I don’t think it it removes the idea of fair orm not fair. You can still say your pay is unfair if you are getting under market value. That is usually what I bring up if I have a problem with my pay, and I’ve found it has pretty good results.
PeeQueue
Value is a tricky thing. What is the real value of Gold? you can’t eat it, you can’t live in it. It is just a rock. But yet it gets traded at $360/ounce. OR how about beannie babies or antique glassware. I can’t see the value of those items at all.
It is hard to talk of value without bringing up scarcity and demand. It is harder to bring up fairness. Is it fair that concert tickets cost $150 for the concert tonight? IS it fair that a McDonalds Worker makes $9.50/hr.
What is the standard. I think that supply and demand is elegant and sufficent to explains these things. Fairness is way too subjective and nebulous.
I surrender. Absolutely and unconditionally.
There’s some famous quote to the effect that ‘madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.’ I keep posting to this forum and expecting people to respond to what I have actually written instead of picking out a few hotpoint buzzwords that remind them of some argument they’ve already had 137 times and then continuing that argument.
I am obviously mad.
Dumbguy, you seem like a rational sort. AS such I would just like to make a very friendly observation as I continue to misunderstand what the heck oyu are saying:
Sometimes you jump into a debate with a specific counterpoint. It looks as if you are actually arguing this point. Others jump in and, to be fair, read too much into your posts. But it certainly is reasonable to believe that you are actually engaging in an argument about a specific point: e.g.
Which would lead one tto believe that you were arguing about the definition of “value” and wheeher or not market valuation is fair.
You, of course meant something else, but I still can’t figure out what it is.
Bill Gates gave several tens of millions of dollars to charity last year, as did Ted Turner. I wonder how much SarumanRex gave? 
I am violating my solemn promise to stop posting to this thread, but here goes… The whole point of my argument is that the super-rich got that way by being selfish and greedy and, therefore, they deserve no admiration or gratitude on the part of the public. It has been pointed out that there are benefits to allowing such greedy people to do what they do. These benefits include: jobs, cheap products, and philanthropy. As I pointed out in my much maligned handicap parking analogy, intentions are everything. Words are out-weighed by actions and actions are out-weighed by intentions. ** INTENTION IS EVERYTHING. ** Since my first example was so misunderstood I will now beat this point to death:
Example 1) You have just shot and killed a man. You are put on trial for murder and are facing the death penalty. If justice is done then what should happen if:
A) Your only intention was to stop that man from stabbing you to death. Then it was self defense and you should be set free.
B) Your only intention was to stop that man from stealing your car. Then you have used deadly force in defense of property, it is considered an unjustifiable homicide (manslaughter) and usually results in a prison sentence of several years (5 years in the one case I am certain of).
C) Your only intention was to stop that man from seeing tomorrow. This is murder, if the jury finds you pre-meditated this crime then it is first degree murder and can carry the death penalty in many states, if no pre-meditation then 25 years to life is the usual sentence for second degree murder (IIRC).
Intention in this case is the difference between right and wrong, life and death. Intention is everything. I am not being theatrical, cases such as these are decided in courtrooms throughout the world on a daily basis.
Example 2: You’re an American and you invent a widget. You find a large market for your invention in America. You decide to patent your invention and start a company to produce it. After several years of growth you accumulate millions of dollars and employ thousands of Americans. You never intended to provide anyone with a job, you only intended to make yourself as rich as possible. You demonstrate your true intentions by laying off your entire manufacturing staff and signing a long term contract with a Chinese firm which uses prison (slave) labor to produce the product at a lower cost. Since you still have a patent and no one can compete with you, you don’t pass on these savings to the consumer, you just pocket them. It is illegal to import products made by slave labor so you cover up the true source of your products and claim that they are made by a non-prison factory in China. You are breaking the law but you get away with it. Over the course of the next few years you accumulate billions. When your patent expires after 20 years a small company opens a new factory in America which uses a new manufacturing technique to produce the widget at a lower cost than the Chinese. You are still under contract with the Chinese to buy only the widgets they produce at a fixed price so you can’t lower your production costs. You never intended to provide American’s with cheap products, you only intended to get really rich (which you have already accomplished). Therefore, you start selling your widgets at half of what they cost you to import and quickly drive the new competitor out of business, you then raise your prices to their previous level. The other company sues you in federal court for being a monopoly but you use your extensive political connections to insure that the case takes many years to be settled and all the while your monopoly on widgets is making you even richer. Over the course of your life you become a multi-billionaire. When you are getting up in years, you start to think about your own mortality and how you will be remembered. You realize that you will never be able to spend all of this money in the life you have left. If you don’t get rid of it somehow it will all go to your unworthy heirs and the even more unworthy government. You decide to donate some of your money to charity right now and to leave the bulk of your estate to a museum to be named after you when you die.
This man has enslaved no one but has knowingly profited off of slave labor and hidden this fact from the authorities and the American people. This man has broken the anti-trust laws and competed unfairly with an American firm. Everyone at that firm lost their jobs (and none of them, Bill, were buggy whip makers). This man has obstructed justice by using political connections to delay the outcome of a pending case.
I concede that the man in my example is entirely fictional, but my question is this: If this were a real person should anyone admire this man? Does it make any difference if the public has no knowledge of his wrong doings but only knows about his much advertised philanthropy? Does it make any difference if the public feels his widgets are fairly priced? What has he done that is admirable in your opinion? Is this man evil? Are any of the examples of wrong doing that I mention all that uncommon in the business world? (I have heard of all of these crimes by watching 60 minutes.) Does his invention of a useful widget outway his crimes? These are not rhetorical questions, I really want to know what you think.
(Note: In a previous post Bill H. accused me of telling lies bout Thomas Edison. All of the information I gave is entirely factual to the best of my knowledge. I have relayed it to you to the best of my ability. The source of my knowledge is a course on the history of modern technology I took at Cornell University in 1990. If you have more reliable information that you would like to report then do so, but do not call me a liar. I claimed that Edison knowingly profited by selling electricity to factories and mills which forced their workers to work 18 hours a day at very low wages. He did nothing to cause this but he also did nothing to stop it, he only profited from it indirectly. I also claimed that the electric chair that Edison personally designed was used to slowly fry a man to death. The original design has since been improved upon.)
Please note that Bill H. was calling himself billehunt when he callled me a liar.
SarumanRex, I appreciate your re-tuned, refined attitude.
I see your point. I wouldn’t say I’m gracious of Bill Gates; I certainly haven’t sent him a Thank You note recently. I completely agree that you have to be greedy to be super-rich (I prefer the word ‘ambitious’ myself, but I’ll concede ‘greedy’).
Now, being guity of greed, and being guilty of crookedness, or even evilness; those are different things entirely.
Also, to echo an earlier point from Mr.Zambezi, what exactly is greed? If you save your son’s life is that greedy? Is it good? If you do charitable works because you like looking good in the community, is it greedy? Is it good?
Well, yes and no. In the case you mention, someone does a bad deed, and is judged on their intention. I believe that is the fair way to judge. But what we’re talking about is someone (like Gates) who does a good deed (you mention “jobs, cheap products, and philanthropy”) and question how we should judge them. I believe it’s two different situations.
No.
Nothing.
Yes.
Nope.
He’s still a criminal. But here’s the thing:
Your implication is that this is the standard. Your implication is that the example you gave is the way people become rich. That’s simply not the case. (or so I argue).
Well, my reading from your post, especially in context of this thread was that Edison did this with the intention (there’s your word and our agreement) of doing evil, which is an interpretation of history I’ve never heard and don’t believe.
http://www.theelectricchair.com//timeline.htm claims
I will concede that Edison was pushing very hard against AC, killing animals to prove the point, and backing the invention of the electric chair, but he didn’t actually invent it.
More importantly, you made the specific implication that a human being was tortured to death by Edison for commercial reasons. He wasn’t.
I don’t want to turn this into a death penalty debate, but people at that time believed (and I suspect still believe) that electrocution was more humane than the previous execution method, hanging. In that sense, even the invention of the electric chair was beneficial, perhaps even more humane.
I argue that honest decent people who are trying to become wealthy by any ethical means invariably get eaten alive by the type of man I have described. I hope in your case, Bill, that you are never targeted by such an unscrupulous person.
I beleive that Edison’s only intention was to make a ton of money. I used to think he did all that he did to make our lives better, I no longer believe this. When he was asked about the long hours people were being forced to work he claimed that a man only needs 1 hour of sleep a night because that was all he slept. This was not true, he did spend all of his time in his lab but he took naps on his lab bench so frequently that his employees had a sign made up that read, “Be very quiet, Mr Edison is sleeping”. My history professor even showed us a picture of the sign with Edison himself in the background asleep on his lab bench. Perhaps my inflated view of Edison made my disappointment all the worse, but I was truly shocked that Edison did not vehemently denounce the long hours of mill workers. I suspect that you are right about Edison and the electric chair, though. My professor told us that Edison promoted using A/C power to execute rather than hanging and that it be called Westinghousing, but he never said Edison actually took part in the first execution (I assumed that he would want to do this in person since it was so historic but apparently I was wrong). However, the very first man to be executed by A/C power was slowly fried. No one intended to torture him, they had expected his death to be instantaneous like the death of the person who fell on the wires that you mentioned. It didn’t work out this way, the man kept waking up after they jolted him, so to complete the execution they turned the chair on and left it on until the guy was smoking (in modern electricutions smoke/steam still comes out the eye sockets before they shut the thing off). I have no evidence that Edison was even made aware of how badly the first attempt at electrocution had gone, I had merely assumed that he had been present. I was wrong and I admit it.
Hi Saru, nice to see I’m not the only person who falls off the no-more-posts wagon. Enjoying your postings, keep 'em coming.
Kimstu