Free Market Fundamentalist Ideology is based on a Logical Fallacy.

This is strange with no mention of Tesla so far.

 

No it isn't. It's bad for everyone but the privileged. Just not as bad as socialism.

Or Nikola Tesla...?

Or Elisha Grey...?

You are feeding me straight lines.

The privileged who do so well under capitalism have this weird habit of assuming everyone else is just like them. Let me try to explain it in terms that are simple enough for you to understand: the fact that you were strong enough to run the race while carrying parasites on your back does not mean everyone else is also that strong.

 

So they started with tax dollars and government favors, like most other large corporations.

Land titles, bank licenses and IP monopolies are all government-issued and -enforced privileges that legally entitle their owners to steal. That is how the greedy, privileged, parasitic rich get richer under capitalism. Bank licenses and IP monopolies legally entitle their owners to steal specifically under modern finance capitalism, while land titles entitle their owners to steal under all forms of capitalism.

 

More informatively, they have to pay landowners full market value just for permission to exercise their liberty rights to work, shop, access public services and infrastructure, etc. I.e., to live.

 

Ook... that comment was so far off into the ether that I must ignore you now. Insanity holds no interest for me. Have a nice day.

Anyone can succeed. You just have to focus on achieving rather than whining and complaining.

 

Winning a competitive government contract is about proposing a better product at a lesser price, not favors. So when the Yankees win a game its because somebody did someone a favor? Wow... I'm glad I'm not that jaded.
So you think evryone steals. What a sad, miserable, rotten little world you must live in.

 

Manifest Destiny was a competitive government contract?

Suggested reading:

The Screwing of the Average Man by David Hapgood

I didn't write it. Notice that I did not say anything about "everyone stealing" so you figure out how you came up with that.

You probably should ignore me. I might explode more of your delusions, like what you think of Thomas Edison.

 

Interesting.

 

Being a career government employee is not the best example of capitalism but sure, - capitalism works.

 

To what degree is Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations used to justify capitalism?

Wealth of Nations is in the public domain and can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg and searched. The printed book can cost you $15 and take a lot of effort to search. Has Smith's "Invisible Hand" been used as a propaganda tool for decades since most people would never read WoN?

Smith used the word 'invisible' six times but only once as "invisible hand". It is really curious that we hear about the 'invisible hand' so much.

Smith used the word 'education' EIGHTY(80) TIMES. We are not told about that. Search for "and account" and you will find multiple instances of "read, write, and account", not "read, write and arithmetic". Double entry accounting was more than 300 years old when Smith wrote Wealth of Nations, but 50% of Brits were illiterate and public schools did not exist in 1776.

The United States could have made accounting/finance mandatory in the schools since Sputnik. Wouldn't that have helped everyone better serve their own self interest? But we do not hear the people who propagandize us about the "invisible hand" advocating mandatory accounting because that might make their invisible rip-offs more difficult.

Adam Smith never used the word 'depreciation' in WoN. He mentioned paper money being depreciated one time. Marx wrote about 'depreciation' 35 times in Das Kapital, sometimes regarding the depreciation of machines and sometimes of money. Marx even mentioned Adam Smith 130 times though not much about education.

Consumers did not buy automobiles, air conditioners, televisions and microwave ovens before 1885. Marx died in 1883. What does reliability have to do with the depreciation of durable consumer goods? How many people know what bathtub curves have to do with evaluating complex technologies that did not exist in the times of Smith and Marx. How free is the market if the buyers cannot evaluate the products?

But it's OK! Our brilliant economists do not talk about the depreciation of under engineered consumer trash today. Every time you buy a replacement the purchase is added to GDP. What about NDP? Oh sorry, when do you ever hear an economist explain NDP? That's OK too, they only depreciate the Capital Goods and ignore the depreciation of consumer junk anyway.

Wealth of Nations has probably been in the public domain for a hundred years but cheap computing did not make it available in Project Gutenberg until 3/17/2001. Milton Friedman died in 2006. Was Friedman giving us the straight dope on economics or treating us like a bunch of dopes for decades?

 

the other thing greedy corporations do is "planned obsolescence"

example is making a cell phone battery difficult to replace without breaking the phone

cloud based devices are the next "planned obsolescence", your device will just stop working or be slowed down with time... they are even trying to make cars cloud based

 

Bless your heart. I guess that must explain the $600 hammers and $2000 toilet seats....

What on earth do you erroneously imagine you think you might be talking about? The rules of baseball are nothing like the rules that govern the economy and awards of government contracts.

It's not a question of being jaded, but of being willing to know facts.

I said no such thing. I stated the fact that owning privileges like land titles, IP monopolies and bank licenses is legalized stealing. Not everyone owns those things.

At least it's the real world, unlike your absurd Ayn Rand novel.

 

Garbage. I repeat: the privileged who do so well under capitalism have this weird habit of assuming everyone else is just like them. Let me try to explain it in terms that are simple enough for you to understand: the fact that you were strong enough to run the race while carrying parasites on your back does not mean everyone else is also that strong.

IOW, "Shut up and get back on the treadmill!"

Identifying massive, systematic, institutionalized injustice as the cause of most of the problems in society is not "whining and complaining," sorry. But those who exploit others to profit from that injustice are definitely keen to dismiss objections to it as "whining and complaining." Maybe you are one of them?

 

After retiring from the Army I spent 20+ years in defense working in "Business Development" for guys like Boeing and Lockheed. "Business Development" is akin to "sales" except that involves selling things that have to be conceptualized, developed, tested and fielded... things that don't exist yet and require R&D. Those $600 hammers were a long time ago and have little relevance today.

Having spent years wog with the system I would suggest that I know a little more than you do about how things actually work. "Favors" are illegal. The players are so sensitive to this that it sometimes gets silly. I was in a hotel one time where both the civilian and military folks involved with a huge contract were all staying. It was raining like crazy. One contractor ran to his car and came back with it to the lobby door. He offered to drive folks to their cars. The military folks refused due to the possibility it might be viewed as such a "favor". You should hear the yelling about free coffee provided by contractors at such meting. The government folks INSIST they pay for the coffee for the same reason.

The government enforces the law against such "favors" with a vengeance. I remember one such investigation dubbed "Operation ill Wind" which sent a lot of folks , both government and civilian to jail. Years later I went to lunch with a visitor. Later, I was advised not to be around him for he had been caught in "ill wind" and served time. It would not be in best interests to be seen with him. And then there's the famous case of the Air Force General that went to jail for bribery concerning the new Air Force refueling aircraft. (The company involved gave jobs to some of the General's relatives.)

I'm no banker so I can't speak to the banking industry. I've only dealt with them on mortgages and car loans and they've been good to me. But I am not familiar with many commercial operations.

 

Like I said, I started as a $78/mo Army Private... I was hardly "privileged". I'm happy as a clam now (if clams really ARE happ that is). My roommate in college grew up in a urine-smelling tenement in Spanish Harlem with no dad around. He was hardly "privileged". He's a medical doctor today. Another friend, son of a coal miner, is a retired Colonel today.

Anyone can succeed in a free market capitalist society.

 

And on Planet Zondo, that might be relevant to something.

It doesn't matter what you were. You are privileged if you have a legal entitlement to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation to them for what you are taking from them.

No doubt. So were slave owners. Your happiness, like theirs, is purchased by the massive, systematic, institutionalized violation of others' rights.

What he was is irrelevant. He is privileged now because others are legally prohibited from competing with him unless they get permission from the government -- which is controlled by the monopoly provider.

Were you under an erroneous impression that that could somehow be relevant?

There has never been, and never can be, any such thing as a free market capitalist society. Capitalism by definition requires private ownership of the means of production: natural resources (which classical economics called, "land") and producer goods ("capital"). Private ownership of land forces everyone else to subsidize landowners. Forced subsidies are not permitted in a free market. QED.

 

Is that how you have contrived to persuade yourself that the affluence -- and extraordinary self-regard -- you enjoy today under capitalism was not obtained by stealing from taxpayers to fund the murders of innocent civilians in poor countries?

Read and learn:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/americas-defense-industry-is-a-corrupt-incompetent-mess/

And there is plenty more where that came from.

<yawn> But somehow, of the two of us, I am the one telling the truth about it.

<yawn> "Written laws are like spiders' webs, and will, like them, only entangle and hold the poor and weak, while the rich and powerful will easily break through them."
-- Anacharsis

See Anacharsis, above.

If you are poor and weak.

GET IT???

Are you saying they were sent to jail, but had not committed any crime or stolen any taxpayers' money?? Or are you claiming, falsely, absurdly, and disingenuously, that all the culprits were caught and punished, and all the corruption exposed and ended?

Yet he was still in a position to do business with the government.

GET IT???

How many of the corporate executives -- let alone shareholders -- who profited from that corruption went to jail, hmmmmmm?

Like the farmer is good to his cows....

No $#!+.

 

Double entry accounting is 700 years old. It could have been mandatory in the schools since Sputnik. What would that have done to the economy by now?

Curiously we do not hear socialists or capitalists suggest any such thing.

 

I started out as $78/mo Army Private and ended up with a beautiful home, paid for cars, three kids with paid for college educations and a comfortable retirement. That is TOTALLY relevant in discussing how capitalism works. Its PROOF that capitalism works... and works well.

I never "abrogated". I never took anything from anyone. I worked hard all on my own. I never took any "entitlements". I EARNED every dime I ever had without harming anyone along the way. I actually HELPED a lot of folks. I never violated anyone else's rights. I actually DEFENDED the rights of others from Kuwait to Iraq and more.

Capitalism means I WORK FOR WHAT I HAVE. No one ever "subsidized" what I have. I earned it all by myself. Losers whine and complain a lot. If they got off their butts and worked, EARNED... perhaps they wouldn't whine and complain so much. It actually feels good to look at what you have and know you EARNED it. Its pleasant to pull into your driveway and know you EARNED what you see.

 

I am not "poor and weak". I am fairly well off, strong and proud. From West Point to a craeer in the Army I am proud of my life. You don't hear me whining and complaining like you do. I am a happy camper while you just whine, cry and complain. Losers do that... a lot. I will ignore you now so that you can be miserable and whine. I'd rather deal with happy folks that are enjoying life than a whiner that is so unhappy and miserable. be well... if you can.

 

Yes, you are -- compared to the rich, greedy, privileged parasites you serve, who profit most from the system you defend.

So were a lot of slave owners.

GET IT??

Are you indeed? Google "General Smedley Butler" and start reading. Like him, you were just another gangster for capitalism, a vicious, violent, evil thug murdering innocent people for the unearned profit of the super-duper uber-rich, and I will thank you to remember it.

Because unlike me, you have no objection to massive, systematic, institutionalized injustice -- as long as you think it is in your own narrow financial interest.

That is pretty much what the British aristocrats told the American Founders, what Marie Antoinette told the starving peasants, what slave owners told the abolitionists, what the colonial governors told Gandhi, etc. I am content to be in better company than you.

<yawn> Ooooo, the L-word. How utterly predictable.

Because you have realized that you cannot refute a single sentence I have written, and are consequently forced to resort to puerile ad hominems in your desperation to preserve your false and evil beliefs. It's always the same.

Yes, well, one of us is capable of making the world a better place, and it is not you:
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”-- George Bernard Shaw

Oh, I am. Don't you doubt it.

 

Many slave owners had similar stories. So what? The fact that you profited from massive, systematic, institutionalized injustice does not somehow make it into justice.

It's proof that it works for the privileged. Like you.

You most certainly did. That is absolutely indisputable just from the fact that you have owned land.

Yes you did, if you have ever owned a land title, an IP monopoly, a bank license, oil or mineral rights, a broadcast spectrum allocation, or shares in any company that owned those things.

No you didn't. You were a hired thug for the US government and the super-duper uber-rich who own it.

Yes you did.

False. Any time you benefited from any of the privileges listed above, you were stealing. And that's not even including your highly lucrative career in the service of US defense contractors, some of the least deserving people on the planet.

No one who has served in the US military or worked for US defense contractors can make that claim, especially anyone who served in Iraq.

Right: rich, greedy, privileged parasites.

Yes you did. See above. You violated others' rights just as certainly as slave owners ever did. You just did it one right at a time, rather than one person at a time.

Kuwait? You defended the "rights" of brutal medieval autocrats to steal natural resources from the people. Iraq?? You sure liberated the hell out of that place...

No it doesn't. It means you work just to pay the privileged for their permission to work, shop, access public services and infrastructure, etc. -- i.e., for their permission to live.

False. Everyone who would otherwise have been at liberty to use the land you owned was forced to subsidize you.

No, you stole from everyone whose rights you abrogated without making just compensation for what you took from them.

"Shut up and get back on the treadmill!"

"Shut up and get back on the treadmill!!"

Yes, well, I'm sure it makes you feel very self-righteous telling yourself that. Slave owners also felt that way when they said the same sorts of things to themselves... and anyone else who would listen.

GET IT???

 

Source?

 

Von Hayek? The astroid?

 

Did he get an asteroid named after him?