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No, this is not businesses driving people out of work and ruining the country. It is the unintended consequence of improper government policy. This is why American houses are filled with Chinese junk. You participated by buying the junk. If government were doing its job, we would be paying more for USA made products.
Unfortunately that type of protectionism just wouldn't solve the problem of outsourcing. Or to say it another way....it would fail for the same reasons "made in the USA" fails to entice people to pay more. Average people have less disposable income to be so liberal with their dollars....so much like a corporation....they do what they perceive to be in their interest. So unless you plan to enlarge government, to the degree that it can keep tabs on those people buying products on the internet overseas, you will merely move money from 1 concentrated hand to another. It's a complicated side effect rooted elsewhere....which is why neither party has an answer for it.
Trade is the least of the actual worries of an actual worker in this economy. Much like the devil, it is the bogeyman that sounds good....until you consider the reasons for it. There is nothing wrong with pure capitalism, nor corporations acting in their interest, so long as it does not replace the notion of socitetal good....or serve as an excuse to dispose of people.
The actual problems for the average person in the US, is the concentration of wealth into fewer hands. And the fewer hands that control wealth, see the "efficiency" and "streamlining" that less labor creates. Which is why there is an unprecedented drive towards automation....to the point of automating the automation. I don't blame the individual corps for doing this....ultimately it is our societies' fault for electing people based on whether they would be fun to have a beer with, or pray to the same god, or whatever silly nonsense people judge politicians on when they can't be bothered with the issues at hand.
Yes, the government (which happens to include Republicans) has not been diligent enough to prevent the consistent robbing of average workers' wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer corporations over the past several decades....and into the hands of fewer and fewer executives. But there is no peaceful resolution which goes down the road of shrinking the government without equally shrinking the concentration of wealth (or essentially redistribution). That may not feel right intuitively....but neither does anarchy and despotism .
So yeah....I suppose we have demonstrated that atheism is just a single belief-position on a single topic. And a single belief-position does not a religion make, I might add.
Unfortunately that type of protectionism just wouldn't solve the problem of outsourcing. Or to say it another way....it would fail for the same reasons "made in the USA" fails to entice people to pay more. Average people have less disposable income to be so liberal with their dollars....so much like a corporation....they do what they perceive to be in their interest. So unless you plan to enlarge government, to the degree that it can keep tabs on those people buying products on the internet overseas, you will merely move money from 1 concentrated hand to another. It's a complicated side effect rooted elsewhere....which is why neither party has an answer for it.
Trade is the least of the actual worries of an actual worker in this economy. Much like the devil, it is the bogeyman that sounds good....until you consider the reasons for it. There is nothing wrong with pure capitalism, nor corporations acting in their interest, so long as it does not replace the notion of socitetal good....or serve as an excuse to dispose of people.
The actual problems for the average person in the US, is the concentration of wealth into fewer hands. And the fewer hands that control wealth, see the "efficiency" and "streamlining" that less labor creates. Which is why there is an unprecedented drive towards automation....to the point of automating the automation. I don't blame the individual corps for doing this....ultimately it is our societies' fault for electing people based on whether they would be fun to have a beer with, or pray to the same god, or whatever silly nonsense people judge politicians on when they can't be bothered with the issues at hand.
Yes, the government (which happens to include Republicans) has not been diligent enough to prevent the consistent robbing of average workers' wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer corporations over the past several decades....and into the hands of fewer and fewer executives. But there is no peaceful resolution which goes down the road of shrinking the government without equally shrinking the concentration of wealth (or essentially redistribution). That may not feel right intuitively....but neither does anarchy and despotism .
So yeah....I suppose we have demonstrated that atheism is just a single belief-position on a single topic. And a single belief-position does not a religion make, I might add.
The reality is that Americans homes are filled with Chinese junk. And, storage buildings are going up everywhere. We have the money for fewer things made by Americans.
And, it is not the corporations robbing Americans. It is government policies turning Americans into broke serfs. Government involvement in home loans has Americans buying bigger homes with less to no downs on longer notes. This in turn cost more in insurance, taxes, utilities and upkeep. Additionally, Americans do not save for being out of work or for retirement. All government causations.
I don't know about the US, but the problem here was that companies could buy cheap from China (and soviet subsidized east european cheap goods - they didn't care they were feeding Communism) and pile it high and sell it cheap; and if it put local producers out of business, -tough. It was government that imposed quotas to ensure limits on cheap stuff being imported. And the Lassaize - faire Right wanted no government interference so they could continue to run local producers by imported cheap Soviet and Maoist dross.
The reality is that Americans homes are filled with Chinese junk. And, storage buildings are going up everywhere. We have the money for fewer things made by Americans.
And, it is not the corporations robbing Americans. It is government policies turning Americans into broke serfs. Government involvement in home loans has Americans buying bigger homes with less to no downs on longer notes. This in turn cost more in insurance, taxes, utilities and upkeep. Additionally, Americans do not save for being out of work or for retirement. All government causations.
This would be a good conversation to continue with but unfortunately it would get closed or moved to the economics or (even worse) political forum if we don't round it back to atheism in some way. And those forums are filled with partisans rather than people looking to discuss solutions to problems.
I'll just say that i agree with much of what you say here regarding issues..... but it is the ability of those with significant capital (i.e. not small business owners which can include people making upwards of a few million/yr) disrupting those markets such as credit, insurance, health care and inflating costs, relative to the rest of the markets. Government policy was enacted to solve these problems, but I agree it hasn't solved them. We need better policy, not less government oversight.
You can't change people en masse, abruptly, and without social instability and upheaval. It's the same reason we can't outlaw religious practice even if we think it's bad, or at least unnecessary, for people. But we atheists ought not fall into the same bogeyman-searching when it comes to societal governance that (many) theists want to find. It isn't there....whether it's corporations, government, or just bad people. All we actually have is ourselves to rely on, and to improve our society. And atheists know (or are highly convinced) that no savior will be coming to do that work for us.
We could as easily ask if people who drink can agree on one particular type of alcohol that is superior to all others. Each person would have their favorite. There's not more unification among atheists than that. I do see that believers would like to force us into some grand conspiracy with mandatory opinions and dogma we have to follow, but that's just their desire to be the poor persecuted majority.
I'd like to thank mordant and MartinEden99 (and others) for their efforts to keep the thread on the topic of this forum; Atheism & Agnosticism. This isn't the Economics or the Politics forum. Please try to stay within the general topic of Atheism & Agnosticism. Thanks.
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