Zone1 Predatory Capitalism

[Grumblenuts]

Capitalism is always balanced by some mixture of socialism. Not nearly enough in many places including the U.S. I'd call "predatory capitalism" highly redundant, the entire point of capitalism being to use of one's capital advantage(s) to leverage more capital(profit) from the efforts or savings of others. Generally using one's unfair advantage(s) to screw people into helping them gain more, one way or another.

When any "one" happens to be some legally sanctioned, liability dodging group we get corporate capitalism. When that corporation eventually proves particularly unethical we call it "predatory." In any case, listen to this and discuss:

Predatory Capitalists

Ralph welcomes Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Gretchen Morgenson, co-author of “These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs – And Wrecks – America,” where they name names in this “heads we win, tails you lose” system of predatory capitalism.

www.ralphnaderradiohour.com

Gretchen Morgenson is the senior financial reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit. A former stockbroker, she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for her “trenchant and incisive” reporting on Wall Street. Previously at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,” she and coauthor Joshua Rosner wrote the bestseller Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon about the mortgage crisis. Their latest book is These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America.

 

[gipper]

There is also Fascism, which many believe the US economy resembles. The combination of government and business is evident in many large sectors of the economy.

Lenin stated Fascism is capitalism in decline. I think he has a point.

 

[Grumblenuts]

Communist!

Yes, working to destroy government yields unregulated predation. Unaccountable private interests takeover governing bigger and bigger pie slices until they begin noticing..



Can't be me? Must be you!

 

[LeroyDumonde]

When you think about it, the objection can't really be to profits. I've yet to hear any Democrat, or any other Leftist for that matter, complain when their own personal income is higher than their outlays. In fact they act to maximize this profit. The objection seems to be when other people or corporations have higher profits than they do. I'm not convinced that envy should be the basis of national industrial policy.

 

[progressive hunter]

There is also Fascism, which many believe the US economy resembles. The combination of government and business is evident in many large sectors of the economy.

Lenin stated Fascism is capitalism in decline. I think he has a point.

currently it does look fascist with the ESG scores, corporate equality index and other influences the fed gov are pushing on large private corps.

 

[Grumblenuts]

When you think about it, the objection can't really be to profits. I've yet to hear any Democrat, or any other Leftist for that matter, complain when their own personal income is higher than their outlays. In fact they act to maximize this profit. The objection seems to be when other people or corporations have higher profits than they do. I'm not convinced that envy should be the basis of national industrial policy.

Correct. They try painting it as far more complicated. But no. It's just envy. Obviously. You've admirably stayed focused upon the talking point's true essence. Work done. Congratulations!
Smoke a lib! Every day!

 

[TruthNotBS]

When you think about it, the objection can't really be to profits. I've yet to hear any Democrat, or any other Leftist for that matter, complain when their own personal income is higher than their outlays. In fact they act to maximize this profit. The objection seems to be when other people or corporations have higher profits than they do. I'm not convinced that envy should be the basis of national industrial policy.

Capitalists profit from the surplus value of their workers, paying less than what they produce. They exploit the fact that others don't have the assets or capital to own the means of production (the facilities and machinery) and then commodify and rent human beings in a "labor market" to work for them, in a totalitarian "state" or productive enterprise, whose only true purpose is to accumulate capital for the capitalist-master.

The relationship between employers and employees is a relationship between an exploiter and an exploitee. It's not much different than the relationship between salve-master and slave, or feudal lord and serf. A better system , without necessarily eliminating markets, would be to require every productive enterprise that requires several workers, to be organized as a worker-owned, democratically-run cooperative. This doesn't imply that there isn't a leadership structure, there is, but all leadership is elected and hence accountable to their subordinates.

​

There would still be markets and competition under this system, but there would be more democracy and less exploitation. The danger of cooperatives becoming predatory or lobbying the government to serve its vested interests at the expense of the public is still present, especially at a national scale, but its cronyism could be more manageable. Mitigating policies have to be enacted to deal with cronyism, an endemic symptom of capitalism.

Eventually, as automation becomes more advanced, all production can become publicly owned and managed by a democratic state, in collaboration with the cooperatives. The state is dangerous, so the people need to remain armed, and strict controls have to be in place to protect democracy. The people should use a very short leash, with their government. Easier said than done, but it can be done, if people are educated (well-informed), responsive and vigilant.

Marx and Engels claimed that the state would eventually "wither away", but I find this opinion to be way too optimistic. I believe a state will always be needed, even when production is advanced enough to be fully controlled by the consumer. Even then you don't want an individual or one family, taking that Atomic Precision Manufacturing Machine, or Star Trek replicator and creating a nuclear weapon, destroying the whole space colony. So there has to be a state apparatus to regulate production, assuming that we live in a community with other human beings. Technology will inevitably, assuming it continues to develop, allow for individuals or a family, to live in a large spacecraft in deepspace or on some asteroid somewhere, isolated and away from others. There might be people who prefer to live as high-tech space-hermits.

I want to live in a 1980s theme park - a space colony, with 80s music playing in the background. ​

When the state misbehaves, you say "bye bye" and you leave and settle somewhere else, maybe a couple of light years away.

​

 

[Dogmaphobe]

It seems to me that anybody who claims to oppose predatory capitalism would be AGAINST the Democrat party shutting down small business to feather the nests of the likes of Jeff Bezos rather than being one of the Democrat cheerleaders.

 

[TNHarley]

The relationship between employers and employees is a relationship between an exploiter and an exploitee

How are the workers exploited when they agree to everything they do? I mean, thats the exact opposite of what exploiting means.
Im just sayin'. You could pick your words better.

 

[TruthNotBS]

How are the workers exploited when they agree to everything they do? I mean, thats the exact opposite of what exploiting means.
Im just sayin'. You could pick your words better.

Sir, it's not a free choice in the same sense as choosing vanilla ice cream rather than dark chocolate, or a big mac combo over a quarter-pounder with cheese. In the aforementioned examples, the choice is between two delicious meals or at worst, a meal you love and another one that is distasteful. The circumstances of the situation doesn't force you to choose between those two food items or even eat. You can just as well walk away and go to the KFC across the street.

No one chooses to be commodified in a labor market and rented as a commodity to a capitalist master (Adam Smith called capitalists masters), unless the alternative is so bleak, if not unbearable that becoming the exploitee of another human being, is a better option. Being reduced and objectified, to a product and means of production that is exploited by another human being, for the sole purpose of capitalizing on your lack of capital and ownership of the machinery of production, is not the result of your free choice, any more than a shotgun wedding is.

The alternative for 94% of the population that sells its labor (its life) to a capitalist employer is hunger if not starvation and dying under a bridge in dead winter, with your spouse and children. That's as much of a choice as someone putting a gun to your head and giving you the "choice" of a bullet, or giving away your wallet.

 

[DudleySmith]

In real life big corporations grow to dominate markets and regulate the hell out of them; they do it for their own benefit and to destroy competition. And, they need govt. help to do that, by buying protection for themselves and putting obstacles in the way of any competitors who might rise up outside their monopolies and oligarchies.

 

[TNHarley]

Sir, it's not a free choice in the same sense as choosing vanilla ice cream rather than dark chocolate, or a big mac combo over a quarter-pounder with cheese. In the aforementioned examples, the choice is between two delicious meals or at worst, a meal you love and another one that is distasteful. The circumstances of the situation doesn't force you to choose between those two food items or even eat. You can just as well walk away and go to the KFC across the street.

No one chooses to be commodified in a labor market and rented as a commodity to a capitalist master (Adam Smith called capitalists masters), unless the alternative is so bleak, if not unbearable that becoming the exploitee of another human being, is a better option. Being reduced and objectified, to a product and means of production that is exploited by another human being, for the sole purpose of capitalizing on your lack of capital and ownership of the machinery of production, is not the result of your free choice, any more than a shotgun wedding is.

The alternative for 94% of the population that sells its labor (its life) to a capitalist employer is hunger if not starvation and dying under a bridge in dead winter, with your spouse and children. That's as much of a choice as someone putting a gun to your head and giving you the "choice" of a bullet, or giving away your wallet.

What a load of hyperbolic nonsense.

 

[Oddball]

"Capitalism is terrible!....I have to work in order to eat!"

Under communism, you still work but don't eat.

 

[Oddball]

Capitalism is always balanced by some mixture of socialism. Not nearly enough in many places including the U.S. I'd call "predatory capitalism" highly redundant, the entire point of capitalism being to use of one's capital advantage(s) to leverage more capital(profit) from the efforts or savings of others. Generally using one's unfair advantage(s) to screw people into helping them gain more, one way or another.

When any "one" happens to be some legally sanctioned, liability dodging group we get corporate capitalism. When that corporation eventually proves particularly unethical we call it "predatory." In any case, listen to this and discuss:

Predatory Capitalists

Ralph welcomes Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, Gretchen Morgenson, co-author of “These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs – And Wrecks – America,” where they name names in this “heads we win, tails you lose” system of predatory capitalism.

www.ralphnaderradiohour.com

 

[TNHarley]

"Capitalism is terrible!....I have to work in order to eat!"

Under communism, you still work but don't eat.

Its mostly disingenuous anyways. These people just want to bitch about it because they are so entitled. They probably had no problem when the fascists shut down half the economy during covid killing peoples entire economic lives.

 

[TruthNotBS]

What a load of hyperbolic nonsense.

How so?

 

[Dogmaphobe]

They probably had no problem when the fascists shut down half the economy during covid killing peoples entire economic lives.

Telling people they were "non-essential", no less.

Here we have uneducated posters supporting the notion of undermenchen, and doing so for no other reason than their being deluded into thinking that is actually LIBERAL.

 

[TruthNotBS]

In real life big corporations grow to dominate markets and regulate the hell out of them; they do it for their own benefit and to destroy competition. And, they need govt. help to do that, by buying protection for themselves and putting obstacles in the way of any competitors who might rise up outside their monopolies and oligarchies.

Cronyism is endemic to capitalism.

 

[TNHarley]

How so?

You are comparing a person freely going to a place and agreeing to terms of employment and wages, to being robbed, FFS.
Did you read what you wrote? Seriously...

 

[TNHarley]

Cronyism is endemic to capitalism.

Using the govt to help a private business isnt capitalism.
Capitalism. Another word you apparently dont understand.