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You're trying to graft libertarianism onto capitalism. Capitalism is amoral. The point is the exchange of goods or services for money. Whether the transactions are good or bad, free or coerced, is irrelevant. One of the favorite eras of American history for libertarians is The Gilded Age, before the advent of progressivism and very little regulation. If you think there wasn't a lot of coercion going on, I've got a bridge to sell you.
As I already explained, capitalism is based on banning coercion from human transactions. If you don't think the use of coercion is a moral issue, then you are undoubtedly a servile toady of the welfare state.
If you think coercion was prevalent during the Gilded age, then perhaps you could document some examples. there's far, far more coercion under the current welfare state than there ever was prior to it. That includes the colonial period.
This article explains why capitalism cannot be equated with slavery and in fact ended slavery...
It stopped being "your(s)" when you resorted to forming a collective to help you acquire more "wealth." Since you were either too greedy or too incompetent to compete without the assistance of others, it is the aggregate wealth of the collective being redistributed. Put another way: you didn't build it alone.Achievement and success are used to create opportunity and wealth.Speaking of nonsense, what is the "natural order of economics"?What you've just described is a mode of business that existed for centuries before capitalism and plantation slavery came into being.Commerce is the exchange of commodities, and capitalism treats labor as just another commodity. You may not like it, but this country doesn't exist today without genocide and slavery."It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism.
"Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined.
"Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness."
You are conflating "commerce" with "capitalism"...selling a person who is a slave doesn't mean you are practising capitalism...since one party is not free to give his consent to the transaction...
Capitalism is free exchange of goods and services to the mutual profit of all trading parties. Note that this includes the exchange of service (labor). I assure you it exists as I personally engaged in it, this very day.
I spent an hour engaging my extensive experience, knowledge and tools... which solved a problem for an individual who knew of my skills in resolving such in a timely and professional manner. For that hour of time, I received a couple of hundred bucks.
They were happy, having had their problem resolved, thus representing their profit and I was happy having increased my means to fulfill my own life and that of my family.
Works every single time it is exercised by reasonable people, intent on bearing the responsibilities that sustain their right to exercise their right to do so.
Simple stuff... despite being beyond the means of the intellectually less fortunate.
What point do you imagine you're making?
Yes, what I just described is the natural order of economics, which eventually came to be known as Capitalism.
The point of which is to refute the nonsense to which I was responding.
For example. I get an education or learn a skill. I decide to create a company. My company's business volume grows to the point where I require others to help me operate the business. I pay them just compensation for their equivalent work ethic, skill level and ability. This my wealth being redistributed.
and another thing...those things that keep the government going from a monster to a rampaging monster are the very things the left/democrat/socialists undermine...they want government big, in control, and unstoppable against the limits posed on it by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights...all for our own good...just put a few, smart, lefties in charge...with all the power they need to smooth out the interference...and we will have heaven on earth...
I always wonder...since the left/socialists/democrats are the ones most likely to think the world is overpopulated...and they tend to point to the birth rate in the 3rd world (the non white world?), and that we need to get that population under control....(and yet, they aren't the racists? )
Is it really wise to turn control of your health care system and your healthcare choices to them...since you might be one of those people overpopulating the world...who needs to be "fixed" to correct the problem...
I never understood the logic in that...
Funny how someone with such a closed mind and the OP is, couldn't or wouldn't research that little phenomena.
Through history, capitalism unchecked has always exploited people and the environment.
But money is king. To them. Until something drastic happens then it becomes confusing to them why human kindness does come into play.
Hypocrites to the extreme.
And yet there are more slaves in the world now then there ever were during the Atlantic slave trade.Slavery was destroyed by capitalism.
The term "exploit" is virtually meaningless. I exploit my employer, and he expoits me. Consumers exploit merchants in distress who sell their wares for pennies on the dollar.
Capitalism vastly improved the standard of living for the average person. Without capitalism, we'd all be wallowing in abject poverty with the threat of stavation constantly hovering over us.
Government social programs have nothing to do with "human kindness" any more than an armed robbery is the manifestation of human kindness.
Unions scuttled themselves when they didn't stand up for socialist principles during the 1950s, not because they failed to notice the similarities between owing and renting a person; when a worker's livelihood is totally and immediately dependent on wages, she can not be said to have an equal bargaining position with any prospective employers. Therefore, she's a wage slave as thinkers from Cicero to Lincoln to Chomsky have noted; naturally, you know better.Ahh. So here we get to the root of your whining....UNIONS...Wage slavery and right to work laws.So why is socialist North not prospering and capitalist Sun Belt prospering in 2014?Slavery was a blight on the south and kept it from advancing...while the capitalist North prospered...
Right. Unions will solve all of your little problems.
The fact is, unions made their own bed. Unions decided to scuttle themselves.
Unions are of no use now. So forget it.
You will not be permitted to use these throw away terms such as "wage slavery" because they have no meaning.
So now we're civilized?So?.....We have laws to prevent this now. That is the result of civilized society.Native Americans never created bond markets based on slave mortgages, did they? Prior to the US Civil War slavery and capitalism were one and the same thing, 85% of Southern cotton was shipped to England's "dark and satanic mills." Both slavery and capitalism denigrate labor to varying degrees. US planters received millions of pounds every year in anticipation of the sale of that year's cotton crop. Slaves served as the unpaid labor and the collateral for those loans. You right-wing losers don't like to admit the US was built on genocide and slavery, but you can't change history.Does it explain how slaves functioned as unpaid labor and capital during the time of King Cotton?This article explains why capitalism cannot be equated with slavery and in fact ended slavery...
It also points out the concept of lefty dyslexia...the inability of people on the left to understand basic truths about economics, politics, the law, social systems...
For example...to a regular person...Capitalism is the freedom to engage another person in a business without government interference...the exact opposite of slavery...
To the lefty/democrat/progressive, Capitalism = Slavery
Capitalism slavery TribLIVE
But the most far-fetched myth that I've encountered recently is that the wealth of the modern Western world, especially that of the United States, is the product of slavery.
She anticipated my response. "Not directly. But the capital that made these innovations possible was extracted from slave labor. The wealth accumulated by slaveholders is what financed the industrialization that makes today's wealth possible."
I looked at her in raw disbelief. (Not a good strategy, by the way, for a public speaker.)
Collecting my thoughts, I pointed out that slavery had been an ever-present institution throughout human history until just about 200 years ago. Why didn't slaveholders of 2,000 years ago in Europe or 500 years ago in Asia accumulate wealth that triggered economic growth comparable to ours• Why is Latin America so much poorer today than the United States, given that the Spaniards and Portuguese who settled that part of the world were enthusiastic slavers• Indeed, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery was Brazil -- in 1888, a quarter-century after U.S. abolition. By American and western European standards, Brazil remains impoverished.
And why, having abolished slavery decades before their Southern neighbors, were Northern U.S. states wealthier than Southern states before the Civil War?
I don't recall my young challenger's response. I recall only that I was as little convinced by it as she was by my answers.
The fact is that slavery disappeared only as industrial capitalism emerged. And it disappeared first where industrial capitalism appeared first: Great Britain. This was no coincidence. Slavery was destroyed by capitalism.
To begin with, the ethical and political principles that support capitalism are inconsistent with slavery. As we Americans discovered, a belief in the universal dignity of human beings, their equality before the law, and their right to govern their own lives cannot long coexist with an institution that condemns some people to bondage merely because of their identity.
The rest of the column is really good as well...
"When the cotton crop came in short and sales failed to meet advanced payments, planters found themselves indebted to merchants and bankers.
"Slaves were sold to make up the difference.
"The mobility and salability of slaves meant they functioned as the primary form of collateral in the credit-and-cotton economy of the 19th century.
"It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism.
"Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined.
"Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/king-cottons-long-shadow/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Sugar planters also used slaves, and that was long before capitalism appeared on the scene. The same goes for tobacco, chocolate, rubber and other commodity crops. Slavery was an anachronism in relationship to capitalism, not a feature of capitalism. It has existed since time immemorial. Even Native American tribes practiced slavery.
What more do you want? Or perhaps more accurately, you have no idea what you want.
Or perhaps your entire existence here on planet Earth is to complain?
You're trying to graft libertarianism onto capitalism. Capitalism is amoral. The point is the exchange of goods or services for money. Whether the transactions are good or bad, free or coerced, is irrelevant. One of the favorite eras of American history for libertarians is The Gilded Age, before the advent of progressivism and very little regulation. If you think there wasn't a lot of coercion going on, I've got a bridge to sell you.
As I already explained, capitalism is based on banning coercion from human transactions. If you don't think the use of coercion is a moral issue, then you are undoubtedly a servile toady of the welfare state.
If you think coercion was prevalent during the Gilded age, then perhaps you could document some examples. there's far, far more coercion under the current welfare state than there ever was prior to it. That includes the colonial period.
Perhaps you should study The Gilded Age. I can't do all your homework for you. Suffice it to say, if you didn't play by Standard Oil's rules, you didn't do business. If there's coercion now, it's to give the little guy a shot. IMO, that's better than the big guy getting whatever he wants, just because he can.
So now we're civilized?So?.....We have laws to prevent this now. That is the result of civilized society.Native Americans never created bond markets based on slave mortgages, did they? Prior to the US Civil War slavery and capitalism were one and the same thing, 85% of Southern cotton was shipped to England's "dark and satanic mills." Both slavery and capitalism denigrate labor to varying degrees. US planters received millions of pounds every year in anticipation of the sale of that year's cotton crop. Slaves served as the unpaid labor and the collateral for those loans. You right-wing losers don't like to admit the US was built on genocide and slavery, but you can't change history.Does it explain how slaves functioned as unpaid labor and capital during the time of King Cotton?This article explains why capitalism cannot be equated with slavery and in fact ended slavery...
It also points out the concept of lefty dyslexia...the inability of people on the left to understand basic truths about economics, politics, the law, social systems...
For example...to a regular person...Capitalism is the freedom to engage another person in a business without government interference...the exact opposite of slavery...
To the lefty/democrat/progressive, Capitalism = Slavery
Capitalism slavery TribLIVE
But the most far-fetched myth that I've encountered recently is that the wealth of the modern Western world, especially that of the United States, is the product of slavery.
She anticipated my response. "Not directly. But the capital that made these innovations possible was extracted from slave labor. The wealth accumulated by slaveholders is what financed the industrialization that makes today's wealth possible."
I looked at her in raw disbelief. (Not a good strategy, by the way, for a public speaker.)
Collecting my thoughts, I pointed out that slavery had been an ever-present institution throughout human history until just about 200 years ago. Why didn't slaveholders of 2,000 years ago in Europe or 500 years ago in Asia accumulate wealth that triggered economic growth comparable to ours• Why is Latin America so much poorer today than the United States, given that the Spaniards and Portuguese who settled that part of the world were enthusiastic slavers• Indeed, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery was Brazil -- in 1888, a quarter-century after U.S. abolition. By American and western European standards, Brazil remains impoverished.
And why, having abolished slavery decades before their Southern neighbors, were Northern U.S. states wealthier than Southern states before the Civil War?
I don't recall my young challenger's response. I recall only that I was as little convinced by it as she was by my answers.
The fact is that slavery disappeared only as industrial capitalism emerged. And it disappeared first where industrial capitalism appeared first: Great Britain. This was no coincidence. Slavery was destroyed by capitalism.
To begin with, the ethical and political principles that support capitalism are inconsistent with slavery. As we Americans discovered, a belief in the universal dignity of human beings, their equality before the law, and their right to govern their own lives cannot long coexist with an institution that condemns some people to bondage merely because of their identity.
The rest of the column is really good as well...
"When the cotton crop came in short and sales failed to meet advanced payments, planters found themselves indebted to merchants and bankers.
"Slaves were sold to make up the difference.
"The mobility and salability of slaves meant they functioned as the primary form of collateral in the credit-and-cotton economy of the 19th century.
"It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism.
"Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined.
"Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/king-cottons-long-shadow/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Sugar planters also used slaves, and that was long before capitalism appeared on the scene. The same goes for tobacco, chocolate, rubber and other commodity crops. Slavery was an anachronism in relationship to capitalism, not a feature of capitalism. It has existed since time immemorial. Even Native American tribes practiced slavery.
What more do you want? Or perhaps more accurately, you have no idea what you want.
Or perhaps your entire existence here on planet Earth is to complain?
Now we diminish the natural superiority of labor over capital by bribing governments to reduce the bargaining power of workers under the guise of protecting the rights of individual workers?
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Abraham Lincoln
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and... - Abraham Lincoln at BrainyQuote
Unions scuttled themselves when they didn't stand up for socialist principles during the 1950s, not because they failed to notice the similarities between owing and renting a person; when a worker's livelihood is totally and immediately dependent on wages, she can not be said to have an equal bargaining position with any prospective employers. Therefore, she's a wage slave as thinkers from Cicero to Lincoln to Chomsky have noted; naturally, you know better.Ahh. So here we get to the root of your whining....UNIONS...Wage slavery and right to work laws.So why is socialist North not prospering and capitalist Sun Belt prospering in 2014?Slavery was a blight on the south and kept it from advancing...while the capitalist North prospered...
Right. Unions will solve all of your little problems.
The fact is, unions made their own bed. Unions decided to scuttle themselves.
Unions are of no use now. So forget it.
You will not be permitted to use these throw away terms such as "wage slavery" because they have no meaning.
It stopped being "your(s)" when you resorted to forming a collective to help you acquire more "wealth." Since you were either too greedy or too incompetent to compete without the assistance of others, it is the aggregate wealth of the collective being redistributed. Put another way: you didn't build it alone.Achievement and success are used to create opportunity and wealth.Speaking of nonsense, what is the "natural order of economics"?What you've just described is a mode of business that existed for centuries before capitalism and plantation slavery came into being.Commerce is the exchange of commodities, and capitalism treats labor as just another commodity. You may not like it, but this country doesn't exist today without genocide and slavery."It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism.
"Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined.
"Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness."
You are conflating "commerce" with "capitalism"...selling a person who is a slave doesn't mean you are practising capitalism...since one party is not free to give his consent to the transaction...
Capitalism is free exchange of goods and services to the mutual profit of all trading parties. Note that this includes the exchange of service (labor). I assure you it exists as I personally engaged in it, this very day.
I spent an hour engaging my extensive experience, knowledge and tools... which solved a problem for an individual who knew of my skills in resolving such in a timely and professional manner. For that hour of time, I received a couple of hundred bucks.
They were happy, having had their problem resolved, thus representing their profit and I was happy having increased my means to fulfill my own life and that of my family.
Works every single time it is exercised by reasonable people, intent on bearing the responsibilities that sustain their right to exercise their right to do so.
Simple stuff... despite being beyond the means of the intellectually less fortunate.
What point do you imagine you're making?
Yes, what I just described is the natural order of economics, which eventually came to be known as Capitalism.
The point of which is to refute the nonsense to which I was responding.
For example. I get an education or learn a skill. I decide to create a company. My company's business volume grows to the point where I require others to help me operate the business. I pay them just compensation for their equivalent work ethic, skill level and ability. This my wealth being redistributed.
This article explains why capitalism cannot be equated with slavery and in fact ended slavery...
Um. No. The Civil War ended slavery.
And the fact is that slavery was withering out until the industrial cotton boom brought it back with a vengeance at the beginning of the 19th century. And even though the Civil War ended slavery, King Cotton kept blacks in bondage well into the 20th century.
In my reality the distribution of income has an impact on the demand side of the economy; what about yours? In my reality wages have stagnated over the past forty years for a majority of US workers while 1% of Americans have increased their share of national income by a factor of three. Why wouldn't you object to that?Oh please. You are living in your own self created reality.Commerce is the exchange of commodities, and capitalism treats labor as just another commodity. You may not like it, but this country doesn't exist today without genocide and slavery."It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism.
"Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined.
"Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness."
You are conflating "commerce" with "capitalism"...selling a person who is a slave doesn't mean you are practising capitalism...since one party is not free to give his consent to the transaction...
All you do is bitch and moan.
What's the matter, Rockefeller, can't wrap your mind around the obvious truism your cave man's spear would never have existed absent his labor?So now we're civilized?So?.....We have laws to prevent this now. That is the result of civilized society.Native Americans never created bond markets based on slave mortgages, did they? Prior to the US Civil War slavery and capitalism were one and the same thing, 85% of Southern cotton was shipped to England's "dark and satanic mills." Both slavery and capitalism denigrate labor to varying degrees. US planters received millions of pounds every year in anticipation of the sale of that year's cotton crop. Slaves served as the unpaid labor and the collateral for those loans. You right-wing losers don't like to admit the US was built on genocide and slavery, but you can't change history.Does it explain how slaves functioned as unpaid labor and capital during the time of King Cotton?This article explains why capitalism cannot be equated with slavery and in fact ended slavery...
It also points out the concept of lefty dyslexia...the inability of people on the left to understand basic truths about economics, politics, the law, social systems...
For example...to a regular person...Capitalism is the freedom to engage another person in a business without government interference...the exact opposite of slavery...
To the lefty/democrat/progressive, Capitalism = Slavery
Capitalism slavery TribLIVE
But the most far-fetched myth that I've encountered recently is that the wealth of the modern Western world, especially that of the United States, is the product of slavery.
She anticipated my response. "Not directly. But the capital that made these innovations possible was extracted from slave labor. The wealth accumulated by slaveholders is what financed the industrialization that makes today's wealth possible."
I looked at her in raw disbelief. (Not a good strategy, by the way, for a public speaker.)
Collecting my thoughts, I pointed out that slavery had been an ever-present institution throughout human history until just about 200 years ago. Why didn't slaveholders of 2,000 years ago in Europe or 500 years ago in Asia accumulate wealth that triggered economic growth comparable to ours• Why is Latin America so much poorer today than the United States, given that the Spaniards and Portuguese who settled that part of the world were enthusiastic slavers• Indeed, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery was Brazil -- in 1888, a quarter-century after U.S. abolition. By American and western European standards, Brazil remains impoverished.
And why, having abolished slavery decades before their Southern neighbors, were Northern U.S. states wealthier than Southern states before the Civil War?
I don't recall my young challenger's response. I recall only that I was as little convinced by it as she was by my answers.
The fact is that slavery disappeared only as industrial capitalism emerged. And it disappeared first where industrial capitalism appeared first: Great Britain. This was no coincidence. Slavery was destroyed by capitalism.
To begin with, the ethical and political principles that support capitalism are inconsistent with slavery. As we Americans discovered, a belief in the universal dignity of human beings, their equality before the law, and their right to govern their own lives cannot long coexist with an institution that condemns some people to bondage merely because of their identity.
The rest of the column is really good as well...
"When the cotton crop came in short and sales failed to meet advanced payments, planters found themselves indebted to merchants and bankers.
"Slaves were sold to make up the difference.
"The mobility and salability of slaves meant they functioned as the primary form of collateral in the credit-and-cotton economy of the 19th century.
"It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism.
"Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined.
"Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness."
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/king-cottons-long-shadow/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Sugar planters also used slaves, and that was long before capitalism appeared on the scene. The same goes for tobacco, chocolate, rubber and other commodity crops. Slavery was an anachronism in relationship to capitalism, not a feature of capitalism. It has existed since time immemorial. Even Native American tribes practiced slavery.
What more do you want? Or perhaps more accurately, you have no idea what you want.
Or perhaps your entire existence here on planet Earth is to complain?
Now we diminish the natural superiority of labor over capital by bribing governments to reduce the bargaining power of workers under the guise of protecting the rights of individual workers?
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Abraham Lincoln
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and... - Abraham Lincoln at BrainyQuote
Every commie in this forum just loves that Abe Lincoln quote. The claim that labor is independent of capital is obviously false. The first cave man to make a spear point understood that.
If drillers didn't like the prices Standard Oil offered for their oil, they were free to sell it to someone else. Standard Oil didn't coerce a soul. Every transaction it engaged in was purely voluntary.
What's the matter, Rockefeller, can't wrap your mind around the obvious truism your cave man's spear would never have existed absent his labor?So now we're civilized?
Now we diminish the natural superiority of labor over capital by bribing governments to reduce the bargaining power of workers under the guise of protecting the rights of individual workers?
"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Abraham Lincoln
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and... - Abraham Lincoln at BrainyQuote
Every commie in this forum just loves that Abe Lincoln quote. The claim that labor is independent of capital is obviously false. The first cave man to make a spear point understood that.
If drillers didn't like the prices Standard Oil offered for their oil, they were free to sell it to someone else. Standard Oil didn't coerce a soul. Every transaction it engaged in was purely voluntary.
Just as I thought, you don't have a clue as to really happened back then. How are you free to sell to someone else, when there isn't anyone else?
It never seemed to occur to TR that there could be valid economic reasons for the railroads to charge the Standard Oil Company lower rates for shipping their oil. At a time when others shipped their oil in barrels, Standard Oil shipped theirs in tank cars -- which required a lot less work by the railroads than loading and unloading the same amount of oil in barrels.
Theodore Roosevelt was also morally offended by the fact that Standard Oil created "enormous fortunes" for its owners "at the expense of business rivals." How a business can offer consumers lower prices without taking customers away from businesses that charge higher prices is a mystery still unsolved to the present day, when the very same arguments are used against Wal-Mart.
An Overdue Reconsideration
But Rockefeller was no autocrat. The standard lesson of Rockefeller’s rise is wrong—as is the traditional story of how it happened. Rockefeller did not achieve his success through the destructive, “anticompetitive” tactics attributed to him—nor could he have under economic freedom.
Rockefeller had no coercive power to banish competition or to dictate consumer prices. His sole power was his earned economicpower—which was no more and no less than his ability to refine crude oil to produce kerosene and other products better, cheaper, and in greater quantity than anyone thought possible.
It has been more than one hundred years since Ida Tarbell published her History of the Standard Oil Company. It is time for Americans to know the real history of that company and to learn its attendant and valuable lessons about capitalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_OilYeah, that bastard at Standard Oil...he made fuel oil really cheap...for everybody...and the regular people could use it, not just the rich democrats...what a bastard...
Standard Oil - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
