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Who Was Ludwig von Mises
"it then dawned on me that all the improvements in the conditions of the working classes were the result of capitalism. social laws brought about the very opposite of what the legislation was intended to achieve"
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The subtlety of choosing Von Hayek to reinforce my point has entirely escaped you...and your crew of hangers on who will relentlessly attempt to reinforce your aborted effort at rebuttal via their facility with the ZH joystick...and you are the champion of their inarticulate rage - enjoy!
I don't indulge 'bullshit' junior...my favored four-legged friends are equine, and we work, eat, sleep and shit together, as part of a lifestyle of freedom and resistance that is outside of your ken altogether;
The world is full of] intellects whose desires have outstripped their understanding
the quote stands, as applicable not just to the intended - shills of the moneypower for whom it was warranted, but also to you and yours, as representatives of that small subset of deadenders who witlessly abet the moneypowerz chosen means of destroying western civilization by mouthing the platitudes their masters prompt them to...now hit that button...fast n furious like!
I'm not "furious" I'm just telling you you are full of shit. Let me explain so you may understand. During Hayek's era government controlled economies looked like they would win out--he was part of a tiny minority. What he saw was that intellectuals, like you, spun up perfect utopian schemes in their heads and never bothered to examine and study markets to see how people actually arranged their economic relationships and how capital flows were patterned thereon. You can whip yourself into an ideological frenzy and demonize all you want, but that was the central premise of Hayek's work, like it or not. So you misused the quote trying to make your "profound" point.
Joyful-
If you have peace than I applaud that and am genuinely happy for you. If you enjoy the privilege of living a lifestyle of your own choice then I admire that great fortune also. It does sound as if you enjoy your Liberty and I for one would like nothing more than to have that be true for every INDIVIDUAL.
Love it or Hate it....Capitalism is what happens in a State of Freedom. Capitalism is a game played by choice, and it's a game for sure, with winners and losers. Every system is game darlin'...EVERY SINGLE ONE.
With winners AND losers.
Real Capitalism (not the quasi fascist/communist bullshit we are ruled under today) simply maximizes the number of winners, with 'winners' being defined quite broadly....Broadly enough even to include YOU.
I salute the suavity of your volley...and the breadth of umbrella under which you offer shelter to even the least favored by your system of choice...but some of us are destined to keep on in search of where we started from - before all the isms and schisms that keep us fighting for crumbs in a land of milk n honey...and that is indeed a lifestyle.
I decided long ago I didn't need to win anything at the expense of someone else losing...that's a choice that's served me well, and kept me endlessly excited to discover what lies over the next horizon, secure in the knowledge that what we we wish for others we will surely reap.
salaam alaikum, ISEEIThttp://youtu.be/8YtPCdqkSl4 [Music in Me\Shaun Escoffery]
Not "system".
GAME>
It is different games.
First step is to be fully honest.
Okay...Love You.
http://www.chastitysf.com/index.html
AND<
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r08wfT8c8g4
Just to make it REAL:)
John D. Rockefeller not only never killed anyone his business empire, specializing in the refining and selling of Petroleum products was greatly beneficial to the American Economy and to American Citizens; who consistently enjoyed lower Kerosense prices than Europeans. Nor did he seek or receive any form of help from any level of government, whatsoever.
C'mon SAT...
"Rockefeller not only never killed anyone in his business empire.. and was greatly beneficial... to American Citizens... Nor did he seek or receive any form of help from any level of government, whatsoever"
I know what you are hoping for here... wishing for... and in your efforts to defend your positions in the future AND so I/we may never have to read something so wrong again... please research what I thought was common knowledge around these parts....
"Rockefeller, Standard Oil, I.G. Farben, Nazi Germany".... should be enough to catch a whiff of some heavy stench.
This is no new "revelation" and is certainly no conspiracy. Even the yahoos on yahoo know better, literally.
Rockefeller and Standard Oil was never about "America" man... it was about profit, at any cost, from any government.
David Rockefeller, at the 1991 Baden-Baden meeting of the Bilderberg Group
We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications, whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years."(He went on to explain:)'It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries.http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/One_World_Government/Council_For_Relations_TBG.html
John Rockefeller aggressively ran Standard Oil for 27years until his retirement in 1897. His business partnership in Standard Oil began with his brother William, Henry Flagler, Samuel Andrews, Stephen Hardness and Jabez Bostwick in Ohio. Rockefeller was called a robber barron because at one point, Standard Oil had almost complete control of oil refining in the United States. Standard Oil monopolized the industry by buying all components needed for manufacturing oil barrels; this prohibited his competition from getting their product to the market. Additionally, Standard Oil cut its rates so low that it undercut its competitors. Other companies could not keep up with the low rates and went out of business.
To his credit he did promote educating the poor and medical research, among other good deeds which should not go unnoticed if only done for a tax cut. Beggers can't be chosers.
http://ragstoriches.com/john-d-rockefeller-oil-tycoon-robber-baron-and-philanthropist/
Any system based upon "buying, selling and producing in an open market" is antithetical to the psychology of the capitalist, who uniformly seeks to monopolize whatever market they participate in, or at the very least to achieve such level of it's domination as to render competitors at a disadvantage in securing access to supply or to markets.
***********
Agreed about monopolization-but don't forget that Mises advocated property rights and a hard backed money system-which via consoumer/foreign trade etc. sentiment was self correcting ie: inflation/deflation based on free market flows-
"Mises advocated property rights and a hard backed money system-which via consoumer/foreign trade etc. sentiment was self correcting ie: inflation/deflation based on free market flows-"
What does "advocate property rights" mean?
In my mind it means having some entity that can kill people in order to ensure that one's property is protected. Problem is, however, that that power can point back at you. And as is all to clear to most, those with more "wealth" appear to have more "property rights."
Giving power to an external entity is one thing (and I really don't advocate for it), controlling it in an external entity is another...
Nice try--but you're missing or forgetting that money "gold" being redeemable for paper insured property rights-and a vote actually counted for someting...ie: power to the people-
the capitalist, who uniformly seeks to monopolize whatever market they participate in
FYI: A lot of us define the word differently. I'd call people who did what you describe "Assholes" or worse, but not "capitalists."
FYI...
the quotation which you selected in no way is a definition of "capitalism"...
rather, it's a summation of several decades of daily, on the ground research into capitalism in action...not the airy conceptual idea of it that neophytes to the world of business love to cast about, but the gritty reality of what it means to work in a market distorted by the avarice and greed of it's participants....
I can safely say that 90% of those who comment on this topic have but a glancing acquaintance with running a small business...interestingly I spent almost the entirety of my working life in the economic area which the producers of this video chose to use as backdrop to their thesis...and entered the rough and tumble world of the fresh produce business as a starry-eyed youth enamored of trade, commerce, and the fiction of free enterprise being our default system of doing business...
battered but not beaten after several subsequent decades of watching competitors daily pull a dozen dirty tricks to squash any real competition in our industry, I gained a finely honed sense of where what you understand to be "capitalism" deviates from 'free enterprise' and after leaving the field with my honor intact, had the freedom to start to educate myself on what I had witnessed, on a more intellectual level. That's an education that money just won't buy you.
'/'
I've never lost my love of buying and selling, the action of the market, the rush of adrenaline that comes from having to put it all on the line daily, but it's no longer possible for me to buy into the fictions peddled by those whose wish is to saddle us all with their delusions of grandeur and hegemony, nor easily abide the babblings of the myriad pundits who preach what they cannot practice.
well said , and.... there is NOT one reference to those "lousy" Khazarian bogeymen in this. Bravo!
SHylock lies in peaceful sleep in Venice; an invention of fertile mind to feed the prejudices of that age, like Othello.
But, it was Othello who was noble... and common, run of the mill Iago who was the villain. White man's burden was more Noble man than common white man himself!
Even Shakespeare realized that the "bogey man" was an invention of political shills, even though that invention procured man a thousand thrills and made its inventor, in the context of literary drama, the greatest poet of his language! Shakespeare was good at that, using history to portray human tragedies and create iconic popular heroes; witness Romeo and Juliet, tale of Guelph-Ghibelline rivalry of Montagues and Capulets set in Verona. What a backdrop for the greatest tale of love lost to Man's hubris. Our Shakepearean tragedy of today is written by WS Oligarchs, now playing at Montagues and Capulets, as Statist shills bred on fiscal teat vs Oligarchy egotistical, marauding capitalism.
That's human psychology, like the Holy grail of the ever free markets, new Crusade manipulated from behind the curtain by the Dukes of Venice or Florence, fathers of modern capitalism; as earlier by the Popes of Crusader fame.
Man's nature is devious like his original blood line of Cain and Abel (if you believe in that revelatory tale of snakes and ladders and apples and feeble Eve mother of Man's destitution).
And thus we forever climb that hill and think we've come down a mountain!
With Von Mises as Moses or Keynes as agnostic Erasmus.
Socialism and crony capitalism are the same thing. Free Market Capitalism is what we all desire and are talking about. Only a fool doesn't know the difference.
Compare: East Germany and West Germany, and South and North Korea post-WWII and how they turned out under two different regimes. If W. Germany and S. Korea were the result of a shitty form of capitalism, then what I think is, how much better it could still be done.
Your head would explode if you actually knew anything about the economies of post WWII W. Germany and South Korea; but since you're entirely innocent of any actual knowledge; you'll be safe enough. The book you want to read right away, is called "10 things they didn't tell you about Capitalism" your library probably has a copy.
Which peoples' bluff?
The combination of "business" and "government" is fascism. Do you equate so-called "fascism" and "capitalism"? If so, you eliminate the entire category that is called "capitalism", and with it, the basis of capitalism, which is "liberty", "freedom" and "free market".
Unfortunately, like advocates of socialism and fascism (and other supposed statist systems), most advocates of capitalism are close to clueless in the sense they have not thought through the system and its dynamics very thoroughly. So what we often find is people claiming to be "capitalists" who are actually statists (usually fascists).
In fascism, monopolies are very possible, and almost always very damaging to the economy. But those monopolies exist because the government gives them artificial power, either by regulation or by insider deals.
So "capitalists" should be very strongly against the actions of government that lead to monopolies. Unfortunately many aren't, because they are shallow thinkers. The result is, many of these shallow thinkers damage the credibility of capitalism by defending businesses that have become monopolies due to government action. Without government action, monopolies would be almost impossible.
It is a fact that most of the "super rich" became that way though a combination of "government favors/regulation" and fraud. Everyone should be enemies of those people and corporations, most certainly capitalists included. But if someone becomes super-rich only because they are massively productive, then so be it. They earned it, and earned it honestly. However, I doubt any of the richest 10,000 people on planet earth got that rich entirely through their own productive actions.
"It is a fact that most of the "super rich" became that way though a combination of "government favors/regulation" and fraud. Everyone should be enemies of those people and corporations, most certainly capitalists included. But if someone becomes super-rich only because they are massively productive, then so be it. They earned it, and earned it honestly. However, I doubt any of the richest 10,000 people on planet earth got that rich entirely through their own productive actions."
Hate the rich?
"Massively productive," what does That mean? How would That be determined? Would that include displacing locals so that their land could be exploited for resources? This is the kind of shit that ultimately gets us to accept "eminent domain" BS. It's the kind of shit the likes of United Fruit would do to peoples in other countries: and, well, United Fruit was seen as being very productive!
We can all stand around and bash, and praise some other system. The ISSUE is: how to get from here to there. Do we separate the "wealth" from all the fraudsters? And how do we determine who is a fraudster? And when fraudsters themselves control the very system that would administer against them? I'm just not seeing that this is going to happen, it's why revolutions happen (and I have little regard for "revolutions," as they really are power-takeovers). Seems that folks here wouldn't go for "redistributing" wealth: and if they do, I'll wager that they exempt themselves from such (well, because that's verging on socialism); I suppose, however, if one were to bite the bullet for the good of humanity and the future that one would use one form that they detest in order to dismantle one the is close to that which they prefer in order to correct the preferred system- sometimes you have to let go of the shore and have faith (faith in the superiority of the system that one believes in- if it's really GOOD then it ought to prevail [because BAD systems cannot succeed]).
Being "massively productive" does not mean or include "stealing or defrauding". So yes, anyone who steals or defrauds under the guise of government grants or powers... including so-called "emminent domain", is a predator, and is not a producer but is a predator.
The fact is, anyone who takes advantage of government power and scams like "emminent domain" should be hung, not praised.
How do we get to an honest system? No way to get from here to there any longer. Human beings passed the point of no return long ago, they accepted, sanctioned and even supported so many forms of predatory authoritarianism for so long, they have put the predators into the position they now hold --- total control over everyone.
Human beings: RIP.
"Unfortunately many aren't because they are shallow thinkers."
I would say that they are weak thinkers and that they apply survival instincts that are innate in humans to their businesses.
Your morality is a toolkit to be used as you see fit.
So in the world you inhabit; whereever that is; Bill Gates and Warren Buffett became super rich because of government help? So far, every one of the people I can think of on that list got there through their own actions; and the idea that the government "helped" would be greated with loud guffaws of laughter by most of them. As it occured to you that you may be hopelessly ignorant?
At the start of the career of Bill Gates was a gigantic fraud in which he cut a deal with IBM that he could not deliver. Then he went out, and lucky for him found someone who had something more-or-less like what he needed to honor his deal with IBM, purchased it, and the rest of his story is the history of having a dominant position.
So Bill Gates was not entirely non-productive (he did co-write some code way back when, including a fairly good BASIC interpreter for its time), but the riches he realized were untold thousands of times more than he produced.
Warren Buffer also was modestly productive in the old days, but when he got a chance he took advantage of corrupt insider deals and connections. And lately he has been the most gigantic and extreme corporate crony for government. He should be hung for the harm he has caused so many.
In case it isn't obvious, the fact that someone did something modestly honest and modestly productive once-upon-a-time does not forgive their other actions and travesties.
Always a delight to encounter that specimen of blowhard so wrapped up in building their sandcastle as to miss even noticing the tide roll in on them; I'm particularly taken with your performance previous on this thread - "Capitalism has a definition; you can find it in a dictionary" I believe you said...as it epitomizes the lazy thinker at their finest...I suspect you did well in school.
I do agree that great guffaws of laughter are common to your chosen heroes...but I fear that you may be one of those poor people who don't realize they are being laughed at, not with...
there's really not even an entry point into this discussion for one as learned as yourself I suspect...it would be to your advantage to retire from it with as much grace as you can muster.
Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch (and Mark Zuckerberg for that matter) became super rich because they are ruthless sociopaths...
I didn't down-arrow you, but I don't think that you can state that Gates and Buffett didn't benefit from the government. I seem to recall Bill's own dad lobbying for the continuance of the inheritance tax, claiming that the system enabled them to make the money that they had.
What most miss is the various arm-twisting that government does with other governments to facilitate trade. On the surface it may look like govt is removing obstacles, but it's usually along the lines of "we want you to buy Boeing airplanes, and if you do we won't do X <regarding some other policy> to you." Without being privy to all of this is hard to measure out the net of it all.
I'm not advocating for anything other than logic and facts.
Cogent, and fairly stated; with one small caveat...
Quite in line with your view of 'shallow thinkers' the unquestioning alignment of "capitalism" with 'freedom and 'free markets' is the leif motif of the ideologue: often seen here on these pages spouting learned phrases that resonate with the fervor of their belief systems but without the benefit of any empiric or logical backup...
The concept of capitalism is a project of several centuries by which the moneychangers who had grown wealthy from their lending to insolvent monarchies could use that wealth to leverage themselves into positions of power and influence which had previously been denied their caste. By buying intellectuals and writers, and pushing concepts like the'joint stock company' they were gradually successful in obliging the nobility to lose their sources of wealth and assent to marrying their offspring to their debt owners.
The true productive forces in western societies had no such public relations and planning departments to carry the flag for them, so gradually lost all traction and were, like the landed gentry, forced into a client relationship with the moneypower, whose use of usury in their banking system is simply a modern extension of the rake off of their ancestors - the tax farmers and slavers of eastern Europe. Nothing perforce has really changed since the feudal period of history...merely new owners...living off of ground rent and taxes without any productive input to their surrounding societies...
more a state of free pillage than free enterprise methinks. The people who shill for these parasites are those in need of being called out. National Review has a long and illustrious history of being full of pompous hirelings of the moneypower whose estimation of their intellectual powers far exceeds the actuality.
I've never liked the term "capitalism", and frankly, I don't think there is enough agreement about its meaning to have coherent conversations sometimes.
This is why I prefer to identify the appropriate state of human interaction is "honesty, ethics, productivity, benevolence" in which every interaction must be voluntary on the part of everyone involved. This is, of course, completely incompatible with any government that has ever existed, even including the old-time, newly-formed USA (or its states).
It is absolutely true that the predators of the world work tirelessly and endlessly to co-opt every term and every concept to benefit their predatory ways. And without a doubt the term "capiltalism" is one of their prime targets.
So you need to identify for us, exactly what term that regular people know do you adovcate? What term would you attach to human interactions that are fully honest and voluntary? Do you even allow such a term? If so, what is it?
And that was in fact my intended point. If you rig the terms so there is no way to identify a system in which people interact voluntarily, then how can two people even have a conversation about the subject at hand. That was my point. The guy was trying to define capitalism as being identical to fascism. Well, that's a waste of a perfect crappy term (capitalism). Why have two terms with the same meaning while we need a term for "liberty, productivity and voluntary interactions"?
It is a waste to argue with terms when people refuse to agree upon their meaning because the predators have utterly confused and manipulated them via their paid stooges in education and media. So how do you propose people have such conversations?
Very well done, and well put.
you say:
"The concept of capitalism is a project of several centuries by which the moneychangers who had grown wealthy from their lending to insolvent monarchies could use that wealth to leverage themselves into positions of power and influence which had previously been denied their caste. By buying intellectuals and writers, and pushing concepts like the'joint stock company' they were gradually successful in obliging the nobility to lose their sources of wealth and assent to marrying their offspring to their debt owners."
Just excellent. Or as E. Micheal Jones has provocatively suggested, "Capitalism is state-sponsored usury."
Throw in the metamorphosis of "joint-stock" to modern "corporate" organization, some Rothschild manipulations to ensure control of national currencies and all major financing--and crucially, the pledging by the political class of the taxed future earnings of the "masses" as fundamental collateral (social security card? Corporation UNITED STATES OF AMERICA?), ideological obfuscation that retroactively treats the War between the States as a crusade against slavery, US economy run by Bernard Baruch during our WWI crusade, etc, etc.
One can learn a great deal from the Mises crowd--their opposition to the war-mongers is exemplary, and their contrarian take on historical myths is stimulating. But they refuse to face reality by forever making the "appeal to irreality" in pretending that a "stateless" system is possible.
Your astute commentary is always a pleasure to read here...and more than offsets the dross which can be expected from the peanut gallery whenever the Austrian nerve is drilled into...I especially enjoy the quotes you supply.
If - and I cannot see a single reason why not - "capitalism" is synonymous with the 19th Century/the Industrial Revolution, then it is just a matter of fact that very little freedom has ever been involved, maybe unless one counts the brief and heady days of the 1960s, though those days were against a backdrop of slavery to the "Cold War" and the Vietnam War, for instance.
Labels are arbitrary. "Capitalism" never actually replaced "Mercantilism" and now there is "Financialism" which, methinks, is closest to the truth of it all of the usury banksters who have always corrupted whomever notionally have 'power'.
Anyhow, if I understand you correctly, I agree with you that nothing has really changed since feudal times ... just don't expect the peasant class/the masses/the proletariat to have any idea.
"So "capitalists" should be very strongly against the actions of government that lead to monopolies. Unfortunately many aren't, because they are shallow thinkers."
Let's test how non-shallow of a thinker you are, shall we?
You are commissioned to create the "new" model. Let's hear some basics.
The good of the people is the highest law.
Freedom: Freedom and liberty of the invididual is of the utmost importance.
Collectivism: The greater good of "we the people" is of the utmost importance.
"Congress shall make no Law abridging the freedom of production or trade." -- "Atlas Shrugged"
Really shallow thinking. Or am I missing the sarcasm??
Some values trump other values. Like what is good for the masses is more important than what is good for the individual. We cannot leave production and trade free from constraints imposed in the name of the greater good. That would be counnter-productive to society. And society must be able to define how they wish to live. If society desires that whales should not be hunted into extinction, then Congress should have the means to restrict that production or trade which would drive the whales to extinction. Simple example. You can come up with many others on your own.
If you weren't being sarcastic, then I offer you this idea: the world does not exist soley for the benefit of producers and traders. Since this is true, the activities of the producers and traders must be restricted where they cross over into mucking up the world that everybody else lives in (e.g., keep your mine tailings out of my drinking water; don't log all the trees off the hills so that my town is burried with landslides the next time it rains; plug up your oil wells in the gulf when they blow; don't just let them run freely until the oil field has emptied itself into the water). I think you get the point. You can probably come up with better examples than these yourself.
true free markets have a minimum barrier to entry. as soon as someone gains enough market share their aim is to stop the entry of new competitors by raising the barrier to entry with the use of .gov and crushing their competition with the help of .gov. so .gov is the real culprit in the bastardization of markets and real price discovery.
And herein lies the conundrum. I wish it weren't so...
Even if there were no government to seek favors from BIG entities would ensure they controlled things through the use of force. This is basic human nature! In order to hold them in check you have to have a BIGGER force, one which could, and does, get corrupted.
We could (assuming there's enough time and planet available) spend a couple of hundred years with some "new" system and I'm almost positive that it would produce the same basic results that we see today. The ONLY exception that I can think of is anarchism (which, like anything else, presents some tough issues).
the countervailing forces of competition would prevent(theoritically) anyone from getting too big. what is the point of buying your competitors to consolidate markets if another company copuld form to take market share away from you. the reality is that you are correct. i have argued many times that the only truly free market is the illegal drug trade where the only thing more powerful than .gov is a threat to your life as part of the model since .gov only affects business by keeping the trade underground because arrest is a minor nuisance but enough of a nuisance to take the precautions against it but it is applied uniformly across the business.
I really, really DO want to be rid of all this shit. I tend to believe that the only real chance is to toss off ALL governments and to neuter BIG corporations and power: the only close description for what would be in such an environment would be anarchism (which brings up problems of word association). Of course, one cannot fight power... so, the only plausible avenue is to apply oneself toward creating the future that one believes in- best to just distance from the corrupt/bad.
Fix all your problems. Just get rid of testosterone.
If you don't, there is no solution.
If otherwise left alone (totally free markets), the biggest and baddest will take over and tell everyone how they can conduct business. History is full of proof of this aspect of testosterone. It has been said before: the only way to avoid such a natural outcome of testosterone is to have some form of government, supposedly responsible to the people, be the biggest and baddest.
Testosterone decrees that there will always be some form of government. You want to pretend that the question is whether government. Inform your opinions with the stories of history. The question has always been what form of government?
Testosterone has always seen to it that someone takes over. We can never be free of that unless we free ourselves of testosterone. Given that, we can only hope to influence who it is that takes over - we can never prevent the process of being taken over. Unless we happen to be the biggest and baddest ourselves. If that is the case, we probably would want to take testosterone pills rather than get rid of the testosterone.
Second anti-testosterone comment here in 24 hours...what's up with that?
Testosterone is the gods' gift to all of mankind...like all gifts of the gods, it bears fruit bitter or sweet, depending on the eater...the mark of a man is his relationship to it, it's either his to control, and therefore enjoy, or it controls him, and therefore reduces him to the animal level instead of raising him and his womanly companion to the stars...
Truly, one needs be a joyless minion of the dark powerz to seek extinction of our potency as free people...free to be what we make ourselves...not what our hormones or our overlords 'decree'
That was not anti-testosterone. It was a biology lesson. Scientists turn agressive male animals into docile nurtures by manipulating testosterone levels. Scientists turn docile female animals into aggressive warriors by manipulating testosterone levels.
"In August 1869, Gould began to buy gold in an attempt to corner the market, hoping that the increase in the price of gold would increase the price of wheat such that western farmers would sell, causing a great amount of shipping of bread stuffs eastward, increasing freight business for the Erie railroad.
During this time, Gould used contacts with President Ulysses S. Grant's brother-in-law, Abel Corbin, to try to influence the president and his Secretary General Horace Porter.
These speculations in gold culminated in the panic of Black Friday, on September 24, 1869, when the premium over face value on a gold Double Eagle fell from 62% to 35%.
Gould made a nominal profit from this operation, but lost it in the subsequent lawsuits."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Gould#Black_Friday
*that* gould?
Yes, that gould. Andrew cargegie built almost all the public libraries in America, and Henry Ford doubled the wages of the industrial worker in America. These posts are discouraging; the complete lack of education and thinking ability on the part of the posters is very depressing. Capitalism has a definition; you can find it in a dictionary. Von Mises was right; and in the right. The Government is the problem; a capitalist is merely someone who uses an organized system of investment to finance a business; other than that it tells us nothing more about what kind of business or whether or not they had any help from the government. As for barriers to entry in markets; trade guilds, and unions, are classic barriers to entry which usually have no help from government at all. So much ignorant childish ranting.
So good of Carnegie and Ford to help prepare us to work in Their factories.
"The Government is the problem; a capitalist is merely someone who uses an organized system of investment to finance a business; other than that it tells us nothing more about what kind of business or whether or not they had any help from the government."
What happens when that "organized system of investments" is impinged upon? Who does that "someone" then turn to in order to seek relief?
The backlash against the monopolists is what eventually got us to where we are today: big govt big local govt stupid big school admin crazy unions taxes entitlement programs and finally The Obamerramma.
People never stop and ask, "Why, if things were so bad in factories, offices, mines, etc did people originally start working there instead of remaing on the farm>" The answer is, of course, that a long day job was better than 24 hours scrounding for existence. Starvation was such a normal aspect of life before the Industrial Revolution that it was almost a given.
One thing - Ford nor Rockefeller nor Vanderbilt never went out and rounded up folks and forced them to work as in Germany, China, Cuba, Russia, etc. The Ford factory is probably the number one reason you are typing on a cheap, reliable keyboard.
...Ford nor Rockefeller nor Vanderbilt never went out and rounded up folks and forced them to work as in Germany, China, Cuba, Russia...
of course they didn't...but you've picked the wrong guy to use for your revision of history...http://www.kevinmacdonald.net/HenryFord-2.htm
Ford was an American entrepeneur...not a cyrpto-jewish pillager like the rest of class you mistakenly lump him with...
he paid the ultimate price for refusing to be saddled with the kosher rake off that is the price of doing business in the West...they throttled his access to credit, sabatoged his supply chains, boycotted his products, but he never recanted...the entire text of his masterful study of international jewry is still available on internet archive...er, until it isn't!
Thanks. Watching this was a wonderful affirmation of belief in free markets and individual liberty. Great time to post it.