Egypt: Flip Flop Economics to Debate the Presidential Elections  · Global Voices
Tarek Amr

Egyptians go to the polls in May to election their new president, after 32 years of Hosni Mubarak's rule. Preparations for the big event are in full swing as potential candidates are filing their candidacy nominations, meeting voters in different governorates and mapping out their agendas to the media.
Khaled Aly is one of those potential candidates, and despite that fact that he isn't well-known among the majority of the Egyptians, he has the backing of many leftists and it is said that his strength in the elections will be the votes of the workers.
Egyptian blogger and economics expert, Mohamed El-Dahshan (@eldahshan), wrote a post [ar] welcoming Aly to the presidential elections race, but also decided to give him some advice and criticize his campaign so far in the process.
El-Dahshan writes [ar]:
El-Dahshan added that workers rights should not contradict with those of business owners, and that Aly's focus on those rights should not prevent him from finding ways to encourage the private sector to elect him as well. The post generated a debate on Twitter, where netizens argued for and against some of the points raised by the blogger.
Tamer Mowafy (@kalimakhus) replied to El-Dahshan telling him that there is contradiction between workers rights and business owners rights most of the time [ar]:
@kalimakhus: @eldahshan حقوق العمال لا تتعارض مع حقوق أصحاب العمل؟؟ .. شيل حقوق و حط مصالح تبقى عبارتك أكيد خاطئة تماما
Mowafy continues:
@kalimakhus: @eldahshan يعنى بدون أى تفاصيل معقدة كل حق من حقوق العمال هو إضافة لتكاليف الإنتاج يعنى إنخفاض للأرباح و إلا ماكانوش بيدوهالهم ليه يعنى؟
They then debated whether the increase of profit for a business means better salaries for workers, or whether more profit means lower salaries. El-Dahshan argues that if a company makes more money it will be able to pay more for its workers.
While Mowafy replied that higher productivity and profit come only from longer working hours which mean a lower value for the workers working time.
@kalimakhus: @eldahshan زيادة الإنتاج لو لم يكن نتيجة لتطوير الآلات أو تكنولوجيا الإنتاج يبقى نتيجة زيادة ساعات العمل أو تكثيف طاقة العمل
Libraliyya intervened saying not everything has to be a zero sum, and if one sides wins the other has to loose.
The three of them debated the meaning of exploitation, and when it's to be called exploitation, and when should we call it supply and demand. So, Mowafy tweeted an example to clarify his point of view.
@kalimakhus: @Libraliyya @eldahshan هو أنا لو بعت لك شبشب بألف جنيه لأن جزمتك إتسرقت من قدام الجامع مش أبقى إستغليتك رغم إنى مش انا اللى سرقتك؟
@Libraliyya: @kalimakhus @eldahshan حلو. خلينا في المثال دا. لو دا الشبشب الوحيد، يبقى مورد نادر و عليه طلب من الكثيرين. صحبه يديه لمين و على اي اساس؟
They continued to discuss on what criteria scarce resources should be sold to bigger demand without exploiting those who need it. And Mowafy disagreed that the one in need of something the most, is the one ready to pay more.
@kalimakhus: @Libraliyya @eldahshan ياخده الأكثر إحتياجا له وفق أى معيار موضوعى .. لو تساووا فى كل المعاير نعمل قرعة :P
@Libraliyya: @kalimakhus @eldahshan (١)ايه هوالمعيارالموضوعي دا؟(٢)ولوكل حاجة بقت قرعةهل دانظام نقدر نبني بيه مجتمع حتى لوقدراتك تسمحلك بالاحسن من الحظ؟
Like most of the debates between people of different ideologies on Twitter, they ended the debate after a while with a promise to have more debates in the future.
@Libraliyya: @kalimakhus @eldahshan عموما حوار رائع و مفيد بالرغم من الاعتماد على الشبشب. كفاية بقى لحسن الفولورز بتوعنا يدونا بالشبشب. :)
Libraliyya created a Storify for their debate here.