Zone1 Predatory Capitalism

[TruthNotBS]

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.

The economic devastation would've been much worse if we would've listened to the Republicans, who wanted to open the economy in the middle of a deadly, nationwide pandemic. Rather than having close to a million dead now, we would've had 40, 60 times that number, and the economy would've collapsed even more so than it did with the lockdowns.

Other countries that are more reasonable in their view of socialism, applied some basic socialist principles to assist their citizens and they did much better. The so quarantining of the population was carried out, along with much more financial support, on a monthly basis.

 

[TNHarley]

The economic devastation would've been much worse if we would've listened to the Republicans, who wanted to open the economy in the middle of a deadly, nationwide pandemic. Rather than having close to a million dead now, we would've had 40, 60 times that number, and the economy would've collapsed even more so than it did with the lockdowns.

Other countries that are more reasonable in their view of socialism, applied some basic socialist principles to assist their citizens and they did much better. The so quarantining of the population was carried out, along with much more financial support, on a monthly basis.

As I said
Your Jesus doesnt like hyperbolic gimps or liars

A Johns Hopkins study says 'ill-founded' COVID lockdowns did more harm than good

The researchers say lockdowns had no noticeable effect on reducing COVID-related deaths and a "devastating effect" on economies and social ills.

health.wusf.usf.edu

 

[TruthNotBS]

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...

The fact that you go to a place, doesn't discount the possibility of you being robbed. One doesn't follow the other.

GO TO A PLACE = NOT BEING ROBBED.

You might go to a place, to be robbed, if not going to that place results in hunger and homelessness. Under capitalism, if you don't own the means of production, you have to rent yourself to another human being for several hours daily, in what amounts to an absolute dictatorship. If that wasn't enough, everything that you produce is owned by someone else, and the owner of what you produce pays you less than what you're producing. Moreover, since you and your co-workers are renting your lives to another human being, in a "labor market", you're competing with them for employment, leading to division and alienation, not just from what you produce, but from all of your co-workers as well.

It's in the vested interest of the capitalist elites, to pay their employees (exploitees) as little as possible to reduce the overhead (cost of doing business). Adam Smith the father of capitalism, wrote:

"What are the common wages of labour, depends everywhere upon the contract usually made between those two parties, whose interests are by no means the same. The workmen desire to get as much, the masters (the capitalists are "masters") to give as little as possible. The former are disposed to combine (combine = form labor unions or any organization that serves their interests), in order to raise, the latter in order to lower the wages of labour.
It is not, however, difficult to foresee which of the two parties must, upon all ordinary occasions, have the advantage in the dispute, and force the other into compliance with their terms (Adam Smith admits that the masters have more power than their workmen, in a dispute, for obvious reasons).

The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations (the capitalist masters, not just their employees, also "combine" or unionize, form organizations to advance their financial interests: Chambers of Commerce, super-PACs, industry associations, armies of lobbyists legally bribing politicians in the halls of government, think tanks/stink tanks that write "white papers"/"research studies" on policy and write the bills for their cronies in government), while it prohibits those of the workmen.

We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer. A landlord, a farmer, a master manufacturer, or merchant, though they did not employ a single workman, could generally live a year or two upon the stocks which they have already acquired. Many workmen could not subsist a week, few could subsist a month, and scarce any a year without employment. In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is every where a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of. Masters too sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate. These are always conducted with the utmost silence and secrecy, till the moment of execution, and when the workmen yield, as they sometimes do, without resistance, though severely felt by them, they are never heard of by other people. " (The Wealth Of Nations).

Emphasis Mine




Afam Smith admits that the capitalist masters are ALWAYS combining in one way or another, to lower wages and advance their profit-pursuing agendas, at the expense of their employees (i.e. exploitees). They're also a canker sore, on democracy, constantly trying to undermine it, to advance their business interests, often at the expense of the public and of course, their employees. T

The Republicans and too many Democrats, pretend that the relationship and employment contract between capitalists and their employees is a relationship and contract between equal parties, sometimes reducing it to a business transaction between two merchants, who are selling and buying a product from one another. That couldn't be further from the truth.


If I wouldn't have told you that I was quoting Adan Smith, considered by many modern "free market" economists as the father of capitalism, you would've thought I was quoting from the Communist Manifesto. These Republicans have no problem with the "combining" or unionizing of the wealthy elites, the capitalist masters that they worship, but when working-class people unionize they're demonized and are told that they're being unreasonable, ungrateful, if not greedy. The gall of these mammon-worshiping Republicans is astounding. It's incredibly RICH, pun intended.

 

[TruthNotBS]

As I said
Your Jesus doesnt like hyperbolic gimps or liars

A Johns Hopkins study says 'ill-founded' COVID lockdowns did more harm than good

The researchers say lockdowns had no noticeable effect on reducing COVID-related deaths and a "devastating effect" on economies and social ills.

health.wusf.usf.edu

Of course, it did, mostly because of the austere conditions that people were forced into by mammon-worshiping Republicans. Other nations supported their citizens with a monthly income and much more support, while we imposed austerities upon the American public, while the wealthy elites went through covid in their Mega-Yachts off the coast of Barbados, fully provisioned, in opulence.

 

[MarathonMike]

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.

View attachment 792583
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.

​

Written by someone who has never run a business and thus is just parroting a Communist narrative from academia.

 

[TNHarley]

Of course, it did, mostly because of the austere conditions that people were forced into by mammon-worshiping Republicans. Other nations supported their citizens with a monthly income and much more support, while we imposed austerities upon the American public, while the wealthy elites went through covid in their Mega-Yachts off the coast of Barbados, fully provisioned, in opulence.

Those policies that didnt help, just made the rich richer. As in, the biggest transfer fo wealth in history. While killing mom and pop shops etc.
But keep enveloping yourself in dogma instead of reality.

 

[dblack]

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

Agreed. Fascism is the demise of capitalism and the rise of socialism.

 

[TruthNotBS]

Those policies that didnt help, just made the rich richer. As in, the biggest transfer fo wealth in history. While killing mom and pop shops etc.
But keep enveloping yourself in dogma instead of reality.

You discount a lot of possible, effective regulations and measures that could've been enacted by our government, to stop what you just stated. It's not as complicated as you seem to like to make it (for your own personal reasons, whatever those might be). What I said earlier, and what you just read above, are compatible. It was your policies that made the situation worse. Unnecessary austerities in the middle of a deadly pandemic isn't a good course of action.

 

[TNHarley]

You discount a lot of possible, effective regulations and measures that could've been enacted by our government, to stop what you just stated. It's not as complicated as you seem to like to make it (for your own personal reasons, whatever that might be).

Nothing they did was effective but if they did more, it would have been ok. Mmmmkay bumpkin.

 

[TruthNotBS]

Nothing they did was effective but if they did more, it would have been ok. Mmmmkay bumpkin.

They essentially did nothing for the general population other than "go home", and just filled the coffers of the wealthy that you so much admire and love. Lockdowns without proper support from the government wasn't the answer and that's what people like yourself adamantly supported.

If society would've applied the measures that you and your ilk supported, there would've been 20x more casualties. The:

"hey everybody, just forget there's a deadly, nationwide pandemic and conduct business as usual. Just do what you were doing before, because all of this is a lie and masks don't help and just enjoy life, in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Those other countries that send a monthly income to their citizens while they're on lockdown, are communists. You're not owed anything. If you die, you die, that's life. Toughen up butter-cups, this is the real world. Go to work, go to church without a mask, go to Walmart and make a scene when they ask you to put on your mask, make a YouTube video".

 

[TNHarley]

They essentially did nothing for the general population other than "go home", and just filled the coffers of the wealthy that you so much admire and love. Lockdowns without proper support from the government wasn't the answer and that's what people like yourself adamantly supported.

If society would've applied the measures that you supported, there would've been 20x more casualties. The:

"hey everybody, just forget there's a deadly, nationwide pandemic and conduct business as usual. Just do what you were doing before, because all of this is a lie and masks don't help and just enjoy life, in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Those other countries that a monthly income to their citizens while they're on lockdown, are communists. You're not owed anything. If you die, you die, that's life. Toughen up butter-cups, this is the real world. Go to work, go to church without a mask, go to Walmart and make a scene when they ask you to put on your mask, make a YouTube video".

I get bored pretty quickly with people that continuously lie and just make stuff up.
You are one of those people.
Good day.

 

[TruthNotBS]

I get bored pretty quickly with people that continuously lie and just make stuff up.
You are one of those people.
Good day.

Vaya con Dios.

 

[TNHarley]

Vaya con Dios.

You should look into that. He might turn your life around. Maybe you will quite being so dishonest

 

[TruthNotBS]

Written by someone who has never run a business and thus is just parroting a Communist narrative from academia.

What is it that I wrote, that you disagree with? I made several points, so choose one or two and let's discuss it.

 

[TruthNotBS]

You should look into that. He might turn your life around. Maybe you will quite being so dishonest

What did I say that was dishonest? Be specific.

 

[MarathonMike]

What is it that I wrote, that you disagree with? I made several points, so choose one or two and let's discuss it.

Thank you for a reasonable response, they are rare. You used the term "exploit" to describe what employers do to employees in a Capitalist system. The majority of jobs in the US are provided by small businesses. The profit margins in small businesses run typically between 2% to 10%. I was a partner in a small business for years and they were most stressful years of my life. I believe that is all too easy to vilify the employer for not providing "a living wage" or characterizing them as fat cats getting wealthy on the backs of their workers. There are some instances of that, but they are the exception not the rule imo.

 

[TruthNotBS]

Thank you for a reasonable response, they are rare. You used the term "exploit" to describe what employers do to employees in a Capitalist system. The majority of jobs in the US are provided by small businesses. The profit margins in small businesses run typically between 2% to 10%. I was a partner in a small business for years and they were most stressful years of my life. I believe that is all too easy to vilify the employer for not providing "a living wage" or characterizing them as fat cats getting wealthy on the backs of their workers. There are some instances of that, but they are the exception not the rule imo.

I agree. You're most likely a working-class person, who started a small local business. Under our capitalist economy, it makes perfect sense, and it's natural, for an employee to want to become an employer.

When a person strives to improve their position in life, under this type of economic system, where one is by default, being exploited and commodified in a "labor market", in order to eat and have a roof over their heads, they're not thinking in terms of "exploiting" others when they see themselves as an employer (they don't want to exploit anyone).

This capitalist system is so effective in its exploitation of human labor, that both the exploiters and the exploited, often don't even recognize that they are functioning within a system of human exploitation and commodification. The small business owner that hires others to work for him or her, is not an evil, malicious oppressor, who doesn't care about his or her employees. Generally, these employers are good, decent people.

In the 1800s, African Americans were enslaved and even though there were some very decent, good, compassionate, generous slave masters. They were still within that system of slavery. It's the institution or system that is evil, not necessarily those who are by fate, of no fault of their own, trying to survive within that system. A slave might want to one day, free himself and his family, have his own plantation and then buy some slaves and treat them well. That's the system.

"If I ever become a freeman, I'm going to have my own land and I will own slaves, but I will treat them as if they were my brothers and sisters. I will treat my slaves, well, because they're made in the image of God, as I am. I will never abuse them. God is my witness."

A righteous slave master. A good decent human being, who is within a bad system. It's not really his fault. The institution is evil. Human beings shouldn't own or exploit other human beings, but those who are in that system, have been forced to function within that institution. They're not necessarily "EVIL".

My criticism is mostly, if not entirely, directed at the big money masters (the big gangsters), not the owner of a mom-and-pop Pizzeria around the corner. My critique applies to those who corrupt our government with their wealth and power, and right now have us all on the brink of fighting WW3 with Russia in Ukraine.

Those who keep us addicted to fossil fuels when we could very easily generate and draw all of our electricity from modern, safe, and clean nuclear power plants. Wall Street, the bankers, big pharma, big agra, the billionaires who have way too much power in their hands, undermining our democracy.

Those multinational corporations destroying local economies throughout the USA, taking out all of the mom-and-pop stores in whatever community is unfortunate enough to fall victim to them.

I'm for labor rights, including the right of workers to unionize and negotiate collectively, as an organization, with their often, wealthy, powerful employers. I would advise workers "Don't demand too much, be fair". The master needs to benefit too, not just his employees. Let the employer make a profit, or else there's no employment.

Even if this capitalist system is one of "human exploitation and commodification", its evils can be mitigated. Softened. Making capitalism benefit everyone rather than just a few people at the top.

 

[LeroyDumonde]

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.

View attachment 792583
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.

​

There are plenty of cooperatives already in the US. Take your skills and join/create one if you don't like working for someone else. Or become a sole proprietor. Personally I'm not fan of corporations in the modern sense though in some cases they may be inevitable. I'd rather see an economy built around sole proprietorships, general partnerships, cooperatives, and corporatism (in the sense of businesses and labor unions being joined into mutually beneficial entities called corporations). In essence I want to maximize the number of capitalists rather than minimize them as corporate capitalism does, or murder them as in communism, or have the government run businesses as in some forms of socialism.

 

[LeroyDumonde]

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.

While I sympathize with the position, if the capitalist class didn't exist that wouldn't mean that the working class suddenly had access to capital. They'd still be starving and living under a bridge in winter. Historically the workers seizing the means of production has been a disaster (see, for example, communist Russia). The problem isn't profits or private ownership of the means of production. The problems are that we don't have enough capitalists and that the big corporations are in bed with the government.

 

[TruthNotBS]

There are plenty of cooperatives already in the US. Take your skills and join/create one if you don't like working for someone else. Or become a sole proprietor. Personally I'm not fan of corporations in the modern sense though in some cases they may be inevitable. I'd rather see an economy built around sole proprietorships, general partnerships, cooperatives, and corporatism (in the sense of businesses and labor unions being joined into mutually beneficial entities called corporations). In essence I want to maximize the number of capitalists rather than minimize them as corporate capitalism does, or murder them as in communism, or have the government run businesses as in some forms of socialism.

It's not as easy as simply having excellent credit, having a business plan for a worker-owned cooperative, then going to the SBA (Small Business Administration) and getting a loan. The banks are even worse than the SBA when it comes to applying for a loan to start a co-op. The system is essentially rigged, to stop the working-class from organizing cooperatives.

The capitalist elites see "worker-owned" anything, as a threat, because the bottom line of a co-op isn't profits (private capital accumulation), it's job security. If I start a privately owned business, my bottom line is to generate a surplus a.k.a. a profit, not to create jobs, or provide a product or service to consumers. That's at best a secondary, peripheral concern, not the priority of my business.

The worker-owners of a cooperative generally consider the purpose of their business as a means to provide job security to its members. Profits are at best secondary. The cooperative isn't burdened with making huge profits for shareholders or the owners of the business. It can often survive without generating a profit and whatever profits it generates can be reinvested into the company, allowing the co-op to offer more competitive prices, product warranties, excellent customer service..etc. Well-run cooperatives are really scary competitors to compete against.

As long as this capitalist system and privately owned business enterprises exist, the contradiction between the interests of the capitalists and their employees will continue. To avoid gross inequality in society, and the abuse of workers by their employers, there has to be a robust social safety net to mitigate the tension between the "haves" and have-nots, and the rights of workers to unionize must be respected. Well-run labor unions negotiate terms of employment with employers that benefit both parties. Poorly run labor unions hurt workers and leave people unemployed.