You miss the point that Capitalism requires voluntary business decisions. Capitalism and "free markets" require cooperation and working together by individuals that have different goals and motivations. This happens millions of times in millions of ways in order to innovate, create, produce, distribute and sell products. It is a respectful, cooperative, lawful process. The participants can make other choices and do. But prices are set when a seller will accept what a buyer will pay.
Force is when someone not involved in the transaction imposes behavior on behalf of someone else.
@Geezer: (1) may be pablum & uninteresting, but it's true. (2) Don't tell me it's nonsense to say the playing field is not level, you know better. Kudos to your 14-year-old friend - he beat the odds (and no, I'm not saying it was just chance), but the opportunity you refer to is the opportunity to exert control over others, who do the work your profits depend on.
@Haali: Question is, which 'needs' should have priority, and who decides?
'...be held accountable...' - excellent point. The term 'the government' covers a lot of possibilities, but none of them can ever be separated from the economic system.
Correction " took out more than $450 MILLION (From SEC filings) before he left the company.
OK. But why do you expect a level playing field? You think business and making money is a football game? In business there is never a level playing field. Someone always has an advantage. Come to think about it, usually one team in a football match has an vantage. If that unfair?
@ Geezer: I agree with what you say about capitalist business - there is never a level playing field. That's one of the major things wrong with it. With football, advantage is much more closely associated with the ability of teams to play well, although I suppose it's not perfect - but it's ONLY about how to play football, not about what your kids education is likely to be, or who can buy which politicians. I think it's part of what promotes good sportsmanship, which I admire - no class conflict here! Those who are winning a football game don't win the power to change the rules.
I think capitalist business - well, anyway, that of huge modern corporations - is a lousy game - creates a lot of bad feeling. War, too, another result of class society. Law of the jungle stuff - the fact that the human species can create things like football games demonstrates that we can do better than that.
Damn, have we left the OP somewhere??
Ibuka and Morita were told by the Japanese government not to make the products they wanted to make. But they went ahead and I'll bet most have own a Sony something or the other.
Honda, a motorcycle company was told not to make cars. So Honda made a small vehicle with a motorcycle engine and became a big car company.
The "force" of the government was weak.
A government that insists on equality will always destroy freedom freedom.
The lack of an unobtainable level playing field is an advantage of Capitalistic economies. It is the competition that breeds innovation and efficiency. Ford reasoned he would be better off, and more profitable, if he paid workers more and worked them less hours.
If you look for a villain, you can always someone or some group to blame. For Marx it was the Capitalist and when that didn't work out too well he added in the bourgeois.
Meaning of bourgeois in Marx's time was: capitalist.
40 hours a week, most people live under a dictatorship.
"To allow slaves to choose their masters does nothing to eradicate either slavery or masters." - either Theodore Adorno or Herbert Marcuse (can't remember which)
I think we could do with a little more innovation and efficiency in promoting human welfare. Globally. Why would this be profitable for people whose 'normal' motivation is greed? ('norm' meaning the usual practice, which is certainly enhanced by capitalism)
You use "greed" pretty recklessly. Is the owner of the little shop selling drinks and smokes greedy? Are all business persons greedy? Or, can it be that all business persons that have more than you are greedy?
Capital without labor is worthless. Labor without capital is poor and hungry.
How the hell do you get that Capitalism needs slaves? Ford proved paying more and working less hours was more profitable.
Capitalism. division of labor, and the industrial revolution has brought more promotion of human welfare than any other system ever tried.
I think your definitions of some concepts center to this discussion are outside the norm.
@alien
I disagree - we've evolved from slavery to prostitution...we now prostitute ourselves for salaries...benefits, etc...A man's got to know his position (sorta Clint Eastwood-ish statement - but he used limitations - dirty harry). And yes - that's the extent of my philosophy - hollywood...sigh...how shallow.
Maybe everybody is greedy to some extent - capitalism glorifies and promotes it from the top of the economy to the bottom, over and above so many other possible and existing human qualities.
If labor gained 'capital' (fruits of their labor) then there'd be an end to class, labor could use it to satisfy the needs that they determined they had (of course it would no longer be called 'capital', but nevermind). People (i.e., 'labor') could still concentrate it for large projects.
I won't argue about capitalism, division of labor and the industrial revolution (though there are things to be said) - Marx greatly appreciated the rise of capitalism, partly, indeed, because it promoted the concentration of wealth; condemned it because it promoted the concentration of wealth, produced by others, in few private hands, who then primarily used it to gain even more for their private purposes rather than for the purposes of those who provided the labor-power) but he remembered that history wasn't finished, and predicted it's self-destruction from its internal contradiction (capital/labor, always in conflict - wealth from work vs. wealth primarily from ownership of the tools (factories) that labor needed to have access to in order to live).
But you may be right that 'greed' has been overused.
Ford: dictator for thousands and tens of thousands, 40 hours a week.
But enough of basic marxism - happy that you can argue without becoming insulting.
OP: Yunnan has many good places in which to live.
