let's make capitalism a dirty word
http://www.nationofchange.org/lets-make-capitalism-dirty-word-1394115317Immediately upon entering adulthood, Americans are forced to compete for increasingly-scarce employment. The purpose of most employment isn't to create value for society or future generations, but to create profits for a scant few executives and shareholders. In order to be competitive enough to gain employment, Americans are expected to take on so much debt for a higher education that most of the income gained in their adult years will be spent paying off that debt.
In return for all their hard work, Americans who aren't executives or shareholders are paid just enough to meet basic needs like food, clothing, and shelter. Under the capitalist system, the majority of life for today's average American before retirement is spent pursuing profits that will never be shared with them. And because capitalists like Pete Peterson and the Koch Brothers are so determined to weaken Social Security in the pursuit of ever-increasing profits, even retirement is unstable.
As a system predicated on the need to grow endlessly and never stagnate, capitalism is doomed to fail. I've written previously on this site about how capitalism is currently in its endgame, similar to the endgame of Monopoly, where one player has accumulated nearly all of the property and money, and all the other players are afraid to make any moves at all, lest they land on the wrong square and are destroyed by debt.
Capitalism is succeeding exactly like it's supposed to – all the resources and wealth are concentrating into fewer and fewer hands and corporate profits are hitting record highs every quarter. The Dow Jones and S&P 500 are doing better than they've ever done in decades. Worker productivity and Gross Domestic Product has increased at a rapid pace, yet wages are stagnant.
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(and I know you know how the rest of this goes), it's VERY hard to do and you're always in danger of being eaten.
In short, there's no such thing as "properly managed" capitalism, at least not over the long term.
An alternative to a social construct which appears nowhere but one's imagination? Sure, the alternative is a more creative imagination... 
One would imagine that as we've allowed these imaginary constructs to dictate our lives, our families and our futures since the dawn of humanity, and that as we've progressed through one form of the imaginary to another, only the dogmatic or unimaginative mind would imply that we have reached the peak of imaginary social constructs...
Last edited Thu Mar 6, 2014, 05:01 PM - Edit history (1)
Make The Corporation pay the Military bill. After all, The Corporation has used the CIA and our Military to rape and pillage the earth since at least what? 1947 when the CIA was created? Wasn't the CIA created to go into countries and ready them for the entry of The Corporation? To rape their resources? Also, make them pay for R&D, infrastructure, etc., etc., etc. Edited here to add: And make them pay retroactively to 1947. 
The Corporation needs to pay up. If we held THEIR feet to the fire, capitalism wouldn't be half bad.
... hey Mineral Man. Just because xchrom created this OP with the article, doesn't necessarily mean he supports the premise of it. It's an article he thought others would like to read and discuss. Go easy. (Did I miss his support of it somewhere? I do miss more and more these days. 
)
I mean, just say it over and over a few times ..."Kapitalismus, Kapitalismus, Kapitalismus..."
Kinda has that...oh, you know...sinister "foreign" sound, don't you think?
Like, "it was kapitalismus that led to the American economy's downfall."
Remember "Das Kapital?" 
[font size="1"]oooooooooooo...sure you do![font size="2"]
Last edited Thu Mar 6, 2014, 04:53 PM - Edit history (1)
capitalism it's self.
We could call it shititalism right now but it needs to be supremely regulated to benefit all instead of just the 1%.
Congress, bought and paid for, Supreme Court stacked.
No one in control wants to change that save for a few like Warren and Sanders.
-p
...political corruption, and corporate welfare?
Capitalism isn't predicated on much of anything. It's more descriptive of what happens given a fairly minimal and unsurprising set of circumstances, like not going out of your way to block people from owning private property that might be designated "means of production", and having a minimal amount of freedom for people to choose to hire and/or work for other people.
The way some people hope to extract enormous and endless wealth and profit from a capitalist "system" (more "society in which capitalism largely describes economic activity" than a "system"
may well be "predicated on the need to grow endlessly and never stagnate", but that goal and capitalism are not one in the same. In fact, basic market economics tells you that profits should tend toward zero -- the games necessary to keep profits high are not an intrinsic part of capitalism.
There's plenty of stuff that's screwed up in the way capitalism works in our country and the world, but little of that is capitalism itself.
To the extent that the wealth generated by capitalism "inevitably" leads to this, that, and the other great evil, capitalism is not at all unique among human institutions in that constant vigilance against abuse is required, and sometimes that vigilance will fail.
When someone comes up with an alternative system that creates intrinsic, guaranteed self-perpetuating goodness which will never, ever falter due to greed, ambition, public apathy, etc., then maybe I'll listen to this tired rhetoric about how capitalism "inevitably" leads to this or that terrible end. Until then, it's just pointless noise.
- Because it was simply a kinder, gentler form of slavery. Instead of chains, they use debt......
K&R
Everybody, right now, go look up Buckminster Fuller's Critical Path. A fast read. Easy to understand and comprehend. 
Thanks for the article, xchrom. It DID open a can of worms and spark discussion. Capitalism already is a dirty word in MY mind. It's synonymous with theft, avarice & greed, etc. By hook or by crook, to transfer our money from our bank accounts to theirs, er, like magic. Voila'! Now you see it, now you don't! The oldest shell game in the history of man. See my reply #71 in this thread. That's what I think needs to be done to balance the books of Capitalism.
These billionaires and greedy scumbag CEOs are able to get away with what they get away with because of deregulation. It's what gives us a one-sided media, the Heritage Foundation, Fox News, and so on and so forth. I'm not normally for censorship, but I really badly want to see Ayn Rand books burn in a giant bonfire. 
