The entrepreneur [Webster: one who undertakes to organize and manage a business or enterprise] is one who sets up a one-person shop or organizes a company to deliver a product or service, especially something of his/her own invention. Within limits (see below), the entrepreneur is entitled to the wealth produced by his/her efforts as entrepreneur. But the executives in any such company deserve no more than the Benchmark figure. Same for artists and entertainers as for entrepreneurs – let the marketplace prevail.
The implementation of reasoned limits on greed are long overdue, but unless the Oligarchy is deposed, we can expect another Great Depression or even a return to the anarchic Dark Ages. Indeed, George Dubya has already screwed up seriously (perhaps intentionally) in that he is now the first U.S. President since Herbert Hoover who will leave office having created a JOB DEFICIT. Irreparable damage has been done to the economy, and it is so enormous that only extreme progressive economic programs – which Dubya will prevent – can reverse the economic statistics, and thus Dubya cannot produce an effected solution any time before the November election.
"It's the job deficit, stupid!"
The only reason that George W. Bush may not be replaced for his misfeasance in office is that the U.S. public is at best ill-informed and ignorant, and the bulk of them are suckers for the lies and manipulation beamed 24/7 at their unfocused eyeballs by the Culture-Structure.
(George Dubya took your job away, do not trade that insult for your vote!)
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The key problem in any realignment of the economic system is that the extant economy is based on the False (dis-empowering) Values of the Oligarchy. The entire present economy is based on Profit At All Cost – the Holy Bottom Line. (Any economic Value other than Profit or Greed is automatically revolutionary – it violates the status quo.)
Jobs are moved to Asia not because the workers are more efficient or better trained but because the economic slavery in those countries allocates only pennies per day per worker.
Executives here and overseas earn unconscionable multiples of what their non-salaried employees receive, merely so the execs can brag about their abuse of power and strut around showing off their skills at conspicuous consumption. The Oligarchy operates no differently than any medieval fiefdom, using force of ownership – of the serfs, of the factories and farms – and the force of their wealth – the Oligarchy controls the media, which deliver disinformation sprinkled with Pavlovian admonitions to buy! buy! buy! – and the Oligarchy controls the government in every jurisdiction – from the lowly bureaucrat to George Dubya and Congress and the Supremes.
PALEO-CAPITALISM
True Capitalism is based on ownership of the Self, and the trade of one's labor for wealth – money, services, goods – and on entrepreneurship, the non-salaried world of the marketplace.
I searched the internet for a useful name to encompass the 'real' practice of Capitalism, and one of the terms that showed up was 'neo-capitalism', but those results included some quite-loony websites that have co-opted the term (i.e. advocating the elimination of money, f'godsakes!). So that term is useless.
I suggest that the term 'Paleo-Capitalism' will work for the present. [Paleo is Greek for 'ancient, early, primitive, archaic', used here to denote 'old', in the sense of original, as in Capitalism as originally intended.]
Before the Industrial Revolution, virtually everyone was an entrepreneur. The farmer grew his crops, the freighter hauled them to market, the wholesaler sold to the retailer, who in turn sold to the end consumer, the innkeeper or housewife. The herdsman raised his sheep or cattle or poultry, sold the meat and hides to the wholesalers, who sold them to tradesmen, who transformed the raw materials into finished product – cuts of meat or shoes or harness – who again sold to the end consumer. The woodcutter, the weaver, the tailor, the horse trader, the lumberman, the cabinetmaker – each took raw materials and plied their trade and produced saleable goods.
Society also maintained a government, the church provided for its clergy, and colleges taught academics to teach others. Bankers, soldiers, artists, entertainers, and thieves all worked their chosen trade directly.
The development of factories, however, required only unskilled, brute labor – to run the machines built to produce goods on a massive scale, at great efficiency, and thus at reduced cost. The result was very soon exploitation: as machines replaced tradesmen, the displaced masses had to compete for jobs in the factories.
Greed took hold of the factory owners, and Charles Dickens and others documented the terrible conditions of the powerless working classes: child labor, dangerous and unhealthy working environments – total disregard for the humanity of the actual producers of wealth, the workers.
The original intention and design of Capitalism (aside from labor), however, is that when an entrepreneur (inventor, artist, manufacturer) gets an idea for a new product or service, he sets up a business plan for others to invest in. Venture capitalists and I.P.O.s [initial public offerings] and basic bank loans amount to the same thing: investment of capital in an enterprise.
The new business is built up, markets developed, and products or services enter the marketplace.
If the new company fails, the investors lose capital and the entrepreneur suffers loss of his capital (if any) plus the loss of his/her reputation. Risk is always an option in a free economy.
But if the new company makes a profit, then the profits are used to repay the investors – NOT to extract dividends in perpetuity to the investor class, the Oligarchy. The profitable company – in Paleo-Capitalism – buys treasury shares from the investors, with further profits directed to the original owners/entrepreneurs, and preferably to employees as both wage increases and participation in an ESOP [employee stock ownership program] – as an incentive beneficial to both employees and management.
The important thing to realize about Ayn Rand is that she is the early-1900's equivalent of Stephen Colbert. She believes what she is saying, but it's heavily loaded with satire.
What else to explain how John Galt should just simply "shrug" and allow the human race to annihilate itself? No self-righteous person would shrug under any circumstances. It's weak and defeatist under the most basic analysis. And it is highly satirical.
Capitalism is an extraction-based model. It requires infinite resources (a mountain of gold) so that "time" is the pivot variable to making a profit. When you put limits on resources, such as the growth of a company on the stock market, capitalism becomes unraveled.
I don't have any problems with the free market. It is the way people connect. But "capitalism" requires capital, and there is scarcely any free capital left in the world.
by
batrider (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 8 comments)
on Sunday, September 3, 2006 at 6:46:55 PM
Well, who is one of the main institution that uses capital (and increases the interest rates)? It's the government.
How do you get the idea that 'capitalism' depends on infinite resources?
Satire... well, she wrote a novel, i.e. art.
"Objectivism defines "art" as a "selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments" - that is, according to what the artist believes to be ultimately true and important about the nature of reality and humanity. In this respect Objectivism regards art as a way of presenting abstractions concretely, in perceptual form."
From the point of view of a non-Objectivist the presentation of the 'ideal man' is possibly a 'Satire' :D
by
Clawg (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Sunday, September 3, 2006 at 10:14:54 PM
