Capitalism

Several years ago I was in a group that was discussing capitalism. This was during a longshoreman's strike on the west coast, and one person took a "pro-capitalism" stance, saying that the owners had the right to make money any way that they could. The second person took a "anti-capitalism" stance, saying that capitalism stunk, that the workers needed to be given their due.

After a while, I expressed my opinion. It was definitely pro-capitalism. That is, I said the workers, living in a capitalist society, had the right to use any legal method allowed to get whatever they wanted, including striking.

That was several years ago. Today I realized the real problem. That is, most people associate capitalism with big corporations, not realizing that they, themselves, are capitalist.

The real problem with this is that the people, in general, really push capitalist ideals, it's the large corporations that thwart capitalism. That is, people are willing to host and attend garage sales, which are capitalism at its most basic level, whereas, corporations try to use government influence to obtain and maintain monopolies, which prevent the capitalism I'm talking about.

Therefore, when one works in a world that corporations find acceptable, the worker (capitalist) is assigned a position where he is forced to do whatever the corporation says. He cannot exploit his talents as he sees best, and more often than not, his contract will say that the corporation owns him, and whatever he produces.

This is a Communistic society. That is, the only difference between this society, which the large corporations desire, and the Communism which existed in the Soviet Union is that in the latter case, the people in charge were called "government," and in the former case they are called the "board of directors."

I've seen believable statements that this understanding was the case when the United States was founded. That is, the founders were aware of large corporations and what they could do. The "East India Company" was a prime example. It used business as an excuse to enslave the Indian people, which enslavement continued until Gandhi ended it in the 1940's. While, I suppose, the English might have considered it "capitalistic" because it benefited them, I'm sure the Indian people did not.

That is, the English considered it "capitalism" because capitalism was considered a good thing, and they were getting their way, but the Indian people likely considered it slavery (or they should have). That is, they couldn't grow the crops they wanted, the company dictated what they would grow, etc.

The same sort of thing happened in the Colonies prior to the creation of the United States. That is, in the United States word from on high said that tea had to be bought from English tea corporations at high prices. This lead to the famous Boston Tea Party, in which it was all dumped into the Boston Bay.

Today we are approaching the same thing. That is, laws are passed which favor big corporations over the capitalists, the small businessman. The government refuses to balance the budget, even though there are enough resources to do so (as indicated by the fact that they can find the resources to carry on government business). This results in the poor man (the capitalist) being heavily taxed so that the wealthy (who have money to invest) can get a good return on their money without having to produce any goods or services.

(How many people realize that if the Federal Government were to balance the budget and begin the process of paying off the debt, the interest rate for mortgage loans might drop to, say, 2??)

Similarly, copyright laws, etc. are written to favor big business. The way this is done is by applying the copyright law to everyone, thereby looking as if it is "fair" but making the law so complicated an unenforceable that only large corporations can claim their right. (How many people have enough money in the bank right now to initiate a lawsuit against someone who might infringe on their copyright if such a suit were to cost $500,000, even if they could win? Yet, Microsoft has done just that, while ignoring the copyrights of the average Joe.)

I guess, the point that needs to be made is this. You, whoever is reading this, are the capitalists. If you can manage to get the government rules favoring the non-capitalists off your back, then you might have a shot at getting rich. Stand up and be counted as such.