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That's a thoroughly unfair assessment. It assumes that all wealth is ill-gotten, and that is utterly baseless. Microsoft created and distributed an operating s
by swombat 17y ago
That's a thoroughly unfair assessment. It assumes that all wealth is ill-gotten, and that is utterly baseless.
Microsoft created and distributed an operating system that brought affordable computing to the masses. They generated enormous wealth for all of mankind, and they did so mostly playing by the rules that were set down for how commerce should be conducted. Certainly, they did some things outside of those rules, and for those they should be and have been punished. But on the whole, the world is still a better place with Microsoft than it would have been without.
Taking Warren Buffet or Soros next, capitalism functions well because there are fiendishly clever people like those trying to figure out where to best allocate their capital to maximise their returns. This fundamental principle allows us to move wealth to wherever it's needed, whatever is the next big thing that humanity should be working on. Without them, we would be worse off too, since capital would be badly allocated - for example, to building countless overpriced houses rather than other things.
What you suggest here is dangerous, because there is a grain of truth in it. Yes, there have been centuries of everyone exploiting everyone else. But pointing that out is useless, because it doesn't help make the situation better. And ascribing that blame to a few individuals, particularly those who started from nothing and built tremendous wealth through their hard work, is completely unfair and unwarranted.
If you have some practical suggestions, rather than pointless muck-stirring, please do share them instead of quoting conspiracy theorists.
- Silentio 17y agoThe idea that the wealthy started from nothing and ascribing their wealth to the "hard work" of building from nothing is romantic, but ultimately it's a fantasy. No doubt much individual hard work goes into building a fortune, but the fortune itself owes much more to the labor of thousands, if not millions, of workers, right down to the janitor who sweeps the floor, than it does to the individual who had the next big idea. Labor certainly has more to do with wealth than capital itself. Inequality is embedded in capitalism. When the invisible hand moves capital from one place to another, it does not only give, it takes away. For someone like Bill Gates to give as he does, he has to have taken away (you might prefer "created") in the first place. It may be muck-stirring, but I am less interested in saving the world than I am in understanding the ideological assumptions implicit in, for instance, Gates's actions, and the systems that allow those actions to take place. To leave the muck unstirred, to forget it exists, is to live in a world that does nothing but support conventional wisdom, excludes alternatives, and limits debate. The useful question is not, "is this True or not," but rather, "what would it mean if it were true." Finally, if Zizek is a conspiracy theorist, was Hegel, was Marx?
- swombat 17y agoInequality is embedded in capitalism. When the invisible hand moves capital from one place to another, it does not only give, it takes away. For someone like Bill Gates to give as he does, he has to have taken away (you might prefer "created") in the first place. That is where your misunderstanding lies. The world is not a finite-sum game. Wealth created is not wealth taken away. Someone like Bill Gates accumulated a lot of wealth because he created a lot of wealth - not because he took it from someone else. The difference between "taking away" and "creating" is like the difference between murder and sex.
- zouhair 17y agoHow is that our World is not finite? Simply take the U.S., the difference between the rich and the poor widened immensely, because most of the profit (or what you call "created wealth") is not shared equally among those who made it. I doubt Bill Gates would have gained so much if he were alone doing the job, we favour only the one who bring the money not the one who do the actual job. There is a capital gain in people's work and their wages are far from covering it.
- swombat 17y agoThe world is not finite from any perspective, whether physical or economic: - The world is not finite from a physical point of view, because it receives gigantic amounts of solar energy from the sun. Sure, it tends to radiate much of it back out, but a large chunk of that energy is converted into "wealth" in a biological form, via photosynthesis. That continually increased wealth is what has allowed us to progress from single-celled organisms to what we are today. - The world is not closed from an economic point of view because work has a value (something your ilk seems to be arguing for, I believe) and new work is done every day. Every bit of productive work adds more value to the system, more wealth. Some people's work is more valuable because it creates more wealth. Those people are (and should be) rewarded accordingly, in a fair system. You should read up on Microsoft's history. Bill Gates started off as a developer. He most definitely "did the work". Also, only someone who has never done any meaningful work in a business could possibly fail to understand that "management" work is not only very hard and complicated, it is also essential. Left to their own devices, most large groups of people devolve into chaos, producing no useful work whatsoever. Finally... There is a capital gain in people's work and their wages are far from covering it. Of course. You're absolutely right. The reason for that is that the people receiving those wages did not take any risk. They receive a pay check at the end of the month, and they don't need to worry about whether or not the product will be successful, whether the company will get sued, whether key members of the company will suddenly leave and start a competitor, etc - they get their money anyway. The founders of a company take most of that risk, particularly at the beginning, and it is perfectly reasonable that they should get most of the reward.
- zouhair 17y ago>...This fundamental principle allows us to move wealth to wherever it's needed, whatever is the next big thing that humanity should be working on. Without them, we would be worse off too, since capital would be badly allocated - for example, to building countless overpriced houses rather than other things.... That's just plain wrong, just look at the endless losses of jobs in the US and other rich countries in the past years, all in the name of profit, see the suffering of most of the World countries under the yoke of the World Bank and the IMF and so on and so on. There is such a thing as a World without capitalism, capitalism is just man made, so it can be replaced. I don't know who said it but I like it : "Workers don't need a Boss, but a Boss needs Workers". Works with big capitalists.