Someone once said you should love people and use things. It seems like we’re moving more in the direction of using people and loving things. “Linked In”, “networking”, “social networking.” Somehow, to me, it seems related to the success of certain people at conflating success, itself with being rich.
I didn’t really spend a lot of time on it, but I noticed a couple of things about that website. One is that their motto is “Good. Smart. Business. Profit.”
The other was that the cost of joining was $10,995. Sounds profitable.
Ohhhhhhh, I didn’t realize you were talking about Scottish Capitalists.
I fear that I am not a True Scottish Capitalist, so I cannot really comment on the subject.
Improving productivity is how you create wealth. But though productivity has gone up, more and more of the resulting wealth goes to the very rich, while wages and salaries stagnate.
What you’re talking about sounds like a contractor who hires a carpenter. The carpenter builds the deck. The contractor (as I understand it, I’m not a contractor) makes sure the job gets done properly, according to the customer’s specs. They’re both making money by doing work, not by owning things.
A manager may be the boss, but he’s still getting a paycheck for doing a job.
To use a different example, if you go to the bank for a loan, a loan officer might be the one who decides whether to lend (provide) the money. But he’s still just a guy doing a job for a paycheck. The people who own the bank, on the other hand, make way more money than the loan officer. And maybe more than all the people who work at the bank, put together.
Sorta depends on what you mean by “funds”.
If by by funds you mean wealth, it’s humans doing work that is source of all wealth, however they’re organized.
If you’re talking about money, it’s the government that’s the source of money, not corporations.
And yet we had both human work AND governments before Capitalism (and after as well), yet no other system has been able to generate the vast amounts of wealth and standards of living so high for so many across the globe.
Well, you would need to look at WHY productivity has gone up. Is it due to the innate abilities of labor, or due to the tools labor has been given to use? Is it because labor is better and more efficient at doing their jobs, or because things like robots and automated and expert systems have been introduced? If labor has indeed been instrumental in the rise of productivity they certainly should enjoy the fruits of that greater productivity…and they would, because if the increase was due to them, collectively, they’d be in a better position to leverage their greater skills to increase their salaries and benefits. Sadly, this hasn’t been the case…automation, expert systems and streamlined and refined processes account for the higher levels of productivity almost across the board.
Improving productivity is not a requirement for wealth.
Production produces…products, i.e. wealth, whether productivity is rising, stagnating or falling.
There is an issue of growth in revenues far outstripping growth in salaries in recent years, that’s true. I’m not sure that that speaks of unethical practices, or is just a symptom of various economic forces at the moment.
One thing that should be clear, is that the US is not a capitalist society. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Unemployment, Disability, and the host of government laws and agencies that prevent corporations from poisoning the air and water, fixing prices and forming monopolies are examples of that.
When banks and money managers nearly bankrupted the U.S. financial system in 09, it wasn’t banks or capitalists who stepped in to stop it. It was the US government.
If you think US is a success, it’s not because the U.S. is capitalist. If we were purely capitalist, we would have destroyed ourselves many times over by now.
Since you mentioned J & J, I’m going to plug Born Rich again. It was made by one of the heirs.
Big Pharma is too big a topic for me right now, but I can’t help mentioning the millions of children who die from easily treated diseases, while Pharma pours billions into give old men hard-ons. One is a money-maker. The other is not.
You said things are getting better, and will continue to do so. I’m guessing you’re talking about '09 until now. Does the President get any of the credit?
“The greatest profit for the least risk” means there’s a risk/reward decision involved in every investment decision. The goal is to make as much profit for as little risk as possible. There’s nothing nonsesenceable about it: in fact I agree with you. Some investors have a low risk tolerance. Others are willing large risks, if they think the payout is big enough.
I would add, that among the truly rich, few manage their own money. That’s what money managers are for.
I’m not sure what your point is. If you’re saying there are good people in the world, I agree with you.
My question was, if the work ethic is “work hard, whether someone’s watching or not,” (or however you want to put it) what’s the capitalist’s ethic?
In my strictly limited experience, there re two kinds of workers. Those who do the work, and climbers. Climbers mostly want to find to find the right people to be friends with, so they can get ahead. The second strategy seems more successful. Not to say there aren’t still plenty of workers still around. If there weren’t, the work wouldn’t get done.
Funny how the same people who say CEOs will slack off if they don’t get $100 mil also say the sky will fall if shelf stockers get $10 an hour.
I agree with your last statement.
I agree, but what about capitalists, as opposed to capitalism? Why is “work ethic” built into our vocabulary, but “capitalist ethic” is not? Is there any ethic for a capitalist other than transferring as much money from your pocket to theirs?
One of the problems of a great concentration of wealth in a small number of hands is that wealth is power. Poor people have very few lobbyists. They can’t afford them.
The Kohn brothers may have politicians at their house on a regular basis, but nary a one has been to mine.
As long as we’re talking about 'isms, socialism stands for taking care of everyone, including the old, the sick, and the disabled.
Capitalism stands for everyone for himself: getting as much as you can, with the rest getting by on handouts (or not).
Is there really no moral choice there?
Sorry, I don’t understand. So far as I remember, no one in the doc so Scottish. There is one guy who’s Eropean royalty, but he’s German-Italian, if I remember right.
Capitalists would argue that they advocate a system of production efficiency and wealth creation in which everyone benefits.
In that respect capitalists – and socialists, too – are like two of the characters in the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Both of them are partly right, yet without acknowledging the value of the other side, both of them are wrong. To reiterate the two main points I and others made before:
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Unless capitalism is regulated, ultimately the only ones who really benefit are the capitalists themselves, and only the most powerful and dominant ones at that. The rest of us end up exploited, and the world we live in trashed and poisoned. The purpose of regulation is to allow the benefits of capitalism to flourish while preventing it from turning into a den of thieves.
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Capitalism – i.e.- free markets – is not the answer for everything. The economic dynamics that allow private enterprise to build better widgets with marvelous efficiency doesn’t automatically make it best suited for doing leading-edge scientific research or providing universal health care or a national transportation infrastructure. There are many instances where the profit motive and the public interest are diametrically opposed. One of my greatest frustrations with conservative ideology is the idea that free enterprise can solve any problem – that just because Acme Corporation can make a terrific can opener I should entrust them with arbitrating my health care.
Right, social spending is not advocated for by powerful lobby groups in the US or other western nations for education or social spending, for unions or for the elderly or myriad other programs or issues touching on the poor, and really it all comes from unicorn wishes and fairy tears! 
Get real. If there were no such lobbies or advocacy groups there wouldn’t be any social spending and no one (i.e. neither of the big two parties) would bother with even making token attempts at addressing their issues in any election…ever. Even if you don’t believe that the US has such things (having slept in a cave for the last 4 decades or so) it’s incredible that you believe this about every ‘Capitalist’ nation out there, which include pretty much every single western European nation, Japan, Australia, Canada and a bunch of others.
Of course, you seemingly focus solely on the US as perhaps the only ‘Capitalist’ country out there, so you can say off the wall and hyperbolic horseshit and no one calls you on it because they are all nodding without actually thinking through what you are spouting. ‘Yeah, the US is sure evil and they sure don’t have any lobbyists or advocacy groups supporting the poor. Oh, damn, I almost forgot to send in my donation this month to AARP and the Auto Workers Union…’
Well, no, it does not. Socialism is an economic system whereby the means of production are owned through some sort of collective system, rather than being held by private interests.
“Taking care of everyone” is not an idea particular to any given dominant economic system.
This is, I cannot stress enough, neither true nor even meaningful. Whose goal? Who says that’s the goal? For that matter, why is it not the goal of a socialist system? Logically, your definition here must also apply to a socialist country. If the People’s Republic of Arstztroka decides to build a new shoe factory, are they not seeking the greatest profit for the least risk? The profit might be socialized, but someone in the Economic Planning Ministry is still looking to maximize return over risk.
If we’re just making up platitudes it can be whatever you want it to be. I personally don’t care about platitudes, as they rarely describe the real world.
If the employee doesn’t work at a firm anymore, the firm doesn’t have to worry about treating them right to keep them motivated, no. And there’s no more an obligation for a firm to keep someone employed (outside of contracts, of course) then there is an obligation for a worker to never quit his job to take another.
Well, no. A satisfied, motivated workforce, itself, tends to increase profits for the owners. Some firms may throw that away for a short-term boost, but many others do not.
If by “moving profits overseas” you mean tax havens or something, that’s not something thing that affects the individual workers.
I have never heard of that definition of ethics, I’m familiar with ones like these, variations on “systems of moral principles”. Cite? Or is it original to yourself?
It says we don’t apportion seats on planes according to military service. Sounds fine to me.