Delicious LiveJournal Links for 8-2-2010

[andrewducker]

• Industrial Revolution was powered by child slaves
  (tags: uk children labour history)
• US companies are making money - they just aren't passing it on to their workers
  (tags: business usa)
• What do sixteen hundred Christian boys think girls should wear?
  (tags: women men feminism clothing religion christianity headdesk)

Comments

[innerbrat]

Do I want to click that last one? I mean, you linked, so that implies it's worth a read, but will it cause my brain to explode?

[andrewducker]

It's not going to tell you anything you don't already know, but it's engaged with in a humorous manner (it's on Mighty God King's journal, which I assume you've encountered before)

[innerbrat]

No offense to Mighty God King's humour, which I'm sure is there, but I'm just saddened at the very concept of this

Not the concept of modesty, which I understand is very important for many women. the concept of men telling women what modesty is. that isnt' a discussion it's a lecture.

Not surprised, but very sad.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, same here.

We really need a change in society to one that tells people that what other people wear is none of their damn business.

[innerbrat]

I liked the comment that implied Christian men have a responsibility to be as unnattractive as possible to avoid tempting The Gays.

[nameandnature]

Metafilter's discussion on the survey had some good comments: this one rang a few bells, although British evangelicalism isn't quite the same as the American sort, thank Dawkins. I found valkyryn's "more theologically knowledgeable than thou" attitude rather annoying though: many people in that thread pointing out evangelical misogyny are ex-evangelicals, not ignorant outsiders.

[innerbrat]

Thank you very much for the link, it was very educational.

Of course, the idea that women have to be responsible for male reactions to women isn't in any way unique to any religion or culture.

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers.

Yup. After the old lot made a bunch of cuts (including me) at the beginning of the year, their profits exceeded targets by a fairly big margin. Which ironically meant my last bonus payment was pretty chunky. I kept saying to everyone else that their bonus was just my salary for the quarter split n-ways.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

That article was just disgusting. You always hope that your suspicions along these lines are wrong, that that sort of greed just isn't actually that widespread, that it really isn't their fault, that they have to make these cuts...

Blech.

[andrewducker]

Seems a bit baffling to me. If I was sacked then less would get done by the company, and they'd make less profits. We'd only let go of people if they weren't actually producing more than they cost. Either these companies had staff they weren't actually using, or they just shot themselves in the foot. Very odd.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Well, clearly they had staff who were not as productive as they could be. However, job satisfaction/happiness is what will have suffered instead, along with the economy since the companies could clearly afford to hire those people. So it's just corporate greed at work, and although it seems to make sense that you shouldn't hire more people than you actually need, there's a definite advantage to doing so if you can - and if you are working by a motivator other than greed.

As Ed Byrne observed on Question Time the other week the best thing to do during an economic downturn is to hire one guy to dig a hole and another to fill it, not to cut jobs when you actually don't need to. Pay/hour cuts and redundancies should be fuelled by necessity, not greed.

It's worth observing that this, in a rudimentary sort of way, is a pretty strong argument for the public sector being better for the economy than the private. The private sector is motivated entirely by profits and will consequently make cuts wherever they can get away with it so that the people at the top have more and more money; consequently they cannot be relied upon to provide work to stimulate the economy. The public sector, from an economic POV, is motivated to spend their whole budget by the end of the year, and will therefore only make cuts where they have to. Naturally there have to be measures in place to make sure that said budget isn't too large and is used responsibly, but that's another argument.

[andrewducker]

I don't believe that companies are there to provide social support for people. They're there to provide goods as cheaply and efficiently as possible, with as much competition as possible to keep their prices low. The state is there to provide stability and support.

I want companies to get rid of people that aren't useful to them - and then I want the government to help those people cope, and retrain for new jobs if they can't get other ones immediately. I like the Nordic system, where welfare payments are higher, and life long education is encouraged and assisted.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that companies are there to provide social support for people... The state is there to provide stability and support.

I think that's a fair enough premise to work from but take into consideration that I'm coming from an angle where I believe in a strong public sector, and would like to see said stability and support provided through said sector in the form of both state-run industry and government subsidy - it's been shown before that competition is not actually the amazing catch-all motivator for high quality at low prices that everyone thinks it is (and I'm sure I'm remembering that from an article that you yourself posted).

I want companies to get rid of people that aren't useful to them

I agree; what I'm saying is that 'useful' and 'necessary' are two different things.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

What happens if non-useful goes beyond 'the company' to 'the society'? UK PLC would be a more efficient enterprise if those who were no longer productive or consuming as they should were done away with.

[andrewducker]

Regulating externalities is what governments are for :->

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

"...the best thing to do during an economic downturn is to hire one guy to dig a hole and another to fill it..."

Not disagreeing with you here, but just wondering why that is?

[andrewducker]

Well, you have cheap labour lying around the place, and you're having to pay them benefits anyway, I'd say it was a perfect time to start a big building project which was socially useful. Like, say, a big high-speed train line from London to Edinburgh :->

[innerbrat]

*points furiously at the New Deal*

Did NO ONE in power in ANY Western country take 20th century history at High School/GCSE level?

The entire reason the current recession makes me angry is that no one seems inclined to do what worked last time. I guess we'll have to have plan B: World War.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, tell me about it...

Apparently, just getting a high-speed train line started will take about 5 years of bureaucracy, which is longer than the recession is likely to last.

*sigh*

[innerbrat]

Not if they continue to do nothing about it...

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

There's currently a belief among the top tiers of American society (not the political class, the business class/CEOs) that the New Deal was actually a mistake, that FDR prolonged the Depression rather than shortened it, and that the World War was the only thing that pulled us out of it.

[innerbrat]

I'm going to admit that all I know is what I learned in school, which is obviously flawed, but I'm intrigued to know if you know more, or how this is supposed to have prolonged the depression?

[When you say "business class/CEOs" in reference to the USA, my assumption is a person who still has an economic/political interest in limiting Government spending on infrastructure. So colour me sceptical but interested?]

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

I really don't know much about it; it's an economically wonky, heavy-jargon theory (and thus beyond my inclination to study) that popped up in the US about a decade ago and took off among the crowd that hates government "interference" in, uh, business, the universe, and everything.

A quick Googling shows these more-or-less reputable sources, in pretty much chronological order: FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (book published in 2003), How FDR's New Deal Harmed Millions of Poor People (CATO Institute, 2003), FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate (UCLA, 2004), How Government Prolonged the Depression, (Wall Street Journal, 2009, opinion piece by the same two UCLA economists referenced above).

Just for reference's sake, I should mention that the CATO Institute is a Libertarian organization, the Wall Street Journal is an extremely conservative paper (I think you'd call them Tories), and the two economists, despite being at the University of California, actually belong to the Chicago school of economics, which is called that just because some of the leading proponents of it came from the University of Chicago. It's a new-ish school of thought in economics, one that throws out Keynes and Galbraith and elevates Milton Friedman to the status of demi-god.

[innerbrat]

Ha, suddenly I'm way out of my depth.

It's so hard to have opinions when I don't have the time to learn! But thanks for the information anyway!

- hey, how do you know jawalter?

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't. I think I friended him way back when he was blogging the Bible, and he friended me for a while, then dropped me, but I kept him on because his posts amuse me. :)

[innerbrat]

Well, he is awesome. And his Bible posts did rock.

(He's my girlfriend's roommate. Small world.)

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's hilarious!

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

"Child labour was the crucial ingredient which allowed Britain's Industrial Revolution to succeed, new research by a leading economic historian has concluded..."

Maybe child "labour" could replace all those immigrants that Arizona (and other right-wingnuts) want to get rid of. Americans don't want to pick crops? Have the kids do it!

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Why not immigrant kids? Cheaper than US kids and adult immigrants alike!