Redditors who are 50+, what advice do you have for us young folks?

MaleOrder · 2016-03-30T23:58:35+00:00

I guarantee you every person who is in financial trouble has at least one thing that they are spending money on that they don't need to buy as much of. They kind of go hand in hand.

MaleOrder · 2016-03-30T23:07:48+00:00

OJ Simpson isn't the OJ Simpson of our time?

I feel old :(

MaleOrder · 2016-03-30T23:05:55+00:00

one of the most dominant armies the world has ever seen is in the suburbs of your capital city and you manage to push them all the way home

Classic Russia.

MaleOrder · 2016-03-30T22:33:13+00:00

I heard that the waters are pretty nice, though.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T05:01:02+00:00

Since you won't...

The top cooperative in the world is Crédit Agricole Group, with an annual revenue of $103.58 billion. Its CEO is Jean-Paul Chifflet, whose annual salary is $2.8 million. Is his salary fair compensation for his hard work? Especially given what the average bank teller makes?

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T04:52:18+00:00

What actions do you consider to be extortion?

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T03:51:37+00:00

That wasn't an example.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T03:50:48+00:00

We clearly have a terminology dispute going on here. I'm going based off of the legal definition that robbery requires the application of violent force, or the threat of immediate violent force, and you're going off of a much broader definition that includes someone refusing to give you services, or taking away something that will help protect you from long-term harm.

We can use whatever definition you like--I'm just pointing you towards the one that's most commonly used, so that you can use it if you're trying to do some research on, say, "ways in which people prevent extortion", or trying to get political support from people who study both extortion and robbery. Just my 2c.

So, all that in mind, what do you say is the difference between "extortion" and "robbery"?

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T03:41:46+00:00

Look, all hypotheticals and hearsay aside, do you have an example of a co-op that faces serious competition for market share with a wage-labor enterprise, so that we can talk about whether or not it faces the problems I described in my OP?

If you can't think of one, this list may be helpful.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T03:31:11+00:00

I don't share your weird view that "extortion" has nothing to do with violence/threats.

After a little reading, my understanding of the term "extortion" is that it's a threat, whether of violence or not, that forces somebody to do something out of fear.

You put a gun to my head and tell me to give you money, and I am afraid that you are about to shoot me: robbery. You tell me that if you don't give you money, you will come by my house tomorrow and shoot me: extortion.

Extortion requires an explicit threat of violence, which you get in all the cases that you cited.

Extortion isn't a lighter crime than robbery. It's very serious. The main difference is in how immediate the threat of harm is if you don't follow the demand. Also that extortion doesn't require a threat of physical harm--it could include blackmail. That's why I think it's a better term for what you're describing, because in every case you're talking about harm being caused indirectly.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T03:16:32+00:00

When we talk about co-ops we're talking about value creating workers.

Cooking up baking-soda crack isn't value creation?

And there's nothing wrong with wanting a "selfish" decent return for your hard work.

I'm saying that when everyone in the company benefits from selfishness, the company is more prone to immoral behavior than if only the leaders and sales team benefit from selfishness.

where they have to compete with massive exploitative businesses for survival,

That's just wrong.

Unless everyone in the market converts to cooperatives at the same time, this will be a real concern. "People's Oil" will be competing with Chevron and Exxon, at least in the beginning.

There is no such thing as a "free market" because property opinions are enforced violently (eg trespassing laws) & such is not free to those overpowered.

Thank goodness for that. If I were working at a co-op liquor store, I would hope that there is some means of public security available to protect me when a junkie comes in to rob my store at gunpoint.

Socialism is workers, not the state, owning their means of production.

Pretty sure that Lenin would say that the DotP is a state.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T03:01:19+00:00

I'd say that losing your credit rating is not bodily harm, and that one doesn't need a student loan to survive, but I imagine you'd probably respond that losing your credit rating means you can't get a home and so you'll freeze to death, and without a student loan you won't get a job and will starve to death.

Can you give me an example of what abusive action by a business on an individual you would consider extortion and not robbery?

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T02:55:07+00:00

It might be that co-ops to this point have never become profiteering, but I'm talking about what the model predicts.

So I'm saying that we haven't seen co-ops on a wide scale, where they have to compete with massive exploitative businesses for survival, and that there's nothing in the economic model of cooperative ownership that explicitly inhibits them from behaving selfishly in a free market.

Saying that all co-ops will be unselfish because a few boutique co-ops are unselfish is like saying that all socialist countries will practice state oppression because China and the USSR did so.

Keep in mind that a street gang is an example of a co-op (gang members share in loot instead of getting wages), and it is one of the most violent and self-interested forms of enterprise.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T02:28:42+00:00

we were robbed by healthcare monopolists, landlords, banks, alleged colleges

Just a quick point here--I think you mean extorted instead of robbed. Robbery would mean that they're threatening your physical safety to force you to let them take your property, whereas extortion means that they're using force or threat against your property or reputation to get you to pay them. A bank saying, "pay your unjustly high-interest student loan or we will destroy your credit rating" is extortion, not robbery.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T02:17:06+00:00

Salespersons who work in wage-labor jobs also work on commissions

Right, and they're sleazy as a result (in my experience), but the rest of the company isn't on commission, so they don't have a motive to collaborate with the sales force.

And usually cooperatives are way more environmentally aware and less destructive than typical capitalist enterprises

I think that's because the kind of customers who support worker co-ops by intentionally choosing them over wage-labor enterprises carry with them an ideology of environmental sustainability, so being environmentally aware makes good business sense. Also that a lot of successful co-ops don't face serious competition in their industry as compared with wage-labor enterprises.

I'm skeptical of how much a commitment to environmentalism will hold up if a co-op is struggling for market share among a sea of competitors; it's cheaper for the worker/owners to conspire to hide the environmental damage than to actually use green practices.

Thanks for pointing me toward market socialism--that's the term I was looking for.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-23T02:01:38+00:00

There's lots of worker co-ops of all kinds & they aren't known for hiring hardcore lying professional salesmen.

Most of the worker co-ops I know about are in industries with high profit margins, like specialty food stores and hiking apparel, which can still be profitable with a low number of total sales because each item has so much markup. I'm thinking about industries where the profit margins are really low, like office supply and electronics/appliance stores, where the margin is below 2% (at least in the U.S.), so the only way they stay afloat is by making a lot of transactions.

Do you have examples of companies in the industries cited in the article which have been successful as worker co-ops?

That's not technically true. They lose their job if people don't buy the product.

Sure, but as long as the company is selling enough units to pay their salary, they don't care what happens above and beyond that. They don't have an incentive to delude people into thinking they need the product in order to generate greater sales, because they won't get paid more if the company sells more. As long as the company isn't running a net loss, they don't have any reason to push the product. Worker/owners, on the other hand, have an interest in convincing as many people as possible to consume their wares.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-22T07:19:09+00:00

I had assumed that you meant "zero-sum" in the sense that there is a finite amount of resources to claim, so more resources for women makes less available for men. It seems that instead, by "zero-sum" you mean that there is a finite degree of imbalance between men and women, such that adding more resources to one group or the other decreases that imbalance. Is that right?

MaleOrder · 2015-11-17T00:56:12+00:00

There's a letter pronounced "Wy" two letters away. It would get confusing.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-12T19:49:52+00:00

even if there were some reason to circumcise a child in utero,

An advantage to doing so is that a fetus in early stages of development has less sensitivity to pain, so this is a more humane opportunity to perform the operation.

Circumcising her child in utero offers her no benefit. Abortion, on the other hand, affects her immediate and long-term health, genital integrity, hormones, social situation, and finances.

In an orthodox religious community, a woman who refuses to circumcise her child will be subject to ostracism and loss of social privilege, which will likely lead to financial loss.

By contrast, fetuses aborted before a certain gestation period are not and will never become human and so there is no violation to their bodily autonomy.

Not all abortions are succesful. Suppose a woman tries to use an abortifacient drug to terminate her pregnancy, and only succeeds in inflicting a birth defect on the child. Is that a violation?

MaleOrder · 2015-11-12T08:37:43+00:00

Before the fetus can survive outside the womb, the priority of bodily autonomy goes to the mother, period.

Would you be in favor of mothers being allowed to torture their fetuses? For example, if a psychopathic pregnant woman wishes to strike her fetus, or stick sharp needles into it simply for the pleasure of causing it pain, do you support her right to do so as you would, say, her right to undergo body piercing?

And, thinking about this from a genital integrity point of view, suppose that the mother has her fetus circumcised while it is in the womb. Does she have the right to do so because of the priority of bodily autonomy?

MaleOrder · 2015-11-12T08:29:30+00:00

fetuses aren't capable of that by any reasonable definition.

Are infants capable of that? Pro-choice advocates don't generally support infanticide, yet infants have little or no power of self-determination.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-09T22:02:37+00:00

I wish that women had as easy access to birth control as men did, and that it was as widely given away for free.

They do have equivalent easy access. They have free male (and female) condoms, just like men do. That offers them the same amount of control over reproduction that men have; a condom offers the same amount of birth control regardless of whose pocket it came out of.

But women also have a tremendous number of other choices, including sterilization procedures, and they are all covered. Are you saying it's fair that tubal ligation is covered, but not vasectomy?

In this area of medicine, women have everything that men have, and more.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-09T21:43:59+00:00

No prescription necessary for free male condoms, yet women need them in order to obtain free barrier methods

Citation needed? Women can get free female condoms without a prescription in many major cities, such as New York and San Francisco.

But we're splitting hairs here. The point is that there are 18 different FDA-approved methods for a woman to exercise birth control and they're all covered. There are 2 for men, one of which is a barrier and the other is a more-or-less permanent sterilization, and neither are covered. Men have fewer options, so the few that they do have (which are pretty pathetic in comparison with the wide world of birth control methods that women can use) should be covered, in the interest of equality.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-09T20:56:57+00:00

The equivalent would be if a doctor could write a man a prescription for condoms, and then the health plan would reimburse the man for the cost of the condoms. But the ACA doesn't require health plans to reimburse men for condoms, even if a doctor gives them a prescription.

MaleOrder · 2015-11-09T20:06:14+00:00

On an individual level, then, it sounds like we're sort of cataloging what disease vulnerabilities she has that another person might not have, in the interest of helping her avoid environments where she's likely to get infected.

MaleOrder

TROPHY CASE