Posted on 01/22/2020 3:27:05 AM PST by Kaslin
On Monday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, (D-N.Y.), sat for a discussion with author Ta-Nehisi Coates. She dropped a number of shocking statements -- statements that elicited nothing but murmurs of agreement from Coates. AOC claimed: "No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars." How, pray tell, are American billionaires responsible for such massive theft? According to AOC, the very mechanisms of capitalism mandate such theft. In her view, successful businesspeople simply exploit their workers while maximizing their profits. Hypothetically speaking about billionaires making widgets, she said: "You didn't make those widgets! You sat on a couch while thousands of people were paid modern-day slave wages and, in some cases, real modern-day slavery...You made that money off the backs of undocumented people."
This, of course, is nonsense. Voluntary exchange of labor for wages is, as stated, voluntary, and the fact that there are many people willing and able to labor in the manufacture of widgets is presumably responsible for lower wages. Companies that refuse to pay their workers market wages will soon watch those workers migrate to other businesses or other industries. It is a patent violation of free market principles to utilize force in order to compel someone to work for you; blaming the free market for coercion is like blaming free speech for censorship. Exploitation in labor markets is typically accompanied by government subsidies, regulation and interventionism.
So, how does AOC magically turn economic freedom into economic tyranny? By suggesting that true freedom lies in collective control of the means of production: "If you're a billionaire, that means that you control a massive system...It means that you have a massive labor force under your control, and to be ethical if you're a billionaire today, the thing that you need to do is give up control and power." But to whom would such power and control be given? AOC suggests that major companies be turned into worker cooperatives -- companies whose workers own and control the business.
But, of course, that doesn't solve her problem: If workers own and control the business, they are properly classified as capitalists. They will have to make decisions to make the business competitive, which means keeping wages competitive, for example. This is precisely what has happened with one of the world's biggest worker collectives, the Spanish Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, whose worker-owners have "learned to think like the shareholders of any other global business," according to The Guardian. In fact, most companies begin with a few workers who pool their capital and labor: Facebook, for example, handed out stock options to employees, resulting in a $23 billion valuation for their initial employees when the company went public. Does that make those workers evil capitalists?
In the end, what AOC truly wants is government control. Worker collectives won't do the trick. Only top-down government redefinition of the value of labor will. When AOC claims that capitalists merely leech off the true value of labor, she suggests that labor can be measured without reference to the market. How would AOC measure the value of such labor? Presumably through appeals to "fairness." There is only one problem with this method: It simply doesn't work. Consumers determine the value of products; producers do not. The diffuse informational system of the free market, which rewards the power of entrepreneurship, rather than punishing it, creates prosperity; top-down control creates poverty. In fact, the greatest guarantee of the sort of poverty AOC decries is the destruction of the same system she decries.
But according to AOC, we have nothing to fear from government, and "the government is us." The fact that Coates, one of the most prominent writers on the evils of Jim Crow, nodded along should demonstrate that those on the left do not understand the consequences of their own philosophy. The government is not "us," because we are not a collective. We are individuals with rights. But in AOC's world, we have no rights -- we have only our role as members of a collective controlled by those who agree with her. And that is exploitation and tyranny.
This beotch will never shut up.
Blabbering nonsense is her main quality.
The quote is misleading. She had a Minor in Econ.
That sounds like she is talking about illegal aliens, who are imported to work at what we call slave wages, paid in cash to avoid withholdings. I presume she agrees, then, that we need to find more effective ways to discourage illegal incursions?
Hey AOC, how could a billionaire (or in this case wanna be billionaire) take a billion dollars? You do realize AOC, that your very statement implies someone else had a billion to take. So how did they get it? AOC, you really ought to look into some facts sometime. Just tossing out sound bites and socialist garbage may make you feel good, but anyone with a modicum of common sense and access to the internet can quickly figure out you’re full of it. Go back to bartending. You’ll have far more success peddling you tripe to drunks. No one will call you on you BS, no one will (repeatedly) point out how wrong you are. No one will tell you how stupid you are. In fact after a couple of drinks they may even say you’re pretty and smart. Maybe more than a couple.
This dangerous dolt should be working on a collective farm in n Korea. When some a hole like her talks they see themselves as in charge not doing any of the work. Anyone who wishes to change the system needs to have experience in working under the system they envision. Just like those s heads who talk about how much better it is in some other country. Like it move there. Leave me alone. People are breaking into the US. Funny I don’t see anyone breaking the wall to get out.
Hedge Funds, especially those that specialize in short sales (i.e. Soros).
There have been individuals and companies that specialized in locating businesses that had more in assets than what their market value was. They would buy controlling interest in the stock or buy the business outright, then liquidate all real estate, equipment and other assets at a profit putting the work force out on the street.
I am underwhelmed by the quality of BU graduates.
Did they? They were kinda funny in a crazy way :)
Located in Los Angeles and other Democrat cities.
lol
And yet....she willingly TAKES almost $200,000 a year from taxpayers and produces ZERO widgets
Steve-O definitely did.
I know Johnny Knoxville didn’t, which is why he had no idea how to fall.
It’s why they loved him doing stupid things, his falls were terrible.
I see what you did there...
lol
They were all nuts :)
But the clown school stuff is fascinating
I do not like AOC's politics, but I wish more Republicans had her moxie.
So they “took” those assets, they didn’t buy them?
Her parents must be so proud.
The answer, of course, is an unqualified 'no'. Just the capital investment required to produce a single car is more than a single worker could handle. And because of that, the worker exchanges his labor for what he considers to be an adequate wage and takes his spot within a company. At the end of his shift, he goes home and leaves it to someone else to worry about how to sell the product, and turn a profit. He has fairly traded his time for a wage he agreed to, and the company agreed to pay him that sum for his role in the process.
I don’t want to name names, because I just retired from one that was very successful as an American-style corporation, but was then purchased by a British corp because of our success. Revenue grew due to increased staffing and corresponding projects, but earnings stabilized as a percentage of revenue and did not continue to grow beyond yhat. The employee bonus pool disappeared and became limited only to management. Staff became treated like commodities that could be replaced, and were no longer valued as the foundation of the revenue. There are many more companies like this. This company had several employees who left at different times who started their own companies, founded on the principles espoused and promoted by the original company. All these new companies have been successful in the marketplace and financially successful for their ownership and employees.
I understand there are companies who treat their employees badly and don’t really provide benefits to society at large. That’s not the same as “taking” wealth and paying slave labor wages, which would be no wages at all, as AOC claims. I’m still waiting for examples of companies that do.
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