Apple and fraud

[SoulBiter]

Where I work we have a 'gain sharing plan' where we set baselines for productivity a few years ago, based on historical data. Anything above the baseline gives a payout, anything below does not. The amount of the bonus is skewed (intentionally) in the stockholders favor. 75% of the gain goes to the company and 25% goes to the associates. This has give the employees a really nice bonus the last couple of years and has saved the company in real dollars (based on 2009 productivity numbers compared today) about 2 million dollars. I administer this plan for out company so I'm very close to it.

Fast forward to this year, where the company is doing all that it can to absorb these gains and reset our baselines. The plan calls for a 10% absorption rate each year. But our financial guys in Italy think the payouts for the associates are too high and want to 'absorb' much much more. So the plan did what it was designed to do and increased productivity. It put millions in the shareholders pockets that wasn't there before and continues to show modest continual gains improvement, but 75% of the gains isn't good enough for the owners anymore.

So just looking at this.. you can see that for most companies, its all about maximizing profits even if you shaft your employees.

[Zarathustra]

WF, which argument am I pretending that you're making? I responded to your quotes and your link.

I posted something above to counter the argument that unions foster "mediocrity". (Whatever that is ...

...of only ordinary or moderate quality; neither good nor bad;

Which your link backs up:

The results from meta-analysis presented here suggest that if all of the available evidence is pooled together, there is no association between unions and productivity.

If there is neither a positive nor negative association with productivity, then this is neither good nor bad. In other words, mediocre. Nothing in my arguments suggested that unions cause productivity--on average--to drop. I argued that they strive for uniformity in productivity, by taking those who excel and keeping them in check by methods such as (according to your own link), "...curbing the pace of work, hours of work, and skill formation."

So whatever argument you were pretending to make, you didn't make it. Maybe it's because of your own admission of not understanding the terms in which you're arguing:

(Whatever that is - we all do know that half of all employees are below average, right?)

No, half don't have to be below average. Averages are affected by both the magnitude of individual elements, as well as the sheer number of individual elements. You can have a lot of people doing poorly balanced by a few who are doing spectacular. You're thinking of median:

In probability theory and statistics, median is described as the numerical value separating the higher half of a sample, a population, or a probability distribution, from the lower half. The median of a finite list of numbers can be found by arranging all the observations from lowest value to highest value and picking the middle one.

I don't think productivity is the only measure either. Nor is profit for that matter - especially profit.

A profitable business is a good business. There may be things about it that you don't like, but that's because your values go beyond what makes a business, into the realm of social justice. The purpose of a business is to make a profit. It can do this with or without providing jobs. If it manages to provide jobs at all--and not simply replace all the humans with robots, for instance--then this is a net benefit to society, or at least to those who want jobs. No business is actually required to provide jobs, much less pay them what you consider to be "fair compensation" (whatever that is). Any net benefit to society beyond making a profit for itself is simply a bonus. So, we're just haggling over the size of that net benefit. We the Living of in the Age of the Spoiled are judging each other on the premise that we don't think it's fair that we're not as spoiled and pampered as others. We're living in a time when humans can not only keep themselves alive, but also benefit from miracles of modern technology in a land of plenty by working relatively short workweeks doing relatively cushy tasks (compared to our ancestors) ... and yet people are still complaining that it's not fair. We Westerners have won history's lottery simply by being born in the time and place in which we find ourselves. At some point, you either accept your "winnings" and supply the rest yourself, or you spend your life complaining in a land of plenty.

Don't get me wrong ... I don't blame unions for trying to get as much as they can possibly get, even to the point of making their companies less competitive. That's simply human nature (greed). I just think the argument about "fairness" being used in a discussion of their coercive tactics is disingenuous and pathetic.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

A profitable business is a good business. There may be things about it that you don't like, but that's because your values go beyond what makes a business, into the realm of social justice. The purpose of a business is to make a profit. It can do this with or without providing jobs. If it manages to provide jobs at all--and not simply replace all the humans with robots, for instance--then this is a net benefit to society, or at least to those who want jobs. No business is actually required to provide jobs, much less pay them what you consider to be "fair compensation" (whatever that is). Any net benefit to society beyond making a profit for itself is simply a bonus. [codgery rant on spoiled lazy modern society deleted]

And this attitude perfectly encapsulates how unchecked capitalism [which is essentially 'impersonal corporate greed'] destroys lives. 'Market forces' that don't take a broader human interest into account are the dark side of the Force. I'm not just munching granola here - I'm talking about incremental impersonal decisions that collectively screw 'other' for the benefit of 'us', to the detriment of us as a whole.

No single drop of water is convinced that it broke the dam.

If it's really all just about greed, and who will ultimately win in corporate greed versus union greed versus personal greed, then we are all screwed, and we deserve the bleak that we get.

dw

[wayfriend]

If there is neither a positive nor negative association with productivity, then this is neither good nor bad. In other words, mediocre.

Could not disagree more. What it means is that it's irrelevant.

Which is a response to: don't unions foster lazy employees who don't want to work? Answer: no, unions have no affect on employee productivity.

Nothing in my arguments suggested that unions cause productivity--on average--to drop.

Who said I was responding to you? I was thinking more about rhodpeca's statements, but trying not to name names.

[Zarathustra]

DW, the answer to your concerns is in the part which you deleted. Capitalism is the reason why we have the luxury of complaining that our cushy lives aren't cushy enough. It's a global matrix of mutually beneficial relationships (non-zerosum logic), which encompass every "broader human interest" you can list. We have won the battle against "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" lives, as Hobbes would say. Now we're just fighting over the spoils of that war.

[Avatar]

If it's really all just about greed, and who will ultimately win in corporate greed versus union greed versus personal greed, then we are all screwed, and we deserve the bleak that we get.

Now we're just fighting over the spoils of that war.

Like he said up there...

--A

[Cybrweez]

Christie in another fight w/unions.

Not really big news, but this struck me:

"As Vince drives out of the palace on State Street in his big luxury car and his $500,000 salary."

I read somewhere else he doesn't make half a mil, but his salary is in the 300 thousands (plus whatever benefits). IOW, this union chief is in the 1%. Gotta love it.

[Rigel]

"As Vince drives out of the palace on State Street in his big luxury car and his $500,000 salary."

I read somewhere else he doesn't make half a mil, but his salary is in the 300 thousands (plus whatever benefits). IOW, this union chief is in the 1%. Gotta love it.

Last I checked, the POTUS made just under $400,000. Granted, he has other perks, but it gives you an idea of the scale of corruption involved in some unions.

[Avatar]

Y'know, the president is supposed to be a public servant. He's chosen to carry out the will of the people, isn't he?

--A

[Cybrweez]

And aren't union bosses in the same boat?

[ussusimiel]

A profitable business is a good business. There may be things about it that you don't like, but that's because your values go beyond what makes a business, into the realm of social justice.

This kind of gets down to the nub of it.

The simple question to ask here is: what would our human world look like without the social contract?

I ask this because I think that it is the key (as you may have noticed, I love keys and cruxes and nubs ) difference between liberal and libertarian philosophies.

Another form of the question might be: in the event that libertarianism was embraced what would you call the form of human association that it gave rise to?

For some reason, we liberals seem to have a dread fear of whatever that would be

u.

[wayfriend]

Slavery was a profitable business.

[Zarathustra]

Slavery was a profitable business.

So was the horse-drawn carriage business. Economies change.

Of course, slavery is illegal now. So are many of the practices for which unions were formed to prevent, rendering their origins about as relevant today as bringing up slavery in 21st century economic discussions. So one would assume that discussions of a "profitable business" in this century take this as a starting point, a given. At least you'd think so, if people were trying to have a discussion with some relevancy to our present condition, and not merely an opportunity for irrelevant cheap shots.

But since you brought it up, the North was out-competing the South economically. The South was the poor part of the country, despite how profitable slavery might seem at first glance. Economic pressures for change was one of the driving forces of the Civil War. The Industrial Revotion, including its increased mechanization, helped end slavery at least as much as political idealism. Thanks, capitalism. Thanks, innovation (brought about by capitalism).

Is a person who must give up part of his earnings, against his will, in order to work for an employer and be part of a union, more like a slave than a person who advances on his own individual merits and doesn't have to pay anyone for the privilege of working in a closed shop? Hmm... Keeping more of your own earnings ... individual liberty ... not being defined as a member of a class/group ... it's worth considering, if we're going to consider comparisons to slavery at all. Or we could just come back to this century and have a discussion here.

[Holsety]

But since you brought it up, the North was out-competing the South economically. The South was the poor part of the country, despite how profitable slavery might seem at first glance. Economic pressures for change was one of the driving forces of the Civil War. The Industrial Revotion, including its increased mechanization, helped end slavery at least as much as political idealism. Thanks, capitalism. Thanks, innovation (brought about by capitalism).

Actually, I think the industrial revolution in part probably spurred on slavery for a time. The introduction of the cotton gin certainly didn't slow slavery down.

The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the South became even more dependent on plantations and slavery, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of the Southern economy.[11] The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850.[12] By 1860, the southern states were providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton, and up to eighty percent of the crucial British market.[13]

I agree that the industrial revolution helped end slavery by assisting the war effort: for instance, I'm pretty sure I learned in history class ages ago that the north had better supply lines than the south as a result of a better train system.

Additionally, from what I remember, industrialism's spread to the South was fairly slow (I'm not saying there wasn't any!) after the Civil War, and primarily the plantation system continued with sharecropping. From this link here - www.brtprojects.org/cyberschool/history ... nswers.pdf - it says that 70% of the South's employment in 1890 was in agriculture, and that the South still grew tons of cotton afterwards for the NE and Europe, though it is true that mills and textiles did spring up.

Also, as far as the South being the poor party of the country, that is true...but it wasn't the plantation owners who were the poor ones! It was the whites who owned only a few slaves, or more often none, that were poor! And the slaves who didn't own their own bodies, though I doubt they were counted.

[aliantha]

But since you brought it up, the North was out-competing the South economically. The South was the poor part of the country, despite how profitable slavery might seem at first glance. Economic pressures for change was one of the driving forces of the Civil War. The Industrial Revotion, including its increased mechanization, helped end slavery at least as much as political idealism. Thanks, capitalism. Thanks, innovation (brought about by capitalism).

Ahem.

Regional economic differences

The South, Midwest, and Northeast had quite different economic structures. They traded with each other and each became more prosperous by staying in the Union, a point many businessmen made in 1860-61. However Charles A. Beard in the 1920s made a highly influential argument to the effect that these differences caused the war (rather than slavery or constitutional debates). He saw the industrial Northeast forming a coalition with the agrarian Midwest against the Plantation South. Critics challenged his image of a unified Northeast and said that the region was in fact highly diverse with many different competing economic interests. In 1860-61, most business interests in the Northeast opposed war.

After 1950, only a few mainstream historians accepted the Beard interpretation, though it was accepted by libertarian economists.[44] As Historian Kenneth Stampp—who abandoned Beardianism after 1950, sums up the scholarly consensus:[45] "Most historians...now see no compelling reason why the divergent economies of the North and South should have led to disunion and civil war; rather, they find stronger practical reasons why the sections, whose economies neatly complemented one another, should have found it advantageous to remain united."[46]

link
Several events coalesced to cause the Civil War, but supposed Northern economic superiority wasn't one of them.

[Cybrweez]

Yea, I don't think it was a driving change. You could say the economic success of the North made the South more protective of slavery, which caused them to go to extremes, but it all came back to slavery.

[Lord Mhoram]

In many ways slavery is the most profoundly anti-capitalist arrangement possible. If we take capitalism to be the liberalization of markets, then the lawful enslavement of huge portions of the population is just about the biggest distortion of the market imaginable! However, this is in my view an absolutely crucial counterpoint to any historical narrative of the United States as a "free market" economy. Slavery was crucial for our economy for quite a long time, and it was about as anti-capitalist as you can get. Thus if you want to wax poetic about how free our economy has always been, you're basically blowing hot air in my view. Plus, that fact didn't stop plenty of pious Southern slavery proponents from making economic arguments for slavery.

[DukkhaWaynhim]

Slavery isn't as irrelevant as some want to make it. Some analogies can be drawn between slaves and non-union workers in industries that have histories of abuse of their employees. Obviously the corporeal slavery that was rightly outlawed back in Civil War times is a much more terrible thing, but industries that are allowed to abuse their workers economically are creating 'corporate' slaves.
This thread exists because a very large American company, like many of its kind, outsources its manufacturing to China, because it knows it can make much more money by doing so. American labor simply is not competitive with other countries, where workers interests are not protected as well as they are here, if at all. Cheaper labor equals higher corporate profits, although this wealth appears to come at the cost of the quality of life of the lower cost workers there. If this cheap labor would be otherwise unemployed, they may be happy to be working at all, even under 'slave'-like conditions, but that doesn't mean that they aren't also being taken advantage of. The question is whether this is a fair or unfair advantage. If profit is the only consideration, it is a perfectly fair advantage, since worker quality of life considerations just add unnecessary cost.
The worker's rights that Americans (meaning the American laborers, along with anyone who can take political advantage by siding with them) prize here are keeping us from being a source of cheap labor. This is a mixed blessing, but it appears to mean that we prize our quality of life more than squeezing out every last buck of profit 'at any cost'.
Our laws may obviate most of the modern need for unions, but we have only to look to China to see why they were formed to begin with. If all countries had the same level of basic rights for their workers that we have here, then American labor would again become competitive, because overseas labor would lose the advantage it has by not having to 'pamper' its workers, and overseas labor will always have higher freight costs to overcome compared to that of local, at least for manufactured goods that have any weight to them.

dw

[Holsety]

In many ways slavery is the most profoundly anti-capitalist arrangement possible. If we take capitalism to be the liberalization of markets, then the lawful enslavement of huge portions of the population is just about the biggest distortion of the market imaginable! However, this is in my view an absolutely crucial counterpoint to any historical narrative of the United States as a "free market" economy. Slavery was crucial for our economy for quite a long time, and it was about as anti-capitalist as you can get. Thus if you want to wax poetic about how free our economy has always been, you're basically blowing hot air in my view. Plus, that fact didn't stop plenty of pious Southern slavery proponents from making economic arguments for slavery.

Honestly, since I think American slavery would primarily be affecting the labor markets in agricultural jobs by keeping wages artificially low*, I'm not sure if it's "the most profoundly anti-capitalist arrangement possible" since it doesn't exactly sweep all sectors. Plus, wouldn't having a market on human beings be more "liberalized" and unrestricted for the buyers, than not having one? Please understand. I am not trying to justify slavery. I am simply questioning whether it is the antithesis to capitalism.

*you could get wages below subsistence levels in a capitalist economy, it wouldn't be sustainable if it was broadly based but if it was limited with workers receiving below subsistence in certain sectors and receiving support from family and friends in other sectors, it might work out.

[wayfriend]

Slavery was a profitable business.

So was the horse-drawn carriage business. Economies change.

Of course, slavery is illegal now. So are many of the practices for which unions were formed to prevent, rendering their origins about as relevant today as bringing up slavery in 21st century economic discussions. So one would assume that discussions of a "profitable business" in this century take this as a starting point, a given.

Since I have disproved the statement that a profitable business is -- with no qualifiers upon it -- a good business, my statement has served the purpose for which it served. All this other stuff is merely trying to discredit the author rather than the author's point, which [the attempt to discredit] I find to be stupid, ignomious, and in the end worthless, except so far as it is a demonstration of what you are willing to do to avoid conceding a point fairly won.

Maybe now we can get back to discussing those important qualifications that prevent a profitable business from being a good business. I am sure there are some, even in these heavenly times where everyone is pure, no one would ever cheat anyone, and no one should have any qualms about trusting their bosses to do the best for them and their families.

Edit: oh, and slavery is alive and well in the current economy, as far as I hear.