That happened to me. My career as a rotoscope artist was outsourced to Vancouver and India and I was left with no work and qualified for nothing. I sent out a thousand resumes. Eventually I lost my condo and now work minimum wage jobs. There is not one person in America or on Earth that cares in the slightest if I am dead. This is my America -- nobody cares if you are dead.
What makes no sense to me is when they outsource to *youknowwho* , these workers are CRAP! Productivity goes down, IT projects and products get fucked up all over the place. The company starts producing rubbish software, but they don't even care. WTF?
''global warming hoax'' ... see this phrase on google as other searches can be ''google biased'' ''AGW is a lie '' i.e. anti science.... but Noam is brilliant on say education ...hopeful future etc. ''thanks for answer ''
philipp king so you know! that global warming is a hoax? what's the hoax btw? is there no warming whatsoever? is there warming, but humans have no influence? global warming is too diffecult a topic. I'm sure so far all we have are estimates and guesses. from both sides!
I got my Economics Degree 40 years ago. I have studied Economics and Sociology my entire adult Life. I work for the DoD at an Aerospace Facility for the last 35 years. Every day as a drive to or from work I drive past a "Homeless Camp", what used to be called a "Hobo Jungle". Whenever a person who is low wage and lives Check to Check drives past this encampment they MUST think; "There, but for the Grace of God, go I". Almost 50 million Americans are just one or two paychecks away from homelessness. Keep the poor frightened and they will eat more shit, for less money than a confident Union Worker. From an Economist's point of view that is why the USA "killed" the Unions after about 1965. Keeping workers scared to death will make them work harder and eat more shit without a complaint to be heard...
Tanks you comment make clear to me was going on in terms of Imigracion and illegal immigration in USA. I live in Washington state and let me tell you things are crazy. The Government is bringing Mexicans by the thousands to harvest and they get screw bad, but of course they don't care because in Mexico is worse.
Ever since I was a child I asked why we would be worried about our working rights here in the United States but not that of every country we work within. Capitalism was the answer I was given from teachers . When I brought up the fact that a company’s overhead was far less expensive because of horrible working conditions and unlivable wages . Yet the company passed on none of this to its consumers . The company never attempted to help the country it was milking . I was told I didn’t understand . My teachers and those I went to for advice couldn’t say America is evil . They couldn’t admit that the only people profiting from this atrocity were those that already owned everything. America is evil .
In 1981, my aunt who was a lawyer told me that if I went to law school a good direction to go would be international unions. That was almost 40 years ago. I hope international unions are not unicorns.
When I was about 12...someone told me..."Remember the Golden Rule..." I thought it was do unto others...but it is really...he who has the gold...RULES.....
Once, anxiety used to be mankind's sister. Nowadays though, those in power perverted her into their servant. Anxiety ist the most powerful instrument to suppress any resistance. In modern society many people are fully absorbed by fear. Ironically, in the "land of the free and the brave" people made themselves servants to their master: anxiety.
Advanced technology has allowed for people to control and take advantage of others, by giving those with resources a lot of power. If we became independent from technology and society then we can be more free
I like the thumbnail because it looks like Chomsky is gesturing while saying something like "Hold up, hold up! Guess what else these fuckin' banks are doin'..."
1:14 "We are an innovative society." This lust for innovation then only comes along as: "We don't know what we need or want anymore, but we certainly have to work. Let's invent stuff then so we eventually can work again." In the end it has been shown that since the emergence of integrated circuits new innovations aren't able to create more jobs than they eventually destroy or get shipped overseas. We have to cut ourselves from the dependence of working to create more profits for somebody. I mean why is it a rational thought that we can't spend money publicly for safe roads, bridges, railways, education, healthcare etc. but it is the greatest thing in the world to accumulate monetary wealth that in the end never get's resolved in consumption.
Here's why I find humanity awesome: About 30 people disliked it and are compelled to comment on it using Freshman economics, and some blog comments they read yesterday concerning Hayek. On the other hand, 700 people liked it (that's twice an order of magnitude more...), and probably fewer than 3-4% of them are exchanging comments with the haters. BUT... fully **85,000 people** watched it, presumably contemplated it, and will gather more information before speaking on the topic. I find it amazing that 30 people can hate Chomsky, argue in favor of positivist social science epistemology and yet not trust the normal distribution.... as if the other 700 or 85,000 were daft, and that they alone had the keys to Truth. THAT, my friends, is irony...
False reasoning. You can find similar numbers on flat Earth videos, and also similar conversations. Here is one 45k, 2k likes, 150 dislikes. Does that mean flat earthers were right all along? I don't think so. Maybe it's irony, dunno.
I have dreamed of contacting him but I'm not worthy. I think he responds as well to posts on z magazine blogs. search z magazine chomsky and it is #1 result. Great to know he is humble enough to spend the time in his busy life to talk with ordinary people.
Global outsourcing gives Western based corporations a chance to shake-off domestic workers that had good benefits and wages, including good health and safety standards in their work places. Corporate access to a labor market bereft of good health and safety standards for their workers, including a living wage and pensions means the entrepreneurs and investors obscenely enrich themselves at a huge social cost at home and abroad.
when the Soviet Union was in control of eastern europe it moved parts and resources around for manufacture, it was called a planned economy. when General Motors moves manufactured parts imported from china to mexico for construction then extra parts in say Detroit then sold in New York, thats called "free market" "free trade". He's mainly talking about outsourcing. Moving jobs abroad to places where wages are horribly low with terrible conditions = less costs= record profits for corporations
Noam tells us what many of already know. I wish that he would tell us... in his opinion.. what needs to do to done to change the way things are. He is a very qualified educator. He is not an activist that we need to incite change.
After US wrecked so many other countries economies it's time for China to have the ball now, no? I don't really care actually. China or US, both will exploit as much as they can because the engines of our capitalism that is how corporations have to act, they have to devour and consume as much possible from the people or another will do it instead. Humanity is the same, regardless of culture.
What I mean is that humanity has always been and will keep having a relationship of "slaver and slave". There will always be someone being manipulated or exploited and there always will be someone exploiting or manipulating. We see that all the time, we value the people who exploit on television, we vote for them on elections, they become leaders on companies. We hate being exploited, but there is a secret biological desire on humans to be the one with the scourge on hands, and not the slave. Our ancestors survived that way by natural selection. As a great example we can see how people value a lot more a person that shows fury and anger on politics than a person who thinks twice and is fair to all.
agriculture created civilization, civilization created control. All this is only 8 to 10,000 years ago. modern HUMANS were around 200,000 years with no evidence of slavery. You need to read a book or two about real history, not Business propaganda to justify exploitation. only ignorant people vote for people who abuse them. Im done.
Aristotle was an advocate of philosophers as rulers, which illustrates how old this idea is. Even so, and over the course of two millennia, well into modern times, there's a good reason why it's never come to fruition. Philosophers are dreamers rather than doers.
Oh, I forgot to give a shout out to Marshal McLuhan. His philosophies are hard to grasp (cold and hot media, etc.) but once you do everything seems obvious. A must read even if you only read a compendium or mash-up of his work. The medium is the message, truly. Why they didn't teach us this stuff in school is obvious: we wouldn't take it. people in the US would threaten power structures that have an interest in us watching TV and eating doritos.
@3soccerstars I'm not so sure that I've seen him exaggerate a point, I just think that he puts extra emphasis on things that we usually skip over, or turn a blind eye to..so as to bring it into sharp focus.
I live around Amish, Mennonites, Brethren, Old Lutherans, Moravians and various other sects. We have cradle to grave care. Over 400 relatives within 30 miles. Everyone owns a business and everyone shops at each other's businesses. Guaranteed job, medical, support for life. I like Noam Chomsky but don't get where he comes from. What's his best book. Just want to understand how English America works. Sorry for my bad English we speak mixed German and English in our house. Some kids speak German till 8th grade.
I wonder if Dr. Chomsky would care to reflect now, in 2012, on his 2004 statements about how the social market economy innocuously integrated Portugal, Spain, and Greece into the larger European economy.
Typical of mechanical human nature,a man came and worked with me on a job,he was struggling to find work because the economy was crushed yet again.he convinced me that he was a fair man, and overworked nobody in hard labour,he how ever made critical remarks about our working conditions as unfair and strained,he gradually asked myself to give him a hand on his own job,when it was ready I agreed of course to the weekend only,.I tell you he was one of the worst slave drivers I ever encountered.i mentioned his hypocrisy some time later,he. Never asked me again and resented the remark,see how humans refuse to see their own evil and therefore must. Blame others to cover up their own self deception.walk away from these cunning devils always.
Chomsky always goes to the heart of the matter. I always have a little problem with words like "innovate", however. I am a simple mind in this respect, I guess, have secured jobs requiring basic muscle power and hands-on technical skill, with the occasional dip into the white collar pool. Here it is: Actually "producing" something that people need, that is a public good, is key. Jobs are a public good, I am inclined to think. But this basic truth runs against the grain of market advertising. And advertising is always about hustling a product or service that, by and large, is never particularly in demand, that may or may not exist. It is the art of the amusing lie. America leads, as it has always, in pushing the ad. Our media are a form of old-school "Adver-tainment". We promote candidates and elect our chief executive with its aid. We also utilize the remnants of a crude mechanism called operant conditioning, response-stimulus conditioning, for fashioning a convenient, compliant sort of "consumer" non-citizen, preferably with disposable income. So called R>S conditioning is America's single significant contribution to psychology, in fact. The "fear" and "desire" components become obvious: fears lead to desires, which lead to more fears (or the reverse). I used to play around with "making up" advertising as a child; it was fun, easy. It was a fixture in the environment. I have since written a great deal of fiction.
I am NOT "frightened" any more. Now, I am more pissed off about having my entire life pirated away from me before I even had a real chance to decide what I wanted for my life and being held there by the circumstances created by being misinformed as a mechanism of public "education", when I had no choice about any of it at that time. I was but a child. Others were deciding for me what information I would receive or not, no matter how much my future in life depended on having information withheld which did and does directly affect my decision making. No one can make good decisions if they do not have the information needed to make a better choice. No one can make a decision based on information they do not have.
tregua24 yeah they always seem to like misleading with the names of his videos, but i think It is a good video nonetheless. Chomsky is always a good person to listen to
Noam Chomsky is just selling woo-woo juice. He makes a few valid criticisms of globalism but his solutions are stupid. He thinks the EU is a good idea. LOL no. The European Union is a disaster especially to countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, and even to the UK to a large extent. It is why so many countries are trying to get out of and exit the EU but aren't allowed to leave. Got Brexit?
@Novusod He described the process of improving labor conditions in foreign countries in order to avoid losing domestic labor opportunity to outsourcing as: 1. An Option, and 2. A measure. He never said that it was a solution. He also never said that the EU is a good idea. When you describe a measure that he suggested as an institution and solution, you basically lie to yourself and everyone else. Now, as for the EU's measures facing serious difficulty, of course they are. Any institution that sets itself up in opposition to transnational corporate interests is asking for struggle and calamity. That is why he calls it a measure and not a solution.
The EU *"Is an transnational corporate interest"* as German industry and businesses have made piles of money under the EU at the expense of poorer nations. Why is it the poor countries that want out of the EU but the rich one's such as Germany want to keep the poor Greeks and Italians enslaved to the Euro? The EU as a political institution is a perfect example a scheme designed to rob the poor and feed the rich. Economics is just warfare by other means. Germany could not conquer Europe militarily so they did it economically instead via internal EU free trade agreements. They should be called weaponized trade agreements. Free trade is always a disaster for the poor and great for the rich. That is why powerful people always promote it as the solution even though it is actually the problem. Noam Chomsky is just a woo-woo salesman spinning words that are complete opposite of reality in order to convince the masses to vote against their own self interest and support their own enslavement.
Both Chomsky and I partially agree with your insights about the EU. Chomsky is anti-NAFTA. He has presented your idea, the idea that free-trade agreements are basically class warfare, frequently in his public speeches and literature. I repeat: Chomsky is against free-trade agreements. It would appear that someone told you something bad about Chomsky at some point, and now you can't help but misinterpret what he says. He was talking about a measure to counterbalance the exploitation of the poor through free-trade agreements. In other words, that some people in the EU managed to stymie the severity of the effects by taking some protective measures for the poor. He makes the case that these measures, which we did not see come to fruition in Mexico and the U.S., were only put into place because the EU maintained some semblance of democracy. He did not say that the EU is a big old democratic teddy bear. He said that it did allow some democratic force to alter its initial designs. You need to get out of this black and white vision of the world. The EU is not simply a transnational corporate interest. It is also more. In fact, if it didn't maintain some democratic function it would quickly be demonized and dismantled. Part of what makes so many of our oligarchies so pernicious today is that they hide behind democracy while maintaining control over public perception and therefore opinion. Chomsky is famous for explaining this in his work Manufacturing Consent.
Chomsky failed to make a compelling argument against outsourcing here. If you boil down what he said, you end up with the efficiency not being materialized because of negative impacts (poor working conditions, environmental damage and so on...). However, he did not refute the scenario in which the outsourcing would be done in a manner that respects these considerations. He would probably argue that only one side, where the jobs are located, would benefit because on the other side it is the corporations that would reap the benefits. Still, both side would end up with more wealth. Plus, I do agree with most of what he said but then what does he propose? Chomsky does see clearly on a lot of issues but he hardly ever proposes any solutions. He has to be the world's most talented critic.
Yes, because Chomsky is a moron. Outsourcing has brought hundreds of millions of people in Asia into the middle class. The working conditions get better and better every year. It’s how countries develop. But he would rather they just starved without jobs.
@kelly980 Indeed, that is no an exaggeration, let alone hyperbole. Chomsky is one of the titanic intellects of the past fifty years -the only conceivable living heir to Bertrand Russel- and as an analyst of international affairs he is literally without peer. No other human currently drawing breath has anything that even approaches the scope and breadth of his intellect and eruditon as a social theorist. But this is more lamentable than laudatory. Chomsky is 82, and cannot be replaced when gone.
Out sourcing: corporations select workers from overseas and then once they are entrenched here, in the Us, they don't renew their work visas, because people do not matter to corporations, they are expendable, and the corporations work hand in hand with the politicians, who make the rules
I am from India and i work for a outsourcing company.... We work for less then or equal to 300-350 dollars a month doing sales, logistics, dispatch, claims,accounting, costing and so on ....... And let me tell you american folks clearly this isn't about efficiency or innovation ..... This is to save a lot of money.... Now imagine if this company has to maintain a office in USA the expenses it has to bear despite of the fact that the kind of profit margins they keep is mind boggling.... It is a very efficient method to exploit cheap labour and deprive the respective native country of the company from job opportunities.
@alan5863 "We live in a world where only profit seems to matter and giving people a better life comes a poor second" In a free society, you make a profit when you provide other people with a good or service that they desire. It represents the value you have added to the economy. If we were free, we would be able to "vote" with our money and support businesses which enriched our lives in some way. When the state uses coercion in markets, all of this becomes distorted.
Also , it doesn't matter how many people you have-- there is such a thing in engineering called ''scaling'' you simply implement some technology on a bigger scale than it was before. You haven't given a reason that you believe scaling is impossible in this situation, therefore your argument is non-sequitor.
He is right. The United States should now be called The United Corporations of America. We had such a great country - once. Even the Supreme Court got bought off :(
I certainly don't want corporate or government institutions arbitrarily determining what is in my best interests. They do. Individual rights are not equally protected. An organized, intellectually armed working class, which we are not, can have power and freedom proportionate to the population, but the elite class is far more well organized and armed, have control of education and media, and a government sympathetic to their ends. Turning the tide will be a huge struggle. Are we up to it?
Scads of people in this city are desperate, and it tells. It's great if you're making 3 figures sure. then life is just dandy. More and more people here are being squeezed out of one bedroom apartments.
Jeremy Hunter I know a man who is living on 600 a month, so he is living on 3 figures in that sense, and just barely, he is destitute of course. 3 figures used to mean 100,000 or more per year..
Jeremy Hunter It shows my age. My friend Mike advises me that the term is, as you say, 6 figures. About 60 years ago Michael Herrington wrote "The Other Americans" about Americans who weren't making it in an age of increasing prosperity. Far from going away, poverty has gotten worse since the mid-1970s. Real wages are down, rent, and home prices are up. More and more Americans are falling down to a subsistence level, living from paycheck to paycheck, such that if they lose there job for any reason they may rapidly find themselves homeless. As Noam Chomsky emphasizes, that creates a climate of fear, that is used by demagogues, on FOX News for example.
Donald Trump: So true, if he's so good and those hypocritical if not dumb American workers are so upset about losing our factories why don't they create or continue working on one or do a strike. Oh let me guess most of these unemployed workers got another job buying an average of 60 unnecessary clothes a year from children in Bangladesh, letting Latin immigrants do mandane jobs and the lest go on. In fact I'm going to build a wall to keep the illegals out and not only am I going to make them pay for it they will also make it!!! Ammmeeeriicaa Boooooooom Trump 2015!
According to Chomsky, people who decide to take a job in my business should tell me how to spend my money. Why should I even higher them if it means they can dictate to me how to manage my assets? What is the point of even owning anything If I don't benefit anymore than the employees do, why put up money and take the risk? If workers should run the mills, workers should share the risk. You can't demand profits if you're not willing to suffer a loss. That's what owning a business entails. Being a partner and an employee have very different implications. So more people should be business owners? That's the only viable solution to the problem Chomsky is talking about. Well that's easy, go buy stock in a company with a bit of savings. That's the type of financing that is required to start any kind of business, and the stock market enables the average person to do the same with small amounts of money. It doesn't require a million. Why don't more people do it if they have 100% freedom to do it, as much as the rich do? People have the choice to be owners or to be employees, its just a question of how you want to spend your resources.
+Nicolas Verrière I don't think you understand what he is saying. He is saying that the free trade agreements allow the corporations to ship jobs to unregulated employment markets, where they can get workers for pennies on the dollar. He's saying that the international economy isn't well represented by the models used by economists, and he's right. He points out that many of the industries are run by a few large companies, and he's making the correct point that the increase of free trade agreements benefits these companies at the cost of the people who had worked for them, who see lower wages and less job prospects. He never says a thing about the profits of companies going to the workers as much as the owners. Where are you getting that from? He says that making sure that people in other countries that we trade with have decent working conditions, pay that doesn't force one into abject poverty, and some environmental controls would level the playing field and make it easier to keep some of those jobs in America and protect the worker's eroding wages. He never suggests worker ownership or completely shared profits.. People do not have the right to chose to be owners or employees. First to start a company requires a lot of capital and you will be competing with companies that are already well established, meaning that either you are wealthy and can afford to invest into a new company, (not likely for most people) or have come up with a great idea that no one has ever thought of and wealthy people will invest in your idea, not likely for 99.9999% of people. Many working poor people do not have additional money to what they spend on living expenses. To suggest that they can simply save up money and buy stock or start a company on their own when they make poverty wages is foolish. The reason less than half of Americans don't own stock is because they don't have the income to invest. Not only that, but the stock market hasn't been the most stable investment and when you're poor and likely to be greatly affected by recessions, you can't simply invest for the long run and leave the money there. The bottom 40% of people have 0.2% of the wealth, please tell me how these people invest when they have nothing?
Alex Klick The jobs are being given to workers in the economies with unregulated labor markets, yes, because employers would rather not higher in a labor market where they are forced to share profits with the workers. That is essentially what regulation of labor implies, imposed laws that force businesses to sacrifice profits by investing directly for the benefit of the employees they hire. It is virtually a transfer of profits in to the hands of workers. (You can't have better working conditions unless someone pays for it. All the government does is mandate that the business pay for it). The only reason they are going overseas is because it is more profitable. And as long as there's a more profitable place to do business, that's where business is going to go. In this video he doesn't address it directly, but its obvious that he opposes these free trade agreements for the precise reason that it allows business to keep the profits that otherwise would've been payed to american workers. Not everyone can afford to set up and self-finance a business or is able to borrow the capital it takes operate. But most ARE able to start small. That is very possible for most people. And yes that money can be invested in small ventures and is very possible with today's financial markets.
So what are you suggesting, that we have no labor standards? That companies should be able to pollute as much as they like and have working conditions akin to sweatshops like Foxconn in China? Is that what would make you happy in life, to make a little more profit at the cost of the people working every day to make the profit a reality? That is a sad belief. This logic is borderline sociopathic and represents perfectly the idea of, "All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind." And the companies (or shareholders) don't really end up paying for it, these costs are passed on to consumers. This is well known and easily proven. However, when workers are adequately compensated, although they pay more for goods, they can also afford to spend more on goods and proportionally the increased costs of goods are less than the increased benefits to to the individuals and therefore society. This is easily demonstrated, look at economic growth in the 50's compared to now and look at inequality then and now. Additionally, if the workers are decently compensated, they have more money that can be saved and invested, further growing the economy. This trend has been reversed over the past 40 years, and we have seen increased inequality, more volatility in economic markets and less growth as a result. Again, this is easily demonstrated. Going overseas is profitable in the short term for sure, you can lower your prices and still make higher margins. But what we are seeing now is a situation of low demand for goods. Look at the price of commodities, are they not crashing? This is a direct result of a lack of buying power for working people, due to increased inequality. Not to be condescending, but I'm not sure how much of an understanding of economics you have, and that plays an important role in understanding this situation.. I went on your page and saw that you asked the question: "PLEASE ANSWER* If private lending institutions have influence over the FED, why are interest rates so low?" Because the private lending institutions get money for free then. They take the money and either loan it out at much higher rates or are able to take excess reserves and just buy treasury bonds and make profit off the arbitrage. It's easy to make money when you get zero interest loans, a child could do it. again easily demonstrated.. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-23/bofa-leads-charge-into-bonds-as-banks-build-2-trillion-hoard
Alex Klick Weather it will or won't be profitable could be up for debate, but what we do know is that many of the executive consensus' are to relocate abroad. We can put in labor standards if we want, we can try to put a floor beneath the amount danger workers are aloud to take on a job, and we do. But it comes at the cost of fewer jobs for the country as the demand for labor moves abroad. The distribution of domestic income flattens out as a result of this, but the country overall is poorer as all the gains from production that existed before no longer exist. And yeah, if we pay our workers more, they'll have more money to spend and more to save. But what will anyone be able to buy if all the goods and services are produced in Asia? Ok we will run trade deficits and weaken our currency. Where will the extra savings be invested if there are no profitable domestic businesses? Again, Asian businesses, more dollars sold to bid up the price of foreign currencies, further weakening our currency. If we want purchasing power we need to sell things that other people want by creating businesses that people all over the world want to invest in. You can't mandate a country to create prosperity, what you can do is create incentives for people to help out.
Alex Klick By the way, as the demand for labor continues to grow in Asia, as competition increases to attract labor, the amount of pay, benefits and security that employers will have to offer to get the labor that they need to operate will rise. Not because of mandates from the government, because of competition to buy scarce labor. If you want the price of labor to rise, you must increase the demand for labor, not reduce the demand for labor.
Freedom is a word used by governments as propaganda. no such thing. we are all slaves to something. money, government, tax, LAW. Equality is the best we can hope for...
"amusing ourselves to death" - neil postman. others have said it is like fiddling while rome burns. But we are also working ourselves to death - "In fact, U.S. workers spend more time at work than anyone else in the world. " - from the economic collapse blog. so I hesitate to call us lazy in general, the whole time/energy thing has a lot to do with it. Well, that and the intentional dumbing down of our school system.
~TheEquestrianFactor~ Did everything he said just completely go over your head? This has almost nothing to do with the FED and everything to do with giant corporations- how they are run, how they wield their power etc etc.
Are they? What is the distinction? What would be the motivation in teaching that there is one? I don't want to steer you. Remember that Chomsky is a philosopher and teacher. Is there a distinction between those? Look at The Purpose of Education, Citizens United, and Anarchism and its' variants. Read the US Constitution. What are the actual limits to 'freedom' ?
@ahmed337799 i dont know if he can but the world champion speed reader can read 4,700 words a minute, which is nearly 200 pages! x60= nearly 12,000! i don't know if she could keep it up for a full hour though.
@alan5863 "I wonder if that has gone down as more and more gets privatised" You need to define your terms. I'm talking about liberty and voluntary exchange. If the fascists "privatize" a previously state-run industry, that's not a free market. I have no idea what the history of state involvement in the railways is in England, but if its anything like the US, then it's state subsidized/run/established/favored, etc.
Poor is a state of mind. People aren’t poor because some jobs don’t pay well. They are poor because they refuse to do anything to help themselves. I used to make minimum wage but I understood that if I want to make more I had to get a skill or education. Minimum wage jobs are not intended to be careers. You can’t fix stupid and you can’t fix lazy. Life’s not fair, get over it. If your job gets outsourced, find a new one
I don't agree with Chomsky on some of his points about trade. While it's possible what he calls "actual trade" has declined, "actual trade" is still valuable to the parties involved, if one believes Ricardo. Also, though corporations are command-like in structure, the actual end-products must still be sold to someone, and corporations can and do decline when the product is no longer relevant and purchased. Some examples include Kodak, etc.
. . . and create a bourgeoisie class that has a manufactured sense of status and makes a bit more money - enough for health insurance, a mortgaged house (and maybe a house “at the lake“), a nice car or three, college for the kids (in order to perpetuate the values of the bourgeoisie), the ability to take family vacations each year and then some tours across the U.S. and to Europe upon retirement - and they will mysteriously associate themselves with the Masters and spend their entire lives holding the working class down. The secret to the revolution has always been the middle class.
@koloneltuesday Remember that the word "system" in the context of physics is completely different from a political "system". Entropy is a measure of energy that dissipates as heat and therefore can't be used to do work. It's not a social concept. Entropy isn't going to determine whether a political system fails or succeeds. Rome didn't fall because of entropy. It fell due to human/economic factors. You weren't completely wrong, just over-applying the idea of entropy to an absurd degree.
@koloneltuesday this doesn't really have anything to do with anything. that's like saying evolution is impossible because entropy increases over time. no - entropy only increases in a closed system where no free energy enters from the outside. our planet is a system powered by the sun, which is why life and physical complexity is possible here. in addition, you're using entropy (a physical law) to talk about something more abstract (human organization) - which it has nothing to do with.
@sallymaggiespotty Impossible. That is physically impossible. I could understand 1,000 words per minute, but reading 17 pages per second wouldn't be reading as you wouldn't have any comprehension of the words between those 17 pages and that second.
That happened to me. My career as a rotoscope artist was outsourced to Vancouver and India and I was left with no work and qualified for nothing. I sent out a thousand resumes. Eventually I lost my condo and now work minimum wage jobs. There is not one person in America or on Earth that cares in the slightest if I am dead. This is my America -- nobody cares if you are dead.
Every man's justice on average, is justice for him with no concern of empathy for
1-800-273-8255, it might be a good idea to call. 211 might be useful too. You’re smart to recognize what caused your situation, namely outsourcing.
Wow so sorry!!!😢
What makes no sense to me is when they outsource to *youknowwho* , these workers are CRAP! Productivity goes down, IT projects and products get fucked up all over the place. The company starts producing rubbish software, but they don't even care. WTF?
I live there too
This mans intellect is astounding, he sees things so clearly.
yes but not everything
+phillip king do you have an example
''global warming hoax'' ... see this phrase on google as other searches can be ''google biased''
''AGW is a lie '' i.e. anti science....
but Noam is brilliant on say education ...hopeful future etc.
''thanks for answer ''
It helps to study a bit, reading of what is going on in the world, to keep oneself informed and so on...
philipp king
so you know! that global warming is a hoax?
what's the hoax btw?
is there no warming whatsoever?
is there warming, but humans have no influence?
global warming is too diffecult a topic. I'm sure so far all we have are estimates and guesses.
from both sides!
I got my Economics Degree 40 years ago. I have studied Economics and Sociology my entire adult Life. I work for the DoD at an Aerospace Facility for the last 35 years. Every day as a drive to or from work I drive past a "Homeless Camp", what used to be called a "Hobo Jungle". Whenever a person who is low wage and lives Check to Check drives past this encampment they MUST think; "There, but for the Grace of God, go I". Almost 50 million Americans are just one or two paychecks away from homelessness. Keep the poor frightened and they will eat more shit, for less money than a confident Union Worker. From an Economist's point of view that is why the USA "killed" the Unions after about 1965. Keeping workers scared to death will make them work harder and eat more shit without a complaint to be heard...
you see clearly!
Tanks you comment make clear to me was going on in terms of Imigracion and illegal immigration in USA. I live in Washington state and let me tell you things are crazy. The Government is bringing Mexicans by the thousands to harvest and they get screw bad, but of course they don't care because in Mexico is worse.
Race to the bottom we're all beginning to realize we in a sinking ship.
+Benny Rodriguez Where I come from that's called slavery.
Benny Rodriguez you are lying! You folks in DC are sending jobs to Mexico! It's crazy in Detroit and this crap is trickling down to Indiana!
Ever since I was a child I asked why we would be worried about our working rights here in the United States but not that of every country we work within.
Capitalism was the answer I was given from teachers .
When I brought up the fact that a company’s overhead was far less expensive because of horrible working conditions and unlivable wages . Yet the company passed on none of this to its consumers . The company never attempted to help the country it was milking .
I was told I didn’t understand .
My teachers and those I went to for advice couldn’t say America is evil .
They couldn’t admit that the only people profiting from this atrocity were those that already owned everything.
America is evil .
Shareholders are the royalty of a country. Businesses are now kingdoms. But kingdoms that move.
In 1981, my aunt who was a lawyer told me that if I went to law school a good direction to go would be international unions. That was almost 40 years ago. I hope international unions are not unicorns.
When I was about 12...someone told me..."Remember the Golden Rule..." I thought it was do unto others...but it is really...he who has the gold...RULES.....
Ha Ha Classic..
The new golden rule is “fuck you, I got mine”.
Wizard of Id.
It's actually true & yet so despicable !
Do you write for Metal Gear?
Once, anxiety used to be mankind's sister. Nowadays though, those in power perverted her into their servant. Anxiety ist the most powerful instrument to suppress any resistance. In modern society many people are fully absorbed by fear. Ironically, in the "land of the free and the brave" people made themselves servants to their master: anxiety.
He's like the narrator of the end of humanity.
Advanced technology has allowed for people to control and take advantage of others, by giving those with resources a lot of power. If we became independent from technology and society then we can be more free
Well, now robots are taking over jobs, white castle is doing this now and then the entire fast food industry.
How were we more free before advanced technology? And could you define advanced technology?
I like the thumbnail because it looks like Chomsky is gesturing while saying something like "Hold up, hold up! Guess what else these fuckin' banks are doin'..."
casually and fluently cites articles he read FOR BREAKFAST
Dormouse: Feed your head.
1:14 "We are an innovative society."
This lust for innovation then only comes along as: "We don't know what we need or want anymore, but we certainly have to work. Let's invent stuff then so we eventually can work again." In the end it has been shown that since the emergence of integrated circuits new innovations aren't able to create more jobs than they eventually destroy or get shipped overseas. We have to cut ourselves from the dependence of working to create more profits for somebody. I mean why is it a rational thought that we can't spend money publicly for safe roads, bridges, railways, education, healthcare etc. but it is the greatest thing in the world to accumulate monetary wealth that in the end never get's resolved in consumption.
The world doesn’t belong to leaders. The world belongs to all humanity.
Here's why I find humanity awesome: About 30 people disliked it and are compelled to comment on it using Freshman economics, and some blog comments they read yesterday concerning Hayek. On the other hand, 700 people liked it (that's twice an order of magnitude more...), and probably fewer than 3-4% of them are exchanging comments with the haters.
BUT... fully **85,000 people** watched it, presumably contemplated it, and will gather more information before speaking on the topic.
I find it amazing that 30 people can hate Chomsky, argue in favor of positivist social science epistemology and yet not trust the normal distribution.... as if the other 700 or 85,000 were daft, and that they alone had the keys to Truth.
THAT, my friends, is irony...
+ne3nayu How many drooling idiots would you expect to find in a random sample of 85,000 people?
a lot.
You use loose logic to support the number of people who agree with Chomsky yet use that same logic to call people stupid. That's irony.
False reasoning. You can find similar numbers on flat Earth videos, and also similar conversations. Here is one 45k, 2k likes, 150 dislikes. Does that mean flat earthers were right all along? I don't think so. Maybe it's irony, dunno.
ne3nayu : stats are usually ironic, yes :)
I have dreamed of contacting him but I'm not worthy. I think he responds as well to posts on z magazine blogs. search z magazine chomsky and it is #1 result. Great to know he is humble enough to spend the time in his busy life to talk with ordinary people.
Listening to this while high is one of the best learning experiences of my life
now imagine it sober when you can actually retain and digest the information
Global outsourcing gives Western based corporations a chance to shake-off domestic workers that had good benefits and wages, including good health and safety standards in their work places. Corporate access to a labor market bereft of good health and safety standards for their workers, including a living wage and pensions means the entrepreneurs and investors obscenely enrich themselves at a huge social cost at home and abroad.
when the Soviet Union was in control of eastern europe it moved parts and resources around for manufacture, it was called a planned economy. when General Motors moves manufactured parts imported from china to mexico for construction then extra parts in say Detroit then sold in New York, thats called "free market" "free trade". He's mainly talking about outsourcing. Moving jobs abroad to places where wages are horribly low with terrible conditions = less costs= record profits for corporations
Noam tells us what many of already know. I wish that he would tell us... in his opinion.. what needs to do to done to change the way things are. He is a very qualified educator. He is not an activist that we need to incite change.
You are right
he says that corporations are totalitarian in structure, which just means that the orders go from top to bottom
Now, 6 years later we can see how well the command economy in China is working out.
After US wrecked so many other countries economies it's time for China to have the ball now, no? I don't really care actually. China or US, both will exploit as much as they can because the engines of our capitalism that is how corporations have to act, they have to devour and consume as much possible from the people or another will do it instead. Humanity is the same, regardless of culture.
+Lucas Lemos I would hardly call that process 'humanity'
What I mean is that humanity has always been and will keep having a relationship of "slaver and slave". There will always be someone being manipulated or exploited and there always will be someone exploiting or manipulating. We see that all the time, we value the people who exploit on television, we vote for them on elections, they become leaders on companies. We hate being exploited, but there is a secret biological desire on humans to be the one with the scourge on hands, and not the slave. Our ancestors survived that way by natural selection. As a great example we can see how people value a lot more a person that shows fury and anger on politics than a person who thinks twice and is fair to all.
agriculture created civilization,
civilization created control.
All this is only 8 to 10,000 years ago.
modern HUMANS were around 200,000 years with no evidence of slavery.
You need to read a book or two about real history, not Business propaganda to justify exploitation.
only ignorant people vote for people who abuse them. Im done.
I can see his point
always love to hear chomsky speak, why are the videos always so quiet though?
STOP PRESS: Joblessness is officially a form of mental illness in the UK today.
(Has me scared).
Aristotle was an advocate of philosophers as rulers, which illustrates how old this idea is. Even so, and over the course of two millennia, well into modern times, there's a good reason why it's never come to fruition. Philosophers are dreamers rather than doers.
Oh, I forgot to give a shout out to Marshal McLuhan. His philosophies are hard to grasp (cold and hot media, etc.) but once you do everything seems obvious. A must read even if you only read a compendium or mash-up of his work. The medium is the message, truly. Why they didn't teach us this stuff in school is obvious: we wouldn't take it. people in the US would threaten power structures that have an interest in us watching TV and eating doritos.
@3soccerstars I'm not so sure that I've seen him exaggerate a point, I just think that he puts extra emphasis on things that we usually skip over, or turn a blind eye to..so as to bring it into sharp focus.
Exactly
The poor sh9uld be frightened out of existence
Seems the only thing being traded is labor.
Anarcho-syndicalism is generally what he seems to advocate.
This is an astute observation.
I live around Amish, Mennonites, Brethren, Old Lutherans, Moravians and various other sects. We have cradle to grave care. Over 400 relatives within 30 miles. Everyone owns a business and everyone shops at each other's businesses. Guaranteed job, medical, support for life. I like Noam Chomsky but don't get where he comes from. What's his best book. Just want to understand how English America works. Sorry for my bad English we speak mixed German and English in our house. Some kids speak German till 8th grade.
Genius.
Noam Chomsky is a hero.
Thank you for sharing this.
I wonder if Dr. Chomsky would care to reflect now, in 2012, on his 2004 statements about how the social market economy innocuously integrated Portugal, Spain, and Greece into the larger European economy.
Typical of mechanical human nature,a man came and worked with me on a job,he was struggling to find work because the economy was crushed yet again.he convinced me that he was a fair man, and overworked nobody in hard labour,he how ever made critical remarks about our working conditions as unfair and strained,he gradually asked myself to give him a hand on his own job,when it was ready I agreed of course to the weekend only,.I tell you he was one of the worst slave drivers I ever encountered.i mentioned his hypocrisy some time later,he. Never asked me again and resented the remark,see how humans refuse to see their own evil and therefore must. Blame others to cover up their own self deception.walk away from these cunning devils always.
Thank You
Jagdish Bhagwati is the economist he mentioned, worth reading :)
Chomsky always goes to the heart of the matter.
I always have a little problem with words like "innovate", however.
I am a simple mind in this respect, I guess, have secured jobs requiring basic muscle power and hands-on technical skill, with the occasional dip into the white collar pool.
Here it is: Actually "producing" something that people need, that is a public good, is key. Jobs are a public good, I am inclined to think.
But this basic truth runs against the grain of market advertising. And advertising is always about hustling a product or service that, by and large, is never particularly in demand, that may or may not exist.
It is the art of the amusing lie.
America leads, as it has always, in pushing the ad. Our media are a form of old-school "Adver-tainment".
We promote candidates and elect our chief executive with its aid.
We also utilize the remnants of a crude mechanism called operant conditioning, response-stimulus conditioning, for fashioning a convenient, compliant sort of "consumer" non-citizen, preferably with disposable income.
So called R>S conditioning is America's single significant contribution to psychology, in fact.
The "fear" and "desire" components become obvious: fears lead to desires, which lead to more fears (or the reverse).
I used to play around with "making up" advertising as a child; it was fun, easy. It was a fixture in the environment.
I have since written a great deal of fiction.
So with you on this one.
It's actually a speaking technique taught in Dale Carnegie courses.
what the flying f
Absolutely brilliant.
I definitely believe that.
TRUST YOUR OWN INTELLECT
he receives emails and updates from all round the world on a hourly basis
I am NOT "frightened" any more. Now, I am more pissed off about having my entire life pirated away from me before I even had a real chance to decide what I wanted for my life and being held there by the circumstances created by being misinformed as a mechanism of public "education", when I had no choice about any of it at that time. I was but a child. Others were deciding for me what information I would receive or not, no matter how much my future in life depended on having information withheld which did and does directly affect my decision making. No one can make good decisions if they do not have the information needed to make a better choice. No one can make a decision based on information they do not have.
Are you aware that if you press the CAPs lock button again the scary, shouty text goes away? I'd look into it.
His sarcasm is beautiful
This video has the wrong title.
tregua24 yeah they always seem to like misleading with the names of his videos, but i think It is a good video nonetheless. Chomsky is always a good person to listen to
Noam Chomsky is just selling woo-woo juice. He makes a few valid criticisms of globalism but his solutions are stupid. He thinks the EU is a good idea. LOL no. The European Union is a disaster especially to countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, and even to the UK to a large extent. It is why so many countries are trying to get out of and exit the EU but aren't allowed to leave. Got Brexit?
@Novusod He described the process of improving labor conditions in foreign countries in order to avoid losing domestic labor opportunity to outsourcing as: 1. An Option, and 2. A measure. He never said that it was a solution. He also never said that the EU is a good idea. When you describe a measure that he suggested as an institution and solution, you basically lie to yourself and everyone else. Now, as for the EU's measures facing serious difficulty, of course they are. Any institution that sets itself up in opposition to transnational corporate interests is asking for struggle and calamity. That is why he calls it a measure and not a solution.
The EU *"Is an transnational corporate interest"* as German industry and businesses have made piles of money under the EU at the expense of poorer nations. Why is it the poor countries that want out of the EU but the rich one's such as Germany want to keep the poor Greeks and Italians enslaved to the Euro? The EU as a political institution is a perfect example a scheme designed to rob the poor and feed the rich. Economics is just warfare by other means. Germany could not conquer Europe militarily so they did it economically instead via internal EU free trade agreements. They should be called weaponized trade agreements. Free trade is always a disaster for the poor and great for the rich. That is why powerful people always promote it as the solution even though it is actually the problem.
Noam Chomsky is just a woo-woo salesman spinning words that are complete opposite of reality in order to convince the masses to vote against their own self interest and support their own enslavement.
Both Chomsky and I partially agree with your insights about the EU.
Chomsky is anti-NAFTA. He has presented your idea, the idea that free-trade agreements are basically class warfare, frequently in his public speeches and literature. I repeat: Chomsky is against free-trade agreements.
It would appear that someone told you something bad about Chomsky at some point, and now you can't help but misinterpret what he says. He was talking about a measure to counterbalance the exploitation of the poor through free-trade agreements. In other words, that some people in the EU managed to stymie the severity of the effects by taking some protective measures for the poor.
He makes the case that these measures, which we did not see come to fruition in Mexico and the U.S., were only put into place because the EU maintained some semblance of democracy. He did not say that the EU is a big old democratic teddy bear. He said that it did allow some democratic force to alter its initial designs.
You need to get out of this black and white vision of the world. The EU is not simply a transnational corporate interest. It is also more. In fact, if it didn't maintain some democratic function it would quickly be demonized and dismantled. Part of what makes so many of our oligarchies so pernicious today is that they hide behind democracy while maintaining control over public perception and therefore opinion.
Chomsky is famous for explaining this in his work Manufacturing Consent.
good luck, you can't even watch him speak unless you are lucky or know someone. he is booked years in advance and tickets are near impossible to get.
so fitting having an eenfeldt video linked to this.
"Noam Chomsky lecture at MIT February 15 2004 full video " hahaha and then the video was uploaded in 2010.. I would love to know how this came to be
A video was recorded and six years later this guy uploaded it independently. What's so hard to understand?
Jeremy Hunter You're right, I don't know what I was thinking lol
pinochska We all get blindsided now and again ;)
Chomsky failed to make a compelling argument against outsourcing here. If you boil down what he said, you end up with the efficiency not being materialized because of negative impacts (poor working conditions, environmental damage and so on...). However, he did not refute the scenario in which the outsourcing would be done in a manner that respects these considerations. He would probably argue that only one side, where the jobs are located, would benefit because on the other side it is the corporations that would reap the benefits. Still, both side would end up with more wealth. Plus, I do agree with most of what he said but then what does he propose? Chomsky does see clearly on a lot of issues but he hardly ever proposes any solutions. He has to be the world's most talented critic.
Yes, because Chomsky is a moron. Outsourcing has brought hundreds of millions of people in Asia into the middle class. The working conditions get better and better every year. It’s how countries develop. But he would rather they just starved without jobs.
Death? No, subjugation and the struggle to be free of it. You're the one who called him a fear-monger.
@kelly980 Indeed, that is no an exaggeration, let alone hyperbole. Chomsky is one of the titanic intellects of the past fifty years -the only conceivable living heir to Bertrand Russel- and as an analyst of international affairs he is literally without peer. No other human currently drawing breath has anything that even approaches the scope and breadth of his intellect and eruditon as a social theorist.
But this is more lamentable than laudatory. Chomsky is 82, and cannot be replaced when gone.
I thought he was talking from a giant cup.
Out sourcing: corporations select workers from overseas and then once they are entrenched here, in the Us, they don't renew their work visas, because people do not matter to corporations, they are expendable, and the corporations work hand in hand with the politicians, who make the rules
@s0673451 You're wrong. Speed reading is measured by WORDS per minute, not PAGES.
00:00 H1V visas replaced tech job of question asker
Matt Orfalea Thank you, Matt. You’re f#%king awesome btw. Respect from Detroit ✊🏾
In the real world.
0:24 "op ed" (opposite the editorial page)
The title to this video is misleading.
Beware: TROLLS !!
What outsourcing had done is cost American computer companies to have to wait for PC parts and components.
Complete respect for you sir!! Mercy, ana maria
I am from India and i work for a outsourcing company.... We work for less then or equal to 300-350 dollars a month doing sales, logistics, dispatch, claims,accounting, costing and so on ....... And let me tell you american folks clearly this isn't about efficiency or innovation ..... This is to save a lot of money.... Now imagine if this company has to maintain a office in USA the expenses it has to bear despite of the fact that the kind of profit margins they keep is mind boggling.... It is a very efficient method to exploit cheap labour and deprive the respective native country of the company from job opportunities.
The decision to outsource is an internal affair, but the consequences, if the outsourcing takes place abroad, are not.
@alan5863 "We live in a world where only profit seems to matter and giving people a better life comes a poor second"
In a free society, you make a profit when you provide other people with a good or service that they desire. It represents the value you have added to the economy. If we were free, we would be able to "vote" with our money and support businesses which enriched our lives in some way. When the state uses coercion in markets, all of this becomes distorted.
Also , it doesn't matter how many people you have-- there is such a thing in engineering called ''scaling'' you simply implement some technology on a bigger scale than it was before. You haven't given a reason that you believe scaling is impossible in this situation, therefore your argument is non-sequitor.
Was he always old?
He is right. The United States should now be called The United Corporations of America. We had such a great country - once. Even the Supreme Court got bought off :(
Out of all the frames to pick for a thumbnail…
I noticed too
it's a phycological fact.
I certainly don't want corporate or government institutions arbitrarily determining what is in my best interests. They do. Individual rights are not equally protected. An organized, intellectually armed working class, which we are not, can have power and freedom proportionate to the population, but the elite class is far more well organized and armed, have control of education and media, and a government sympathetic to their ends. Turning the tide will be a huge struggle. Are we up to it?
Scads of people in this city are desperate, and it tells. It's great if you're making 3 figures sure. then life is just dandy. More and more people here are being squeezed out of one bedroom apartments.
Three figures? Nobody can live on that. Oh, you meant six.
Jeremy Hunter I know a man who is living on 600 a month, so he is living on 3 figures in that sense, and just barely, he is destitute of course. 3 figures used to mean 100,000 or more per year..
tonygumbrell22 It's hardly great or dandy though ;)
It may have used to have meant that, but not for a long time!
Jeremy Hunter It shows my age. My friend Mike advises me that the term is, as you say, 6 figures. About 60 years ago Michael Herrington wrote "The Other Americans" about Americans who weren't making it in an age of increasing prosperity. Far from going away, poverty has gotten worse since the mid-1970s. Real wages are down, rent, and home prices are up. More and more Americans are falling down to a subsistence level, living from paycheck to paycheck, such that if they lose there job for any reason they may rapidly find themselves homeless. As Noam Chomsky emphasizes, that creates a climate of fear, that is used by demagogues, on FOX News for example.
Donald Trump: So true, if he's so good and those hypocritical if not dumb American workers are so upset about losing our factories why don't they create or continue working on one or do a strike. Oh let me guess most of these unemployed workers got another job buying an average of 60 unnecessary clothes a year from children in Bangladesh, letting Latin immigrants do mandane jobs and the lest go on. In fact I'm going to build a wall to keep the illegals out and not only am I going to make them pay for it they will also make it!!! Ammmeeeriicaa Boooooooom Trump 2015!
❤️ Noam Chomsky!!!🌹🖖🖖
According to Chomsky, people who decide to take a job in my business should tell me how to spend my money. Why should I even higher them if it means they can dictate to me how to manage my assets? What is the point of even owning anything If I don't benefit anymore than the employees do, why put up money and take the risk? If workers should run the mills, workers should share the risk. You can't demand profits if you're not willing to suffer a loss. That's what owning a business entails. Being a partner and an employee have very different implications. So more people should be business owners? That's the only viable solution to the problem Chomsky is talking about. Well that's easy, go buy stock in a company with a bit of savings. That's the type of financing that is required to start any kind of business, and the stock market enables the average person to do the same with small amounts of money. It doesn't require a million. Why don't more people do it if they have 100% freedom to do it, as much as the rich do? People have the choice to be owners or to be employees, its just a question of how you want to spend your resources.
+Nicolas Verrière I don't think you understand what he is saying. He is saying that the free trade agreements allow the corporations to ship jobs to unregulated employment markets, where they can get workers for pennies on the dollar. He's saying that the international economy isn't well represented by the models used by economists, and he's right. He points out that many of the industries are run by a few large companies, and he's making the correct point that the increase of free trade agreements benefits these companies at the cost of the people who had worked for them, who see lower wages and less job prospects.
He never says a thing about the profits of companies going to the workers as much as the owners. Where are you getting that from? He says that making sure that people in other countries that we trade with have decent working conditions, pay that doesn't force one into abject poverty, and some environmental controls would level the playing field and make it easier to keep some of those jobs in America and protect the worker's eroding wages. He never suggests worker ownership or completely shared profits..
People do not have the right to chose to be owners or employees. First to start a company requires a lot of capital and you will be competing with companies that are already well established, meaning that either you are wealthy and can afford to invest into a new company, (not likely for most people) or have come up with a great idea that no one has ever thought of and wealthy people will invest in your idea, not likely for 99.9999% of people. Many working poor people do not have additional money to what they spend on living expenses. To suggest that they can simply save up money and buy stock or start a company on their own when they make poverty wages is foolish. The reason less than half of Americans don't own stock is because they don't have the income to invest. Not only that, but the stock market hasn't been the most stable investment and when you're poor and likely to be greatly affected by recessions, you can't simply invest for the long run and leave the money there. The bottom 40% of people have 0.2% of the wealth, please tell me how these people invest when they have nothing?
Alex Klick The jobs are being given to workers in the economies with unregulated labor markets, yes, because employers would rather not higher in a labor market where they are forced to share profits with the workers. That is essentially what regulation of labor implies, imposed laws that force businesses to sacrifice profits by investing directly for the benefit of the employees they hire. It is virtually a transfer of profits in to the hands of workers. (You can't have better working conditions unless someone pays for it. All the government does is mandate that the business pay for it). The only reason they are going overseas is because it is more profitable. And as long as there's a more profitable place to do business, that's where business is going to go. In this video he doesn't address it directly, but its obvious that he opposes these free trade agreements for the precise reason that it allows business to keep the profits that otherwise would've been payed to american workers.
Not everyone can afford to set up and self-finance a business or is able to borrow the capital it takes operate. But most ARE able to start small. That is very possible for most people. And yes that money can be invested in small ventures and is very possible with today's financial markets.
So what are you suggesting, that we have no labor standards? That companies should be able to pollute as much as they like and have working conditions akin to sweatshops like Foxconn in China? Is that what would make you happy in life, to make a little more profit at the cost of the people working every day to make the profit a reality? That is a sad belief.
This logic is borderline sociopathic and represents perfectly the idea of, "All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."
And the companies (or shareholders) don't really end up paying for it, these costs are passed on to consumers. This is well known and easily proven. However, when workers are adequately compensated, although they pay more for goods, they can also afford to spend more on goods and proportionally the increased costs of goods are less than the increased benefits to to the individuals and therefore society. This is easily demonstrated, look at economic growth in the 50's compared to now and look at inequality then and now. Additionally, if the workers are decently compensated, they have more money that can be saved and invested, further growing the economy. This trend has been reversed over the past 40 years, and we have seen increased inequality, more volatility in economic markets and less growth as a result. Again, this is easily demonstrated.
Going overseas is profitable in the short term for sure, you can lower your prices and still make higher margins. But what we are seeing now is a situation of low demand for goods. Look at the price of commodities, are they not crashing? This is a direct result of a lack of buying power for working people, due to increased inequality.
Not to be condescending, but I'm not sure how much of an understanding of economics you have, and that plays an important role in understanding this situation.. I went on your page and saw that you asked the question:
"PLEASE ANSWER* If private lending institutions have influence over the FED, why are interest rates so low?" Because the private lending institutions get money for free then. They take the money and either loan it out at much higher rates or are able to take excess reserves and just buy treasury bonds and make profit off the arbitrage. It's easy to make money when you get zero interest loans, a child could do it. again easily demonstrated.. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-23/bofa-leads-charge-into-bonds-as-banks-build-2-trillion-hoard
Alex Klick Weather it will or won't be profitable could be up for debate, but what we do know is that many of the executive consensus' are to relocate abroad. We can put in labor standards if we want, we can try to put a floor beneath the amount danger workers are aloud to take on a job, and we do. But it comes at the cost of fewer jobs for the country as the demand for labor moves abroad. The distribution of domestic income flattens out as a result of this, but the country overall is poorer as all the gains from production that existed before no longer exist. And yeah, if we pay our workers more, they'll have more money to spend and more to save. But what will anyone be able to buy if all the goods and services are produced in Asia? Ok we will run trade deficits and weaken our currency. Where will the extra savings be invested if there are no profitable domestic businesses? Again, Asian businesses, more dollars sold to bid up the price of foreign currencies, further weakening our currency. If we want purchasing power we need to sell things that other people want by creating businesses that people all over the world want to invest in. You can't mandate a country to create prosperity, what you can do is create incentives for people to help out.
Alex Klick By the way, as the demand for labor continues to grow in Asia, as competition increases to attract labor, the amount of pay, benefits and security that employers will have to offer to get the labor that they need to operate will rise. Not because of mandates from the government, because of competition to buy scarce labor. If you want the price of labor to rise, you must increase the demand for labor, not reduce the demand for labor.
Fear is the weapon....wise general, use well!
Freedom is a word used by governments as propaganda. no such thing. we are all slaves to something. money, government, tax, LAW. Equality is the best we can hope for...
"amusing ourselves to death" - neil postman. others have said it is like fiddling while rome burns. But we are also working ourselves to death - "In fact, U.S. workers spend more time at work than anyone else in the world. " - from the economic collapse blog. so I hesitate to call us lazy in general, the whole time/energy thing has a lot to do with it. Well, that and the intentional dumbing down of our school system.
End the Federal Reserve.
~TheEquestrianFactor~ Did everything he said just completely go over your head? This has almost nothing to do with the FED and everything to do with giant corporations- how they are run, how they wield their power etc etc.
Are they? What is the distinction? What would be the motivation in teaching that there is one? I don't want to steer you. Remember that Chomsky is a philosopher and teacher. Is there a distinction between those? Look at The Purpose of Education, Citizens United, and Anarchism and its' variants. Read the US Constitution. What are the actual limits to 'freedom' ?
@ahmed337799 i dont know if he can but the world champion speed reader can read 4,700 words a minute, which is nearly 200 pages! x60= nearly 12,000! i don't know if she could keep it up for a full hour though.
Um. Wrong, Noam. Learn econ. Average product of labor is total product divided by variable inputs (labor), not productivity.
I WAS DOING SOMETHING ELSE AND NEGLECTED TO SHUT IT OFF ..
I'd like to see him debate George Will. It's not too late.
Views should be not less than 10,000,000,000!
That's the world population + some!
The thumbnail really has me questioning which political party Chomsky truly identifies with
@alan5863 "I wonder if that has gone down as more and more gets privatised"
You need to define your terms. I'm talking about liberty and voluntary exchange. If the fascists "privatize" a previously state-run industry, that's not a free market. I have no idea what the history of state involvement in the railways is in England, but if its anything like the US, then it's state subsidized/run/established/favored, etc.
"Like he actually reads current publications." *
That, at least, I can agree with.
Poor is a state of mind. People aren’t poor because some jobs don’t pay well. They are poor because they refuse to do anything to help themselves. I used to make minimum wage but I understood that if I want to make more I had to get a skill or education. Minimum wage jobs are not intended to be careers. You can’t fix stupid and you can’t fix lazy. Life’s not fair, get over it. If your job gets outsourced, find a new one
"it's not - either let command economies maximize their own profit and power or else you don't have a job - there are other options" :)
I don't agree with Chomsky on some of his points about trade. While it's possible what he calls "actual trade" has declined, "actual trade" is still valuable to the parties involved, if one believes Ricardo. Also, though corporations are command-like in structure, the actual end-products must still be sold to someone, and corporations can and do decline when the product is no longer relevant and purchased. Some examples include Kodak, etc.
. . . and create a bourgeoisie class that has a manufactured sense of status and makes a bit more money - enough for health insurance, a mortgaged house (and maybe a house “at the lake“), a nice car or three, college for the kids (in order to perpetuate the values of the bourgeoisie), the ability to take family vacations each year and then some tours across the U.S. and to Europe upon retirement - and they will mysteriously associate themselves with the Masters and spend their entire lives holding the working class down.
The secret to the revolution has always been the middle class.
Mrs. Doubtfire gives A speech... Yay!
Has anyone asked him how he would organize society?
I'm poor as fuck living in a shack but I ain't frightened
guys look up FIRE
@koloneltuesday
Remember that the word "system" in the context of physics is completely different from a political "system". Entropy is a measure of energy that dissipates as heat and therefore can't be used to do work. It's not a social concept. Entropy isn't going to determine whether a political system fails or succeeds. Rome didn't fall because of entropy. It fell due to human/economic factors. You weren't completely wrong, just over-applying the idea of entropy to an absurd degree.
@koloneltuesday
this doesn't really have anything to do with anything. that's like saying evolution is impossible because entropy increases over time. no - entropy only increases in a closed system where no free energy enters from the outside. our planet is a system powered by the sun, which is why life and physical complexity is possible here. in addition, you're using entropy (a physical law) to talk about something more abstract (human organization) - which it has nothing to do with.
@sallymaggiespotty Impossible. That is physically impossible. I could understand 1,000 words per minute, but reading 17 pages per second wouldn't be reading as you wouldn't have any comprehension of the words between those 17 pages and that second.