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"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under socialism, the reverse is true."
Often ascribed to J.K. Galbraith.
"Employees produce more value per hour than they are paid per hour. That surplus amount of value, once converted from commodity to money (through the sale), is profit, and goes to the capitalist. The same goes for services.
Thus, quite literally, the entire history of capitalism is built on the concept of the capitalist getting more than what he pays for."
~"Thus, quite literally, the entire history of capitalism is built on the concept of the capitalist getting more than what he pays for."~
And if he doesn't, then why would or should he? Folks seem to forget that part these days...
Economics are dead simple: If Joe wants a new roof made by John, John makes the roof and Joe writes him an IOU (worth of a new roof). So next time John want something done he knows Joe is good at, John can use this IOU to trade for Joe's work.
When it becomes ridiculous is when Joe can't write this IOU, but only James has the power to write IOU's. Now Joe has to lend an IOU (worth of a roof) from James who writes this IOU with his magic pen. So now Joe uses the IOU to pay John.
What happened?
Joe is in debt with James (who has done no work) equal to the worth of a roof + interest
John has a IOU equal to the worth of a roof.
Joe has to work for James to repay the IOU (worth one roof + interest)
So John has worked hard to provide Joe with a new roof, Joe is breaking his back doing work for James.
And James is best of, doing no work at all but getting Joe to work for him with a strike from his magical IOU pen.
One could say 2 slaves and one master were created, with the power of writing IOU's
Now James can control the economy of their little community, since only he can write IOU's. If he wants a economic boom, he will write IOU's easily without questioning. But if he wants to create a crisis, he refuses to write a single IOU, without these IOU's Joe and John can't trade, so all activity stops..
We can be ruled by viscious capitalistic bankers
or idiot socialistic academics.
Or by idiotic socialistic academics (Obama, Clintons) via viscious capitalistic bankers (Rubin, Blankfenstein, Dimon)
The Banksters control all, including the socialists who control the populous via their tyrannical laws.
The world is desperately imperfect. Even if a quarter of the working people were engrossed in new thoughts and inventions and lived off the others, humanity would still gain tremendously thanks to the constant stream of inventions and intellectual work emerging from this horde of people striving upward.
Thus, quite literally, the entire history of capitalism is built on the concept of the capitalist getting more than what he pays for.
Those who own the means of production which can include anything from a pizza shop to a giant factory provide workers with the means to produce at a level they could not achieve without that capital equipment. The worker earns more money working for those who own the means of production than he could if he worked by himself with his own capital equipment. So it is not only the owners and managers who get more out of the system than they put into it, the workers also get more out of it than they put into it. That's the beauty of capitalism and voluntary association. Those who interact in this fashion do so because it is the best available means of profit for each participant and it makes more goods more widely available thus creating a varied and vibrant market in which those profits can be exchanged.
Yeahbutt; in the first picture the Red Guy is holding the gun (which makes sense if you think about it) and taking the Blue Guy's money. (That makes less sense, but okay...). Then in the second picture the Red Guy is holding the gun and he also has the money - leading me to believe that he simply wants to shoot the Blue Guy.
Interesting...
Capitalism sucks. Socialism sucks. Communism sucks. What we need is an evangelical Christian theorcracy. More people need to be burned at the stake.
Q. How do you turn Capitalism into Crony Capitalism?
A. Wait.
No, you'll need a government for that.
"As far as I'm concerned, and I think the rest of the movement, too, we are anarcho-capitalists. In other words, we believe that capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism. Not only are they compatible, but you can't really have one without the other. True anarchism will be capitalism, and true capitalism will be anarchism." -- Rothbard
From the book "Market for Liberty" Chapter 2. Explaining Laises Faire philosophy of free markets. It's a great read. TLDR Physical force is immoral.
"It must be a society in which each man is left unmolested, in which he is free to think and to act on his ideas ... without anyone else trying to force him to live his life according to their standards. Not only must each man be free to act, he must also be free to fully enjoy the rewards of all his pro-life actions. Whatever he earns in emotional joy, material goods, and intellectual values (such as admiration and respect) must be completely his—he must not be forced against his will to give up any of it for the supposed benefit of others. He must not be forced to sacrifice, not even for “the good of society.”
To the extent that a man isn’t free to live his life peacefully according to his own standards and to fully own whatever he earns, he is a slave. Enslaving men “for the good of society” is one of the most subtle and widespread forms of slavery. It is continually advocated by priests, politicians, and quack philosophers who hope, by the labor of the enslaved, to gain what they haven’t earned.
A society in which men can realize their full potential must be one in which each man is free to act in his self-interest according to the judgment of his own mind. The only way a man can be compelled against his will to act contrary to his judgment is by the use or threat of physical force by other men. Many pressures may be brought to bear on a man, but unless he is compelled by physical force (or the threat of force, or a substitute for force) to act against his will, he still has the freedom to make his own choices. Therefore, the one basic rule of a civilized society is that no man or group of men is morally entitled to initiate (to start) the use of physical force, the threat of force, or any substitute for force (such as taking something from another person by stealth) against any other man or group of men."
Nonsense. I want you to look at the anarchist utopias of sub-saharan africa and get back to me on how your theory works in the real world.
stop beating the dead horse - eastern europe was a case of state fascism not socialism or communism, learn first or leave the fear mongering for retards, don;t think anybody here is retarded.
Re " So it is not only the owners and managers who get more out of the system than they put into it, the workers also get more out of it than they put into it":
Don't tell that to me, tell it to the workers at Foxxconn. Oh hang on, the alternative is starving to death. Yep, much better. Carry on...
How many times do I have to state this simple fact? Capitalism simply means that you can catch more fish with a net (capital equipment) than you can by hand.
Self righteously screaming that free goods and services don't fall from the sky and how unfair that is doesn't feed anybody.
That's not how capitalism is pitched though; there is a two (2) part pitch. The first part is the maximization of the efficient distribution of goods and services within the economy. The second part is that the fruit of your own labor will be returned to you [in a non-capitalist society, the fruit of your labor isn't yours to begin with]. I think you're conveniently ignoring the second part. Aside from the fact that the first part never actually occurs in practice, but is more of a cleanest, dirty shirt situation.
Thankyou Mr Macho. Spot on.
My problem is not with Capitalism the idea, it is with Capitalism the Religious Cult, which is what we see advertized on ZH.
Billy: If someone told me that the sky is blue then I'd believe them. Of course the sky is blue. I see it every day unless it is cloudy. But if a thousand people keep telling me the sky is blue, and media is constantly running articles about how the sky is blue, I'll start taking a closer look at the sky because people don't continually state the obvious for no reason. Someone will be trying to fuck me over and it will depend on me crapping on about the sky being blue.
The whole Capitalism/Socialism dichotomy is a lie. It is bullshit. Something is happening behind the scenes. Like I said, TPTB just use whatever suits them and they use your beliefs against you. "Ohhhh! You're an evil Socialist!" No, most times it is plain old theft and extortion, so why don't we call a Spade a Spade? When you steal a hundred bucks and toss a dollar to a beggar, is that "socialism" or "thuggery"? Like I said before, the words send the idealists running round in circles while the truth is so much easier to decipher without the ideological pigeon-holing bullshit.
Socialists like loans in order to forward-demand their purchase of material things too.
they do, but as a rule they pay a more punishing rate of interest for the privilege
Funny thing is that, at it's most basic root, there is nothing in Socialism to justify borrowing. The basic premise of Socialism is okay. It is all the crap that gets bolted onto it that turns it into a monster. Likewise Communism. Small tribes do well living as a Commune. But as the tribe gets bigger, people get replaced with "Representatives" and the whole Communism thing turns into a monster.
Socialists like loans? Guess what! Capitalists LOVE loans. Show me one large Capitalist who doesn't have any loans. Capitalists LOVE loans because it allows them to acquire Capital immediately and then then Capital pays off it's own loan and the Capitalist doesn't have to dig into his own pocket! You wanna build a car factory: You gonna borrow to buy a factory or are you going to use the savings out of your own pocket? How long will it take you to save?
Number 2 Guess what! Competition encourages Capitalists to borrow on thinner margins until there is no CashFlow Profit, only a potential Capital Gains Profit ... but the Capitalists keep borrowing because the banksters KEEP LENDING. And now might be a good time to refresh your memory about what Hyman Minsky had to say about Hedge, Speculative and Ponzi Financing. And then perhaps you may admit that the Capitalists couldn't self-regulate as they quite happily slit their own throats in exactly the same way workers do when they compete for minimum wages. The banksters should never have been bailed-out but the rot started when UNREGULATED banksters were allowed to lend as much as they liked to who-ever they liked, and were FREE to dump their losses onto whoever was dumb enough to buy their losses that were rated AAA by the ratings agencies and why not? The banksters bought those AAA ratings fair-and-square on the free markets.
That's not a very optimistic false trichotomy.
"Courage my friend, it's not too late to make the world a better place." T Douglas
"Every man's nature is a sufficient advertisement to him of the character of his fellows. My right and my wrong, is their right and their wrong. Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and work together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie, namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the world." -- Emerson's Politics
Wow, Billy, you're really on today
Friends of liberty must keep on their toes. We may well be making these arguments publicly in the near future in an effort to stave off the moocher and looters.
Yes, because at any time in the world's history, a material number of its beings have been interested in listening to reason...
Those vicious bankers are NOT capitalists.
The Ten Planks of the
Communist Manifesto
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Exactly! Wall street banks financed Lenin and communists to replace the nationalist czar in order to create a central bank. The communist central bank, although controlled by party officials, would be authorized to agree to get 'loans' made of fiat money from western banks and repay in goods made by state owned factors, mines, and farms. And that's how it played out in the Soviet Union in the 1920's, until the new nationalist Stalin eliminated the 'internationalist' element in the ruling party such as Trotski (whose wife was the daughter of a banker).
Nothing has changed. Wall street/Rothschild banks arrange Orange revolutions to eliminate nationalist leaders and replace them with a crony government and a privately owned central bank. The crony government gives the real power to the private central bank, which again agrees to get loans made of fiat money from western banks.
They are criminals, mafia, neo-slavemasters, less than human, dung,....Kids should be warned about them and fairly-tails should end with them getting their just desserts.
They didn't win by being Capitalists. They didn't win by being Communists. They won by adapting to whatever system was in place at the time and doing whatever worked at the time. A lot of their opponents were neutralized by simply sending them off to run around in ideological circles so they wouldn't notice the real looting that was taking place. That is why they laugh at us.
They win through corruption. The "isms" are simply the use of ideology to justify or conceal the corruption. Each party uses, as an excuse, the excesses of prior opposition party control to justify even more, ultimately all for our betterment (liars).
There is no capitalist, there is no communist... There is only competition and adaptation. How that competition takes place and the form it eventually takes often repeats or rhymes, but political theories are not emotions that lead to human action. Thus, human action always dictates the political environment, not vice versa.
Err, yes, Karl Marx came to the same conclusion some 150 years ago. You've been away for a while?
And as is so often the case, while Marx did an excellent job at identifying the problem, he suck hind quarters when it came to the solution.
Karl Marx understood there would be bloodthirsty leeches like himself (never worked a day in his life IIRC) who would work to game the system and turn government into an instrument of power to enrich themselves and enslave everyone else.
Err, yes, Karl Marx came to the same conclusion some 150 years ago. You've been away for a while?
You are forgetting who bears the risk. The worker is guaranteed an agreed upon wage in exchange for his labor, regardless of whether or not the capitalist profits from it.
It's a pretty fucking simple relationship between risk and reward. Some "employees" decide to become "capitalists" by setting up a small business and taking the risk of using their labor (and also being the capitalist) to make a bigger profit than selling their labor to some other capitalist. They take a risk with their livelihood and their life savings.
It used to work OK, not perfect, but since the .gov and the biggest capitalists merged, it's broken, hence crony capitalism, which is the same in effect as Socialism. The outcome or playing field is the same: you either control the means of power by "election" or terror, or you control the means of power via paying cash for it.
The point is that it doesn't matter if the overlords make you a serf via "social policies in the best interest of the collective", or they make you a peon via thousands of pages of regulation, punative taxation and general hostility that make starting/owning a small business impossible. Either way you are a slave.
They don't like that inconvenient truth.
It's a cherry picked truth at best. If the capitalist didn't expect to make profit from the transaction, then it wouldn't be performed. While you can say that he bears the entirety of the risk, there is no mitigation of profit based upon the risk level undertaken. In other words, each transaction does not carry with it the same level of risk.
Moreover, capital often controls the mechanism to assess the risk associated with a transaction. The profits of many transactions are known, or practically known, before being undertaken.
Further, in order for there to be an imbalance of risk for a transaction, one of the parties necessarily must have more bargaining power than the other. In other words, in a perfectly competitive environment, the capital reward would be mitigated by labor's reward (or other factors), thus increasing the risk of capital loss. This bargaining exchange tends to be more dictated than a legitimate exercise. In short, if might does not make right, it is practically difficult to differentiate between physical duress and any other form of exploitation.
While it is possible to have a well bargained exchange and both parties get what they want (while expanding the pie so to speak), that's not what we see happen over time. One party tends to get the better of the exchanges, across all spectra of human existence and all time periods. If this is the case, then how do you continue to profess your "truth"?
PS, this process is even worse when the pie is shrinking, relatively speaking between the parties.
Government has removed the "risk" from the Capitalist and the reward from thw worker.
Money is just printed out of thin air, there is no risk for the Capitalist. When they lose, they put the loss on the taxpayers.
Might as well just print money to fund jobs directly, there is no need for the slave master Mr. Capitalist.
The Federal Reserve is anti-capitalist, not capitalist. Capitalism deploys stored wealth in order to increase the potential for future production while the Fed has no stored wealth just unbacked paper which it use to manipulate markets.
You always blame capitalism for things that are done by collectivists. Why is that?
People is wealth, not money, not gold, not capital. This is your fundamental confusion.
Capital is money and is printed out of thin air. People work for money and uses money to buy stuff they worked to create in return.
So just print money to fund jobs, and cancel the excess money and you have a perfect economy. No Capitalist masters required. No need to be a wage slave either.
Capital is money and is printed out of thin air
We JUST went over this. Federal Reserve Notes are not a free market device.
People is wealth
That opinion explains why you think that you can own people. But people are not wealth, they are independent, self-owning biological actors.
Crony capitalism prints money out of thin air to socialize losses. True capitalism requires the creative destruction of enterprise as newer and better ways to deploy capital are invented/innovated.
Right on the money; pun obviously intended.
I would add that "crony capitalism" seems to be a confusing term to many as they see it as a form of capitalism rather than as a perversion of capitalism. A better word would be oligarchy (a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution).
+100
They have managed to take capitalism, what was supposed to rely on free markets to function, and then add socialist concepts to make it kinder and gentler. As we watch capitalism transformed into something else, a bastardization of anything that might look like a free functioning market, its continually worsening output is blamed, not on the viral additives that have been introduced to deliberately cause such effects, but on capitalism...primarily free markets. We have allowed "capitalism' to be used as a term implying free markets, when in actuality it is anything but. But then again every policy that has been imposed resulting in disaster have been faulted only in the claim they did go far enough. The poison applied by our genius doctors of the economy has been determined to be of too weak of strength, and higher concentrations are ordered. never, ever will the medicine being applied be questioned as the cause.
The capitalist has his savings, or capital at risk. The banker, call him the 'financialist', has nothing at risk yet controls both the capitalist and the worker.
"Israeli Sephardic leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in his weekly Saturday night sermon said that non-Jews exist to serve Jews.
“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel,” he said during a public discussion of what kind of work non-Jews are allowed to perform on Shabbat.
"Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat," he said to some laughter."
http://www.jta.org/2010/10/18/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/sephardi-leader-yosef-non-jews-exist-to-serve-jews
If you don't like the Jews there is always the trillion dollar pope.
"It's a pretty fucking simple relationship between risk and reward. "
LIAR. ASSHOLE. DUMBFUCK.
PRIVATIZATION OF PROFITS & SOCIALIZATION OF LOSSES. BAILOUTS. CARVE OUTS.
TAKE YOUR GODDAMNED LYING ELSEWHERE SCUMBAG.
I'm a liar because why? You're the fuckhead Socialist, why are you on this board?
"PRIVATIZATION OF PROFITS & SOCIALIZATION OF LOSSES. BAILOUTS. CARVE OUTS."
IS NOT CAPITALISM you troglodyte. IT"S CRONY CAPITALISM.
Got that Mr ALL CAPS.
YOU ARE A PUDDINGHEAD ASSHOLE. GO TO RUSSIA AND EXPERIENCE THE REAL THING. Let me know how your numb, bleeding asshole feels after that.
God what a dumbass.
Marge: and what is "Risk"? If that Capitalist does nothing, supply stays low, prices increase potential reward increases, the risk/reward profile becomes more palatable, more would-be Capitalists "magically" appear.
"This guy deserves to be rewarded becoz he took on huge risk!" No, he was reckless. True, he got lucky and beat everyone else to the punch bowl. And four of his mates fell over before they got to the punchbowl. All were equally reckless, but one got lucky. The other side of that "Fortune favours the brave" saying.
The world can't afford Hedge Finance. You didn't take on enough risk! If you ain't indulging Ponzi Finance then you're taking up too much space!
Keep the workers poor. Then they will never accumulate enough Capital to be able to threaten you with Competition.
"The reason I am so wealthy is becoz I MANAGED my RISK." i.e figured out onto whom I can dump all my losses.
All you have to do is borrow more money and run at a loss until your competitors go broke. An idiot and his bankster beats the world as they "manage their risk".
"Marge: and what is "Risk"? If that Capitalist does nothing, supply stays low"
Dumbass, and the capitalist does NOT get paid? Get it?
"This guy deserves to be rewarded becoz he took on huge risk!" No, he was reckless. True, he got lucky and beat everyone else to the punch bowl. And four of his mates fell over before they got to the punchbowl."
Sounds like you are jealous. Jealous people ascribe other success to luck, except for their own.
""The reason I am so wealthy is becoz I MANAGED my RISK." i.e figured out onto whom I can dump all my losses."
Isn't that the whole idea of insurance?
You guys kill me. The point of the article is CRONY capitalism, not capitalism.
You're such a stupid, ill-educated American you can't even tell the differnce between the two anymore, and that's the sad part.
They won.
Re "Dumbass, and the capitalist does NOT get paid? Get it?": You betcha I get it. Now let me use the standard retort that Capitalists use on underpaid workers: Get a job elsewhere. Start your own business. Competition is good. If there's no profit then don't do it ...
... or maybe we can just admit that it is possible for good people to be crushed by the herd through no fault of their own ...
Re Jealousy: Yeah, I am "jealous" that I wasn't able to jump on the property Ponzi scam, I am jealous that I have no clue how to access "friendly financiers" ..., sort of, not really.
Yes, there are lots of good little Capitalists out there. (I think. Can they still survive? I have met a couple of good ones. I assume they're honest in all their dealings.) Capitalism is a great idea. But if it is your only idea then you're gonna get, umm, what you've already got. I guess you must be happy then and it's all working out quite well.
"or maybe we can just admit that it is possible for good people to be crushed by the herd through no fault of their own"
Of course it's possible, but I don't see how that's relevant to the conversation.
"es, there are lots of good little Capitalists out there. (I think. Can they still survive? I have met a couple of good ones. Iassume they're honest in all their dealings.) Capitalism is a great idea. But if it is your only idea then you're gonna get, umm, what you've already got. I guess you must be happy then and it's all working out quite well."
No, no, no. The point of the article, and my point, is that we don't have Capitalism at all. We have a perversion of Capitalism that our politicians claim is Capitalism, but is really more like Oligarchy. Capitalism is NOT crushing people, Political Cronies are crushing people using government.
Capitalism nor socialism are crushing anyone. People are crushing them. The fact that those people choose one economic and/or political model over another to do so is largely irrelevant.
Socialism would work if it ran as advertised, just as Capitalism would work if it ran as advertised. And out of Ideal Capitalism and Ideal Communism, I'd probably still prefer Ideal Capitalism. (But Why? A slave is a slave and the name of his master is quite irrelevant, be it "the Man" or "the Market", they can be as brutal as each other. I guess Capitalism offers more HOPE).
But in the real world we don't have Ideals. We have Real Capitalism and Real Socialism and that is the mess you see in the real world today. The hope is that Capitalism gives us a smaller mess to deal with. Capitalism stops concentrated power? Sure it does. Until it doesn't. And then you say, "But we don't have Ideal Capitalism, we have Crony Capitalism". Wasn't Ideal Capitalism supposed to prevent the Crony Capitalism? It didn't. May as well say that gravity guarantees that the ocean is flat. And it is. Until an earthquake causes a Tsunami and then all that "Gravity keeps the ocean flat" stuff goes out the window.
Yes, and what gets lost in this is that
1) the original capitalist probbly worked longer to accumulate capital (while maybe others enjoyed leisure time)
2) Said capital was put at 100% risk in a business venture by the owner
3)provided a tax base for government thieves to appropriate monies for governemnt largesse
4)Provided a source of living for someone else who either wasn't motivated to start a business or assume the risk
Socialists always seem to forget these inconvenient facts and no Im not talking about Walmart, Im talking about the hundreds of thousands of small businesses that take a gamble every time they open their doors.
Yes and what happens to the equation when these idiots think the capital can be printed?
Jesus. Give it a rest.
There is no exploitation in a system of voluntary exchange. It is simply not possible.
those words mean so much to someone experiencing involuntary spasms of hunger.
Strawman.
How so? Nanny Moose is referring to capitalism as a system of (wholly) voluntary exchange, it isn't.
It's a human construct. Humans experience involuntary needs, so an inherently amoral system providing for those human needs isn't exclusively voluntary, unmitigated it can be predatory too.
Try again.
Please provide the soothing words a socilaist would use to quiet pangs of hunger.
"Here, have this sandwich."
Give a man a sandwich which you've stolen from someone else and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man how to profit from his own labor while not inflicting violence on others and he will eat for a lifetime.
Malwartism
Your little cartoons don't change the fact that you are the one who depends on politicians with guns and prisons to do your bidding while in a free market all transactions are voluntary.
"Yes mummy. My three year old little brother gave me his ice-cream because he didn't want it. He said so.
Just to make the argument a little more interesting and drift away from the well worn paths:
What if someone chooses to opt out: Neither be Capitalist, Communist, Slave Owner nor Slave. What if someone decides to just walk away, catch / grow their own food, build their own shelter ... TODAY. Let's assume this guy is debt-free and owns no more than the clothes on his back and, say, lives in the middle of a large city. He's gonna opt out - ask for nothing, give nothing, receive nothing, do it all himself....
First he needs access to fertile land. Where is it? How does he get there?
What? He has to PAY for it? No, no, no, this guy is CHOOSING TO OPT OUT and is currently DEBT FREE. Where is the nearest fertile land and how does he get there?
All Capitalist Choice is based on the ability to OPT OUT. So let's start there, shall we?
HOW EASY IS IT TO OPT OUT???
catch / grow their own food, build their own shelter
That is capitalism. Capitalism is simply the fact that one can catch more fish with a net (capital equipment) than one can by hand. Agriculture is a fine example of capitalism. Instead of gathering berries which are ripe today one expends energy in cultivating food which can last throughout the winter.
First he needs access to fertile land. Where is it? How does he get there?
What? He has to PAY for it? No, no, no, this guy is CHOOSING TO OPT OUT and is currently DEBT FREE.
Paying for land is not a debt problem. Land which one pays for is debt free by definition (excluding the taxes demanded by collectivists, of course).
Why does anyone have to pay for land? Because someone else "owned" it first? Because someone else "paid" for it? Capitalism works great if anyone and everyone is free to opt out whenever they feel like it. YOU CAN'T OPT OUT? THEN THERE IS NO FREE-WILL CAPITALIST TRANSACTION. You are born with no land? Then you are born a slave. The first step to freedom is owning fertile land. Not enough fertile land to go round? Then you're gonna have to learn to share, or the survivors will be left to bury the bodies of those with whom they could/would not share.
So again, back to my original question: What does it take to opt out? How far do you have to travel? What? You can BUY freedom ONLY if you are prepared to labour for the next 25 years? Well, that's not really opting out then, is it?
I've said this a dozen times already but let's try again. Capitalism means that you can catch more fish with a net (capital equipment) than you can by hand. How are you going to opt out of that fact? What magic spell can you cast that will make free goods and service fall from the sky?
That's not all capitalism means... let's talk about the spoils of using the net, how those get distributed, and what this does over time to the political system. If you're going to espouse capitalism's virtues, then at least be prepared to discuss its pitfalls.
In the course of human history it has been demonstrated time and again that those who work hard to make a living are the most generous to those who run into bad luck and need assistance.
Your type just doesn't want to work and have someone else provide for all of your needs. That includes having people with guns take from hard workers so that you can be given your "fair" share.
"In the course of human history it has been demonstrated time and again that those who work hard to make a living are the most generous to those who run into bad luck and need assistance."
agreed. Those who have the least regularly give the most of what they have.
My 'type' gives legislative weapons to hard workers so they can receive a living wage,
I'll thank you to speak for yourself next time
My 'type' gives legislative weapons to hard workers so they can receive a living wage,
So you admit that you participate in and encourage violence.
not violence, justice. And I try, I try.
Justice is not a solitary equalization of outcomes. There must be an equalization of productivity/inputs to make the equality of outcome just.
Capital comes from deferred consumption. A return on invested capitol is the justice for defering consumption. A loss of capitol is a return for being stupid.
Right, Capital can't be amassed if subsistence consumption isn't met. Thank you.
"A loss of capitol is a return for being stupid." starvation can make a person pretty dumb and desperate, no doubt.
I'm sure the latest generation of the Rothschilds would approve your explanation of where capital comes from...
not violence, justice. And I try, I try.
You said that you use weapons. The weapons mentioned were described as "legislative" which confirms that those weapons are not figurative but are the real weapons of state power over the individual, namely guns and prisons. That puts you in league with the elite class of bankers and politicians against the common man.
Yeah, because any and all engagement with any political system, on any level, especially when seeking to empower the wage earner, is somehow, counter-intuitively, violently 'elitist', apparently because a proven bad guy, regardless of his wordly position, might be forced to behave or go to prison.
I don't buy it.
You brag about exploiting a system which functions solely through violence and the threat of violence but you refuse to admit that violence is involved. This is another example of doublethink on your part.
elected legislative assembly
no elected legislative ass'y
You say it functions "soley through violence and the threat of violence but" I refuse to.. blah blah blah violence, violence here violence there violence! violence everywhere!
not me.
So you're both violent and insane. What a nice combination.
You can try to deny that the government compels citizens with guns and prisons but you can't do it convincingly.
In the event government didn't do so, then the company store and henchmen/thugs would. Robert E. Lee Wilson would be a good place to start looking for this proposition.
Socialism and Crony Capitalism got married.
The Supreme Court presided at the ceremony, Wall Street paid for the wedding and passed the bill and their baggage to us, Congress told us to bring more drinks, and make it snappy.
Agreed but don't call it crony capitalism. There is no capitalism involved. It is simply cronyism and corruption.
Stop giving them the two steps forward one step back victory (incrementally destroying our language, culture, and nation).
I also take exception to use of the term capitalism to describe the system; there is no capitalism involved.
"I also take exception to use of the term capitalism to describe the system; there is no capitalism involved."
AS DO I.
FUCK OFF YOU DAMNABLE LIARS.
100% BULL SH*T!
"Capitalism" DIED the very day that "Fractional Reserve Banking" / Counterfeitism was created via the Phederal Reserve Act!
Get A Clue already!
Cheers,
S. Rex
nice
As an existing example: if the first image is 'socialism' who are the blue guys the Norgwegians (in bright red) are holding a gun to the head of? Oil companies?
Crony capitalisme is fascisme.
In the 50's they implemented the monopoly laws to prevent it from ever happening again but lobbyisme destroyed it and even turned the chairs so monopolies got even stronger.
America is so proud about it's big companies but those are actually the examples of how it looks when everything goes bad.
So there needs to be a third picture: where the blue guy says thanks after he's kicked in the balls while sucking the red guy off, and add some stars to it so the people see what country it represents.
Where do u sit on patents? to me they produce monopolies via regulation and most inventors i have seen arent in it for the money. Would society be a different place without them?
Patents are needed but shouldn't be valid for more then 10 years.
And there should be no patents on genetics AT ALL! food and human!
some would say your being selective and that if its good for one, why not the other?
Patents are something that could be a net benefit to everyone if administered by intelligent and honest people, but in practice, we would be better off with no patents at all than the current system. This is not sour grapes. I have about 80 patents, mostly to companies I worked for previously, but 8 patents are mine personally. I view them more as required defensive weapons rather than to keep others from using my ideas. I would much rather use all of my time developing new products, rather than writing patent applications (no way I could afford patent attorney fees for the 8 patents I own). 80 to 90% of the patents should never have been issued in the first place due to being obvious, or not new. While the patent on using a laser pointer to exercise a cat probably did no harm, there are many equally baseless patents in software that restrict competition and cost people (I despise the term "consumer")) billions of dollars.
Copyrights are even worse, due to congress extending the term, which used to be 17 years (the same as the original term for a patent from issue date, patent term is now 20 years from filing date (unless you are a pharmaceutical company that can bribe the FDA or congress to extend it). Now it looks like copyrights will be extended indefinitely, and most of the royalties don't go to the writers, but to some corporate parasitic entity. In some cases a researcher or his organization may have to pay to get a technical paper published, yet the publisher will charge $30 or $40 per copy for others to see it. (and the FBI hounded someone to suicide for fighting this)
problem is all are administered by govts or their arms and they are not answerable to the public, they do what their ovelords or ISIS tells them to do, therefore it will always be biased IMO.
i like the crony capitalism.....at least that guy isnt taking my money......
/S (got to put the sarc tag around here lately)
Looks like under socialism, the guy with the gun gets the money; under crony capitalism, the guy with the money gets the gun.
No, dummy! It is so easy!
In socialism the guy with the gun is getting his money and in cronycapitalism the guy with the gun got his money. Crony is an exsocialist.
People deal by trade or they deal by force.
Ayn Rand
Dealing by trade is capitalism. All alternatives to capitalism are some exploiting others by force.
Employers (capitalists) and employees are just trading. They trade because each benefits. Capitalists make profits by earning capital, choosing wise investments and taking risks. Employees profit because the capitalist makes their skills more valuable.
This kind of production and trade created the prosperity of the modern world.
And everyone with half a brain knows it.
all true.
but, the cartoon is illustrating crony capitalism, which is faux capitalism - not capitalism at all.
a lot of people get confused by the term crony capitalism, thinking it's some form of capitalism; maybe it's better to use another term, like cronyism, or crapitalism.
Oligarchy: a small group of people having control of a country, organization, or institution.
"All alternatives to capitalism are some exploiting others by force."
There is another way, under exploited thus far, and it is COOPERATIVISM, where ever one has a share in the success (or failure) of a business.
The word speaks for itself.
m.
COOPERATION VS COERCION.
FREE ASSOCIATION VS FORCED ASSOCIATION.
LIBERTY VS TYRANNY.
"All alternatives to capitalism are some exploiting others by force." There is another way, under exploited thus far, and it is COOPERATIVISM,
A free market is cooperative by definition as it involves voluntary interaction and not coercion.
No, a free market merely means that it is free of government control. I think you're getting the free market confused with a perfectly competitive market, on both the capital and labor sides. Rand's free market capitalism is predicated upon a virtuous human, who does not exploit differences in bargaining power for personal gain. Fortunately or unfortunately, that human does not exist... at least in any material number.
Watched McClintock with john Wayne, he summed up how it should work.
Devlin Warren: About that job Mr. McLintock.
George Washington McLintock: Look son, I told ya, I got no need for farmers. Or use for them either.
Devlin Warren: Just one minute, Mr. McLintock. My father died last month, how come we don't have a homestead. I've got a mother, a little sister to feed. I need that job badly.
George Washington McLintock: What's your name?
Devlin Warren: Devlin Warren.
George Washington McLintock: Well, you've got a job. Go see my home ranch forman. He's over by the corral.
Devlin Warren: Step down off that carriage, mister!
George Washington McLintock: [Swings and McLintock and gets thrown to the ground] Hold that hog leg! I've been punched many a time in my life but never for hirin' anyone.
Devlin Warren: I don't know what to say. Never begged before. Turned my stomach. I suppose I should have been grateful that you gave me the job.
George Washington McLintock: Gave? Boy, you've got it all wrong. I don't give jobs I hire men.
Drago: You intend to give this man a full day's work, don'tcha boy?
Devlin Warren: You mean you're still hirin' me? Well, yes, sir, I certainly deliver a fair day's work.
George Washington McLintock: And for that I'll pay you a fair day's wage. You won't give me anything and I won't give you anything. We both hold up our heads. Is that your plug?
Devlin Warren: Yes sir.
George Washington McLintock: Well, hop on him and we'll go get your gear.
I go along with what Jason Reed said about our capitalist society.
From Jason Read:
"People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as "parasites" fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make the host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society."
A truly capitalist society does not have a "ruling class" as the only way to profit in a free market is to satisfy the needs of others and when one no longer does that one looses any position of authority. You are confusing oligarchy with capitalism.
Your "Capitalism" does not exist, although it is a nice dream.
Okay, okay, you can probably find small pockets of Capitalism here and there.
Capital acquisition is not easy. Few people really understand how to do it. Don't say, "Hard Work". Although Hard Work is an ingredient, Hard workers are a dime per dozen, I've seen factories full of them. Something else is missing. "Taking Risk"? "Managing Risk"? Then yes, indeed, it really does boil down to a bit of luck, but such a crude description does not do the Capitalist justice.
From where does the Oligarchy come? They were the successful Capitalists. As they grew older, or as their children took over the reigns, they grew tired of the endless struggle of Competition and sought to succeed with less struggle ... hence my assertion that Capitalism always leads to Crony Capitalism. In fact there is no definite line between the two, no black and white, just a gradual fade to grey.
Or you could be right, maybe the successful Capitalists of the day are simply hijacked by the successful Parasites of the day. As each Capitalist falls, the Parasites dump them and jump onto the next successful Capitalist. Does that mean we can stop the tired old "Capitalist / Communist / Socialist / Crony Capitalist" arguments and concentrate on "Us Vs the Oligarch / Parasite Class"? What's the difference, you ask? The Parasites thrive whether the environment is Capitalist, Communist or any other "-ist". They use whatever suits them at the time. And they'll use your own beliefs against you. "YOU can't have XXX because YOU are a YYYist ... but we can do ZZZ because there is this exception and we have to do it otherwise your YYY system will collapse ... heads I win Tails you lose don't let the XXXs steal your wealth! ..."
You're a hpeless case. You insist on blaming the crimes of theives and murders on the simple fact that people must work in order to thrive. That's a strange argument and it can't possibly do you any good.
No, your definition of capitalism is a helpless case... it's patently impossible in the real world because it is so fundamentally counter to man's basic nature. The reason why you cannot cite a perfect, capitalist utopia is because every time it is tried, it fails... again, let's look at sub-saharan africa... shouldn't it be the poster child for capitalists?
If you're going to insist on demanding a capitalist system, then talk about its most basic and only necessary virtue: it sucks less than the alternatives.
Billy, you're getting close:
The thieves and murderers do not magically disappear just because a bunch of people decide to call themselves "Capitalists". They are always there.
The old saying, "You cannot build a fool-proof system because fools are so ingenious."
PT says, "You cannot build an evil-proof system, because evils are smarter than fools."
The Propaganda: "Competition sorts out the wheat from the chaff. Only the good Capitalist survives."
The Reality: Exactly what you see all around you.
The Excuse: "But that's just Crony Capitalism.
The Conclusion: Then your Ideal Capitalism is just an idea. It does not exist. File under "Ideal Capitalism, Ideal Communism, Benevolent Kings and Other Fantasies".
"Capitalism" is the word coined by Karl Marx to describe what people do when the State leaves them alone to do what they want.
Crony capitalism, socialism, fascism, communism, all different shades of red, all versions of the religion where adherents worship the State.
Benjamin Franklin said in a letter that they (the Founding Fathers) had given us a Republic, if we could keep it. I guess the human condition won't allow for a prosperous and free society for very long without eventually fucking it up through unforgivable complacency.
-Argenta
they gave us a republic?
well, thanks, that was a nice thought, but i can't accept this gift, it doesn't fit me. i'd prefer to be free.
did it come with a receipt, so that i can return it?
And so the difference between a governmental system that functions as we all want it to versus complete anarchy. We all, at least most, want to be free, but in a limited system of laws, not the complete cluster we see today. So while you may wish to return this idea Franklin spoke of, forget it. I'll buy it from you.
-Argenta
"a governmental system that functions as we all want it to versus complete anarchy"
that we *all* want? i wasn't aware there was such a consensus.
nor, that we are all opposed to anarchy.
thank you for informing us of this fact, i'm pleased that someone such as yourself, qualified to speak on behalf of all mankind, and to inform us of what *all* people want, can inform us of the will of the collective.
i am now informed.
Lol. Well, not to continue this little back and forth much further, but *all* means a *super high majority* of the like-minded people that frequent our little bastion of truth, otherwise known as ZH. But point taken (sort of).
-Argenta
At this point, I'll take either. They both beat what we have now.
As a matter of fact, George Mason convinced the Founding Fathers to give the states the "nuclear option" as the second option of Article V in the Constitution that gives the states the power to call a new Constitutional Convention at which they could "return" the Federal government from whence it was created. The state legislatures just need a little "kick in the ass" to make this a reality. That means a little effort from you pleb.
True capitalism without central banking would go as follows:
Man works for capital
Man saves capital
Man invests capital into productive enterprise, hires labor to expand productive enterprise, man profits while labor works to save capital and do the same ad-infinium, and as such economy grows, living standards rise, humanity progresses.
Central banking has corrupted capitalism into a system where
Instead of working and producing to earn capital and save for future investment, people borrow for consumption they did not earn or produce.
Which means that supply is always struggling to keep up with demand, and prices rise.
Rising prices push more people into lower living standards and rob them of the opportunity to work for capital and save.
The only reason central banking even works to the degree that it does is because capital leaks out of the fraudulent banks clutches in the form of defaults on loans, if it were not for the ability of borrowers to default on loans the entire system would come crashing down overnight.
Socialism fails in the sense that it robs employers (who presumably should of worked for capital and saved in order to start their business but under central banking may have been granted purchasing power illegitimately from banks) of the means to incentive productivity (wages based on market conditions) and productive human resources move to other ventures that have a closer relationship to the central bank where all capital flows from.
This is why you have rocket scientists, engineers, computer programmers and the like working for banks to build skynet to rape and pillage markets of capital, instead of working to get man to the moon/mars/the next closes solar system where humanity can expand its dominion/territory and gain new insight and technology through experience and exploration.
That's great except for the fact that the world is already populated, every asset already spoken for, and labor pigeonholed accordingly. If you're going to conceive of capitalism in the present time, then at least pretend there isn't a blank slate from which it is to start.
The new "blank slate" that capitalism requires comes in the form of new frontiers and exploration and the development of new technology.
Every step in human advancement also comes with new opportunity/frontiers.
The problem is socialism is holding us back and preventing us from discovering new frontiers "blank slates" to build on.
I think that's a half hearted rebuttle. You might have a new frontier, but its likelihood of uprooting all aspects of a world economy is nil. In effect, you're just agreeing with me... acknowledging that in immaterial pockets of our existence, we might get to actually compete as conceptualized.
Of course, this presupposes that the miraculous technology isn't corrupted upon launch... With snowden's leaks, we've figured out that many of our tech companies are little more than government listening devices. We already knew they weren't productive in any classical sense, but I have severe reservations about their practicality.
Further, most technological advancement is simply lesser minds filling the gaps left by pioneers (who come along, at best, every few decades). In other words, advancement doesn't even have the possibility of being new or novel in the vast amount of circumstances.
Socialism isn't holding us back... human ingenuity is holding us back... and the more we learn and the longer society exists, the more difficult it becomes to generate new ideas that have practical application.
Monopolies are one seller of a good or service. In a free market businesses earn their monopolies (if they exist at all) by offering a better deal than their competitors, which is a good thing. The idea that some companies "could" out produce all others and then exploit everyone is silly, as competitors are free to return.
When govt grants a patent or copyright, it is creating a monopoly deliberately in order to encourage innovation. In fact, patent and copyright law grew out of the practice of the King granting monopolies to his friends. All real, coercive monopolies have historically arisen by or with the help of govt in the form of licenses, grants, special privileges and the like.
Anti-trust laws don't protect us from anything. They exist to punish success for being success and to give politicians power over producers.
The "bugaboo" of monopolies is and always has been a leftist fairy tale, another stupid rationalization used by unproductive people to use force against productive people.
All contemporary systems of governance are anti-socialist movements with no pretense of being so-called 'socialist'. The USA is an anti-socialist system based on an Oligarchy comprised of billionaires that take their orders from the de Rothschild Banksters, and the de Rothschild family. There is nothing noteworthy about Ponzi Casino Capitalism other than it died March 10th 2008, ad the Oligarchs don't understand why they are losing all the ground they amassed, and appropriated, for the last 40 years. They will keep attempting to revise all the Cold War rhetoric and memes that worked in the past, but this time they will not win out due to the fact that the calculus was altered in 2008, and the so-called 'brilliant minds' of the World cannot figure out how much it was altered quantitatively, or qualitatively. In brief, everyone is grasping at straws attempting to figure out how to get the economic engines firing on all cylinders once again to no avail. And we are now talking about 8 years of contraction which is the technical definition of insanity IMHO.
ThANK YOU.
If socialist countires could foist their own Ponzi on the world .... they would .... they can´t .... they are the junior varsity team !
The USA is an anti-socialist system based on an Oligarchy comprised of billionaires that take their orders from the de Rothschild Banksters, and the de Rothschild family.
The US is an oligarchy but it is an oligarchy in the socialist mold. The banking cartel is confirmation of this fact not a refutation of it.
The Ten Planks of the
Communist Manifesto
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
What Makes you think Romney doesn't control everything using the de Rothschild family as cover?
http://fee.org/freeman/detail/the-credential-is-killing-the-classroom? The Credential Is Killing the Classroom. Don’t Get a Degree: Get an Education Instead.
Judging from the picture I spotted the difference: crony capitalism is faster in stealing.
The guy with the gun always wins.
Give them both guns.
Bellum omnium contra omnes FTW!
This is wrong!! There's crony capitalism, and crony socialism. Its total BS thinking that there is some form of pure socialism in the world where at least some oligarchs, often family members and friends of the country's leadership, aren't living high off of the country's economy.
Socialism is the most tried, experimented, invested in system .... and a red/blue cartoon .... isn´t going to make it work !
+Publicus the marxist. You didn't answer me last time I pointed out what an evil autoritarian you were.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-11/wendys-explains-what-happens-wh...
About thirty seconds.
"From each according to ability to each according to need" is Marx's famous creed of communism. It's also the de facto creed of socialism.
People create values that we call wealth in order to live. The right to use them for that purpose is the right of property. Socialists abolish the right of property and tell producers that if they want to eat, etc., they must work.
It's a way of forcing productive people to produce for others.
Virtually the definition of a slave state.
It wouldn't be toooo bad if that was the way it really worked. What really happens is "From each according to ability to each according to the bare minimum needed to stop them from getting pissed off and we'll keep 99% of the loot as "Administration Costs".
That's kind of surreal! The last time I saw the image, I was thinking that the red guy with the gun should be holding a bigger bag of money to fit with the context of the times. Great minds think alike......or not, every time we get another disparaging attack on the "Evils of Socialism" on ZH, it'd be nice to have this sort of spotlight on the "Evils of Capitalism" - crony or otherwise - to counterbalance the rhetorics so beloved by the 1% of the 1%.
A well informed populace + democracy will have a tendency toward libertarian, anti-war, anti-oligarch stance. I don't think we can truly have a democracy without a well informed populace, nor will a well informed populace abide with tyranny in all its forms. That's the trouble with reality right now; for all it's institutions and facades, outside the confines of the internet, we have neither the media keeping us well informed nor any semblance of democratic values in government. It's a giant shit sandwich whichever way you face in the political spectrum.
OT: Just been watching a mainstream series that I reckon some ZHers might enjoy - "Mr. Robot".
Everybody is a capitalist. It is impossible not to be a capitalist.
Anybody who saves for a rainy day is a capitalist. Being a capitalist has nothing to do with free exchange versus corruption. That distinction only confuses economic analysis.
What is capital?
Anything can be capital. It does not matter what you do with it. The only thing that matters is that you gamble upon your capital to maintain some value over time --- it does not even have to retain the same value and you do not even have to have a business plan.
If you expect your sack of grain will still be a sack of grain next season, then your grain is a type of capital. If you expect your pm to still be a precious metal than your precious metal is capital.
If I could choose, I would rather live under MindYourOwnFuckingBusinessism (the artist formerly known as AreYouTalkingToMe?!?) rather than have to distinguish the smell of 1 asshole's definition of "capitalism" from any other.