Real World Event Discussions

Supreme Court ruling on money and free speech

POSTED BY: HKCavalier
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 25, 2026 22:50
VIEWED: 10274
PAGE 14 of 20

FREMDFIRMA

Sunday, January 24, 2010 5:34 PM

Oh they get paid.

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At Mondragon, there are agreed-upon wage ratios between the worker-owners who do executive work and those who work in the field or factory and earn (in theory) a minimum wage. These ratios range from 3:1 to 9:1 in different cooperatives and average 5:1. That is, the general manager of an average Mondragon cooperative earns 5 times as much as the theoretical minimum wage paid in his/her cooperative. This ratio is in reality smaller because there are few Mondragon worker-owners that earn minimum wages, their jobs being somewhat specialized and classified at higher wage levels.

Although the ratio for each cooperative varies, it is worker-owners within that cooperative who decide through a democratic vote what these ratios should be. Thus, if a general manager of a cooperative has a ratio of 9:1, it is because its worker-owners decided it was a fair ratio to maintain.

In general, wages at Mondragon, as compared to similar jobs in local industries, are 30% or less at the management levels and equivalent at the middle management, technical and professional levels. As a result, Mondragon worker-owners at the lower wage levels earn an average of 13% higher wages than workers in similar businesses. In addition, the ratios are further diminished because Spain uses a progressive tax rate, so those with higher wages pay higher taxes.

None of that workers-make-dick-while-execs-take-it-home bullshit neither, they use a wage structure very similar to what the IWW has been striving for since their inception, and it works out pretty damn well.

-F

BYTEMITE

Sunday, January 24, 2010 5:45 PM

You don't have a tv, Wulf? Never went through public education?

GEEZER

Sunday, January 24, 2010 5:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Most women, and many men, are cooperative. Having and raising children is cooperative... it can't possibly be done by a single person...

But being cooperative doesn't preclude greed or badness. The Mafia is a cooperative enterprise, as are Wall Street, and drug cartels. The Third Reich was a bunch of folks being cooperative.

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There is a difference between GREED and REWARD. Just because people work for REWARD doesnt' mean they're GREEDY. For example, it's possible to gain a bigger REWARD through COOPERATION.

Not in your example of everyone in a co-op being paid the same. Where's the motivation for the hard-working, innovative, but not crooked guy who wants to provide for his family, but knows he'll be paid the same as the lazy schlub bachelor who's getting a free ride and dragging profits down? Can't kick all the lazy schlubs out of the co-ops, or they'll starve and smell the place up.

Then again, try to write a law that requires that everyone cooperate and work their unselfish best. Think that'd work?

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Bull. Crap.

So Society is just laws or regulations?

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You make it sound as if OUR system isn't being constantly reinforced, corporate thought, corporate interests being pushed on us from all directions, deviants crowded out.

Not at all. I'm just saying that it's not unique to Capitalism, Corporatism, or any economic system.

The Soviets constantly and severely reinforced Communist thought and Communist interests in their country, sending the deviants off to gulags to die. Commissars, apparatchiks, factory managers, military officers, and blackmarketeers managed to serve their greed, even under a government which had no hesitation about sending them to the wall. After the fall of the Soviet Union, these same folk re-emerged as Capitalists, since that was the economic flavor of the week.

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I know people from Russia, and they say that the propaganda here in the USA is worse than in their home country.

Do the people you know in Russia have a mindset similar to yours? If so, your citing them is sort'a like a racist citing a Klan conventions opinions on civil rights.

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And that is why you question the ability of people to cooperate...

Nope. What I question is the ability of all (or most all) the people to cooperate selflessly all(or most all) the time. Even if you make laws that require it, as the Soviet Union did, there will be people who find ways around it - because their personal ethics and philosophies find nothing wrong with using less-than-selfless means to get ahead.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Sunday, January 24, 2010 6:21 PM

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Every day, in every way, we're propagandized- Signy
Examples, please- Wulf

Omg, where to start???

There's what you see/hear on TV,movies, radio, billboards, music etc. and what you DON'T see. Why do you suppose Michael Moore's movies make such a splash? It's not bc what he says isn't true... It's far MORE true than Avatar, Star Trek, the zillion TV shows about cops, robbers, lawyers and doctors, beautiful twenty-somethings who're famous for being rich, "reality" shows etc. No, the reason why they make such a splash is because they're so RARE. There are almost NO shows about real people with real jobs and real problems. If you were an alien and used our TV shows to figure out our society, you'd miss 90% of the people in the USA.

Now, when people look in a mirror and see... nothing... day after day... eventually they stop even identifying THEMSELVES. They don't even recognize themselves in the scheme of things... who they are, where their best interests lay. Not to point fingers too hard, Wulf, but... look at you. You think you're some kind of hero. By your name, you feel yourself to be some kind of fierce predator. In actuality, you're a chump, along with the rest of us chumps, because NONE of us has any power to remake the system at least, not by ourselves.

Then, there's advertising. It's not just selling a product. It sells you the idea that you can buy happiness, that the ONLY way to be happy is to consume because nobody ever has an example of people being happy MAKING things or just being with people, do they? It sells you the idea that you SHOULD be happy, that trouble and travail should never enter your life, that the natural state is happy happy happy. It tells you that you are DEFICIENT because you don't match those happy, beautiful people on TV. It sells you the idea that advertising is natural and useful. That the best use of airwaves is to peddle stuff through manipulation. By constantly linking "buying stuff" to "happiness" in a visceral way, it manipulates you in that direction. And you're OK with that.

I could go on, (about the news, for example) but I do have things to do. The point is that these are so commonplace, so ubiquitous that people don't even SEE it anymore, which is the best kind of propaganda. You only notice it in its absence, or when someone contradicts it, and you call THAT propaganda.

SIGNYM

Sunday, January 24, 2010 6:32 PM

Geezer, the point of cooperation is NOT that it's selfless. Who the frak wants selfless cooperation? The point is that cooperation is instinctive in humans BECAUSE it is necessary for species survival. I said I wasn't going to discuss human nature anymore, and after this, I won't. You're just bringing up trivial arguments to derail the discussion; I've answered all of your objections/ questions more than once already. If you need to hear it again, please scroll up.

GEEZER

Sunday, January 24, 2010 8:05 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Geezer, the point of cooperation is NOT that it's selfless. Who the frak wants selfless cooperation?

You apparently do, if you expect folks to work hard in their co-ops so others can loaf for the same wages.

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The point is that cooperation is instinctive in humans BECAUSE it is necessary for species survival.

So? Has nothing to do with your insistance that greed is supported and promoted only by Capitalism. Greedy Capitalists, or Greedy Communists, or Greedy Feudal Lords can cooperate - not for species survival (at least not consciously), but for the survival and benefit of their group.

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I've answered all of your objections/ questions more than once already

Not even close. You keep making unsupported statements which I'm supposed to accept on faith.

Never answered this, though I asked it twice.
"Where's the motivation for the hard-working, innovative, but not crooked guy who wants to provide for his family, but knows he'll be paid the same as the lazy schlub bachelor who's getting a free ride and dragging profits down?"

Never responded to the fact that the Soviet Union, with all it's efforts to promote Communist economics and ideology, couldn't stop the greedy from accumulating.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

SIGNYM

Sunday, January 24, 2010 8:27 PM

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You keep making unsupported statements which I'm supposed to accept on faith.

Like...???

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Where's the motivation for the hard-working, innovative, but not crooked guy who wants to provide for his family, but knows he'll be paid the same as the lazy schlub bachelor who's getting a free ride and dragging profits down?

Simple. The lazy schlub gets booted out. That's how cooperatives work.

GEEZER

Monday, January 25, 2010 3:56 AM

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Like...???

"Corporations, OTOH, have ONE and ONLY one motive: the highest amount of profit possible. Pay the least possible, and charge what the market will bear. Develop a monopoly. Sink the workers. It doesn't matter to them if it means shipping off American jobs to Chinese prison labor, or creating inscrutable pyramid schemes with funny-money, or dumping toxic waste in your water table, or ravaging the entire planet. They're answerable to nobody except (maybe) their shareholders, whose interests are the same as theirs: greater profitability, higher dividends, higher stock prices."

"The mindset is based on several assumptions that run so deep most people don't even know they're there. One is that individual greed creates the MOST PRODUCTIVE economy. (Curiously, the exact opposite is true. If everyone were to behave like capitalists, we would have a society of thieves and scam artists, and NOTHING would ever be produced!)"

That's been pretty much your argument - backed up by nothing, since there are plenty of examples of corporations that do not live specifically for profit or exploitation, and of capitalists who are not thieves or scam artists and produce things - at least if you don't define by fiat corporations as only those who exploit or capitalists as only the thieves and scam artists.

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Simple. The lazy schlub gets booted out. That's how cooperatives work.

And then the lazy schlubs, or the folks who aren't able to contribute, for whatever reason, starve to death? If the government supports them, then the hard worker still pays for it. I'm not sure I like your utopia.

And again, what's the motivation for the hard worker to work hard if, no matter how he excels, he can't get ahead?

And you still haven't responded to the fact that the Soviet Union tried to enforce cooperatives on everyone, and tried, pretty forcefully, to educate everyone in cooperative living, and it didn't work too well at all.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

KWICKO

Monday, January 25, 2010 4:44 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
"Every day, in every way, we're propagandized."

Examples, please.

"I pledge allegiance to the flag..."

"Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light..."

"And I'm proud to be an America, where at least I know I'm free..."

"Let's Roll!"

"Support Our Troops!"

"America: Love it or Leave it!"

"An Army of One."

"The Few. The Proud. The Marines."

I'm sure there must be a slogan for the Navy that wasn't sung by The Village People...

Oh yeah - "Be All That You Can Be."

"Country First"

"In God We Trust"

"E Pluribus Unum"

Need I go on?

Mike

Work is the curse of the Drinking Class.
- Oscar Wilde

KWICKO

Monday, January 25, 2010 5:08 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:

Not in your example of everyone in a co-op being paid the same. Where's the motivation for the hard-working, innovative, but not crooked guy who wants to provide for his family, but knows he'll be paid the same as the lazy schlub bachelor who's getting a free ride and dragging profits down? Can't kick all the lazy schlubs out of the co-ops, or they'll starve and smell the place up.

I think you have the wrong idea of co-ops if you think they're all about driving profits up, which you do seem to think, if you're that concerned with the lazy schlub who's "dragging profits down". And as far as I know, most co-ops DO require you do actually, you know, PARTICIPATE to a degree. I think you may have them confused with buying clubs like Sam's or Costco, which aren't co-ops at all, and ARE in it purely for the profits.

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Then again, try to write a law that requires that everyone cooperate and work their unselfish best. Think that'd work?

So are you against laws just because there are SOME people who won't follow them? Shall we stop trying to prosecute murderers, then? Torturers? Rapists? Speeders? Doesn't matter WHAT you write a law about, SOMEONE is going to not cooperate and be "selfish" about it.

And we already have a plethora of laws that require that everyone cooperate and work their unselfish best. Ever tried to merge onto a freeway at rush hour, and encounter the one dickhead who decides he's in more of a hurry than everyone else, so decides to go all the way to the onramp in the right lane, then turn on his left blinker at the last minute in the hopes of getting some sucker to let him in? See how it fucks up the traffic flow when one guy doesn't want to follow the rules and cooperate?

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Do the people you know in Russia have a mindset similar to yours? If so, your citing them is sort'a like a racist citing a Klan conventions opinions on civil rights.

Or like listening to a capitalist talk about someone "dragging down the profits" of a co-op...

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Nope. What I question is the ability of all (or most all) the people to cooperate selflessly all(or most all) the time. Even if you make laws that require it, as the Soviet Union did, there will be people who find ways around it - because their personal ethics and philosophies find nothing wrong with using less-than-selfless means to get ahead.

Again, I point out that MOST of us DON'T murder people on a regular basis, which is a pretty selfless thing at times, considering... And yet we still make laws REQUIRING us not to murder people. And those laws get ignored by a few. Are we being punished for those few who are dragging down the profits of the justice system (which IS a for-profit industry now)? Shall we do away with the idea of laws, just because there are going to be some who will try to skirt the law?

You seem to be so deeply entrenched in your capitalist mindset, Geezer, that you can't even comprehend a society that isn't driven by a constant need for increasing profits.