What exactly is Capitalism?
Some say it’s the highest, most elegant economic structure upon which robust wealth for all can be built. Others say it’s a flashy thug in an alley with a gun who threatens to shoot your kids unless you do what he says.
Personally, I think Capitalism is simply a concept that doesn’t, in the long run, work. It’s like Communism -it looks good on paper.
What exactly is Capitalism?
Some say it's the highest, most elegant economic structure upon which robust wealth for all can be built. Others say it's a flashy thug in an alley with a gun who threatens to shoot your kids unless you do what he says.
Personally, I think Capitalism is simply a concept that doesn't, in the long run, work. It's like Communism -it looks good on paper.
Communism doesn't work because it requires people to not act like, well, people. Everybody working together for the common goal, common ownership of public wealth, wise stewardship of public resources, respect, justice, yadda yadda yadda... like that's ever gonna happen.
Remember - these are people we are talking about. People - the ones who put dire health warnings on cigarette packages so they'll have something to read while they suck hot, smoky death into their lungs. If we as a species can't figure out that voluntarily breathing poisonous gas is a bad idea, how can we manage something as complicated and altruistic as economic equality?
So let's leave Communism to the higher animals - like the bees.
Capitalism, on the other hand, seems extremely doable, doesn't it?. Dog eat dog, survival of the fittest, every man for himself, let the weak die by the side of the road - I mean, how hard is that? Sounds workable...
Well, first off, dogs don't really eat dogs very often. In fact, they are famous for working together, in packs. Dogs eating dogs is actually kind of a warning sign that something is very wrong with the ecosystem, "Survival of the Fittest" doesn't account for slick marketing and stock manipulation, and the only "every man" who is actually for "himself" is a hermit. Stinky, hairy, and whatever they are making by themselves, I don't want any. It takes hundreds of people to make one successful person - parents, friends, teachers, clients, employees... the only thing self-made about a "self-made man" is his inflated sense of his self-madeness.
So what, exactly is this economic system that produces enormous wealth for the Few, cringing debt and low wages for the Rest, that promises mansions on the Moon, but delivers a tenement on a Superfund site in New Jersey, a system that always and only puts profit before humanity, a system that regularly crashes and burns?
WHAT IS CAPITALISM?
Many Americans think Capitalism means the right to vote.
Nope. That's Democracy. In Capitalism only dollars vote.
Many think Capitalism is in the Constitution.
It's not. If you haven't, read it. It's one page. Nothing in there about buying low and selling high.
Some think it's all of us working together to improve all our lives.
Theoretically, that's Socialism.
Or maybe is Capitalism just a willingness to work hard, using your brain, brawn, or talent to get ahead? Enriching your self by the honest sweat of your own brow, or hard earned intellect?
Not exactly...
A "Capitalist" is someone who makes a living not from their own labor, but from their money, their "Capital." Interest, dividends, stock sales. If you work for a living - even if it's intellectual work, and if you need that paycheck to live, you are a worker. (Middle Class is just a worker with a mortgage.) If you own a business that you have to work at to make a living, you are an owner/operator, a self-employed worker. Let me say that again: If you own a small business that you have to work at you are not a Capitalist! For some reason people have a hard time with that one. "Oh, what about the hairdresser on the corner! What a bout the mechanic down the block!" What about them? They are owner/operators, living on their labor and their investment.
If, however, your Capital provides enough financial return for you to live, you are a Capitalist.
That's it. Free Market Capitalism means the same thing, without regulations or trade barriers.
Most Americans are not Capitalists. They might want to be Capitalists, but no matter how much you, or that hardworking barista, that well paid techno-nerd, small farmer, or gangsta rapping bank teller may want to be, you are not Capitalists. You are Workers.
You probably belong to the class who's income does not cover all its needs, and who rely on public wealth and services to survive. Government funded roads, police and firefighters, government oversight for clean air, water, and food. Free public schools, libraries, and parks for your kids - all those services that Capitalists say don't work because they haven't been privatized - all the things and services we citizens pool our money in the form of taxes to pay for because we can't afford them by ourselves. Actually, when you think about it, all the wannabe Capitalists are living like Socialists.
Now that we know who is and who is not a Capitalist, let's look at why this steaming sack of profit driven demonology is antithetical to common sense, human values, kindness, puppies, Mom, and apple pie.
Let's start with that Barista, shall we? The wannabe/thinks she is a / Capitalist, smiling while she serves up hot joe to a morning rush of caffeine withdrawing tension bombs. There she is, sweating over extra cinnamon froth, hurriedly steaming free range milk, and doing it all for minimum wage. Think about that for a minute: Minimum wage - The Government mandated rock bottom amount a business can legally pay a person to do an actual job. Now, I understand that small, privately owned corner stores and such can't afford to pay more. I wish they could, but they can't. But why do so many huge publicly traded corporations, who until recently boasted about the begamajillions they showered on their CEOs, pay their hardworking employees as little as they can? That's what America's favorite high value, low price, supermarket to the world, we bring good things to light, 40 billion burgers sold, fair trade coffee companies pay - as little as they can without breaking the law. Why? Because Capitalism dictates that Labor costs must be kept as low as possible so the greatest possible profit can be returned to the Investors. The workers do all of the work, and the money people get all of the profit, and profit only comes from raising prices and/or lowering wages. So when that Barista can't make rent, get a winter coat, or buy school supplies for her kid it isn't because she isn't working hard enough, or that there isn't enough money. She's working plenty hard, but the extra money the Corporation makes from her hard work is going to the Capital investors, not her - though a little is spent on her, for propaganda to keep her believing the system works for her.
CAPITALISM CREATES WEALTH.
No. Labor creates wealth. Here's a test:
A guy with no money on the beach. With his bare hands he build a sand castle that is so beautiful people pay him to take their picture in front of it. All he invested was his labor, and he will have more money than he started with.
Labor =Money.
Another guy. Same beach, $100 in his pocket.
And that's it. Unless he does something. or pays someone to do something, that $100 is not going to increase. "Oh, he could invest it." Hold on, there , Sparky. Wherever the guy would invest his $100 his return would rely on someone's labor to turn it into profit. Starbucks is a profitable corporation, but if a laborer didn't pick the coffee beans, roast the coffee beans, grind the coffee beans, or add hot water to make overpriced, hot bean juice, Starbuck investors would never make a profit. Labor is the essential ingredient to profit. So why aren't we all proud Laborists, rather than wannabe Capitalists? Propaganda. And what kind of economy do you get when a nation convinces itself that money breeds money, investment alone creates wealth, and that Labor is irrelevant?
Look out the window.
CAPITALISM IS SELF CORRECTING.
If your car ran like Capitalism - some days humming along great, other days needing a government tow truck to get it to a shop where the mechanic can only promise more booms and breakdowns after it's "fixed", - you wouldn't call your car "self correcting." You'd call it junk. You'd give it away on Craigslist for parts and start looking for something that worked. But the Mechanics of Wall Street - the same mental minnows who two years ago insisted the economic engine was just warming up when in fact the damn car was on fire - when these sleazy, used car selling felons tell us this is how the car of Capitalism is supposed to run, we consistently fail to trade it in for a better model.
CAPITALISM FOSTERS COMPETITION.
Okay, that's just insane. The object of any corporation is to dominate it's market, not joyfully share it. It's not about building a better mousetrap, it's about lowering labor costs so the competition's price can be undercut, while building enough investor capital so that all the competing, and perhaps better mousetrap companies can simply be bought. And anyone who says different is trying to sell you on tossing out some antimonopoly regulation. The goal of Capitalism is profit. Market dominance equals greater profit. Monopoly insures dominance. The enemy of monopoly is competition. Capitalism always tends toward monopoly.
CAPITALISM WORKS BEST WITH FEWER OR NO RESTRICTIONS.
Really? Remember the Recession of 1981? Most serious economic slump since the Great Depression? And what preceded it? The Depository Institutions Deregulations and Monetary Control Act of 1980, which ended many of the regulations on how banks invest your money. Regulations gone, and so they played in the stock market, speculated in Real Estate, lost our dough, and the Federal Government had to spend $870 million to bail them out. Is this sounding familiar? And that was when $870 million could really buy something! And how did these cash sucking colon worms follow that? With the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982, which further deregulated banks, and also the... wait for it... Savings and Loans! By 1983 the FDIC listed 540 banks on the verge of failure, and then the S&L crisis popped. Who didn't see that coming? Another $160 billion!
And what legislative Crap-o-rama landed in 1999, right before the latest daylight robbery of our future? The Graham-Leach-Bliley Act, overturning the bank regulating Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which had separated commercial and investment banking. Result? Again, look outside! Go! Now! Look! Every time any regulations are lifted on the Market, Capitalists find a way to abuse their new freedom, and rob us in the process.
My friend John, who has been in the financial sector for 29 years, says people in the business of money are always, always looking for ways to steal. And while fewer regulations give them fewer laws to break, they are always looking for ways around any law which stands between them and your money. The system is set up for them to view personal and corporate profit as their goals, regulations as the enemy, and whatever pain and economic destruction their undocumented crimes cause along the way as collateral damage, and the societal price of doing Business.
CAPITALISM ENGENDERS FREEDOM.
No, Capitalism engenders an accumulation of wealth, high-stakes financial crimes, and an economic aristocracy. Democracy and justice engender freedom.
CAPITALISM IS ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY.
While Capitalism was a huge leap forward in the struggle against Feudalism, in the end it has simply replaced an aristocracy of blood and money with one of money and blood.
CAPITALISM IS COMPASSIONATE.
Oh, suck my ass! Do I even have to go into this one? Capitalism is compassionate if there is a profit in it. If they can make money saving your life, Capitalists will do it, and if the profit is in letting you die, you're dead. Remember the Pinto? Ford Corporation knew the cars could explode, but calculated it was cheaper to pay for good marketing and the wrongful death lawsuits than recall and fix the cars. Merck knew that the drug Vioxx could kill you, but with $2.5 billion in annual sales and almost $50 per share, they reckoned their profits would more than take care of paying your surviving relatives for your fatal stroke. Corporations are not designed to provide goods or services in exchange for money; they are designed to make money, while grudgingly providing as little service, or the cheapest product possible, while giving the profit to the investors. Capitalism would let the cutest baby in the world starve to death on it's doorstep... unless there was a profit in saving it.
CAPITALISM IS SELF SUSTAINING.
Oh, Christ! Aren't you paying attention? Remember the whole minimum wage thing? The Barista? It was just a couple of paragraphs ago! In the name of Free Trade/Anti-Protectionist/Bottom Line crap these Friedman spouting blowholes pay as little as they can to the very people Capitalism relies on as customers - too little to let their own employees be the consumers the economy needs. Sounds stupid, and such blind greed should have been rebelled against decades ago, villagers with torches, let-them-eat-cake capitalist swine chased naked and screaming through the streets, corporate heads on sticks held aloft by gleeful children... but the system temporarily saved itself with the great Faustian gift of the Capitalists to the Working Class - Credit Cards! Buy now, pay for the rest of your life! Easy credit helped push those lowest wages even lower, since the workers only have to make low, low monthly payments stretched out into an infinite future. Result - consumer credit debt has skyrocketed. The underpaid, deeply in debt American worker is now responsible for 70% of the economy because of our purchases and payments... but not for long. With American wages depressed in the name of Capitalism, payments will not be met, and Credit Card companies, unable to cover their own debts, will start falling from the sky like banks. And what's left of the economy may fail.
Capitalism is self-sustaining like a cancer - it flourishes as it kills it's host.
CAPITALISM WORKS.
No, no it doesn't. It has failed repeatedly through it's brief history, each time absconding with a huge chunk of wealth, and each time needing to be bailed out with public money. That's right - our hard earned tax dollars, all that money that should go to making our collective lives better instead is repeatedly sucked away and fed to the freshly dead zombie corpse of Capitalism as it is once again dragged from it's too, too shallow grave by Corporatists and Corporate Politicians, and recesitated before our very eyes. And it is never, ever a strong dose of more Capitalism that is injected into this tottering, thieving, crack head of the Undead. Oh, no! What saves Capitalism each time, giving it enough life to kill more of our hopes and dreams? Government spending! Regulations! Socialism! The very things the Capitalists tell us are the problems are always used by the Capitalists to prop up the nightmare illusion we call the Free Market. Don't believe me? What ended the Great Depression? Public Spending and programs - and that includes spending on World War II! Who do you think paid for that? That recession in the 80's - how did Reagan work that out? By increasing public spending... on the military! Biggest increase in history! The Left was horrified, but the Market was thrilled! Saved their asses. Since the mid-80's the U.S. military budget has been the longest running, most expensive corporate bailout in history.
And after the Nasdaq Crash - why do you think Capitalists were pushing so hard to get Social Security money into the Stock Market? It wasn't to save our retirements - it was because they knew the Market was going to fail, once again, without a big infusion of public dough. They knew it. Capitalism feeds off the public sector because it cannot stand on it's own.
Capitalism needs Socialism for societal stability, just as Socialism needs a well regulated Capitalist sector for innovation. The problem in America has been the antagonism of the Free Market Zealots against anything that does not turn a profit. Milton Friedman was wrong, and I hope somewhere Karl Marx is sitting on Friedman's creaky chest, flicking beard fleas into Milton's dry, cracked piehole. The Stock Market should not be the dominant factor in the any nation's economy - it should be a component. The dominant factor has always been, and will always be, Government spending. A limited, regulated market has it's place, but that place cannot be at the front. And a Free Market, an unregulated Market, has no place at all.
WHAT IS CAPITALISM?
A Ponzi Scheme. This is a term that's been tossed around quite a bit recently, and not everyone knows what it is. A Ponzi Scheme is like a Pyramid Scheme - Someone promises a return on an investment ("Give me twenty bucks, and I'll pay you a dividend of one buck each week for a year.") $365 for a $20 investment? How do they do it? (It's a secret! I have special investments that have great returns!) So you give them your money, and when the dividends start rolling in you tell two friends, who rush to be a part of the bonanza, and in turn each of them tell two friends, etc...and a pyramid grows. But the truth of the Ponzi Scheme is there are no special, ultra secret investments. The first investors are simply paid off with the money from the later investors, who are in turn paid off with the money of the latest investors. Ponzi Schemes, just like Pyramid Schemes and Multi-Level Marketing Schemes, require an ever expanding pool of investors to keep going - which must grow geometrically. (hence the term "Pyramid.") But when the inflow of cash stops - and it always does with a Ponzi/Pyramid scheme because at some point you simply can't find enough new people - the whole thing collapses... normally right after the people who started it have flown the coop.
And so it is with the Market. It's all about fast talkers and greedy suckers. A broker says "Hey, I've got a hot property! It'll go through the roof soon!" So a bunch of people buy it, which pushes the price up. Other people see the "value" going up, they want to be part of the bonanza, and when they buy the price goes up even more! Mind you, during all of this frenzied buying the actual company may not have changed at all - nothing may have actually changed - except the Capitalist's manipulation of the public perception of the value of the stock. Then, when the Capitalist think the run is over, they sell. Remember, the Capitalists make money selling you stock after they've driven the price as high as they can. And when they sell, the price starts to drop. Seeing the price go down, other people lose confidence and sell, which makes the "value" go down even more. People who bought high are selling low, and the latecomers are wiped out. It's like when those people at the top of the Pyramid Scheme top out, or the early investors in the Ponzi scheme cash in, leaving everyone else wondering where their money went. The only difference is Capitalism's victims never want to believe the scheme was a scam.
We were all told Real Estate values would never go down. Buildings, land, location - nothing had changed, but suddenly everything had more value, and low interest rates meant this was a chance for everyone to own a piece of the American Dream! Despite the fact that real wages have been going down for thirty years, while prices for everything have gone through the roof, we were all encouraged to buy! It was an "Ownership Society" (remember that?) Buy now, and watch you equity grow! It didn't matter it was a 50 year mortgage you'd die before paying off - you would have a house that only increased in value, and the Ponzi scheme would have a new stream of cash.
And who were the last invited to this particular round of Ponzi-mania? High-risk loan applicants. Make no mistake, they were a tiny, tiny drop in the actual financial slop pot, but the Capitalist Bankers scanned the financial horizon, and realized they had expanded their pyramid as wide as they could with people who could reliably pay. Again, a Ponzi scheme must grow, or collapse. But finally workers in underpaid, minimum wage America just couldn't even afford the freakishly low payments on monstrously overpriced homes, and the money stopped flowing,. Properties were sold, prices dropped, and the whole thing collapsed. There simply wasn't enough money coming in to keep the Ponzi Scheme going. And now, with promises of change and lessons learned, the Capitalists hope all the wannabe Capitalists will blame a few bad players, and not notice it was the Scheme itself that caused the misery. And after the bailouts and pardons, they hope they can start it all over again.
WHAT IS CAPITALISM?
It is a system of investment in which profit is shared among those who invest their Capital, and labor is considered an unfortunate cost.
WHAT IS CAPITALISM?
It's the siren song of the Free Marketeers, who've repeatedly crashed our Ship of State on the rocks of Capitalist Greed. And each time the Captains of Wall Street have struck up a new song, convincing the surviving galley slaves to rebuild the ship with their own money and row again - row - as they sit in filth, row - as their homes sink, row - as their children starve, row - to a fantasy tomorrowland where all their suffering and sacrifice will be forgotten because they, too, will share in the Capitalist Dream!
WHAT IS CAPITALISM?
It's a dream of unrestricted greed, and each time we've tried to come close to it, deregulating and loosening restrictions, it's almost wrecked America.
WHAT IS CAPITALISM?
It is a lie. It is a fraud. And if we bail it out again, try to "fix" it, our country will be saddled with it's lies and crimes until it breaks down again, next time sucking the money out of our children's economy.
WHAT IS CAPITALISM?
It is a failure, and we Americans should finally spit it out like the mouthful of maggots it is.