Are americans buying themselves out of jobs?

Memnoch

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

I'm sure a lot of people are aware about walmart and their extreme business practices. I found this well written and balanced article that makes a lot of intersting points in both directions.

Is walmart the true definition of unbridled corporate capitalism? Is it also the demonstration of the limits of this school of thought?

More importantly, is it the ultimate lesson by example of why the completely unilateral capitalistic policies of today are destined to fail?

Sand

Is walmart the true definition of unbridled corporate capitalism?

No, its not the free market ideal as its so large as to be a monopoly. An ideal market is formed by many small buyers and sellers, not any one huge one.

Though it got to its present position by simply being far better managed than its rivals so it could simply be a result of the most efficient company rising to the top.

Is it also the demonstration of the limits of this school of thought?

More importantly, is it the ultimate lesson by example of why the completely unilateral capitalistic policies of today are destined to fail?

I dont see how you view it as failure.

The article doesnt dispute that Walmart is delivering low prices for all its customers year after year, though efficiency on its own part and demanding efficiency on the part of its suppliers - a benefit to all its customers, all its suppliers, and all the other customers of their suppliers. Firms admit theyre forced to innovate and introduce new products. The only real loser are firms that are inefficient and cannot compete. Those jobs go overseas to firms that are more efficient.

I dont see that as a problem - if we can get goods for cheaper abroad then why not? We benefit from lower prices and the new suppliers benefit from new markets. Everyone wins. Some jobs are lost in the developed world in the short term but developed economies are moving towards jobs that require a more educated workforce and were far better equipped to take the pain than the developing world.

The fact is that countries cant compete with the rest of the world in everything anymore. Low skilled, low wage workforces are going to trump low skilled, high wage workforces everytime. You can either try to educate your workforce so as to compete in markets where you can succeed or attempt to defeat reality by establishing barrier to trade - this is the route the EU has taken to preserve innefficient food production in Europe rather than allow 3rd world farmers access to their markets.

But capitalism could never help that particular problem could it?

chill

Memnoch wrote:

I'm sure a lot of people are aware about walmart and their extreme business practices. I found this well written and balanced article that makes a lot of intersting points in both directions.

There's nothing extreme about Walmart. They are incredibly successful because they supply what the ordinary people want at the prices they can afford. More power to them.

Is walmart the true definition of unbridled corporate capitalism? Is it also the demonstration of the limits of this school of thought?

It certainly is an example of the power of capitalism and the free market system. It delivers lower prices so that ordinary middle class and working class people can afford the things they buy. They supply much needed jobs for people at the bottom end of the skills ladder.

More importantly, is it the ultimate lesson by example of why the completely unilateral capitalistic policies of today are destined to fail?

Walmart are one of the greatest successes in the history of the market system and a lesson that demonstrates the success and power of the market system and it's importance to ordinary people.

Memnoch

sand - i don't view it as a failure. I said it seems destined to fail. The outsourcing of jobs from the US continues at a tremendous rate. The new jobs that are being created do not match in terms of salaries and benefits, since a lot of these jobs are working for McDonalds, which i'm sure we will all agree isn't the ideal vocation.

the question is how long can this system be supported?

With the US government giving more and more corporate tax cuts, with more and more jobs being outsourced, not only in low skilled areas such as labour but even high skills areas such as information technology, is it the beginning of a terminal downward spiral?

The article made a VERY good point about another huge monoply that was 5 times larger than wal mart that destroyed america's economy in the past, and was the cause of the anti-trust/takeover policies of modern economics. With these rules now being discarded as single corporations grow more and more powerful and wield greater and greater lobbying influence, how long is it before we are back to the original crises.

Again to reiterate, i'm not really on EITHER side of the issue in this case. I'm just trying to throw it out there for debate to see what people think about it.

mike65

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=204258

Of course if Walmart opened up here you'd get killed in the rush, Aldi and Lidl
have shown there's a healthy market for cheaper but quality goods. Also consider the hoo-har over IKEA, they can't open up here due to planning laws. So thousands get a coach/ferry to Scotland or Manchester and spend thier money in the UK instead. Sure too big can be bad but not big enough is'nt any great shakes either...

Mike.

SkepticOne

One of problems being identified in this article is that many formerly dirt-poor agricultural nations are now developing manufacturing capability and competing directly with richer countries.

This is one of the things that the anti-globalists were demonstrating against in Cancun and more recently Santiago. They believe that poor countries should rely on the charity of the rich rather than from trade and industry which can cause jobs to be lost in developed countries.

TomF

Reading this article makes me think that the world economy is like a landscape of peaks and valleys, with the wealthy regions the peaks and the poor the valleys. It seems that as manufacturing jobs head to China and India that the valleys will fill and the peaks will erode. Eventually, it will all be at sea level, and the only way to make things happen is to keep coming up with new products, or as in the Wal-Mart article, new designs or items that have no cheaper competitor yet.

What in the world is Ireland going to produce that is cheaper and better? We can't go on building more and more costly houses and spiralling higher and higher in the mortgage market and producing nothing but more "owner" debt with no more buyers lining up at the auctions.

Hobbes

chill wrote:

There's nothing extreme about Walmart. They are incredibly successful because they supply what the ordinary people want at the prices they can afford. More power to them.

Beginning to wonder if you even read what it says.

"No Logo" has a good piece on Walmart and its practices. Worth reading.

It delivers lower prices so that ordinary middle class and working class people can afford the things they buy. They supply much needed jobs for people at the bottom end of the skills ladder.

:rolleyes: What happens when the working class are out of work because the prices are so low it is impossible for the companies in the US to supply the goods?

Which is the whole point of story. I think it will be more like this..
1. Walmart/KMart offer low prices below what US companies can compete at.
2. Companies lay off people.
3. People can't afford to shop at other shops and end up in Walmart/KMart.

Cycle continues.

The story is intresting though. Some of the problem has a lot to do with US mentality (not all States but I did notice it more in San Diego/Michigan).

Quote: They'd eat a quarter of a jar and throw the thing away when they got moldy. A family can't eat them fast enough.

Stuff is so cheap it is practically wasted. I would see this in resturants too. You would ask for a meal and you could get x3 what a normal person could on your plate.

Boggle

Stuff is so cheap it is practically wasted. I would see this in resturants too. You would ask for a meal and you could get x3 what a normal person could on your plate.

Better being left hungry, having paid good money for a meal! (And why shouldn't stuff be cheap?)

pickarooney

It'll eventually end up with just one shop, selling one brand of goods, at silly prices. Of course it'll be up to the shopkeeper to decide if that's silly expensive or silly cheap.
A bit like Russia in the good old days.

The Corinthian

Last time I checked manufacture was only one link, albeit an important one, in the supply chain. Retail and transport are benefiting from an increase in trade. Ultimately, the market adapts to competition and where jobs are lost in one sector, they’re created in another.

Hairy Homer

Sand wrote:

No, its not the free market ideal as its so large as to be a monopoly. An ideal market is formed by many small buyers and sellers, not any one huge one.

The free market ideal, or idyll, may indeed be that but in practice the 'free' market eventually rationalises down to a few big players.

Coke and Pepsi -- Go on. Name the third largest cola brand in the world.
United and Arsenal -- hasn't the premiership got EXCITING now that Chelsea have emerged as the third horse in the race?
Dell and HP -- name the third largest PC maker in the world.
Gibson and Fender
etc etc

The more competitive a market is, the more likely it is to boil down to just such a situation.

The socialist ideal is that everybody gives according to their ability and receives according to their needs so we all live in egalitarian utopia. But if somebody argued from that point of view here the unreconstructed free marketeers would be down on them like a ton of bricks.

Sand wrote:

We benefit from lower prices and the new suppliers benefit from new markets. Everyone wins.

By God sir, you're beginning to sound like a real pantywaisted leftie. In the capitalist system, somebody is REQUIRED to lose. It's inevitable. Those who mouth the 'win-win' mantra would earn the scorn of many on the right in places like America for daring to exhibit such touchy-feely inclinations.

sand wrote:

you can ....attempt to defeat reality by establishing barrier to trade - this is the route the EU has taken to preserve innefficient food production in Europe rather than allow 3rd world farmers access to their markets.

But capitalism could never help that particular problem could it?

It certainly couldn't when there are muppets out there who say that market forces are the only ones worth paying any attention to and must be allowed maximum freedom of operation at all costs.

Read our own history. Especially around the 1840s. We were an integral part of the world's strongest empire. Our political representatives sat in its parliament. Our ancestors lived in one of the most fertile countries in the world from a food-producing point of view. In 1846 there was a bumper grain harvest.

That same year, people began to starve in their hundreds of thousands. It wasn't a natural famine. It was an economic one.

The economic 'efficiency' of our peasantry's food production was stunning. They grew their own food, basing their diet on a single foodstuff with the most remarkable combination of nutrients and incredible yields per acre of tillage. For all the good it did them.

Look at it from the property owners point of view: let them eat potatoes, their ability to feed themselves goes up; our rents and margins--or the area we can set aside for cash crops--increases. A Win-Win scenario if ever there was one.

Apart from that little matter of more than 10 per cent of the inhabitants starving to death and the population halving over the next 50 years.

sovtek

Sand wrote:

I dont see that as a problem - if we can get goods for cheaper abroad then why not? We benefit from lower prices and the new suppliers benefit from new markets. Everyone wins.

Yea "everyone" like the poor Chinese kids that go blind making cheap crap in factors with no health/safety standards to speak of.
Efficient and cheap are two entirely different things.
And how do middle income people win when their taxes go to help Wal-Mart to send jobs to other countries as well as the people that work at Wal-Mart having to go on wefare...also something the middle earners pay for?
Is it "capitalism" this week?

Some jobs are lost in the developed world in the short term but developed economies are moving towards jobs that require a more educated workforce and were far better equipped to take the pain than the developing world.

And businesses of developed countries are now sending all those lovely skilled jobs to India...win win of course....

Low skilled, low wage workforces are going to trump low skilled, high wage workforces everytime.

And every time a country starts to climb out of that "developed" status and can demand higher wages and safer working conditions the "developed" world moves to another slave wage country meanwhile putting pressure on those "developing" countries to keep "labour flexibility". EYE EMMM EFF

You can either try to educate your workforce so as to compete in markets where you can succeed or attempt to defeat reality by establishing barrier to trade -

How the hell does educating your workforce help anyone when those jobs are going somewhere else....

this is the route the EU has taken to preserve innefficient food production in Europe rather than allow 3rd world farmers access to their markets.

...and what do these two entirely different animals have to do with the former?

But capitalism could never help that particular problem could it?

Is it "capitalism" or "free-trade"?

Sand

Yea "everyone" like the poor Chinese kids that go blind making cheap crap in factors with no health/safety standards to speak of.

Thats right, lets deny employment and development to people because human rights are about as bad in those developing countries.....as human rights were in the developed world when they were developing?!?! Do you see the possiblity of history repeating itself?

Yeah, we should encourage human rights development in the devloping world - that goes without saying, and would probably be best brought about by firms pushing for some sort of international recognition of their working standards and pushing consumer demand for some symbol of that recognition.

Starving them economically and helping to ensure theyre dependant on the wholly inadequate Western aid budgets is not an alternative.

And businesses of developed countries are now sending all those lovely skilled jobs to India...win win of course....

Answering phones isnt a skilled job?

And every time a country starts to climb out of that "developed" status and can demand higher wages and safer working conditions the "developed" world moves to another slave wage country meanwhile putting pressure on those "developing" countries to keep "labour flexibility". EYE EMMM EFF

Which is why the pressure is on to develop infrastructure, education and encourage investment by higher value industries. As a country develops it cant compete with a lower wage workforce....Ive already stated this.

How the hell does educating your workforce help anyone when those jobs are going somewhere else....

Youre right - education has no benefit.

...and what do these two entirely different animals have to do with the former?

Break down the barrier to trade and most of EU farmer will find they cant compete with the developing worlds farmers. Almost 100% of Europeans will enjoy lower food prices, the developing worlds farmer will enjoy a rising standard of living from selling their produce and the only losers will be the EU farmers who will get on a soapbox and prophesise death and destruction because all the jobs are going from Euro farming to Kenyan farmers.

Its the same old story here - a firm cant compete, they go to the wall and their jobs are somehow "stolen" by another firm whose crime is to do their work cheaper. Those bastards! And theyre damn foreigners too! If they were American it would be okay and wed be praising yankee work ethic and meritocracy but its cheating chinese or whoever. Its just more trade=war tripe that Id have hoped would have died out with the age of enlightenment.

Sand

Apart from that little matter of more than 10 per cent of the inhabitants starving to death and the population halving over the next 50 years.

Right so limited trade ( only within the British Empire ) led to the Irish famine, not generations of the effects of penal laws which were designed to reduce the majority of Irish people to a subsitence level of existence....that might mean that a series of agricultural reverses could lead to terrible famines?

If there was some crime or deliberate policy attached then that was it - the potato blight was widespread in Europe. We got hit hardest because surprise surprise the Irish were reduced to absolute dependancy on it. From here

Too bad for the kids who will be taught this partisan line; most recent historical evidence doesn't support it. In the 1960s, a revisionist school of economic historians proved that limiting wheat exports would have made only a puny dent in the calamity. British action wouldn't have mattered. In addition, British intervention to assist the starving assumes a more contemporary idea of the state's responsibilities that doesn't jibe with mid-19th-century realities. If Ireland got hit hardest by the famine, it was because it depended more heavily on the potato for sustenance than other countries.

Hell, look at this. Youll notice that in 1847, right after the bumper grain harvest wheat exports *halved*, wheat imports *tripled*, oat exports *halved*, oat imports *tripled*, barley exports *halved*, barley imports *tripled*, rye imports went up *21 fold*, maize imports *tripled*.

Indeed as a total of *all* grain imports Irish exports roughly halved, and imports went up four fold.

Yeah, this really supports the argument that masses of wheat were exported whilst the poor Irish starved, damn those imperialist/capitalist bastards.

Read our own history.

Read it yourself - without the green tinted glasses this time perhaps?

By God sir, you're beginning to sound like a real pantywaisted leftie. In the capitalist system, somebody is REQUIRED to lose. It's inevitable. Those who mouth the 'win-win' mantra would earn the scorn of many on the right in places like America for daring to exhibit such touchy-feely inclinations.

Right, so every time you pay for a newspaper are you winning or losing? Whose keeping score? Do you get like trophies or medals if you win?

Do you have a book of grudges where you keep track of newspaper sellers who you lost to?

Coke and Pepsi -- Go on. Name the third largest cola brand in the world.

How the feck should I know - there are enough barriers to trade to ensure the world cant sell into this market. If you want to ask me which is the 3rd biggest coke manufacturer in the Irish markets Id hazard a guess at Country Spring.

United and Arsenal -- hasn't the premiership got EXCITING now that Chelsea have emerged as the third horse in the race?

Heh, the premiership as a free market - You know that one of the definitions is that anyone can enter or leave the market? Not quite true as Cletic and wimbledon before them are finding out.

Dell and HP -- name the third largest PC maker in the world.

IBM? Yeah i know - whose ever heard of them. Oh and Toshiba and Fijitsu Siemens are 2 others before you go "Oh yeah, well whose the next ...."

The more competitive a market is, the more likely it is to boil down to just such a situation.

Balls to be honest, but I havent got time to fill you in on the economics lectures you skipped.

The socialist ideal is that everybody gives according to their ability and receives according to their needs so we all live in egalitarian utopia. But if somebody argued from that point of view here the unreconstructed free marketeers would be down on them like a ton of bricks.

Our needs are the same, our ability differs. Its a flawed ideal.

RainyDay

It's not that hard for the offshore suppliers to undercut the US based suppliers given that they have no minimum wage laws, no unfair dismissals legislation, no health & safety protection, no unions etc etc etc.

shotamoose

SkepticOne wrote:

One of problems being identified in this article is that many formerly dirt-poor agricultural nations are now developing manufacturing capability and competing directly with richer countries.

This is one of the things that the anti-globalists were demonstrating against in Cancun and more recently Santiago.

Er, bollocks. The vast majority of the mainstream trade NGOs / campaign groups that I know of want developing countries to be competitive with richer countries. And they want richer countries to lower their trade barriers to make trade more beneficial for poor countries.

Captain Trips

shotamoose wrote:

Er, bollocks. The vast majority of the mainstream trade NGOs / campaign groups that I know of want developing countries to be competitive with richer countries. And they want richer countries to lower their trade barriers to make trade more beneficial for poor countries.

I would rather the EU keep it's barriers. The US's example has shown that it virtually inevitably leads to exploitation of third world workers. I can live without a gallon (? 4 litre!!) jar of ****ing gerkins or whatever it was. I can live without the Monster Thickburger http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6498304/

Currently, the EU is not exploiting anyone (relatively to comparitive US brands) and we all seem to be doing pretty well, and there are limits, thankfully on companies so that Walmart can't come here and build a 500000 square foot city of cheap **** from China to destroy other businesses.

Let's all go to Bewley's next Tuesday........

SkepticOne

Captain Trips wrote:

I would rather the EU keep it's barriers. The US's example has shown that it virtually inevitably leads to exploitation of third world workers. I can live without a gallon (? 4 litre!!) jar of ****ing gerkins or whatever it was. I can live without the Monster Thickburger

I think this is pretty representative of the ant-globalist protesters point of view. There may be some NGO groups that don't entirely go along with it however.

shotamoose

SkepticOne wrote:

I think this is pretty representative of the ant-globalist protesters point of view. There may be some NGO groups that don't entirely go along with it however.

The fact is that most NGO groups don't go along with that view - in fact I'm hard pressed to think of any that do. So your statement that anyone who demonstrated at Cancun was against trade of any kind remains totally wrong.

bonkey

Captain Trips wrote:

Currently, the EU is not exploiting anyone (relatively to comparitive US brands)

Riiiiight. Suuuuure we aren't.

One of the very first "headline" issues concerning the (mis)treatment of the people in developing nations was the whole sweatshop thing....you know...Nike getting some kid from Penuria to sow $5000-a-pair running shoes for .002c or thereabouts*.

And who were Nike's competition, engaged in the exact same practices? Adidas. And where are Adidas based?

On a different note, Starbucks - the biggest (?) player in the retail-coffee world - are signed up to Fair Trade / Max Havelaar for their coffee-purchasing. Can we say the same about the major European producers/packagers/retailers?

jc

* may be slightly exaggerated

pickarooney

bonkey wrote:

Riiiiight. Suuuuure we aren't.

On a different note, Starbucks - the biggest (?) player in the retail-coffee world - are signed up to Fair Trade / Max Havelaar for their coffee-purchasing. Can we say the same about the major European producers/packagers/retailers?

jc

* may be slightly exaggerated

Douwe Egberts says it's not their responsibility. Although I think their parent company (Sara Lee) is American. Nestlé may or may not be, though they have a pretty woeful reputation in this respect.

Hairy Homer

Sand wrote:

If there was some crime or deliberate policy attached then that was it - the potato blight was widespread in Europe. We got hit hardest because surprise surprise the Irish were reduced to absolute dependancy on it. From here

The point is, as you concede and even that ranter from the New Republic concedes, the Irish peasantry was reduced to absolute dependancy on a single food crop. When a natural disaster wiped that out, that peasantry was doomed.

Let's give the Victorian Brits the benefit of the doubt. Let's say they really did not have the information systems or foresight to have been able to predict what could happen when an entire section of the population was feeding itself with such 'efficiency' that they depended on the ultra 'streamlined' highly 'productive' output from one 'specialist' crop the production of which was the peasants' 'core competence'. No point picking a fight with Victorians, anyway. They're all dead.

My argument is not that theirs was a deliberate policy of extermination. It is that their laissez-faire policy which forced such specialisation on the peasantry proved to be disastrous.

So that means today's laissez faire capitalists have no excuse. The lesson that should be learned from the famine is the danger that exists when the bottom layer of society is marginalised to such an extent that its existence can be threatened by something as simple as potato blight.

Indeed as a total of *all* grain imports Irish exports roughly halved, and imports went up four fold.

Yeah, this really supports the argument that masses of wheat were exported whilst the poor Irish starved, damn those imperialist/capitalist bastards.

It supports the argument that the organisation of food production and distribution by Irish society in the 1840s was the problem, not the ability of nature to provide foodstuffs. Unfettered, laissez-faire free markets cannot provide the answer to such problems. Wal-Marts policy would seem to be 'LEt them eat Gherkins'

A welfare state can. And those who say: 'But you can't distort a free market on principle' should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

If you want to ask me which is the 3rd biggest coke manufacturer in the Irish markets Id hazard a guess at Country Spring.

No I don't. I want you to tell me who is the third largest in the world. Don't worry. I don't know either. Which is kind of my point about the duopoly situation a free market normally produces.

IBM? Yeah i know - whose ever heard of them. Oh and Toshiba and Fijitsu Siemens are 2 others before you go "Oh yeah, well whose the next ...."

Not even close. Fujitsu Siemens are third biggest in Europe in general. They're nothing in America. Tosh don't make PCs, just portables. IBM are nowhere in the PC market nowadays.

Again my point being there are two dominant global players. The rest of the market is fragmented between the smaller ones.

Balls to be honest, but I havent got time to fill you in on the economics lectures you skipped.

ROTFLMAO

On the basis of these posts, the only economics lectures you paid any attention to were given by the likes of Britain's Young Conservatives circa 1985. And where are they now?

sovtek

Sand wrote:

Thats right, lets deny employment and development to people because human rights are about as bad in those developing countries.....as human rights were in the developed world when they were developing?!?! Do you see the possiblity of history repeating itself?

No I don't see history repeating because developed countries didn't get there without barriers to trade.
Of course all use knee jerk anti-globalisation nuts want the Chinese people to stay poor and unemployed and undeveloped because we want to keep the nice rustic atmoshere for backpacking holidays. :rolleyes:

Yeah, we should encourage human rights development in the devloping world - that goes without saying, and would probably be best brought about by firms pushing for some sort of international recognition of their working standards and pushing consumer demand for some symbol of that recognition.

And when did that ever happen (and only tokens even then) without some big media do about poor blind Chinese kids. Then Starbucks sends $2m worth of food to Columbia to keep the coffee pickers alive. (about %1 of the profits they've made off them). So it's all good then

Starving them economically and helping to ensure theyre dependant on the wholly inadequate Western aid budgets is not an alternative.

Where's the strawman smiley?

Answering phones isnt a skilled job?

It is when a software developer answers it.

Which is why the pressure is on to develop infrastructure, education and encourage investment by higher value industries. As a country develops it cant compete with a lower wage workforce....Ive already stated this.

Which is why they don't want the government using their increased tax revenues (from the one armed blind workers) to do just that and keep the price low, otherwise they threaten to go somewhere else. EYE EMM EFF as I've already stated.

Youre right - education has no benefit.

...still can't find that strawman smiley.

Break down the barrier to trade and most of EU farmer will find they cant compete with the developing worlds farmers. Almost 100% of Europeans will enjoy lower food prices, the developing worlds farmer will enjoy a rising standard of living from selling their produce and the only losers will be the EU farmers who will get on a soapbox and prophesise death and destruction because all the jobs are going from Euro farming to Kenyan farmers.

No ****...but then you were raving about ending farm subsidies (which all us anti-globalisation nutjobs are against as well) and in the same sentence saying that educating the first world is going to make jobs magically appear.

Its the same old story here - a firm cant compete, they go to the wall and their jobs are somehow "stolen" by another firm whose crime is to do their work cheaper. Those bastards! And theyre damn foreigners too! If they were American it would be okay and wed be praising yankee work ethic and meritocracy but its cheating chinese or whoever. Its just more trade=war tripe that Id have hoped would have died out with the age of enlightenment.

By now I'm convinced there needs to be a new strawman smiley....either that or you honestly don't understand my argument.

sovtek

Captain Trips wrote:

Currently, the EU is not exploiting anyone (relatively to comparitive US brands) and we all seem to be doing pretty well, and there are limits, thankfully on companies so that Walmart can't come here and build a 500000 square foot city of cheap **** from China to destroy other businesses.

Let's all go to Bewley's next Tuesday........

I don't agree with you there...I mean EU corporations are just as insanely greeding as the Americans...the EU companies just don't have such fervent backing by their respective government(s). And before anyone jumps on me, "fervent" does not equal "none".

sovtek

Hairy Homer wrote:

ROTFLMAO

On the basis of these posts, the only economics lectures you paid any attention to were given by the likes of Britain's Young Conservatives circa 1985. And where are they now?

You know, of course, that we all need to attend Trinity to be able to understand big scary terms like "supply and demand"

bonkey

Hairy Homer wrote:

No I don't. I want you to tell me who is the third largest in the world. Don't worry. I don't know either. Which is kind of my point about the duopoly situation a free market normally produces.

Except that when you say "nromally" you mean "in a few examples - some of which are flawed - that I can provide".....as we will now see.

Not even close. Fujitsu Siemens are third biggest in Europe in general. They're nothing in America. Tosh don't make PCs, just portables. IBM are nowhere in the PC market nowadays.

Care to back any of that up? This would tend to show that Fujitsu/Siemens are fourth in the world...just behind......IBM. So thats two of your points knocked on the head.

The third one (notebooks not being PCs) is also factually incorrect, but has nothing to do with this discussion, because you're correct in that Tosh are no longer considered to be a major player.

Again my point being there are two dominant global players.
The rest of the market is fragmented between the smaller ones.

"Dominant" in this case meaning "have approximately one third of the market between them" ??? Indeed, the top 5 have less than 50% of the market between them. Given that you're talking this signifying lack of competition, I think we can safely say that short of the figures I've linked to being totally incorrect, your example kinda undermines your entire argument.

Going further, we can also say that the disappearance of Toshiba, the emergence of Acer, Dell, etc also shows that the positions of market dominance are far from well-established. Indeed, the emergence of Sony as a player in recent times further backs that up.

ROTFLMAO

Exactly what I thought when the world's third-largest PC manufacturer was dismissed as being "nowhere", or that two players with "teen-percentage" shares in a market dominated anything.

On the basis of these posts, the only economics lectures you paid any attention to were

And what does what I've just posted say about your equivalent knowledge of the subjects you are presenting as "test-cases"???

sovtek

Hairy Homer wrote:

Not even close. Fujitsu Siemens are third biggest in Europe in general. They're nothing in America. Tosh don't make PCs, just portables. IBM are nowhere in the PC market nowadays.

Again my point being there are two dominant global players. The rest of the market is fragmented between the smaller ones.

Personally I find it hard to talk about free markets and PC manufacturers in the same sentence when you consider who payed for the R&D.

Hairy Homer

bonkey wrote:

This would tend to show that Fujitsu/Siemens are fourth in the world...just behind......IBM. So thats two of your points knocked on the head.

OK hands up. Didn't research the minutiae of the market details before I posted that. My impressions were formed by data I had seen for the European market some time ago which showed Fujitsu Siemens in third place, some way behind the Big Two and IBM in among the general maw of 'others.'

Fujitsu Siemens, I am pretty sure, have little or no presence in the US so their market share is mainly accounted for in Europe and Asia. I suspect that IBM's share comes largely from the US.

Anyway the basic point I am making remains unchanged. Dell and HP are the two biggest players everywhere. The rest of the market is fragmented between smaller players who are, in many cases, struggling to survive.

"Dominant" in this case meaning "have approximately one third of the market between them" ??? Indeed, the top 5 have less than 50% of the market between them. Given that you're talking this signifying lack of competition, I think we can safely say that short of the figures I've linked to being totally incorrect, your example kinda undermines your entire argument.

Yep. They're dominant. Most of the others are so small that they're not even worth registering as individual items on this table.

Going further, we can also say that the disappearance of Toshiba, the emergence of Acer, Dell, etc also shows that the positions of market dominance are far from well-established.

On the contrary. The big two positions are fairly entrenched. It's the little people who are eating themselves. And will continue to do so.

You may point out here that IBM was number one PC maker for years and is no longer in a dominant position, which is true, but that is because they have realigned themselves to concentrate on other areas of IT. They are still the largest IT company in the world by some distance when you consider all the other sectors of the industry: mainframes, software, services etc etc

The only other company that comes close is HP

Dell is way behind.

Off the top of my head I would guess that IBM's annual revenues are about 80-90 billion dollars

HP's about 70-80 billion

Dell about 40 billion

How did I do?


Point taken about factual error. Mea culpa. But even then it doesn't change my argument.

And the cola market is probably exactly the same. Coke and Pepsi everywhere. Virgin big in Britain and Ireland but way off the top two. Dr Pepper probably third in US but again way off the top two. Worldwide? Dunno. Never met anyone who does.

SkepticOne

shotamoose wrote:

The fact is that most NGO groups don't go along with that view - in fact I'm hard pressed to think of any that do. So your statement that anyone who demonstrated at Cancun was against trade of any kind remains totally wrong.

I'm not talking about NGO groups, I'm talking about protesters who make their way to various events like WTO negotiations. These take the anti-globalist position of being in favour of trade barriers.

An example of this would be the Korean farmer who killed himself in protest against the removal of trade barriers against foreign rice imports. I don't know what the situation is now, but at the time there was a virtual wall against imports of rice from surrounding poorer countries. After he died, other protesters held up banners saying "WTO Kills". It may not be the view of all NGO's or even most NGOs, but it is a proper anti-globalist position and did seem to strike a chord with the protesters at Cancun.

chill

Despite all the crocadile tears for the third world countries, the truth is that capitalism and market forces are doing more for the poor of the world than the sum total of all of the charity and aid handed out.
The great multinationals of the market like Nike, Adidas, Walmart etc are doing more for these people by giving them jobs and feeding and clothing and educating them than anything done by the left wing socialists who abhor free markets.
Jobs are being exported to those countries from the US and EU every day and this ia a great thing for those countries. This is how they grow and develop, and it is how wee grew and developed.
What we need is less barriers to trade, less barriers to outsourcing of jobs, less barriers to multi nationals setting up manufacturing plants abroad. That is if we really care about thgose people, instead of lining our own pockets.

bonkey

chill wrote:

Despite all the crocadile tears for the third world countries, the truth is that capitalism and market forces are doing more for the poor of the world than the sum total of all of the charity and aid handed out.

Truth, or your opinion?

If the former, please supply linkage to back this up. If the latter, please explain why you feel the charter doesn't apply to you any more.

I'm getting fed up of you stating everything as a fact, and then telling others that this is a place for discussing opinion when you're asked to back up what you say.

We have a charter. It already clarifies our position on this, and you are not exempted from it.

jc

RainyDay

chill wrote:

What we need is less barriers to trade, less barriers to outsourcing of jobs, less barriers to multi nationals setting up manufacturing plants abroad.

I'd take these comments seriously if there was any genuine desire by the multi-nationals for a true free market economy, i.e. no subsidies from welcoming governments to FDI (foreign direct investment), no subsidies to farmers for food production, no tariffs on goods imported etc etc. The multinationals want to pick & choose carefully the areas where the 'free market' applies.

SkepticOne

RainyDay wrote:

I'd take these comments seriously if there was any genuine desire by the multi-nationals for a true free market economy, i.e. no subsidies from welcoming governments to FDI (foreign direct investment), no subsidies to farmers for food production, no tariffs on goods imported etc etc. The multinationals want to pick & choose carefully the areas where the 'free market' applies.

This is true. There is no intrinsic desire for free trade on the part of multinationals except when it suits them. As far as I can tell, it is the poorer countries that are pushing for the lowering of tarifs and other free trade ideas, not the multinationals. For example, the US steel industry lobbies intensively for the maintaining of barriers against cheap imports.

It is important not to confuse corporatism with 'free market' ideals.

Corporations are more than happy to stifle free markets when it suits them and they can get away with it.

chill

RainyDay wrote:

I'd take these comments seriously if there was any genuine desire by the multi-nationals for a true free market economy, i.e. no subsidies from welcoming governments to FDI (foreign direct investment), no subsidies to farmers for food production, no tariffs on goods imported etc etc. The multinationals want to pick & choose carefully the areas where the 'free market' applies.

So ? the multi nationals don't make the rules, people and their governments do. Multinationals are like any company, big or small, and they will seek and accept any subsidy or protection they can.
It's up to people and governments to establsih free access and zero barriers, but the truth is of course that it IS the people that are demanding the barriers... take farmers, steel workers, clothing workers etc....

RainyDay

chill wrote:

So ? the multi nationals don't make the rules, people and their governments do. Multinationals are like any company, big or small, and they will seek and accept any subsidy or protection they can.
It's up to people and governments to establsih free access and zero barriers, but the truth is of course that it IS the people that are demanding the barriers... take farmers, steel workers, clothing workers etc....

Your naivety is touching. You forget that multi-nationals will buy their way into Governments, or just buy the Government. Where do you think Bush funded his reelection campaign? Do you think it is pure coincidence that Haliburton gets $4 billion of business out of the US government in Iraq and Vice President Dick Cheney is a former CEO?

shotamoose

The main problem with the argument that what we're seeing in America is simply the result of free markets and is therefore all for the best is the fact that the American trade deficit (and associated decline of its manufacturing base) has in large part been engineered by certain Asian countries who are effectively manipulating the 'free' market for their own advantage. They've been buying up billions in dollar reserves to keep the dollar strong against their currencies, so their exports would be more competitive in the US market. As a result (though this obviously isn't the only cause), the US has opened up an even bigger trade deficit and now seems to source just about every manufactured item from China or some other Asian country. So while the Asians are building up their manufacturing expertise, America is losing hers.

It won't last, of course. The dollar is already sliding and the Asians might decide they've played the game long enough and gently dump their reserves. At which point, who knows but the American manufacturing base might pick up again. Point is, anyway, that there's perfectly above board ways in which governments can game the system to their own (perceived) advantage.

Sand

No I don't see history repeating because developed countries didn't get there without barriers to trade.

So in arguing to bring up barriers to trade to prevent jobs being lost in the US and won in say, Thailand, youre actually fighting for the cause of the Thai workers who are better either unemployed or reduced to subsistence farming rather than working in a job which is well paid by Thai standards? Who stand a better chance of winning rights in a agrarian economy than an industrialising one? Unlike Britain say? Obviously the Russian route was the better.

All this is nothing we havent seen before in European and American history.

And when did that ever happen (and only tokens even then) without some big media do about poor blind Chinese kids.

I dont think its ever happened or ever been seriously considered - the political spectrum is dominated by the leftist philosophy that the state should solve everything, regulate everything and if theres a problem its because not enough laws have been passed and not enough bureacrats are paid to suggest more regulations. No one trusts individuals to do the right thing.

If I was to argue that Irish people were generally decent people and would not support exploitation of children most people would agree. If I was to argue Irish people would pay say 5% extra for a good if it could be verified that the good they were buying was didnt involve the exploitation of child labour Id be sneered at.

Instead the solution is always seen as how to get the government to pass laws that corrupt bussinesses will try and will no doubt succeed in thwarting. No one would entertain the idea that the solution might be to encourage the consumer to seek verification of "moral" production which would then encourage manufacturers to seek that verification rather than avoid some regulation.

Where's the strawman smiley?

Sorry I forgot youre helping them by arguing for trade barriers to protect american jobs.

...still can't find that strawman smiley.

Make up your mind - youre the one questioning the use of educating a work force. I think its vital, you think its pointless. Unless youre just disagreeing for the sake of disagreeing?

No ****...but then you were raving about ending farm subsidies (which all us anti-globalisation nutjobs are against as well) and in the same sentence saying that educating the first world is going to make jobs magically appear.

Youre against those *particular* trade barriers? Well Ive got news for you - American jobs will be lost there too, and the jobs gained in the developing world wont exactly be 9-5, 5 days a week, 4 weeks paid holiday a year either. So whats the problem with American jobs being lost to exterior suppliers in the case of Walmarts suppliers, but not here? Surely we should be fighting for the human rights of developing world farmers by ensuring they cant sell into this market? The conditions these farmers operate under are horrific, we cant exploit them by buying their goods!

By now I'm convinced there needs to be a new strawman smiley....either that or you honestly don't understand my argument.

Well it is tricky to follow inconsistent logic.

OK hands up. Didn't research the minutiae of the market details before I posted that.

Really? Because I thought that youre points about the Irish famine, the PC market, the premiership as a free market, coke and markets that are more competitive leading to monopolies were all really well researched points with a good grounding in understanding what a free market is, or what a competitive market is, which when you think about it are basic terms of the debate.

The point is, as you concede and even that ranter from the New Republic concedes, the Irish peasantry was reduced to absolute dependancy on a single food crop. When a natural disaster wiped that out, that peasantry was doomed.

So on the one hand you argue its laissez faire economics thats at fault because it argues that state *shouldnt* get involved in the market wherever possible. Which blindly ignores the fact that the states involvement via the discrimnatory penal laws *caused* the dependancy, which caused the massive impact of the famine - not the lack of state involvement. Or are you going to argue that laissez faire economics includes state discrimination against Irish Catholics as policy?

You argue that the laissez faire policy meant the market wouldnt react to the famine despite statistics showing that Ireland went from a net exporter of grain to a *massive* net importer of grain inside a single year in 1847. How do you explain that?

And remember youre whole argument has been the state did nothing, that laissez faire economics prevented them from intefering, leading to the massive death toll - so it must have been market forces that led to Ireland becoming a massive importer of grain - reacting to the famine purely via market forces?!?!?

Cheers man, through your grasp the Sinn Fein version of Irish history plus a healthy dose of anti-globalisation rhetoric youve made my case for me. Id have never thought of citing the Irish famine to debunk the supposed benefits of state inteference without your inspiration.

Hairy Homer

Sand wrote:

Really? Because I thought that youre points about the Irish famine, the PC market, the premiership as a free market, coke and markets that are more competitive leading to monopolies were all really well researched points

Hey. When I make a mistake and it's brought to my attention I acknowledge it. But as I said in my reply to Bonkey it doesn't change my overall argument. There are two big players who dominate the PC market. The third and fourth biggest players are a long way behind them. (OK so I got the third-placed one wrong. Embarassing but not fatal) The rest are also rans.

sand wrote:

So on the one hand you argue its laissez faire economics thats at fault because it argues that state *shouldnt* get involved in the market wherever possible. Which blindly ignores the fact that the states involvement via the discrimnatory penal laws *caused* the dependancy, which caused the massive impact of the famine - not the lack of state involvement.

What caused the dependency was the huge economic pressure on the peasantry imposed by the wealthier classes. Their incredible efficiency in feeding themselves did them no good at the end of the day.

And that is why commenting on it was relevant to this post which started off with the example of Wall Mart, a massive retailer forcing a gherkin company to sell its products at a price that was effectively below cost.

Why didn't the Gherkin company tell Wall-Mart to go sling its hook? Why didn't it just withdraw its custom and sell through another outlet? Why didn't it go to the competition? Because Wall Mart was and is such a dominant player in the supermarket arena that it had to be kept onside. It had the power to force on the Gherkin company an 'efficiency' that led to its demise.

Just how powerful is Wall Mart? Look here. I don't know how reliable this source is but it says that Wall MArt has 12 % market share in the supermarket space.

WOW!!! TWELVE PER CENT. Take note Bonkey, that is less than the share Dell or Compaq has in the world wide PC market but it was enough to force the gherkin company to sell its product for next to nothing. So 12 % can be a dominant position. Especially if most of the competition is down at the 1% share level.

sand wrote:

Or are you going to argue that laissez faire economics includes state discrimination against Irish Catholics as policy?

Some dates for you:
Catholic Emancipation 1829
Start of the Famine 1846 (or maybe 1845. I'm not exactly sure but it doesn't change the point)

You argue that the laissez faire policy meant the market wouldnt react to the famine despite statistics showing that Ireland went from a net exporter of grain to a *massive* net importer of grain inside a single year in 1847. How do you explain that?

Repeal of the Corn Laws. Not that it did the peasantry much good. They had another couple of years of misery to go after '47.

sand wrote:

And remember youre whole argument has been the state did nothing, that laissez faire economics prevented them from intefering, leading to the massive death toll - so it must have been market forces that led to Ireland becoming a massive importer of grain - reacting to the famine purely via market forces?!?!?

That's not actually what I said. What I am saying, and one side of the debate at the core of this thread, is that simply relying on market forces to organise the basic functions of society is folly.

The state is not to blame for what it did in reaction to the Famine; it's to blame for what it didn't do before it. ORganising proper backup systems and safety measures so that people were not so vulnerable as to rely on the health of a single food crop. Forcing people on to the margins where they are so much more efficient than those they serve and are punished for it by financial ruin, is madness.

Like I said before, maybe we can forgive the ignorant Victorians, but today's generation has no excuse.

sand wrote:

Cheers man, through your grasp the Sinn Fein version of Irish history plus a healthy dose of anti-globalisation rhetoric youve made my case for me. Id have never thought of citing the Irish famine to debunk the supposed benefits of state inteference without your inspiration.

I'm not a Sinn Feiner, never have been.

I haven't used the famine in this thread to bash Britain. I've used it to bash a simplistic notion of market theory that 'competition is good' and 'markets enforce better efficiency' is in many cases a nonsense.

The Catholic peasantry of the 1840s were incredibly 'efficient' food producers. What good did it do them?

And it's not a case of 'All markets bad, all state intervention good' The real sensible argument should be about when and to what extent we allow the state to regulate markets, or rather to regulate the initial conditions inside which markets can operate freely.

Everyone, even socialists, should recognise (and I think most Lefties now do) that market forces are a fact of life. They do exist, they must be observed and taken account of.

They're a bit like the weather. Only a fool would go out in a rainstorm without a coat or umbrella.

But those who worship market forces as the source of all good and the be all and end all of our civilisation are like those who worship the moon because of its influence on the elements.

The dictionary definition of which is 'lunatic'.

Take a bow, Sand.

Sand

What caused the dependency was the huge economic pressure on the peasantry imposed by the wealthier classes. Their incredible efficiency in feeding themselves did them no good at the end of the day.

Penal laws -> Subdivision of catholic farms -> a long time -> tiny catholic farms -> dependancy on potato crop to ensure *existence*.

Primary school kids learn this stuff for christs sake.

Catholic Emancipation 1829

Oh so the damage wrought by that policy was reversed in 16-18 years? Whats holding up the African Americans - they got emancipated in the 1860s or thereabouts and theyre still having troubles.

Repeal of the Corn Laws. Not that it did the peasantry much good. They had another couple of years of misery to go after '47.

Ah yes the corn laws. Its good of you to bring this up because its another way to sink your attack on market forces.

What were the corn laws?

From here

The first Corn Law was passed in 1815 at the end of the Napoleonic War. Although it was called a Corn Law, it legislated about wheat, the most important corn crop. The Corn Law said that cheap foreign wheat could not be imported into Britain until the price of British wheat was more than 80 shillings a quarter. This made wheat, flour and bread more expensive than it could have been.

So the corn laws were government inteference and trade barriers in a market. So the government helped resolve the famine by actually *getting out* of the market not by interfering in it. So again, the only conclusion we can draw is that market forces led to the massive reaction to the famine - once those market forces were allowed to act by the retreat of an interfering government.

So the conditions required for the viciousness of the famine were brought about by the penal laws (government policy outside of market concerns) and the famine was eased by the repeal of the corn laws (the retreat of the government from barriers to trade).

Thanks man, any more points you wish to make on my behalf?

That's not actually what I said. What I am saying, and one side of the debate at the core of this thread, is that simply relying on market forces to organise the basic functions of society is folly.

In the example youve been citing the smartest thing the government did was stop trying to intefere with market forces.

I will give government some credit though - You can wait 50 years for market forces to build railroads, but a government can build it in 5-10 years if they view it as required policy. Government is good at rapid mass infrastructure development - but theyll do so with a lot of baggage attached like political corruption. Some Japanese cities have tremendous infrastructure - far beyond their requirements actually because of government links to the construction companies.

But those who worship market forces as the source of all good and the be all and end all of our civilisation are like those who worship the moon because of its influence on the elements.

Again, the example you cite doesnt bear this out. If government policy was truly laissez faire then they wouldnt have passed penal laws to reduce a particular of society to a subsistence level of existence, which doesnt make any economic sense. If they were truly laissez faire then they wouldnt have passed corn laws which can only have been a favour to British farmers - to protect them from foreign competition by holding the price of wheat artificially high. Both these polices contributed to the effects of the famine.

And the effects of badly thought out government tinkering with the market to accomplish some goal outside of the market continues to this day. Only now the corn laws of today are designed to protect EU farmers rather than just British.

I'm not a Sinn Feiner, never have been.

I didnt say you were a SFer - I said your version of events was a mix of the SF version of Irish history and anti-globalisation rhetoric.

Lennoxschips

They [the protestors] believe that poor countries should rely on the charity of the rich rather than from trade and industry which can cause jobs to be lost in developed countries.

No they don't. They believe that people in the third world should be allowed to enjoy the same rights and benefits as workers in the developed countries.

Pesky things like health care, pensions and human rights in the first world get in the way of profits of companies manufacturing goods in developed countries, so corporations move their operations overseasm, where these pesky things don't exist.

SkepticOne

Lennoxschips wrote:

No they don't. They believe that people in the third world should be allowed to enjoy the same rights and benefits as workers in the developed countries.

Do they enjoy them without such investment?

Pesky things like health care, pensions and human rights in the first world get in the way of profits of companies manufacturing goods in developed countries, so corporations move their operations overseasm, where these pesky things don't exist.

The protesters are terribly concerned about these companies that exploit workers in third world countries? Why is it that these third world countries are crawling over themselves to attract such investment into their countries? Why are the populations of these countries pleased when such investment arrives?

Could it be that the people, seeing as they have little chance of health care and pensions in the first place and see these corporations as a means of improvement in their lives?

Maybe the protesters might think of travelling to these countries and pointing out to the people the error of their ways in this regard. Clearly they have a lot to learn. Instead they protest against the lowering of trade barriers and subsidies against third world countries which those very same countries (as well as many NGOs) are trying to see lifted.

Alternatively, why not give up the pretense. No one likes to see their job moving to India or Morroco. Lets admit that this isn't about 'exploitation' of those workers since those workers are only too happy to take up those jobs given the alternatives in the absence of such 'exploitation'. There is nothing wrong with simply fighting for your own interests.

Lennoxschips

You are failing to make a distinction between fair trade and unfair trade. You are saying that by being against unfair trade, that I am against all kinds of trade with the third world.

I'm not against trade, I'm just against unfair trade. I refuse to buy Nike shoes, but have no problems buying Max Havelaar coffee and tea products.

SkepticOne

Lennoxschips wrote:

You are failing to make a distinction between fair trade and unfair trade. You are saying that by being against unfair trade, that I am against all kinds of trade with the third world.

I'm not against trade, I'm just against unfair trade. I refuse to buy Nike shoes, but have no problems buying Max Havelaar coffee and tea products.

But why would you buy Nike shoes in the first place? Yes, they make excessive profits on shoes while paying little more (if any) than the going rate to third world labour. For me they are simply bad value and I won't be contributing to their profits.

Having said that I won't be contributing to Nike's profits, I may well be wearing clothing that has its origins in third world countries where the working standards are far below Irish or developed country standards. By our standards we may well consider these to be 'sweatshops'. However, to those working in those sweatshops, it matters little whether money is being creamed off by the likes of Nike (or some other corporate) or not. What matters is what they get out of it; whether they can feed their children or not.

If Nike can get workers, then it means that they are at least competitive with whatever other employers there might be in that area.

Like an interview said to Naomi Klien on BBC radio yesterday, "You as a middle-class Canadian might not be terribly impressed by a corporations activities in a developing country, but that might not be the case for someone whose only other option is the rice-paddy".

So for me, the real Nike issue really comes down to someone in a Western developed country not wanting to be ripped off (and possibly embarrasment about being ripped off in the past through the purchase of expensive gimmicky shoes). But so that it doesn't seem like we are doing things for selfish reasons we tack on an unnecessary 'moral' dimension.

This is similar to the jobs aspect I mentioned earlier. We don't like to admit that we want to protect our jobs in the West (at the expense of developing countries) so we tack on the moral aspect of exploitation as a salve to our consciences.

Thus we have the ideas of unfair trade and exploitation.

By the way, I'm not targetting this at you specifically. I'm talking about the overall impression given by the ant-globalist protesters at events like Cancun. Possibly the problem is lack of leadership and lack of the willingness to think things through sufficiently, leaving behind a simplistic pointing of the finger at specific corporations and organisations while the deeper, more complex problems of the world are ignored.

Finally, buying 'fair trade' products, if they pay better money than the going rate to developing country farmers is, of course, a good thing. It is good that out of the pure goodness in peoples hearts in developed countries people are willing to help out the poor in developing countries. It is peoples' charitable nature that makes 'fair trade' coffee possible.

But why is the going rate so low in the first place? Again, we are back to trade barriers and subsidies (both agricultural and non-agricultural) in rich countries and the anti-globalist ideals that have led to these.

Hairy Homer

Sand wrote:

Penal laws -> Subdivision of catholic farms -> a long time -> tiny catholic farms -> dependancy on potato crop to ensure *existence*.

Primary school kids learn this stuff for christs sake.

And this contradicts the paragraph you cited, how?

Sand wrote:

Oh so the damage wrought by that policy was reversed in 16-18 years? Whats holding up the African Americans - they got emancipated in the 1860s or thereabouts and theyre still having troubles.

Given that we're talking about the land of the free with a renowned antipathy to 'big government' and whose constitution declares it a 'self-evident truth' that 'all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. That these include life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' etc

One for YOU to explain surely.

Sand wrote:

Ah yes the corn laws. Its good of you to bring this up because its another way to sink your attack on market forces.

I'm not attacking market forces. Market forces are a fact of life. I'm attacking an interpretation of the importance of market forces.

Let's not forget what a market is. A market is simply a mechanism which operates freely under certain initial conditions. You set the ground rules and let matters take their course. All government intervention is, or should be, is an adjustment to the ground rules. It's encumbent on all of us to think through what the effect of any adjustments may be, and they don't always achieve what they were intended to, but it's not a question of 'anything the government does is distorting the market so it shouldn't be allowed.'

In certain circumstances, for the better good of everybody, it should be.

Sand wrote:

So again, the only conclusion we can draw is that market forces led to the massive reaction to the famine - once those market forces were allowed to act by the retreat of an interfering government.

OK. Let's say the Penal Laws were 'government intervention' in a market. (They were a lot more strategic than that of course) But for the purposes of this argument let's just say that they were largely responsible for the miserable penury of the Irish peasant. Or is that too Sinn Fein an interpretation for you?

Once those laws were removed, was it right then for the Government to say: 'Hey the Papists are free now. What more do they want?' and just let unfettered market forces for such things as basic accommodation, food, education etc etc operate freely on that subsistence class of people?

Or should it have intervened to try and somehow level the playing field so that some basic amenities and social mobility was made possible among the Catholic peasant class?

Although given the right to vote and allowed entrance to the civil service and professions in 1829, the granting of emancipation only helped the Catholic middle class (which always existed, no matter what Sinn Fein might say). It did little or nothing for the peasantry. With an unregulated market for such matters as farm tenancy and (remember the first two of the '3Fs') little or no fixity of tenure, their freedom to operate was extremely limited. Unlike that of their landlords.

Applying the vigours of the free market on such a huge disadvantaged section of the community led inevitably to the conditions whereby they were forced to the margins of over reliance on a single food stuff.

So Penal Laws made them poor. The free market kept them that way.

sand wrote:

Thanks man, any more points you wish to make on my behalf?

Don't confuse my acceptance of the facts of history with agreement on your interpretation of it. Or Sinn Fein's for that matter.

sand wrote:

I will give government some credit though - You can wait 50 years for market forces to build railroads, but a government can build it in 5-10 years if they view it as required policy. Government is good at rapid mass infrastructure development - but theyll do so with a lot of baggage attached like political corruption. Some Japanese cities have tremendous infrastructure - far beyond their requirements

[plagiarise] 'Thanks man, any more points you wish to make on my behalf?[/plagiarise]

:-)

Sand

And this contradicts the paragraph you cited, how?

Because it explains that tiny Irish catholic tenant farmers dependant on potatos didnt get that way as part of some sort of efficiency drive. They got there due to government intervention. This is something youve been refusing to accept because it questions your use of the famine as a case of the free market gone bad.

One for YOU to explain surely.

Sorry I didnt follow your point beyond the Government of the day not living up to its obligations under the constitution, which only shows we cannot simply trust the government to act "for the better good of everybody".

Let's not forget what a market is. A market is simply a mechanism which operates freely under certain initial conditions. You set the ground rules and let matters take their course. All government intervention is, or should be, is an adjustment to the ground rules. It's encumbent on all of us to think through what the effect of any adjustments may be, and they don't always achieve what they were intended to, but it's not a question of 'anything the government does is distorting the market so it shouldn't be allowed.'

But youre not arguing for minor adjustments to the market. Youre arguing for sabotage of the market to attempt to reverse the outcome of the market and the benefits it has for everyone, and instead seek an advantage for some entrenched interest group - in this case Walmarts suppliers who dont want to face awkward things like competition that force them to be the best for the job, rather than just American. Benefit the few, at the exspense of the many.

The 2nd problem is that governments have been shown to be very poor at thinking out the long term affects of their "tinkering" and the good of the economy - and thus the people in it - comes second to short term political electioneering and cronyism everytime. If you want to look at incompetence youre example of the corn laws is a good example - didnt set out to accomplish what it wanted, but it did prevent corn imports getting in. Incompetence and cronyism all rolled into one. A tradition continued to this day with Independant TDs "selling" their votes to Fianna Fail.

Once those laws were removed, was it right then for the Government to say: 'Hey the Papists are free now. What more do they want?' and just let unfettered market forces for such things as basic accommodation, food, education etc etc operate freely on that subsistence class of people?

Why not? Theres no reason to suggest that the Irish are any less capable of thriving in an market economy. Maybe the first step to help would have been for the government to repeal the Corn laws in 1829 while they were at it to ease the dependancy on potatos. However youve claimed/implied that the famine and its effects were a result of the market and the way it operated, all the while doing your best to ignore the effect of the penal laws which were the real cause of the dependancy and subsitence agrarian economy which was so tragically vunerable to crop failure. Even here you only allow for their effects for the sake of argument, not as the accepted primary factor.

So youre looking at the famine - pointing at the market shouting "look what the market did!!!" and trying to ignore that if the market had been applied without government interference as in the penal laws or the corn laws it is likely the conditions for such a harsh famine would never have come about.

Applying the vigours of the free market on such a huge disadvantaged section of the community led inevitably to the conditions whereby they were forced to the margins of over reliance on a single food stuff.

Ha - the free market wasnt applied to reduce them to a subsistence agrarian economy. It was government intervention. Theres no other way to describe the penal laws. But then, as youve said yourself it was "for the better good of everybody". After all, the Catholics needed to be kept out the market - they were living in appalling conditions. It would have been immoral to trade with them.

bonkey

Sand wrote:

Ha - the free market wasnt applied to reduce them to a subsistence agrarian economy. It was government intervention.

I would agree with this....with the proviso that I would clarify it to say that it was bad government intervention which caused the problem, and that this case is not necessarily an argument against government intervention.

jc

Hairy Homer

Sand wrote:

Because it explains that tiny Irish catholic tenant farmers dependant on potatos didnt get that way as part of some sort of efficiency drive. They got there due to government intervention. This is something youve been refusing to accept because it questions your use of the famine as a case of the free market gone bad.

You're confusing cause and effect. The government did not institute an efficiency drive among the peasantry. The peasantry reacted to the situation they found themselves in--no capital, no security of tenure, tiny small holdings, no regulation of landlords--to put in a system of subsistence which delivered the maximum amount of food and nutrition for the means they had to produce it.

And if I may say so, your idea of the free market seems to be Utopian: that if a perfect situation existed with a level playing field and maximum freedom of entrance to a particular market then a general level of prosperity would ensue. That may well be true, but it's like the old joke about not starting from here. In reality, ideal situations rarely apply. The initial conditions, or 'ground rules' in which a market --any market--is allowed to operate freely are perhaps the most important factor determining how it will pan out.

The situation in which the peasantry found themselves in the 1840s was that they were hopelessly disadvantaged with respect to their landlords who had complete freedom of operation with regard to setting rents and enforcing evictions.

By refusing to alter those initial conditions the government of the day was guilty of creating a precarious position--dependency on a single food crop--which doomed a million people to starvation.

sand wrote:

But youre not arguing for minor adjustments to the market. Youre arguing for sabotage of the market to attempt to reverse the outcome of the market and the benefits it has for everyone, and instead seek an advantage for some entrenched interest group

I never said anything of the kind. I was reacting to quotes like this one

some muppet wrote:

Walmart are one of the greatest successes in the history of the market system and a lesson that demonstrates the success and power of the market system and it's importance to ordinary people

which suggests that any damage caused by Wallmart's aggressive policy to its suppliers must be tolerated because of the 'power of the market system'.

Incidentally I'm still waiting for Bonkey to jump on you for calling Wallmart a monopoly when the only figure I could find for their market share was 12 per cent--less than that for HP and Dell in their industry.

In a sense, of course you're right. It is a DOMINANT player which can exert huge pressure, not always beneficial, on its suppliers. But not a monopolist. It doesn't need to be to get to that stage.

sand wrote:

The 2nd problem is that governments have been shown to be very poor at thinking out the long term affects of their "tinkering"

There is some basis to that claim,but in a democracy it is the duty of the populace to be aware of how market forces operate and to insist on initial conditions that bring the most general good.

Awareness of market forces: good
Slavish adherence to their excesses: bad

sand wrote:

Theres no reason to suggest that the Irish are any less capable of thriving in an market economy. Maybe the first step to help would have been for the government to repeal the Corn laws in 1829 while they were at it to ease the dependancy on potatos.

I refer you to your earlier post when you said that greater availability of corn locally had a miniscule effect on famine relief. And the Corn Laws were not enacted, or even repealed, solely with the Irish peasant farmer in mind. There were other vested interests on either side of that argument.

In fact, what helped pull the Irish peasantry out of its penury was Government Intervention in the form of the Land Acts of the last 30 years or so of the 19th century, culminating in the Wydham Act of 1903. Low-cost government loans to tenants and incentives to landowners to sell helped create conditions where small farmers were able to take more control of their own affairs.

Incidentally those farmers became the backbone of the very class of newly empowered middle class people which founded the original Sinn Fein but that's going off at a tangent.

Hairy Homer

bonkey wrote:

Except that when you say "nromally" you mean "in a few examples - some of which are flawed - that I can provide".....as we will now see.

This[/url] would tend to show that Fujitsu/Siemens are fourth in the world...just behind......IBM. So thats two of your points knocked on the head.

"Dominant" in this case meaning "have approximately one third of the market between them" ??? Indeed, the top 5 have less than 50% of the market between them. Given that you're talking this signifying lack of competition, I think we can safely say that short of the figures I've linked to being totally incorrect, your example kinda undermines your entire argument.

Exactly what I thought when the world's third-largest PC manufacturer was dismissed as being "nowhere", or that two players with "teen-percentage" shares in a market dominated anything.


And what does what I've just posted say about your equivalent knowledge of the subjects you are presenting as "test-cases"???

Hairy Homer is ALWAYS right!!! Even when he's (temporarily) wrong. Look on my musings ye mighty and despair.

Looks like IBM is in fact 'nowhere' in the PC market after all. Although it owns a minority stake in the company that is.

Hate tha'.

Earthhorse

I'm not too sure whether you've read the original article Memnoch linked to Hairy Homer but, if you have, I fail to see why you've linked to another, in which we are told WalMart has 12% market share (of supermarkets) when this really isn't the issue.

We are told in the original article that, "Wal-Mart is not just the world's largest retailer. It's the world's largest company... The scale can be hard to absorb. Wal-Mart sold $244.5 billion worth of goods last year. It sells in three months what number-two retailer Home Depot sells in a year. And in its own category of general merchandise and groceries, Wal-Mart no longer has any real rivals."

And it is this huge presence, this massive and unparallaled buying power which is unique to WalMart that allows it exert such influence, not market share. So whilst Sand might not be correct to call WalMart a monopoly they have a monopolist's power and, as is mentioned, they are a monoply when it comes to general merchandise and groceries.

You go on to compare IBM, HP and Dell whilst admitting that IBM have remodelled themselves as an IT consultancy firm. HP also engage in such work whereas Dell do not. And by restricting the definition to PC's you leave out the real third player in the market for desktop computers, which is Apple. You're just not comparing like with like and I'm wondering what the relevance of your comparisons are?

In any event, to answer Memnoch's question, I do believe that there are some implications for American jobs if they continue to shop at WalMart. But even the article admits that in Vlasic's collapse, "the gallon jar of pickles...wasn't a critical factor."

It's impossible to stop people shopping for bargains and buying at the lowest price even if there's a resultant loss of jobs in their country. How many people here buy Irish when there's an equivalent quality import product available at a cheaper price? It's just not feasable in the long run and the impact on jobs is ultimately minimal compared to the other factors at play in a country's economic development.

Hairy Homer

Earthhorse wrote:

I'm not too sure whether you've read the original article Memnoch linked to Hairy Homer but, if you have, I fail to see why you've linked to another, in which we are told WalMart has 12% market share (of supermarkets) when this really isn't the issue.

It's what comes of going off on tangents, Earth Horse.

I really don't have the stomach to go over it all again. I was just amused to find that my 'impression' that IBM had slipped so far out of the limelight in the PC business (which is correct) as to not be a major player in it any more (which was incorrect at the time) has now culminated in them disappearing from it altogether.

Hairy Homer is always right.....eventually.

earthhorse wrote:

And it is this huge presence, this massive and unparallaled buying power which is unique to WalMart that allows it exert such influence, not market share.

Surely that's a chicken and egg situation. Its huge market share gives it massive buying power. Just as the huge buying power of the likes of Dell has a major effect on the business models of rival PC makers.

earthhorse wrote:

by restricting the definition to PC's you leave out the real third player in the market for desktop computers, which is Apple. You're just not comparing like with like and I'm wondering what the relevance of your comparisons are?

Arghhhh!!!!! An Apple fan. Hawk Spit. Throw garlic. Wave crucifix and generally run away.

Actually, your statement is factually incorrect, according to the link that Bonkey put up (go check it out for yourself if you like) 'Apple's global market share is 1.7 per cent. Drops out of top 10 vendors.'

Good thing too.

earthhorse wrote:

In any event, to answer Memnoch's question, I do believe that there are some implications for American jobs if they continue to shop at WalMart. But even the article admits that in Vlasic's collapse, "the gallon jar of pickles...wasn't a critical factor."

As I said, I'm not going to repeat it all again. Just my observation that those who worship market forces as the reference point against which all attitudes and morals should be measured are of the same mentality and should be offered the same respect as those who worship the moon.

Loonies.

NB this does not deny the existence of, or the proper importance and respect due to those forces.

Or to the moon.