How would you respond to this argument

[Jacob Cliff]

If someone tells you that capitalists getting rich is deserving since they invested and risked their money and make hard, important business decisions daily, how do you normally respond? I'd like to refine my responses to these. I usually say that they're only rich off others labor but that's simple minded and unconvincing.

[BIXX]

Just shit in their mouth. It's not worth debating these nerds.


Or you can ask if they think rape is OK as long as you don't get stopped. Or murder. Or thievery.

[ckaihatsu]

The problem with the status quo is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy -- *of course* those who have wealth (and thus power over others' labor) are making all the decisions of importance, *because* they own all of the significant wealth in society.

In other words it becomes a chicken-or-the-egg situation, where one can no longer differentiate between the wealth that confers the power, or the power that confers the wealth.

If people want to become decision-makers in society -- as it happens to be, currently -- then they'd better have the wealth to put them in the position to make such deterministic societal decisions.

[John Nada]

1. Many of the rich only had to be born to rich parents. It usually isn't the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" story.
2. Is the wealth really proportionate to the labor? Do the Waltons work billions of times harder than a manual laborer in the third-world?
3. The capitalist risks her or his money if the business goes under. But the workers risk his or her lives even if it succeeds, and faces certain poverty if it doesn't.
4. The capitalists' wealth comes from ownership of the business which the workers produce profits for. A lord receives rent from the land which the serfs labor on. Aren't both classes that exploit people.
5.What is rewarded with money is not always for the better. Someone could sell something that is absolutly inferior or even harmful, yet be rewarded far more than producing products safer and better for society.
6.Those decisions can be made by the workers themselves. There's nothing special about capitalist that makes them smarter than everyone, beyond title and birth.
7.Why do these "risky decision makers" tend to come from western Europe or North America? Could it have to do with exploiting the world via colonies and war?

[Zoop]

Tell them that the prerequisites that allow them to make such decisions are unjustified in the first place. If private property is inherently untenable, then it follows that all decisions that spring from that are too, untenable.

Dictators make hard decisions. They work hard. Do they deserve to maintain that position? No, because they shouldn't be dictators in the first place. Same with capitalists.

[Philosophos]

Whatever the first guys said. I also have experience in that field. So just to get this staight and helo you a little bit, if they don't get it the first time (second time tops) don't ever talk to them about that, they won't understand the rest of the times and probably make you feel angry as hell.

peace and love :grin:

[Comrade Jacob]

Tell them that the prerequisites that allow them to make such decisions are unjustified in the first place. If private property is inherently untenable, then it follows that all decisions that spring from that are too, untenable.

Dictators make hard decisions. They work hard. Do they deserve to maintain that position? No, because they shouldn't be dictators in the first place. Same with capitalists.

What he said.

[Rafiq]

If someone tells you that capitalists getting rich is deserving since they invested and risked their money and make hard, important business decisions daily, how do you normally respond?

Ask this someone if risking things and making hard, important decisions is more amply suited to be of ethical relevance for a game, rather than the basis of everyone's survival and life.

Finally, ask him to what mechanisms are such "risks" owed? Free will? If it is not pure chance, pure convenience, and some kind of innate inborn characteristic, ask him to just cut to the chase and basically admit that an aristocracy would be more justified, with advances in neuroscience that will (in his mind) be able to isolate from birth the superior individuals.

In which case, you will find yourself in league with the various bourgeois revolutionaries who dealt with the same questions centuries ago.

But ultimately, as stated, it is a stupid fucking question. Why should working people, why should anyone who will never become a capitalist give a fuck about such morals? Why should we RESPECT that they 'took risks' and have to make difficult decisions? Because it is unfair to them if we don't? Why is it fair that they aggrandize themselves at the expense of vast swaths of miserable people living in destitution, degradation and suffering? Tell him we simply have different morals. From society we Communists take liberty, fraternity and equality, and from society irk like him take the ethics of the casino as the basis of the survival of all peoples'.

[Hatshepsut]

It usually isn't the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" story.

The physics of which are impossible. Any faction or persuasion left of the political centerline has long cooked this issue into hash browns by now. Investors don't really take that much risk anyway. They hedge their bets and they bring plenty of money to the table so that even a blowout won't cramp their lifestyle. When Bear Stearns went down, it wasn't James Cayne who took bamboo on his back. The hundreds of thousands of workers who saw their retirement plans sink were the ones really taking the risks.

In other words, when the capitalist wins, we reward him lavishly. When he or she loses, we force society at large to take the hit, via bailouts, golden parachutes, and leveraged asset sales.

[Luís Henrique]

If someone tells you that capitalists getting rich is deserving since they invested and risked their money and make hard, important business decisions daily, how do you normally respond? I'd like to refine my responses to these. I usually say that they're only rich off others labor but that's simple minded and unconvincing.

Well, if the argument is that the bourgeois deserve being rich as a reward to their actions, it seems to follow that inheritance should be abolished, and all people given equal opportunities to take risks and make hard decisions without being cushioned by their parents (and grandparents, and grandgrandparents, and grandgrandgrandparents, and...) monies.

Or why not?

Luís Henrique