# A Tocquevillean Challenge **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 31, 2000, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874 "2000-03-31T02:58:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2000, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874/41 "2000-04-02T07:01:00Z")
SingleDad: Many thanks for sharing your understanding of the labor market. You are damn eloquent. Also thanks for the logical fallacies thread. I can almost figure out what the excluded middle must be. Have to read that thread again. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_Salaam * * * ## Just putting my 2sense in. _Tyranny_,\* like Hell\*,\* is not easily conquered\*. -Thomas Paine (fugitive slave catcher) ---
**Author:** ![SingleDad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9e8a1a/32.png) [@SingleDad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SingleDad)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2000, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874/42 "2000-04-02T07:28:00Z")
[Logical Fallacies (Page 2)](http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/001595-2.html) – I aim to please 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![SingleDad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9e8a1a/32.png) [@SingleDad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SingleDad)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2000, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874/43 "2000-04-02T07:36:00Z")
**CalifBoomer:** Truly, a monument to incomprehensibility! I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone trying to (mis-)represent propositional calculus in algebraic notation. > [@](#): > > Based on my impartial observation of your thought processes… You’ve observed my thought processes? Damn! I didn’t even feel the electrodes! :rolleyes: And I don’t think that either one of us has the _slightest_ claim to “impartiality” regarding the other. 😃 > [@](#): > > Rather than further weaken the already weak and make them even more dependent, how about finding a way to make them stronger and less dependent? Damn… I actually agree _wholeheartedly_ with that statement. 😕 Boomer, perhaps there’s hope for you yet. ---
**Author:** ![Erratum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cc9497/32.png) [@Erratum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erratum)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2000, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874/44 "2000-04-02T09:39:00Z")
**SingleDad** : “\* it is also true that the laborer is at a significant disadvantage in a pure laissez faire economy.\*” And this is relevant because… ? We have unemployment insurance, and frequently government sponsored re-training programs, as well as lots of other things that make this far from a laissez faire economy. “_I don’t think that we would long endure an economy where a privileged few held all the economic assets and the mass of people were relegated to peasantry or serfdom._” Again, the relevance please? Displaced manufacturing workers are hardly a peasant class. We have the lowest unemployment we’ve had in a _long_ time. There are jobs out there to be had. If it were my job, and I knew that I was being paid more than I was worth out of a sense of pity, I’d be insulted. I like to earn my salary. ---
**Author:** ![Erratum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cc9497/32.png) [@Erratum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erratum)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2000, 9:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874/45 "2000-04-02T09:43:00Z")
**2sense** : “_I think we might have a point of view difference. I am looking at these issues from a POV of the laborers._” It’s quite obvious that you are only looking at the POV of the laborers. Don’t you find that you get a very limited understanding of things when you only look at things from one perspective? Look at the economy in terms of _all_ of the agents involved: producers, consumers, laborers, entrepenuers, etc. ---
**Author:** ![SingleDad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9e8a1a/32.png) [@SingleDad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SingleDad)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2000, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874/46 "2000-04-03T03:12:00Z")
**Erratum:** > [@](#): > > And this is relevant because… ? I was responding to the implied points in your statement: > [@](#): > > The labor market is the same as any other market, and if they charge too much for their product (labor), the companies will look elsewhere. Nobody balks at paying american workers big bucks when they do a better job than anyone else, only when they are not worth the price premium that they charge. The labor market is _not_ like other markets (e.g. the VCR market is truly _laissez faire_ as well it should be), and for the reasons I stated in my earlier posts. * * * No matter where you go, there you are. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2000, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874/47 "2000-04-03T06:26:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Remember, Plato’s mentor, Socrates, was profoundly authoritarian: the real reason he was executed was almost certainly because he provided ideological justification to the aristocratic faction that seized power for a time before being expelled. "To suggest that Socrates would have participated fully for seventy years in a system that he had contempt for and rejected, and that in a final gesture of masochism he would invite the system to kill him is to suggest that he was not an intellectual master worth following. To suggest - as the Platonists do - that being old, Socrates felt like dying and therefore tricked the Athenian legal system into murdering him, not only insults his honesty, but his intellectual integrity and indeed his intelligence. “That he had constantly cajoled the system to do better is quite another matter. Plato’s bitterness can be understood. But that should have been a matter of personal grief, not the foundation for a philosophy which betrays Socrates by favouring dictatorship.” -John Ralston Saul, “Socrates”, _The Doubter’s Companion_ ---
**Author:** ![Erratum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cc9497/32.png) [@Erratum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erratum)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2000, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874/48 "2000-04-03T15:25:00Z")
**SingleDad** : “_I was responding to the implied points in your statement_” Maybe if you responded to what I _actually_ said, instead of what you _thought_ I said, things would move a lot more cleanly. Please quote any statement by me in which I state that a purely laissez-faire system would work, that I oppose unemployment insurance, etc. “_The labor market is not like other markets_” “_it is difficult to find another job quickly_” I fail to see how this is different from a business which relies exclusively on a single customer. For example, if my only business was to manufacture a specialized component that NASA uses in its space probes, but NASA redesigns their probes to work with the components of another manufacturer, then I am screwed. It will be difficult to retool my factory to produce another product, and I don’t want to cut my costs to match my competition. Why is that different from a manufacturing worker who gets laid off because of his more cost-competitive counterparts in another location? Are you advocating government control of all markets in which the producer’s earnings come primarily from a single customer? ---
**Author:** ![SingleDad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9e8a1a/32.png) [@SingleDad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SingleDad)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2000, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874/49 "2000-04-04T05:44:00Z")
**Erratum:** > [@](#): > > Maybe if you responded to what I actually said, instead of what you thought I said, things would move a lot more cleanly. I was using your comments as a “springboard” to make related but not directly responsive points. My intention was not to refute your point of view, and I apologize for my lack of clarity in seeming to do so. > [@](#): > > Why is that {a business which relies exclusively on a single customer} different from a manufacturing worker who gets laid off because of his more cost-competitive counterparts in another location? A business is not a human being. If a **business** is no longer economically viable, it can (and should) go bankrupt and become non-existant without creating a moral dilemma. In fact at a certain level of weakness, short sellers or bankers and other creditors can and _should_ **exterminate** a business and recover what they can from the tangible assets. I think that government support of a non-viable _business_ is a stupid waste of money, except perhaps in _very_ specialized cases where a tangible reward exists for the government and society (e.g. the Crysler bailout, which paid interest, and kept a fundamentally sound but temporarily ailing business afloat). A **human being** no longer economically viable cannot merely be exterminated or allowed to starve and die. * * * Free the Indianapolis 500! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-tocquevillean-challenge/17874.md?page=2)