[jheii]

I read an article in The Nation today, which was a trimmed up version of the blog found here: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=76104
Bowing to insurmountable pressure from France's students and labor unions, President Jacques Chirac has repealed the CPE law.
The students won because they put together an extraordinary protest movement. I can tell you that witnessing hundreds of thousands of youth from all different ethnic and class backgrounds marching together, chanting in unison, for seven straight hours, was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life. I vividly remember, around the sixth hour of the protest, students chanting "We are not tired! We are not tired!"
The students demanded a total repeal of the law, they vowed to continue protesting until their demands were met, and they won. Victor Vidilles, one of the central architects of the movement, told me, "They are trying to kill the movement. But it's not possible."
Before I left for Paris, I asked whether or not these students should be considered progressive, and I've made up my mind: of course they should. We've been made to believe that any tinkering with free markets will spell doom for civilization, but let's look at the facts. Despite its incredible protections for workers, France is the world's fifth largest economy. Despite its lifetime employment laws, 35-hour work weeks, and 8-week vacations, France has the highest worker productivity in the world.
Yes, France has a real and serious unemployment problem, which needs to be dealth with. But as Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research points out, "there are a number of countries with high levels of labor market protections and low levels of unemployment: Austria (5.2 percent), Denmark (4.4 percent), Ireland (4.3 percent), the Netherlands (4.6 percent), and Norway (4.5 percent)." So the solution to dealing with unemployment isn't necessarily to weaken labor market protections (Weisbrot suggests that a core cause of French and overall EU unemployment is related to the fact that the European Central Bank has kept interest rates too high).
The mainstream media-- which seems to have bought, hook, line and sinker, the values of free market fundamentalism-- has labelled these students reactionaries, protectors of an outmoded status quo, conservatives. These students are anything but conservative; they are visionaries. They are struggling to redefine the globalized world. They refuse to inherit a society of savage capitalism in which worker's rights are constantly undermined in the name of efficiency.
They have won the first major victory in what I believe is the great moral struggle of my generation: taming global capitalism.
These students are not delusional. They believe in markets and support globalization and trade. They simply refuse to accept that in order for capitalism to function in society, it must be totally unregulated, unchecked, and unharnessed. And guess what, they are inheriting the future. We are inheriting the future. Like the French students, we cannot allow our goverments to mold our futures without consulting us at all. It's our future, and we must play a role in defining it.
The French students showed us that this is possible.

The CPE contract is essentially the same as standard French contract, except that it creates a longer "trial-period" for under-26 first time workers, meaning that they can be fired from their jobs without much hassle. If allowing employers to let go of employees who they feel aren't doing a satisfactory job is "unchecked capitalism," then I'll go ahead and stick my phallus into Ayn Rand's rotting cunt. If the cause of French unemployment is too-high interest rates, then how come the other EU countires mentioned in the article have managed to keep their unemployment so low, while unemployment in France is hovering at twice what economists consider to be the "natural" unemployment rate (around 5.6%)?

My broader point is expressed in the title of this thread. Why don't people actually think anymore? Why is it that the only thing us human beings seem capable of is using facts and statistics to reinforce a point that someone else has conned us into believing is the only possible answer to all of our questions? Weren't the French and American revolutions supposed to create monuments to everything great that humankind could achieve? When did a refusal to accept inequity turn into ridiculous bitching about minor shifts in the status quo? When did an informed opinion turn into an innate ability to regurgitate propoganda? Somebody help me, please.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by jheii

My broader point is expressed in the title of this thread. Why don't people actually think anymore? Why is it that the only thing us human beings seem capable of is using facts and statistics to reinforce a point that someone else has conned us into believing is the only possible answer to all of our questions? Weren't the French and American revolutions supposed to create monuments to everything great that humankind could achieve? When did a refusal to accept inequity turn into ridiculous bitching about minor shifts in the status quo? When did an informed opinion turn into an innate ability to regurgitate propoganda? Somebody help me, please.

First - this post is too long - I can't be bothered to read things that aren't going to change my life, and I'm certain that something on a message board for an all right rock group isn't going to have the article that's going to change my life.

Second - Any statement that starts "Why can't people think for themselves?" is automatically symptomatic of the question it attempts to address. The use of a broad generalisation to criticise not thinking for yourself (which would surely be defined as the constant use without appraisal of generalisations) involves the non-appraisal of your own statement. Ergo sum, while I truly loathe this statement, if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

Part of the nature of existence is to portion out understanding to people who can be bothered to care - I don't want to understand my microwave, it heats my food fine whether I understand it or not. I could accuse myself of not trying to understand it, but this would be little more than a re-enactment of Sisyphus. A better recipe for life: Find what you want to understand. Try and understand it. Fail, repeat, fail, repeat, give up, get a job and a mortgage, have kids, inspire them to have the same ridiculous hang ups as you, fail, buy some records along the way, die.

Incidentally, I'm not in the best of moods this evening.

[jheii]

Incidentally, neither am I.

Perhaps I should re-word things so that I can say what I mean with a little less room for misinterpretation. Why do so many people let others form their opinions for them.

I see where yr going with the microwave thing, but there's a significant difference between accepting ignorance in wave mechanics or whatever the fuck, and the all-too-common conception that another (wo)man's opinion is as good as yr own. I hear it everywhere, and it's nauseating. People with opinions of the French Student Protests, on Immigration Reform, in the War in Iraq, who are only aware of what other people think about these issues, and thru whatever indocrination they've recieved are somehow intuitively aware of which of these opinions they're most likely to agree with, and claim them as their own. I find it disheartening, that's all.

[qprogeny79]

but capitalism MUST be unregulated in order to survive -- a "mixed economy" or a welfare state is a contradiction. the labor laws in france are a GROSS violation of workers' rights . . . they essentially state that an employer has no right to fire a worker, even if he is deemed incompetent or a lawbreaker. additionally, it gives the french public the deluded idea that they have the "right" to a job -- which they don't; they must EARN it by merit, since that's how capitalism works. if you don't earn your keep, you're out; in a competitive market, that's the only way to keep quality high and prices low (otherwise companies will be burdened with a labor force onto which they must hold, even when it is comprised of people who, knowing their jobs are completely secure, no longer have any incentive to work hard and do well).

and, the author failed to consider that the unemployment rate is DIRECTLY caused by the labor laws. consider this: let's say you're an employer and you're trying to hire people. now, knowing that whomever you chose to hire you would have to hire pretty much FOR LIFE with virtually no possibility of being fired, wouldn't you be a bit reticent before hiring? wouldn't you want to know every possible meticulous detail about the candidates before making a decision? whereas if you could hire and fire candidates at will (as is any employer's moral right), you would have no qualms about hiring workers whenever you wanted, knowing that if it didn't work out you could always try again.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by jheii

Incidentally, neither am I.

Perhaps I should re-word things so that I can say what I mean with a little less room for misinterpretation. Why do so many people let others form their opinions for them.

I see where yr going with the microwave thing, but there's a significant difference between accepting ignorance in wave mechanics or whatever the fuck, and the all-too-common conception that another (wo)man's opinion is as good as yr own. I hear it everywhere, and it's nauseating. People with opinions of the French Student Protests, on Immigration Reform, in the War in Iraq, who are only aware of what other people think about these issues, and thru whatever indocrination they've recieved are somehow intuitively aware of which of these opinions they're most likely to agree with, and claim them as their own. I find it disheartening, that's all.

Fair enough. Where I see the problem is attempting to seperate you & indoctrination, others & indoctrination, the multiple sources of indoctrination, the history of indoctrination, the impossiblity of a taxonomy of influences, the likelehood of a 'pure' genetics programme, and whether 'wave mechanics' is actually that unimportant.

Ultimately, I have nothing to say that I can be entirely sure is mine, and, worse still, being a Catholic I don't particularly want to lay claim to a radical, even a little bit, identity.

[jheii]

Yr giving me hope and a headache at the same time; thank you, and fuck off.

[Glice]

Excellent. Then you are to be my wife/ manslave. Perhaps both.

[jheii]

"but capitalism MUST be unregulated in order to survive"

Ask an economist if this is true... tell me what answer you get.

[qprogeny79]

Originally Posted by jheii

"but capitalism MUST be unregulated in order to survive"

Ask an economist if this is true... tell me what answer you get.

economists are typically employed by universities and thus tend to have anti-reason, anti-capitalist views ingrained in them by the intellectual establishment.

now i would ask a businessman, since he's the one who is perpetually persecuted by the very system of socialist "reins on capitalism" that is advocated by that article.

[Toilet & Bowels]

Originally Posted by qprogeny79

economists are typically employed by universities and thus tend to have anti-reason, anti-capitalist views ingrained in them by the intellectual establishment.

does this "reasoning" apply to anyone employed by a university does it extend to the presumably brainwashed students?



and i don't understand why you think the employer's rights take presedence over the worker's. the importance of the few over the many.