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Author | Topic: Evidence for why Bolton should not be confimed | |||||||||||||||||||||||
macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 4183 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
the problem with outsourcing is not with outsourcing in and of itelf. the companies pay a good wage for the area they go (if you don't think 75 cents in mexico is good money, then you should leave the resort towns). further, having worked a shitty job or two in my life, i am under the opinion that it is better to have a shitty job than no job.
any rate. the problem with outsourcing is that the now jobless americans sit around bitching about losing their jobs instead of getting new training. yes, education is expensive. but why is it ok for me to take out a student loan for tons of money that i'll never be able to pay back but not okay for a blue collar worker to do so? most outsourced jobs are factory jobs and tech support. factory workers could all go into construction. construction pays AMAZINGLY well and can't be outsourced. you can't build a house in toledo ohio with workers from bengladesh with no shoes. and the better our economy gets, the more construction jobs there will be. and there are a ton of other infrastructure support jobs people could take. but then there are all kinds of jobs that people think they're too good for and those are all given to immigrants to this country who aren't too spoiled to clean up after others. yes, i'm optimistic, but i also think i might be right.
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nator Member (Idle past 2424 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: How do you figure? I mean, do you think that most of the people who work in factories are young, strong, able-bodied people? I have been inside several factories where most of the people were women in their 40's and 50's. Many, many factory jobs are the type that require fine motor skills to operate machinery, or that do not require a lot of strength.
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EZscience Member (Idle past 5409 days) Posts: 961 From: A wheatfield in Kansas Joined: |
contracycle writes: Actually, it is not a valid question. Sure it's valid question. I agree that we need community effort to assist with the relocation of displaced workers, and that their former employers should contribute to this process. The question goes deeper than that. It touches on whether jobs should be preserved for their own sake, as opposed to because they are relevant and needed by the current economy. If I take a devil's advocate approach and answer 'yes' to this question, then we have a problem. Because then no job can ever become obselete, regardless of how redundant or outdated it is. One can think of plenty of examples. Should we have kept all telephone operators employed indefinitely despite the fact that their job is now done, faster, better and more cheaply by computers? Agriculture provides another exhibt. Only a tiny fraction of people still work on farms compared to a century ago. With farming a 'big business' heavily-mechanized operation, they just aren't needed. And yet there still exists a large grass-roots movement to preserve the family farm 'way of life' that many Americans value deeply. But it is simply nostalgia, without economic justification. This is the dilemma: economics, not social ideals, determines the society's overall prosperity.
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nator Member (Idle past 2424 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: But why do you assume that large agri-business farms are preferable just because they make more money? They make money for the corporations, yes, but not for the local community. Small family farms are more likely to produce more varied crops and to be more responsive to their local customers' requests. They are less likely to think in the profit-driven short term and more likely to want to preserve the land and the waterways for future generations, and for their neighbors. Also, we can look to nations like Italy and France where really large agribusiness is nearly unheard of and local small farms, creameries, and other food producers are supported by the government rather than tax breaks given to the largest companies.
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EZscience Member (Idle past 5409 days) Posts: 961 From: A wheatfield in Kansas Joined: |
schraf writes: But why do you assume that large agri-business farms are preferable just because they make more money? I make no such value judgement. I am NOT a fan of large agribusiness. But it is a simple economic fact that more efficient means of production will always be able to out-compete less efficient means. That is the free market system and is dictated by the law of supply and demand.
schraf writes: Small family farms are more likely to produce more varied crops and to be more responsive to their local customers' requests. They are less likely to think in the profit-driven short term and more likely to want to preserve the land and the waterways for future generations, and for their neighbors. And they are probably much better for the environment in the net balance of things. But they still have to make money to survive. Here in America 'organic' local production is a specialty niche market for discerning consumers. However, most people buy the cheapest food they can find and don't ever read a label. You and I are not typical American consumers, or maybe there would be more small-scale, sustainable agriculture in the country.
schraf writes: ...we can look to nations like Italy and France where really large agribusiness is nearly unheard of and local small farms, creameries, and other food producers are supported by the government rather than tax breaks given to the largest companies. Well I am also against tax breaks for the largest companies, but we have to be very careful before we start advocating 'government support' (= subsidies of some form or other) for any form of agriculture. It usually doesn't tend to encourage very wise agricultural practices and it has led to the current cycle of international escalation in agricultural subsidies that now *everyone* is trying to roll back. It has led to an international competition to see who can afford the most inefficient, although superficially bountiful, agricultural production. But this is aside from the issue of preserving jobs for their own sake. Job descriptions have to be dictated by society's needs and change with them, not by the nostalgic image of the job itself or the fact that a bunch of people don't know how to do anything else.
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mark24 Member (Idle past 5450 days) Posts: 3857 From: UK Joined: |
Contracycle,
It is factually wrong to claim that the UN threatened force and failed to actualise it. Furthermore, Saddam is now known to have been in complience. Third, many states including Israel remain in defiance of the UN for years. If I give you two apples, a red one & a green one, & say I might shoot you if you bite the red one, but not the green one, then I am threatening force. This is what a chapter seven resolution does relative to a non-chapter 7 resolution. The UN could have made a c6 resolution, which lacked the menace of potential military action. Instead, it chose to resolve under c7, which does allow the use of force to resolve the issue. Given that operationally, the only meaningful difference between the c7 & other resolutions is the use of force, it is implicitly threatened as a measure for non-compliance. Saddam was most definitely not in compliance. There is more to the UN with respect to Iraq than resolution 1441. Weapon inspection teams were set up under resolution 687, taken in 3rd April 1991, & were a part of the ceasefire agreement. In that document Iraq was to allow immediate on-site inspection of any locations required by the special commission. This is failed to do on many occasions. Iraq was therefore in breach, & most definitely not in compliance. Given a decade had passed & Iraq was still non-compliant, & peaceful means had failed to realise the desired effect, then the resolution should have used force, or it had no right being a c7 resolution in the first place. I am not making a pro-war argument, but an argument that c7 UN resolutions are ambiguous & lose their political & diplomatic value as a result of not fully realising themselves when peaceful means are realistically exhausted. The lesson is to not explicitly or implicitly threaten force if you are not going to use it, because the deterrent value of future resolutions will be weakened as a result. Mark There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 4183 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
oh no not weak old women.
immaterial. there are jobs they can do. no one is hopeless, they just have to put forth a little effort. there is no job security for anyone anymore, why should it be different for them?
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nator Member (Idle past 2424 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
The jobs that a 50 year old woman can do after her good-paying factory job is exported are not many. Maybe kitchen work or housekeeping at a hotel, which certainly do not pay as well as construction; not even close. The kinds of shifts that are attractive for women with children are also not typical in construction.
I don't know the solution, but I just know that they probably can't work construction
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 4183 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
nothing like focussing on a stupid example. there's also a lot of 20-50 year old men in factory jobs. those ages already work in construction. you're being argumentative for now reason. the point isn't the construction field, the point is re-education. but then that's even out of favor in prisons...
maybe we should just execute old factory workers since they're too useless to be able to do anything else.
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nator Member (Idle past 2424 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Well, I wasn't going to call your exaple stupid, but it was a "solution" of sorts that you put forth.
quote: Sure. But I think you might be surprised how many women are factory workers.
quote: See, I thought that your point was that construction, in particular, pays really well and that the factory workers could go do that. Well, the 50 year old women probably couldn't, and they would probably take a cut in pay when they started to clean houses or change the bed linens in a hotel.
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MangyTiger Member (Idle past 6608 days) Posts: 989 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
maybe we should just execute old factory workers since they're too useless to be able to do anything else. I've been wondering how long it would be before someone reached the obvious conclusion of this discussion. I suggest to make it acceptable we would have to turn the killings into some sort of public festival or ceremony. It would probably be better accepted if it had some sort of non-threatening name - I suggest Carousel Oops! Wrong Planet
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 4183 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
or how about replacing the young secretaries in doctors' and lawyers' offices while said young ladies (and they still are mostly women) go actually become doctors or lawyers?
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 4183 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
or the lottery?
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Silent H Member (Idle past 6074 days) Posts: 7405 From: satellite of love Joined: |
I will answer your last post to me in this reply since it covers the same exact assertions I am having problems with.
Let's start where we are in agreement. We are both agreed that it is not good for anyone, much less a powerful organization looked to for guidance and protection, to be caught in a bluff. If force is threatened, but is not or cannot be actualized given that a stated precondition arises, it is likely to be seen as a weakness and more entities are likely to not listen to threats in the future. Here is a working analogy: A nation has developed a naval force for protection of its national security and merchant shipping as well as perhaps to prevent smuggling. If an entity (lets say a group of smugglers) begin becoming a nuisance the gov't might announce that any further attempts to land in a certain area for smuggling purposes will be met with force! There is a threat of force and a precondition. Smugglers will undoubtedly test this threat for veracity. If the nation does not do anything to block their attempts, then they will see (or believe) that they can get away with their operations and are likely to ignore threats in the future. Likewise national enemies and pirates might notice that bluff and ignore threats made by that nation in the future. Thus getting caught in a bluff, is bad for national business. HOWEVER... 1) The nature of bluffing in diplomacy... The idea that bluffing is neither useful, nor necessary at times, nor part of everyday diplomacy in the world at large (when one considers tha large variety of threatened sanctions beyond military), and that it results in eternal weakening of the entity caught bluffing, is patently false and shows a great misunderstanding of how diplomacy works. All nations work toward maintaining national sovereignty and attaining national interests, while avoiding the worst solution possible... war. The entire point of diplomacy is to avoid war which undeniably causes more problems than other solutions (except once one is under attack, or imminent attack). The UN in specific is designed to provide mechanisms of bargaining and threats (of many different kinds) so as to help smaller nations from being smashed in simple "might equals" right power grabs from both other small and large nations. These mechanisms are generally filled with bluffs in order to reach bargains. Like the US might bluff that it will impose trade sanctions, or cut aid, or not vote for something another nation wants, in order to get a support vote on another issue. The key is making sure the bluff sounds real. If caught, it is not important to always follow through, but to make sure one follows through on those issues that count. 2) The UN and its actions regarding Iraq... Your assertion that everyone who voted for the resolutions which allowed for force against Iraq yet did not back the Iraq War were merely bluffing appears counterfactual. I might add your statement is rather offensive as I could see having supported the resolutions for force, yet not supported the invasion and I know for certain I would not have been bluffing. Here are some alternatives to consider: {a} They may have supported force, but not war (at least not at that time). Generally "use of force" or "serious consequences" is accepted in language to mean "equivalent to needs" and not inherently "total war". Using the original analogy, when smugglers start testing the nations resolve a ship may be sent in to show resolve is there, if they continue to test then a shot is sent over the bow, if this is not sufficient then an attempt to disable the vessel, and only if that does not work a fullscale battle will ensue. In this case you are buying into the very stock dilemma that Bush was selling, when you posit it as mere bluff if others did not back his full scale war. You may note (if you read writings at the time) that there was not a problem with force, but degree of force being suggested by the US. Can you not think of alternatives? I can. Others could. {b} Iraq had not necessarily met conditions requiring force. Despite your harping on the fact that it had been ten years of bucking resolutions, that does not argue that the degree of violation was sufficient for such dramatic force... specifically an invasion. Even Bush acknowledged at the beginning of his term that Saddam was contained and his threat to the region null. The only time his message began to change is after 9/11 when the hawks rose to power (who had public plans against Iraq prior to 2000) and he began to amplify incomplete and sometimes wholly fraudulent evidence to make his case. Those who resisted his call to war, were skeptical that Iraq was in conflict with the resolutions in such a way as to mandate a serious infliction of violent force. This is especially true when the mere threat of violence appeared to be yielding some fruit. You can look here for the increasing objective assessment of compliance, and findings contrary to Bush's claims as he continued to build for war. Using the original analogy: if a naval ship in the harbor is keeping a known smuggler's ship from landing most of the time, and the nation can't quite prove its case that serious smuggling is occuring, then what is the reason to have the navy start firing and sinking that smuggler's ships? The precedent of firing on merchant boats based on minor infringements or questionable evidence, especially if those boats appear to be moving toward compliance is perhaps more dangerous than a bluff. If you can be attacked anyway, what's the point in complying at all? {c} Following up on b, it could also be that even if Iraq was noncompliant, there were real world conditions which prevented their acceptance of war as a solution at that point in time (under those conditions). War, as we can see now, is not just popping a few caps off. It is a major undertaking which eats up time, money, and resources. This is doubly so when it will involve nation building. Thus countries are going to be very careful of which projects they take on. The fact of the matter was that a real war had just begun against AQ. This was going to be eating up time, money, and resources. Iraq WAS NOT CONNECTED TO AQ. Therefore moving assets to get involved with Iraq was not only going to be weakening an ongoing (and more important) conflict at the time, but in addition all intelligence groups noted that such a war could lend assistance to AQ! Using the analogy, it would be seriously questionable for a nation to waste time diverting naval resources to hunt small time smuggling operations when there is an active war going on with an enemy nation, and the act of trying to wipe out the smugglers will rally more people to the enemies' side. There is an important notion of picking your battles. Iraq was not as important, or important enough, at the time to warrant such dramatic activity, specifically when they were contained, not posing a threat, and the mere threat of war drove them into better compliance. It would have been a serious mistake for anyone to not take real world events into consideration. Even if this had resulted in no attack on Iraq, a nation which later showed a real threat would unlikely have gone unchallenged. You may note the evidence for this in that no one was having any issues regarding Afghanistan. 3) The US, bluffing and pulling the UN's teeth... The idea that Bush or the US was somehow actually putting muscle behind the UN's mandates is absurd on its face. It obviously twisted arms and made bargains to get the original resolution that DID NOT CONTAIN A MANDATE FOR WAR, then bluffed that they'd go for actual support for war and reneged when they realized there was little support for it. I mean our concern certainly was not about sticking up for enforcing UN resolutions. Here is a list of resolutions against Israel, with an addendum of all the ones the US shot down with unilaterally shot down with its singular veto. And here is a list of oustanding UN resolutions regarding other nations other than Iraq. The real reason should be obvious, given Bush's flipflop on Iraq and the papers written by his hawk advisors for eliminating Iraq in order to help Israel and stabilize oil reserves. You might note from the last link that...
Since the early 1970s, the United States has used its veto power nearly fifty times, more than all other permanent members during that same period combined. In the vast majority of these cases, the U.S. was the only dissenting vote. The preceding list, therefore, includes only resolutions where the United States voted in the affirmative or abstained. Thus even when they don't overtly cripple a UN mandate, they do go along with ignoring enforcement of resolutions just like all the other nations. If you want to knock diplomacy and champion war as the only solution for problems, fine. If you want to say that the UN should have been putting pressure on Iraq earlier, fine. But to claim that Bush and the US showed up some inadequacy of the UN because it did not support his rush to war, and indeed Bush was some standard bearer for not bluffing and standing behind ones words, well that is simply counterfactual and naive. In the end analysis, Bush went to the UN to play at diplomacy but he didn't know how it worked and trusted neocon hawks to make a case. When HE failed at diplomacy because he was inept, he did what every other loser does... packed up his cards and money and declared that it doesn't work at all. Sour grapes. He now wants to take over the house and rig the games in his favor. THEN he'll be willing to play. Might makes right and Bolton is the perfect manager for such an enterprise. holmes "...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)
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nator Member (Idle past 2424 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
The point is that good-paying factory jobs with benefits are being eliminated entirely, and low-paying Wal-Mart jobs with no benefits are what is replacing them.
It doesn't matter if you get lots of retraining to work in doctor's offices if there are the same number of jobs as before.
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