Reply #12: That's not a good example

[Cal Carpenter]

you are implying that such a situation could only occur under capitalism, when really, your example is an exception in capitalism. That type of market - where one farmer sells his product directly to a consumer and lives off the proceeds - is a fraction of a percent of the economy in our capitalist system. It's not capitalism at all. It's just basic trade. Such businesses, especially successful ones, are constantly bought out by capitalists, or shoved out (see: Walmart and the shutting down of tons of small businesses in any town they invade)

Capitalism by definition seeks profit - and capitalists acquire that profit by basically stealing some of the value of the labor of people who are actually doing the work. Your farmer gets to take the money he gets at the market and take it home to pay his bills, and to buy new equipment for his farm, and so forth. Whereas capitalism prefers to transfer ownership of that fellow's property, pay him a low wage to do the work, and pocket the profit to mass wealth for the new owners and maybe the shareholders/investors.

There is a huge difference. By using phrases like 'predatory' or 'disaster' capitalism, there is this implication that there is some other kind. There's not. Capitalism is what it is, it does what it does, there can be no successful lasting regulation of it because the 'winners' in capitalism become so powerful. Think of how hard we have to fight for the most basic regulation, how little effort is spent at enforcing said regulation, and how quickly and often any sort of regulation gets watered down. Think how our minimum wage laws are terrible, job security, benefits, pension, down the tubes...this is an inevitable result of capitalism. The concentrated wealth = concentrated power. That power is used to promote its own interests, not ours.

It's totally dishonest to imply that food wouldn't get distributed or widgets wouldn't get manufactured if there wasn't someone making a shitload of money at the top of the pyramid. Those people at the top aren't the ones who know how to do the work.

Here it is in pictures: