Carl,
I don’t disagree with anything you say. You are absolutely right. I think we’re
on the same side, and the things you say about the big, even smaller
corporations, companies are true.
However, they are not always true, and they also hold true even when the means
of production would be owned by the workers. All that noise, pollution,
detrimental effects on the surrounding neighbors, that still holds true. And if
the business owned by the workers fails or founders, and it is established
there is a better place to set up shop, won’t the same thing happen?
And I definitely agree that the factory boss needs the workers as much as,
perhaps even more, than the workers need him.
As for your father and his buddy, both lost something, and so did the people
who came to them for repairs. That’s another thing that has changed…no one
repairs anything anymore. You are expected to throw it out and buy new.
But I call attention to the first paragraph. This is also true, and it is not
true anymore. The untenable disparity again caused by privilege, by wealth
trumps all. And I add that once, companies realized that they needed their
customers to keep them afloat, and they treated those customers accordingly.
Now, if you threaten to take your business elsewhere, the basic response from
the company is don’t let the door hit you n the way out. And all these websites
and so on with their supposed reviews by customers, well, we all know that they
are fixed and rigged. Yes, negative reviews appear, but they can’t hold a
candle to the shills.
So the big corporations don’t care about the worker or about the customer. So
we’re screwed from every direction.
And I also agree that the whole Norman Rockwell thing has always been a lie, a
sham, and note, I use words that are more damning than the more benign word
myth.
It’s less frequent and really less tragic for the big mansion dwellers to lose,
because they are so often so incredibly insulated from ruin, with their
lawyers, their economic padding, their alternatives. But it does happen that
they hit bust along with the little guy, and then, all those reserves,
including their so-called friends desert them like the proverbial rats.
Struggling to survive is hard on anybody who has to do it.
But I still say we’re on the same side of this issue, the side of the worker,
the poor, those who are taken advantage of and, as you say, kicked to the curb
by the rich and powerful. But the rich and powerful wolves wear many varieties
of sheep’s clothing.
And my last sentence sums it up well, I think:
For me, anyhow, the problem lies in the overwhelmingly enormous disparity
between the way the worker lives and the boss, the owner, lives
But Alice, does the "boss", the fellow who began a business really
take all of the risks and responsibility? What about the risk you
take as you plod in day after day, making your fifty dozen widgets?
Aren't you taking some risk in trusting that the boss knows how to
navigate his business through the competition? You keep him supplied
with widgets. But what if he makes a blunder and his business goes
down? You depended upon his skill just as much as he depended upon
yours. Both of you are now out on the street. Because he is tossed
to the curb, leaving behind a fine mansion and expensive furnishings,
and you are out of your tract house with your cheap Sears bargain
basement furniture dumped around you, does not mean that he lost more.
You both are losers. But that is the small business owner. Much of
our business today is conducted by old, long standing corporations.
There is no comparison between the risk you take when working for a
huge international corporation, like Boeing, and the risk Boeing
takes. Boeing tells you that they are doing you a favor putting their
aircraft factory in your backyard. But they are lying. That factory
is being built in your neighborhood because Boeing planners have
decided this is going to be a profitable location. Never mind that
the congestion and the noise and the stench will lower your house
value and cause your family their good health. That's just the price
you must pay for the opportunity of having a job.
What about a partnership? You and Boeing need one another in order to
put those 747's in the air, and big profits in the Corporate pockets.
But who really is taking the lion's share of risk? If the company
decides to move your factory to the South, or out of the country,
leaving behind huge buildings and piles of junk, who suffers more? We
keep being directed to the small business, when those businesses are
fast becoming things of the past, while most of our jobs are dependent
on huge International Corporations. These corporations do not risk
failure. They have the resources to weather storms that would pull us
under. Just as with the Contracting of Labor by Uber and other
corporations, we little folks have had all of the risk shoved onto our
plate. And all the while, the big corporations PR guys keep us
focused on The Make Believe World of Norman Rockwell. That world does
not exist, if it ever did. It is bogus.
During the Second World War, my dad and his buddy took correspondence
courses in radio repair. Dad opened his business as a part time
venture, working out of home while he continued his full time job at
the Bremerton Naval Shipyard. His buddy borrowed money and opened a
store front. He sold radios and other appliances of the day,
repairing radios in the back. Both men ran their businesses for
several years. Both were forced by circumstances, to close their
repair businesses. People said that dad's friend "lost his shirt".
No one said that dad had failed in his business venture. But that's
what they said about his buddy.
Who had risked the most, and who had lost the most? If you say that
money is the measure of success, then dad's buddy was the bigger
loser. But if you say self image and self respect were the measures
of success or failure, then both men were equal in their loss.
Both men recovered. Dad's friend went on to open his own restaurant
and make a local name for himself. Dad went on to become a highly
respected structural steel estimator.
Risking loss had no part of how these two men were constructed. Life
is a risk. How we approach it and what we do with our set backs, is
determined by who we are.
Dad told me the story of his co-worker who came to work each day and
announced to the office, "Every day that I come through this door, I
feel like getting down on my knees and thanking Mister Schissle for
giving me a job". Finally my dad had heard enough. After one such a
performance, dad announced, "Every day when I come through that door,
Mister Schissel should get down on his knees and thank me for showing
up and making him a profit."
It's all in the way each of us sees life.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/17/15, Alice Dampman Humel <alicedh@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
But that’s also part of the equation. A factory worker in 1948 could afford
to send his son to Oberlin, a private college. The relationship between
wages and prices was less extreme in its lopsidedness. It was still
lopsided, but nothing like it is now.
I agree that the owners of businesses, the creators of ideas, inventions,
the organizers of the facilities of production of goods and services should
not be billionaires while their workers earn next to nothing. But I do not
necessarily object to the guy who takes all the risks, does all the work of
establishing a plant, a factory, a store, a dairy, keeps things in good
running order, looks out for the safety of the working conditions, keeps the
bureaucrats at bay, does all the paperwork, or, yes, hires somebody to do
that, deserves rewards for his labors, too. If all I have to do is show up
and make my 50 widgets a day, then go home and play with the cats, then I
don’t think it’s unfair that I earn somewhat less than the person who has
all the responsibility on his shoulders.
It’s like renting as opposed to owning one’s digs. If something in my rented
apartment breaks, I call the landlord or the housing authority, whomever,
and they are responsible for fixing it and paying for it. If I own the house
myself, then I have to get it fixed, find the plumber, make sure he’s
reliable, and pay the bill.
I guess it falls under division of labor.
The Soviets and others tried to turn the whole thing on its head by saying
that the noble factory worker deserved a much higher wage than the professor
or the surgeon. I’m not sure either is terribly useful. It’s still
disparity, and it still creates class and, more than likely, the class
warfare that accompanies it.
Ownership of the means of production by the workers? It sounds good, but it
also has its problems, as we have seen in history. Different problems,
admittedly, but nonetheless…
For me, anyhow, the problem lies in the overwhelmingly enormous disparity
between the way the worker lives and the boss, the owner, lives
On Jul 17, 2015, at 4:36 PM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Points well made, Alice.
Most certainly I am not standing up for the cab companies. Back when
I was a much younger feller, just a Whippersnapper, cab companies had
fleets of cabs and they had service garages where they maintained
their equipment. But even then the drivers were over worked and under
paid. Why is it that the place bosses see as the only place to cut
costs is with the employees wages? When we check it out, we find that
the labor cost is usually only a small percentage of total expenses.
Again, when I was a boy, labor costs were a larger portion of most
production costs. Still, they were not the largest expense by a long
shot. But over the years production equipment became more efficient.
Manual labor became a smaller and smaller cost. But the bosses did
not share in the profit gained by the more modern methods. In fact,
today's production worker is paid far less than his counterpart of
50 years ago.
When my sisters and I were growing up, dad earned enough money to keep
the family solvent. Mother stayed home until we were older. Then she
went to work long enough to earn the down payment on a home.
The working class neighborhood I grew up in consisted of families
where fathers worked and mothers cared for the children and the home.
Fishermen, mill workers, factory workers, truck drivers, etc. Common
laborers. Earning a living for their families. Very little debt in
these neighborhoods, outside of the house payment and maybe a car
payment. Credit was not easily available, in part because it was not
needed.
But those were the days when working men and women knew the value of
being organized. Strong labor unions forced bosses to hold down their
greed and share with the folks who were producing their wealth. Uber,
regardless of whether they are an improvement over Cab Companies, or
not, and regardless as to whether the drivers sing high praises to the
opportunity of tailoring their hours to their own needs, Uber is
piling up profits that represent the labor of the drivers. But this
is my personal problem with Capitalism. The idea that you have the
right to have other people work for you and give you part of their
labor for simply giving the the opportunity to give you some of their
labor. This notion that just because I open a plant called, Jarvis
Manufacturing, that I have a right to force you to work for me at near
poverty wages in order for me to live in luxury, is a hold over from
the Dark Ages. As long as some of us live in mansions with households
full of servants while the majority of us live hand to mouth, there
will be those among us who will grab all they can, regardless of where
that leaves others. The system is corrupt. So I can't find a way to
support Uber or the Cab Companies. If the owners really cared for
their clients or their employees, they would be insuring that either
their rates were lower or their workers lived at the same level as
they.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/17/15, Alice Dampman Humel <alicedh@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I know I’m in the minority here, but I still think there is another way
of
looking at this. I’ve used Uber quite a bit, and only once did the
bastard
driver see the dog and pull away, leaving me and my 91 year old mother
standing on the street. I had told my mother what kind and color car to
expect, and she saw such a car pull up, slow down, then speed off.
I complained to Uber, the driver was reprimanded, suspended, fired, not
sure
exactly what, and I was given a refund for the trip.
Do ou have any idea how many times I’ve been refused by standard cabs?
Too
numerous to count.
Now, I see all this flap over Uber and the rest as an attempt by the
taxi
industry to eliminate competition. IMO, it is the taxi industry that is
trying every which way but loose to convince everybody of every
political
and socio-economic persuasion that Uber and the rest are evil, and only
the
taxi industry should prevail. Why do you think there is even any question
as
to whether or not Uber can operate at the airports? Of course, they
already
can drop off passengers who take Uber to the airport, but they are
frozen
out from picking up arrivals by the taxi industry. And again, how many
times
has a taxi driver refused to take me and the dog? Theoretically, such
drivers are supposed to be pulled out of the queue and sent to the end
of
the line of waiting taxis, but that almost never happens.
Aware of how many like-minded people on many other issues see this one
differently from me, I ask every Uber driver how long they’ve been
driving
for Uber and how they like it. They all say they love it. Usually the
same
story: they can make their own hours, they can drive at 2 AM if they
like
and sleep all day. They are like all free-lancers and self-employed and
“independent" contractors or consultants: they get no benefits, they have
to
pay their own contributions to medical insurance, Social Security, etc.
.
So I don’t know who is right or if there’s a little right on both sides.
But it certainly is true that Uber and Lyft and the others will force
the
taxi industry to clean up its own house if the taxi industry does not
succeed in squelching the competition.
Just like cabs, some will be able to accommodate wheel chairs, some not.
So we’ll see where this all ends, and if the critics that see Uber as an
exploitative big business end up being right, I”ll be the first to
concede
my error. For me, the jury is still out.
Alice
On Jul 17, 2015, at 11:53 AM, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
HI Joe,
Thanks for an early chuckle on a warm but windy day here on the Great
Olympic Peninsula.
Trade Secret, is it? Poor Uber. Surely they must know that their so
called Trade Secret is the age old, worn out exploitation of hard
working men and women. Contract Labor is the favorite method of our
Out-of-control Corporate Capitalism to suck up some more of our hard
earned money.
What a win/win deal for the boss!
All risk, all expenses, and all responsibility is placed squarely on
the backs of those doing all the labor. I've heard the Uber ads
proclaiming that if you have a car, you can make a thousand dollars a
week. How many out of work, desperate people will jump at such an
offer? Back when I was young it was the door to door vacuum cleaner
companies and other companies such as encyclopedias and magazines,
sweet talking unemployed, desperate people into the false hope of
earning a living. But as long as Labor Unions continued to be strong
and support their members, such slimy methods of exploitation were
kept to a minimum. Today's world has been swamped by the "Right to
Work", mentality. Unions have become labeled as Evil. "Pull yourself
up by your own boot straps. Rags to riches. The Self-made
man/woman". Meanwhile Corporate Barons such as the upstart Uber, roam
the land like giant predators. Why do we keep buying into the belief
that we need some bloated corporate head in order to have a job?
Can't the Uber approach work as well if it were owned and operated by
the drivers and those support workers?
We need to begin working together. Forget the bad name socialism has
been given by Corporate Capitalism, United Workers means a dignified
living. It's time we kicked the drones out of the bee hive. Or
cleared the Foxes out of our Hen Houses.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/17/15, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Judge Says Uber Should Be Fined and Suspended for Failure to Turn Over
Rideshare Data
Posted By
Jeremy Lybarger
on Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 9:24 AM
JOONAS TIKKANEN/FLICKR
List of 1 items
• Joonas Tikkanen/Flickr
list end
Yesterday was a tough one for Uber. The California Public Utilities
Commission
ruled
that the rideshare giant should be fined $7.3 million and suspended
from
operating in California for failure to demonstrate compliance with the
American
with Disabilities Act, as well as failure to release data indicating
how
well the company serves diverse neighborhoods.
According to CPUC judge Karen V. Clopton, Uber has never turned over
information pertaining to its “efforts to date for accommodating
visually
impaired,
persons with service animals, and persons requiring a wheelchair
accessible
vehicle.” When CPUC requested data about passengers with disabilities,
“no
actual data was provided” by Uber, according to the ruling.
Nor did the company provide data about which zip codes it serves or
its
driver safety numbers. This isn’t surprising given Uber’s
general secrecy
about how it operates — a reticence the company claims is a trade
secret.
The CPUC doesn't buy that. “A trade secret claim cannot be used as a
shield
to
deny access to the very regulatory agency that has ordered the
information’s
creation and compilation," the ruling reads.
According to the
Los Angeles Times,
the CPUC’s ruling won’t go into effect for 30 days, and Uber will have
a
chance to appeal. A $7.3 million fine is less than one percent of the
$5.9
billion
in venture capital that Uber has raised.
In related news, officials at LAX will determine today whether
rideshare
companies will be allowed to
operate at the airport.
If approved, L.A. would become the largest city in America to grant
such
permission.
Source:
http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/07/16/judge-says-uber-should-be-fined-and-suspended-for-failure-to-turn-over-rideshare-data
