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These states cut unemployment aid early to supercharge hiring. It isn't working.

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
Sure, it's finding the 'balance' between screwing the customers with over-priced food, or screwing the employees with underpaid wages. Because the owner's not going to screw himself. And SOMEONE has to get screwed, here, or it's not capitalism! :)
Your post is all about those damnable capitalists screwing everyone.
This is just empty demonization.
What real world alternative to capitalism do you offer?
Anything?
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
I hope I didn't imply that I thought profit maximization was an entrepreneurs sole objective. It wasn't mine.

I was explaining what I thought you meant by balance, which was different than what another poster thought you meant.
OK.
But it's always necessary to point out to the anti-capitalist
element here that maximizing profit isn't inexorably about
crushing the workers & cheating the customers.
They see only the worst....just as they see only the best
in theoretical constructs of socialism & communism.
 

fantome profane

Anti-Woke = Anti-Justice
Premium Member
I've always said that the only real job
security is one's ability to get the next job.
It's not true....just a useful attitude.

People often think I've told them something
that I never said. A common problem it is.
If it is a common problem I suggest looking for a common denominator.

In other words, it must be everyone else’s fault.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
If it is a common problem I suggest looking for a common denominator.

In other words if must be everyone else’s fault.
Do you disbelieve that some posters operate with
preconceptions, reading things that aren't there?

My favorite recollection is a certain poster who
believed that I defend creationism, & attack evolution.
I'm biased on this, but I say that this mistake is the
other fellow's fault...not reading carefully, & just
assuming that because he placed me in some group,
that I believed the same as they.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
I hope I didn't imply that I thought profit maximization was an entrepreneurs sole objective. It wasn't mine.

I was explaining what I thought you meant by balance, which was different than what another poster thought you meant. I see now that that was of no interest to him.
You are both missing my point. It's not about the "bad" capitalist. It's about the way capitalism works. You can be as good a guy as you want to be, but the system will destroy you if you don't play by it's rules. Because the system isn't about rewarding good guys, or punishing bad guys. It's about giving all the decision-making power to the capital investor, and it doesn't care how that investor got that capital, or who gets hurt by the decisions he makes with it. That's what I meant by "no one cares" about anyone finding any balance ... because the system doesn't care about balance. It's not designed to define or protect any balance. Quite the opposite. It's designed to create one big winner who ends up with all the monopoly money. And everyone else gets nothing. It's a fundamentally toxic, anti-social system that if it's left unchecked, will destroy any society foolish enough to engage in it.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
You are both missing my point. It's not about the "bad" capitalist. It's about the way capitalism works. You can be as good a guy as you want to be, but the system will destroy you if you don't play by it's rules. Because the system isn't about rewarding good guys, or punishing bad guys. It's about giving all the decision-making power to the capital investor, and it doesn't care how that investor got that capital, or who gets hurt by the decisions he makes with it. That's what I meant by "no one cares" about anyone finding any balance ... because the system doesn't care about balance. It's not designed to define or protect any balance. Quite the opposite. It's designed to create one big winner who ends up with all the monopoly money. And everyone else gets nothing.
Have a better system to offer?
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
Sure, it's finding the 'balance' between screwing the customers with over-priced food, or screwing the employees with underpaid wages. Because the owner's not going to screw himself. And SOMEONE has to get screwed, here, or it's not capitalism! :)
I'm guessing you've never known a restuarant owner. Nor looked into them enough to know they operate on razor thin margins with profits.
And, really, I am an anti-Capitalist and even I am saying "damn" over that post. Way to gloss over efforts by those who aren't doing any screwing and trying to make things more fair and equitable.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
Oh...sure....
The old "I have an answer, but you're not worthy to hear" is unconvincing.
We've already tried to discuss this many times. You can't even acknowledge that there are other reasonable possibilities. ANY possibility anyone offers, you deem to be totalitarianism. Your bias is both blinding and intractable. Sorry, but it's not my job to overcome that nonsense for you.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
We've already tried to discuss this many times. You can't even acknowledge that there are other reasonable possibilities.
You've yet to present any real world alternative.
I'm biased in favor of empirical examples.
Unverified flawed theories....useless.

One should not take things so personally.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
You are both missing my point. It's not about the "bad" capitalist. It's about the way capitalism works. You can be as good a guy as you want to be, but the system will destroy you if you don't play by it's rules. Because the system isn't about rewarding good guys, or punishing bad guys. It's about giving all the decision-making power to the capital investor, and it doesn't care how that investor got that capital, or who gets hurt by the decisions he makes with it. That's what I meant by "no one cares" about anyone finding any balance ... because the system doesn't care about balance. It's not designed to define or protect any balance. Quite the opposite. It's designed to create one big winner who ends up with all the monopoly money. And everyone else gets nothing. It's a fundamentally toxic, anti-social system that if it's left unchecked, will destroy any society foolish enough to engage in it.

I think you missed my point, which I believe was also @Revoltingest 's point as well, and which was about how an employer chooses employees wages - not whether capitalism is good or bad.

But since you've gone there, I've identified five things that capitalism promotes. Like most other people, I approve of the first three, but not the last two, which can be mitigated with government regulation and oversight of business, and with policies that support a middle class.
  1. Capitalism makes one more creative. One has an incentive to find a new niche or market with a new popular product or service..
  2. Capitalism makes one more efficient, since efficiency translates into increased profit.
  3. Capitalism promotes being industrious. Working harder ought to improve revenue.
  4. Capitalism makes people willing to harm others and damage the environment for profit. Business needs to be regulated. Make these activities are too costly in terms of penalties and prison time.
  5. Capitalism causes wealth to concentrate. The middle class needs protection to thrive, to have their labor valued fairly and share the profits of capitalism more equitably (unions, decent minimum wages, employer matching contributions).
Capitalism worked well for me. It worked very well for America, too, until the successful effort to deregulate business and undermine the labor force in management's favor beginning about 1980 promoted the two bad guys listed above damaging the work force and the environment. This is probably what you object to, and so do I.

But let's not throw out the baby with the bath water. Let's preserve and even facilitate that engine of innovation, efficiency, and industry. Unregulated capitalism is bad. It's Dickensian capitalism and Robber Baron capitalism - dismal. But done properly, it's a huge win for the people, who could once support a family, a mortgage, a car payment and an annual vacation with a single income, possibly unskilled like mailman. That was capitalism, too.
 

Shadow Wolf

Certified People sTabber
How about we fire all the billionaires into the sun and buy ourselves xboxes with the winnings?
We'd be able to pay off people's medical debt, pay for their college, fund hospitals, fund schools, update infrastructure, and put the homeless in homes. And probably still have enough left over to get everyone an xbox, playstation, computer, or whatever.
 
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