Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

How about gentrification? I've seen the pro-property destruction people discussing that, and it's not illegal so appealing to the legal system wouldn't work. And often worker abuse laws are not enforced well, and bringing the lawsuits harms the workers.

theunitofcaring answered:

1) I do not think ‘your livelihood is destroyed and you are possibly injured or killed in a mass riot’ is an appropriate penalty for ‘some asshole decided you were participating in gentrification’

2) Random mass violence sure is a way to keep property values down, I guess, but if your goal is ‘low property values, period’ rather than ‘livable communities with affordable housing’ then we just profoundly disagree on priorities. 

3) …and rioting and destroying businesses never harms the workers, I’m sure. Look, raise money so exploited workers can quit. Ask them what they want and do that - I guarantee you it’s not going to be ‘smash the business and attract tons of police attention’. Don’t decide for yourself who is guilty, decide for yourself that legal mechanisms won’t work, decide for yourself that peaceful mechanisms won’t work, destroy tons of stuff, and then call that ‘fighting for marginalized people’.  

4) If your radical leftist politics amount to ‘Kristallnacht, but trust us, they deserve it’ then I’m sorry but fuck you.

[mitigatedchaos]

What violent leftists think will keep housing affordable: using mob violence to physically prevent outsiders from moving in to a neighborhood.

What would actually make housing affordable: Japanese Zoning Laws

[philippesaner]

What are Japanese zoning laws?

[mitigatedchaos]

They have a maximum zone type instead of strict limitations of one type for one zone.

Click that link.  Look at how smart their plan is.

As a result of this and other policies, their booming metropolitan areas see no significant increase in housing prices relative to American cities and the UK.  I had a chart I saved for this but it’s elsewhere.  Basically, London prices have gone up like 500% without anywhere near a 500% increase in population, while Tokyo prices are up less than their % rise in population.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@drethelin

It isn’t just government subsidies that are in effect when a company doesn’t pay enough to keep workers alive.

The company can also be indirectly subsidized by draining the social and other capital of families, relatives, kind strangers, and whoever keeps those employees alive.

This is “efficient,” not actually efficient.

The alternative is to openly embrace social darwinism, which also deprives society and the economy in general all future value of the worker based on what their feasible value is right now, which may cause a rather significant net loss.

( @collapsedsquid may know if someone has explicitly studied this )

Making it impossible to fire people isn’t a good idea, but letting companies free ride on society’s / the country’s generosity isn’t such a great idea, either.  

Now, you may say that direct wage subsidies have to come out of taxes, but those taxes likely aren’t going to come from the scarce poor-families-capital currently subsidizing Walmart, and it significantly reduces the competitive advantage of such behavior.  Additionally, with more jobs profitable for more workers, there is more competition between employers to quit being jerks to the working class, which is currently distorted by the massive power imbalance between the working class as individuals and corporations with their collective bargaining power.  It’s also less expensive than welfare since it stacks public funding with private funding, instead of running a straight loss, and if structured correctly, it still strongly incentivizes these workers to pursue higher-paying, more economically valuable work.

Or we could start billing Walmart for the billions of dollars in public assistance their workers receive, but that would be a much less efficient solution with similar effects to raising the wage floor.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anaisnein, I went to reblog your comment but Tumblr wanted to say Mutant Aesthetic was saying it. Weird. Anyhow, I used “Communist” and “not uncommon” because Social Democracy, intelligently managed, does not have the same rate of imploding. You can get away with it if you’re smart about it. (But also I was annoyed at the anon, who is in denial.)

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[yveinthesky]

Every time I read up on why Walmart failed in Germany again I am massively entertained.

I can recommend it to everyone. 

Google “Why Walmart failed in Germany”. 

Hours of entertainment. 

[blackestsabbath]

[shieldfoss]

Why walmart failed in Germany:

https://thetimchannel.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/w024.pdf

[shieldfoss]

My Lidl Entrepeneur: Capitalism is Magic.

The EURO-conversion was used by retailers to raise prices. Aldi, however, reacted with the biggest price reduction of its corporate history. As a result, it was able to double its profits.

Paragraph edited for clarity - the original is on page 17.

Imagine that - taking market share by improving service and prices.

EDIT: Mind you, some of Walmart’s failure is absolutely because the government has put bars on the free maket that made it illegal for them to succeed:

With organic growth close to being a mission impossible for hypermarket operators due to stringent* planning and zoning regulations

Soon faced with rapidly mounting losses, Wal-Mart’s management resorted to staff cuts and closures to reduce its above-average personnel costs. Due to strict worker protection regulations, however, making surplus workers redundant can be a complicated, lengthy and costly affair in Germany – a cumbersome fact of life for its German competitors, but, obviously, terra incognita for Wal-Mart Germany’s (mostly) American executives

* Stringent is explained elsewhere in the text and it is, indeed, stringent.

[belvarine]

Beautiful article. My favorite parts:

- The leading retail strategy in Germany is “hard discounting” which offers a very narrow selection of high quality products at “rock bottom” prices. Aldi rules at this and hard discount retailers control a third of the market. In the UK etc this accounts for less than a tenth of the market. This is the polar opposite of Walmart’s “sell literally everything” strategy.
- Germany has zoning laws that favor smaller buildings. This works in favor of hard discounters because they offer a narrow selection and minimalist shopping environment. Compare to Walmart’s “browse an entire warehouse and grocery store then eat at one of several restaurants” model.
- Germany has antitrust/fair trade laws that forbid merchants from permanently selling goods below cost. This is Walmart’s favorite strategy famously observed in the gallon-jar pickle campaign.
- Germany only allows retailers to be open for 80 hours per week, compared to 196 in the UK, 96 in the Netherlands, and 144 in France.
- Walmart refused to recognize the outcome of the collective wage negotiation process with their German unionized employees and were “completely surprised” when said unions promptly organized walkouts in 30 stores. They were probably surprised because of their millions of US employees, only 12 are known to be unionized. This gave Walmart a “union basher” rep in Germany where unions are influential and popular.
- Walmart tried to pull their “hire a ton of employees and give them shitty part time hours so we don’t have to give them full-time benefits” but worker protection laws prevented this and Walmart was forced to compete on product margins and services rather than recouping losses by shafting their employees. Aldi was able to match their prices cent for cent, but offered better service and more value.
- Walmart repeatedly defied German antitrust laws like “You must provide your balance sheet and annual profit/loss statement” and “You must provide a bottle/plastic refund system for products you sell.” None of the other leading German retailers had a problem sustaining growth and profit while complying with these laws.
- Germany put some dude from Arkansas in charge of the acquisition. He didn’t speak German. Anyone who’s spent time with Germans can imagine how well this probably went over.

So basically Walmart rolled up to Germany and tried to play its usual game of “buy out entire supply chains, sell products below cost until competitors are dry, then use their market reach to demand bulk orders from suppliers at near-zero margins, all the while keeping stores open 24/7 to maintain a huge pool of redundant part time workers at minimum wage with no benefits to reduce operating costs and further subsidize more supply chain buyouts” and the heavily unionized, aggressively antitrust, worker protection, high value low price German market laughed in their dumb weasel faces and sent them packing.

Meanwhile, Aldi, who has been commanding the German market while complying with all these regulations, has been expanding seamlessly into the US and has owned Trader Joe’s since 1979, which sells twice as much per square foot as Whole Foods.

This article is a beautiful demonstration that the only reason shitty companies like Walmart keep biting us in the ass in the US is because our leaders refuse to put them on a leash.

[voxette-vk]

Well, I agree with the general point that Walmart couldn’t succeed in Germany because Germany basically had regulations making Walmart illegal.

But I disagree with your normative evaluation of that outcome.

[drethelin]

Germany: Makes convenience and low prices illegal

You: HAHA WALMART BTFO I LOVE TO PAY MORE MONEY FOR SHIT

[mitigatedchaos]

Walmart is de facto subsidized by the US government as many of its employees are on various kinds of welfare.

So how about instead of all this bullshit we issue direct-to-employee wage subsidies to simultaneously improve conditions for the working poor and increase competition. It isn’t fair if only unethical companies that loot the commons and free-ride on the social consequences of their actions get this advantage.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

j ESUS CHRISTT

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

How about gentrification? I've seen the pro-property destruction people discussing that, and it's not illegal so appealing to the legal system wouldn't work. And often worker abuse laws are not enforced well, and bringing the lawsuits harms the workers.

theunitofcaring answered:

1) I do not think ‘your livelihood is destroyed and you are possibly injured or killed in a mass riot’ is an appropriate penalty for ‘some asshole decided you were participating in gentrification’

2) Random mass violence sure is a way to keep property values down, I guess, but if your goal is ‘low property values, period’ rather than ‘livable communities with affordable housing’ then we just profoundly disagree on priorities. 

3) …and rioting and destroying businesses never harms the workers, I’m sure. Look, raise money so exploited workers can quit. Ask them what they want and do that - I guarantee you it’s not going to be ‘smash the business and attract tons of police attention’. Don’t decide for yourself who is guilty, decide for yourself that legal mechanisms won’t work, decide for yourself that peaceful mechanisms won’t work, destroy tons of stuff, and then call that ‘fighting for marginalized people’.  

4) If your radical leftist politics amount to ‘Kristallnacht, but trust us, they deserve it’ then I’m sorry but fuck you.

[mitigatedchaos]

What violent leftists think will keep housing affordable: using mob violence to physically prevent outsiders from moving in to a neighborhood.

What would actually make housing affordable: Japanese Zoning Laws

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

there’s a reverse slippery slope effect where a range of related things all get described as ‘eugenics’:

1. attempting to commit genocide

2. using force or coercion to control the reproduction of others

3. offering incentives or encouragement to influence the reproduction of others

4. making observations that could imply that people should reproduce at different rates

5. simply observing that people currently reproduce at different rates

I think the only way to be completely safe from accusations of eugenics in the first few senses is to avoid any observations of reproduction rates and definitely avoid making any suggestions of how they might be changed, no matter how indirectly or consensually.

[discoursedrome]

One thing that’s interesting to me is how, with the lapsing of most government efforts to forcibly enact eugenic policies, the eugenic aspects of personal family planning become more relevant. People would generally react pretty poorly if the government mandated that all fetuses with serious developmental problems be aborted or genetically modified, but given the ability to notice this and do something about it themselves, people will still do it often enough to have a visible effect over time.

Getting away from the “eu” pretext entirely, sex-selective abortion is already a thing with visible downstream effects. These are things we can grapple with by attempting to reduce stigma, but there will always be some sorts of people heavily stigmatized, and the ability to detect that a real or hypothetical child belongs to those groups before birth or even before conception is going to continue to increase. So at some point people are going to be stuck having to decide which they like better, personal bodily autonomy or forbidding eugenics, and it’ll be a messy situation all around.

[mitigatedchaos]

I mean, if you offer me the choice between a baby that’s directly related to me and a genetically-engineered gauranteed above-average-or-better designer baby that’s directly related to me, I’m gonna take the second one, because there is no reason for me to have a crippled baby if the baby does not yet exist.

There is no advantage whatsoever to a severe peanut allergy, for instance (though I don’t have one). Most of the SJ stuff is based on the people already existing, and it isn’t their fault peanut allergies are a thing, but a hypothetical person that doesn’t exist yet doesn’t have the same moral weight as a person that already does.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

“Look at those cowards standing behind the police.”

“So you want them to come out and attack you with bike locks like your one guy did to them?”

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I can understand being terrified to look up non-msm sources on Venezuela. but you can't just believe CNN Breitbart or vice or other mainstream outlets

mutant-aesthetic answered:

“Venezuela no longer has the money to fund its lavish social programs because their oil isn’t worth what it used to be and they have nothing anywhere else” isn’t a terribly controversial take though.

[mitigatedchaos]

Also, at least one alternate source of someone living there corroborates that the whole country is running out of money. Communists can sometimes have like this whole alternate reality thing going where they are terrified that “oops we fucked up Socialism” is not that uncommon of an outcome and has happened multiple times before.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

there’s a reverse slippery slope effect where a range of related things all get described as ‘eugenics’:

1. attempting to commit genocide

2. using force or coercion to control the reproduction of others

3. offering incentives or encouragement to influence the reproduction of others

4. making observations that could imply that people should reproduce at different rates

5. simply observing that people currently reproduce at different rates

I think the only way to be completely safe from accusations of eugenics in the first few senses is to avoid any observations of reproduction rates and definitely avoid making any suggestions of how they might be changed, no matter how indirectly or consensually.

[mitigatedchaos]

Obviously you’re only makimg this post because you secretly want to practice eugenics.

Do not worry, comrade. I, too, believe that the state should subsidize the eventual heritable genetic treatment to remove peanut allergies.