I haven’t read the whole thread, but it appears the word gun has only been used once, something of a novelty in stupendousman-led discussions. Allow me to offer this: unpaid internships are a willing “buyer” / willing “seller” proposition, but the interns should be required to own and carry a gun at work.
At this point, ‘Oh, just fuck off’ is as reasonable argument as you need, I reckon. Good work, though.
No. It’s not always a problem. When you have people who are close to starving because the congresscritters need to be seen “reigning in big government” for their white and comfortable constiuents back home who don’t want “Obummer to touch their medicare”, when you have parents having to make faustian choices between the heat and enough food, when you have inadequate housing, and what there is is too expensive, etc and so on, then yes, it’s a problem. I’m sorry that you can’t see how degrading and dangerous poverty is for people.
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If you remember, I put community/love after food and shelter. But clean water should have been first. There are people wihtout access to clean water because we’ve commoditized it. That’s the free market for you. something nature makes that is a necessity for human life is now a commodity.
Yet another facet of the postwar economy is not only did we not have competition for the first decade or so, we also made way for US manufacturers overseas, especially in Europe via the Marshall Plan, and in Japan, via rebuilding. We also fought a protracted battle with the soviets over expanding into the decolonizing world. That was pretty much the where, what, and why of the Cold War. But then, we helped to build up our competition… again, see japan.
We’re just going to have to disagree.A market economy is a specific thing. Again, see Polyani.
Not all market regulation is “central planning” as you seem to think.
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I teach in graduate mental health programs (MFT, professional counseling, psychology).
I would say that 90% of my students, if not more, wind up working for free as an “intern” after they graduate, on the way to earning their professional licenses. And the vast majority of community mental health programmes around here rely SOLELY on these unpaid interns to provide clinical services to the clients. The only paid employees at many of these agencies are the supervisors/administrators.
This blatantly violates federal law, as quoted earlier in this thread - the unpaid “interns” are doing the majority of the work of the agency, and without them the agency couldn’t operate. But it appears to have become a well-entrenched standard in the industry, and the competition for “internships” is so fierce because there are so many programs graduating people who must earn hours for licensure*, there is no possibility that a few individuals saying “well I won’t stand for it!” will have any impact on the system.
(Some interns work under people in private practice, which is a situation unique to California AFAIK - and yet, some of THEM are also working for free, while the supervisors say “I’m providing them office space, supervision, and experience, which is enough.”)
I find this absolutely infuriating, and I have no idea what to do about it. I split my time between private practice and teaching, and have looked at trying to get a more stable full-time job somewhere, but nearly everything available at my level of qualification involves being a supervisor in just this kind of system, which I refuse to have a hand in. I tell my students “don’t work for free; leave the area if you have to” but I know some of them will wind up doing so anyway, doing a few hours a week (plus supervision, plus training, plus paperwork) on top of their full time jobs, taking years to get to licensure and burning out along the way.
*3000 hours in California, about half of which have to be actual hours providing therapy. That’s a minimum of two years of nearly full-time work, which for many people is wholly unpaid.
That would depend on the country you’re looking at. Finland, anyone?
So why did the economies of Japan and Germany grew so huge so fast after WW II without a surviving manufacturing base?
Well, looking at the stock market, especially automated trading I’d have to say: more often than it’s good for the economy in the big picture.
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