Socialism

Don't fib! I've stated that they refer to supply & demand

Dig yourself deeper! Monopsony is a market structure. Supply & demand is used to understand the equilibrium result. Asymmetric information, for the labour market, delivers an upward sloping supply curve for the firm, despite there apparently being a competitive industry. All supply & demand!

Now can you refer to these multitude of factors? So far you've effectively said "they are supply and demand, supply and demand, supply and demand and- on yessum- supply and demand".

 

What have I got wrong? You won the strawman. Got anything relevant to what I have stated and you've chosen to quote and respond to. And you won't find any assertions as to what factors that effect price "refer to"

 

Everything! You've talked about a multitude of factors and, when you couldn't hide any more, you just stated numerous aspects of supply and demand. As I said, anti-socialists rarely understand the labour market. However, they never are as funny as you. I salute you

 

Nobody other than YOU. You created the imaginary argument as to what these factors "refer to", and you are the one who knocks them down.

 

"refer to", "aspects of" these are your words, not used by me. Just another version of the same strawman. Supply, demand, monopsony and asymmetric knowledge. FOUR different factors affecting price, not two factors. Supply and demand are but just two of the many factors that effect price. It's been two days of your babbling in response to this simple assertion and you haven't yet supplied anything to dispute this fact and have only confirmed the assertion.

 

You've only referred to supply and demand. Golly, you just keep on going with the humour!

 

No (*)(*)(*)(*) Sherlock. AND it is a factor that can effect price with or without effecting supply because supply and monopsony are Two different factors that can effect price, not one in the same

 

I'll go through it slowly for you. We (that is you, me and- if you have an imaginary friend called Dave- him too) understand monopsony through supply & demand. It merely informs us of the slope of the firm supply curve. So how is the monopsonist choosing its wage? Why, golly, through supply and demand criteria!

 

No, the four were contained within what you took the time to edit out of what you quoted of my post

Or, are you trying to claim that monopsony and asymmetric knowledge don't effect price?

 

They're both features of supply. You're just referring to supply and demand. Keep going though. I'm still finding it entertaining how you keep saying "supply and demand isn't supply and demand".

 

Nope, supply is a quantity of labor in a market, monopsony is only one buyer in that market. Two different factors that independent of each other effect price. You demonstrate every day that you can't comprehend the economic jargon you parrot.

 

What exact socialist policies do you want?

 

The last thing your discussion needs is to become heated :/

 

Chortle, chortle, still saying "supply is supply" aren't you? Monopsony informs us that the market supply curve is the firm's supply curve. You're just religiously giving supply & demand analysis. There's no debate in that, so seeing you repeat your error tirelessly is just for entertainment value.

When you do realise your error, don't forget the question: What multitude of factors are these? (Hint: don't just say "there is supply & demand and, oh yes, supply and demand. They differ because I've used & and then and")

 

Yep, and you still claiming monopsony is supply. I am right, you are deluded.

So where is the error, if there is no debate? That is your purpose in selecting your strawmen. Selecting strawmen where there is no debate, so you can pretend you won the debate you imagined.

 

But he would still have to compete internationally. China is moving the opposite direction, so this problem cannot be overcome unless it is a world wide system.

Collectivists are all the same in that they want everyone to be the same.

 

Reiver says capitalism requires government and coersion, thrives due to economic rents, assures underpayment, and unemployment, and that there is monopsony in the labor market. Sounds like Reiver, along with many others, thinks capitalism is too prone to corruption.

In a competitive environment that has reached stability (where most products and services operate), prices for equivalant products are pretty close to equal. Why, because companies want to maximize profits. If one company lowers prices, attempting to capture more market share. The competitors do likewise. This will continue until lowering the price has a bigger impact on profits than the increased market share. Companies that can't achieve that price will exit the market. The cost structure for the remaining companies are pretty much the same. The cost for materials, whether modified in house (vertical integration) or purchased are similar, as are wages. Collusion isn't required, it is the invisible hand of market pricing at work.

Is there "monopsony" (a single buyer) in the labor force, yes, only if that "buyer" is the market as a whole (labor rates are the same because the market won't support higher wages, and the employees won't work for less).

Is there underpayment? How could that be if wages are set by competitive forces. An employer can lower wages, and then employees can seek employment elsewhere, or can reduce productivity (increasing wages by 10% doesn't result in 10% more productivty, but reducing wages by 10% usually reduces productivy by more than 10%).

Where are the economic rents? To be competitive, economic rents have to be minimized along with all other costs. Paying an employee (front line, or CEO) more than the minimum that they will work for is an economic rent. Unless, there is collusion between government and the company. A few well place regulations, and competition is crippled, profits soar. The coimpany execturives, and politicians reap their economic rents.

Any coersion comes form the market, if the employer can't following costs down, they lose that business, and can't afford those employees.

Does capitalism require unemployment? Or, could that come from increasing productivity? What happens when I create 10 times what I consume?




Reiver says his brand of socialism, where the workers own the means of production, is better than capitalism.

I still have no answer how new companies, entrepeneurs, and innovation, would be funded. Or how an employee would sell off ownership (if they voted to allow that) in one company to buy into another. But, lets look at a few other "assumptions".

What about increased efficiency and productivity? In an earlier post, Reiver referenced a paper that said union employees are more efficient because, with less fear of losing their job, they will make helpful suggestions on productivity enhancements. Could they be squelched, not by management, but by co-workers? What happens to a union employee that outperforms his peers? Do the peers increase their performance, or "suggest" that employee stop making the rest look bad? It would apprear the latter as union shops are not significantly more productive than non-union shops as demonstrated by the fact that unions have lost ground in the private sector. How would peer pressure apply in a worker owned company?

What about unemployment in socialism? Reiver says productivity increases, therefore even fewer people are needed. As productivity increases, the cost per employee falls, with the floor being minimum wage.

Would underemployment be eliminated in a worker owned company? If there were some factor other than market forces at work, allowing higher wages, then the existing worker owned companies could cut labor costs just a bit and dominate the market. No evidence of that.

What would change in a worker owned company that eliminates collusion between government and the company? Maybe the workers would vote themselves a piece of that corruption.

 

By removing the wealth from the wealthy with a wealth tax and giving it to workers as they ccome of age. I believe they came up with a figure of $80,000 per worker, granted by the government so he can go buy a job. .

 

I just know what I'm talking about. A perfect competitive labour market? Supply & Demand. A monopsonistic labour market? Supply & Demand. The only difference? Market and firm labour supply coincide with monopsony.

Don't worry though, keep your 'supply & demand is supply & demand' tremendously high powered argument going.

Whilst I've found your silliness particularly entertaining, the purpose was clear: to highlight that anti-socialists typically start from a common starting point- an ignorance of the labour market and the creation of inefficient wage differentials and social immobility. To reject supply and demand as main determinants of wages, you'd have to shift to heterodox models: from post-Keynesian analysis and how it rejects the simultaneous determination of wages and employment to the institutionalist analysis into the creation of wage norms.

 

You havent identified the error. And you didnt contradict anything I stated.

 

Two overlooked problems I see with Capitalism are inheritance and unpaid job training. Both of these put inferior people in superior positions and make it impossible to judge the economic system itself. Economics treats a living human organization as some inanimate entity to be analyzed according to its structure.

 

I haven't just referred to your error (where you've foolishly said "its not just supply & demand, its also supply & demand"), I've also illustrated how you put foot in it by referring to these multitude of non-supply/demand factors. That necessarily leads to an heterodox understanding of the labour that pinpoints the sources of inefficiency that naturally occur in capitalism. Ultimately that was the fun factor. You had no where to go; anything you could say would attack your own position. I thanks you for that. You've been very useful in illustrating the point!

 

Inheritance is (usually) passed from parent to child. Who would you have get inheritance? If I knew inheritance was going to be confiscated, I would find a way to transfer that wealth pre-death.

Unpaid job training? Isn't that what trade school, college, etc. is all about? The winner is almost always the employee.

 

No it doesn't. Only neoclassical theory does that, with labour reduced to isoquants and production theory. We miss out on the nature of institutionalism and how, through the profit motive, hierarchical systems eliminate the value of the individual's imagination.

 

Never said any such thing. So now we can see you are left with nothing but strawmen and fabricated quotes attributed to me.