Capitalist claim

[tradeunionsupporter]

What do you think of the Capitalist claim that it is possible in a Capitalist society for the Poor and the Lower Class to become Rich or Wealthy therefor Capitalism can work and Class Warfare is wrong.

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Question: Under capitalism, what will happen to those who are born without the wealth and opportunities enjoyed by others? Doesn't capitalism make the rich richer and the poor poorer?
Answer: Quite the opposite. Capitalism is the one system that leaves everyone free to rise by his own efforts. The history of capitalism provides countless instances of people who improved their lives through work and ability. There are the millions of immigrants who came to America and worked their way up to the middle class—or higher. One of the great historical examples was Andrew Carnegie, who rose from a penniless sweeper at a steel mill to revolutionize the steel industry and make one of the largest fortunes of his day. It is no coincidence that 19th century America—the most purely capitalist era in the nation's history—brought us the phrase "from rags to riches."

http://www.capitalismcenter.org/philosophy/FAQ/

[Ocean Seal]

It doesn't matter if you were born into your position among the rich or if you're a "self-made man." Because the money that capitalists have is still gained through the labor of others. And no capitalism doesn't create profit for the majority. Keep in mind that about half the world lives on less than $2 a day.


It is no coincidence that 19th century America—the most purely capitalist era in the nation's history—brought us the phrase "from rags to riches."
It also was filled with slums, poor working conditions, no workman's compensation, child labor, 14-16 hour workdays, malnutrition, illiteracy, assaults on organized workers by mercenaries like the Pinkertons and of course the police and all the wonderful things that capitalism has moved to the third world with. Fun times guys. Fun times. Seriously, anyone who wants to go back to America in the 1800's to try their luck at becoming a robber-baron is insane. If you had Andrew Carnegie on a scale and all of the worker's who lost their fingers in his machines and didn't receive adequate compensation or were fired you would probably find that the scale weighed Carnegie several times over.

[DinodudeEpic]

I think that's the reason why I prefer a laissez-faire capitalist economy to a planned or feudalistic economy. However, this opportunity only lasts for a short time, since inheritance and the formation of organizations ruled by autocrats and oligarchs (Corporations) would cause people who were born poor to work VERY hard to be rich. While, those who were born rich just act like douches. Thus, the poor get poorer after while and the rich get richer too. Welfare is way of allowing the poor some mercy to partially overcome the disadvantages of being born poor. Then, Socialism (the workers' ownership of the means of production, not the state nor 'society'.) prevents the oppressive institutions of corporations via workers' councils/ cooperatives/ trade union/ combination of above. Then, you have banning inheritance. So, the only way of having a truly fair and free economy is to have welfare, socialism (not planned economy), and the abolishment of inheritance.

[tradeunionsupporter]

I agree it doesn't matter if a Rich Person got Rich by being born into Wealth or got Rich off of their Workers's Labor.

Myth: The rich get rich because of their merit.

Fact: Researchers have uncovered dozens of social factors that contribute to becoming rich.

Summary

The vast majority of academic studies on who becomes rich have found that intelligence and merit are only a part of the reason -- social factors play a huge role as well. Studies of Fortune 500 companies have found that American executives are seeing exploding pay, but there is no correlation between their pay and a company's profitability. In fact, companies with the greatest inequality of pay suffer worse product quality. And many studies have found that societies with the greatest equality generally enjoy the fastest rates of economic growth.

Argument

Many conservatives and libertarians defend the current levels of income inequality on the basis of merit. They claim the rich got rich because they worked harder, longer or smarter than the rest. However, researchers have conducted a vast number of empirical studies on what factors contribute to success, and in what proportion. A classic example of one of these studies is the 1972 book Inequality, by Christopher Jencks. (1) And these studies show that the meritocrat's position is not just arguably wrong, but clearly wrong.

For adults, countless factors other than personal merit contribute to success. A partial list includes:

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-richmerit.htm

[tradeunionsupporter]

Q: Rich people deserve to be rich because they work harder. Why should they give up their money?


A: Capitalists gain their wealth from the labor of others--not from their own work. The workers who actually create the wealth-by picking the crops or assembling the engines, for example-should get a fair share of the wealth they create. Why should someone be a millionaire, with three houses, a private plane, and the like when other folks can't even afford enough to eat?

http://www.yclusa.org/article/articleview/1445/1/278/

[Tim Cornelis]

Capitalism is the one system that leaves everyone free to rise by his own efforts.

Translated: only the privileged (those with enough intellectual capacity by birth) can grow rich.


The history of capitalism provides countless instances of people who improved their lives through work and ability.

Emphasizing the exception rather than the rule.


There are the millions of immigrants who came to America and worked their way up to the middle class—or higher.

Over the sorrow and backs of African slaves and American natives (as well as working class) one should add.


One of the great historical examples was Andrew Carnegie, who rose from a penniless sweeper at a steel mill to revolutionize the steel industry and make one of the largest fortunes of his day.

Again, emphasizing the exception rather than the rule. "If he did it, so can anyone". Isn't this a fallacy?

Most of the rich people have actually inherited their wealth (more than 80%).

[tradeunionsupporter]

I agree Capitalists always want to bring up and use Exceptions to prove Capitalism works for all Economic Classes.

[Zealot]

That is complete bs, capitalism relies on the fact that there will always be any army of workers who won't make it big time because if everyone was a capitalist, who would be there to exploit? You could think of it this way, if everyone was a slave master, there would be no one left to enslave. The whole reason that a "rags to riches" story is amazing is that it hardly ever happens, it's like a lottery winner telling you how easy it is to win the lottery. Using a rarity to prove something only proves that it's a rarity and nothing more. So those who say that the system is so generous, that gives everyone an equal chance, are talking out of their ass.

[Zealot]

I also laugh how capitalists like to use 19th-early 20th century america as the proof of their claims, because they know exactly why it happened. Resources were everywhere and the demand for work was quite high. Nowadays it's the exact opposite.

[Bud Struggle]

Again, emphasizing the exception rather than the rule. "If he did it, so can anyone". Isn't this a fallacy?


To make (not inherit) large quantities of money in the United States you have to be exceptional. Unfortunatley most people aren't exceptional--it's a sad fact, but most people are average and yet they do reasonably well.

I wouldn't mind the number of people inheriting money and the amount of money they inherit being more restricted, but I wouldn't limit what exceptional people could earn. Those are the people give the Proletarians their jobs.

[danyboy27]

Capitalism cannot guarantee that simply beccause this system dosnt take into account the material condition in wich an human being live or is being raised.

by material condition i mean both the social environnement and the ressources avaliable.

take two identical plant, give to the first plant fertilizer, 24 hours of sun a day, water.
to the second plant, give it 2 hours of sunlight per day, no fertilizer and a bit of water.

Of course human are more complicated than plant, but the logic remain pretty much the same.

P.S: dont pay attention to the rag to riches story has exemple of capitalist ability to raise poor to the top. Most folks who where able to rise to the top did received a material advantage (parent teaching, a good teatcher, friend) that most people in their situation usually dont have, or where just plain lucky.

Capitalism cannot guarantee social mobility to all poor people.

[R_P_A_S]

I agree it doesn't matter if a Rich Person got Rich by being born into Wealth or got Rich off of their Workers's Labor.

Myth: The rich get rich because of their merit.

Fact: Researchers have uncovered dozens of social factors that contribute to becoming rich.

Summary

The vast majority of academic studies on who becomes rich have found that intelligence and merit are only a part of the reason -- social factors play a huge role as well. Studies of Fortune 500 companies have found that American executives are seeing exploding pay, but there is no correlation between their pay and a company's profitability. In fact, companies with the greatest inequality of pay suffer worse product quality. And many studies have found that societies with the greatest equality generally enjoy the fastest rates of economic growth.

Argument

Many conservatives and libertarians defend the current levels of income inequality on the basis of merit. They claim the rich got rich because they worked harder, longer or smarter than the rest. However, researchers have conducted a vast number of empirical studies on what factors contribute to success, and in what proportion. A classic example of one of these studies is the 1972 book Inequality, by Christopher Jencks. (1) And these studies show that the meritocrat's position is not just arguably wrong, but clearly wrong.

For adults, countless factors other than personal merit contribute to success. A partial list includes:

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-richmerit.htm

thanks for this!

[R_P_A_S]

Translated: only the privileged (those with enough intellectual capacity by birth) can grow rich.



Emphasizing the exception rather than the rule.



Over the sorrow and backs of African slaves and American natives (as well as working class) one should add.



Again, emphasizing the exception rather than the rule. "If he did it, so can anyone". Isn't this a fallacy?

Most of the rich people have actually inherited their wealth (more than 80%).


I'm sorry.. but could you break this down a bit? elaborate more on:

The history of capitalism provides countless instances of people who improved their lives through work and ability.

Emphasizing the exception rather than the rule.

[Zealot]

I'm sorry.. but could you break this down a bit? elaborate more on:

The history of capitalism provides countless instances of people who improved their lives through work and ability.

Emphasizing the exception rather than the rule.

Emphasis is placed on something that is rare to make it look as if it constitutes the whole. For example, I might point to someone in Hitler's government who done something good for the Jews and make it look as if that was normal for Nazi rule, when clearly it wasn't.

[RGacky3]

Theres only a small amount that can be at the top in capitalism, and the gap between that top and the rest gets bigger and bigger.

[Nox]

For every one man who becomes rich, a thousand stay poor as a result of his actions.

[danyboy27]

one could even argues that if everyone could go to the top we couldnt call it capitalism anymore.

Beccause it work that way, capitalist created that false moral justification that all those who dosnt go to the top did so in a voluntary basis or where lazy.

[GatesofLenin]

How can capitalists claim that a person can reach the top if they work hard enough, when we all know that the people on top horde all the capital and there's nothing left for the rest. Capitalists act like there's an unlimited amount of money to be had. The reality is, in a capitalistic country like the USA, the top 1% controls 64% of the capital. 36% for the other 99%. Does this seem fair to anyone?

[aristos]

Why does it even matter whether exceptional people can get rich or not?
The key issue is that all people regardless of abilities or genetic traits have access to satisfying all material and social needs, as well as continuous opportunity to grow and develop in order to live a fulfilling life.

[CommunityBeliever]

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e.., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control. - This only refers to laissez-faire capitalism. If you study the evolution of capitalism you will realise that laissez-faire capitalism only exists temporarily in states of backwardness and underdevelopment. In any capitalist state, monopolies, cartels, syndicates, etc form and then merge with the government, creating state capitalism. The surpluses produced by the state are then expended on acts of physical force against other states. See Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/).

- The threat of physical force is actually less potent then the threat of poverty, because poverty includes starvation, which has historically been shown to lead people to incredible acts of desperation, even cannibalism. This form of coercion is so potent, that when capitalism and wage slavery were first emerging, some authors argued that chattel slavery was more progressive.

- Your definition of rights should also include positive rights, such as the right to a good standard of living including, health care, food, water, clothing, housing, and necessary social services. People also have the right to education even online communication. See The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/). History shows that only socialist countries such as Cuba have been able to effectively grant these rights to their population.


As private corporations, business has no power to force anyone. The entire claim that that businessmen can coercive their customers (and, indeed, the entire case for the antitrust laws) is based on equation between economic power and political power. Economic power is always extendible to political power, which is why there has never been a society where state bureaucrats couldn't be bought out by corporate lobbyists. However, besides the political "force" objectivists refer to there are several other methods that can be used to determine people's actions.

Dependencies
If someone is dependent upon something, then they specifically go out of their way to satisfy that dependency.


Inherent dependencies: every human animal has is inherently dependent upon food, water, sleep, sex, breathing, homoeostasis, and excretion.
Acquired dependencies: people can acquire new dependencies through psychoactive products such as alcohol and tobacco. People can also acquire weak dependencies on things such as gambling or through habituation.

Marketing
People's activities can be determined by controlling the information in which they receive. For example, it is project that in 2011, global advertisement expenditures will be over $471 billion dollars.

http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/uploads/ZenithOptimedia-top-5-global-ad-markets-Jul11.gif

The purpose of marketing is to create new wants in people, and to direct them towards products that satisfy their existing wants. In the second case, google has a virtual monopoly, which allows it to direct most consumer choices. Another important tactic in marketing is to target children, who aren't yet educated enough to make effective choices.

For an excellent example of the utilisation of these two methods of coercion see the historical activities of cigarette companies, which nurtured an acquired dependency on nicotine in children through the school system. In particular, the second largest tobacco company in America, the R.J Reynolds Tobacco Company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._J._Reynolds_Tobacco_Company), was fined 15 million dollars in 2002 for providing free cigarettes to children in events.


The reason why capitalism allows people to rise by their own efforts is that capitalism is driven by only one fundamental consideration: profit. But profit can only be earned through an increase in the production of wealth: profit comes from inventing a new product, producing a good more efficiently, promoting it to a wider market, etc. It comes from doing things better, faster, and smarter than before. Actually, I have compiled five points at which capitalism fails to produce things that are better, faster, or smarter then before:

1). The first point of failure, is the system of supply and demand at the foundation of the capitalist price system.

If there is an abundant supply of something, then capitalism adapts by creating artificial scarcity. This can see in any digital industry, with things like copyrights and patents. In long-lasting products, capitalists create planned obsolescence so that they won't last that long, forcing the consumer to rebuy.

On the other side is this system is artificial demand. Everyone in the first world is intimately familiar with this through the advertisements, which is estimated to take up nearly $500 billion dollars in 2011. Advertisements create artificial demand in consumers for products that they don't particularly want or need.

2). The second point of failure is the wasteful overlap that occurs from reinventing the wheel. This occurs in part due to the privatisation of research information, such as with proprietary software, but also in large part due to a lack of social organisation. A huge amount of reinventing happens in the open source world, because they lack organisation.

3). The third point of failure is network effect which arises from social inertia. Existing organisations don't want new technologies to arise that will eliminate their existence. For example, oil companies don't particularly want to see widely available nuclear fusion.

4). The fourth point of failure is the focus on short term profit rather then long term benefit and sustainability. For example, capitalists over-exploit renewable resources, such as fish stocks and forests.

5). The fifth and final point of failure is disinterestedness. Capitalists can just be disinterested in important research which shows itself in, for example, a lack of R&D funding.


This means that capitalism offer an open field to anyone who works hard to improve his skills—and it offers riches to anyone who thinks hard and comes up with new and better ideas.Lets qualify what it means to have "merit" in the first place. On the issue of intelligence, a leading cognitive science researcher, Arthur R. Jensen, suggests in [Does IQ Matter?] that humans use the same intellectual mechanisms and and all differences in intelligence are based upon quantitative biochemical and physiological conditions, such as processing speed, short term memory, and long term memory storage. These conditions are in turn mainly determined by genetic traits, age, early education, and many other factors out of personal control. This makes it questionable rather "merit" really exists.

A far more important factor is the amount of labor time that is being spent. However, in capitalism, there are poor factory workers that work vastly longer and harder then any capitalist, yet they are paid minimally.


It is under capitalism, for example, that a company like Microsoft creates scores of millionaires out of individuals whose qualification is not inherited wealth or social connections, but only the ability to create and sell computer programs. Microsoft is great at selling computer programs, but not so much at creating them. Microsoft software is based upon the immanently deficient UNIX system from 1969, and it perpetuates artificial scarcity and DRM.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Billgates.JPG

Microsoft was even brought to court for its corrupt and monopolistic practices, that even Austrian economists should oppose.


Who is on the side of Microsoft? There is Microsoft itself—and us. Furthermore, Microsoft's efforts are widely dismissed on the grounds that it is merely protecting its own interests. In the code of modern American politics, it is the victim of government intervention who is considered to have the least right to speak in his own case. Microsoft was a total monopoly at the time, so Austrian economists support corrupt monopolies now?


Thus, the first question must be: What happens to the thinkers and producers? What conditions make it possible for them to think and produce? The fundamental answer to that question is: freedom—the freedom to direct their own actions and to keep the property they have produced. I literally can't wait for a communist society where people such as me are given the freedom to produce an innovate rather then waste most of their day in some occupation. Then I will be free to work on AI systems research and other things I like to do.


Today, a quadriplegic can make a living simply from the power of his mind to solve problems—and the power of computers (produced by capitalism) to help him communicate his thoughts.Today's computers are immanently deficient, thanks to the AI winter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter), created by capitalism. We need a social system which puts more funding into AI without creating winters, then we can have effective computer systems.


Let us concretize the question. What kind of work is performed by the lowest paid worker in a company? This worker might be, for example, a janitor. His work consists of performing routine, pre-established tasks, requiring little thought and only moderate physical effort. If he performs his work well, there is a moderate benefit: a clean workplace is more productive than a dirty one. But if he performs his work poorly, the consequences are minor—and the worker can easily be replaced by a better janitor; since the skills required are not complex, almost anyone can perform the job properly.

In the case of a CEO, by contrast, his work consists primarily in making decisions—decisions about what products the company should produce, how much it should invest in improvement of its equipment, whether it should raise money through stocks, bonds, venture capital, etc. Fuck you. You are an elitist prick and you should be forced to clean our Gulags.

Lets see you say to a janitors face that his work requires minimal effort and is of minimal benefit.

[CommunityBeliever]

I can't believe that elitist motherfucker who wrote that FAQ said that janitorial work is of "moderate benefit" and takes "minimal effort." Everything else there I can potentially tolerate.