare model. Yeah, it was mostly conservatives who created the first welfare states, in a bid to appease the masses, iron over the problems with capitalism, and keep the rising labor/socialist parties out of electoral power.

You see much more adherence to Marxist ideas inside corporations which have embraced profit sharing and collective decision making. They're basically the poster-boys for the idea that workplace democratic ownership actually works (Semco is the prime example).

The main naysayers for more worker control within companies are the collective "mangament class". They basically maintain that if you let the "rif raff" workers be in charge of anything they'll run it into the ground because their little brains can't deal with responsiblity, and the whole thing will collapse because of their greedy short-sighted little working-class minds. But this is pure classism, and many models where they give the workers more freedom to innovate and contribute show that workers definitely want to be part of the decision process, and they can in fact make adult decisions which are in both their own interest and in the companies interests. Hell, if you're rewarded in the good years worker's will even vote themselves pay cuts in the bad years. Really, the issue is that the "management class" have a privileged position and don't want it eroded. Fuck what actually makes a profit, because these people eat their steak and caviar no matter what happens to the company. If anything, the management-class have less of a visceral interest in the company staying profitable than the rank and file workers do.

[Mephansteras]

All of which is made worse by the fact that publicly traded companies are driven by the short-term needs to the shareholders, who really don't care about the longer term health of the company. So you see management in those companies actively short-changing the future of the company for immediate gains.

I'd say with the current way corporations work, at least in the US, management is less able to take care of the future of a company than the workers.

[mainiac]

Not entirely.  The best strategy for the shareholders would often be for the company to stagnate, pay dividends and slowly go obsolete in a profitable fashion.  The money from those dividends could then go into new companies.  The best strategy for managers is for companies to relentlessly reinvest, expand and have more revenues so they can pay management more.

[smjjames]

Not entirely.  The best strategy for the shareholders would often be for the company to stagnate, pay dividends and slowly go obsolete in a profitable fashion.  The money from those dividends could then go into new companies.  The best strategy for managers is for companies to relentlessly reinvest, expand and have more revenues so they can pay management more.

How exactly does one 'slowly go obsolete in a profitable fashion'?

[mainiac]

How exactly does one 'slowly go obsolete in a profitable fashion'?

Think about Microsoft.  They sell windows.  Windows is really profitable and microsoft put a lot of effort into getting to the top of the heap.  Microsoft will keep making profits off windows for a long time.  However windows wont be the end all be all for ever.  Eventually some sort of VR system or social media integrated environment will render it obsolete.  I dunno, it'll just be something eventually.  Maybe it will take 50 years.  Microsoft could just say "windows is enough", sell windows until it goes obsolete and make profits for 50 years.  That would be a lot of money returned to shareholders.  Maybe they'll even flawlessly navigate the new technology and get another 50 year lease on life (but do you expect a 70 year old company to outcompete startups?  Look at how microsoft schooled IBM).  But saying "windows is enough, let's stagnate" would be very profitable.

But microsoft doesn't do that.  Instead they waste money on trying to do the next big thing.  They make the Zune.  They make the Microsoft Smartphones.  They make an online marketplace, a video service, an email service, an internet browser, so many other projects that were of uncertain value.  They had a couple of big successes, the Xbox and the Surface.  Because of these successes they are buying more years of life for their company.  But the shareholders are paying for all the failures that never made a dime.

[Mephansteras]

Part of that is all complicated by the revolving shareholders. All those brokerages and managed funds and whatnot that buy and sell stocks regularly based on gains and losses in the market. Those are the ones that drive a lot of the short-term thinking, because they are only interested in the short term gains from a stock. But you have a big enough firm buying large numbers of stock in a company like Microsoft and they push for all those risks. One big surge in stock price that they can capitalize on (and then leave) is all they want. They don't even care if it turns out to be successful or not, they just need the hype to be big enough to spike the stock prices when they sell.


Not saying that all brokerages do this or that all publicly owned companies have problems with this. Just...I've seen it happen a number of time to quite a few companies, both ones I've worked for and ones that I was following in the stock market.

[Flying Dice]

I've just had the horrifying realization that Bevin probably won solely because of gay marriage.

Almost makes me wish the fucker wasn't going to be dealing with four years of gridlock in Frankfort so that all those bigoted shitheads could enjoy losing their health insurance.

[misko27]

Not to mention being able to vote online, which would go a long way. Just need to make sure that it's as free of problems as possible.

I just want to pop in here and say that since I worked as an election inspector on Tuesday, I have two things to say:
1) It's decent money and the check arrives right before Christmas.
2) We have to do a lot of shit to ensure that everything is alright. There's both electronic and paper verification. I haven't seen an online voting system that is reliably secure enough for this. And imagine the scam sites (the people who fall for those have the right to vote too you know). The DDoS attacks. And more.

[sluissa]

Not to mention being able to vote online, which would go a long way. Just need to make sure that it's as free of problems as possible.

I just want to pop in here and say that since I worked as an election inspector on Tuesday, I have two things to say:
1) It's decent money and the check arrives right before Christmas.
2) We have to do a lot of shit to ensure that everything is alright. There's both electronic and paper verification. I haven't seen an online voting system that is reliably secure enough for this. And imagine the scam sites (the people who fall for those have the right to vote too you know). The DDoS attacks. And more.

Just to note, every state does their voting differently. Some are still on purely paper ballots, some have gone completely paperless with the only paper resulting from the voting coming as a "summary print out" of that machine's final numbers that gets printed by the machine after all is said and done.

Each state is responsible for their own oversight and at least when it comes to the presidential election (and possibly national congressional offices, but that I'm not sure at all about) no vote even has to occur nor does a guarantee of fairness or honestly need to be upheld because, lest we forget, the electoral college has the final say and only takes into advisement the popular vote in each state. Each member has the ability to cast their vote for whatever candidate they feel like no matter what the popular vote outcome is. Now individual state regulations may require the votes to follow popular decision, but again, that's up to each individual state to police.

[TheDarkStar]

There's also the fact that random quirks of the system can cause elections to not follow the popular vote, even if the electoral college votes the same way that their constituents do.