Helmutye said:
Unfortunately, I feel that such a society would eventually devolve into a brutal plutocracy. Laissez-faire capitalism has the potential to be just as brutal as any form of totalitarianism because it exposes the value of human life and happiness to market forces--if you have lots of people, their individual lives aren't worth as much.
now where is anything saying these people are bound to these "evil" employers? what stops these lower classes from standing up to these people and demanding better conditions? im pretty sure these people will not be lobotomized as a condition for working. if they do not like the treatment, they can stand together against them. when they stop en masse, the employer must find a way to get them back to work.
Helmutye said:
Proponents of such a view would do well to remember how things were back in the old robber baron days, when workers were earning starvation wages and were exposed to brutal working conditions and if they got sick or injured, even if they were injured as a result of poor working conditions, they were fired and replaced. Now, it is certainly possible to go too far in the other direction, where companies go bankrupt or worse, cannot even form, because they are obligated to do so much for their workers. But building a just society is like walking a tightrope--there is danger on both sides. Ayn Rand is good reading for lazy socialists, but greedy capitalists would do well to read a book like The Jungle by Upton Sinclair to get some balance in their perspective.
brutal working conditions? standards that must be met. if the people dont like the wages, work harder or follow what was previously said. the conditions in the days of the jungle were before they actually had standards. im not saying regulation, but a minimum that must be met. happy employees work harder, and that is of primary concern.
Helmutye said:
The other problem I have with Ayn Rand's ideas is that they only make sense to the people on top. She just seems to assume that there will be groups of people willing to work and fight to defend it. No taxes? No government regulations? Sounds great to a boss, but before you declare it the pinnacle of fairness you have to honestly think whether or not you would want to live in such a society if you were not a boss. What if you happened to be born poor and instead of getting to go to school and learn what you would need to launch a successful business you had to work every day at the factory to provide for your family? What if, while working at the factory, you were crippled by machinery, or happened to be born with a severe physical or mental disability, or caught a debilitating illness? What if you volunteer to serve in the armed forces and are severely wounded? Who is going to take care of you? Would you honestly be willing to live a life of misery, or even to die, in order for other people to accumulate massive wealth beyond what they would ever be able to use? Is the free and unfettered accumulation of wealth a principle that you would sacrifice your life for?
the biggest misconception is that philanthropy would be nonexistant. it wouldnt be. it just wouldnt be from the government. you also seem to think that only the wealthy become wealthy. hard work will take you ANYWHERE. many of those things you mentioned (disease, etc) would not be lawfully existent in a workplace with standards. there is nothing stopping the lower classes from rising to the ranks of boss. people with no experience open businesses all the time. you just have to have entepreneurial spirit. mowing someones lawn could jumpstart a landscaping business. mow a lawn, he tells friends. you mow theirs, they tell friends. it expands and expands until you are making good money as your own boss. a society where people prosper by their own merit, where they are free, is something that would be supported by myself and people of every class.
Helmutye said:
By the way, I have a question about Ayn Rand--what is her policy on inherited wealth? Because that is the other problem with laissez-faire capitalism--once a person climbs up to the top, their descendants gain far more opportunities and can live far better than they might have otherwise been able to achieve without the advantage of rich inheritance. And more disturbingly, if they are not as clever and creative they may use their vast fortune to ensure that no one else can rise to compete with them. Companies do this all the time, and without regulations in place to prevent it it is virtually inevitable. Even formerly cool companies do this. Remember how Microsoft started really small and was a vigorous and eager innovator? I would say that the early growth of that company exemplifies how capitalism can bring good to the world. But then they got big and powerful and started suppressing innovation in favor of maintaining that power. I know that in Atlas Shrugged she said that the only person fit to inherit wealth was someone who would have made it anyway by themselves, but how the heck is that established? I would like to hear a proponent of Ayn Rand either explain to me how the dynastic inheritance of wealth is justified and by what standard a person establishes that they "would have made it anyway by themselves," or admit that there is no rational basis for inheritance and advocate that rich people not be allowed to pass on their massive wealth to their children.
"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?
"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth--the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?"
there's her view on inherited wealth. only those who have earned it can not be destroyed by it. those who grow up entitled, never earning a dime, will be ultimately destroyed by it. if someone wants to raise their kid entitled, and give them a fortune to waste without making them earn anything, it is their money to use as they wish. it is not that they "would" make it by themselves, it is that they have made it by themselves. it is saying that the person who is a natural thinker and innovator, one who is a hard worker, will be the person fit to inherit it. someone who naturally wants to make money, who desired to. not someone who wants to sit no their ass all day having it handed to them. did companies rise to challenge microsoft? yes, they did. if you are genuinly better than your competitors, then you are going to hold a monopoly. if they can do something better than you however, there is not enough money in the world to suppress it. the ones who never, ever give in to pressure, the ones who take that thing they do better and rise up, will be successful. to use a cliche, david and goliath. goliath has the size on his side, but david is simply more skilled and has a better weapon.
exchange is truly voluntary only when nearly equivalent alternatives exist. monopoly implies the absence of alternatives and thereby inhibits effective freedom of exchange. monopoly generally arise from collusive agreements among individuals or from government support. the solution is to either stop government fostering or make use of anti-trust laws. however, a monopoly may also arise because it is technically efficient to have a single producer or enteprise. they are limited, but an example would be a telephone company within a city. we'll call this a technical monopoly. if society were so static that the conditions which give rise to a monopoly were sure to remain, there would probably be a problem. in a rapidly changing society however, the conditions for making a technical monopoly frequently change and a private technical monopoly would be much easier eliminated than one a public technical monopoly. take the railroads for example. a large degree of monopoly in railroads was inevitable under technical grounds of the 19th century. this was justification for the interstate commerce commission. conditions changed. air and land transportation reduced the monopoly to negligable proportions. yet, the ICC didn't get abolished until the 70's.. the ICC started out to protect the public from the railroads, but they became an agency protecting the railroads from the trucks and planes.then, to protect current truck companies from new entrants. if the railroads had never been subject to regulation, it is almost certain that transportation would be highly competitive, trains included.
Helmutye said:
Finally, I think putting education in the hands of the market is a terrible idea. Firstly, there are some things that are worth having that will never be profitable. Take troubled inner city schools. Do you think any businessperson would ever create a school in the inner city? If someone did, do you think they would ever make any money by doing so? I live in Michigan, and Detroit is the closest major city. Did you know that there are no supermarkets in the entire city of Detroit? They all pulled out a few years back because poverty and crime were so high. The people with cars have started driving out to the suburbs to do their shopping, but people who are unable to do that are simply stuck. They have to make do with the few neighborhood grocery stores still around (assuming they have access to any because the bus system is virtually nonexistent) and fast food. This leads to massive health problems, increased illness, and a steady stream of other dooming problems. It is completely possible for all capitalistic enterprises to abandon a place. Where would we be if that happened with education, if all schools just pulled out of the inner cities? Also, what happens when the ruling rich decide that there are enough rich people, and simply start teaching everyone else how to be drones? You say there should be standards, but how often are large companies able to get away with subverting standards and regulations to achieve their goals? And what's to stop them from simply using their wealth to push for changes in the standards concurrent with their plans?
they subvert the standards and use wealth to have them changed by bribing a corrupt government obsessed with money. it wouldnt be a true society as i am advocating if the government accepts bribes. they wouldnt. the whole point of the government is to stay out of the economy. set standards, and sit back. hands off. accepting bribes would simply be a perversion of the system and not the society i am referring to. again, philanthropy can thrive in a truly capitalist society. a city would never be left, because as long as there is workforce, a company will stay there. the car companies were being run improperly, and the government shouldnt have stepped in. companies such as those would have been bought by others, and kept running. production jobs would go to detroit if the government in the area wasnt set up to punish businesses and give the government power. as for schools and such pulling out, a philanthropist would step in or the workforce would demand one/someone would step up and build one themselves. i've already answered the standards for education and such, so that answers that question.
on the flip side of the education issue however, you could theoretically use the neighborhood effect to justify government schooling. education contributes to society as a whole, and provides for a stable society. this makes it impossible to identify those affected and charge for services rendered.
Helmutye said:
To sum up the fundamental flaws: In laissez-faire capitalism, money becomes the absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another--their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun."
"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood--money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves--slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers--as industrialists."
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
