Service economy jobs at odds with cost of living in Orlando area

ApolloAndy said:
So my real answer to your question is that there has to be accountability. Someone - the government, the civic organizations, the churches, the schools, the Jones families - someone has to gather the power to fight for the self interests of those who don't have money and hold accountable those who do. When such accountability exists, I claim we have the greatest chance of serving the actual common good.

Seems to me this may be our biggest disagreement. You keeping tossing around "common good" as if there is some book we can open to look it up. I don't believe that is the case. And without that, I think its difficult to march towards some undefined objective.

I do agree though that we need more accountability. On the part of everyone. Not just people with money.

Governments, civic organizations, churches, schools and the Joneses, being run by people (and in the case of the Joneses being people) are subject to self dealing, corruption, bias, etc. And when that is the case, we face the same issues we face with MegaCorp.

On thing we should definitely do is address the lousy understanding of economics that is all too common in the country. Even without our self interest, corruption, bias, ect. issues, we still aren't likely to make sound policy decisions with a lousy understanding of economics. Should start in kindergarten and continue all the way through high school and beyond.

Yep. "Where you going to find those angels to organize society for us?"

They sure aren't in DC.

You couldn't have set me up better Lankster (ed. note: I didn't watch the Youtube, because it's blocked on my computer).

My whole deal (and what I've been working on in my community) is that WE have to organize OURSELVES in order to have the power to stand up to MegaCorp, but we have to do it in a way that we are accountable to each other and the "common good" such that we don't become the out of control, unaccountable monster.

There is no objective common good. The common good is the will of the people (within the Bill of Rights etc.). That's why we're a democracy.

Every major social movement in the United States that I can think of (Civil Rights, Women's Suffrage, Workers' Rights, Abolition...even stuff like the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement) was a grassroots movement in which enough people got together to defend their vision of the common good against an injustice, real or perceived.

And yes, piss poor education in general is probably not part of the common good. ;)

Interesting.

I guess my 'common good' is a place where people are accountable and responsible for themselves.

The bonus is that when you take the initiative and understand that you and only you can truly help yourself, then we collectively give ourselves the power to stand up to the MegaCorps of the world.

Although, admittedly, I don't see MegaCorp as the enemy. I see people with no skills trying to feed their families on a valueless position as the enemy.

The problem isn't that MegaCorp exists. It's that people play victim to MegaCorp's existence.

Lord Gonchar said:

I guess my 'common good' is a place where people are accountable and responsible for themselves.

To me, one of the forces that led to governance is that each individual acting on their own behalf and in their own interests leads to the aforementioned "Tragedy of the Commons." (H/T Andy). Shared resources will quickly be depleted when it's in everyone's personal interests to agree to a mutually-beneficial, or at least mutually-acceptable, deal...and then cheat.

In other words, don't live downstream of the hog-farmer in a libertarian state...

Limited government is not the same thing as no government.

And if the common good is the will of the people, is it what we say we want or what our actions actually show we want? Because we pay lip service to a lot of stuff.

ApolloAndy said:

There is no objective common good. The common good is the will of the people (within the Bill of Rights etc.). That's why we're a democracy.

Every major social movement in the United States that I can think of (Civil Rights, Women's Suffrage, Workers' Rights, Abolition...even stuff like the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement) was a grassroots movement in which enough people got together to defend their vision of the common good against an injustice, real or perceived.

You are essentially saying that the will of the people reversed the earlier will of the people which doesn't seem very remarkable to me (but the actual societal changes themselves were remarkable to the extent that makes sense).

And the notion of someone's "vision" of the will of the people is the very problem I have identified here with the concept of the common good. I could much easier get behind the notion of the will of the people than I could someone or some group's vision of it. The latter seems far less compelling to me.

It's clearly our actions with the caveat that most people have no idea what to do to get what they really want. (By the way, the answer is to organize.)

Right? This is how you know you're at least in the ballpark of "the will of the people" - if they follow you. If what you're doing isn't in the will of the people, nobody will rally around it. (Now, it may be evil or good, but if they rally around it, it's their will. You could say it's their self-interest (again, self-interest is used neutrally here)).

Lord Gonchar said:

I guess my 'common good' is a place where people are accountable and responsible for themselves.

I hope it's this, but I hope it also involves looking out for each other to some extent.

^Yes...rather than being forced to "look out for" each other (by government via healthcare, welfare, handouts, etc). It seems to me that Andy's line of thinking places more importance on the collective; the "common good." Whereas Gonch and GoBucks (and myself) place more value on the individual. That's not to say individualism or collectivism should be (or can be) absolute, as there are always elements of both in any society. But the founders based our form of government on the idea that the individual is superior to the collective. We as a society have abandoned that premise over the last 200 years; as we've placed more importance on collectivism, or the common good, by its nature we've limited the rights of the individual.

ApolloAndy said:

Right? This is how you know you're at least in the ballpark of "the will of the people" - if they follow you. If what you're doing isn't in the will of the people, nobody will rally around it. (Now, it may be evil or good, but if they rally around it, it's their will. You could say it's their self-interest (again, self-interest is used neutrally here)).

As the will of the people may be good or evil, its really not the common good as much as it is common want. Common good is better from a marketing concept though far less compelling.

People will follow you if you are doing their will. But they will also often follow you if you are deceptive about your intentions/objections, market yourself effectively (say what people want to hear but do something different) or deflect blame to someone else for your failure to get movement towards the cause (we are not the problem, its those other guys who are standing in our way). And that approach is more likely to be effective as the size of the organization increases and when the conviction of its members to any given cause is less strong and/or less principled. And when they take that approach, organizations tend to operate much like the dark side of MegaCorp (there is an empty Ford plant in my hometown as evidence of that).

And two examples of that approach are the two parties running things in DC. I think a good argument can be made that they have done more to damage/violate the common good than any MegaCorp ever possibly could.

It strikes me that this has way more to do with lack of accountability and/or lack of power to hold responsible parties accountable than it does with the size or nature of the organization/leader that is running amok.

Vater said:

But the founders based our form of government on the idea that the individual is superior to the collective.

I don't buy it. Why all the checks and balances then? Why 3 branches of govt. and two houses of congress? Why all the hoops to change the constitution and all the separate levels of government? Why democracy at all?

The founders were deathly afraid of a small group of people gaining too much power without accountability from those they serve. i.e. the individual will superseding the collective will.

Our problem as citizens isn't that we're over emphasizing the collective. It's that the collective has failed to do it's job (hold the individuals in power accountable through collective action) and people have given up on it.

(I could probably write a 10 page paper off the top of my head on why that is, but the short version is: we don't know each other and therefore we don't care about each other anymore. It's the old "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a Socialist...etc.").

As far as I can tell, historically speaking, collective action is the only thing which actually makes real, lasting change.

Stand and applauds.

It is a strange irony that the world is smaller than ever before, yet we know far less about our next-door neighbors than we did a generation ago (barring NSA intervention). I think that allows us to "distance" ourselves from the adverse impacts of our decisions on others...

rollergator said:

I think that allows us to "distance" ourselves from the adverse impacts of our decisions on others...

Like the adverse impact of the decision to learn no useful skills and then demand to be paid a living wage far above the actual value of what you contribute to the overall common good?

(winky...kind of)

ApolloAndy said:

I don't buy it. Why all the checks and balances then? Why 3 branches of govt. and two houses of congress? Why all the hoops to change the constitution and all the separate levels of government? Why democracy at all?

We're actually a republic. You may not buy it, but if you read the Federalist Papers it's readily apparent that the founders created our form of government around the concept of protecting individual liberty.

As far as I can tell, historically speaking, collective action is the only thing which actually makes real, lasting change.

I think we're discussing two different levels of collectivism, Andy. And maybe it's possible we're closer to being on the same page than I realized. It seems like you're referring to more of an egalitarian collectivism, whereas I'm referring to (and speaking against) hierarchical collectivism.

From Wikipedia:

Collectivism can be divided into horizontal (or egalitarian) collectivism and vertical (or hierarchical) collectivism. Horizontal collectivism stresses collective decision-making among equal individuals, and is thus usually based on decentralization and egalitarianism. Vertical collectivism is based on hierarchical structures of power and on moral and cultural conformity, and is therefore based on centralization and hierarchy.

Yes, collective action is absolutely necessary to make change. But what I'm getting at is that the founders believed that the rights of the individual trumped all, which is why we have the Bill of Rights. Those were written to protect the unalienable rights (those believed we are born with) of the individual from the federal government. It was the premise of the limited federal government we are supposed to--but no longer--have.

And as I said, collectivism is a necessary part of a governed society...but by our constitution, we govern ourselves. The checks and balances were put in place to prevent rule by an individual. The "common good" in this instance is, as Gonch mentioned, the good of the individual.

A good example of individuals organizing (a collective, if you will) for the good of the individual is the Convention of States project that has been gaining ground since last fall. It's a method outlined in Article V of the constitution that allows the states to come together for the purpose to amend the constitution without interference or approval from Congress. This particular movement is forming to, in short, limit the power and overreach of the federal government.

Hierarchical collectivism is revered by progressive liberals, or statists, who prefer a large centralized government to make everything "fair" for everyone; where everyone is "equal." In reality, in this scenario no one is equal, because by its definition "equality" is imposed on its citizens by a superior authoritarian individual or group of individuals. Whereas a limited centralized government, as the founders intended it, should provide (or more accurately protect) equal opportunity for everyone.

It's easy to generalize about the intentions of the founding fathers, but beyond that we can also see that they knew they didn't have all of the answers. That's why they allowed the Constitution to be amended. They could not have anticipated the effects of the industrial revolution, short or long term, that led in part to the creation of labor laws.

But to the point of leaning toward individual liberty, yes, that might be the right thing to emphasize. It just can't be done in a vacuum away from the existence of massive multinational corporate entities. Again, it's too nuanced a topic to simply adhere to ideals.

Much like the currently in-fashion version of Christianity whereby God always seems to want exactly what the guy with the megaphone wants....

Seems to me everyone who knows what the Founding Fathers (capitalized for sarcastic emphasis) would have wanted...know that they would have agreed with the speaker.

"For the war, against the war, who cares, 100 episodes"... Trey and Matt already had this argument...and they agree with me. (huge winky).

Vater said:

I think we're discussing two different levels of collectivism, Andy. And maybe it's possible we're closer to being on the same page than I realized.

Probably. I'm thinking more along the horizontal collectivism where the accountability happens by peers, not some large overseeing body (unless that overseeing body is accountable to the people who established it).

But what I'm getting at is that the founders believed that the rights of the individual trumped all, which is why we have the Bill of Rights. Those were written to protect the unalienable rights (those believed we are born with) of the individual from the federal government. It was the premise of the limited federal government we are supposed to--but no longer--have.

A) Like Jeff said, even above the Bill of Rights, the founding fathers valued the ability to change things in the future.

B) I don't think the Bill of Rights is evidence for

the rights of the individual trumped all

It is the extreme limit of what the government can't do (unless amended as stated above). Anything less extreme than the Bill of Rights is fair game. Otherwise they would have put things like "The right to not be forced to pay a minimum wage" in the Bill of Rights. It is the parameters within which the rest of the discussion can happen.

On a different tack, in general I don't particularly care about the size of the government either way. What I do care about is that they are accountable to their constituencies (and not MegaCorp or special interest or teachers union or whoever), which, until the people organize, will not happen. If the government/MegaCorp/union/whoever is accountable to the people, they can raise or lower the minimum wage and I'd be for it.

Andy, who is the "they" when you say they can raise or lower minimum wage? We are talking about government action here with respect to minimum wage. So if MegaCorp wants to establish its own higher minimum wage, or a union or other non-governmental group wants to negotiate for a higher minimum wage, I don't think anyone here is saying they should be blocked from doing so. Its just the government that is the subject of the discussion here. But its not clear to me who "they" is in your statement.

In terms of the limited/virtually unlimited government, I don't think you need to look to the framers intent. Look at what they actually wrote into the Constitution as the governing document. If you want the government to be able to do anything it wants to do subject only to the Bill of Rights, why list specific things the government can do? When you form a corporation, if you want it to have limited powers, you list those powers. If you want it to be able to do anything it wants, you say it can do anything permitted by the law.

Amendment provisions were meant to be cumbersome. Really isn't much of a purpose creating a governing document if it can be amended at the drop of a hat. And the document isn't set up to trust the government though it doesn't necessary trust the people either. The people didn't even vote directly for senators who were appointed by state legislatures. And we still don't directly vote for presidents. And never mind the fact that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration really meant "all white rich men are created equal." We were founded on discrimination and have been fighting it ever since.

But never mind all that at this point. The strict constructionists lost. By a lot. We don't have a government that is in the same galaxy of limited government much less light years away from it. That is a kitty that isn't going back in the bag.

We will never have limited government for two main reasons. One, there is no power or money in limited government and with incredibly few exceptions (counted on one or maybe two hands at best), all politicians want is money and power (for themselves).

Two, and this is much more important, there just aren't enough people who truly want limited government. We have large numbers of people who don't think the government does enough now and should do a lot more and be a lot bigger (think Krugman). And then we have a group of folks who say they want limited government, but when push comes to shove, just want government that does what it wants it to do. Cut someone else's spending that doesn't benefit me or programs that I don't like. Keep the programs and spending that I like/which benefits me. A lot of people don't seem to care how big government is as long as its doing what they like. Millions of people share that view and the government is suddenly doing a whole lot of stuff. And we somehow act surprised that we are $16+ trillion in debt with deficits climbing out to the horizon as the boomers retire en masse.