Are you a communist? |
No. I just don't think that capitalism works very well at the extremes. |
What would be a current example of extreme capitalism under your definition? |
Billionaires. To be a billionaire you have to grind money out of people who need it more than you do (everybody needs it more than you do) in order to collect it up, to be seen to win, to give yourself the headache of how to dispose of it. Only a total arsehole could really think that billionaires are motivated by a reasonable and non-pathological need for money. They are high-functioning addicts. |
How do billionaires "grind money out of people"? In Western market economies consumers GIVE their money to billionaires in exchange for a product. Billionaires often are large shareholders in companies with an extremely successful product. The very fact that an individual created a product which is in such high demand warrants recognition and praise within itself. The only high functioning addicts are people who are willing to shed out their money en masse in order to empower these people, not that thats necessairly a bad thing. You have the cause and effect reversed. |
Billionaires grind money out of people by getting full value for money they don't need simply because that's the way they do things. If you earn billions why do you need accountants to save you money? If you have already earned more than you can spend how is money meant to motivate you? It can't do it efficiently, what happens is people get into the habit of driving hard deals, making sure only people on their side of the deal do well. Every deal a billionaire does redistributes money from those who need it towards the billionaire who doesn't need it. |
" Every deal a billionaire does redistributes money from those who need it towards the billionaire who doesn't need it." On what evidence do you base this? If i pay 30,000 dollars to buy a car from Toyota or General motors, i am exchanging my money for a product i need. Since cars are in high demand, it is natural that the majority stockholder in the company will raise revenue in the billions of dollars. This is true for hundreds of other products in the society. The purpose of accountants in the business environment is to maximize the utility of the dollar and stay competitive in the marketplace. Even billionaires run into competition from other billionaires. Its not as if each transaction the consumer makes is mutually exclusive and no competition exists. This idea of "pushing hard deals' and "grinding" money out of people only would be plausible in an environment in which there were limited alternatives and goods. As it stands in our global economy, consumers (particularly westerners) have a plethora of options to choose from. Any money "redistributed" to the billionaires was done on a purely consensual basis with consumers consciously choosing to buy that product. The ultimate redistribution scheme in our day in age is government wealth distribution, not liberal consumer choice. |
How does supporting the rights of people who don't need the money (who have difficulty spending what they already have) to go on extracting money from people who do need it far more help you in any way? |
It helps society because they are allowed to re-invest that money into their companies. All fortune 500 companies in the world today which provide some of the most essential services to people have re-invested billions of dollars of their profits into expanding their companies which has created countless jobs for individuals, thereby bettering society. Whats the big deal if there are a couple hundred people in this world with more money than they need. Who's to say whats too much money anyway? Once your basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing are met you basically don't NEED anything else to survive. Yet we have televisions, ipods, automobiles, and advanced medical technology. All these inventions have bettered society and all of them have by in large developed in societies with free market economies. When you try to reprimand people for being successful, you end up creating More new questions and problems than what you would have originally had if you let them keep their money. The first major problem is the economizing one: Who gets the money, What is produced with it, and How much? In order to reallocate this money you need to create new government positions, nearly all of which are highly inefficient. I have yet to see a study, European or American, that shows that government wealth distribution improves unemployment rates, literacy, or crime. Don't let your jealously rule your political beliefs. |
Who said anything about reprimanding people for being successful? That would be ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as letting them acquire money they don't need that causes them problems with spending it simply because you lack the imagination to think of a better way to run things. After the first few million people aren't doing it for the money, they are using money as the scoreboard. That is inefficient. Capitalism doesn't work at that level, it's fucked up. Show me a single self-made billionaire, somebody who has earned billions entirely by his own efforts. They don't exist. To attain great wealth you need somebody else to create the opportunity for you. Spit Bill Gates out onto an empty America, with or without an education and he wouldn't be able to survive a month let alone build a multi-billion dollar enterprise. It is the American legal system, the international trade system and the vast size of the American market all sharing a common culture that allowed Gates to become rich. Stick him in Borneo or twelfth century Naples and those ideas are worthless, perhaps even that personality would be worthless too. Success is a combination of the individual and the circumstances, so why should the individual get all the reward, especially beyond the point at which it ceases to be efficient? If you run a fine art gallery or fashion boutique in the best part of the smartest city you might be able to earn a decent living. But if you put the same gallery in a dangerous neighbourhood you wouldn't, despite having to pay a much lower rent. Billionaires need to pay their rent. They make out that it is the gallery that is successful and the street and the city and the country it happens to be in is irrelevant. Bullshit. Billionaires bring a tiny piece of the jigsaw to the table, owning, controlling, manipulating, pricing. They issue instructions and give orders, making decisions that they have paid other people to simplify for them. They assemble a machine around them that makes money and they get people to sing their praises without even being paid to do so. There is no more reason for you to kowtow to a billionaire than there is to smile at a supermodel, you are not going to get anything from either action. |
So what if they need to pay their rent. Your hypothetical situation could be repeated in ten million different ways in which to make a current business unsuccessful. Maybe we should start using the Antarctic theory of competition. If a person was placed alone on Antarctica then they wouldn't make ANY money because there aren't any people to buy shit there. These hypothetical situations are not pertinent nor are they the way people operate their businesses (thank god). They issue instructions because workers WANT to work at these jobs. They are rich because you and I pay them for their services. Corporations are nothing more than an entity which can be sued and is effecient for pooling large amounts of resources. The owners or the large ones who own majority share happen to be billionaires, big deal. If you want to destroy billionaires you will also destroy the corporations since modern billionaires wealth is in their assets. The two go hand in hand, so unless you're into a regression to pre-industrialization then you're argument is quite bullocks. Im sure there arent any billionaires in Sudan, i bet the people are much happier there. Starvation is really underrated. |
I note that you stubbornly refuse to answer my question, what's in it for you in defending billionaires? When do you expect to be one? |
Who has achieved anything by solely their own efforts? Your clothes are produced by someone else. So is your beer, your automobiles, your television set and your Internet access. Humanity is built on cooperation from other human beings. Without it its impossible to have a society. I really have no idea what you're trying to prove by saying "Show me a single self-made billionaire, somebody who has earned billions entirely by his own efforts." You or I haven't earned money without the cooperation of our parents who raised us, the teachers who schooled us, and the bosses who hire us. You're making claims that can as easily be said about a homeless bum as they can be about a billionaire. You're auguring under the illusion that you and I are somehow less dependant than a billionaire because we don't need other people to meet our needs. Once you realize this simple fact that humans are entirely dependant on one another you'll realize that you and I operate in exactly the same way Bill Gates does, just on a smaller less entrepreneurial scale |
I note that you stubbornly refuse to answer my question, again, what's in it for you in defending billionaires? When do you expect to be one? |
I thought i answered your question with my last post, i must be mistaken. Whats the question again? |
How does defending billionaires, when they aren't even watching, doing you any favours? Do you expect to become one? If so how and when. |
I dont know if i will ever become a billionaire. Probability is that I wont, but thats not a problem to me. I dont think any billionaire ever planned on becoming that successful, who can anyway? Im not defending billionaires, im defending the free-market nature which lends itself to success. Billionaires are nothing more than an externality associated with competition. In Free-Market economies, wealth distribution may be inequal but the pie is always getting bigger. A growing pie is what matters in an economy because even though your slice may be relatively small, its always increasing. |
That would be all well and good if free market economies only ever grew, constantly. But that isn't true, is it? Besides wealth only matters in relative terms. The fact that my material standard of living is in many ways higher than that of an aristocrat of two hundred years ago doesn't matter when I am poorer than most of the people I meet and am treated accordingly. Why are you spreading their propaganda? I repeat, again, what's in it for you? |
No answer. Can anybody explain to me why people need to keep on defending the rights of people who don't need defending? Do they think if they bad-mouth any aspect of capitalism or fail to add “and good luck to them” whenever they mention the name of one of the Wholly Profits (Riches be Upon Them) capitalism will somehow seize up and stop working, or throw them out on the scrapheap?
Come on, there's dozens of them but billions of us, we don't need them as much as they need us.
Billionaires are not the creators of wealth in the modern world, they are people who own things and cause decisions to be made. What billionaires do is decide things and own companies: money making machines. Wealth doesn't get decided into existence, or owned into existence. Wealth is created by work, innovation, invention and implementation of plans. The current capitalist system is screwed up in that it allows an unnecessarily large proportion of the wealth of a capitalist economy to be channeled into the hands of people who really don't deserve the money or need it. They simply expect it and employ other people to ensure nobody else gets it instead. Billionaires control the money making machine but it is the machine and most importantly the environment the machine works in that really generates the wealth. No, there aren't any billionaires in Sudan are there? That isn't because nobody is Sudan is smart or innovative or willing to take a risk or work long hours. Sudan isn't a rich country, the pickings are slim. No matter how smart, entrepreneurial or hard working you are you will not get to be a billionaire in Sudan unless you inherit wealth from some psychotic warlord of an ancestor. In Sudan there is little money making environment.
I am quite sure that there are many people out there who work harder than me and are smarter than me. But nobody works twenty times harder than I do, let alone twenty thousand times harder. The capitalist system screws up at the very top, 99.9% of capitalism works well but at the extreme top end people are pocketing money they don't need which is actually causing them problems to spend. There has to be a mechanism available which would enable these people to still score wonderful high scores on the scoreboard of corporate esteem without actually giving them the headache of having to spend the money. Some sort of tax for fabulous people, a reverse Nobel Prize perhaps.
Atheism
Politics
Life
Feedback
Forum
Home
