Thomasio

Maybe you should get some information, before you pretend to know more than me? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-16/where-worlds-unsold-cars-go-die To answer your last question: Yes, I've worked in large companies, like Siemens in Munich, I've worked in smaller companies like a computer reseller in Stuttgart, I've run my own business for about 5 years and I'm perfectly aware of what's going on, especially the fact that small business cannot compete against the bribery driven politics in favor of large corporations and their gigantic over production.

I suggest a few lessons in basic math. An increasing productivity of about 3% per year means, every single worker doubles the amount of stuff he produces about every 25 years. 100 years of 3% increase means doubling 4 times, means every single worker today produces 16 times more stuff than 100 years ago. Furthermore between 1900 and 2000 world population has grown from 1.5 bln to 6.1 bln, today we're already over 7 bln. That means not only every worker produces 16 times more stuff, also there are 4 times more people, including 4 times more workers, all together making 64 times more stuff than 100 years ago. Do workers today make 64 times the money, or at least 16 times the money they made 100 years ago? AFTER inflation that is. Nope, they don't, by FAR not. http://usa.usembassy.de/etexts/his/e_prices1.htm In 1915 (taking the middle between the numbers shown for 1910 and 1920) the average income was $990 per year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States In 2014 the average income was $53,657 per year actually going BACKWARDS from 2013. Now what did consumer prices do in the same time? Let's take for example bread. http://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-2/pdf/average-food-prices-a-snapshot-of-how-much-has-changed-over-a-century.pdf $0.056 in 1913 and $1.422 in 2013. Some things like potatoes have increased by 40 times, other things like butter only 9 times, I take a rough estimate of 25 times. The rest is easy math. Production increased by 4 times per worker, prices increased by 25 times, requiring 100 times more income to keep the same purchasing power in relation to production. But the average income increased only by 54 times, meaning in relation to production the population has only HALF the purchasing power, or in other words, roughly half the worlds industry is doomed to collapse, as soon as the population has maxed out their credit limits. Do you need examples, proving this is already happening? Half of all the cars manufactured in the world cannot be sold, because there are no buyers.

Then I guess they must have finished building their company in 1860, they make their 1 bln a year ever since and never spend any, or how else did they get to 151bln net value today? http://www.techscio.com/richest-family-in-the-world/

Man you're so wrong, I can't even begin to describe it. You're getting back over and over to points I have explained several times already, always claiming I had not. You keep adding points, asking for things I have explained long ago, yet you still claim I haven't. Take this for example: Remember my posting about atomic power in Germany? How public opinion in Germany was able to turn politics upside down within a week? No change in government needed, a simple pre election survey is sufficient, no matter what party has the government, as soon as they discover they have lost the majority of voters they change their policies. Of course in the end there will be no government anymore, but for the time being, for the first initial steps in the right direction, we can use our voting power to turn the government and their opposition against each other. Once we did some initial steps, once the people have understood who has the power in a democracy, the rest of the transition into a free society will come almost by itself. Suppose Labor would win the next elections with the promise to make manufacturing worker owned and then they wouldn't deliver on the promise. What would Cameron do right after the news is out that Labor didn't deliver? Cameron would understand how he can get the voters back, he would campaign himself for worker owned manufacturing and THAT would then make Labor deliver on their promise. For the rest, read my earlier postings, it's all there, most of it multiple times and if you insist you can't find it, I suggest new glasses. Why is Hillary Clinton suddenly against war? Maybe because election polls have shown her, with her pro war attitude she was losing to Bernie Sanders? Does that make either of them a good president? Probably not, but it gets us out of the war. Did it require electing Sanders and wait 4 years? Nope, a simple election poll was sufficient.

It's almost funny how you are able to turn the most obvious clearest possible wording into its opposite. Which part of "If the owner doesn't want the company anymore" and "give workers the first right to purchase the enterprise" contains ANY kind of force? Doesn't the owner not wanting the company anymore already include that he has volunteerly decided to sell it? Doesn't the first right include the option to pass?

Because if employers attempt to keep things going as they are now, by the time the fact they can't find workers anymore will force them to pay more, economy will have collapsed already and it will take a LONG time to rebuild society afterwards. If you can mange to make deals with Asian manufacturers and international transport companies that through the sheer size of the business allows you to negotiate prices nobody else can reach, if you then have the money to launch a gigantic chain of stores, if you then can manage to locate these stores in areas where there are so many unemployed that workers are willing to work for next to nothing, you surely could do that, just like Walmart did it. Here are the actual numbers An increasing profit reaching $130 bln in 2015. All competitors combined make less profit. http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Wal-Mart_%28WMT%29/Data/Gross_Profit Running 11,500 stores in 28 countries. $7.2 bln paid out to shareholders. http://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/company-facts $2 bln donated to charity. => means over $120 bln left for the Waltons. 2.2 million employees https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart Do the math, a rough estimate will do, even without knowing the minimum wages in all 28 countries and without knowing how many hours they work on average. Let's say $10 per hour tripled gives $20 per hour and worker extra cost for the Waltons. Let's ignore the vast amount of part time workers and those working for less than $10, let's say that evens out with those who earn more than $10. (If you want to insist their average worker makes more than $10 per hour and/or works more than 40 hours a week, just alter my initial statement from triple to increase by $20 per hour, that's the same to me, but maybe you find it easier following the calculation then.) $20 * 2.2 million workers * 40 hours a week * 52 weeks a year = $91.5 bln. Still leftover profit for the Waltons roughly $30 bln a year. Obviously those are the numbers before taxes. If there's a tax on wages, that would be deduced from wages, same as workers who work for $10 do not get paid the full $10, while a tax on their profits would automatically be reduced by the smaller profit they make when paying higher wages. At the same time the economy in all these 28 countries would experience a gigantic boost in demand. $91.5 bln more purchasing power in the population would create demand for more goods, would create the need for more production, would create investments, factories and jobs, which would allow Walmart to get back to (if not exceed) their 120 bln profit upon triple wages, they would have more diligent and better motivated workers, better service and they would force their competition to pay more as well, or else the competition would end up with the bottom end of worker skills. Furthermore it would force literally ALL other businesses in ALL other branches of business to raise wages accordingly, because no hairdresser would do haircuts for minimum wage, if he could make 3 times as much filling bags at Walmart, which would again cause an even bigger increase in demand, even more investment, even more jobs and so on, an endless spiral upwards in a win-win-win-win-win situation. But before you come up with the usual counter argument: Nope, nobody would mind if a haircut would become more expensive, if everybody had that much more income. There wouldn't even be any inflation, as long as production can keep up with the increasing demand, only if production would fall behind, prices would increase.

I don't even have to go to any other posting, RIGHT HERE you're doing it AGAIN. I point out a pretty good idea, you point out that the source this idea comes from is a political party, therefore cannot be trusted, therefore the idea isn't going to work and anyone supporting it must be a communist (which again you mistake for socialist). In fact this idea is VERY old, it is the core idea of socialism, it only was forgotten when in Russia the communists took over and declared a state organized capitalism to be socialism. Ever since that ALL attempts towards socialism copied communism, nobody ever tried the original idea of socialism. That's why socialism has a bad reputation now, while communism is the actual problem. In fact, the labor party is a center right wing authoritarian party, therefore as far away from my personal point of view as it could be, only beaten by the extreme right wing authoritarians, which would be UKIP and Conservatives. Another fact is, YOU are one of those who want to do a SLOW transition from authoritarian government to a free society, therefore YOU support the current authoritarian government, meaning YOU trust them to keep going until the slow transition to a free society is done. I on the other hand am one who does NOT believe the authoritarian government has much time left, before the exponential increasing debt will cause a complete collapse of the system, therefore I am more into a faster transition, which does require active self defense against the stealing done by authoritarian governments. Still I am aware, we cannot do revolution like they do in North Africa or so, we have to begin within our existing system, pick any idea that would lead into the right direction, in this case worker owned manufacturing, support it and push for it by voting for the party. If they then don't fulfil the promise (which I fully expect) at the very least all other political parties will understand, what the voters want, namely worker owned manufacturing. Sooner or later, where it becomes the sooner, the stronger the support is, we will get to a movement that the political parties cannot drop in an empty promise anymore, sooner or later there will be a politician that actually does implement a law supporting worker owned manufacturing. Then we're one step done and can go for the next. Turning everything anyone says down, only because you expect he won't do it, while nobody else even says anything in this direction will never get you anywhere and accusing me of supporting the labor party is the precise opposite of what you should be doing if you were anywhere near libertarian.

I don't think repeating that would help either of us any. You seem to have the impression of me being a communist and no matter how often I express that libertarian left is as far away from communism as libertarian right is from authoritarian right, you keep ignoring that and keep contesting my postings by claiming that my communist ideas (even though you call them socialist, what your're contesting is communism) wouldn't work. How would you like it, if I would keep calling you a supporter of big government on the authoritarian right? If you want to see what I want to do, read through my previous postings. While you're at it, try to find ANYTHING I wrote that sounds like communism and if you cannot find anything, check your reply right underneath my posting, accusing me of being a communist (even though you call it socialist). Then come back to me and explain to me, why you contest the opposite of what I'm saying and why you're not simply agreeing with me, which is identical to contesting the opposite of what I'm saying, only sounds less negative. If you then still want some clue of what I want, THIS http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-35370234 seems to me like a pretty good first step in the right direction. Take government AND the super rich out of production at the same time. If the owner doesn't want the company anymore, give workers the first right to purchase the enterprise. Let workers have the full fruit of their labor.

In a truly free market, business models that depend on paying the workers less than they need to make a living cannot exist, simply because no worker would be able to afford taking a job there. That's why in a free society wages will automatically adjust to a given minimum, completely without any government setting any minimum. Companies like Walmart will simply lose all their workers, or have to replace them with students who don't have to make a living out of their wages. How on earth could you possibly believe that? Isn't Walmart the perfect example that the wealth of the owners has no influence on the wages they pay? Walmart could easily triple the wages of all their workers without increasing any of their prices, just by lowering the personal profits of the owners a bit, yet they don't have to, because there are more than enough unemployed workers around willing to take any job, no matter how low the salary and that's why they don't pay more. Only and exclusively the fact, in a free society without welfare they won't find workers for these low wages anymore will force them to increase wages.

It's easy to lose the perspective. $2.41 bln sounds like incredibly expensive, but divide it by the 100 years it will last, divide that by the amount of atomic power plants that haven't melted down, then divide that by the energy these power plants produce. You will get to a total cost of (I'm too lazy to calculate that precisely now) a tiny fraction of a cent per kwh. Then compare that to the continuous cost of medical supplies for all those millions that suffer from the pollution of cole and gas fired power plants. I haven't done that calculation, so I'm still not sure, but I guess you wouldn't get to a result that would give either form of energy a clear edge over the other.

Sometimes I have the impression, some of you guys in here misunderstand me on purpose. I NEVER said anything remotely close to "need artificial help", I said the precise opposite of that. I said, it will happen automatically once the free market has learned how it works. Any attempt of whatever form of artificial help only prevents the markets from learning the true conditions of life in a free world.

It may be quite late for me to step in here, since this is a rather old topic, but since there is still activity in here, let me give you a few ideas out of my personal experience. I grew up in an almost pure male environment, aside of my mom and my younger sister. Almost all the neighbors who had children my age were all boys, some coincidence. In school I was in a 100% boys class, because in my school in my year there were so many more boys than girls, that they decided to make all classes mixed 50/50 plus one class all boys and I was one of those. By the time I got to high school, out of the past experience with girls, or better the lack thereof, I kinda avoided any contact to girls. When my interest in girls awakened, sometime around my 16th or 17th bday, I had the (false) impression, I should look for a girl outside my own environment, no clue why, maybe I didn't see any attractive girls among my friends, or because I was kinda late and all of the girls I knew already had a boyfriend and I wasn't in for "stealing" one from one of my friends. I went to bars and discotheques just to discover, there was a vast majority of single men, all looking for girls, but rarely any single girls and the few there were, mostly were looking for a rich guy. After a while I kinda gave up, thinking I might remain single for the rest of my life. But then things happened on their own, or at least without me consciously working in that direction. My first job was a computer technician, doing PC home service at customers, in the very earliest stages of personal computers, where anyone knowing how to fix a computer was considered an over natural being or something like that. At first I didn't even realize what was going on, I just wondered, why some single women, working at home with their computer would call me for help, while there was nothing wrong with their computers. Call me dumb or slow, but it took me almost a year before I discovered, they didn't want my help with computers, they wanted ME. Once I got the point I had a WILD time with up to 5 "girlfriends" simultaneously, up to 15 years older than me, which gave me some good experience. But then one day I messed up, those girls got to know each other and I was single again. Then I started playing pool billard in a club and at least within the limited skills available in my town I was pretty good at it. I became the #1 in the club ranking, got quite some attention, including all the girls in the club, I had somewhat free choice which one I wanted. Of course I picked one and this time I was smart enough to limit it to that one. We were a good match, but her parents didn't like me, maybe because they had heard of me and my story with those 5 girlfriends, however, it didn't last too long. Next the internet was invented, I was among the first people online, I saw the development of the very first chat rooms, followed by the very first gaming rooms. I learned to play backgammon there and even on a global level I was pretty good at it. In the early times, a game room was mostly a chat room, where the actual game was somewhat only a side event, but different from plain chat rooms there was no majority of men and the general attitude of lonesome men bothering anyone who pretended to be female didn't exist in the game rooms. I managed to become #1 in the ranking of one of the biggest backgammon game room on the web, got the attention of all the others, including all the girls, meaning now I had somewhat free choice worldwide among 1000s of girls. There was one who lived only 20km away from me, I met her, she was by only a few days difference my age and I fell in love instantly. She must have felt the same and we had 4 wonderful years, until she had an opportunity for her own career that took her 1000s of km away. She took the offer and despite promising to stay in touch, she disappeared, I never heard from her again. I went back to the backgammon room, which by now was a bit converted, because those lonesome men from the chat rooms had discovered where the real girls are, but there still were some players who remembered me. We founded a little online club for backgammon, setting up teams, competing against each other, where I became the captain of my team. After a year or so, one of the other captains had a problem with her computer. I offered to come over and fix it, even though she lived 1000km away in a different country. Since that country was Italy and it was summer, I figured taking a few days vacation at the beach would be a good idea and fixing her computer was a good excuse to take a few days off work. I got stuck there, I moved in with her a year later, later on married her and tomorrow is our 10th anniversary. I found her too late, so we don't have kids, but we're quite happy anyway. In short: You shouldn't try and seek a girl, the whole idea of going around looking for a girl is already the wrong approach. Try to be good at something, if possible the best, even if it's something as meaningless as online backgammon and the opportunity, maybe even a choice will come to you by itself.

Can't remember in which one, because I've seen too many of them, but I remember Richard Dawkins stating in a discussion about this topic, there are in fact not only fossile, but existing trees today that have more than 6000 rings.

I only have a few unsorted thoughts on this, but maybe I can give a few starting points of discussion. First of all there is a limited amount of natural energy, such as hydroelectric power, but the consumption of humanity is way more than that could ever produce, so let's take that for a given base amount and let's talk about the rest. Ethanol causes during it's production more pollution than it saves in the end, so that's nonsense. There is no renewable energy that could work without backup, because we do not (yet) have any efficient way of storing energy over longer periods of time. Whether it's wind or solar, during a night without wind it requires the same capacity of non renewable energy. The only question is, what kind of backup power to build. A cole or gas fired power plant produces pollution that causes a near endless amount of health problems and (according to the Heal-Study) kills on average 18,000 people per year alone in Europe. http://www.env-health.org/resources/projects/unpaid-health-bill/ Not sure about the whole world, but I guess it would number in a few 100,000 dead per year. Accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima kill (by inofficial numbers, so don't take them for a fact) 1-2 million people. Furthermore smaller incidents in atomic power plants kill on average roughly 50 people per year per power plant. Furthermore atomic waste will cause environmental problems for millennia to come, or at least until technology develops a new generation of atomic power plants that can use spent fuel (which is in development). The calculation isn't easy, but it comes down to which type of power causes less death. Are two major disasters times 1-2 million plus a few 100 smaller incidents in 50+ years more than a few 100k dead plus millions of sick people per year? I myself am not sure at all, looks on first view like it's about the same numbers. I'm only aware, until we develop the technology for cold fusion, there will be no power that doesn't cause harm, above the on start mentioned base amount. I'm also aware that without using all this power, if we would reduce power consumption to the natural base level, the loss in technological options, slower progress in medical research and all that would cause WAY more death than the production of the energy causes.

Let me see if I got that right. First you claim what I said is wrong and you contest my claim that the poor will need a sufficient income by: And two sentences later you repeat with slightly different words precisely what I had said, contradicting yourself: How is that any different from me saying the rich may make more than the poor, but they must leave the poor enough to buy what the rich produce? Same thing with you, @B0b No difference to what I said, only different words. So let me put it in different words again: Today, under an authoritarian government that redistributes income from the middle class to the poor, employers can squeeze down wages and employees are still willing to take the job, because they can rely on welfare to fill up whatever is missing between their salary and their needs. Without governement BOTH employers as well as employees will have to adjust to the new situation. Employees will not be able to take jobs that they cannot make a living from, that's quite obvious from start. Employers will have to learn the lesson that they can no longer squeeze down wages below the basic needs of their workers. All I'm saying is, IFFFFF there was an instant switch from todays authoritarian welfare system to a free society there would be some employers still trying to pay less than required for a living, those would on start still have employees, simply because not all poor people can launch their own business instantly. These "unfair" employers would outcompete the fair employers and by the time they lose their workers because the workers cannot afford to work for so little money anymore, a great many of fair businesses would have gone bankrupt. That would cause a huge crash in the markets, before new fair employers can build a new fair free society. IFFFF the switch to a free society comes slow enough, so employers can adjust to the new situation slowly, there wouldn't be much of a problem, except of the fact that during the time of transition we have to keep the old system alive. If the old system collapses before we're done with the transition, there won't be a transition anymore, but complete collapse with unpredictable consequences. Since I believe our todays corrupt authoritarian system will not survive for long anymore, I'm afraid we do not have the time for a slow transition. But then a faster transition will cause the huge crash described above.