Rebuttal to the Mcdonalds argument

[Aspiring Humanist]

I frequently have debates with this anarcho-capitalist I know and whenever I say wealth is inherited he goes off on this tangent describing how the guy who started mcdonalds and walmart were orphans and poor etc etc
I keep saying that those are really rare occurances but that doesn't sound like a solid enough argument. How should I respond to this

[Ocean Seal]

I frequently have debates with this anarcho-capitalist I know and whenever I say wealth is inherited he goes off on this tangent describing how the guy who started mcdonalds and walmart were orphans and poor etc etc
I keep saying that those are really rare occurances but that doesn't sound like a solid enough argument. How should I respond to this
Yes, and now the children of these billionaires are very rich for crawling out of the womb. The Rockefeller dynasty is composed of hundreds of millionaires and a few billionaires yet John D. Rockefeller has been dead for a while.
Kings were the same way. Originally many started out as peasants with exceptional leadership skill who worked their way to the top, but eventually the power was passed down to generations who did not even know the ancestor who had risen to power.

Additionally, the emotional argument doesn't matter. The aggregation of capital in the hands of the few is not beneficial to the grand majority of us. The resources could be used in a more efficient manner, and to the benefit of more people.

[The Douche]

Does he own a multi-million dollar business? How about another member of his family? Why not? Anybody can do it...

[Tim Finnegan]

Honestly, I wouldn't bother with the issue of inheritance. It's an illustration of the moral bankruptcy of capitalism, but it shouldn't be core to any socialist critique. Exploitation is exploitation, and that's just as sure whether it's a "self-made man" or a fortieth-generation aristocrat doing the exploiting.

[Octavian]

In ancient Rome slaves would sometimes work until they could buy their freedom and become rich, but that doesn't mean every slave could.

[Princess Luna]

Point out for every Sam Walton, there are a million people who reach for the stars only to be crushed by the system, however they don't make books and movies about the people who failed.

[Vendetta]

I frequently have debates with this anarcho-capitalist I know and whenever I say wealth is inherited he goes off on this tangent describing how the guy who started mcdonalds and walmart were orphans and poor etc etc
I keep saying that those are really rare occurances but that doesn't sound like a solid enough argument. How should I respond to this

Paris Hilton.

End of argument.

[Revolution starts with U]

Ask them to make a logical argument for why that entitles them to determine what their employees are worth.

[ZeroNowhere]

I don't think that whether employers' levels of income are just or deserved as such has all that much to do with communism. What is of significance is how they obtain it, which is a matter of economic fact, namely that they sell things. There is no real point arguing for communism in terms of universal, absolute moral judgement, as there is no universal morality in capitalism (and hence no genuine morality in any case). We merely explain to the world the nature of its own interests, and the necessary course of these.

The victory of the working class is not a dictate of universal morality as such so much as the prerequisite of it. The ethical position that the capitalist class do not deserve their wealth is a necessary corollary of proletarian struggle in practice (it is even inherent to some extent in its most basic forms, by which profits are reduced and wages increased), whether or not it is held explicitly, and hence a necessary part of proletarian morality, but this struggle arises because of interests and appetites, the non-moral impulses, rather than due to ethical considerations, and as such it is not a matter of ethical argumentation but simply of action in accordance with interests. Proletarian morality is a sophism, as is bourgeois morality (indeed, the only genuine morality as such is a human morality which as yet has no practical existence), but we do not base communism on the a priori superiority or truth of our morality, but rather upon the non-moral appetites and their necessary course, while of course human morality involves their supercession as driving forces and resides in the Marxian realm of freedom; capitalism, of course, while it does develop this realm on the stage of absolute productive power, in this and from this develops crises and in these, for the working class majority, fails to feed and clothe its own slaves.

[robbo203]

I frequently have debates with this anarcho-capitalist I know and whenever I say wealth is inherited he goes off on this tangent describing how the guy who started mcdonalds and walmart were orphans and poor etc etc
I keep saying that those are really rare occurances but that doesn't sound like a solid enough argument. How should I respond to this


The significance of inheritance tends to be understated because it is not always appreciated what is meant by this term. What is called "inheritance" is not simply what it is often imagined to be asLisa Keister and Stephanie Moller explain in their article, "Wealth Inequality in the United States":

We know very little about how wealth is actually inherited because data on inheritance is virtually nonexistent. Indeed , Menchik & Jianakoplos (1998) esitimated that between between the 1970s and 1990s, as little as 20% and as much as 80% of total wealth may have been inherited. Those who study inheritance typically refer to three forms of inheritance: inheritance at the death of a parent or other benefector, inter-vivos transfers of money and other assets, and transfers of cultural capital (Miller & McNamee 1998:3) While we typically think of inheritance as occuring at the death of the benefactor, Kurz (1984) estimated that inter-vivos transfers account for nearly 90% of intergenerational wealth transfers. (Annual Review of Sociology Aug 2000 Vol 26: 63-81)

The evidence seems to suggest that, far from social mobility in America increasing, it is on the wane (and, with it, faith in the "American dream") and that this is associated with the steadily widening gap between the rich and the poor The Economist refers to a study carried out by the Economic Policy Institute which reveals a decline in social mobility since the 1970s.

In the 1990s 36% of those who started in the second-poorest 20% stayed put, compared with 28% in the 1970s and 32% in the 1980s. In the 1970s 12% of the population moved from the bottom fifth to either the fourth or the top fifth. In the 1980s and 1990s the figures shrank to below 11% for both decades. The figure for those who stayed in the top fifth increased slightly but steadily over the three decades, reinforcing the sense of diminished social mobility. ("Ever higher society, ever harder to ascend. Whatever happened to the belief that any American could get to the top? The Economist Dec 29th 2004).

[Le Socialiste]

In ancient Rome slaves would sometimes work until they could buy their freedom and become rich, but that doesn't mean every slave could.


Beat me to it. :thumbup1:

[graymouser]

I frequently have debates with this anarcho-capitalist I know and whenever I say wealth is inherited he goes off on this tangent describing how the guy who started mcdonalds and walmart were orphans and poor etc etc
I keep saying that those are really rare occurances but that doesn't sound like a solid enough argument. How should I respond to this
Consider Ray Kroc. He didn't get rich by being the nicest guy around - he got rich by doing some really nasty shit. To start with, the original McDonald's was a drive-up restaurant out in California; Kroc was a milkshake machine salesman. What the McDonald brothers did was to figure out how to turn a burger-flipping restaurant into basically a factory, which at the time meant simplifying their menu and using lower-paid, unskilled staff to replace line cooks needing a lot more training.

What Kroc proceeded to do was build the whole franchise system up, where a small investor is responsible for all the overhead of the restaurant and takes on all of the risk, while the large chain simply soaks in all the profits. (He also wheeled and dealed the McDonald brothers out of the picture while keeping their name.) This has immiserated many in the petty bourgeoisie when a franchised store goes belly up, but kept the big chain's profits clean. Kroc effectively established lower wage work in the food industry, while keeping McDonald's hands out of it as a corporation: the franchise owners set the pay rates, but since McDonald's sets their costs and prices it's not like they have a real say in it. Fast food has established food service as a low-wage industry. And they really have made the conditions of the kitchen like a factory.

If you read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, it really hits you how the fast food industry has driven increasingly brutal industrial practices in the meatpacking industry. This drive for more, cheaper meat has led to low-wage, high-risk and repetitive work in the other food industries that is degrading to humans, animals and the environment. Not to mention the health effects of the food - and Kroc was really a pioneer in pitching greasy, salty fast food to young children, with a pantheon of colorful characters and child-friendly meals.

Ray Kroc's rise from humble beginnings has meant poverty and obesity for millions. It is a story rife with exploitation and degradation, and I've been relatively mild - you really should read Schlosser's book. I worked fast food for a couple years, I know the environment and it's not something I ever want to go back to. This is the real problem with capitalism, not that there is never class mobility but that if you look underneath every success story, there's a trove of horrors lurking.

[mikelepore]

I frequently have debates with this anarcho-capitalist I know and whenever I say wealth is inherited he goes off on this tangent describing how the guy who started mcdonalds and walmart were orphans and poor etc etc
I keep saying that those are really rare occurances but that doesn't sound like a solid enough argument. How should I respond to this

Following causation backwards can be misleading.

If you consider all of the arrows that are stuck in the bull's eyes of targets, you may conclude that each one of them started out sitting on some archer's bow string. However, that doesn't mean that an archer who shoots an arrow has a good chance of hitting a bull's eye. These are two separate statements.

Suppose you leave a bucket out in the rain and the next morning you find water in it. You can say that every drop of water in the bucket started out high in the atmosphere. However, that doesn't mean that a drop of water released high in the atmosphere has a high probability of hitting the bucket. These are two separate statements.

Similarly, we can find some capitalists who used to be in the working class. However, that doesn't mean that a working class person has a significant chance of becoming a capitalist. These are two separate statements.

[Vanguard1917]

I keep saying that those are really rare occurances but that doesn't sound like a solid enough argument.

But it basically is one. As mikelepore points out, a working-class individual's chances of becoming the owner of a large business through sheer effort are slim. The idea that the working class has indolence to thank for its existence -- which is what's essentially being put forward by the common "if you work hard enough" line -- is somewhat inaccurate from a socio-economic perspective.

[Quail]

I frequently have debates with this anarcho-capitalist I know and whenever I say wealth is inherited he goes off on this tangent describing how the guy who started mcdonalds and walmart were orphans and poor etc etc
I keep saying that those are really rare occurances but that doesn't sound like a solid enough argument. How should I respond to this

The fact that they are really rare occurrences is an argument, and furthermore, studies have shown that the most important factor in deciding a person's life chances is their class. Generally, poorer people go to worse schools and as a result get lower exam results or don't get into the most prestigious universities so are unlikely to get the best jobs. It's also worth noting that even a person who has worked upwards from a poor background has not earned all of their money and built their business on their own work. It's their workers that have made them that money, which is exploitation. Basically, your ancap friend is making a very poor argument.

[theblackmask]

I think the fact that I can't even get a basic fucking job a McDonald's says a lot about any dream of upward mobility.