Korean meat processor wins bid to buy U.S. chicken company

[Autumnlicious]

[theVOID]

[bozo]

Void,
true co-operation is not to be found under capitalism. Indeed much wasted money and effort is spent by capitalist organisations, each spending millions to bring similar products to the market place and all concerned with one thing, maximising their own profit. Under socialism, r&d would be for bringing products to the market place that would enrich society, not shareholders. Under socialism, desperately ill people would not go wanting of drugs that today are so expensive
as a result of the huge profits the pharmaceutrical companies make out of sick people.

Cartels operate quite openly....take the energy companies as an example. It goes without saying that energy supply should be in common ownership. If it were possible to harness it, private industry would charge us for the very air we breathe----and let those that can't afford to pay die.

Under capitalism, I agree with you, we are all wage slaves. The problem is that the value to society of what you do for a living is not reflected fairly in wage earned. You are right, I deeply resent the millions paid to pop-stars and the like. Obscene.
Only today I read that one Gisele Bundchen, the world's highest paid " supermodel " ( how I detest that title and the fashion industry in toto )is 16th richest woman in the entertainment industry, with an estimated fortune of £92million.......all due to " working " as a clothes-horse! Obscene in the extreme, and whilst the gravy train keeps on rolling along for the likes of her, ordinary people are left competing for the finite number of jobs ( thus ensuring high levels of unemployment ) at whatever terms the man will offer.

I'm glad you admit to having it cushy, lucky you. Good job there are those who will take on the dirty jobs which are not usually as well paid as your friend in sanitation, apparently. In the UK we depend on imigrant workers, frequently exploited, always on low pay, to do the dirty jobs ...cleaning, fruit-picking, hotel work, care of the elderly and such like...the jobs not valued under capitalism.

Freedom is what socialism is about. Freedom to enjoy the necessities of life. Freedom from poverty on the one hand and bloated excess of wealth on the other. Freedom from fear of falling ill and growing old, safe in the knowledge that the state will be there for you. Freedom from being at the mercy of " the man " to put food in your mouth and a roof over your head.
The road is a long one, but sometime in the far off future just maybe we'll get there.
If we don't, then I fear capitalism will have been succeeded by barbarism.

[The Grand Nudger]

I like Venezuela and Italy hanging out there in the wind on that graph.

[theVOID]

Void,
true co-operation is not to be found under capitalism.

True cooperation is only possible when people act of their own accord, without any coercion. A state that requires cooperation is coerced cooperation, If people truly wanted to cooperate in the way that you desire them to then you would not need a state, you would need "perfect selfless humans" which don't exist.

In that sense cooperation under capitalism is much more "true" than cooperation mandated by an authority.

Indeed much wasted money and effort is spent by capitalist organisations, each spending millions to bring similar products to the market place and all concerned with one thing, maximising their own profit.

And it is this process that leads to innovation, efficiency, usable price signals to guide capital investment and lower prices for the consumers. The consumer electronic market is one of the most 'free' markets on earth, it is one of the only industries that consistently results in better goods for lower prices, the price of a flat-screen TV is 15% lower than last year.

What do you think the industry would look like the state ran everything? There would be less innovation, less incentive to invest in new ideas, the price would stagnate and like the Soviet Russian car industry everyone would be using the same products from 10 years ago and there would be little to no change, what would be more important to them is that everyone has the same product - In contrast the market automotive industry saw lower prices, lower manufacturing costs, more innovation and more freedom for the people to chose a product that bet suited their needs.

Under socialism, r&d would be for bringing products to the market place that would enrich society, not shareholders. Under socialism, desperately ill people would not go wanting of drugs that today are so expensive
as a result of the huge profits the pharmaceutrical companies make out of sick people.

You mean people would be coerced into working for others in roles they did not chose to produce technologies. Nobody who took a risk would be rewarded, nobody who saved to invest would see benefit from it, everyone would be an automaton, "consume what you are given slave! We'll handle all the big boy stuff!"

Drugs are so expensive because there is a lack of competition, a situation that has changed drastically over several decades with the increase in intervention - The system ensures that a sparse few companies are given all the capital, you can only get drugs from government-backed companies, you can't pursue the treatment you want but the one that is offered to you and treatments that show promise but aren't "approved" are off-limits, even if there is no good alternative you are not allowed to try these products - There are many people who are dying because the treatments that they were given did not work and they are told by some authoritarian douches that they could not freely chose to take other products as well as all the people who died when they were not allowed to take products that were later proven to be effective.

Cartels operate quite openly....take the energy companies as an example. It goes without saying that energy supply should be in common ownership. If it were possible to harness it, private industry would charge us for the very air we breathe----and let those that can't afford to pay die.

If I can do you the courtesy of not expecting you to defend something YOU don't condone (pol-pot communism) then don't for a second expect me to defend Cartels. I do not support Cartels, I've already explained that their actions are either coercive or fradulent and seeing as I oppose anything that involves Force, Fraud, Coercion or Negligence It follows necessarily that I do NOT support such an operation, nor do I believe any such structure can exist in a free market without the use of force, fraud or coercion, all of which give a government a moral authority to intervene.

Under capitalism, I agree with you, we are all wage slaves.

Wage Salves?!? No more so than we're all Hunger slaves! Think back on those hunter gatherers living 10,000 years ago, what bunch of Hunger slaves! And in that sense we're all Labor slaves and Oxygen slaves! Wages are a quantified exchange in value and value is a product of pleasure and desire - If they weren't wages it would be rations, under socialism we'd all be "Rations slaves". I'm self-employed, I guess that makes me a labor slave! When I make money from selling a Menu UI I designed I'm an innovation slave! Oh, and I'm also putting off consuming some of my hard earned slavery to buy a server, I guess pretty soon I'll be a resource slave! Damn, I'm a triple slave!

It looks like the only people who aren't "slaves" are beneficiaries, right? After all they are the only ones who don't have to exchange their labor, ideas or resources for their income!

The fact is we need to put effort (labor) into our environment to survive, to extract that which we need to fulfill our desires and pleasures, it doesn't make a shit-bit of difference whether our labor is quantified in rations, wages or dividends, we're all giving up something for our income, we all depend on this sacrifice to survive, the amount we receive in exchange for this sacrifice is a function of how desired our goods/skills/ideas are to others.

The problem is that the value to society of what you do for a living is not reflected fairly in wage earned.

"Fair" is a reasonable allocation of value and once again, it all stems from desire.

You are right, I deeply resent the millions paid to pop-stars and the like. Obscene.

Well tough shit, you don't get to decide what value is or how it works. Value is a product of desire and pleasure, nothing has value without someone desiring it, the more desired something/someone is the more valuable that thing/person is - Anything else is arbitrary.

Only today I read that one Gisele Bundchen, the world's highest paid " supermodel " ( how I detest that title and the fashion industry in toto )is 16th richest woman in the entertainment industry, with an estimated fortune of £92million.......all due to " working " as a clothes-horse! Obscene in the extreme, and whilst the gravy train keeps on rolling along for the likes of her, ordinary people are left competing for the finite number of jobs ( thus ensuring high levels of unemployment ) at whatever terms the man will offer.

Yeah people desire her. You've got a problem with that? Again, tough, these are other people's values, you don't get a say - You're free to pursue your own values, you're free to persuade other people that they shouldn't value supermodels or fashion (I'm all on board with persuading people of that), you're free to persuade people to value others over their own needs (again, being an social egalitarian I am 100% behind this persuasion) but you DO NOT get to dictate values, it's thought crime.

And by what means does competition for finite jobs create less jobs? Complete nonsense!

I'm glad you admit to having it cushy, lucky you.

Lucky me? I spent years teaching myself what I needed to know, I work hard pursing and soliciting clients, I work hard to make sure I'm up to date with all the new skills, there is nothing "lucky" about it. And yeah, as a single guy with no kids I get by just fine, but seeing as I have goals of having a family I am taking active measures to set up my skills and resources for the future - I do not consume all I earn, I save it to invest in increasing resources to increase my productivity and thus my desirability to others. My parent's aren't rich and I've had no opportunities that other people don't get.

Good job there are those who will take on the dirty jobs which are not usually as well paid as your friend in sanitation, apparently.

I doubt there are many people at all who have to deal with anything near as "dirty" as him, being knee deep in rotting chicken guts. Working in waste disposal would be a walk in the park, but there are more people willing to do that work so they aren't as scarce and therefore not as desirable, he freely chooses to do the job because it pays well.

In the UK we depend on imigrant workers, frequently exploited, always on low pay, to do the dirty jobs ...cleaning, fruit-picking, hotel work, care of the elderly and such like...the jobs not valued under capitalism.

Cleaning is easy, fruit-picking is easy, hotel work is easy, I've done all but the latter. Fruit picking is also something many people enjoy, I know people who do it full time in summer and they enjoy the work, they are paid a commission and the more effort they put in the greater their reward. One of my good friends (a foreigner too, by the way) works in elderly care, she enjoys her work and it pays an average wage but the pleasure she takes from it combined with the value of her work to others makes it a job she is more than willing to do.

Freedom is what socialism is about.

Bollocks. Am I free to sell my ideas to someone for whatever the price they are willing to pay? No, I'm coerced into giving it to the state for whatever price they want to pay me, swapsies for a bag of chips and a generic house!. There would be no incentive for me to take risks or spend my spare time studying to increase my productivity? No. Will I get any more for my effort than someone who takes handouts? No.

Fuck that.

Freedom to enjoy the necessities of life.

Shitting is a necessity, I can't say I enjoy it. We don't enjoy necessities, we enjoy pleasure.

Freedom from poverty on the one hand

Capitalism reduces poverty, go look at those studies I cited earlier, it's all there in the data buddy.

and bloated excess of wealth on the other. Freedom from fear of falling ill and growing old, safe in the knowledge that the state will be there for you.

Oh right, we all want to be free from excessive wealth! How terrible!

Unlike you I would rather see EVERYONE be excessively wealthy, hell, compared to 100 years ago almost everyone is excessively wealthy.

What?? Socialists don't fear death or cancer? Bullshit. And I'm absolutely for helping people pay for medical expenses, I actively give to the volunteer ambulance service and advocate means dependent aid. Don't fool yourself into thinking Socialists have a monopoly on this, you'd be dead wrong. My country is capitalist, we have a healthy social medicine program - The two ARE NOT mutually exclusive.

Also, seeing as governments have made promises to people that they would take care of their retirements we have a moral obligation to provide. Private investment of retirement savings have a much greater rate of returns which means that there are less people who need the means-dependent aid later in life - Encouraging people to invest their retirement savings in the local economy benefits everyone, much more so than having it sit there as a debt-obligation for the governments borrowing.

They will be if you are truly poor, if you're struggling they'll help, but people shouldn't go into life with that attitude, it causes nothing but problems. People should try and be self-sufficient and responsible and only the people who fail at doing so should receive aid from the state.

Freedom from being at the mercy of " the man " to put food in your mouth and a roof over your head.

Right, you're at the mercy of a coercive monopolistic state instead!

The road is a long one, but sometime in the far off future just maybe we'll get there.

You're just going to ignore the failed experiments of the past? Right, because somewhere at some time there will be a highly competent group of angels to micromanage the economy! Let's just ignore the failures. Those other guys were just bad apples right?

If we don't, then I fear capitalism will have been succeeded by barbarism.

Oh yeah, we're going to go from being awesome at producing material goods, a complex web of interacting individuals cooperating from mutual self interest all to fulfill their desires and pleasures to hunting with sticks and stoning each other! That makes so much sense!

---

I like Venezuela and Italy hanging out there in the wind on that graph.

You're seriously going to ignore the trend and focus on a single data point? How intellectually rigorous of you!

Hey, I guess the universe is expanding at a constant speed, after all there is are data points from Type 1a supernovae that shows an Ωm,Ωv of 0.25,0! Wait, there are other data points of 1,0! Damn, guess we're due for a big crunch in 20 billion years! Ooh, and there are thermometer readings showing no increase in temperature, no climate change! Awesome, I was concerned there for a second, time to buy a really inefficient car!

[The Grand Nudger]

Void, I have no idea what data that study comes from, I don't have a stake in either side of this debate, I just found it anomalous that those two countries are in the position that they find themselves in on the graph. Intellectually rigorous, I'll have to get some sort of tag for the posts where I'm trying to be intellectually rigorous in the future. However, on a serious note, anomalous points of data are truly disturbing in any conclusion. They do need to be explained, even if they have little meaning in the end.

Just looking at that graph, I could have drawn a very different line, Venezuala would not be anomalous if we drew the line to suggest that wealth peaked under very prohibitive systems that are much like Venezuela's, and that as control was lifted beyond that point there is an intial slump until it picks back up again, and becomes a pretty nice curve. If the graph were drawn so, it would make Italy the real anomaly.

[theVOID]

Void, I have no idea what data that study comes from, I don't have a stake in either side of this debate, I just found it anomalous that those two countries are in the position that they find themselves in on the graph. Intellectually rigorous, I'll have to get some sort of tag for the posts where I'm trying to be intellectually rigorous in the future. However, on a serious note, anomalous points of data are truly disturbing in any conclusion. They do need to be explained, even if they have little meaning in the end.

We don't make conclusions from anomalous points of data, we follow trends. Having a few points out of place could represent culture, one massive and uncontrolled industry amongst a strictly controlled every-day business structure (like Venezuelan tourism) etc.

Just looking at that graph, I could have drawn a very different line, Venezuala would not be anomalous if we drew the line to suggest that wealth peaked under very prohibitive systems that are much like Venezuela's, and that as control was lifted beyond that point there is an intial slump until it picks back up again, and becomes a pretty nice curve. If the graph were drawn so, it would make Italy the real anomaly.

And I could draw a zigzag... The line is shows the average income per capital given the economic freedom of the country, it can only possibly be in one place given the data, it's not a game of "connect the dots".

[The Grand Nudger]

I've obviously waded in on something that is very important to you. Again, I have no idea where the data set comes from. I dont have any conclusions at all. What the hell is it that you think I'm alluding to anyway?

I understand that it isn't connect the dots, in theory, except that in practice it is. That we have let a formula decide where the dots should be is fine, that's that way it's done, I understand that. Still, those two points were excluded, and there is a reason (When I saw them I immediately thought tourism personally). I'm still not sure what's riling you up in all of this?

[theVOID]

I've obviously waded in on something that is very important to you. Again, I have no idea where the data set comes from. I dont have any conclusions at all. What the hell is it that you think I'm alluding to anyway?

I thought you were suggesting that the anomalous points invalidated the graph, though it seems now that you were just suggesting it was interesting, sorry if I misunderstood you.

I understand that it isn't connect the dots, in theory, except that in practice it is. That we have let a formula decide where the dots should be is fine, that's that way it's done, I understand that. Still, those two points were excluded, and there is a reason (When I saw them I immediately thought tourism personally). I'm still not sure what's riling you up in all of this?

How do I appear riled up?

The dots are simple coordinates along two axis represented by average income and economic freedom, the source of the data is explained in the first link.

Those two points are not excluded, they contribute to the average which is represented by the line, they are simply not enough compared to the other data points to drastically change the curve. The reason the line is suppressed relative to Venezuela is the large number of data points around the bottom of the graph. What it shows is that relative to economic freedom Venezuela is doing rather better than comparable nations, as is Italy.

[Napoléon]

How do I appear riled up?

\/

You're seriously going to ignore the trend and focus on a single data point? How intellectually rigorous of you!

Hey, I guess the universe is expanding at a constant speed, after all there is are data points from Type 1a supernovae that shows an Ωm,Ωv of 0.25,0! Wait, there are other data points of 1,0! Damn, guess we're due for a big crunch in 20 billion years! Ooh, and there are thermometer readings showing no increase in temperature, no climate change! Awesome, I was concerned there for a second, time to buy a really inefficient car!

Use of exclamations and the general sarcastic tone of your response was quite negative. I can see why Rhythm would think you were riled up.

I think you just interpreted Rhythms initial post as though he was insinuating something but he was actually just giving a general comment

C'mon guys group hug!