Depends on your perspective. You're far more right-wing than he is. He's for small government in business, you're advocating no government in business.
I'm sorry if I've given you the impression that I'm against any kind of government influence or intervention in business. Given this thread, I can understand how you might have gotten the idea, but I don't think I've actually stated such, as I'm not quite that right-wing. The actual statements I've made here can perhaps best be summarised as the following three:
1) the ~160 employees that were fired as read in the OP were laid off due to normal business logic;
2) the company line that the layoffs were due to the effects of government energy policy is accurate to an extent;
3) government energy policy has had a highly appreciable negative effect on the prospects of coal energy.
In addition to this there was also our small sidetrack into examining your economic model.
As a philosopher, I just want to say, to both sides....FFS, make up your own analogies. BOTH of you are horribly abusing Plato's Cave for things it wasn't meant for. You're all, and those Bhutanese famers as well, stuck snugly inside the cave, I assure you (and me too). It's literally impossible to be made free and look outside of the cave.
If you as a philosopher tell me that nothing in the allegory is useful for the purposes of what I meant, then it's my bad. I haven't read about Plato's Cave since high school, so I may misremember a few things.
Well, yeah. It's been proven over and over that people are a LOT happier if they have less worries and less thinking to do. People who are "a bit simple" tend to be much, much happier than the real thinkers. You might worry about the ozone layer, global warming, national politics, the price of gas, terrorism, the sad state of the education system, your relationship, your personal hygiene, your iPhone crashing, your stocks plummeting,....
I remember hearing from somewhere that "if you want to find a man who is truly and always happy, start looking in mental asylums". While certainly a quip, it would stand to reason that perpetual bliss in life can only be found amongst the insane. Whilst perhaps offering the greatest degree of happiness, most people who are still in possession of their faculties would likely find the idea of such an existence undesirable. Assuming the above are true, could it be argued that a strategy which seeks to maximise happiness is not optimal, and that a strategy in which the person also desires other things is superior?
A somewhat simpler person just doesn't really know or care much about most of those issues.
Now, that farmer over in Bhutan may be just as smart as you are, but he still has a lot less to worry about. He doesn't *hear* about national politics. He doesn't *have* an education system to worry about. He doesn't *live* in a society where it's important to (shave your armpits/trim your nose hair/use deodorant/have white teeth/whatever). He doesn't use gas. Etc etc.
All in all, generally speaking*, the less you know and have to worry about, the happier you are. Inversely, the highest amount of depressions and anxieties is found with people who know about a lot of stuff, but can't actually change any of it.
I know you told me to stop using Plato's Cave, but... I think I can remember that the people chained up in the cave were happy as they were, were fearful of change, yet release from the cave was still considered a good thing - even if it was originally against their will, though don't make too much of that.
Assuming the bhutanese farmhand who doesn't want to go back is representative, would his unwillingness not count as a point in favor of the current US/western model, over the bhutanese way? Even if the bhutanese are happier in general, according to some claims.
Less worries -> happier. Having more stuff? Hardly matters at all, and actually has a negative impact, since more things break down/have to be replaced/have to be maintained.
Being rich would provide the potential for a person to fulfill a greater amount of his or her needs, thereby presumably increasing happiness. Were you talking about 'negative impact' as diminishing marginal utility of stuff to the point of being negative, or is having more stuff detrimental to happiness in general? It seems to me that both cases would result in rich people, who are people with more stuff, as being less happy. At first sight this might seem something of a paradox, may I inquire as to your views on this?
Well if one wants a clarification it would help to actually stop at the request and not say things like "I have brought up EPA legislation, the Renewable Portfolio Standard, and government grants and subsidies to support my position. You bring up the slave trade to support yours." and then complaining about the other side using strawman arguments... (to be clear, amount of arguments brought says nothing about their importance, one could bring up 1 million instances when the Bible was right, but another needs only bring up one when it was wrong to disprove the statement that the Bible is never wrong).
At that point I had already asked for clarification, without success. My outburst back there was too confrontational, I'm sorry about that. But it would make this conversation more fruitful and less frustrating if you were to continue in the manner you've adopted in your last two posts of making the effort to be more clear with your points. It helps those of us who don't know you well enough to accurately guess your way of thinking to understand.
The amount of arguments by itself is not reflective of their relevance. Their merits are. I believe all of the three points I provided are relevant to the discussion. If you wish to dispute them, please proceed to do so. And if you have something of your own to corroborate your position, I'd be happy to see it.
I mean, was "Well if i didn't pay any employees my expenses would go down, thus more profit... obviously laws against slavery are hindering my business." really unclear? I don't see how you can interpret that one as being about the condition of slaves vs coal miners.So i assume you wrote the reply to that in an attempt to make me clarify more...
The words themselves are clear, certainly. The intention behind them and your view on it's relevance to the conversation is still not. I'll get more into that later.
Let me just distil that a bit: "I think you will come to notice that no-one is claiming the company line is the unexaggerated and unbiased truth, but such is not really a requirement in my opinion"
Yes, you aren't, my problem is that you still are making an excuse for them claiming it because of the government. Objectively at most the government's policy just made them fire those people faster.
I know that compared to some of the completely fictional "facts" some morons use (women's bodies can kill sperm) it's leagues better, but "we fired them because of Obama" is still a lie...
It's like firing a woman and saying it's because her work wasn't as good as the other woman that works for you, while there's clear evidence that some men doing the same job do an even worse job but weren't fired. Sure, the fact that she was worse then the other woman was part of the reason why she was fired and not the other woman, but the evidence shows it's not the main reason, doesn't it.
I have posited three things previously:
1. The layoffs took place due to a decline in coal demand
2. A non-insignificant part of that decline is due to government policies favoring other forms of energy production
3. The Obama administration is generally thought of as continuing those policies during his second presidential term
If those three are taken to be correct, then it would follow that the company statement was correct to a non-insignificant degree. This, to me, means it is partially true, and therefore not a lie. As I've said, it is not the
unexaggerated and unbiased truth, but it's partly true.
As to your example, so person A was fired for not doing as good of a job as person B, while there are indications that persons C, D and E were doing even worse and weren't fired. And the company says they fired A because of not doing as well as B. There could be a number of reasons why they fired A instead of, say, D, and some of them might be valid reasons. But not doing as good of a job as B is one of them, so the company statement is partially true, though perhaps not the whole picture if there were other reasons as well.
Considering what we where discussing i assumed it was clear that the slavery analogy had nothing to do with the situation of the slaves vs the coal miners, but with the effect of government policy on business.
I'm sure there are plenty of businesses out there that wouldn't have gone bankrupt/failed if they didn't have to pay their workforce, yet i don't think you'd accept them blaming the government for not allowing them to have slaves.
We are discussing the effects of a subset of government policies on the energy sector, more specifically their adverse effects on the competitiveness and prospects of coal energy in relation to other forms of energy production. If you wish to have a conversation about the effects of government policy on business in general, then I'm game, but it really is an entirely separate discussion.
As to your slavery analogy, in my previous post I disputed it's relevance in the discussion. Now, for the record, I'd like to ask you to spell out how you believe slavery is analogous to the situation of US energy policy and it's effects on the energy market.
