Interesting Conversation

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Start of aarontdi buffer: Fri Mar 16 22:54:29 2007

Session Ident: aarontdi ([email protected])
[22:04:40] <memzy> its weird
[22:04:44] <aarontdi> ok
[22:04:51] <memzy> the way this guy explains stuff is scary
[22:05:33] <memzy> can I tell you the example I got given?
[22:05:37] <aarontdi> sure
[22:05:56] <memzy> right Dell is just an example
[22:06:41] <memzy> You go to a dell website to buy a computer, but it could be you phone a catalog firm to buy a sofa. Same
thing could happen.
[22:07:18] <aarontdi> wtf? sounds like non native english speaker... or a crazy
[22:07:30] <memzy> sorry
[22:07:36] <memzy> I havent finished
[22:07:45] <memzy> I suck at telling this
[22:07:57] <memzy> Whats wrong with this scenario?
[22:08:14] <aarontdi> oh ok
[22:08:22] <aarontdi> it just doesn't make sense
[22:08:25] <memzy> You go to the Dell website to buy a laptop, the one you want is $2000.
[22:10:13] <memzy> You cant afford two thousand dollars so you buy it with a payment plan, where you pay $2500 over 13
months at $20 a month.
[22:10:28] <memzy> Whats wrong with this scenario?
[22:10:37] <memzy> (I'm still trying to say this right sorry)
[22:10:40] <aarontdi> $20 is probably the minimum payment per month
[22:10:50] <aarontdi> not enough to actually pay it off
[22:11:02] <memzy> actually thats true
[22:11:14] <memzy> but its a simplified example
[22:11:22] <memzy> heres what the guy would say is wrong with it
[22:12:14] <memzy> the computer priced at $2000 on the website cost Dell $1200 to produce based on parts, labour excetra
[22:12:42] <memzy> so there was already a $800 profit being made
[22:12:42] <aarontdi> ok
[22:14:26] <memzy> The new price is $2500 however, which makes $1300 profit minimum.
[22:14:54] <aarontdi> ok
[22:14:58] <memzy> As you point out, it probably has a catch where the debt can get larger and probably costs more than that.
[22:15:49] <aarontdi> yeah
[22:17:05] <memzy> Now you earn $6 an hour, so $2500 is 417 hours work.
[22:18:12] <memzy> 216 hours of which is a penalty for not having enough wealth to begin with, since $1300 divided by 6
works out that way.
[22:19:04] <aarontdi> ok
[22:19:28] <memzy> That 9 days and nights, nine lots of 24.
[22:20:09] <memzy> 216 hours is 9 days and night, or 43.2 five hour work days.
[22:21:10] <memzy> So I exchange a month and a half of my work life to Dell for nothing but an entry on their books.
[22:22:28] <memzy> The thing is this weirdo points out is that most of the goods in the economy are owned by huge
multinational corporations, similiarly most money loaned at interest is owned by huge multinationals.
[22:23:34] <aarontdi> that makes sense
[22:23:43] <memzy> Which isnt terribly unfair if the shares are spread fairly evenly, however 10% of the population owns
90% of the shares of all of the companys publically traded. The rest belong to specific familys.
[22:25:15] <memzy> Most of the jobs in the economy are with these huge corporations, though many of them are indirect.
[22:27:09] <memzy> Take a privately owned Shop, Jimmy's Convience Store, while Jimmy sells the goods at a small profit and
manages and 'owns' the buisness on paper, a handful of huge corporations does everything from provide all the stock at
much more exhorborant profit margins, to rent him the property or give him a mortgage for it (which is probably worse in
terms of hours).
[22:27:58] <memzy> So basically 9 out of every 10 people is a servant to the odd one.
[22:28:39] <memzy> IS that right?
[22:28:39] <aarontdi> sure
[22:28:52] <aarontdi> i suppose you could interpret it that way
[22:32:39] <memzy> Those 1 in So ten people in every hundred hire private councils to manage most the property on the planet
and a vast amount of the other ninety peoples time?
[22:33:13] <memzy> And the same class of wealthy persons also by this method control the groups that advise the goverment on
its policys, and the media that informs the people of their options?
[22:33:14] <aarontdi> I'm not sure that last statement makes sense
[22:33:36] <aarontdi> ok. i'm willing to agree with that
[22:33:43] <memzy> Those ten people in every hundred hire private councils to manage most the property on the planet and a
vast amount of the other ninety peoples time?
[22:34:05] <aarontdi> I guess so
[22:34:51] <memzy> Isnt that a little deppressing?
[22:35:15] <aarontdi> yeah. its a pretty harsh world.
[22:38:23] <memzy> The thing he points out is that if just thirty people in every hundred, thirty friends and family for
every hundred people made other arrangements for their needs and did the work themselves with the best technique and all
the red tape work removed theyd be several billion less man hours of labour needing done each year!
[22:38:53] <memzy> The thing is most the work doesnt need doing, think of all the stuff that just relates to those 10 in a
hundred maintaining control..
[22:39:13] <aarontdi> ok now I'm not sure I agree
[22:39:19] <aarontdi> but I'm not sure I understand fully either
[22:39:21] <memzy> What you think?
[22:39:25] <memzy> me either
[22:39:39] <aarontdi> I believe the first part
[22:39:47] <aarontdi> the last part just doesn't make sense
[22:39:54] <memzy> the labour bit confused me
[22:40:01] <aarontdi> or at least I can't wrap my brain around it
[22:40:03] <memzy> but you take the example of a supermarket
[22:41:23] <memzy> most the jobs at K-Mart are in moving stuff into and out of warehouses. Stocking it on shelves, and
monitoring who uses what and what they owe for it.
[22:41:37] <memzy> What does a bank actually produce?
[22:41:42] <memzy> is another example..
[22:42:09] <memzy> Aside from understanding some obscure dialect written in a code what is it a lawyer is NEEDED for?
[22:42:20] <memzy> in most cases of consultation
[22:43:02] <memzy> huge amounts of work that has nothing to do with anyones stuff, the however many in a hundred that just
work to keep the ten minute incharge of the hundred!
[22:43:05] <memzy> 90*
[22:43:09] <memzy> see the point?
[22:43:42] <aarontdi> not really
[22:44:15] <memzy> A sandwhich
[22:44:28] <memzy> someone grows a lettuce, someone grows some grass seed (wheat) etc etc
[22:45:10] <memzy> someone bakes bread, etc etc
[22:46:39] <memzy> the man hours between thirty people cooperating to get enough sandwhichs made to suite themselves is much
lower than the number needed to fill a shelve with boxed sandwhichs from a billion places in a store, and thats ignoring
all the work involved in getting you there or selling it to you
[22:46:40] <memzy> get it?
[22:46:50] <memzy> and it goes deeper
[22:46:58] <memzy> going stuff the way we do is labour intensive
[22:47:15] <memzy> you can actually do stuff with alot less labour
[22:47:41] <memzy> society is arranged for the good of those ten in every ninety and the arrangement is expensive to maintain
[22:47:46] <memzy> isnt that really deppressing?
[22:48:00] <memzy> in a hundred*
[22:48:00] <memzy> duh
[22:48:23] <aarontdi> that makes more sense
[22:48:28] <aarontdi> yeah, I see what you're saying
[22:49:11] <aliens> hi
[22:49:17] <aarontdi> hi
[22:49:17] <aliens> daves gotta go wash up
[22:49:38] <aliens> does daves shite make out in the way of sense?
[22:49:49] <aarontdi> it makes some sense
[22:50:12] <stoned_aliens> which bit dont make no sense den
End of aarontdi buffer Fri Mar 16 22:54:29 2007