Argentine Protesters Back on Streets

gee bill, you going to spank us too? Well, hey, whatddya say when your govt/capitaist/moneyrucking policies screw people out of jobs Bill? Whaddaya say when they screw you out of your retirement savings, and chrage you up the butt for water and electricty? Whaddaya gonna do Bill? You gonna go make more money and keep making more money? Whatdda gonna do Bill when there aren't a lot of jobs, much less any that pay anything? Huh Bill? Gonna go dip into that trust fund mommmy and daddy set up for yer? Huh? gee bill, glad you're so free to be so stupid.

this is a troll, right? Do you actually think that the unemployment rate = the laziness rate? This nation which has historically been somewhat conservative has just had an outburst in childlike dependency or sloth? If large numbers of hard working and willing-to-work people aren't able to get enough to eat, then that system doesn't work, plain and simple.

> whatddya say when your govt/capitaist/moneyrucking
> policies screw people out of jobs

Then my policies would suck. But you assume that anyone who loses their job as an indirect result of an economic policy, is getting screwed. Things change, resources come and go, players in the game maneuver. If for any reason an employer no longer needs the services of an employee, that's life. You have no more inherent right to an employer's money than he has to your labor.

> Whaddaya say when they screw you out of your
> retirement savings

Again, depends on if it's a true screw job (theft, deceit, betrayal), or tough luck, or your own damn fault. If your precious retirement savings was lost because you, like a dumb fuck, invested it in the stock market then guess who's fault is that? If you're gonna gamble, dont whine when you lose.

> and chrage you up the butt for water and electricty?

The only water you have a right to, is that which comes out of your own well. The only electricity to which you have a right, is that which comes out of your own generator. Dont have either? Tough. Cry to your parents if you want a free ride, don't expect others to build your generators, lay your power lines, and pump your water for miles into your house, ingrate. You wanna set the prices? Provide these things yourself, and you're welcome to ask any price you want.

> Whatdda gonna do Bill when there aren't a lot of jobs, much less any that pay anything

Move somewhere else where my skills are of greater value, or find a way to provide for myself. It's called accepting responsibility for one's self.

> Gonna go dip into that trust fund mommmy and daddy set up for yer?

Guess what, fool? I'm part of your "working class", and always have been. 8 hours a day, Monday to Friday. Never had a trust fund.

> Do you actually think that the unemployment rate = the laziness rate?

Not at all, many unemployed Argentines may be perfectly willing and able to do various kinds of work. But if no one needs their services, they still have a problem. I'm perfectly willing to work for many high tech companies in San Jose who pay big bucks - but they don't need me, so that's life. Or should I be demanding that they hire me because it's somehow my liberal birthright to receive their money? Yeah, whatever.

> This nation which has historically been somewhat
> conservative has just had an outburst in childlike
> dependency or sloth?

Or the money's all gone somewhere else, and many Americans are no longer needed at the wages they expect. Bummer, but oh well.

> If large numbers of hard working and willing-to-work
> people aren't able to get enough to eat, then that
> system doesn't work, plain and simple.

You're right, it doesn't. Too many people incapable of providing for themselves. Too many people dependent upon others to provide them with the basic necessities of life. It's a sad state of affairs, when you've got so many co-dependent people standing around yelling "What do I do now? Who will build my house? Who will fix my car? Who will grow my food? I cant learn to do these things for myself!"

You know what the difference is between the rich and the poor? Money, nothing else. They're both spoiled and lazy. Take away the poor kid's job or the rich kid's trust fund, they both scream "Who will take care of me?!"

Atlas is shrugging, and you're all falling from his shoulders.

*Sj

as is typical of "libertarians", spider confuses the formally voluntary nature of relationships under capitalism for the real thing. capitalism can not emerge nor can it reproduce itself without wage-labor, which itself requires dispossession. why else would a person "consent" to exploitation? the reality is that in a fully capitalist society such as Argentina, the vast majority have little more than wages as a means of staying afloat once savings -- if they exist in the first place -- disappear. Spider fashions himself the rebel but shows himself to be a minstrel for the rich.

are you saying that as a worker you'd never make demands on your boss spider? would that go against your silly little religion?

Yes - I read his argument twice, and it is completely monarchist, with no way of avoiding it. In almost all of Europe, the russian part of asia, the thousands of years of emperors in China, and under a several hundred year long period of Aztec king rule, years and years would go by and literally no peasant would be able to acquire their own well or plot of land due to the system of property ownership, as SJ would suggest they need to do. And indeed, most did just go and die when there was any sort of shortage or the king was being mean and offering the typical extremely wage for labor. The only change in this came when people got rid of the monarch. I suppose he would be the Ayn RAndian superhuman, with facial features resembling Howard Roark, who would be able to transcend the masses and figure out some brilliant way to acquire his own property under this original unjust system of land allocation. I don't know why the layout of property ownership in most countries today is so much more fair either. Did Weyerhaeuser buy up their vast land holdings because they worked so much harder or because the government favored them? Clearly the latter, thus, why should their property rights be respected as some god given force.

adult ayn randians like spider share a common trait: they lack emotional depth, like those greasy-haired 35 year olds you see at the science fiction section of the bookstore.

In fact, randism is like all male jerk-off sci-fi: it's a world where everyone is a robot who can build his own generator, lay his own power lines, without any help, and then "sell" the products to any other robot who has the "money" to buy. Robots who can't cut it end up on the scrap heap.

By his own logic, spider must have been reared by a woman who sold her child-rearing services on the open market. after all, who would do hard work like that for free?

Far from being "radical," this chilling worldview is in fact quite common among the Alan Greenspans (big Randian) who run the capitalist state from the commanding heights. Like all so called right wing libertarians, randians are fervent advocates of state power to enforce covenants, put down riots, and shoot starving strikers. One man's state is another man's "enforceable contract provision."

so don't feel so persecuted, spiderman: you've got friends in high places!

Even If You Believe In The Black Market...


Spider Jerusalem's original comments on Bill Cormier's article are mistaken not so much for the "blame the victim" anti-paternalism which saturates most conservative and libertarian arguments but because of the trust he has misplaced in the Associated Press to tell the story in a fashion useful to analysis.

SJ's primary assumption - justified by the AP's poor storytelling - is that the workers feel *entitled* to gainful employment; one could speculate that they suffer from some sub-equatorial memetic mutation of the Leftist Virus. The truth, however, is that the Argentinian poor and unemployed - who led the protests and make the demands - understand the free market much better than any north american could hope to.

South America's persistent unemployment and kleptomaniacal ruling classes translate on the ground into an Unofficial Economy that is frequently larger than the official economy and weak de facto consolidation of power in the state. Add in the absence of the paternalist policies SJ would likely distain, e.g welfare and social security systems, and you have a small pocket of Official Argentina which exists seperate from Unofficial Argentina.

It is clear that if 40% of the population is "unemployed" but manage to avoid starvation year after year they must be earning a living outside of the official economy - they must work in the unregulated, unpoliced, perfectly competative Illegal Economy. Black Markets rarely (if ever) accept electronic transactions, checks or credit cards (though the latter are frequently a commodity); all business is done in cash. From dog walkers to lawn-mowers to car washers to street vendors to taxi drivers to gun runners to healers - most of the people in Argentina relied upon cash to conduct business and most people were "self employed" (though they didn't pay taxes as such). [Side note: it says a lot about the U.S. that "working for someone else" is assumed.]

When Argentina's government decided to restrict cash withdrawls from banks it essentially choked the unofficial economy - which employed 40% of the population - of its only medium of exchange. If nobody will hire you, you can work for yourself. But if nobody can pay you, you can't work for anyone. Certainly, the poor could revert to barter but that is no way to run an economy.

If SJ concieved that those workers demanding jobs had essentially been prohibited from working for themselves he might have been more sympathetic to their demands: "If you won't let us work for ourselves, you had damn well better give us jobs!"

...opendna

but just because someone is engaged in wage-labor in the black-economy doesn't mean that they are "working for themselves" in any meaningful sense. you make a good point about the restrictions on bank withdrawls disproportionately impacting this informal sector of the economy. but let's not pretend for the sake of appeasing spider's delusional notions that the black-marketeers were independent or "working for themselves". even without the clampdown on bank transactions this sector of the economy was reeling -- like virtually all the others.