[Patrick Turner]

On May 10, 2:10*pm, flipper wrote: And you
could 'afford' them at twice the current price too. But would
you 'like' paying twice as much?

Price "mechanisms" are accepted without us big rich fat cats feeling
the slightest guilt about what we pay because it is assumed the seller
is happy with the price he's offering you.

I'm no 'fat cat', there is no "price mechanism" in free trade, and no
one is holding a gun to the seller's head.

I never said YOU were, but the West has people with the biggest
waistlines.

Free trade? every time people in our goverment try to discuss free
trade with the USA they come up against a pile of obstructive trade
practices and we can't export a lotta stuff to the US.
There is very little real free trade; more like expensive and un-
free.




Of course there are happy slaves around the world and the USA was full
of them until they abolished slavery around the time they had a civil
war where a million men perished.

Slavery is not free trade nor is 150 years ago relevant.

Amnesty International might disagree with you....

Here in Oz, we probably had some
happy convicts who'd been transported under duress from Brittain by
the King of England and used as cheap labour everywhere. Our native
blacks here were shot, poisoned, and treated like scum and no doubt
some may have been happy to work as cowboys rounding up the cattle,
but at wages far below "white fella pay". But we didn't have a civil
war, maybe the worst that happened were a few pub brawls, and maybe
two Labour Party meetings where a few chairs were broken after a rowdy
night deciding what workers should do to give unified opposition to
the Association Of Fat Arsed Bosses who always tried to keep Mr Little
poor.

Maybe you should try free trade.

I'd like to, but conditions are rigged against me.



I am not a rabid socialist who wants the lazy unproductive anarchy of
East Germany or Russia or Cambodia etc where people get trambled down
by others who think they are "more equal than anyone else".

The hell you aren't.. You just claim you'd be more righteous and
benevolent in your dictatorship.

I AM NOT A SOCIALIST. I just believe in equal human rights. Socialism
has been proven not to work in most parts of the world because human
nature is more greedy than it is altruistic. I am a capitalist, in muy
own very small way.



Of course, that's what Mussolini, Hitler, Staling, Ho Chi Minh, Mao,
Kim Jong-il and all the rest said. Give us power and it'll be a
workers' paradise.

Give us some money and we'll all get rich. Delete all the controls on
banks, yippee. Well, then the GFC happened, delivered personally by
rabid capitalists.

Fact is there is good and bad about capcitalism and socialism. I
believe in Oz we have a good mix of the two.

And its a reason why communism never got a foothold in Oz; people had
it so good, and they could see what was wrong with Russia and China
and eastern Europe. Sure, some were sorely tempted, but after Russia
invaded Hungary the zest went right out of the Australian Communist
Party. I was never a member.

But all
men are just blokes, and all women are just sheilas and once somebody
is born anywhere in the world they should have equal rights,
oppportunity, freedoms and equal duties of care to others, which means
they are prepared to work not bludge, and not try un-ethical means to
derive income without raising a sweat.

And just how much do you 'sweat' soldering an amplifier together?

Quite a bit on a hot day in my shed in mid-summer.

Certainly not as much as your ditch digger comrade, comrade.

My ditch digger? whooze zat?

Interesting to hear that your knowledge of how to build them is
worthless, though.

Yeah, I have no secrets. People are welcome to what I know. There's
been 100MB a day average download from my site for the last 6 years.
Somebody values what I say.


I heard all this communist crap from the horses' mouth when I was in
China.

Those who are rich should see
to it that those who are poor may pull themselves up to us; If an
african breaks a leg, he should be able to get to a doctor in a clean
hospital and not have to bribe anyone, or pay $1,200 a month for
medical insurance.

And you'll send in the storm troopers should anyone disobey.

Sieg Heil.

I am into fairness, the direct opposite of what Hitler promoted.

Unfortunately, while everyone in the West likes to think how ****in
marvellous they are there isn't much chance that Western human nature
will ever insist on paying the Chinese the same price for something
made in the West.

There is no need to 'insist'. The free market sets price.

The West is in a mad greedy scramble where the rich
get richer yey they never have enough

None of your business. It ain't your money and you ain't dictator.

No, but we are all on this Planet together, so it oughtto be shared
out equally. It means you should not take more than your share of the
cake on the table.

The Rich hate being told they have too much when all they wanna do is
get richer. Nothing is enough. Its a fenzy....and crazy and wrong.

and they like to see others NOT
doing so well as themselves because that boosts their cherished
picture of their own grandness.

It's irrelevant what they 'like to see'. Anyone who makes a better
mousetrap gets to sell the better mousetrap.

Not if the market can be rigged to make the inferior trap sell better
and destroy the guy who tried to make a better one.



*Of course rich countries can go
astray and become obsessed by all sorts of things such as maintaining
influence and control over foreign countries. The more they do it, the
more it costs, and it can send a rich country broke. Nobody wants to
know. All sorts of crap reasons are trotted out. Its a long turgid
story. Empires come, empires go.

Speak for yourself. You're the one praying at the alter of dictating
wages and prices, not I.

Yes and its always the rich wage earners who complain about wage
fixing because usually it means a wage reduction. But if the fix means
a wage increase they don't mind a bit.



I should be able to open a factory to make tube amps here just as
easily as I could anywhere else, but it is not so. A bloke here runs a
small business selling music amps, electric guitars, all sorts of
stuff to the "music industry." *He found bigger shops who established
themselves 50 years ago ganged up to prevent him getting supplies of
Fenders and Marshalls from importers. Oh how people hate fair
competition! *Anyway, this new local fella's response was to go
straight over to China and have tube amps and guitars made there by Mr
Sixty Four Cents An Hour. The guys in China were happy to see him, and
they produce a pile of generic crap that feeds out to the world all
over.

We have laws against collusion and price fixing because that is not a
free market. Maybe you folks should try the same.

Ha, collusion abounds despite laws.

Unfortunately, we also have a President who thinks he can dictate to
companies where to manufacturing plants but that's another story.
You'd love him.

Obama would probably make a nice Prime Minister of Oz. He wouldn't
have to reform the health system if he came here becasue it was all
done years ago and I don't have to pay a cent for hospital treatments.
No $1,200 per mth for insurance premiums either.

Yeah, just where companies place factories could be government
business. People's lives are affected. People vote for other people to
do something to make life better, and that may include telling
companies what they can and can't do.



And our fella here gets his own name put on the Chinese stuff he
imports. Once here in Oz, its sold at many times the Chinese ex
factory price.

Good for him. Maybe someone else will get the idea too.

I don't really care because I feel no desire to manufacture junk for
the music industry ,guitar amps and so forth. They'll always be repair
work though.


There is NO established repair agent or product
support. The young kids here trying to learn how to be rock stars buy
all this stuff on their apprentice or junior worker wages.

So you say it's a 'bad thing' they can afford it.

Its good they can afford it, but it ain't so good there isn't the
product support like it may have been like in old times.
But support isn't a huge need now because the broken product is often
fixed by buying a new one.


Are these
kids mindful of their Chinese brothers whose apprentice wage was maybe
10c an hour and whose prospects of being a pop star are zip. What on
earth is going through the minds of kids who want to be rock stars?
Whoever thinks of the Mexicans making Fenders?

If you think putting those Chinese workers out of a job is 'helping
them' then have at it.

I want to see everone who wants to work able to get work - but with
equal pay world wide. It means the Chinese worker just like the USA
worker should get equal pay for equal work and equal standard of
living, ie, the price of bread is the same both countries.

Its never going to be though, I know that. I'm allowed to say what is
fair, even though human nature won't budge.



Anyway, its very easy to see why a questioned existance poses far more
questions than answers, and hence the need for a stable supply of
container fulls of anti-depressant pills. Unrest among young minds is
well known, and hence a proportion of them find solace in far stronger
meds whose origin are the poppy fields of Afghanistan, where you
guessed it, the West is at war with some locals.

Well, let's see. So far you've claimed the unthinking ignorance of
youth is wisdom,

Gee, did I say that? Don't think I did, but youth isn't too wise,
street wise maybe, but hey, there's a lotta dumb yongans out there and
they don't wanna study nothin.t

mind altering drugs are a wonderful thing, we
shouldn't be 'interfering' with the Afghan drug trade, and the foreign
Taliban are 'locals'.

Well Taliban sem to be native to that part of the world. They ain't
Martians. I don't like em. Just look how they treat shielas - like
rubbish.

Anyway, Taliban + drugs = money for somebody, and money corrupts, and
maybe after spending another trillion or two the US might just
persuade the Afghanies to quit grwing poppies to destroy the minds of
US kids and to adopt good old american knowhow with a McDonalds on the
corner.

But rather than spend so much money and still lose, methinks someone
will have to make a deal with Taliban, and I think it will happen if
they can be seen to be solving the problem, ie, quitting Afghanistan.
Does anyone really think the locals will hand over their country to
foreigners?

In Iraq, the idea was to spend 5 billion of US taxpayer money to knock
out Saddam and then private enterprize would corner the oil. 20
billion would be invested over 20 years and oh how the money would
roll in. Well, look how it reallt turned out. The US taxpayer got
shafted.
Dubbya did it.

But in the US they have well oiled printing presses and they know how
to make a dollar!


Let me know if you ever visit earth.

But I like to question everything I can and its net effect prevents
depression.

That farcical claim is getting old.

You should start a Farcebook account.

It sure prevented me leading an entirely pointless
existance while trying to become richer than most other people on the
Planet. One could argue that by agreeing to pay a smiling Chinese
person 64c an hour, we are denying him his part of the Planet to which
he is entitled.

One could also 'argue' that Elvis is still alive but that doesn't make
it any more rational than the nonsensical notion if you don't buy
Chinese products you're going to 'help' the then unemployed worker.

We sure are supporting a huge network of middle men.

Yeah, like all the people employed in transporting goods and those
selling goods, to name but a few. But, what the hell, lets put them
out of work too.

Well, if everyone was like me the world economy would go broke
overnight. I ain't got any money. I hardlywant anything. If the shops
just had what i wanted, they'd only need to be 1/40 of their size.

We are all lucky everyone else wants far more than I want.

People are busy everywhere.

But just where we are heading ultimately, and how fair things are is
what is questionable.

I
always feel slightly guilty when I buy underpants. But nobody on Oz
makes any.

No wonder at $27 an hour.

Well, it might take a girl sewing undies to do it in 3 minutes, and
her labour is worth $1.35. But garments ARE sewn up here by women
often working for far far less than $27 per hour, more like $5, so the
garment cost is almost nothing no matter where its made. The shop
price is so much higher than the cost of production. But unless the
shops and manufacturers can make the huge profits they fade away from
business.


*I'm too lazy to make my own, even though I have a sewing
machine. And if I tried, the cloth itself would be from China, and
maybe cost more than if already made into underpants by a Chinese
Shiela working 10hrs a day at 40c an hour.

The Sheila can go to the other company paying twice as much. Oh, wait,
no she can't because China doesn't do free trade.

Its un-free trade. And the next factory along won't pay twice the wage
of the other one. All the owners and managers of the factories in a
given town all know who gets what, and its impossible to improve one's
pay by factory hopping.

Its always been like this in most places where factories have peppered
the landscape.


So when are you planning to invade?

Did I say THAT?

But a couple of weeks ago I walked around the City to look in all the
mensware stores for a black skivy. I wanted long arms, polo neck, all
cotton, plain black. At K-mart, you could get a red one for $10. ( 60c
ex China ), but no black.

"Red China."

Indeed, Chinese Communist Party control of Chinese Capitalism. Deng
said, "To grow rich is glorious"
All that Mao insisted upon became passe'.

The up-market menswear stores with
pretentious decor thought I may have been a bank robber looking for
clobber, especially after I derided them for trying to flog me a "Made
In Italy" brand of skivy at a knock down discount price of only $330.

Made for $27 an hour, no doubt.

I dunno what wages are in Italy.

But cheap black skivies are not sold much because blokes buy them
rather than buy a couple of shirts and a tie and a new suit which
would make me look like Mr Pretentious. Maybe an online store will
have WHAT I WANT, which isn't much, really. *At least by shopping
online I don't make quite so many middle men rich, but I can't arrange
for the worker in China to get an extra dollar for their child's
education - too many grasping hands are in the way.

You can't dictate to China no matter what and 'middle men' have not
one blessed thing to do with it.

The middle men have a lot to do with what you pay for goods and
services, and their effect on prices ppl might pay for Chinese mades
is enormous. A soldering iron costing 50c from China sells for $20 in
a hardware store. If it fails in a month, the shop replaces it without
argument because it cost them virtually nothing. I been there done
that twice in two months.

Patrick Turner.