With all due respect, this is quite a long rant, but these are my frustrations with living in a Capitalistic society. Oh, and I have been on here for a little more then a year now, so I know pretty well of the ideas that is passed around Mises readings.
Now, I understand that CEO's are responsible for a company's profits, and that the entrepreneur is someone who sacrifices a stable job lifestyle for risking his personal savings. However, while this is true with small business', I have no problem with CEO's of small business. Though, if someone needs to find a job, they have no choice but to employ themselves at a crappy job where they will be exploited. My definition of exploited meaning no pay for overtime, keeping you overtime, no vacation, and taking money off of your paycheck for breaks. You can't control when an employer decides to keep you overtime to get more work done, but its ****ing bullshit when you have school and a life to maintain as well. People at low-income jobs barely make enough to even be worth all this stress, where someone with a BA in even Communication gets to work for an above average salary and sit in the comfort of his cubicle on a computer. Jobs shouldn't be a privilege, and if someone has to work for low income, they shouldn't be slaving a lot more then someone with an education earning a median-above average salary. This is exploitation. You know, the only reason someone working at McDonalds is getting ****ed in the ass is because CEO's don't want to cut their erroneous salary so that they can continue golfing on their private island, while hiring less people so that they themselves, who don't even do much with the Corporation they are the head of, can get higher salaries.
Do I think the honest ones, i.e. small businessmen, do so? No. In fact those types of CEO's live it like its a lifestyle, not just a job, they DO work their asses off.
Novus Zarathustra:Because I was never able to live my life the way I wanted do, I end up at the age of 40, with kids and having to spend his entire life working at a place Wal-Mart or Target if I get lucky enough to even get the job there and be paid decently. ALl the money I'm earning will go toward paying for my bills and feeding my kids because I was never able to go to school, never able to try to make it as an artist since I couldn't afford my tools so I could be making a better salary. Instead I work my ass of, am miserable, and will never be an artist. gg.
Only in a rich, formerly free country could one, in the midst of a horrific depression, think that working in a large store, earning just enough to pay bills and feed kids, is a bad thing. Try explaining to a resident of Tanzania that you are upset that you will stand in a building full of things and earn enough to eat for pressing buttons on a computer.
The Tanzanian works harder than you do, much harder. He spends all day carrying heavy things, and he just watched two of his children starve. So he won't stand for your whining. If you want to be consistent, at least complain on his behalf, not your own.
But it's not about work, it's about what you produce. You might think it is harder to press buttons than to do what a CEO does. But anyone can do your job, and you produce very little. You're only necessary at all because we have division of labor and such massive production that we can have stores. The CEO is an organizer. Without him, your labor would produce even less, because you would not have in front of you a computer to press buttons on. What you're doing is only valuable because of a huge supply chain and the related actions of thousands of people - and the people who bring it all together.
The Tanzanian doesn't have this kind of organization. He has no capital structure, and so has to produce directly from the earth. That is hard.
Now, I agree with a lot of your points, believe it or not. I would like to see more equity, I'd be happy with a lower standard of living with less organization, smaller organizations - and in addition, I think, with Kevin Carson, that in a free society organizations would be smaller with higher production anyway, so its a moot point. But those are my preferences, and I have no right to inflict them on you - to decide for you that production should be smaller and lower so that I can have more free time, or shop at smaller stores, or whatever. I have to find a like-minded group of people and build what I want. If you want a commune, build one. That's a task as hard as what a CEO does, for less pay - but it's building the world you'd like. Just don't demand that people who don't want what you want build it for you.
Novus Zarathustra:So thats it? Is that what you would say to someone if you knew they were dying of an illness?
I like how you dismissed everything I said, and are now fixated on that quote, which should be obvious to any thinking adult. I must confess, I didn't think that would be controversial.
Novus Zarathustra:hey wish they had a cure, so just tell them "You can't always get what you want". After all, living is a fucking want and a utility, not a fucking NEED. We don't need to live, why don't we all just kill ourselves?
I want to have sex with Megan Fox, in fact, I think about it all the time. Do I have the right to rape Megan Fox? Is this a logical conclusion? The people of Africa want food and clean water; indeed, many of them die each and every day from malnutrition. The ignorant man (you) will say that the starving Ethiopian's should raid and pillage Saudi Arabia. But even if they are successful in this endeavor, they will only have enough food to keep themselves alive for a short and fixed period of time. The logical man says that Ethiopia should embrace capitalism, sound money, and private property, so that it can provide food for it self (Ethiopia) at a sustainable level, for an extended period of time.
Here's a useful cliche: give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish....
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
You are blaming illness on capitalism? Or is it that you are implying that infinite resources exist so that should we want to in a "just" society no one would have to suffer from illness?
My "second" mother who basically adopted me after I moved far away from home in hopes of a better life died of breast cancer. I quit my job during her final moths to take care of her full time and it was by far the most excruciating experience of my life. The utter helplessness of it all was devastating. I loved that woman with all my heart. Socialized medicine would have cut her life much shorter though and despite the pain she suffered in those final months she wanted them. Those of us who loved her gave all we could to prolong her life as much as possible even though the final outcome was a foregone conclusion. No cost/benefit analysis involved. We loved her and were willing to pay for her life extension however hopeless it might be in the end. Not to mention despite slim odds it isn't always hopeless.You seem to argue that ability to pay should not be a determination in these factors. I cannot wholly disagree with that. What I can say is that it is far superior to a bureaucratic determination and a cost/benefit analysis of outcome.
You don't honestly believe that the government (taxpayers) would pay for any and all treatments despite their probability of success do you?If I have the money and I want my grandmother to live another couple months despite its $500,000 price tag than so be it. Should the taxpayers be held to the same standard? Of course not. They should let her die according to cost/benefit analysis.
Whether you like it or not scarce resources are a reality and must be split up amongst differing needs. Who should split them up? The producers of those resources? Or a bureaucratic committee? I for one don't claim that "capitalism" as we know it is the be all end all of social evolution. What I do claim is that it is far superior to the proffered alternative of "socialism" or for that matter the "mixed economy."
I am open to new ideas and a society that allows those new ideas to compete. An ideal I fear is a Utopian dream. For now then, I will defend free market capitalism to my dying breath until a better idea comes along.
Well me and many other people feel the same damn way I do. You can't blame us for thinking that society should take care of everyone and us.
(Nobody's blaming you. You can think what you want. Disagreeing with reality cannot change reality. If you cannot even attempt to understand this, you are in for a very miserable life, regardless of your economic standing.)
I honestly can't see whats so illogical about not taking care of each other or socialism where all our needs and wants are provided for. I think I've said what i need to say here, feel free to message to me.
(Well, the bigger problem is that you have been told PRECISELY what is illogical about it several times, and have not heeded any of it. I guess the only way to show you is to ask you what exactly IS logical about it? How will this work? Have you pondered your own statement to demonstrate in any logical manner exactly how socialism provides for everyone's wants and needs? You're just saying it will. You're saying it and expecting it to be true because it sounds nicer for everyone. But I can sit here and say that we should make a law saying all women should be beautiful, and making the law won't make all women beautiful. That's not even including the fact that we would need someone to decide definitively what beautiful IS.)
If I had a life-threatening illness, which I know someone who does, nothing you guys have said to me would matter to me. We didn't make ourselves get sick, so we shouldn't be stuck in a shitthole society that wont do anything about it but push us into a hole we didn't even want to get into deeper.
(Knowing someone who has a life-threatening illness does not add weight to your argument. How does your logic stand on an island, where there is no one else, and you are sick and dying? You have the same choice. You can do whatever you can to live, or you can perish. The fact that someone works hard to become a doctor in no way obligates them to save your life, know matter how much you think it may be the right thing to do. What could you possibly suggest as an alternative? Do we enslave people by decree for whatever they are capable of? What do we do with the laborer? The doctor must heal, so the laborer MUST work the mines? The farmer MUST provide me with food? What if he can't do it without starving himself? Where do we draw the line? And yet you pass over all the good that can come from the very society you point fingers at. We can feed ourselves cheaply. We have access to more health products than we could have imagined a hundred years ago. We live long, long years. You talk about being forty and working long hours when a few hundred years ago forty was about the time people were getting ready for the grave. We now see GRANDCHILDREN growing up. Society has taken care of itself without having to force doctors into slave labor, and just because we still have room for improvement you talk about how evil we are to allow doctors the freedom to decide how they work. There are people who are eighty...EIGHTY...who are still healthy enough to work in Wal-mart. I won't pretend that everyone should be able to see at least a sparkle of wonder in the universe, but we've come a damn long way, and it has been through progress brought about by those willing to invest in the growth of business, which is where improvements in technology come from. My new iPod costs have as much as my first iPod. The first one had an LCD screen and a nifty little game you played but turning a wheel with your thumb. Now it can do shit-all without buttons. It can tell me the weather when I'm too lazy to turn on the TV or open up my laptop. I'm well below the poverty level and I live like a damn king. What the hell do you want? Everything that I have? That destroys your premise, because for you to achieve peace of mind I would have to suffer. Think for yourself for a few hours. Just sit down and think. All the nonsense you hear from people on TV, in school, from your friends, from your coworkers, and even on these message boards and in the books you read...just think about it for yourself for a while. Think about what is being said. Think about what it all boils down to, if you reflect on it. What really carries weight and what doesn't? If you can't even do that, why even bother discussing ANYTHING? You will be like the voices that assault you constantly. Nothing but words with no meaning.)
Stranger: Bert: I know it doesn't guarantee anything, but it's a better chance than nothing. Nothing doesn't charge tuition and consume your time.
Bert: I know it doesn't guarantee anything, but it's a better chance than nothing.
I know it doesn't guarantee anything, but it's a better chance than nothing.
Nothing doesn't charge tuition and consume your time.
I have nothing better to spend my money and time on other than books that won't get me a job.
Feeling something doesn't make it true, and yes, I can.
All lovely to muse about, but what's it got to do with socialism when it is economically infeasible? Why should others be coerced to shoulder your burdens?
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Jon Irenicus:All lovely to muse about, but what's it got to do with socialism when it is economically infeasible? Why should others be coerced to shoulder your burdens?
Because I would be willing to do the same for my neighbor. Oh, and here is that very point put beautifully. Socialism is progress to TRANSCEND the term "economic". It would be evolution beyond the human predatory.
"The observable economic facts belong to that phase and even such laws as we can derive from them are not applicable to other phases. Since the real purpose of socialism is precisely to overcome and advance beyond the predatory phase of human development, economic science in its present state can throw little light on the socialist society of the future. Second, socialism is directed towards a social-ethical end." - Albert Einstein.
Because I would be willing to do the same for my neighbor.
So what?
Oh, and here is that very point put beautifully. Socialism is progress to TRANSCEND the term "economic".
And make pigs fly. This meaningless jibber jabber means nothing to me.
Sounds like special pleading to me. And no, I do not acknowledge Einstein as an authority on economics, so the quoting here will do you no good.
Jon Irenicus:And make pigs fly. This meaningless jibber jabber means nothing to me.
Thorstein Veblen called it "the predatory phase" of human development. I'm guessing the need for Capitalism is based on this phase of human development. Its called EVOLUTIONARY ECONOMICS.
Jon Irenicus:Sounds like special pleading to me. And no, I do not acknowledge Einstein as an authority on economics, so the quoting here will do you no good.
Economics is a science. Einstein was an authority on science. He may not have the knowledge that Carl Menger or Marx had, but he is an authority on science.
Thorstein Veblen called it "the predatory phase" of human development.
A pretty clueless description of free markets.
No no, he was an authority on physics. Krugman is supposedly an authority on economics yet he's full of shit. So even if Einstein were one, it would not preclude him from talking nonsense, which of course he is, there.
Jon Irenicus:A pretty clueless description of free markets.
Its called Evolutionary Economics.
Jon Irenicus:No no, he was an authority on physics. Krugman is supposedly an authority on economics yet he's full of shit. So even if Einstein were one, it would not preclude him from talking nonsense, which of course he is, there.
Krugman is full of shit because he's a tool of the political elite. Einstein wrote for himself.
Novus Zarathustra:Its called Evolutionary Economics.
That's a contradiction in terms.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
You sound like a rather bad troll right now. It could call itself divinely-inspired-absolutely-100%-correct economics for all I care, it would not make it anymore silly. Unless it acknowledges the problem of scarcity and details how it is to be dealt with, it is a non-starter.
And still managed to get it so wrong, eh?
Stranger:That's a contradiction in terms.
The Theory of the Leisure Class man
Jon Irenicus:You sound like a rather bad troll right now. It could call itself divinely-inspired-absolutely-100%-correct economics for all I care, it would not make it anymore silly. Unless it acknowledges the problem of scarcity and details how it is to be dealt with, it is a non-starter.
Have you even read Thorstein's critique of consumerism?
Jon Irenicus:And still managed to get it so wrong, eh?
Einstein didn't come up with all those ideas. His foundation was TLC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class
Don't start with the "have you even read..." crap. Outline the argument you think is convincing, or else I will just retort for you to go read Mises or Rothbard. If Einstein did not come up with them he was just parotting nonsense anyway.