Who Exploits Whom?

[EN[i]GMA]

Who Exploits Whom?
By Wladimir Kraus

[Posted December 15, 2004]

The avowed claim of the various socialist schools ranging from the die-hard Marxists to the welfare-state Social Democrats is to bring justice into the economic affairs of society. In their view, justice means protecting the interests of the workers against the capitalist bloodsuckers who allegedly produce nothing but nevertheless are able to reap handsome profits.

The Social Democrats are willing to betray their principles on grounds that a bloody civil war along with a centrally planned economy could be even worse than ongoing worker exploitation. Still, they are under the impression that it is the workers who are the ultimate owners of the products because it is they who toil and sweat, i.e., who are directly involved in the physical production of goods.

Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, as explained in the recent article by Robert Murphy, defended the existence of very high profits because of the necessary function capitalists perform. Even Böhm-Bawerk, however, explicitly acknowledges the basic right of the workers to the whole value of the goods they produce. But his positive analysis tries to convince the reader that capitalists' existence is important and of a high value even to the workers. The function of the capitalist, according to Böhm-Bawerk, is to provide workers with the means to buy present (consumers') goods.

Workers require capitalists because they are either unable or unwilling to wait until the products of their labor ripen to the full value of consumers' goods. Seen in this light, the basic function of a capitalist appears to be merely that of a good salesman who trades present goods against unfinished future consumers’ goods. Thus, workers get only a discounted value, which is still allegedly equal to the value of their marginal product, of what will eventually become present goods of the full market value and capitalists get the difference—interest income. We may say, using a popular expression among economists, that capitalists perform a “waiting� function.

The argument of workers' unwillingness to wait until the products of their labor eventually ripen to their full value, to be sure, may appear to be somewhat insensible. Waiting several years to be paid off in full would mean for many workers and their families simple starvation. So, the workers may appear in the circumstances where they are simply physically unable to wait for an extended period of time to live under the state of permanent duress. And why in such cases does the rate of interest depend on the time preference of the capitalists and not of the workers?

These concerns and questions are valid only if we assume that workers in fact are the rightful owners of the goods produced. To claim that workers do get only a fraction of what they produce means essentially that profits are deductions from wages.

Here I follow George Reisman to argue that in the very nature of the things workers do not have any claim of ownership to the products of their labor, but, to the contrary, businessmen and capitalists do. In addition, wages constitute deduction from profits.

The Issue of Which was First

The proposition that wages are deductions from profits will most certainly appear to be simply incredible, if not even manifestly wrong. For who works in the factories and is engaged in the immediate creation of goods and services? However, the fact that workers are engaged in the process of physical production is virtually of no relevance whatsoever if we want to dig deeper and try to understand the economic interdependencies in a division of labor (capitalist) economic system.

The first thing we have to realize is that not everyone who is engaged in physical production receives wages. To see this, imagine a self-employed sheep raiser somewhere in the steppes of Kazakhstan a hundred years ago. Assume that our sheep raiser is not self-sufficient and that he needs clothes, bread, and a variety of other things which he can buy in a nearby town market. Assume further that the economy of Kazakhstan is developed enough and uses gold coins as its money.

The next time he needs all the stuff, our sheep raiser goes to the market and sells some of his sheep for, say, ten gold coins. Here comes the crucial question. Are we entitled to call the ten gold coins he receives from the sale of his products wages? No, we aren't. Regardless of the fact that our sheep owner is a poor fellow who rises up very early and works very long hours under unpleasant working conditions, the ten gold coins cannot be termed his wage, because to receive wage one must be first employed by someone else. By definition, a wage earner or, equivalently, a proletarian is someone who owns no means of production besides his own body, and whatever exceptional physical strength and skills he might possess.

Our sheep owner, by way of contrast, is his own boss and can decide what to do with his property—the sheep herd. The money the sheep owner receives after he has sold some of them is his product sales revenue. Now we come closer to the nature of the exact relationship between wages, product sales revenue and profit. In a few moments we shall see that in order for wages to come into existence there must first be profits.

In order to see this we must realize the fact that in the market economy people engage in productive activities for the sole purpose of earning money. Earning of money is of literally vital importance because, usually, the only way to acquire the goods one consumes is through expenditure of money one possesses. Earning of money becomes the decisive focal point of all productive activities in the economy. Individuals and business enterprises are able to earn money only if they offer things that somebody is willing to exchange his money for.

Furthermore, in the market economy, earning more money or even a definite minimum amount of money does not come easily because one's potential customers have always the free choice to spend their limited incomes elsewhere. Only through continuing quality improvements or through continually offering goods for lower prices or through a combination of the two is it possible to outcompete one's competitors permanently, thus ensuring a steady flow of income for oneself.

But the quality improvements and lower prices are usually achievable only with the help of more tools and materials as well as more and more intelligent labor. At this point we have to introduce the species of entrepreneurs/businessmen who actually make the relevant business decisions concerning the investments in tools, materials and labor.

Our sheep owner acquires the status of an entrepreneur/businessman if he regards his productive activity, here raising sheep, as being for the purpose of earning sales revenue. From the perspective of our sheep owner the product sales revenue he receives qualifies as a potential means of his survival or, alternatively, his income.

If he decides to invest a part of it, say, into employing a worker and paying him a definite amount of money, say, on a monthly basis, then he incurs business costs. His investment in the form of monthly wage payments regularly diminishes the fraction of the sales proceeds which, following common practice, is to be regarded as profit, i.e., the difference between product sales revenue and costs.

Observe that where our sheep owner does not incur any costs in the form of monthly wage payments, the entire amount of his product sales revenue must qualify as profit! The abstract analysis given above confirms the proposition that profits, not wages, are the original form of income.

To understand the matter more clearly, we extend our original example and assume that our sheep owner hires his propertyless neighbor Murat to help him out watching the sheep and guard them against hungry wolves. They agree that Murat receives one gold coin per month for his services. Now, the picture becomes an entirely different one. Here we have one wage earner and one entrepreneur/capitalist.

Are we entitled in this case to say that Murat is entitled to own all the sheep just because he manages to save them from the wolves by watching them carefully? No, he isn't! It is certainly true that the marginal productivity of the sheep herd has gone up since Murat has been hired, but this fact alone does not mean that Murat is entitled to claim the marginal product (sheep saved from the wolves) for himself just because he has been hired.

What he receives as his wages is not the marginal product of his watching services but just the one gold coin. Observe the crucial role played by the sheep owner here.

Murat’s wage—one gold coin that he receives—comes into existence solely because the sheep owner is wise and prudent enough to save the one gold coin from his sales revenue and to use it to pay Murat.

By employing Murat the sheep owner hopes, naturally, to earn more gold coins than he expends paying Murat. But still, Murat is able to earn the one coin and to contribute to a greater overall physical marginal productivity, and thus ultimately to his real wage, because of the savings and wise business decision of the sheep owner! Had the sheep owner consumed the one coin, say, by buying his wife delicious fruits, Murat would have remained unemployed and there would have been fewer sheep for humans to consume.

We can generalize the case. The existence of wage earners as a distinct economic class comes into existence, and remains in existence, only because and as long as there are entrepreneurs/capitalists who are willing to pay wages out of their saved funds.

We can go even further and see more clearly the crucial role played by the system of monetary exchange.

As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, without money and economic calculation stated in monetary terms, no capitalistic/roundabout method of production is possible.[â€*]The capitalistic/roundabout methods of production, in turn, are carried out with the means of capital funds saved, i.e. not consumed, by businessmen and capitalists.

The capital funds saved and expended in the production process can be termed productive expenditures because they are made for the purpose of producing goods and services that will be subsequently sold for usually a greater amount of money than the sum originally expended for buying the factors of production.[‡]

Productive expenditures of businessmen and capitalists in the form of wage payments and purchases of capital goods not only create a distinct class of wage earners, but also at the same time bring into existence the necessary conditions for a greater physical productivity of a given number of people willing to work for wages, thereby raising their real wages.[§]

The institutions of capitalism such as the monetary economic system and the system of private property enable those individuals in a human society who are more intelligent, productive and prudent than others to apply their own labor, and that of others, for the task of production, thereby bettering their own lives and also, and to an enormously greater extent, the lives of others who less capable.

I would like to conclude with a question: who indeed "exploits" whom? Do businessmen and capitalists exploit the workers, or do workers basically live from the intelligence, productivity, and prudence of entrepreneurs and capitalists?

---------
Wladimir Kraus [mail] is a graduate student, Universität Paderborn, Germany. Comment on this article on this blog.

See the enormously valuable book by Professor Reisman(1996) Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, Jameson Books, Ottawa, Illinois. Also available on the internet, URL: http://www.capitalism.net/. The issues I deal with in this article Professor Reisman discusses in a much greater detail along with a host of important applications and extensions in chapters 2, 4–7, 11, 13 of his book.

[â€*]See, Ludwig von Mises (1922): Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth

[‡]On the concept of productive expenditure and its role within the division of economic labor, see in particular Capitalism, pp. 441–62.

[§]For a full analysis of the determinants of productivity of labor and real wages, see Professor Reisman's own and truly pathbreaking Productivity Theory of Wages, ch. 14, pp. 603–72 of Capitalism.

[Funkaloyd]

the lives of others who less capable.

Heh.

[EN[i]GMA]

What did you think of the article?

[SobaViolence]

i'm more left wing than anything else, but this is exactly why socialism pisses me off. it's long-winded and boring.


maybe it's because i'm irish, but if you can't say it in 50 words then you can't say it in 5,000 words.

[EN[i]GMA]

i'm more left wing than anything else, but this is exactly why socialism pisses me off. it's long-winded and boring.


maybe it's because i'm irish, but if you can't say it in 50 words then you can't say it in 5,000 words.

Just read the article. It's excellent.

[Funkaloyd]

I've never really believed that production always belongs to the workers, regardless of what contracts they've made with their employers.

I disagree with the third paragraph from the end though. Management―given the opportunity―is more likely to hire more employees than demand an production increase from their existing workers.

On the question of exploitation in the thread's title: Who gets paid more, and who are there more of?

[EN[i]GMA]

Bump

[Schmeltz]

Very interesting article. Just a couple of thoughts.


Murat is able to earn the one coin and to contribute to a greater overall physical marginal productivity, and thus ultimately to his real wage, because of the savings and wise business decision of the sheep owner!

...

We can generalize the case. The existence of wage earners as a distinct economic class comes into existence, and remains in existence, only because and as long as there are entrepreneurs/capitalists who are willing to pay wages out of their saved funds.


Not strictly true. Murat is actually forced to sell his labour for one coin to his more wealthy neighbour because, being propertyless, he presumably doesn't have any other way to survive. The existence of the wage earning class is not a function of the generosity of entrepreneurs/capitalists, but is a product of the inegalitarian disparities inherent to the concept of private property.

Furthermore, it's not merely a matter of how willing an entrepreneur is to pay wages, but of how it is necessary for an entrepreneur to pay wages in order to support his own position; if the shepherd had not hired Murat and a pack of wolves chanced upon his flock the next day, he would have no sheep to sell for profit. This doesn't necessarily mean that Murat is entitled to the marginal product created from his labour, but it does indicate that the system is at best a two-way street, with each class dependent on the other in order to perpetuate the system. Therefore in looking at the question of who exploits whom, it is more constructive to look at who gains the most from the perpetuation of the relationship: is it Murat, who is forced to sell his labour month by month in exchange for whatever the shepherd feels he can get away with, or is it the shepherd, who need only dispense with a fraction of his income in order to appropriate the services of someone less fortunate than himself?


The institutions of capitalism such as the monetary economic system and the system of private property enable those individuals in a human society who are more intelligent, productive and prudent than others to apply their own labor, and that of others, for the task of production


That's a very disingenuous, coded way of saying that capitalist institutions enable the wealthy (who, so sorry, are not always more intelligent, productive, or prudent than others) to use their surplus capital to arrogate the labour power of those individuals with no other real assets and harness it for their own ends - as the article admits, the production of more capital. Again, this inescapably points to the fact that no matter how you dress it up, entrepreneurs are engaged in the business of actively playing on the disadvantage of others in order to buttress and enhance their own position within the propertied system, while those who "live off" the entrepreneurs do so only because they have no other method of survival within the propertied system. Again, it's the entrepreneurs who have vastly more to gain from the system's perpetuation, so it follows that their participation is more exploitative in nature.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that the division between the shepherd and Murat was not based on any qualitative disparity in intelligence or productivity, but on a disparity in property. The affluent shepherd is at a distinct advantage in the propertied system to begin with, and he only has to be smart enough to realize that if he employs his surplus capital to entrap Murat and prevent him from realizing that two propertyless Khazaks can gang up on and beat up a single shepherd and so obtain five sheep apiece, he can stay on top at the cost of only a single gold coin a month.

[Qdrop]

Very interesting article. Just a couple of thoughts.



Not strictly true. Murat is actually forced to sell his labour for one coin to his more wealthy neighbour because, being propertyless, he presumably doesn't have any other way to survive. The existence of the wage earning class is not a function of the generosity of entrepreneurs/capitalists, but is a product of the inegalitarian disparities inherent to the concept of private property.

Furthermore, it's not merely a matter of how willing an entrepreneur is to pay wages, but of how it is necessary for an entrepreneur to pay wages in order to support his own position; if the shepherd had not hired Murat and a pack of wolves chanced upon his flock the next day, he would have no sheep to sell for profit. This doesn't necessarily mean that Murat is entitled to the marginal product created from his labour, but it does indicate that the system is at best a two-way street, with each class dependent on the other in order to perpetuate the system. Therefore in looking at the question of who exploits whom, it is more constructive to look at who gains the most from the perpetuation of the relationship: is it Murat, who is forced to sell his labour month by month in exchange for whatever the shepherd feels he can get away with, or is it the shepherd, who need only dispense with a fraction of his income in order to appropriate the services of someone less fortunate than himself?



That's a very disingenuous, coded way of saying that capitalist institutions enable the wealthy (who, so sorry, are not always more intelligent, productive, or prudent than others) to use their surplus capital to arrogate the labour power of those individuals with no other real assets and harness it for their own ends - as the article admits, the production of more capital. Again, this inescapably points to the fact that no matter how you dress it up, entrepreneurs are engaged in the business of actively playing on the disadvantage of others in order to buttress and enhance their own position within the propertied system, while those who "live off" the entrepreneurs do so only because they have no other method of survival within the propertied system. Again, it's the entrepreneurs who have vastly more to gain from the system's perpetuation, so it follows that their participation is more exploitative in nature.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that the division between the shepherd and Murat was not based on any qualitative disparity in intelligence or productivity, but on a disparity in property. The affluent shepherd is at a distinct advantage in the propertied system to begin with, and he only has to be smart enough to realize that if he employs his surplus capital to entrap Murat and prevent him from realizing that two propertyless Khazaks can gang up on and beat up a single shepherd and so obtain five sheep apiece, he can stay on top at the cost of only a single gold coin a month.

a rather sound argument for socialism, compared to others i have read on this board.

i commend you for that.

philsophically, you have a strong case (as does the article's author as well).

but i implore you to focus on the internal decisions made by those involved that lead to capitalist system.
what was the leading factor for the sheep herders decision to engage in a rather kleptocratic system?

[EN[i]GMA]

Very interesting article. Just a couple of thoughts.



Not strictly true. Murat is actually forced to sell his labour for one coin to his more wealthy neighbour because, being propertyless, he presumably doesn't have any other way to survive. The existence of the wage earning class is not a function of the generosity of entrepreneurs/capitalists, but is a product of the inegalitarian disparities inherent to the concept of private property.

Furthermore, it's not merely a matter of how willing an entrepreneur is to pay wages, but of how it is necessary for an entrepreneur to pay wages in order to support his own position; if the shepherd had not hired Murat and a pack of wolves chanced upon his flock the next day, he would have no sheep to sell for profit. This doesn't necessarily mean that Murat is entitled to the marginal product created from his labour, but it does indicate that the system is at best a two-way street, with each class dependent on the other in order to perpetuate the system. Therefore in looking at the question of who exploits whom, it is more constructive to look at who gains the most from the perpetuation of the relationship: is it Murat, who is forced to sell his labour month by month in exchange for whatever the shepherd feels he can get away with, or is it the shepherd, who need only dispense with a fraction of his income in order to appropriate the services of someone less fortunate than himself?



That's a very disingenuous, coded way of saying that capitalist institutions enable the wealthy (who, so sorry, are not always more intelligent, productive, or prudent than others) to use their surplus capital to arrogate the labour power of those individuals with no other real assets and harness it for their own ends - as the article admits, the production of more capital. Again, this inescapably points to the fact that no matter how you dress it up, entrepreneurs are engaged in the business of actively playing on the disadvantage of others in order to buttress and enhance their own position within the propertied system, while those who "live off" the entrepreneurs do so only because they have no other method of survival within the propertied system. Again, it's the entrepreneurs who have vastly more to gain from the system's perpetuation, so it follows that their participation is more exploitative in nature.

Finally, it's worth pointing out that the division between the shepherd and Murat was not based on any qualitative disparity in intelligence or productivity, but on a disparity in property. The affluent shepherd is at a distinct advantage in the propertied system to begin with, and he only has to be smart enough to realize that if he employs his surplus capital to entrap Murat and prevent him from realizing that two propertyless Khazaks can gang up on and beat up a single shepherd and so obtain five sheep apiece, he can stay on top at the cost of only a single gold coin a month.

The sheep herder probably has enough sheep to prevent them from being wiped out that quickly. We're not talking 7 or 8, he would likely have dozens.

Why is Murat forced to sell his labor? Why is Murat poor and landless in the first place?

But take this concept of capitalism further. Poor do not need to exist in a capitalistic society, just RELATIVE poor. It is perfectly feasible for capitalism to give everyone more than enough to live. It already feeds the populous.

Who gets away with more? Murat. Murat has nothing at stake. He takes no risk in purchasing, feeding, protecting and caring for these sheep. He watches them. Hardly a difficult job. The money he is paid is the money he and his employer BOTH AGREE ON. If he does not feel he is being paid enough he can ask for more money, demand more money, or quit. If he demands it, he could be fired if someone else will do it for less. Obviously this person is not being exploited if they agree to the money they earn.

The capitalist on the other hand, has his livlihood at stake. Should famine, predators, a storm, or any other number of diasters scare away/destroy his flock, he is ruined. His means of production are gone. He is poor. For this great risk, he deserves compensation. He was the person who purchased the sheep knowing that they could die any moment, costing him his investment. Murat could simply find another job.

It is through some generosity, a lot of necessity and mostly intelligence that the capitalist hires employees. These employees are not paid less than they are worth. They are paid exactly what they are worth to capitalist and the worker hisself and not penny more or less. Is that exploitation?

How is Murat less fortunate than the capalist? Perhaps Murat could save his money, purchase his own sheep and run the capitalist out of business by more effectively managing his resources. Is that less fortunate? Currently he owns no means of production because he has not earned any means of production. There was a point when the capitalist was in the same position and he was hardly "less fortunate". He made his own money.

If the capitalists (You said wealthy, a wealthy person is not necessarily a capitalist nor is a capitalist always a wealthy person, I assume you meant capitalist) were not more productive, intelligent or prudent than others, they would not be in the position they are in. You made a remark about capitalism being nonegalatarian. It is perfectly egalaterian. No matter the wealth, stature or ability you currently possess, you could reach the top by being better than everyone else. Everyone is afforded this oppurtunity but some lack the skill, talent or drive necessary to succeed. Who's fault is that? The capitalists?

The capitalists do not arrogate anything. They earn what they have (by definition) and share it with those who agree with their terms.

There is no such thing as "surplus" capital. A capitalist does not have surplus capital. He has as much capital as he has earned and lacks the capital he has not earned.

How does a capitalist play off of others disadvantages? Those they hire willfully agree to be paid a certain amount. There is no coercion. They could refuse. They chose not to.

Is their disadvantage their lack of funds? But they have yet to earn any funds. A person who has not earned anything does not deserve anything. You earn what you deserve and vice-versa.

The poor have everything to gain in a capitalist society. They can gain what they earn. There is plentiful, cheap food available to anyone with a job due to capitalisms extreme efficiency. There is cheap housing available, built by workers paid little, but paid enough to live in their own home and eat their own food with the chance to advance based on their own proficiency.

The capitalists have as much to gain as the proletarian. Everything the capitalists produce and sell helps the proletarian. If the sheep herder does not hire Murat, he puts out fewer sheep. This leaves Murat jobless, starving to death, raises the cost of food and makes life worse for everyone, including hisself. It's mutually beneficial. There is no exploitation when it benefits everyone involved.

The capitalist acquired that property though his ideas, labor, capital and skill. His earnings are his and none elses. You deserve nothing he has earned and neither do I. You are, however, more than welcomed to run him out of business and make all the capital you deserve.

Everyone realizes theft is the easy way out. Of course their thievery ruins the capitalist, leaves Murat still starving, drives up food prices for everyone, disrupts the economy making it harder for them to ever find jobs and does nothing to alleviate their own lack of capital.

So yes, thievery is often resorted to by the lazy but it only hurts themselves and the other poor.

[Qdrop]

enigma: A+

GMA']The sheep herder probably has enough sheep to prevent them from being wiped out that quickly. We're not talking 7 or 8, he would likely have dozens.

Why is Murat forced to sell his labor? Why is Murat poor and landless in the first place?


one could make the argument (and be correct) about the poverty trap that exists in many societies, though.
a young, poor, urban youth does NOT have the same oppurtunity as a posh, suburban youth.


But take this concept of capitalism further. Poor do not need to exist in a capitalistic society, just RELATIVE poor. It is perfectly feasible for capitalism to give everyone more than enough to live. It already feeds the populous.


great point. socialists never get this.


The capitalist on the other hand, has his livlihood at stake. Should famine, predators, a storm, or any other number of diasters scare away/destroy his flock, he is ruined. His means of production are gone. He is poor. For this great risk, he deserves compensation. He was the person who purchased the sheep knowing that they could die any moment, costing him his investment. Murat could simply find another job.

exactly, risk should be rewarded, and encouraged.
that is essential to devolopment.
without incentive.....we become stagnant.


It is through some generosity, a lot of necessity and mostly intelligence that the capitalist hires employees. These employees are not paid less than they are worth. They are paid exactly what they are worth to capitalist and the worker hisself and not penny more or less. Is that exploitation?

this, however...is extremely debatable.


How is Murat less fortunate than the capalist? Perhaps Murat could save his money, purchase his own sheep and run the capitalist out of business by more effectively managing his resources.

the hallmark of capitalism...provided the market is protected from monopolies and Trusts....



The capitalists have as much to gain as the proletarian. Everything the capitalists produce and sell helps the proletarian. If the sheep herder does not hire Murat, he puts out fewer sheep. This leaves Murat jobless, starving to death, raises the cost of food and makes life worse for everyone, including hisself. It's mutually beneficial. There is no exploitation when it benefits everyone involved.

this is why capitalism is essential for large populations.


The capitalist acquired that property though his ideas, labor, capital and skill. His earnings are his and none elses. You deserve nothing he has earned and neither do I. You are, however, more than welcomed to run him out of business and make all the capital you deserve.



A+

[EN[i]GMA]

enigma: A+



one could make the argument (and be correct) about the poverty trap that exists in many societies, though.
a young, poor, urban youth does NOT have the same oppurtunity as a posh, suburban youth.



great point. socialists never get this.


exactly, risk should be rewarded, and encouraged.
that is essential to devolopment.
without incentive.....we become stagnant.


this, however...is extremely debatable.


the hallmark of capitalism...provided the market is protected from monopolies and Trusts....



this is why capitalism is essential for large populations.



A+


True. But someone of skill will not be stopped. That person only needs to work at a job, aquire capital and invest it. This is not easy, I agree, but is not much easier for middle class kids. Money doesn't equal success. Look at W's oil failures.

Socialists think there is some limit to the amount of people employed. Unemployment would be near nothing if things like minimum wage were done away with, lowering the cost of employees and lowering the cost of living so more people could have jobs and consumer goods and services would be cheaper.

In a socialist society, there is no innovation.

If both you and your employer agree to the wage, how is it wrong? If you think it's wrong don't agree to it.

Monopolies can only exist with government invervention. Someone can always do it cheaper if the government allows him.

Exactly. Where there is capitalism there is prosperity. Where there is socialism there is starvation.

[Schmeltz]

Leaving aside your fantastic, utopian assumptions about the inherent good nature and superior capability of capitalists (strikingly similar to those that inform and define Communism, or so it seems to me), it appears that we fundamentally disagree only on who has more to gain or to lose from participation in the system. You claim that the entrepreneur has more at stake owing to the risk he took through investing, but the very fact that he had the property or capital to risk reveals the inherent inegalitarianism of the system: the wage-earning Murats have no opportunity to do this because they do not possess sufficient capital to play the game (and as to the why's of that, there are any number of reasons - cultural, historical, political, what have you - that do not rest on the idiotic assertion that people are poor because they are lazy). That is what I meant by surplus capital: assets that can be used for things other than basic necessities, essentially.

The greatest returns are thereby awarded to those who already possess the greatest amount of capital, while those whose only asset is their labour receive only as much return as the capitalist permits. Of course there is no physical coercion in such an agreement, but one can hardly claim that this relationship is negotiated on equal terms; people will generally agree to work for even a pittance if their only alternative is starvation or revolution, and that's called exploitation of the disadvantaged. This has only recently be mitigated by the application of labour laws, trade and labour unionism, and the like, but you hardly have the generous capitalists of the world to thank for those things. If capitalism is more profitable now for the wage-earners who serve as its real backbone, it's thanks to the efforts of socialist movements the world over.

Anyhow, the capitalist might take a risk in terms of capital investment, but he couldn't do this at all without a) getting a hold of surplus capital to begin with, and b) taking advantage of wage-earners who are unable to play the game at his level owing to their relatively more impoverished status. The wage-earners, meanwhile, stand only to gain as much as they can get out of somebody who uses the labour of others to enrich himself. All your talk about saving money in order to compete with the big players is fantastic nonsense; the system is designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor - somebody's got to be hurting in order for the system to keep functioning, and so sorry, but it's not always those who deserve to be at the bottom who find themselves there.

To reiterate: the capitalist has vastly more to gain; the wage-earner has less at stake but very little to gain. The capitalist sees the greatest returns on his investment; the wage-earner sees only what the capitalist is willing to allow him. The capitalist (generally) starts from a position of some economic advantage; the wage-earner (generally) starts from a position of some economic disadvantage. The very fact that the capitalist has vastly more to gain from participation in the system than any of his workers can ever hope for ought to indicate who is really exploiting who, and who is simply seeking to survive as best they can.

PS - If you think there's no starvation in capitalist societies, there's no point discussing this issue.

[EN[i]GMA]

Leaving aside your fantastic, utopian assumptions about the inherent good nature and superior capability of capitalists (strikingly similar to those that inform and define Communism, or so it seems to me), it appears that we fundamentally disagree only on who has more to gain or to lose from participation in the system. You claim that the entrepreneur has more at stake owing to the risk he took through investing, but the very fact that he had the property or capital to risk reveals the inherent inegalitarianism of the system: the wage-earning Murats have no opportunity to do this because they do not possess sufficient capital to play the game (and as to the why's of that, there are any number of reasons - cultural, historical, political, what have you - that do not rest on the idiotic assertion that people are poor because they are lazy). That is what I meant by surplus capital: assets that can be used for things other than basic necessities, essentially.

The greatest returns are thereby awarded to those who already possess the greatest amount of capital, while those whose only asset is their labour receive only as much return as the capitalist permits. Of course there is no physical coercion in such an agreement, but one can hardly claim that this relationship is negotiated on equal terms; people will generally agree to work for even a pittance if their only alternative is starvation or revolution, and that's called exploitation of the disadvantaged. This has only recently be mitigated by the application of labour laws, trade and labour unionism, and the like, but you hardly have the generous capitalists of the world to thank for those things. If capitalism is more profitable now for the wage-earners who serve as its real backbone, it's thanks to the efforts of socialist movements the world over.

Anyhow, the capitalist might take a risk in terms of capital investment, but he couldn't do this at all without a) getting a hold of surplus capital to begin with, and b) taking advantage of wage-earners who are unable to play the game at his level owing to their relatively more impoverished status. The wage-earners, meanwhile, stand only to gain as much as they can get out of somebody who uses the labour of others to enrich himself. All your talk about saving money in order to compete with the big players is fantastic nonsense; the system is designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor - somebody's got to be hurting in order for the system to keep functioning, and so sorry, but it's not always those who deserve to be at the bottom who find themselves there.

To reiterate: the capitalist has vastly more to gain; the wage-earner has less at stake but very little to gain. The capitalist sees the greatest returns on his investment; the wage-earner sees only what the capitalist is willing to allow him. The capitalist (generally) starts from a position of some economic advantage; the wage-earner (generally) starts from a position of some economic disadvantage. The very fact that the capitalist has vastly more to gain from participation in the system than any of his workers can ever hope for ought to indicate who is really exploiting who, and who is simply seeking to survive as best they can.

PS - If you think there's no starvation in capitalist societies, there's no point discussing this issue.


Nothing but the same socialist propaganda.

Utopian? Hardly. They are accurate effects of capitalism.

Bill Gates didn't start with anything. The founders of Google didn't start with anything. The founder of Amazon.com didn't start out with anything. Andrew Carnegie didn't start out with anything. Capitalists don't get rich through inheritance. Those people aren't capitalists. Capitalists get rich through enterprise. Through their ideas.

So than why are people poor? You danced around that one with your vague generalities. Is it because their black? Because their foreign? Because they grew up in the ghetto? Or is it because they either can't compete or don't have the drive? It's safe to say there was a better singer than Frank Sinitra who didn't have the courage to risk his livlihood on his singing. This isn't a complete meritocracy. It takes drive. I plan to make capital through my achievements, not whine that I didn't start off with enough money to buy a company and if I fail it won't be because of unfair distrobution of wealth, simply through my lack of ability.

Why is a poor person deserving of anything they haven't earned? Because they're poor? Because of the inherent flaws in the system? Because he's lazy? Does it even matter? You tell me.

Tell me. How do you think an economy can work without competition and a market? How can a planned economy function? How can you pay people without judging their skill or talent or intelligence? What's preventing me from missing work every 3rd day, half-assing it when I show up and generally be a bad employee? You going to fire me? Capitalism provides an incentive to work. Produce or die. Socialism provides incentive to not work. Produce a hundred lights a day or 3. You still make enough to live. This is sure to lead to prosperity for everyone.

In a communistic society there is no room to innovate. Why come up with a new procedure that allows you make 300 light bulbs in the time it used to make 100 when you would gain nothing but the chance to make more bulbs?

How can you plan an economy? How do you know how many lightbulbs are needed? Isn't the free market the perfect manner for finding need and providing for it?

People agree to the wage they make. Nobody in their right mind would work for 1 dollar an hour. People make the money they deserve. If they have a menial job like janitor, they deserve little money. As they gain experience and talent, they become a commidity. The company isn't going to lose a talented light bulb maker. He is going to pay him extra. He gets more money, the capitalist sells more and the public has more, better, lights at a reduced price. Who loses?

Socialist movements have done nothing but increased unemployment with their minimum wage laws, robbed union members with union dues to pay for gold trips, hurt the consumer by causing inflated prices by making menial union labor cost an exorbitant amount.

Why do people have to be poor? That's a socialistic lie. In a capitalist society, there is no reason people need to be poor. If the capitalists had fewer poor they would have more employees, greater productivity, lower prices, higher profits and a fairer market.

The workers would have increased wages due to increased revenue and would be able to purchase more further increasing revenue and their own wages.

The popolous would have more, cheaper consumer goods and capital to spend.

Who loses?

Go here and read: www.mises.org

Why have communist/socialist societies always managed to fail? Why is there always rampant starvation? Why are there always mass killings?

Communism has only killed 100 million people, let's give it another chance! Right?

[EN[i]GMA]

Money, Method, and the Market Process

Ludwig von Mises

13.

Capitalism versus Socialism

I

Most of our contemporaries are highly critical of what they call "the unequal distribution of wealth." As they see it, justice would require a state of affairs under which nobody enjoys what are to be considered superfluous luxuries as long as other people lack things necessary for the preservation of life, health, and cheerfulness. The ideal condition of mankind, they pretend, would be an equal distribution of all consumers' goods available. As the most practical method to achieve this end, they advocate the radical expropriation of all material factors of production and the conduct of all production activities by society, that is to say, by the social apparatus of coercion and compulsion, commonly called government or state.

The supporters of this program of socialism or communism reject the economic system of capitalism for a number of reasons. Their critique emphasizes the alleged fact that the system as such is not only unjust, a violation of the perennial God-given natural law, but also inherently inefficient and thus the ultimate cause of all the misery and poverty that plague mankind. Once the wicked institution of private ownership of the material factors of production will have been replaced by public ownership, human conditions will become blissful. Everybody will receive what he needs. All that separates mankind from this perfect state of earthly affairs is the unfairness in the distribution of wealth.

The essential viciousness of this method of dealing with the fundamental problems of mankind's material and spiritual welfare is to be seen in its preoccupation with the concept of distribution. As these authors and doctrinaires see it, the economic and social problem is to give to everybody his due, his fair share in the endowment that God or nature has destined for the use of all men. They do not see that poverty is "the primitive condition of the human race." [1] They do not realize that all that enables man to elevate his standard of living above the level of the animals is the fruit of his planned activity. Man's economic task is not the distribution of gifts dispensed by a benevolent donor, but production. He tries to alter the state of his environment in such a way that conditions become more favorable to the preservation and development of his vital forces. He works.

Precisely, say the superficial among the critics of social conditions. Labor and nothing but labor brings forth all the goods the utilization of which elevates the condition of men above the level of the animals. As all products are the output of labor, only those who labor should have the right to enjoy them.

This may sound rather plausible as far as it refers to the conditions and circumstances of some fabulous non-human beings. But it turns into the most fateful of all popular delusions when applied to homo sapiens. Man's eminence manifests itself in his being fully aware of the flux of time. Man lives consciously in a changing universe; he distinguishes, sooner and later, between past, present, [2] and future; he makes plans to influence the future state of affairs and tries to convert these plans into fact. Conscious planning for the future is the specifically human characteristic. Timely provision for future wants is what distinguishes human action from the hunting drives of beasts and of savages. Premeditation, early attention to future needs, leads to production for deferred consumption, to the intercalation of time between exertion and the enjoyment of its outcome, to the adoption of what Böhm-Bawerk called round-about methods of production. To the nature-given factors of production, man-made factors are added by the deferment of consumption. Man's material environment and his style of life are radically transformed. There emerges what is called human civilization.

This civilization is not an achievement of kings, generals or other Führers. Neither is it the result of the labors of "common" men. It is the fruit of the cooperation of two types of men: of those whose saving, i.e., deferment of consumption, makes entering upon time-absorbing, round-about methods of production possible, and of those who know how to direct the application of such methods. Without saving and successful endeavors to use the accumulated savings wisely, there cannot be any question of a standard of living worthy of the qualification human.

Simple saving, that is, the abstention from immediate consumption in order to make more abundant consumption at a later date possible, is not a specifically human contrivance. There are also animals that practice it. Driven by instinctive urges, some species of animals are also committed to what we would have to call capitalistic saving if it were done in full consciousness of its effects. But man alone has elevated intentional deferment of consumption to a fundamental principle of action. He abstains temporally from consumption in order to enjoy later the continuous services of appliances that could not have been produced without such a postponement.

Saving is always the abstention from some kind of immediate consumption for the sake of making an increase or improvement in later consumption possible. It is saving that accumulates capital, dissaving that makes the available supply of capital shrink. In acting, man chooses between increasing his competence by additional saving or reducing the amount of his capital by keeping his consumption above the rate correct accountancy considers as his income.

Additional saving as well as the non-consumption of already previously accumulated savings are never "automatic," but always the result of an intentional abstention from instantaneous consumption. In abstaining from instantaneous consumption, the saver expects to be fully rewarded either by keeping something for later consumption or by acquiring the property of a capital good.

Where there is no saving, no capital goods come into existence. And there is no saving without purpose. A man defers consumption for the sake of an improvement of later conditions. He may want to improve his own conditions or those of definite other people. He does not abstain from consumption simply for the pleasure of somebody unknown.

There cannot be any such thing as a capital good that is not owned by a definite owner. Capital goods come into existence as the property of the individual or the group of individuals who were in the position to consume definite things but abstained from this consumption for the sake of later utilization. The way in which capital goods come into existence as private property determines the institutions of the capitalistic system.

Of course, today's heirs of the capitalistic civilization also construct the scheme of a world-embracing social body that forces every human being to submit meekly to all its orders. In such a socialist universe everything will be planned by the supreme authority and to the individual "comrades" no other sphere of action will be left than unconditional surrender to the will of their masters. The comrades will drudge, but all the yield of their endeavors will be at the disposal of the high authority. Such is the ideal of socialism or communism, nowadays also called planning. The individual comrade will enjoy what the supreme authority assigns to him for his consumption and enjoyment. Everything else, all material factors of production, will be owned by the authority.

Such is the alternative. Mankind has to choose: on the one side—private property in the material factors of production. Then the demand of the consumers on the market determines what has to be produced, of what quality, and in what quantity. On the other side—all the material factors of production are owned by the central authority and thus every individual entirely depends on its will and has to obey its orders. This authority alone determines what has to be produced and what and how much each comrade should be permitted to use or consume.

If one does not permit individuals to keep as their property the things produced for temporally deferred utilization, one removes any incentive to create such things and thus makes it impossible for acting man to raise his condition above the level of non-human animals. Thus the anti-property (i.e., socialist or communist) authors had to construct the design of a society in which all men are forced to obey unconditionally the orders issued from a central authority, from the great god called state, society, or mankind.

II

The social meaning and the economic function of private property have been widely misunderstood and misinterpreted because people confuse conditions of the market economy with those of the militaristic systems vaguely labeled feudalism. The feudal lord was a conqueror or a conqueror's accomplice. He was anxious to deprive all those who did not belong to his own cluster of any opportunity to make a living otherwise than by humbly serving him or one of his class comrades. All the land—and this means in a primitive society virtually all the material factors of production—was owned by members of the proprietary caste and to the others, to those disdainfully called the "villains," nothing was left but unconditional surrender to the armed hereditary nobility. Those not belonging to this aristocracy were serfs or slaves, they had to obey and to drudge while the products of their toil were consumed by their masters.

The eminence of the inhabitants of Europe and their descendants who have settled in other continents consists in the fact that they have abolished this system and substituted for it a state of freedom and civic rights for every human being. It was a long and slow evolution, again and again interrupted by reactionary episodes, and great parts of our globe are even today only superficially affected by it. At the end of the eighteenth century the triumphal progress of this new social system was accelerated. Its most spectacular manifestation in the moral and intellectual sphere is known as the Enlightenment, its political and constitutional reforms as the liberal movement, while its economic and social effects are commonly referred to as the Industrial Revolution and the emergence of modern capitalism.

The historians dealing with the various phases of this up-to-now most momentous and weighty period of mankind's evolution tend to confine their investigations to special aspects of the course of affairs. They mostly neglect to show how the events in the various fields of human activity were connected with one another and determined by the same ideological and material factors. Unimportant detail sometimes engrosses their attention and prevents them from seeing the most consequential facts in the right light.

The most unfortunate outcome of this methodological confusion is to be seen in the current fateful misinterpretation of the recent political and economic developments of the civilized nations.

The great liberal movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries aimed at the abolition of the rule of hereditary princes and aristocracies and the establishment of the rule of elected representatives of the people. All kinds of slavery and serfdom ought to be abolished. All members of the nation should enjoy the full rights and privileges of citizenship. The laws and the practice of the administrative officers should not discriminate between the citizens.

This liberal revolutionary program clashed very soon with another program that was derived from the postulates of old communist sects. These sects, many of them inspired by religious ideas, had advocated confiscation and redistribution of land or some other forms of egalitarianism and of primitive communism. Now their successors proclaimed that a fully satisfactory state of human conditions could be attained only where all material factors of production are owned and operated by "society," and the fruits of economic endeavors are evenly distributed among all human beings.

Most of these communist[3] authors and revolutionaries were convinced that what they were aiming at was not only fully compatible with the customary program of the friends of representative government and freedom for all, but was its logical continuation, the very completion of all endeavors to give to mankind perfect happiness. Public opinion was by and large prepared to endorse this interpretation. As it was usual to call the adversaries of the liberal [4] demand for representative government the parties of the "right" and the liberal groups the parties of the "left," the communist (and later also the socialist) groups were considered as "more to the left" than the liberals. Popular opinion began to believe that while the liberal parties represent only the selfish class interests of the "exploiting" bourgeoisie, the socialist parties were fighting for the true interests of the immense majority, the proletariat.

But while these reformers were merely talking and drafting spurious plans for political action, one of the greatest and most beneficial events of mankind's history was going on—the Industrial Revolution. Its new business principle—that transformed human affairs more radically than any religious, ethical, legal, or technological innovation had done before—was mass production destined for consumption by the masses, not merely for consumption by members of the well-to-do classes. This new principle was not invented by statesmen and politicians; it was for a long time even not noticed by the members of the aristocracy, the gentry, and the urban patricians. Yet, it was the very beginning of a new and better age of human affairs when some people in Hanoverian England started to import cotton from the American colonies; some took charge of its transformation to cotton goods for customers of modest income; while still others exported such goods to the Baltic ports to have them ultimately exchanged against corn that, brought to England, appeased the hunger of starving paupers.

The characteristic feature of capitalism is the traders' unconditional dependence upon the market, that is, upon the best possible and cheapest satisfaction of the most urgent demand on the part of the consumers. For every kind of production human labor is required as a factor of production. But labor as such, however masterfully and conscientiously performed, is nothing but a waste of time, material, and human effort if it is not employed for the production of those goods and services that at the instant of their being ready for use or consumption will best satisfy in the cheapest possible way the most urgent demand of the public.

The market is the prototype of what are called democratic institutions. Supreme power is vested in the buyers, and vendors succeed only by satisfying in the best possible way the wants of the buyers. Private ownership of the factors of production forces the owners—enterprisers—to serve the consumers. Eminent economists have called the market a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote.

III

Both the political or constitutional democracy and the economic or market democracy are administered according to the decisions of the majority. The consumers, by their buying or abstention from buying, are as supreme in the market as the citizens through their voting in plebiscites or in the election of officers are supreme in the conduct of the affairs of state. Representative government and the market economy are the product of the same evolutionary process, they condition one another, and it would seem today that they are disappearing together in the great reactionary counter-revolution of our age.

Yet, reference to this striking homogeneousness must not prevent us from realizing that, as an instrument of giving expression to the genuine wants and interests of the individuals, the economic democracy of the market is by far superior to the political democracy of representative government. As a rule it is easier to choose between the alternatives which are open to a purchaser than to make a decision in matters of state and "high" politics. The average housewife may be very clever in acquiring the things she needs to feed and to clothe her children. But she may be less fit in electing the officers called to handle matters of foreign policy and military preparedness.

Then there is another important difference. In the market not only the wants and wishes of the majority are taken into account but also those of minorities, provided they are not entirely insignificant in numbers. The book trade publishes for the general reader, but also for small groups of experts in various fields. The garment trades are not only supplying clothing for people of normal size, but also merchandise for the use of abnormal customers. But in the political sphere only the will of the majority counts, and the minority is forced to accept what they may detest for rather serious reasons.

In the market economy, the buyers determine with every penny spent the direction of the production processes and thereby the essential features of all business activities. The consumers assign to everybody his position and function in the economic organism. The owners of the material factors of production are virtually mandatories or trustees of the consumers, revocably appointed by a daily repeated election. If they fail in their attempts to serve the consumers in the best possible and cheapest way, they suffer losses and, if they do not reform in time, lose their property.

Feudal property was acquired either by conquest or by a conqueror's favor. Once acquired, it could be enjoyed forever by the owner and his heirs. But capitalistic property must be acquired again and again by utilizing it for serving the consumers in the best possible way. Every owner of material factors of production is forced to adjust the services he renders to the best possible satisfaction of the continually changing demand of the consumers. A man may start his business career as the heir of a large fortune. But this does not necessarily help him in his competition with newcomers. The adjustment of an existing railroad system to the new situation created by the emergence of motor cars, trucks, and airplanes was a more difficult problem than many of the tasks that had to be solved by enterprises newly started.

The fact that made the capitalistic methods of the conduct of business emerge and flourish is precisely the excellence of the services it renders to the masses. Nothing characterizes the fabulous improvement in the standard of living of the many better than the quantitative role that the entertainment industries play in modern business.

Capitalism has radically transformed all human affairs. Population figures have multiplied. In the few countries where neither the policies of the governments nor obstinate preservation of traditional ways on the part of the citizens put insurmountable obstacles in the way of capitalistic entrepreneurship, the living conditions of the immense majority of people have improved spectacularly. Implements never known before or considered as extravagant luxuries are now customarily available to the average man. The general standard of education and of material and spiritual well-being is improving from year to year.

All this is not an achievement of governments or of any charitable measures. More often than not it is precisely governmental action that frustrates beneficial developments which the regular operation of capitalistic institutions tends to bring about.

Let us look upon one special case. In the precapitalistic ages, saving and thereby the betterment of one's economic condition was really possible, apart from professional money-lenders (bankers), only to people who owned a farm or a shop. They could invest savings in an improvement or expansion of their property. Other people, the propertyless proletarians, could save only by hiding a few coins in a corner they considered as safe. Capitalism made the accumulation of some capital through saving accessible to everybody. Life insurance institutions, savings banks, and bonds give the opportunity of saving and earning interest to the masses of people with modest incomes, and these people make ample use of it. On the loan markets of the advanced countries, the funds provided by the numerous classes of such people play an important role. They could be an important factor in making the operation of the capitalistic system familiar to those who are not themselves employed in the financial conduct of business affairs. And first of all—they could more and more improve the economic and social standing of the many.

But unfortunately the policies of practically all nations sabotage this evolution in the most disgraceful manner. The governments of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany, not to speak of most of the smaller nations, were or are still committed to the most radical inflationist policies. While continually talking about their solicitude for the common man, they have without shame, again and again through government-made inflation, robbed the people who have taken out insurance policies, who are working under pension plans, who own bonds or savings deposits.

IV

The authors who in Western Europe at the end of the eighteenth century and in the first decades of the nineteenth century developed plans for the establishment of socialism were not familiar with the social ideas and conditions in Central Europe. They did not pay any attention to the Wohlfahrtsstaat, the welfare-state of the German monarchical governments of the eighteenth century. Neither did they read the classical book of German socialism, Fichte's Geschlossener Handelsstaat, published in the year 1800. When much later—in the last decades of the nineteenth century—the nations of the West, first among them England, embarked upon the Fabian methods of a temperate progress toward socialism, they did not raise the question why continental governments whom they despised as backward and absolutist had long before already adopted the allegedly new and progressive principles of social reform.

But the German socialists of the second part of the nineteenth century could not avoid dealing with this problem. They had to face the policies of Bismarck, the man of whom the pro-socialist Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences says that he was "with reason regarded as the foremost exponent of state socialism in his day." [5] Lassalle toyed with the idea to further the cause of socialism by cooperation with this most "reactionary" paladin of the Hohenzollern. But Lassalle's premature death put an end to such plans and, very soon, also to the activities of the socialist group of which he had been the chief. Under the leadership of the disciples of Marx, the German socialist party turned to radical opposition to the Kaiser's regime. They voted in the Reichstag against all bills suggested by the government. Of course, being a minority party, their votes could not prevent the Reichstag's approval of various pro-labor laws, among them those establishing the famous social security system. Only in one case could they prevent the creation of a government-supported socialization measure, viz., the establishment of a governmental tobacco monopoly. But all the other nationalization and municipalization measures of the Bismarck age were adopted in spite of the passionate opposition of the socialist party. And the nationalization policy of the German Reich that, thanks to the victories of its armies, in those years enjoyed all over the world an unprecedented prestige was adopted by many nations of Eastern and Southern Europe.

In vain did the German socialist doctrinaires try to explain and to justify the manifest contradiction between their fanatical advocacy of socialism and their stubborn opposition to all nationalization measures put into effect. [6] But notwithstanding the support the nationalization and municipalization policy of the authorities got from self-styled conservative and Christian parties, it very soon lost its popularity with the rulers as well as with those ruled. The nationalized industries were rather poorly operated under the management of the administrators appointed by the authorities. The services they had to render to the customers became highly unsatisfactory, and the fees they charged were more and more increased. And, worst of all, the financial results of the management of public servants were deplorable. The deficits of these outfits were a heavy burden on the national treasuries and forced again and again an increase in taxation. At the beginning of the twentieth century, one could no longer deny the obvious fact that the public authorities had scandalously failed in their attempts to administer the various business organizations they had acquired in the conduct of their "state socialism."

Such were conditions when the outcome of the First World War made the socialist parties paramount in Central and Eastern Europe and also considerably strengthened their influence in Western Europe. There was in those years in Europe practically no serious opposition to most radical pro-socialist plans.

The German revolutionary government was formed in 1918 by members of the Marxian social-democratic party. It had no less power than the Russian government of Lenin and, like the Russian leader, it considered socialism as the only reasonable and possible solution to all political and economic problems. But it was also fully familiar with the fact that the nationalization measures adopted by the Imperial Reich before the war had brought unsatisfactory financial results and rather poor service and also that the socialist measures resorted to in the years of the war had been unsuccessful. Socialism was in their opinion the great panacea, but it seemed that nobody knew what it really meant and how to bring it about properly. Thus, the victorious socialist leaders did what all governments do when they do not know what to do. They appointed a committee of professors and other people considered to be experts. For more than fifty years the Marxians had fanatically advocated socialization as the focal point of their program, as the nostrum to heal all earthly evils and to lead mankind forward into the new garden of Eden. Now they had seized power and all of the people expected that they would redeem their promise. Now they had to socialize. But at once they had to confess that they did not know what to do and they were asking professors what socialization meant and how it could be put into practice.

It was the greatest intellectual fiasco history has ever known and it put in the eyes of all reasonable people an inglorious end to all the teachings of Marx and hosts of lesser-known utopians.

Neither was the fate of the socialist ideas and plans in the West of Europe better than in the country of Marx. The members of the Fabian Society were no less perplexed than their continental friends. Like these, they too were fully convinced that capitalism was stone dead forever and that henceforth socialism alone would rule all nations. But they too had to admit that they had no plan of action. The flamboyantly advertised scheme of Guild Socialism was, as all people had to admit very soon, simply nonsense. It quietly disappeared from the British political scene.

But, of course, the intellectual debacle of socialism and especially of Marxism in the West did not affect conditions in the East. Russia and other Eastern countries of Europe and China turned to all-round nationalization. For them, neither the critical refutation of the Marxian and other socialist doctrines nor the failure of all nationalization experiments meant anything. Marxism became the quasi-religion of the backward nations which were anxious to get the machines and, first of all, the deadly weapons developed in the West, but which abhorred the philosophy that had brought about the West's social and scientific achievements.

The Eastern political doctrine asking for immediate full socialization of all spheres of life and the pitiless extermination of all opponents gets rather sympathetic support on the part of many parties and influential politicians in the Western countries. "Building bridges to the communist sector of the world" is a task rather prevalent with many governments of the West. It is fashionable with some snobbish people to praise the unlimited despotism of Russia and China. And, worst of all, out of the taxes collected from the revenues of private business some governments, first of all that of the United States, are paying enormous subsidies to governments that have to face tremendous deficits precisely because they have nationalized many enterprises, especially railroads, post, telegraph and telephone service, and many others.

In the fully industrialized parts of our globe, in the countries of Western and Central Europe and North America, the system of private enterprise not merely survives, but continually improves and expands the services it renders. The statesmen, the bureaucrats, and the politicians look askance upon business. Most of the journalists, the writers of fiction, and the university teachers are propagating various brands of socialism. The rising generation is imbued with socialism in the schools. Only very rarely does one hear a voice criticizing socialist ideas, plans, and actions.

But socialism is for the peoples of the industrial world no longer a living force. There is no longer any question of nationalizing further branches of business. [7]

None of the many governments sympathizing with the socialist philosophy dares today seriously to suggest further measures of nationalization. On the contrary. For example, the American government as well as every reasonable American would have reason to be glad if the new Administration [8] could get rid of the Post Office with its proverbial inefficiency and its fantastic deficit.

Socialism started in the age of Saint-Simon as an attempt to give articulation to the ripeness of Caucasian man's Western civilization. It tried to preserve this aspect when it later looked upon colonialism and imperialism as its main targets. Today it is the rallying cry of the East, of the Russians and the Chinese, who reject the West's ideology, but eagerly try to copy its technology.

[Reprinted from The Intercollegiate Review 5 (Spring 1969)—Ed.]

[1] Jeremy Bentham, "Principles of the Civil Code," vol. 1, in Works, J. Bowring, ed. (London: simpkin, Marshall, 1843), p. 309.

[2] About the praxeological concept of "present" see Human Action, 3rd ed. (Chicago): Henry Regnery, 1966), pp. 100f.

[3] The term "socialism" was fashioned only many decades later and did not come into general use before the 1850s.

[4] "Liberal" is here used in its nineteenth-century meaning that still prevails in European usage. In America "liberal" is nowadays used by and large as synomymous with socialism or "moderate" socialism.

[5] See W.H. Dawson, "Births," in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1930), p. 573.

[6] About the lame excuses of Frederick Engels and Karl Kautsky, see my book Socialism, J. Kahane, trans. (New Haven, conn.: Yale University Press, 1951), pp.240ff.

[7] The British Labor cabinet paid homage to its party ideology in dealing with the steel industry. But everybody knows that this is merely a facade to conceal a little the great failure of all that the various British left-wing parties were aiming at for many decades.

[8] [This was the first administration of Richard Nixon: he was elected president in 1968—Ed.]

[Schmeltz]

Jesus, man, you're nuts if you think I have time to read all that cut-and-paste, let alone your simplistic babble. I'm gonna agree to disagree.

[EN[i]GMA]

Jesus, man, you're nuts if you think I have time to read all that cut-and-paste, let alone your simplistic babble. I'm gonna agree to disagree.

I like how you try to belittle my arguements before gracelessly capitulating.

Let me just cut to the heart of the matter here: You think you're entitled to the fruits of somone else's labor. You're not.

[Schmeltz]

Well, really your "arguments" consist mainly of the same flowery, idealistic platitudes that one would expect from any Communist idealogue, only from the other end of the spectrum. I'm really not enough of a socialist to commit to changing your mind about the issue, and since you'd rather swamp me with cut-and-paste a la gmsisko, which I really don't have time to read, than have an actual conversation, I'm prepared to cheerfully go my own way. You can consider it a capitulation if you like, it's all one so far as I'm concerned.

But, as one final point, it would be far closer to the heart of the matter to admit that the type of unbridled free-market economics you propound will simply never be implemented. The model has about as much chance of success as pure Communism; the clock isn't getting turned back for either of them.

Good luck getting rich, I'm sure you'll be fabulously wealthy someday since all anyone has to do to achieve that goal is work hard.

[Ace42]

GMA']
Bill Gates didn't start with anything.

Rubbish. He had graduated from MIT. That didn't just land in his lap. It is not something he worked for then reaped the rewards for. He was part of a privledged elite that maintained their inherant power structures.

Capitalists don't get rich through inheritance. Those people aren't capitalists. Capitalists get rich through enterprise. Through their ideas.

Even more tripe. They didn't build the universities. They didn't teach themselves. Windows was plagarised from an old Xenon concept. Gates got rich through someone elses idea. Lots of people have ideas which make hte country, not them, rich. For example, corporations sponsor patents, so inventors do not get direct rewards for their ideas. For example, my dad has numerous patents to his name, but gets no royalties from their usage. That is how capitalism works. You work, they give you a small percentage of what your idea is worth. The company directors got rich from buying other people's ideas because their inherited capital gives them the power over the market.

Or is it because they either can't compete or don't have the drive?

It is because money makes money, and the poor don't have any. That is the core premise of capitalism. That is why it is called capitalism, because it is predominantly concerned with the conservation and centralisation of capital. That doesn't mean giving it out to any guy who has a good idea.

and if I fail it won't be because of unfair distrobution of wealth, simply through my lack of ability.

So, if somone opens a corner shop, does a great trade, and then a massive national brand moves in, and because of the large amount of capital involved and the economy of scale can offer products at a cheaper rate, it is your "lack of ability" that puts you out of business? What ability precisely is the one that allows wealthy and powerful corporations to squeeze small businesses out of the market?

Why is a poor person deserving of anything they haven't earned? Because they're poor? Because of the inherent flaws in the system? Because he's lazy? Does it even matter? You tell me.

"hasn't earned" - Most earnings in capitalism come from interest based around assets. How do you think Bill Gates got so rich:

A. He spent all his time in the computer lab, even after he had made his first few mil.
B. The vast amount of wealth he had meant that the interest alone dwaved the income of most small business owners.

How did Bill "earn" interest that is afforded simply for "owning money" ?

How do you think an economy can work without competition and a market?

Except competition and capitalism seldom go hand in hand. CDs can be manufactured for a fraction of the price of audio-tapes, and yet they still are and always have cost more than audio-tapes (that is taking inflation into account) - according the traditional capitalist line, recording companies would've fought to make them cheaper and do each other out of business and thus increase their market share. In actuality, it did not happen.

Likewise with privatising the rail industry in the UK. It is now less efficient, more dangerous, less invested in, less reliable and more expensive than when it was a nationalised industry. Capitalism has resulted in more deaths in the industry, and "competitiveness" costs tax-payers MORE than it did when nationalised for an inferior service.

The examples where large, inherantly capitalist, corporations have totally failed to "self-regulate" or be effected by "the unseen hand" goes on and on. The idea that capitalism encourages competition and thus progress and efficiency is a fallacy.

How can you pay people without judging their skill or talent or intelligence?

Easily. Look at the spice girls. In today's world, earnings vs the difficulty of work are in no way shape or form in correlation. Doctors with incredibly precious and rare skills and vast amounts of training get paid less than footballers who only have to kick a ball between sticks, and get paid irrespective of their performance once signed. A CEO gets paid to do less paperwork than his secretary, and spends as much time on the golf-course as the plebs in his factory spend in hot cramped and unpleasant conditions doing tiring manual work. Rich people do not do particularly difficult jobs. If they did, it would be them getting nobel prizes and making discoveries, not the plebs who work under them.

What's preventing me from missing work every 3rd day, half-assing it when I show up and generally be a bad employee? You going to fire me? Capitalism provides an incentive to work. Produce or die. Socialism provides incentive to not work. Produce a hundred lights a day or 3. You still make enough to live. This is sure to lead to prosperity for everyone.

Tosh. Many people in capitalist jobs work half-assed. I know plenty of people in shops or on factory lines that take long breaks, throw sickies regularly, goof off, etc. I know plenty of people who play football with the uncoocked chicken in the KFC kitchens. What does capitalism do against them? Nothing, they get paid either way. Capitalism is rife with poor employees, it is endemic. And it is so corrupt, it offers very few incentives for hard work, hence why people are invariably labled as "Losers" for having a dead-end job. The increase in effort required before you notice tangible results (if any) is not worth it. This is "the poverty trap" and is inherant in capitalism. Furthermore, it cannot lead to prosperity for everyone. If everyone is prosperous then there is inflation because no-one wants to work if their needs are met. Capitalism MUST rely on starving the people to the extent where they HAVE to work. If everyone in the US suddenly thought "I know, I'll go out and work extra extra extra hard" - what do you think would happen? Everyone in the country would get to become a manager? Nup... That couldn't work. Therefore we can see that equality in capitalism would mean the end of capitalism. It only works by stratifying people and keeping them nailed into their level. If one person managed to climb a rung, it's because a bunch of new plebians have been pushed down below.

In a communistic society there is no room to innovate. Why come up with a new procedure that allows you make 300 light bulbs in the time it used to make 100 when you would gain nothing but the chance to make more bulbs?

And yet I know a smart chap who invented an enginethat was hyper-efficient. Managed to run a go-kart on a fraction of the petrol it used with its old engine. His idea got bought out (presumably he got rich, never saw him again) and yet engines are not any more efficient.

Why? Because the oil companies would make less money, and they don't want that. So, in a capitalist society, there is no room to innovate. Capitalism is about maintaining the status quo, and that means sabotaging innovation (that would improve everyone's lives) if it means a few rich men won't be as rich.

People agree to the wage they make. Nobody in their right mind would work for 1 dollar an hour.

Ever heard of the term "sweatshop" asshat?

People make the money they deserve. If they have a menial job like janitor, they deserve little money. As they gain experience and talent, they become a commidity. The company isn't going to lose a talented light bulb maker. He is going to pay him extra. He gets more money, the capitalist sells more and the public has more, better, lights at a reduced price. Who loses?

That is a fantasy. It doesn't work like that. Firstly, a janitor works a lot harder and longer doing a vital job and gets paid a pittance. Someone in marketing does not do a vital job, and yet gets paid shitloads more. So, instead of having nice clean places that a high-paid a talented sanitation engineer can be proud of, we have loads of shitty adverts taking up time on TV channels that WE HAVE ALREADY PAID THROUGH THE NOSE FOR, trying to make us spend money on shit we HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT.

Ever heard the term "built-in (or often 'manufactured') obsolescence?

For the last 50 years, companies have intentionally been building products that are inherantly deffective with limited life-spans in order to FORCE people to have to re-buy the latest model. This squanders non-renewable resources (oil and petrol) as well as causing terrible pollution and damage (old fridges giving off CFCs etc)

This is the backbone of capitalism. Fuck over the customer, squeeze him for every last penny. This makes a handful of capitalists rich, and loads and loads of hard working individuals poorer, because they have to spend lots and lots of their money buying shit that is designed to break on them. That isn't efficient, or productive, that is the antithesis of progress. And don't try to argue "yeah, but because you are buying new things, they are getting better" - building things that are inherantly flawed are not "better" than things that are designed to work. I had an old TV that lasted me 15 years with one repair. Since then I have had half a dozen more expensive ones which have had numerous flaws for just this reason. The same can be seen in all manner of consumer goods. Google for the term, and you'll see what your pure efficient capitalism is actually about.

Socialist movements have done nothing but increased unemployment with their minimum wage laws, robbed union members with union dues to pay for gold trips, hurt the consumer by causing inflated prices by making menial union labor cost an exorbitant amount.

Except, since introducing the minimum wage, employment in the UK has gone up. Also, manufactured obsolescence causes inflated prices, as it means people are forced to buy new things which they should not, by rights, need.

That's a socialistic lie. In a capitalist society, there is no reason people need to be poor. If the capitalists had fewer poor they would have more employees, greater productivity, lower prices, higher profits and a fairer market.

Bullshit. If there was no poor, there'd be no bog-cleaners. Nobody would be working in the factories, no-one would do the grotty jobs. Who'd drive the busses if everyone is prosperous? Who'd pour the pints instead of drinking them if they were well off? Capitalism is slavery. Give everyone in the US a million dollars, every last person, and then you tell me what would happen. Think everyone in the US would be sipping martinis in their appartments? Appartments built buy who? The neauveau millionaires?

The workers would have increased wages due to increased revenue and would be able to purchase more further increasing revenue and their own wages.

Rubbish. Absolute deluded tosh. Increased wages means increased inflation.

The popolous would have more, cheaper consumer goods and capital to spend.

Bullshit. The populous are all rich, so they all buy their own businesses to "climb the ladder" - which you advertise as the beautiful way of making fair capitalism. Who is at the bottom? Who is working for someone else if they have all got richer?

Why have communist/socialist societies always managed to fail? Why is there always rampant starvation? Why are there always mass killings?

Urm... Because they have all been run by tyrranical dictators? Nazism was the embodiment of capitalism. Mass killings, it crumbled. Mussolini's italy ditto.

Hmm, guess it doesn't apply only to communism then. Infact, I bet I can name more capitalist societies which have failed more completely (in that they never achieved the industrial might and technological superiority of notable communist states) than you can name communist ones.

Communism has only killed 100 million people, let's give it another chance! Right?

Capitalism has killed more easily and is killing more as we speak. And don't confuse totalitarianism with communism, it makes you look like a dickhead.

[Whois]

By Xenon Ace I assume you mean Xerox PARC. Some of the programmers that worked at PARC on the GUI project also worked on Windows.

Gates went to Harvard but never graduated, he left his junior year to run Micro-soft (now Microsoft).

He started with money, both from his parents and business ventures during and after high-school, as well as a shrewd business sense and ruthless need to win.

"The best advice he [Bill Gates] ever gave me was to drop out of school."
-Steve Ballmer

[Ace42]

Yep, that's pretty much what I meant. couldn't be arsed to look up the specifics given the gratuitous length of the post, and my lack of sleep. I'm glad someone managed to make it all the way through. Unless you only read the start, in which case, for shame.

[EN[i]GMA]

Rubbish. He had graduated from MIT. That didn't just land in his lap. It is not something he worked for then reaped the rewards for. He was part of a privledged elite that maintained their inherant power structures.



Even more tripe. They didn't build the universities. They didn't teach themselves. Windows was plagarised from an old Xenon concept. Gates got rich through someone elses idea. Lots of people have ideas which make hte country, not them, rich. For example, corporations sponsor patents, so inventors do not get direct rewards for their ideas. For example, my dad has numerous patents to his name, but gets no royalties from their usage. That is how capitalism works. You work, they give you a small percentage of what your idea is worth. The company directors got rich from buying other people's ideas because their inherited capital gives them the power over the market.



It is because money makes money, and the poor don't have any. That is the core premise of capitalism. That is why it is called capitalism, because it is predominantly concerned with the conservation and centralisation of capital. That doesn't mean giving it out to any guy who has a good idea.



So, if somone opens a corner shop, does a great trade, and then a massive national brand moves in, and because of the large amount of capital involved and the economy of scale can offer products at a cheaper rate, it is your "lack of ability" that puts you out of business? What ability precisely is the one that allows wealthy and powerful corporations to squeeze small businesses out of the market?



"hasn't earned" - Most earnings in capitalism come from interest based around assets. How do you think Bill Gates got so rich:

A. He spent all his time in the computer lab, even after he had made his first few mil.
B. The vast amount of wealth he had meant that the interest alone dwaved the income of most small business owners.

How did Bill "earn" interest that is afforded simply for "owning money" ?



Except competition and capitalism seldom go hand in hand. CDs can be manufactured for a fraction of the price of audio-tapes, and yet they still are and always have cost more than audio-tapes (that is taking inflation into account) - according the traditional capitalist line, recording companies would've fought to make them cheaper and do each other out of business and thus increase their market share. In actuality, it did not happen.

Likewise with privatising the rail industry in the UK. It is now less efficient, more dangerous, less invested in, less reliable and more expensive than when it was a nationalised industry. Capitalism has resulted in more deaths in the industry, and "competitiveness" costs tax-payers MORE than it did when nationalised for an inferior service.

The examples where large, inherantly capitalist, corporations have totally failed to "self-regulate" or be effected by "the unseen hand" goes on and on. The idea that capitalism encourages competition and thus progress and efficiency is a fallacy.



Easily. Look at the spice girls. In today's world, earnings vs the difficulty of work are in no way shape or form in correlation. Doctors with incredibly precious and rare skills and vast amounts of training get paid less than footballers who only have to kick a ball between sticks, and get paid irrespective of their performance once signed. A CEO gets paid to do less paperwork than his secretary, and spends as much time on the golf-course as the plebs in his factory spend in hot cramped and unpleasant conditions doing tiring manual work. Rich people do not do particularly difficult jobs. If they did, it would be them getting nobel prizes and making discoveries, not the plebs who work under them.



Tosh. Many people in capitalist jobs work half-assed. I know plenty of people in shops or on factory lines that take long breaks, throw sickies regularly, goof off, etc. I know plenty of people who play football with the uncoocked chicken in the KFC kitchens. What does capitalism do against them? Nothing, they get paid either way. Capitalism is rife with poor employees, it is endemic. And it is so corrupt, it offers very few incentives for hard work, hence why people are invariably labled as "Losers" for having a dead-end job. The increase in effort required before you notice tangible results (if any) is not worth it. This is "the poverty trap" and is inherant in capitalism. Furthermore, it cannot lead to prosperity for everyone. If everyone is prosperous then there is inflation because no-one wants to work if their needs are met. Capitalism MUST rely on starving the people to the extent where they HAVE to work. If everyone in the US suddenly thought "I know, I'll go out and work extra extra extra hard" - what do you think would happen? Everyone in the country would get to become a manager? Nup... That couldn't work. Therefore we can see that equality in capitalism would mean the end of capitalism. It only works by stratifying people and keeping them nailed into their level. If one person managed to climb a rung, it's because a bunch of new plebians have been pushed down below.



And yet I know a smart chap who invented an enginethat was hyper-efficient. Managed to run a go-kart on a fraction of the petrol it used with its old engine. His idea got bought out (presumably he got rich, never saw him again) and yet engines are not any more efficient.

Why? Because the oil companies would make less money, and they don't want that. So, in a capitalist society, there is no room to innovate. Capitalism is about maintaining the status quo, and that means sabotaging innovation (that would improve everyone's lives) if it means a few rich men won't be as rich.



Ever heard of the term "sweatshop" asshat?



That is a fantasy. It doesn't work like that. Firstly, a janitor works a lot harder and longer doing a vital job and gets paid a pittance. Someone in marketing does not do a vital job, and yet gets paid shitloads more. So, instead of having nice clean places that a high-paid a talented sanitation engineer can be proud of, we have loads of shitty adverts taking up time on TV channels that WE HAVE ALREADY PAID THROUGH THE NOSE FOR, trying to make us spend money on shit we HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT.

Ever heard the term "built-in (or often 'manufactured') obsolescence?

For the last 50 years, companies have intentionally been building products that are inherantly deffective with limited life-spans in order to FORCE people to have to re-buy the latest model. This squanders non-renewable resources (oil and petrol) as well as causing terrible pollution and damage (old fridges giving off CFCs etc)

This is the backbone of capitalism. Fuck over the customer, squeeze him for every last penny. This makes a handful of capitalists rich, and loads and loads of hard working individuals poorer, because they have to spend lots and lots of their money buying shit that is designed to break on them. That isn't efficient, or productive, that is the antithesis of progress. And don't try to argue "yeah, but because you are buying new things, they are getting better" - building things that are inherantly flawed are not "better" than things that are designed to work. I had an old TV that lasted me 15 years with one repair. Since then I have had half a dozen more expensive ones which have had numerous flaws for just this reason. The same can be seen in all manner of consumer goods. Google for the term, and you'll see what your pure efficient capitalism is actually about.



Except, since introducing the minimum wage, employment in the UK has gone up. Also, manufactured obsolescence causes inflated prices, as it means people are forced to buy new things which they should not, by rights, need.



Bullshit. If there was no poor, there'd be no bog-cleaners. Nobody would be working in the factories, no-one would do the grotty jobs. Who'd drive the busses if everyone is prosperous? Who'd pour the pints instead of drinking them if they were well off? Capitalism is slavery. Give everyone in the US a million dollars, every last person, and then you tell me what would happen. Think everyone in the US would be sipping martinis in their appartments? Appartments built buy who? The neauveau millionaires?



Rubbish. Absolute deluded tosh. Increased wages means increased inflation.



Bullshit. The populous are all rich, so they all buy their own businesses to "climb the ladder" - which you advertise as the beautiful way of making fair capitalism. Who is at the bottom? Who is working for someone else if they have all got richer?



Urm... Because they have all been run by tyrranical dictators? Nazism was the embodiment of capitalism. Mass killings, it crumbled. Mussolini's italy ditto.

Hmm, guess it doesn't apply only to communism then. Infact, I bet I can name more capitalist societies which have failed more completely (in that they never achieved the industrial might and technological superiority of notable communist states) than you can name communist ones.



Capitalism has killed more easily and is killing more as we speak. And don't confuse totalitarianism with communism, it makes you look like a dickhead.


Now we're going somewhere.

Bill Gates grew up middle class and earned his money through his profiency. I'm not a fan of Microsoft but I can realize this.

Your dad agreed to do that. How is the corporation's fault if he agreed to it? It is entirely possible to bring a product to market on your own or negotiate a better contract. If his ideas were good, the company would not say no to a contract that afforded him royalties because they would know another company would and would make lot's of money off of his invention.

They shouldn't give out to guys with good ideas. Those guys with good ideas should sell them, market them and use them to amass their own capital.

That corner store does not effectively meet the demands of the consumers. It's democracy at work. The consumers demand low prices. They vote with their dollars. The national chain can provide these prices. The corner store cannot. The people win, the national chain wins and the corner store owner loses because he was not able to effectively compete. Should be prop his inefficient store up with government money so he can reem the people of their hard earned money with his inflated prices?

That interest went to fund other companies and capitalists allowing them to make more money and expand their business and further invest it. This investing allows companies to grow, hire more people, run more efficiently, make more money and sell their products at a lower cost. Who loses?

Already the advent of music downloading has forced the prices of CDs down and the consumer ALWAYS holds the final say. If 18.99 is to much money for you, don't buy it. If 18.99 is to much for everyone and they do not buy CDs, the price will come down to a more reasonable level. Obviously the price is not to high if people continue to buy the product.

I truly don't know enough on the British rail system to comment, but I might be able to find someone. And the norm is that privitazation saves money because government buearacracises are inherently ineffective.

It is not a fallacy. Look around you. Do you see those products? Do you notice the computer you're typing on? Is it a Tandy? Is that monitor of yours in 2 colors? Is your keyboard better and cheaper than a keyboard 10 years ago would be? How many more items do I need to list? Competition forces prices down and quality and wages up. It's simple economics.

Let's look at this way. The CEO gets 400 times more than the lowest paid employee, usually a janitor or something of the type. The CEO's decisions are FAR more than 400 times as important as the janitors. An innefective CEO means the company fails. They die. They lose all their money. This is a job that requires planning, decision making and intelligence. Stupid people do not stay CEO for long. Janitorial duty has little effect on the company other than a marginal increase in productivity. The job is basic and menial. Anyone over the age of 12 can do it. This person does not deserve much money. Though the CEO's job is not labourious it is more vital to the company than any number of secrateries.

Than they should be fired. Simple enough.

Of course it can lead to prosperity for everyone. You aren't listening. Say there is 7% unemployment. Let's say that they are just coming out of a recession. Companies are growing. Prices are locked at reasonable rates for both the company and the consumer, per the usual competition, and the job market is accelerating quickly. Soon companie's profits are up because they are able to pay their employees who in turn buy more, causing profits to go up. These companies seek to increase productivity by hiring more employees. Profits continue to rise as do wages because companies do not want to lose valuable employees to competitors. Employment is down to a reasonable 4%, growth is healthy and profts and wages are both more than adequete to stem more growth. Companies continue to hire more workers, though at a slower rate, due to their increasing profits and need for added output and efficiency. They continue to hire workers who continue to buy even more products. Unemployment is almost as low as it can possibly become at 1.5/2%.

At this point, consumers have great buying power, money is invested throughout the economy, inflation is low due to having a currency backed by solid gold, locked at the same rate, without the government mucking it up, and profits and outputs are high.

This clearly shows why it's wrong to say poor have to exist in a capitalistic society. They don't. Everyone could have more than enough money to support themselves and live a comfortable life. Some would be richer than others but all would be prosperous.

If another company used those engines, they would quickly run the one that didn't out of business. This isn't a flaw the free market, it's a flaw of someone to take advantage of an oppurtunity. The company that bought the idea is free to do what it wants with it (Due to government copyright laws that stifle free market competition) because it purchased it. Consumers could use less oil, forcing the price down, but they choose not to. Democracy in action or inaction as it were.

There is no room to innovate when ideas are held hostage thanks to our friends in the government.

Sweatshops are either agreed to by the workers, and therefore of their own volition, or slave labor, which is not capitalistic at all. And slavery is not supported due to the limited government intervention I propose and the free-markets effect of making slave labor inefficient in comparison to wage labor.

Marketting plays a valuable roll in any company. How would you know that company exists if not for marketting? The people in marketting do far more the company than a janitor. He cleans the floors, they make the company unestimatable revenue. They deserve to be compenstated proportionally. Anyone can janitor, not everyone can market. And if you don't like the adverts, don't buy the product.

Purchase products that don't do this. Buy TVs that don't wear out and refridgerators that don't need replaced as often. It certainly is an unsavory tactic but what's the remedy? The best tactic is to buy from a company who produces quality TVs and once enough people do this, the other companies will do the same or get ran out of business.

Is it BECAUSE a minimum wage was instituted or DESPITE a minimum wage being instituted. They aren't the same you know. It can't be denied that minimum wages cause unemployment. If you are willing to pay 4.50 for someone to help wash dishes, and the minimum wage is 5.25, the aren't getting that job. If the minimum wage is 7.50 and you need to hire a janitor, you are paying him more than his labor is worth. Instead of hiring 2 at 3.75 you hire 1 at 7.50 causing unemployment for the other and decreased efficiency for you. This causes inflation as well due to companies not being able to match output and efficiency with wage spending.

They wouldn't be "poor" as in not having a house or food but "poor" as in not having as much as the CEOs. They would still need to perform the same jobs but would be compensated more equally due to to increased profit and efficiency.

That's actually incorrect. Though it is hypocritical of you to say that AND support minimum wages. Increased wages only cause unemployment when they are out of sync with revenue. No inflation is caused if the company is making more money and the consumer is paying less for goods.

How else can you force people to share without tyrannical dictators telling them to? Isn't it quite the coincedence that a statist economy leads to a tyrnnical dictator? Maybe a less powerful, less involved government is the answer. Hmm?

The National SOCIALIST Workers Party was a capitalist party?

This National Socialist Workers Party?:

The program is the political foundation of the NSDAP and accordingly the primary political law of the State. It has been made brief and clear intentionally.

All legal precepts must be applied in the spirit of the party program.

Since the taking over of control, the Fuehrer has succeeded in the realization of essential portions of the Party program from the fundamentals to the detail.

The Party Program of the NSDAP was proclaimed on the 24 February 1920 by Adolf Hitler at the first large Party gathering in Munich and since that day has remained unaltered. Within the national socialist philosophy is summarized in 25 points:

1. We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples.

2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.

3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people, and colonization for our surplus population.

4. Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race.

5. Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners.

6. The right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore we demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county or municipality, be filled only by citizens. We combat the corrupting parliamentary economy, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideration of character or abilities.

7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.

8. Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since the 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.

9. All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.

10. The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all Consequently we demand:

11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.

12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).

14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.

15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

16. We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

17. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.

18. We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

19. We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.

20. The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbuergerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.

21. The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.

22. We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.

23. We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that: a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race: b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language: c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.

24. We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: common utility precedes individual utility.

25. For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich. Unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich and its organizations in general. The forming of state and profession chambers for the execution of the laws made by the Reich within the various states of the confederation. The leaders of the Party promise, if necessary by sacrificing their own lives, to support by the execution of the points set forth above without consideration.

Adolf Hitler proclaimed the following explanation for this program on the 13 April 1928:

Explanation

Regarding the false interpretations of Point 17 of the program of the NSDAP on the part of our opponents, the following definition is necessary:

"Since the NSDAP stands on the platform of private ownership it happens that the passage" gratuitous expropriation concerns only the creation of legal opportunities to expropriate if necessary, land which has been illegally acquired or is not administered from the view-point of the national welfare. This is directed primarily against the Jewish land-speculation companies.



True, they were no Communists as they supported private property but they were a State Socialist party.

There have been more capitalist countries than communist ones. But nice try.

And show me one communist state that isn't totalitarian and you have a case.

[EN[i]GMA]

God damn I wrote to much.

[Whois]

Yep, that's pretty much what I meant. couldn't be arsed to look up the specifics given the gratuitous length of the post, and my lack of sleep. I'm glad someone managed to make it all the way through. Unless you only read the start, in which case, for shame.

I'm a picky arsehole...

I did read the whole thing...too tired to comment on all of it. Have to go get tickets to Texas for another family funeral.

[Ace42]

GMA']Bill Gates grew up middle class and earned his money through his profiency.

Nonsense. How much of his fortune was accrewed solely by the amount of work he personally put in on MS windows 1.0 ? Not in the billions, bucko.

Your dad agreed to do that. How is the corporation's fault if he agreed to it? It is entirely possible to bring a product to market on your own or negotiate a better contract.

That is quite frankly nonsense. Firstly, if your choice is "starvation or a pittance" it is no choice at all. A patent in control circuitry is of no use on its own. You cannot home-manufacture bulk components for custom machinery. It requires a company with manufacturing capabilities, etc etc. This requires capital. No money, no way to bring it to market.

If his ideas were good, the company would not say no to a contract that afforded him royalties because they would know another company would and would make lot's of money off of his invention.

Yeah, except it doesn't happen like that. Research and development (let alone manufacturing) requires equipment, etc. This costs capital. To manufacture this, you need an initial outlay of cash, which is where corporate sponsorship comes into play. They give you what you need to develop your idea, then they use it.

No initial capital, your idea is just electricity in your head. You have to exchange the idea for capital, not just magically get capital and then use the idea to add to it. It never works out like that, and if it did, then everyone would be doing it, and there'd be no janitors because everyone would go "oooh, a non-stick alarmclock toilet pan, what a great idea, I'm going to be a millionaire"
Those guys with good ideas should sell them, market them and use them to amass their own capital.

Which requires a buyer. The buyer gets to choose the price. They aren't going to pay you millions or a cut when they can simply wait 15 years until the patent expires and get it for free.

So you either fail to capitalise on your idea for a decade and a half and then get nothing, or you get to take the bone they throw to you, and be happy that you got anything at all.

That's how it REALLY works. You think the companies are worried about someone else getting the idea? Feh, they all know they only have to wait. There mere fact that an innovation is desirable and useful doesn't mean the company wants it. A new innovation means they have to change their marketing and manufacturing. This adds to the cost. It's easier for them to sit on their arses and do nothing, which they do. Capitalism does not feed innovation, that is a myth that gets tagged on to the 1 out of millions and millions of outstanding patents that are filed yearly.

1 in a million does not make it a "good system" - it makes it a lottery and a farce.

That corner store does not effectively meet the demands of the consumers. It's democracy at work. The consumers demand low prices. They vote with their dollars. The national chain can provide these prices. The corner store cannot. The people win, the national chain wins and the corner store owner loses because he was not able to effectively compete. Should be prop his inefficient store up with government money so he can reem the people of their hard earned money with his inflated prices?

You miss the point. You said that if you have ability you will become wealthy. No matter how much ability the poor corner store owner has, the fact that he does not have the capital of the chain means that he is incapable of competing, no matter how shit that store is. The people do not "win" - because they get mass-produced super-cheap sub-standard crap. The service is inferior, and the company uses its powers in a purely selfish way. The fact that the customers pay less for a product is only an illusionary benefit. The cons outweigh it, but they are not there in numbers of the shelf, so you don't think about it. No matter what the corner store offers, the lower price its capital can afford will make it preferable, thus eliminating innovation. Only maintaining the status quo will occur.

That interest went to fund other companies and capitalists allowing them to make more money and expand their business and further invest it.

Since when have mansions, dodgy tax-havens, fast cars, and sitting idley in a back been "further investment" ? And since when has that money had anything to do with "ability" ?

This investing allows companies to grow, hire more people, run more efficiently, make more money and sell their products at a lower cost. Who loses?

Nonsense. There are plenty of companies which have accrewed wealth only to squander it and go bust, or to reduce the quality of service, leaving customers without support, employees jobless and without retirement, creditors without bills, etc. To suggest that this only goes up and not down is patently false.

Want to know who loses? The managers and CEOs and staff of other companies. Their jobs get swallowed, so they end up on tills getting paid LESS not more. That is the opposite of what your theory states would happen.

Already the advent of music downloading has forced the prices of CDs down

That is theft, not capitalist forces. Downloading MP3s does not keep the industry in check, and to suggest that theft is a good capitalist force is a nonsense. If you mean pay-per-download, then I'd still disagree. Pay for download sites cost more than buying albums, and are less reliable. I don't know anyone who uses them, and the price of CDs has not gone down whatsoever.

and the consumer ALWAYS holds the final say.

Yes, to avoid being ripped off, I could just buy nothing and go without. Of course, for this to have an effect on capitalism and force them to play ball, it means everyone would have to do it. Do you think that's gonna happen? Everyone is going to go without their CDs and drinks, and games, and DVDs so we can get a fair deal? Do you really think that is going to happen? No, and neither do the companies, which is why they don't give a fuck about over-charging, and why it hasn't and won't change. This is why your idea that capitalism reduces costs is nonsense.

You have said "well, you can always go without" - yeah, I can starve myself and live in a black little hole knowing that I am only being ripped off by being given shit wages. That would be a great choice, I'd feel so much better there while everyone else is being ripped off, and yet they get to have over-priced CDs and faulty TVs.

If 18.99 is to much for everyone and they do not buy CDs, the price will come down to a more reasonable level. Obviously the price is not to high if people continue to buy the product.

That is like saying "the wage is not too low if people are willing to work for it." - so your system is actually regulated not by any sort of legitimate justice, but by who is the most desperate. The person who is near dead from starvation has to work, and will work for $1, which means if anyone else wants to work, they HAVE to work for $1. There will always be people that desperate, so the company will never have to pay more than the most desperate individual. And one thing capitalist societies aren't short of is people who are desperate. Whether desperate for this or that item to fill a void in the life (until it breaks as it is designed to, and then they are desperate to replace it) or even just desperate to eat.

This leads to sweatshops and vast misery. That is pure capitalism.

And the norm is that privitazation saves money because government buearacracises are inherently ineffective.

Except, as has been seen, privatised industries are often less efficient and more expensive. The idea that some self-interested peopel skimming the profits can run something more efficiently than a company which does not have people skimming the profits is a lie perpetrated to stop rich people having their sizeable assets used for something other than self-gratification.

It is not "the norm" - it is the myth that you have been indoctrinated with, and it is a myth which has *no basis in fact* whatsoever. I can name numerous privatised industries which have all offered worse service for higher rates.

It is not a fallacy. Look around you. Do you see those products? Do you notice the computer you're typing on? Is it a Tandy? Is that monitor of yours in 2 colors? Is your keyboard better and cheaper than a keyboard 10 years ago would be? How many more items do I need to list? Competition forces prices down and quality and wages up. It's simple economics.

It's bullshit. My TV is no different to a TV I had a decade and a half ago, except it was more expensive, and is less reliable. The prices have NOT gone down, and the quality has NOT gone up, and the wages have NOT increased. My numerous sinclair spectrums all work perfectly, they are decades old. I have numerous modern hard-disks which no longer work because they are broken. My family had a austin metro which was MOTd regularly and parts were cheap and easy to come by. Again, it lasted decades. Our current rover metro has been plagued with faults, costed more, and AGAIN, the factory which builds them employs less people for less wages.

Also, the examples you gave were not "due to competition" - for a long while intel were the only company making pentium processors. They frequently updated their processors simply to make more powerful equipment available. Until cyrix came out (and they don't count, as they were shit and flopped bigtime) they had no competition. It doesn't mean that the technology just stayed stagnant. Technology moves on irrespective of competition, and saying "oh, they are only doing it to get one up on their commercial rivals" is a nonsense.

If you actually look into marketting, you'll see that innovations occur BEFORE the product is placed in competition with its rivals. I once heard a marketing gimp boasting about how no matter how flawed a product is, he could sell it as superior than its rivals. This can be seen in AMD and Intel lying about the performance of their new processors. AMD have been saying 3200+ means three ghz performance, massive improvements" - that is a lie. The differences can be benchmarked and they are minimal. It is marketing and spin, designed to make suckers like you part with your cash.

What rival was windows competing with for 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 95, 98, XP? Linux? That has only even remotely approached windows as a desktop OS in the last couple of years. And yet innovations kept being made.

To suggest that Russian technology froze in 1917 with the revolution is likewise a nonsense. They put a satellite in space before the US did. Who were they competing with when they started the space-race? Despite all these commies not getting to reap the rewards of their efforts, they still managed to technologically rival the US's best capitalist efforts for the best part of a century, often surpassing US innovations. Were the yanks just not being challenged enough by each other?

The CEO's decisions are FAR more than 400 times as important as the janitors. An innefective CEO means the company fails. They die. They lose all their money.

Bullshit. Go up and read what a CEO and board of directors tend to do. It usually involves golf, mansions, and controlling stock options. It never has anything to do with innovation, production, etc. Think the CEO is so important? Get rid of the CEO, does the factory stop producing? Do the trucks stop moving? No. Get rid of the factory workers? Production stops. CEOs do jack shit. They play games, throw money around, and play roulette with assets they can afford to lose.

Stupid people do not stay CEO for long.

Bullshit, absolute drivel. Numerous CEOs of privatised countries have had their companies criticised for failing to meet standards and offering terrible service, massive redundancies, etc, etc whilst giving themselves millions in pensions and pay-rises. Michael Moore has a book full of them, and if you check the FT archives, you'll see it is no secret. George Bush has run numerous oil companies straight into the ground, and he just keeps getting richer and richer.

Janitorial duty has little effect on the company other than a marginal increase in productivity. The job is basic and menial. Anyone over the age of 12 can do it. This person does not deserve much money. Though the CEO's job is not labourious it is more vital to the company than any number of secrateries.

You try living in a world with no janitors and then say that. Tell me how little money they deserve after you start cleaning up excrement. Then tell me how hard a CEO's job is when he runs a company into the ground, and goes home to his mansion and lives off his fat pension.

Than they should be fired. Simple enough.

Yet it never happens. Capitalism "should" be a lot of things that it claims to be. It ain't. It's a deception that you buy into. When you get more life experience, you'll see just how much of a con it really is. You'll see when the boss that always makes dumbass mistakes and gets paid twice as much as you gets promoted because YOUR project, that you prevented him running into the ground, is a sucess. You'll see when you get made redundant because the board of directors put more cash into their pockets than into the business, and it got swallowed up by a bigger company that strips its assets. You'll see when you get passed over for a job by some harvard boy whose parents paid his way through college, and because he was in the same frat as the interviewer, he's a shoe in, despite being lazy shiftless incompetent and a coke-user.

You'll see all of these flaws, and then you'll maybe see why capitalism, more so that communism, only works on paper where you can ignore the flaws.

You aren't listening.

I am, and it is a nice fairy tale.

Soon companie's profits are up because they are able to pay their employees who in turn buy more, causing profits to go up.

A company pays their employee an extra $1. So the company is down $1. Now, the employee has to spend ALL of that $1 on the company's products just for the company to break even. Actually, the company will never get 100% of that back, it will be split in a number of different ways. Your process creates a net loss, not profit.

Profits continue to rise as do wages because companies do not want to lose valuable employees to competitors.

Profits will go down if they are paying more employees more money. And production cannot increase exponentially as you seem to believe. If a company is building TVs, and it keeps building more and more, and getting more and more employees, eventually everyone owns a TV, and everyone is redundant. Hence manufactured obsolescence. People aren't getting richer. Any additional money they make they must also burn up. They might get paid twice as much, but if they then have to buy stuff twice as often, they have not got any richer whatsoever. Otherwise, they will accrew and accrew until they, and their children, need never work, and then there is no more workforce. Everyone has money, nobody is producing. This causes inflation.

Companies continue to hire more workers, though at a slower rate, due to their increasing profits and need for added output and efficiency.

Market demand has nothing to do with adding people. And simply adding more bodies seldom *improves* efficiency. Never heard the phrase "too many cooks spoil the broth" ?

They continue to hire workers who continue to buy even more products. There are not an infinite number of workers, or consumers, or resources, or products needed or manufactured. The system is not sustainable, or even likely to occur in the first place.

At this point, consumers have great buying power

And everyone buys their mansion and retire in the bahamas. And no-one is producing so the economy collapses. And no-one will work for less than a million dollars because they already have a million dollars, and a breadmaker and sports car. If the people are prosperous, they buy everything they need, then stop buying, making production irrelevant, and freezing the economy.

This clearly shows why it's wrong to say poor have to exist in a capitalistic society. They don't. Everyone could have more than enough money to support themselves and live a comfortable life. Some would be richer than others but all would be prosperous.

Consumers could use less oil, forcing the price down, but they choose not to. Democracy in action or inaction as it were.

Hah "choose not to" - again, there is no choice. You cannot voluntarily give up something you are dependant on. No buying petrol or cars means no transport to work, means no wages, which means you starve. In the 70s in the UK there were coal-mine strikes where the people literally were starving (literally, not in the 'we didn't eat for a day or two' sense) and it achieved next to nothing. You are living in a fantasy world if you believe that the market will bow to consumer pressure. Ever seen Fight Club? The narrator explains that if the cost of a recall is more than the cost of court settlements, they don't recall. That is how your market works. Whatever secures the most capital. Lives, quality of life, wages, health of workers, etc etc does not come into it. The only reason any of these things are visible is solely through socialism. Your vision sees a removal of socialism. Well I can tell you, without it, all of this "self-monitoring" the market is supposed to do WON'T HAPPEN.

You know what a company does when another company is undercutting them? They buy them out. The prices stay fixed, nothing changes. No price-war, no market regulation, the people fucking you over merely get a greater ability to fuck you over. That's an extra 100,000 workers that make you just that much more expendable. And because you are expendable, you don't get to "vote with your feet" or boycott, or refuse to buy the CD, it makes no difference. The status quo is maintained.

Sweatshops are either agreed to by the workers, and therefore of their own volition, or slave labor, which is not capitalistic at all. And slavery is not supported due to the limited government intervention I propose and the free-markets effect of making slave labor inefficient in comparison to wage labor.

People who agree to work in sweatshops have no choice in the matter. They work or they starve to death. That is like saying being held at gunpoint, and being given the choice "work or die" is a choice. It is no choice at all. And the freemarket never makes slave labour ineffecient. Slave labour is always more efficient because the workforce do not require pay, and can work for the absolute minimum that is humanly possible. A paid job can never compete with that, because people will tolerate less willingly than they will when forced to.

Marketting plays a valuable roll in any company.

Maybe for feeble minded individuals like you, incapable of independant thought. Adverts have no effect on me. If I like a product, I will buy it on the basis of my own judgement of its merits, not because it has a nice slogan, or an amusing catchphrase or an interesting jingle. So, to me, like everyone who isn't a souless zombie, advertising merely makes a product that I would buy anyway more expensive. That is the antithesis of efficiency.

How would you know that company exists if not for marketting?

Marketing is strictly superficial. If a company's sole virtue is marketing, it really does not deserve to exist. All the money it spends on telling people to buy its product could go on making the product better.

Now tell me, honestly, would you rather have a better product, or a better marketed product? If a company only existed through marketing, then clearly it means consumers are being given an inferior product. This is not a reason for capitalism.

Anyone can janitor, not everyone can market.

So let's have no janitors at all then. Then everyone will be happy.

Purchase products that don't do this. Buy TVs that don't wear out and refridgerators that don't need replaced as often. It certainly is an unsavory tactic but what's the remedy? The best tactic is to buy from a company who produces quality TVs and once enough people do this, the other companies will do the same or get ran out of business.

There are none. Why on earth would a company build ever-lasting TVs? Even if it put all the other companies out of business, it would then go out of business itself. They all use this tactic because it is the tactic that yields the best profits. This is the tactic that your "free market" has grown, and it is the tactic your "free market" will protect. It is precisely this sort of tactic that is the fundament of capitalism, and only in a fantasy world will it change. Certainly not because you suddenly think everyone will be rich.

It can't be denied that minimum wages cause unemployment.

It can, because it is patently false.

If you are willing to pay 4.50 for someone to help wash dishes, and the minimum wage is 5.25, the aren't getting that job.

So what, the dishes go unwashed? What then? You can serve any meals in your restaurant, so your whole business goes under because you were to stingy to pay someone a decent wage? Where is your precious market then, eh?

If the minimum wage is 7.50 and you need to hire a janitor, you are paying him more than his labor is worth.

What you tell him his labour is worth. What it is ACTUALLY worth is very different. What if millions of people across America suddenly offered to jobs for free? The labour for that job would instantly become "worthless."

Is 12 hours of work (in whatever job you care to nominate) a day, 7 days a week "worthless" simply because people are willing to work for nothing?

Instead of hiring 2 at 3.75 you hire 1 at 7.50 causing unemployment for the other and decreased efficiency for you. This causes inflation as well due to companies not being able to match output and efficiency with wage spending.

No, it causes an increase in demand as production decreases, thus causing other companies to employ people (at minimum wage) to profit from this demand. Funny how your market balances itself when it is screwing other people over, yet when it is obliged to play ball, it suddenly breaks.

They wouldn't be "poor" as in not having a house or food but "poor" as in not having as much as the CEOs. They would still need to perform the same jobs but would be compensated more equally due to to increased profit and efficiency.

Why would they need to perform the same jobs if they are being paid more for the same thing? If an employee is currently making $10 an hour, and his wages get doubled to $20, he only needs to work for half as long to meet his needs. So, production halves, inflation rises. This is how it actually works.

That's actually incorrect. Though it is hypocritical of you to say that AND support minimum wages. No, it is common sense, and observable fact. And it is not hypocritical, it is "consistant."

No inflation is caused if the company is making more money and the consumer is paying less for goods.

Except that never happens. If you are making more money, and you can buy more for less, you have more excess cash left over. That cash is surplus to your needs, and as people do not work for the fun of it, is representative of work they DID NOT NEED TO DO. And according to your representation of communism, if people don't want to work, they won't.

Think of it this way: Your company sells phones for $30 dollars. It takes one day for one worker to make one phone. He gets $15 in wages and it costs $15 in materials. You are currently self-sufficient.

Now image that everyone is wealthy. Now you have to pay your worker $30 a day to make one phone that still costs £15 in material. Now, you are proposing that magically the stuff will cost less?

So the phone now costs $45 to produce, but is being sold cheaper (according to you) - that's a loss of $15 even if the price does not change.

You seem to think that if you have two people working, they will magically produce more than 1 phone each per day. This is not true. The improvement in efficiency is not a universal constant. Depending on all number of factors that change from product to product, the optimum number can vary and is static. Once you go beyond this or under it, efficiency drops. Thus growth is not sustainable.

How else can you force people to share without tyrannical dictators telling them to?

"Force" - feh. Communism says nothing about forcing. And it is in human nature to share. It is biologically hardwired. The optimum level of trust in any transaction is 0, and yet humans trust despite it being the antithesis of capitalist philosophy. If two young children are offered chocolate buttons, and one is allowed to divide the pile, and the other gets to accept the deal, or prevent BOTH of them getting the chocolate, the first child will always give himself a lions share, and the second child will ALWAYS say no to the deal, even though it means he gets no buttons.

In a capitalist system, even getting 1 chocolate button is better than 0, and thus agreeing to it is more profitable than guaranteeing you both get nothing. Capitalism is thus seen to be intrinsically unnatural. Get some young kids, and try it yourself. After a certain age, they will always share evenly, because they learn not to screw people over. This is innate behaviour. Suggesting that the kid with the "important" job of dividing the chocolate is more deserving of a greater share doesn't pan out. The kid that has the terms dictated to him goes without. It is only through the slavery enforced by capitalism that people are unable to say "no fair, we'll all go without"

Capitalism is like the kid dividing the buttonsgiving himself all of them bar one, then going round to kid after kid after kid going "will you take the one button so I can have all of these?" If all the kids said "No, be fair" he'd be screwed. Ability doesn't come into it, merely that because he has the capital, he has the power to dictate terms. The system can only be made fairer (like capitalism) if everyone chooses to go without buttons. This will not happen. It came close in the 70s, but then legislation, etc made it impossible.

Isn't it quite the coincedence that a statist economy leads to a tyrnnical dictator? Maybe a less powerful, less involved government is the answer. Hmm?

Apply that to the job of CEO, then tell me how important their jobs are again.

The National SOCIALIST Workers Party was a capitalist party?

Ah, you are being a dumbass yank and equating socialism with communism. That is a very common misconception. You can have a socialist capitalist state.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

Yes, a small government that doesn't interefere with corporate power, and thus is subserviant to it. Great idea.

True, they were no Communists as they supported private property but they were a State Socialist party.

See, you are obsessing with the word socialist. Socialism merely means that they advocate the citzenry having ownership of industries, rather than individuals or small collectives who are not answerable to anyone.

A PLC (public limited company, that is a company that floats on shares) is thus a socialist company, and yet will almost always follow intrinsically capitalistic principles, RE the quest for profit, etc.

There have been more capitalist countries than communist ones. But nice try.

And show me one communist state that isn't totalitarian and you have a case.

Muh, think about it again. What you have effectively said is "communist states are always totalitarian" when by your own admission "there haven't been that many communist countries."

Congratulations on just undermining your own assertion by reiterating just how narrow your basis for judgement is.

however:

to·tal·i·tar·i·an Audio pronunciation of "totalitarian" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (t-tl-t�r-n)
adj.

Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed: “A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul�

Castro's Cuba does not have absolute or centrlaized control over all aspects of life, just off the top of my head. Likewise, Vietnam (after it had settled down post war) had numerous civil liberties. They still do get to choose what they wear, what they eat, etc etc.

Russia under Gorbachev was still communist (although ailing) and not totalitarian at all. Infact, he lifted anti-party censorship, and was famous for being quite fond of anti-communist independant movies. He describes one which portrayed russian communism as a house falling apart around the inhabitants as "poignant."

Many many capitalist empires have fallen or been totalitarian. Suggesting that communism is intrinsically totalitarian is irrational. It is like Thomas Edison saying "the idea of an electric lightbulb is intrinsically flawed because I haven't been able to get one to work yet"

[EN[i]GMA]

Reply coming tommorow.

[Qdrop]

both sides are making good points, and shitty ones.

"take a CEO out of the company and the workers keep working and production continues. take the workers out and production ceases."

yeah, the company will run without the CEO, but for a limited time.
who will handle future investments and business activity? who will steer the company through future economic issues, make neccessary policy changes, invest in necessary capital, look to future trends to ensure future success, ect?
the janitor?
the old pressman working the floor? (i work in a print packaging plant)

yes, without the workers, production stops. but they can ALL be quickly replaced as the requirements for most production positions are minimal.(granted, if they ALL walked out simutaneously, it would temporarily cripple the company)

without a CEO, the company would soon run into the ground and permanently fall behind all the competition.
there would be massive layoffs as the company folds (unless it is bought up by ANOTHER CEO) and all investments would shit the bed. millions would be lost permanantly.
it's all about the Business Model...which is set by the CEO and upper execs.
Ace knew this was shortsided bullshit when he wrote it.

this is why a CEO rightfully deserves what he earns.
yes they golf alot and have rather posh lives......most of them earned it.

for every "bad, corrupt, inefficient" CEO you can list, there are literally a hunderd more that are the opposite.
this is irrefutable. how could corporate business exist and be profitable (which it undeniable is) if this were untrue. the corprate business world could not continue and be profitable if every CEO was as inept as Bush was.

unless you wanted to spout out some "behind the scenes" conspiracy theory about "a few rich elite that maintain the flawed system just to keep their billions in check" then one must admit that the corprate world is profitable and essential to our economy.
the proof is in the pudding, so to speak.


look,
capitalism is not perfect. at all.
it has many flaws. but it works better than communism in that capitalism better suits human nature - namely our need for greed and progress.
those are the same reasons why capitalism is flawed- if also falls victim to greed.
the fuel that runs it, can also corrupt and destroy it.
capitalism is like a viscous beast in a spinning wheel: when it runs, it's output is unmatched. but if the beast is left unchecked...it will eat the fucken wheel and destroy everything.

the key is controlled capitalism.
yes, i mean a certain amount of gov't intervention.
but intervention that focuses soley on corruptive practices that are harmful to the system itself: enviromnental issues, stocks and investment corruption, wage control, rampant outsourcing.

the problem (particularly with the last issue) is global competion.
example: if we stop outsourcing in some manner, those companies will fall behind to other global companies that can get cheaper labor in 3rd world countries.
that is losing battle. in fact, it's suicide.

True controlled capitism would require a global movement, to keep the system fair and balanced.
pure laisse faire free market capitalism would destroy itself.

there is much more, but i have to get back to work.

[Qdrop]

btw, does ACe have a life outside this message board?
his responses must take him an hour at a time.

jesus, get some fucking sleep.....or a girlfriend.

why doesn't he put that "massive intellect and education" to better use then sitting here in fuckin E-penis debates.
go start a company....or a revolution. :rolleyes:

[EN[i]GMA]

Nonsense. How much of his fortune was accrewed solely by the amount of work he personally put in on MS windows 1.0 ? Not in the billions, bucko.



That is quite frankly nonsense. Firstly, if your choice is "starvation or a pittance" it is no choice at all. A patent in control circuitry is of no use on its own. You cannot home-manufacture bulk components for custom machinery. It requires a company with manufacturing capabilities, etc etc. This requires capital. No money, no way to bring it to market.



Yeah, except it doesn't happen like that. Research and development (let alone manufacturing) requires equipment, etc. This costs capital. To manufacture this, you need an initial outlay of cash, which is where corporate sponsorship comes into play. They give you what you need to develop your idea, then they use it.

No initial capital, your idea is just electricity in your head. You have to exchange the idea for capital, not just magically get capital and then use the idea to add to it. It never works out like that, and if it did, then everyone would be doing it, and there'd be no janitors because everyone would go "oooh, a non-stick alarmclock toilet pan, what a great idea, I'm going to be a millionaire"


Which requires a buyer. The buyer gets to choose the price. They aren't going to pay you millions or a cut when they can simply wait 15 years until the patent expires and get it for free.

So you either fail to capitalise on your idea for a decade and a half and then get nothing, or you get to take the bone they throw to you, and be happy that you got anything at all.

That's how it REALLY works. You think the companies are worried about someone else getting the idea? Feh, they all know they only have to wait. There mere fact that an innovation is desirable and useful doesn't mean the company wants it. A new innovation means they have to change their marketing and manufacturing. This adds to the cost. It's easier for them to sit on their arses and do nothing, which they do. Capitalism does not feed innovation, that is a myth that gets tagged on to the 1 out of millions and millions of outstanding patents that are filed yearly.

1 in a million does not make it a "good system" - it makes it a lottery and a farce.



You miss the point. You said that if you have ability you will become wealthy. No matter how much ability the poor corner store owner has, the fact that he does not have the capital of the chain means that he is incapable of competing, no matter how shit that store is. The people do not "win" - because they get mass-produced super-cheap sub-standard crap. The service is inferior, and the company uses its powers in a purely selfish way. The fact that the customers pay less for a product is only an illusionary benefit. The cons outweigh it, but they are not there in numbers of the shelf, so you don't think about it. No matter what the corner store offers, the lower price its capital can afford will make it preferable, thus eliminating innovation. Only maintaining the status quo will occur.



Since when have mansions, dodgy tax-havens, fast cars, and sitting idley in a back been "further investment" ? And since when has that money had anything to do with "ability" ?



Nonsense. There are plenty of companies which have accrewed wealth only to squander it and go bust, or to reduce the quality of service, leaving customers without support, employees jobless and without retirement, creditors without bills, etc. To suggest that this only goes up and not down is patently false.

Want to know who loses? The managers and CEOs and staff of other companies. Their jobs get swallowed, so they end up on tills getting paid LESS not more. That is the opposite of what your theory states would happen.



That is theft, not capitalist forces. Downloading MP3s does not keep the industry in check, and to suggest that theft is a good capitalist force is a nonsense. If you mean pay-per-download, then I'd still disagree. Pay for download sites cost more than buying albums, and are less reliable. I don't know anyone who uses them, and the price of CDs has not gone down whatsoever.



Yes, to avoid being ripped off, I could just buy nothing and go without. Of course, for this to have an effect on capitalism and force them to play ball, it means everyone would have to do it. Do you think that's gonna happen? Everyone is going to go without their CDs and drinks, and games, and DVDs so we can get a fair deal? Do you really think that is going to happen? No, and neither do the companies, which is why they don't give a fuck about over-charging, and why it hasn't and won't change. This is why your idea that capitalism reduces costs is nonsense.

You have said "well, you can always go without" - yeah, I can starve myself and live in a black little hole knowing that I am only being ripped off by being given shit wages. That would be a great choice, I'd feel so much better there while everyone else is being ripped off, and yet they get to have over-priced CDs and faulty TVs.



That is like saying "the wage is not too low if people are willing to work for it." - so your system is actually regulated not by any sort of legitimate justice, but by who is the most desperate. The person who is near dead from starvation has to work, and will work for $1, which means if anyone else wants to work, they HAVE to work for $1. There will always be people that desperate, so the company will never have to pay more than the most desperate individual. And one thing capitalist societies aren't short of is people who are desperate. Whether desperate for this or that item to fill a void in the life (until it breaks as it is designed to, and then they are desperate to replace it) or even just desperate to eat.

This leads to sweatshops and vast misery. That is pure capitalism.



Except, as has been seen, privatised industries are often less efficient and more expensive. The idea that some self-interested peopel skimming the profits can run something more efficiently than a company which does not have people skimming the profits is a lie perpetrated to stop rich people having their sizeable assets used for something other than self-gratification.

It is not "the norm" - it is the myth that you have been indoctrinated with, and it is a myth which has *no basis in fact* whatsoever. I can name numerous privatised industries which have all offered worse service for higher rates.



It's bullshit. My TV is no different to a TV I had a decade and a half ago, except it was more expensive, and is less reliable. The prices have NOT gone down, and the quality has NOT gone up, and the wages have NOT increased. My numerous sinclair spectrums all work perfectly, they are decades old. I have numerous modern hard-disks which no longer work because they are broken. My family had a austin metro which was MOTd regularly and parts were cheap and easy to come by. Again, it lasted decades. Our current rover metro has been plagued with faults, costed more, and AGAIN, the factory which builds them employs less people for less wages.

Also, the examples you gave were not "due to competition" - for a long while intel were the only company making pentium processors. They frequently updated their processors simply to make more powerful equipment available. Until cyrix came out (and they don't count, as they were shit and flopped bigtime) they had no competition. It doesn't mean that the technology just stayed stagnant. Technology moves on irrespective of competition, and saying "oh, they are only doing it to get one up on their commercial rivals" is a nonsense.

If you actually look into marketting, you'll see that innovations occur BEFORE the product is placed in competition with its rivals. I once heard a marketing gimp boasting about how no matter how flawed a product is, he could sell it as superior than its rivals. This can be seen in AMD and Intel lying about the performance of their new processors. AMD have been saying 3200+ means three ghz performance, massive improvements" - that is a lie. The differences can be benchmarked and they are minimal. It is marketing and spin, designed to make suckers like you part with your cash.

What rival was windows competing with for 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 95, 98, XP? Linux? That has only even remotely approached windows as a desktop OS in the last couple of years. And yet innovations kept being made.

To suggest that Russian technology froze in 1917 with the revolution is likewise a nonsense. They put a satellite in space before the US did. Who were they competing with when they started the space-race? Despite all these commies not getting to reap the rewards of their efforts, they still managed to technologically rival the US's best capitalist efforts for the best part of a century, often surpassing US innovations. Were the yanks just not being challenged enough by each other?



Bullshit. Go up and read what a CEO and board of directors tend to do. It usually involves golf, mansions, and controlling stock options. It never has anything to do with innovation, production, etc. Think the CEO is so important? Get rid of the CEO, does the factory stop producing? Do the trucks stop moving? No. Get rid of the factory workers? Production stops. CEOs do jack shit. They play games, throw money around, and play roulette with assets they can afford to lose.



Bullshit, absolute drivel. Numerous CEOs of privatised countries have had their companies criticised for failing to meet standards and offering terrible service, massive redundancies, etc, etc whilst giving themselves millions in pensions and pay-rises. Michael Moore has a book full of them, and if you check the FT archives, you'll see it is no secret. George Bush has run numerous oil companies straight into the ground, and he just keeps getting richer and richer.



You try living in a world with no janitors and then say that. Tell me how little money they deserve after you start cleaning up excrement. Then tell me how hard a CEO's job is when he runs a company into the ground, and goes home to his mansion and lives off his fat pension.



Yet it never happens. Capitalism "should" be a lot of things that it claims to be. It ain't. It's a deception that you buy into. When you get more life experience, you'll see just how much of a con it really is. You'll see when the boss that always makes dumbass mistakes and gets paid twice as much as you gets promoted because YOUR project, that you prevented him running into the ground, is a sucess. You'll see when you get made redundant because the board of directors put more cash into their pockets than into the business, and it got swallowed up by a bigger company that strips its assets. You'll see when you get passed over for a job by some harvard boy whose parents paid his way through college, and because he was in the same frat as the interviewer, he's a shoe in, despite being lazy shiftless incompetent and a coke-user.

You'll see all of these flaws, and then you'll maybe see why capitalism, more so that communism, only works on paper where you can ignore the flaws.



I am, and it is a nice fairy tale.



A company pays their employee an extra $1. So the company is down $1. Now, the employee has to spend ALL of that $1 on the company's products just for the company to break even. Actually, the company will never get 100% of that back, it will be split in a number of different ways. Your process creates a net loss, not profit.



Profits will go down if they are paying more employees more money. And production cannot increase exponentially as you seem to believe. If a company is building TVs, and it keeps building more and more, and getting more and more employees, eventually everyone owns a TV, and everyone is redundant. Hence manufactured obsolescence. People aren't getting richer. Any additional money they make they must also burn up. They might get paid twice as much, but if they then have to buy stuff twice as often, they have not got any richer whatsoever. Otherwise, they will accrew and accrew until they, and their children, need never work, and then there is no more workforce. Everyone has money, nobody is producing. This causes inflation.



Market demand has nothing to do with adding people. And simply adding more bodies seldom *improves* efficiency. Never heard the phrase "too many cooks spoil the broth" ?

There are not an infinite number of workers, or consumers, or resources, or products needed or manufactured. The system is not sustainable, or even likely to occur in the first place.



And everyone buys their mansion and retire in the bahamas. And no-one is producing so the economy collapses. And no-one will work for less than a million dollars because they already have a million dollars, and a breadmaker and sports car. If the people are prosperous, they buy everything they need, then stop buying, making production irrelevant, and freezing the economy.





Hah "choose not to" - again, there is no choice. You cannot voluntarily give up something you are dependant on. No buying petrol or cars means no transport to work, means no wages, which means you starve. In the 70s in the UK there were coal-mine strikes where the people literally were starving (literally, not in the 'we didn't eat for a day or two' sense) and it achieved next to nothing. You are living in a fantasy world if you believe that the market will bow to consumer pressure. Ever seen Fight Club? The narrator explains that if the cost of a recall is more than the cost of court settlements, they don't recall. That is how your market works. Whatever secures the most capital. Lives, quality of life, wages, health of workers, etc etc does not come into it. The only reason any of these things are visible is solely through socialism. Your vision sees a removal of socialism. Well I can tell you, without it, all of this "self-monitoring" the market is supposed to do WON'T HAPPEN.

You know what a company does when another company is undercutting them? They buy them out. The prices stay fixed, nothing changes. No price-war, no market regulation, the people fucking you over merely get a greater ability to fuck you over. That's an extra 100,000 workers that make you just that much more expendable. And because you are expendable, you don't get to "vote with your feet" or boycott, or refuse to buy the CD, it makes no difference. The status quo is maintained.



People who agree to work in sweatshops have no choice in the matter. They work or they starve to death. That is like saying being held at gunpoint, and being given the choice "work or die" is a choice. It is no choice at all. And the freemarket never makes slave labour ineffecient. Slave labour is always more efficient because the workforce do not require pay, and can work for the absolute minimum that is humanly possible. A paid job can never compete with that, because people will tolerate less willingly than they will when forced to.



Maybe for feeble minded individuals like you, incapable of independant thought. Adverts have no effect on me. If I like a product, I will buy it on the basis of my own judgement of its merits, not because it has a nice slogan, or an amusing catchphrase or an interesting jingle. So, to me, like everyone who isn't a souless zombie, advertising merely makes a product that I would buy anyway more expensive. That is the antithesis of efficiency.



Marketing is strictly superficial. If a company's sole virtue is marketing, it really does not deserve to exist. All the money it spends on telling people to buy its product could go on making the product better.

Now tell me, honestly, would you rather have a better product, or a better marketed product? If a company only existed through marketing, then clearly it means consumers are being given an inferior product. This is not a reason for capitalism.



So let's have no janitors at all then. Then everyone will be happy.



There are none. Why on earth would a company build ever-lasting TVs? Even if it put all the other companies out of business, it would then go out of business itself. They all use this tactic because it is the tactic that yields the best profits. This is the tactic that your "free market" has grown, and it is the tactic your "free market" will protect. It is precisely this sort of tactic that is the fundament of capitalism, and only in a fantasy world will it change. Certainly not because you suddenly think everyone will be rich.



It can, because it is patently false.



So what, the dishes go unwashed? What then? You can serve any meals in your restaurant, so your whole business goes under because you were to stingy to pay someone a decent wage? Where is your precious market then, eh?



What you tell him his labour is worth. What it is ACTUALLY worth is very different. What if millions of people across America suddenly offered to jobs for free? The labour for that job would instantly become "worthless."

Is 12 hours of work (in whatever job you care to nominate) a day, 7 days a week "worthless" simply because people are willing to work for nothing?



No, it causes an increase in demand as production decreases, thus causing other companies to employ people (at minimum wage) to profit from this demand. Funny how your market balances itself when it is screwing other people over, yet when it is obliged to play ball, it suddenly breaks.



Why would they need to perform the same jobs if they are being paid more for the same thing? If an employee is currently making $10 an hour, and his wages get doubled to $20, he only needs to work for half as long to meet his needs. So, production halves, inflation rises. This is how it actually works.

No, it is common sense, and observable fact. And it is not hypocritical, it is "consistant."



Except that never happens. If you are making more money, and you can buy more for less, you have more excess cash left over. That cash is surplus to your needs, and as people do not work for the fun of it, is representative of work they DID NOT NEED TO DO. And according to your representation of communism, if people don't want to work, they won't.

Think of it this way: Your company sells phones for $30 dollars. It takes one day for one worker to make one phone. He gets $15 in wages and it costs $15 in materials. You are currently self-sufficient.

Now image that everyone is wealthy. Now you have to pay your worker $30 a day to make one phone that still costs £15 in material. Now, you are proposing that magically the stuff will cost less?

So the phone now costs $45 to produce, but is being sold cheaper (according to you) - that's a loss of $15 even if the price does not change.

You seem to think that if you have two people working, they will magically produce more than 1 phone each per day. This is not true. The improvement in efficiency is not a universal constant. Depending on all number of factors that change from product to product, the optimum number can vary and is static. Once you go beyond this or under it, efficiency drops. Thus growth is not sustainable.



"Force" - feh. Communism says nothing about forcing. And it is in human nature to share. It is biologically hardwired. The optimum level of trust in any transaction is 0, and yet humans trust despite it being the antithesis of capitalist philosophy. If two young children are offered chocolate buttons, and one is allowed to divide the pile, and the other gets to accept the deal, or prevent BOTH of them getting the chocolate, the first child will always give himself a lions share, and the second child will ALWAYS say no to the deal, even though it means he gets no buttons.

In a capitalist system, even getting 1 chocolate button is better than 0, and thus agreeing to it is more profitable than guaranteeing you both get nothing. Capitalism is thus seen to be intrinsically unnatural. Get some young kids, and try it yourself. After a certain age, they will always share evenly, because they learn not to screw people over. This is innate behaviour. Suggesting that the kid with the "important" job of dividing the chocolate is more deserving of a greater share doesn't pan out. The kid that has the terms dictated to him goes without. It is only through the slavery enforced by capitalism that people are unable to say "no fair, we'll all go without"

Capitalism is like the kid dividing the buttonsgiving himself all of them bar one, then going round to kid after kid after kid going "will you take the one button so I can have all of these?" If all the kids said "No, be fair" he'd be screwed. Ability doesn't come into it, merely that because he has the capital, he has the power to dictate terms. The system can only be made fairer (like capitalism) if everyone chooses to go without buttons. This will not happen. It came close in the 70s, but then legislation, etc made it impossible.



Apply that to the job of CEO, then tell me how important their jobs are again.



Ah, you are being a dumbass yank and equating socialism with communism. That is a very common misconception. You can have a socialist capitalist state.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." - Benito Mussolini.

Yes, a small government that doesn't interefere with corporate power, and thus is subserviant to it. Great idea.



See, you are obsessing with the word socialist. Socialism merely means that they advocate the citzenry having ownership of industries, rather than individuals or small collectives who are not answerable to anyone.

A PLC (public limited company, that is a company that floats on shares) is thus a socialist company, and yet will almost always follow intrinsically capitalistic principles, RE the quest for profit, etc.



Muh, think about it again. What you have effectively said is "communist states are always totalitarian" when by your own admission "there haven't been that many communist countries."

Congratulations on just undermining your own assertion by reiterating just how narrow your basis for judgement is.

however:

to·tal·i·tar·i·an Audio pronunciation of "totalitarian" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (t-tl-t�r-n)
adj.

Of, relating to, being, or imposing a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural expression is suppressed: “A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous institutions in its drive to seize the human soul�

Castro's Cuba does not have absolute or centrlaized control over all aspects of life, just off the top of my head. Likewise, Vietnam (after it had settled down post war) had numerous civil liberties. They still do get to choose what they wear, what they eat, etc etc.

Russia under Gorbachev was still communist (although ailing) and not totalitarian at all. Infact, he lifted anti-party censorship, and was famous for being quite fond of anti-communist independant movies. He describes one which portrayed russian communism as a house falling apart around the inhabitants as "poignant."

Many many capitalist empires have fallen or been totalitarian. Suggesting that communism is intrinsically totalitarian is irrational. It is like Thomas Edison saying "the idea of an electric lightbulb is intrinsically flawed because I haven't been able to get one to work yet"


Are you saying he's undeserving of what he made? Why? If he wasn't one of the best leaders, he wouldn't be the richest man in the world.

You get money from a venture-capital firm, for instance. You get a loan from the bank. Getting capital isn't hard, but making enough to repay the interest is. Some people are willing to take this risk. They deserve what they get, either rampant success or crushing failure based on their business decisions.

Not everyone would be doing it because not everyone has the ideas. There would still be janitors because the market couldn't support all those products. The janitor might be well payed, but he would still exist.

So the business can play the role of buyer or non-buyer to influence your decisions but you can't do the same to influence theirs? That seeps hypocrisy.

Or you will force them to pay premium price for your invention or market the idea yourself through a loan from the bank, a venture capital firm or a private backer who agrees to loan you money for an interest rate. The only place where your ideas go unnutilized and uncompensated is communism.

The competitor who DOES evolve will market new, cheaper, better procucts and run that company out of the market. Why is this a difficult concept? And nice one pulling a completely arbitrary figure out of your ass to make a point. Every product you see has been thought up and marketed by someone at some point. And you say it's impossible?

Than he obviously does not have much ability to compete if he loses. Sam Walton did. He took his corner store, expanded it, beat everyone who stood before him and now his company is the premier retailer in the world. That's pure capitalism. K-Mart existed when Wal Mart was starting to grow. Wal Mart kicked it's ass. Now Target is starting to get some market share. It might run Wal Mart out of the premier spot as Wal Mart did to K-Mart. And the ensuing price wars will benefit the consumer and the worker.

Actually, by purchasing those things they are helping the economy immensely though that isn't the point you were trying to make. The vast majority of their money is kept in the stock market where it helps other companies and in turn, their customers and employees.

Economic ignorance. Any instances of when this did happen are miniscule compared to the times when it didn't. Nearly every company out there follows this simple practice. Those that don't won't be around for long. Even the CEO cannot pay hiself an undue amount as it will hurt the company and thus hiself.

ITunes costs 10 dollars an album. Plently cheap. And I will expound on illegal downloading later, though I must mention that since the advent of Napster album prices from some companies have come down to 12.99 or 14.99, making headway.

You could go without, though that often isn't necessary. There are very few (Literally almost no) fields that require you to purchase from 1 and only 1 company. Say you think McDonalds is over priced. You don't have to stop buying fast food, just McDonalds. Either they will lower their prices to recoup the lost market share or they won't. Either way, your needs and wants are met and McDonalds are as well.

You say capitalist societies are never lacking people who are desperate to work but it's capitalist societies that have the fewest amount of these people. Look at it this way: Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's miles better than anything else. There will always be people either through bad luck or their own decisions, who do not have enough to live on. Who's fault is this?

Privistation works because the privitized industry has to run better and more efficiently because they have a budget to follow. They can't pull money out of the public coffers to fund their ineptitude. They can pay people 60,000 to do little work because they have no accountability. Private industries have to do better work because if they don't, someone else will. The government only has to do enough not to cause the people to overthrow them. Which isn't much.

Your TV is cheaper and more reliable. I don't know where you bought your TV but prices have dropped to insanely low levels for units that are better than the older ones. Maybe you're a poor shopper, but what you claim is not the case. You can buy large CRT sceens for little money due to the advent of LCD screens, plasma screens, projectors and numerous other variants.

Intel was the only company making chips because it ran everyone out of business. Their chips were overpriced (Though very good), and people knew it. Along came AMD. For a long time they produced low end, poor chips and had a market share that would indicate such. Than they released the K6-2. they literrally slapped the taste out of Intel's mouth. A cheaper chip that tore the P3 apart. The resulting competition has lead to a near stalemate between the two with the consumer gaining. 2 excellent chips on the market for insanely low prices.

And even when Intel was the only player they still outpaced Moore's Law.

And 3200 doesn't mean 3.2 ghz, a 3200 is actually clocked at 2.1 ghz I do believe but it rans equavilent to a 3.2 ghz intel Northwood (I think) chip. The chip was clocked lower, allowing it to be sold more cheaply, and still outperformed the Intel equivilent. Though it is decieving, I will admit.

And funny you mention the space race. Competition between two entities causes each of them to continually improve their products and reduce their costs? Where have I heard that before? Maybe the Soviets were good capitalists and just didn't know it.

More generalizations. If you think the CEO is not the most important person in the company, who do you think is? The article this thread was started by answers this basic question.

Than who makes the decisions that enrich the company? Joe the widget maker on the assembly line who has no clue about the companies' earnings or the CEO and board whose only job is to watch this numbers?

I don't companies should have no janitors. That would be bad. Just fewer. 1 or 2 could easily prevent the company from falling into squallor yet many companies hire a dozen or more or even *GASP* contract another company to, further aiding capitalistic development.

This people are liabilites. All of them. If the employer chooses not to fire them, oh well, but I assure you, they hurt productivity drastically.

Perhaps you are listening but you aren't hearing.

Your economics are flawed. They pay the person 1 more dollar because their profits are up do to either the raising of the prices on their product, increased consumer demand or lowered prices and increased consumer demand. The company pays it's workers more because it can afford to. By paying them more, they work more efficiently, are more likely to remain at the that company, and purchase more products in general.

It won't increase exponentially. The labor wages will stop when profits stop. It's a fluctuating market. Without a fiat currency, what you propose cannot happen. And wages would never get to such an inflated point anyways. As soon as people stopped buying at a high rate, companies revenues would go down and wages would go down.

So 1000 people making toasters make fewer toasters than 800 people, when working at the same rate? The companies production facilites would grow as well.

It can't continually grow, that much is obvious, it can however stay superemly efficient.

By great buying power I meant enough to live comfortably on. There isn't enough money in the economy to give everyone enough for a mansion. There is enough for everyone to have a nice, reasonable house though. Tell me how wages could grow that high when you previously stated, and I agreed, that the economy cannot grow forever?

Buy cars from a different company. The choice isn't all or nothing. You are dependant on very little. Shelter which isn't supplied by larger corporations, food, which is produced by thousands of different companies so prices always stay competitive, and transportation which, due to competition in the auto industry is relatively cheap. Anything else is superflous (Though strangely enough, anything other than shelter, food and transportation is never produced in a communist society [and what is produced isn't produced well]) though certainly desirous. Like I said, it isn't all or nothing, it's more or less or this or that. Buy a different, cheaper CD or movie, from a different company.

Is Intel in the process of buying out AMD? Ford buying out General Motors? Dell buying out Gateway? Buyouts are a pretty rare occurance with the thousands upon thousands of businesses around. It seems like your economics are flawed again.

Slave labor has poor efficiency because they undermine thier owners at every turn and produce poor products. Though the point is irrelevent because I don't support anarcho-capitalism.

In your time here, you've resorted to ad hominems in your debates more than anyone, even Anasazi. That's saying something too. I'm enjoying a seemingly civil debate and you come off like an elitist prick. It's good natured (I would think) internet debate. Are you unable to debate properly?

Tell me this Ace. Do you buy products that you don't know exist? Of course not. To buy them you have to know they exist. So a commercial would let you know there is a new *insert product here* on the market. That's all it is. To some people, the hyperbole makes them likely to buy the product. To everyone, it allows you to know the product exists.

I would rather have a better product, but even moreso, I would rather know the product exists.

That's not the point I was making. Just that janitorial duty is remedial.

Because it's impossible to make a TV that never breaks. And even if it were, a company would sell them if it could run the competition out of business because there is always demand for TVs, even if they don't break. Due to people buying 2nd or 3rd TVs (Which they can do since the one they have dosn't break) people moving out of their parents house buying a TV, the TV breaking due to a football through glass, etc etc

The company would make a tidy profit until faced with a competitor who could sell them cheaper.

This says more about the minimum wage than I could. I wasn't going to post any more articles but you are just so off the mark on this it's required: http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1603

That person would be fired for somone who would do all the work for the great pay. Lazy people get fired. Plain and simple.

Either that or you find a way to make phones for 10 dollars instead of 15. Or you sell more phones in general (Your model is incorrect because there is no profit. A company with no profit margin cannot exist for long). Either way, profits go up, giving you more money to hire more people to make their 1 phone a day, and/or raise wages.

And growth will end but the economy is in such great shape at that point that the stopped growth has little effect becuase nearly everyone is doing so well. Minor market fluctuations are perfectly acceptable.

If it's in our nature to share, why did it take so long for a guy to write a book about it? Why do so few people pracitce in their daily lives? If Joe Blow doesn't share now, what makes you think he would in a communistic society? Your beneavalent view on human nature?

And I'm not sure I'm convinced by the anecdote though I do agree humans are generally beneavalent and helpful. And CEOs are people to aren't they?

I don't get the analogy.

To tell you the truth, socialism and communism have so many defitions, usages, meanings, sub catagories (Trotskyism, anarcho syndacalism, anarchism, state socialism, marxism) that I really don't know what most people mean when they say "socialist" or "communist". I've always though socialism was the period between capitalism and communism where the government plays the role of refferee during the transition. Soon no governement is needed and communism forms. They are so similiar I see no point in dividing them.

I was reffering to state socialism where the government controls parts of the economy for the "public welfare".

It has to be totalitarian to force people to give up their property. Either the state does it or the people do it. Either way, it's forcible.

And it's more like using cat hair instead of tungsten and claiming it will work and than noting the failure an trying again.

[Whois]

Well, that was fun...

[EN[i]GMA]

Well, that was fun...

It was...interesting, to realize I had typed for over an hour.

[Ace42]

Jeez, use the quote function selectively. Just one big block of text makes it hard to follow. And there is no point in quoting my whole post without selecting as it is there anyway.

GMA']Are you saying he's undeserving of what he made? Why? If he wasn't one of the best leaders, he wouldn't be the richest man in the world.

Who? Edison? USE THE QUOTE FUNCTION SENSIBLY. I assume you mean Gates (being reluctant to trawl through a dozen pages to make sure it wasn't one of the numerous individuals named in the preceding posts)

Yes, he is undeserving. He has fleeced customers, and used his monopoly to provide an inferior service for exploitative prices. Whenever a decent alternative is provided, his company use their capital to deny the product a market share. They have made effective competition near impossible by coding windows in such a way that external software companies are disadvantaged. If you want software to run properly, you need to run windows. You have no "choice" in the matter. Simply "not using windows" is not an option, as everyone else uses Windows. Everybody in the world being unable to conduct business due to them boycotting Windows related software is not an option. Gates and microsoft know it is not an option, and so can do whatever the hell they want. To take down MS, everyone else would all have to sacrifice themselves first. Not going to happen.

You get money from a venture-capital firm, for instance. You get a loan from the bank. Getting capital isn't hard

Hah, what world are you living in? How does a corner store owner get enough capital to challenge Walmart's market dominance?

So the business can play the role of buyer or non-buyer to influence your decisions but you can't do the same to influence theirs? That seeps hypocrisy.

Firstly, use a dictionary to read what hypocrisy really means. Secondly, companies are powerful, and individual is not powerful. Think about this very carefully. a CEO of a company stops buying raw materials from a country, that country is hit by massive losses and hardship. One person in that country stops buying products from a company, the company doesn't give a rat's ass.

Company is strong, one man is weak. Very very simple.

Or you will force them to pay premium price for your invention or market the idea yourself through a loan from the bank, a venture capital firm or a private backer who agrees to loan you money for an interest rate. The only place where your ideas go unnutilized and uncompensated is communism.

Hahahaha, have a look around the real world. Banks, venture capital firms, and private backers do not just go "oh that's a good idea, here's millions of dollars!" The American dream is a lie, good ideas are ignored or stolen all the time.

The competitor who DOES evolve will market new, cheaper, better procucts and run that company out of the market. Why is this a difficult concept? And nice one pulling a completely arbitrary figure out of your ass to make a point. Every product you see has been thought up and marketed by someone at some point. And you say it's impossible?

I don't know WHAT I said, because YOU DIDN'T QUOTE IT CONSIDERATELY. However, I am growing tired of you saying "oh, but a company will evolve. Someone will do this."

BULLSHIT. We were told that because of the low production costs, music on CDs would plummet. We'd be getting them for £1 each. Never happened. Why? Because all the capitalphiles worked under the assumption that companies are stupid and under-cut each other.

They aren't. They know that 3 companies with an equal share of a market that sells CDs for $10 each is better than just one company selling CDs for $1 each. They know that if they enter a pricing war (which happens all the time in your dream-world, and not at all in the real-world) then even the winner ends up losing out.

Than he obviously does not have much ability to compete if he loses.

To "compete" companies have to abuse their customers, which they do. The "winner" is the company which squeezes the customers the most. This means the "customer" is the loser. To assume that customers benefit when a company benefit's is naive to say the least. When a company turns a record profit, there is seldom a wage increase felt in the lower echelons. Think about it - if the company is doing well, why on Earth would they *give away* their profits? If they do not need to improve wages anyway, they will not do so *just because they can* - ditto for product quality or quality of service. Assuming that "oh, a rival will come along and force them to" is likewise a nonsense. If the rivals could do so, they would already. The fact that a company is showing profits anyway shows clearly that there is no need to improve things. Infact, companies get complacent and say "hell, we can have some bad years and STILL be doing well."

"And then that company will go down the drain and someone else will try to get in on it" - Yeah, after the owners have become rich, and the hundreds of thousands of employees get laid off.

The vast majority of their money is kept in the stock market where it helps other companies and in turn, their customers and employees.

Economic ignorance. Any instances of when this did happen are miniscule compared to the times when it didn't. Nearly every company out there follows this simple practice. Those that don't won't be around for long. Even the CEO cannot pay hiself an undue amount as it will hurt the company and thus hiself.

It is not ignorance, it is how it works. Look up how it actually is, instead of how you imagine it working in your fantasy theoretical model. They don't CARE if it hurts the company, because they have already lined their pockets. You think CEOs would say "Hmmmm, I guess I could survive on a pittance for 60 years, so that my company is super-strong down the line"? Or do you think they go to themselves "hmmmm, I can milk this thing for every penny it is worth, and be living in a mansion in Marbella while the plebs are in the job-queue" ?

They get richer by giving themselves more money. So they do it. Social conscience doesn't come into it.

ITunes costs 10 dollars an album. Plently cheap. And I will expound on illegal downloading later, though I must mention that since the advent of Napster album prices from some companies have come down to 12.99 or 14.99, making headway.

Here it has had 0 impact whatsoever. The prices have no gone down. Now that it is starting to become obsolete, it isn't rising with inflation, however that on its own has taken over a decade to achieve, when we were promised them being cheaper than tapes as soon as it was the dominant media. This is not the case.

Say you think McDonalds is over priced. You don't have to stop buying fast food, just McDonalds.

Yes, but if you want to buy fast-food, you need to find a fast-food outlet that you do not think is over-priced. This involves a company that is willing to enter a price-war. This DOESN'T HAPPEN. They know that if they do so, they will both lose out. Check the web, you'll see numerous "competing" companies have informal price-fixing agreements to prevent them both pricing each other into poverty.

You say capitalist societies are never lacking people who are desperate to work but it's capitalist societies that have the fewest amount of these people.

Fewer than whom? You think in America everyone gets paid an amount that is equivalent to the quantity of work done?

Look at it this way: Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's miles better than anything else.

Such as?

There will always be people either through bad luck or their own decisions, who do not have enough to live on. Who's fault is this?

Clearly bad luck is their own goddamn fault for being so unlucky! Nevermind the fact that having a multinational company pollute your town to the point where you are not healthy enough to work has nothing to do with luck, and everything to do with the company being able to turn over more profit.

Privistation works because the privitized industry has to run better and more efficiently because they have a budget to follow.

EXCEPT, privatisation has never worked. Ever. What you are saying does not actually happen in real life. Privatised industries have a budget to follow, incase you didn't know.

They can't pull money out of the public coffers to fund their ineptitude.

What if the privatised power-company can't be bothered to spend money (which could be in the CEO's pocket) improving the grid, and the power goes down. The whole country is just "going to go without power until a better company comes along" ?

A country can't function without power, and that goes for the government too. So, the government has to pay money to bail out the power company ANYWAY. The government CAN'T sit on its hands and say "well, we just have to wait for capitalism to work, so until then you people just burn your houses down with candles, use tin-cans with string, play the piano, use up as many batteries as possible, and starve due to no refridgeration for food or medicines."

So, once again, the company gets bailed out by the government. Why don't you check out how much the US government shells out on private companies before making wild claims about nationalised industries. Lockheed Martin gets bailed out of trouble with tax-payers money all the goddamn time.

They can pay people 60,000 to do little work because they have no accountability.

Nationalised industries have more accountability than private companies. Nationalised industries are answerable to the people, via their elected representatives. Private industries are answerable to NO-ONE. The rich get their money, and don't give a rat's ass about anything else, including customer satisfaction.

Private industries have to do better work because if they don't, someone else will.

Rubbish. You set up a superior oil company with a social conscience today, and put all the shit evil anti-social oil companies out of business, then tell me that.

Oh, what, no loan firms have the sort of cash to do that, even if they believed you'd have the capability to do so?

Well, I guess we'll just have to keep getting screwed over because your system DOESN'T WORK then.

but prices have dropped to insanely low levels for units that are better than the older ones.

Obviously, because you are so young, you are not familiar with how long electric equipment used to live, nor lived long enough to have your equipment fail on you. That or you are accustomed to "upgrading" your TV to one with more bells and whilstes so regularly that you don't notice how frequently they die. Ask an adult how many TVs they have owned in their lives, and then ask how many of those were in the last 10 years. And then the last 5.

Or better yet, google for manufactured obsolescence, and see just how prevalent it is. By your argument, it should not occur at all, because people naturally get a more reliable system, and a company that did such would go out of business. Go on, google for it, and then ask yourself why it is a tactic that is still being used the world over all the time.

The resulting competition has lead to a near stalemate between the two with the consumer gaining. 2 excellent chips on the market for insanely low prices.

If by insanely low, you mean "the same price they were always at" - then yes. When pentiums first came out, the state of the art processors were around £300 plus. At the moment, same thing.

And 3200 doesn't mean 3.2 ghz, a 3200 is actually clocked at 2.1 ghz I do believe but it rans equavilent to a 3.2 ghz intel Northwood (I think) chip. The chip was clocked lower, allowing it to be sold more cheaply, and still outperformed the Intel equivilent. Though it is decieving, I will admit.

It was deceiving because they marketed it as superior in performance to its ghz equivalent. As benchmarks have shown, even with more efficient archetecture, they still do not perform as well as their ghz counterparts would.

Also, microsoft have been nerfing their OSs in a deal with Intel to shift higher end processors. The fact that they are still doing this, and still doing well inspite of what you think about capitalism resulting in the best benefits for the consumer shows what a crock of shit that really is.

Competition between two entities causes each of them to continually improve their products and reduce their costs? Where have I heard that before? Maybe the Soviets were good capitalists and just didn't know it.

Yeah, or maybe you should think carefully about what you just said. The soviets were the first to put a satelite into space, starting the space-race. They weren't competing. Lenin didn't take over power in Moscow and say "wow, those Americans are going to put things in space, we better start developing space technology!"

The AMERICANS were playing catchup to the Ruskies, not the other way around. Therefore, competition was not a factor when they started, obviously. To compete, you need someone or something to compete against. The US was not a space-power by that point, so it sure as hell wasn't them.

More generalizations. If you think the CEO is not the most important person in the company, who do you think is?

The producers are. A company can exist without a CEO, it cannot exist without a production force.

Than who makes the decisions that enrich the company? Joe the widget maker on the assembly line who has no clue about the companies' earnings or the CEO and board whose only job is to watch this numbers?

You are confusing being a CEO with being an accountant. Perhaps you should state what you think a CEO really does, excluding playing golf, because I think you'll find it differs very much from reality. Many of the CEOs I have met have invariably been incompetent, and kept afloat by the hard work of their much more competent underlings. CEOs make desicisions that enrich their companies? Bullshit. They make decisions that enrich themselves. CEOs and directors consider themselves to be "the company" and what is good for them is good for "the company."

"Downsizing" is good for the company, in that the CEOs and directors get more money. The guys in the factory do NOT get wage increases, and the ones in the closed factory or office lose their jobs.

CEOs NEVER EVER say "well, times are hard, so us rich guys are gonna hve to hold our wages for a bit" even though they can easily afford to without feeling it. They OFTEN say "oh well, there will have to be redundancies."

That would be bad. Just fewer. 1 or 2 could easily prevent the company from falling into squallor yet many companies hire a dozen or more

Hah, a dozen or more janitors would certainly keep the food-prep area of every Maccy D's in the world spotless.

This people are liabilites. All of them. If the employer chooses not to fire them, oh well, but I assure you, they hurt productivity drastically.

Hah, yeah, they are all liabilities, the same liabilities that according to you make communism unworkable. Funny how in capitalism they are "acceptable problems" but the exact same phenomenon in Communism is "a fatal drawback."

Of course, everyone knows that when commies goof off, they goof off more.

Your economics are flawed. They pay the person 1 more dollar because their profits are up do to either the raising of the prices on their product, increased consumer demand or lowered prices and increased consumer demand. The company pays it's workers more because it can afford to. By paying them more, they work more efficiently, are more likely to remain at the that company, and purchase more products in general.

Hah, my ecnomics are flawed? Your common sense is. Companies do NOT pay their workers more simply because *they can* - never. Check the stats, increases in net company profit is in no way shape or form proportional to the wage increases of the labour force. Never. If a company can get away with paying its staff $3, it will. Every extra dollar it pays its staff more than it has to is money it is (in the capitalistic sense) wasting. And they don't care if their staff pay more money. They can control what wages they give, they cannot control where the staff spend their wages. It is easier for them to give less than to hope the staff will spend all of their increased wages on their products instead of opposition products.

The labor wages will stop when profits stop. It's a fluctuating market. Without a fiat currency, what you propose cannot happen. And wages would never get to such an inflated point anyways. As soon as people stopped buying at a high rate, companies revenues would go down and wages would go down.

We call this "boom and bust" and it is what happened in the 80s at the height of "true capitalism." It caused widespread social misery for everyone who wasn't a yuppie.

So 1000 people making toasters make fewer toasters than 800 people, when working at the same rate?

Read what I said again, it is common sense and simple math. Doubling the number of people doubles the number produced, but it also doubles the wages that need to be paid. That is not a net increase in profit.

The companies production facilites would grow as well.

Which costs money in transport, materials, building, housing, workforce training, etc etc. It's not a magic bag of economy growth.

It can't continually grow, that much is obvious, it can however stay superemly efficient.

Much, efficiency is found at the optimal number of workers. The optimal number is seldom if ever the MAXIMUM number. You are sadly mistaken when you equate the two.

By great buying power I meant enough to live comfortably on. There isn't enough money in the economy to give everyone enough for a mansion. There is enough for everyone to have a nice, reasonable house though. Tell me how wages could grow that high when you previously stated, and I agreed, that the economy cannot grow forever?

Heh, think about what you just said. "Everyone to have a nice reasonable house." - if the houses are cheaper, then whoever is building them will get less money, and thus be less likely to afford a "nice reasonable house."

If house prices remain the same, while wages increase for everyone, the builders will be getting the same money for the same work, while everyone else in other jobs are getting more money.

If then house prices increase so the people building the houses can get paid more money (to be inline with everyone else) then the increase in wages becomes irrelevant.

The choice isn't all or nothing. You are dependant on very little.

So, yo are saying that in order to secure a fair deal from corporations, I *only* have to give up everything except for "food and shelter" - well, I see lots of people giving up everything just to teach those companies a lesson! I'm sure those rich CEOs would really feel the hurt of consumers stopping buying their products, what with them being rich, living in a mansion, sipping martinis, living off the interest of their fat wallets, while the poor down-trodden masses are shivering in their cardboard boxes searching through the trash for food.

Shelter which isn't supplied by larger corporations

Even cardboard boxes are produced. Now, as you want to get rid of welfare in this purely capitalist Utopia, where is this shelter found for those boycotting shit jobs to secure a fair deal on housing prices?

food, which is produced by thousands of different companies so prices always stay competitive

If food is so competitive, why is there such a disparity in cost between nearly identical products? And how do you buy this food without being obliged to get a job, irrespective of how shit the wages are?

and transportation which, due to competition in the auto industry is relatively cheap.

Bullshit. The UK pays thousands and thousands of pounds more on cars identical to cars in mainland Europe because of the auto-industry's price-fixings. There are dozens of competing international companies selling cars in the UK and on the continent, and yet not one of them has said "oh, I know, we'll charge them the same price as we charge the Europeans, thereby pricing the opposition out of the market."

If your system is so goddamn effective, WHY DOES IT NOT ACTUALLY WORK?

I'll tell you why, the companies make MORE MONEY BY SCREWING OVER THE CUSTOMER THAN BY TREATING THEM FAIRLY. This will not change. No matter how much you want to believe in your fantasy system of capitalism, it doesn't work out like that, ever.

Though strangely enough, anything other than shelter, food and transportation is never produced in a communist society [and what is produced isn't produced well]

Here's an idea, why don't you investigate a few communist countries before making sweeping generalisations about their cultures. Cuba has a 100% literacy rate, and it is not like the only literature it produces are party propoganda and farming instructions.

Buy a different, cheaper CD or movie, from a different company.

Except CDs and Movies all cost the same. You think it is just coincidence that DVDs all cost exactly the same amount, even though the film budgets were all different, their box-office takings and popularity were all different?

I go into WH Smiths, and I see DVDs at £16.99, £16.99, £16.99 all down the line.

Is Intel in the process of buying out AMD? Ford buying out General Motors? Dell buying out Gateway? Buyouts are a pretty rare occurance with the thousands upon thousands of businesses around. It seems like your economics are flawed again.

Hahahaha, ever heard of AOL-Time-Warner? What about MSNBC? What about the Rupert Murdoch empire (Fox, Sky, Times and The Sun, etc)? What about IBM buying out Cyrix? Even the example you gave: GM has bought out: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Saab, Opel and Vauxhall to name just a few. It seems your understanding of the economy is flawed once again. Do you know how many sub-stores Walmart brand has bought out?

Slave labor has poor efficiency because they undermine thier owners at every turn and produce poor products.

Nonsense. Yes, after the bombing of Peenemunde, Jewish slave labour sabotaged the missile equipment they were forced to build. However, black slave labour on the plantations was as efficient as paid labour. And it was much more cost effective, because you could keep them in terrible conditions. While a slave revolt is a nice romantic fantasy, in real life scared slaves work as hard as possible to escape the whip. Most slaves are NOT constructing weapons to be used against potential liberators, and thus have little motivation for incurring wrath of their owners.

In your time here, you've resorted to ad hominems in your debates more than anyone, even Anasazi. That's saying something too. I'm enjoying a seemingly civil debate and you come off like an elitist prick. It's good natured (I would think) internet debate. Are you unable to debate properly?

Yes, I come off as an asshole because I don't like correcting idiots on their errors. I'm sorry, but even if I were inclined to, there isn't a nice way of telling you that your thought processes are inadequet, your conclusions sloppy, and your notions thus patentently absurd.

Dumbass yanks equate socialism with communism. You equated communism with socialism, thus that makes you...

That's right, a dumbass yank.

If the cap fits.

Tell me this Ace. Do you buy products that you don't know exist? Of course not. To buy them you have to know they exist. So a commercial would let you know there is a new *insert product here* on the market. That's all it is. To some people, the hyperbole makes them likely to buy the product. To everyone, it allows you to know the product exists.

Hah, that is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. All commericals do is let you know a new product is on the market? Bullshit. I go into a newsagent, I see a chocolate bar there, Oh look, there is a chocolate bar, I now know it is on the market. So an advert making amusing jokes about how chocolate bars can help you relax are superflous.

What, you think Ford need to advertise all the time incase people forget ford cars exist? "Oh, I did not realise that you could still buy Coca-cola, I am glad they advertise it daily, otherwise I'd not know it is on the market, despite it being clearly available in can form in the shops."

Oh, let me guess, you need an advert to tell you that the drink tastes nice, incase you confuse it with deicer.

I would rather have a better product, but even moreso, I would rather know the product exists.

Because, when you go into a shop, it is so easy to overlook products that YOU ARE SHOPPING FOR.

"Well, I was in the softs drinks section, and I saw all these softdrinks, but because I didn't see a commerical with women dancing on a beach, I decided against buying it, because I wasn't sure it existed."

Because it's impossible to make a TV that never breaks. And even if it were, a company would sell them if it could run the competition out of business because there is always demand for TVs, even if they don't break.

Absolute tosh. It's a nice theory, but if you join us in the real world, you'll see it is not what actually happens. My family has a couple of TVs it has owned for DECADES. They have outlived at least a dozen TVs bought recently for the same amount of cash. TVs have become LESS reliable, and have not become cheaper. One of the old TVs I have (A Pye) belongs to a company that was bought out by some Japanese company (probably Hitachi by now) and that company produces TVs using cheap unreliable parts that it knows will blow out in no time at all and sells them for the same price as always. It does this because it knows everyone will pay this price for TVs (they always have done) and thus the cheaper they can manufacture the TVs, and more they can turnover (due to them breaking) the more money they make.

If they make a TV that lasts forever, that is one person who will never need to buy a TV (Theirs or anyone elses) again. The company would be signing their own death-warrant, and they are not that stupid.

Due to people buying 2nd or 3rd TVs (Which they can do since the one they have dosn't break) people moving out of their parents house buying a TV, the TV breaking due to a football through glass, etc etc

People buy second or third TVs anyway. It is a fallacy to assume that if people had more money they would buy more TVs. Infact, due to the credit-card society, people buy more than they can afford anyway. That is what marketing is about. Not alerting you to a product that is on the market, but by overiding your free will, and artifically causing a desire in you that needs to be met. That is the "consumer culture."

Again, read up on it.

The company would make a tidy profit until faced with a competitor who could sell them cheaper.

No, it wouldn't. Once everyone has bought a TV, it would be game over. Most people I know have several TVs and have replaced each TV several times. That is a *minimum* of 6 TVs in an average lifetime barring accidents. Now, multiply this by each new family that needs a new set of TVs.

If the TVs were everlasting, the kids would inherit TVs, that's 6 TVs TV companies will never make. Per person.

This says more about the minimum wage than I could.

Wow, what a surprise, an article by a rich capitalist that justifies a position that keeps the poor poor. Who'd've thunk it.

Lazy people get fired. Plain and simple.

Plain, simple, and a fantasy. Lots of lazy people get to keep their jobs. In the words of Homer Simpson "that's the American way, do a job you hate, but do it really half-assed."

All the people I knew threw college did really half-assed jobs, and they never ever were even threatened with firing.

Again, how you see capitalism, and how it really is are two different things. When you are an adult, you might actually get to see this firsthand.

Either that or you find a way to make phones for 10 dollars instead of 15. Or you sell more phones in general (Your model is incorrect because there is no profit.

"make them cheaper, or sell more phones." - you think companies don't do that all the time as a matter of course? If they could make the phones cheaper, or sell more, THEY WOULD. And they would not then may their staff more money just because they could. Profit is only profit if you KEEP IT. Otherwise it is *expenditure*

And it is not "incorrect" - it excludes profit because profit is irrelevant to the issue. Unless you are going to argue that the increase in wages could be paid for by cutting into the profits. Yeah, because businesses are all going to take a dip in profits voluntarily.

Either way, profits go up, giving you more money to hire more people to make their 1 phone a day, and/or raise wages.

"Either way, profits magically go up, because all companies naturally are making hardly any money, and if you jsut keep hiring more and more people, it becomes more efficient" - yeah, that's why downsizing never occurs. Profits go up, the CEOs keep them. If you spend them, they cease to be profits. And if you hire 1 more person, you have to pay them more wages and buy more equipment, factories, materials, etc etc.

You say I know nothing about economics, but you are convinced that throwing people at an industry will make it more productive. That is frankly not true.

And growth will end but the economy is in such great shape at that point that the stopped growth has little effect becuase nearly everyone is doing so well. Minor market fluctuations are perfectly acceptable.

Why not read up on some economic theory, and then say that. Growth is essential in capitalism. A "recession" is a period of economic stagnation (not necessarily a dip) and is exactly what you are describing.

If it's in our nature to share, why did it take so long for a guy to write a book about it?

Because capitalism didn't exist until the time of Karl Marx. Before that it was imperialism / feudalism. There were plenty of books written about that. Why not do some research.

Why do so few people pracitce in their daily lives?

Hah, Americans. I share all the time with all sorts of people. I share the TV, I share my toothpaste, I share my food. I share the household chores, I share all manner of things with people around me.

If Joe Blow doesn't share now, what makes you think he would in a communistic society? Your beneavalent view on human nature?

Capitalism is a system which requires ruthlessness and selfishness to do well. The reason Joe Blow "doesn't share now" (he does, but it could be better) is because the system persecutes him from doing so. Any money a company spends on safely dumping toxic waste is money it isn't spending on lowering the price of its product, releasing adverts, etc etc. To "compete" with a ruthless company, it has to be ruthless. This permeates society. I am sure some of the older posters on the board will be the first to tell you about the 60s when you could leave your door unlocked, and everyone helped everyone and there was free love, and it was safe to pick up hitchhikers. What happened since then? Corporate Globalisation. Thankyou Mrs Thatcher.

There can be no "compassionate capitalism" because the root of capitalism is the consolidation and aquisition of capital. Giving it away is the antithesis of capitalism. This applies to workers wages more than anything. People can't share because they don't have as much money to share as the CEOs, and because they pay through the nose for the small pleasures in life they need, they are reluctant to share. And this makes everyone greedy. A well known psychological experiment showed that when people are pitted against each other for resources, they instinctively start "hoarding" and taking more than is necessary. If they are not so, they self-ration and can maintain sufficiency.

And CEOs are people to aren't they?

A CEO is a job, not a person. If you look up the "Zimbardo" experiment, he showed that when people are given lables (prison guards in his study) people adopt certain behaviour patterns that as a normal social person they would not even consider doing. Give a CEO rewards for screwing people over, put him in an office where he never has to see the misery he causes, and construct a system that facilitates him screwing over people, and it is no surprise they behave in that way.

I don't get the analogy.

And due to your quoting, I can only guess which it was... I assume it is the lightbulb one...

My point is that if I were to set up a communist democracy tommorrow, it would prove straight away that your idea of totalitarian communism is false.

I've always though socialism was the period between capitalism and communism where the government plays the role of refferee during the transition.

Loosely, in a Marxist sense. More literally, socialism is merely the control of assets by a group of citizens, as opposed to owned by "the party." In a more general (and less technically correct) sense (in the sense that I was using it) Socialism can be roughly equated to the wellfare state. IE the state provides for the wellfare of its citizenry.

They are so similiar I see no point in dividing them.

Socialism can be capitalistic, whereas communism cannot.

Much confusion surrounds the words "communism" and "socialism", particularly in the United States. In terms of ideology and politics, communism is a sub-category of socialism. Communist ideology is a specific branch of socialist ideology and the communist movement is a specific branch of the larger socialist movement. A person who calls himself or herself a "communist" is a certain kind of socialist; in other words, all communists are socialists but not all socialists are communists. In terms of socio-economic systems, communism and socialism are two different things. For example, socialism involves the existence of a state, while communism does not. Socialism involves public ownership of the means of production and private ownership of everything else, while communism abolishes private ownership altogether.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism#.22Communism.22_and_.22socialism.22

It has to be totalitarian to force people to give up their property. Either the state does it or the people do it. Either way, it's forcible/

Since when has voluntarily sharing objects required force? And someone who lives in a rented or a mortgaged house doesn't "own" it, the bank / leaser does. That doesn't offend your capitalist agenda, so why should not having personal ownership of any other resource? Consider it "renting" everything, without the downside of being obliged to pay for it. Wow, how terrible. What a nightmare.

And it's more like using cat hair instead of tungsten and claiming it will work and than noting the failure an trying again.

Nonsense. Despite being run by a succession of nutjob socipaths, being in a cold war with a super-power, having some of the most barren and inhospitable climates on the planet, and suffering massive desolation and depopulation in the second world war, Russia still managed to technologically rival the US right into the end of the last century.

That's not bad going at all, from the first country to put a man into space. Mir stayed up in space for ages, and the US still has yet to catch up with the technical sophistication and efficiency of the "Okranoplan"

Vast numbers of US citizens currently live in conditions substantially worse than an average moscow citizen's apartment. As Michael Moore points out in "Downsize this" (I think, it might've been Dude where's my country or TV nation) there are counties in the US which are practically "third world" - with no fresh water, unreliable electricity, etc etc.

Bigger empires than the US have lasted much longer. If you compare the US's timeline to some of the civilisations of antiquity, its current progress is unremarkable, and the US is still several centuries off even coming close. So holding up the US as a yardstick by which you judge if other empires have suceeded or failed is erroneous.

Anyway, my point is:

The central theme of communism is social equality. No communist states have had genuine equality, thus no "communist" states were truly communist. You cannot say communism has failed, because it has not been correctly implemented in order to fail.

The two most prominent of these were headed by Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky, respectively. Stalin argued for the consolidation of socialism in one country (even one as underdeveloped as Russia was at that time) and claimed that, due to the aggravation of class struggle along with the development of socialism, it was necessary to enforce strict Party discipline and eliminate all political dissent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism

Stalin managed to secure his Totalitarian policies by executing and silencing disenters. This is not inherantly Marxist, and as can be seen, his policy was directly contradictory to Leninist / Trotskyite democracy, which said that dissent and vocalisation strengthened the party, not deminished it.

Eliminating opposition is an inherantly capitalist ideal (might is right, the strong survive) and is also one of the core themes of facism.

When a dictator comes to power in a communist state, I'd say that the state becomes facistic.

The word fascism has come to mean any system of government resembling Mussolini's, that

* exalts nation and sometimes race above the individual,
* uses violence and modern techniques of propaganda and censorship to forcibly suppress political opposition,
* engages in severe economic and social regimentation,
* engages in corporatism, i.e. merges state with corporate power.

Fascist movements have historically been composed of small capitalists, low-level bureaucrats, and the middle classes. (...) A key feature of fascism is that it uses its mass movement to attack the organizations of the working class - parties of the left and trade unions (...)Fascism, in many respects, is an ideology of negativism: anti-liberal, anti-socialist, anti-Communist, anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, etc., and in some of its forms anti-religion. As a political and economic system in Italy, it combined elements of corporatism, totalitarianism, nationalism, and anti-communism.

Facism is decidedly pro-capitalist.

So, from this we can say it is not communism that has failed, but Facism. This would be more consistant, as it would also include the non-communist (and anti-communist) Nazi germany, as well as numerous other predominantly capitalistic regimes.

[DroppinScience]

*passes out*

Jeez, how can anyone read all that? I'd probably be 30 by the time I finished all that. :p

At least you guys are proving you have an IQ larger than 55.

As the eloquent gmsisko would once say: thanks for playing. ;)

[Ace42]

It was excruciatingly long. And thus tiring and painful. Which put me into a very bad mood. I had been up for over 24 hours straight by the end of it.

[EN[i]GMA]

In lieu of another point by point refutation (Which I'm more than happy to provide), I think it would be more effective if you laid out your views.

[EN[i]GMA]

*passes out*

Jeez, how can anyone read all that? I'd probably be 30 by the time I finished all that. :p

At least you guys are proving you have an IQ larger than 55.

As the eloquent gmsisko would once say: thanks for playing. ;)

My last post took an hour and 15 minutes and I don't think writing another novel would solve anything.

Debating with Ace would be a lot more enjoyable if he didn't have to patronize everyone. I've seen debates where he and the person were in 99% agreement and he still hounded them over every last detail.

And I would like to add, that if capitalism were the abject failure you claim it be (Though nothing like the faux-utopia I claim it be) why are standards of living so high in Western countries? Why do the majority people live reasonably comfortable lives? Is it increased government regulating? Market effects?

Because I see your criticisms, and see how many are valid, yet I don't see a viable alternative.

[Ace42]

GMA']why are standards of living so high in Western countries?

Two reasons:
1. Control over the world's most valuable and useful resources. This includes the all important "capital"
2. The exploitation of the people in non-western countries.

Why do the majority people live reasonably comfortable lives?

In capitalist countries? Iraq was a capitalist country, their lives are not exactly comfortable. Palestine was a capitalist country. India has been a capitalist country for a whole century, and a self-governing capitalist country for half of that. They are poor. It is very telling that you say "why do people in the west have comfortable lives?" and ignore all the numerous *capitalist* countries which are suffering the worst kind of abject poverty.

If capitalism works, why does it not work elsewhere? Why, if capitalism works and you see it as a gap that naturally closes, is the gap between the rich and the "not as rich" getting bigger and bigger, despite the "poor" having such a great quality of life?

If capitalism is so great, why did the great depression occur? Why is 60% of *all* American assets owned by other nations? Check out the stats. 60% of the US belongs to other nations. That is one helluva national debt.

You could argue that the commie states are so poor because they couldn't borrow money like the US did, or live off the massive interest the US accrews like other first-world nations.

[EN[i]GMA]

Two reasons:
1. Control over the world's most valuable and useful resources. This includes the all important "capital"
2. The exploitation of the people in non-western countries.

By exploitation you mean globalisation, correct? The standard of living of these places increased incredibly since companies started putting up facilities there. How is recieving no money better than recieving little?



In capitalist countries? Iraq was a capitalist country, their lives are not exactly comfortable. Palestine was a capitalist country. India has been a capitalist country for a whole century, and a self-governing capitalist country for half of that. They are poor. It is very telling that you say "why do people in the west have comfortable lives?" and ignore all the numerous *capitalist* countries which are suffering the worst kind of abject poverty.

If capitalism works, why does it not work elsewhere? Why, if capitalism works and you see it as a gap that naturally closes, is the gap between the rich and the "not as rich" getting bigger and bigger, despite the "poor" having such a great quality of life?

If capitalism is so great, why did the great depression occur? Why is 60% of *all* American assets owned by other nations? Check out the stats. 60% of the US belongs to other nations. That is one helluva national debt.

You could argue that the commie states are so poor because they couldn't borrow money like the US did, or live off the massive interest the US accrews like other first-world nations.


None of this countries are industrialized. That makes it very difficult to improve standards of living. First industrialization has to occue, as in India, than the market takes effect.

[Ace42]

GMA']By exploitation you mean globalisation, correct? The standard of living of these places increased incredibly since companies started putting up facilities there. How is recieving no money better than recieving little?

Actually, the sweatshop conditions in India have not changed at all in the slightest. And how is receiving no money better than receiving a little? Have you forgotten your explanation that workers must boycott work in order for a decent wage? By your own admission, it is better to have a terrible job for a ridiculously low wage than none at all.

None of this countries are industrialized. That makes it very difficult to improve standards of living. First industrialization has to occue, as in India, than the market takes effect.

So it is industrialisation, NOT capitalism that affects quality of life?

And no, conditions are not improving in the third world:

All over the world, disparities between rich and poor, even in the wealthiest of nations is rising sharply. Fewer people are becoming increasingly “successful� and wealthy while a disproportionately larger population are also becoming even poorer. There are many issues involved when looking at global poverty and inequality. It is not simply enough (or correct) to say that the poor are poor due to their own (or their government's) bad governance and management. If fact, you could quite easily conclude that the poor are poor because the rich are rich and have the power to enforce unequal trade agreements that favor their interests more than the poorer nations.

The IMF and World Bank-prescribed structural adjustment policies have meant that nations that are lent money are done so on condition that they cut social expenditure (such as health and education) in order to repay the loans. Many are tied to opening up their economies and being primarily commodity exporters in such a way that poor countries have found themselves in a spiraling race to the bottom as each nation competes against others to provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources to corporations and richer nations. This has increased poverty and dependency for most people. It also forms a backbone to what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules of trade.

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty.asp

So, "competition" makes everyone happier, eh? Oh look, what actually happens is the price spirals down and down, until people are poor. So THAT'S why companies do not often engage in price wars.

They know better than to break their own backs.

[ASsman]

I'm going to publish this thread. It will come in 3 volumes, and have illustrations.

[EN[i]GMA]

I'm going to publish this thread. It will come in 3 volumes, and have illustrations.

I'm sure it will be a big seller. Nothing sells like esoteric capitalist vs. communism debates!