We need to make a FAQ that tackles these arguments so we don't have to reiterate the same old arguments again and against
tooAlive suffers from a condition known as "just-world hypothetiseritus."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
Quote:
The just-world hypothesis (or just-world fallacy) is the cognitive bias that human actions eventually yield morally fair and fitting consequences, so that, ultimately, noble actions are duly rewarded and evil actions are duly punished. In other words, the just-world hypothesis is the tendency to attribute consequences to, or expect consequences as the result of, an unspecified power that restores moral balance; the fallacy is that this implies (often unintentionally) the existence of such a power in terms of some cosmic force of justice, desert, stability, or order in the universe.
Look up what it means there ^. This is reflected not only by justifying famines and starvation (of which in India alone 10 million people befall victim to) for supposedly not wanting to produce rather than market forces disallowing them to subtract enough value from the market to sustain their own lives; but also by his belief in the supernatural force of reincarnation.
Believe in the just world hypothesis is perhaps a psychological mechanism to cope with a world so riddled with exploitation and oppression.
Reward Hard Work
tooAlive assumes that markets happen to coincide with what is morally just--how convenient (see again just world hypothesis). If you work hard, you are rewarded, if you are a lazy you starve.
Let's look at the Somali famine. It was
caused by drought but
amplified by food speculation. Rich food speculators bought food, driving up prices, making food unavailable to the starving people. Irrespective of the willingness to produce and work, the food was unavailable due to market forces.
Rich people do not necessarily work harder than poor people. How much money would Heineken have made if he had hired zero employees? Exactly, zero €. Most work that is done is socially valuable (needed in society), from factory work, to cleaning, to administration. Work that is not needed is of course financial speculation, etc.
We simply cannot rely on markets to dictate who works hard and who doesn't and reward accordingly, that's simply not how markets function. Bargaining power, capital gains, etc. all influence it, additionally we have the genetic lottery: not everyone is smart enough to become rich.
How can you manage to get rich under capitalism?
1. Appropriate a position of undemocratic authority within an enterprise.
2. Inherit money--requires no contribution to society.
3. Corruption, nepotism, etc.
4. Win the lottery--requires no contribution to society.
5. Have the physical or mental superiority that allows you to specialise in a certain field and thus create an immense bargaining power (e.g. become a professional football player). Is only for those few who won the genetic lottery.
All of this is unfair. (1 is dealt with bellow).
Innovation
Research funded by the Federal Reserve, done by MIT, has shown that the more money you throw at innovative work, the less innovative people become. Instead there are three factors that lead to innovation.
1. Mastery: desire to master a certain skill (e.g. understand how a machine works).
2. Purpose: desire to have a certain goal (e.g. cure cancer).
3. Autonomy: desire to be self-directed.
Wage-Labour is voluntary
Only if you drop context, as Ayn Rand might have called it--ironically.
Quote:
The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately deStalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a par-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation.. The liberals and conservatives and libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phonies and hypocrites. There is more freedom in any moderately deStalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a par-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called "insubordination," just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation.
But, you will insist, they are free to leave, free to start their own corporation.
Remember, when we enter this world all wealth is already divided. All means of production already owned. This is either in our favour or not, but it's fundamentally unjust since there is no equality.
All productive resources -- financial assets, land, means of production, workplaces, natural resources -- are already owned, appropriated, dispossessed when we are just born. We enter this world in a complete dependence on those who own those productive resources. From this dependency (since we need access to means of life), we are compelled by circumstance (not physical coercion) to subjugate ourselves to an employer. This is not a free arrangement since there is no equality. Equality and freedom are complementary, not contradictory. The absence of equality implies one person rules over another, which implies a loss of autonomy of the ruled, and thus a loss of freedom.
Wage-labour and debt-bondage is force by circumstance (in contrast to chattle slavery which is force by physical coercion).
It may not be the capitalism you desire, but it's the real world capitalism.