I have mixed opinions on it, just wanted to hear what everyone elses opinions of capitalism are? I mean some people have nothing and some have it all.
Capitalism is the only way to go . But proper laws and proper education are the only ways that capitalism remains a balanced economic system . The 1st picture is a Photoshop product . Anyway capitalism brought broadband Internet to the world . Still think it's something bad ?
Capitalism is evil. It makes rich grow richer, extracting labour out of poor people and making them slaves literally. We are living in the age of capitalism. We are servants of capitalists, the only way to survive is to do 9 to 5 job, and when you come home you are told what to wear how to look what to use what to buy what to drink through media, they control everything in our world. They are not selling there products, they dont need money its not about money, they are introducing (infact they have) there culture into our way of life. Ever wondered all top corporations have the same owners. Those are the ones who control the money, they can devalue it in months. Infact that's what is happening. Because they want a new monetary system. The best way of slavery is to make people believe that they are free. Liberty is not freedom its a new name for slavery. Which started in 20th century. Wake up people! When will you wakeup!
Entrepreneurs - successful ones - create jobs. When they do really well, they're able to hire managers and skilled workers... and pay them higher wages and better benefits. They also pay taxes - on their own income, and on their business, and on all the expensive things they buy. When capitalistic entrepreneurs succeed, everyone succeeds. Think - why are we the greatest, most prosperous nation in the world? Because of innovation, because of successful businesses, because of hard-working people, because ofpeople willing to invest in others' businesses and ideas, because the government has, historically, let us do whatever we want with minimal intervantion (compared to other nations). A true capitalist believes in independence - surviving with minimal dependence on the government. WHen government begins paying people 99 weeks of unemployment and a lifetime of welfare benefits and full medical benefits and food stamps and all kinds of other social benefit systems - people aren't motivated to get jobs. (I know some of these people personally.) I do believe government should make sure noone is freezing, starving, or sleeping on park benches - but it is NOT government's job to make life comfortable for everyone. When people cannot work through no fault of theuir own - we should offer basic help. But I think government has taken on a role that tries to ensure that everyone is living a middle-class lifestyle... even when they do nothing to earn it. But I digress - back to discussing business and capitalism - When government places high taxes on businesses and entrepreneurs, they can't afford to hire more people. Or if they do hire people, they pay them less when the government places additional strain on the company through taxation. And when government takes too much money (through high taxes) from entrepreneurs, then people lose their desire to work extra hard to create successful businesses. A few statistics - - The top 10% of earners in AMerica pay 70% of the tax burden. source - 47% of AMerican household pay ZERO Federal income tax. source (I refuse to believe that 47% of American households NEED to be that dependent on government.) An example - A friend once told me "It's not fair that some people are flying around in private jets. Why aren't those people investing their money in creating jobs instead?" I said - they are. Somebody was employed when they made the private rich guy's private jet. A jet mechanic is employed when he inspects and repairs the rich guy's private jet. Jet feullers put gas in the rich guy's private jet. A pilot is making big bucks flying the jet. There is a stewerdess on the jet. The companies who make parts for jets are employing people. The people in the air traffic control tower are employed because of the rich guy's private jet. And so on... my point: We all benefit from rich people who have lots of money and spoil themselves. And... yes.. those rich people are creating jobs in the businesses they own too. Another example - Think of a pencil. A common, 25 cent pencil. Somebody harvested the wood, and made money. Somebody mined the graphite or lead or whatever and made money. Somebody shaped the pencil on a machine and made money. Somebody harvested rubber trees for the eraser. Somebody made the eraser. Somebody made the tiny metal part that goes on the end. Somebody made the packaging for the pencil. SOmebody drove the pencil to a warehouse in a truck. Somebody sold the pencil in a store. And many more people took part too, I'm sure. That's a lot of employment for a pencil. And who makes it all possible? The capitalist entrepreneurs and investors. Final thought - Government doesn't make money. They only take it. Government does not make people successful - hard working people make themselves successful. Money motivates people. When people want to become rich, and work hard to become rich, good things happen - innovation, job creation, economic prosperity.
That's not true capitalism. True capitalism everyone has to be willing to participate in the trade/exchange. With stuff like trafficking, people are coerced into doing so and that's not capitalism.
I did not say it was true capitalism. I'm just not a firm believer that when people try to get rich only good things happen.
You're right, I apologize for misunderstanding you. Just that a lot of people will equate capitalism with such acts and in a thread such as this, I just assumed that was the case.
Capitalism isn't good, but it's still the best system we have. It would be nice to see some improvement, maybe introducing a whole new system, but till then we need to stick to this one.. I mean what else we have.. communism?
Capitalism isn't evil, it's the people who's in the game. Capitalism is good to drive your motivation to push yourself to the limits. But unfortunately most rich people tend to forget the unfortunate ones when they're rich. If you ask them before they get rich, most of the pledge to help others when they're rich but it never happen as the get richer.
"The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory democracy." — Milton Friedman, Introduction to the Fiftieth Anniversary Edition of The Road to Serfdom "To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything." — Friedrich Hayek "In war, the stronger overcomes the weaker. In business, the stronger imparts strength to the weaker." — Frederic Bastiat "The “private sector†of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and…the “public sector†is, in fact, the coercive sector." — Henry Hazlitt "The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality." — Ludwig von Mises "The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations." — Adam Smith "What is called “orthodox†economics is in most countries barred from the universities and is virtually unknown to the leading statesmen, politicians, and writers. The blame for the unsatisfactory state of economic affairs can certainly not be placed upon a science which both rulers and masses despise and ignore." — Ludwig von Mises, Human Action "What is wrong with our age is precisely the widespread ignorance of the role which these policies of economic freedom played in the technological evolution of the last two hundred years. People fell prey to the fallacy that the improvement of the methods of production was contemporaneous with the policy of laissez faire only by accident." — Ludwig von Mises, Human Action "Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." — Mark Twain "Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist." — John Adams "Never appeal to a man’s ‘better nature.’ He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage." — Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long "When a government takes over a people’s economic life it becomes absolute, and when it has become absolute it destroys the arts, the minds, the liberties and the meaning of the people it governs." — Maxwell Anderson "The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another." — Milton Friedman "It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder." — Frederic Bastiat "You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot establish security on borrowed money. You cannot build character and courage by taking away men’s initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves." — William Boetcker "Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses." — Ralph Waldo Emerson "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." — Benjamin Franklin "Government is not the generator of economic growth; working people are." — U.S. Senator Phil Gramm "I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple. Were we directed from Washington when to sow, when to reap, we should soon want bread." — Thomas Jefferson "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits." — Plutarch "Every government interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others." — Ayn Rand "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." — Adam Smith "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship." — Sir Alexander Fraser Tyler "Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer." — Ludwig von Mises "But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." — Frederic Bastiat "I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." — Thomas Jefferson "What is called ‘capitalism’ might more accurately be called consumerism. It is the consumers who call the tune, and the capitalists who want to remain capitalists have to learn to dance to it." — Thomas Sowell "The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not." — Friedrich Hayek "Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon." — Winston Churchill "A panhandler is far more moral than corporate welfare queens….The panhandler doesn’t enlist anyone to force you to give him money. He’s coming up to you and saying, “Will you help me out?†The farmers, when they want subsidies, they’re not asking for a voluntary transaction. They go to a congressman and say, “Could you take his money and give it to us?†That’s immoral." — Walter E. Williams "The principle that both sides benefit from trade is readily visible when it involves two parties within a country; it somehow becomes confused when an invisible political barrier separates the parties. Neither the mercantilists of yesteryear nor those who fuss about the trade deficit today have ever satisfactorily answered this fundamental question: Since each and every trade is “favorable†to the individual traders, how is it possible that these transactions can be totaled up to produce something “unfavorable�" — Lawrence W. Reed, The Trade Deficit: Much Ado About Nothing "A glance at the economic system and methods of totalitarian states — of the Soviet bloc, for example — is enough to show that state-ownership of the means of production does not lead to an increase of wealth for the people but, on the contrary, to their exploitation, whereas the reverse is true of the free countries and peoples, which are denounced for their so-called capitalism but which clearly illustrates how private ownership of the means of production is contributing more and more to the general welfare." — Ludwig Erhard "I champion an economic order ruled by free prices and markets…the only economic order compatible with human freedom." — Wilhelm Ropke "The dilemma … is between the democratic process of the market in which every individual has his share and the exclusive rule of a dictatorial body. Whatever people do in the market economy is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner’s own plan for the plans of his fellowmen. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute preeminence of his own plan." — Ludwig von Mises "Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race." — William Howard Taft "Private property was the original source of freedom. It still is its main bulwark." — Walter Lippman "The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man’s nature." — William James, The Variety of Religious Experience, 1902 "Agriculture, manufacturers, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise." — Thomas Jefferson, First annual message to Congress; December 8, 1801 "A free economy will not break down. All depressions are caused by government interference. and, the cure is always offered, so far, to take more of the poisons that caused the disaster. Depressions are not the result of a free economy." — Ayn Rand "True capitalism is based upon one simple principle: that all exchanges of property are made with the voluntary consent of all parties. Private ownership of property and competition — the other two components of capitalism in most traditional definitions — are actually results of this foundational principle. As all governments are institutions of coercion, there is no way for them to acquire property through voluntary exchange. Further, with all exchanges being voluntary, sellers must by definition compete with one another in order to sell their products. So, the foundation of “capitalism†is really the non-aggression principle applied to property. Capitalism requires that no one’s property can be taken from them without their consent." — Tom Mullen
CapCom, because of the differing persuasions of individuals from enterpriser's to socialist the society they live in should reflect the spectrum of the individuals than material denominations. Combining Capitalism and Communism into a united economy will be the solution for a stable society.
I believe the cat/buttered toast anti gravity machine applies that very principal. You seem like the kind of guy who might buy powdered water.
I think that's a society where "Some people create wealth and other people steal it." That system is highly thought of -- by thieves.
I think capitalism is the right way to go and its only the stockmarket that is the problem not allowing true capitalism to thrive. When one man owns the company (the entreprenaur), there's a person who loves the company & builds it up to a bigger company. The company has a 'face' to blame if something goes wrong, hence a lot of checks and balances are in place to keep it above board. These days, instead of Fred owning the business (capitalism), it's more corporatism. where unnamed 'faceless' corporations, driven by a highly paid CEO forced by law to put profit above all else. It's too easy to let standards slip. If something goes wrong, they simply replace the CEO and continue their business as usual, maybe making a little change or not, if only to appease the public. It's much harder to bring down a 'corporation' because like the law, if you get rid of one officer, another 20 are ready to take his place. Capitalism good, corporatism bad.
Sole proprietorships have difficulty scaling to the point where they can effectively tackle certain business challenges. And, of course, business continuity is an issue with sole proprietorships. Nobody lives forever.