Oddbean new post about | logout
 No capitalists own other people's labour.   Workers labour time is owned.  You'd know this by comparing pay packets and noticing the discrepancy in reward  or by seeing that unions exist, or that musk isn't actuall yworth billions more than you.  If people were rewarded hard work and hard labour, most women in africa would be  billionaires.  But they arent, because thats how capitalism works: it exploits everyone downward forever until there is on gazillionaire left. 
 You don't even know the definitions of the words you're talking about. Capitalism has nothing to do with owning other people's labor. You haven't completely backwards. No one's making you work for someone else. Capitalism doesn't force you to work for somebody. You are free to choose to work wherever you want and you are entitled to the money you get from the labor you provide. That doesn't mean you're entitled to ask for whatever sum of money you feel like earning.  
 I'm not free to just go work where I want.  I can't just rock up to a beach selling  buckets of sand.  I can't believe how delusional capitalists are.  I CAN  just quit my job, but I lose my home and go hungry. I can do some slave wage work, but I lose my time , energy and dignity, and my home.  Its such a asanine thoughtless thing to say you can just become anything and get rich by choice.  I am 100% sure you make lots of money by exploiting others.  Its the only way you would be able to believe such a thing. 
 Yes you are and yes you can You're just not entitled to make a billion dollars from it.  
 Nobody should have a billion dollars.  That would make everyones standard of living extremely high.  Only the very greedy ignorant, and selfish would opposes such a redistribution of billionaire wealth. 
 Why shouldn't they?  
 There is no legitimate argument for why people shouldn't be able to have an amount of value. Anyone trying to dictate how much value a person can hold is a supporter of tyrants or the tyrant themselves. 
 Capitalists determne how much value people can have.  Have you looked at the world today?   Can I have all your money?  Its a value I want. 
 What you are talking about isn't capitalism. It's central banking 
 Because greed is a sin.  Look around the slums of the world. And ask yourself if they deserve it. 
 Why does the amount of money you have, have anything to do with greed? They have that money because they earned it.  
 Yes there are no greedy wealthy people. 
 greed is an economic constant. Everyone is greedy.  
 Not true.  That is a myth peddled by capitalists.  Everyone is susceptible to bad behavior, that does not mean everyone is choosing to behave badly.  People are also highly keen on sharing.  Capitalists spend an enormous amounts of energy  trying to beat that instinct out of us through schooling and propaganda. 
 WTF are you on about? Capitalism is just what people naturally do. It's not some made up construct. Capitalism just means that you own what you make and are entitled to to any profit from your property.  
 If I put a gun to your head and say work for me for free for the rest of your life you are free to say  no.  

Is your defense of freedom under capitalism? 
 That's not capitalism at all... That's socialism... 
 Sounds like you're just a lazy bum who thinks he's entitled to a "living wage" for just existing and not providing anything to anyone else. ie You think your entitled to the labor of others.  
 It sounds like that to you because you are reductive and can't think properly.  I blame propaganda. 
 No.  Just no. 
 If children are going hungry and shoeless (as millions around the world do) , is that because THEY are lazy bums?

Capitalism fails when it fails children. It fails humanity.  I don't care about your financial arguments, Children shouldn't go hungry because of a system  they were born into that selfish adults obsessed with wealth have failed to address. 
 You realize the poorest people in CaPiTAlIsT USA are far richer than the vast majority of the rest of the world right? Our poorest people are still in the top 1% on a global scale.  
 what does this have to do with my question?  poor avoidance. 
 The point is that children DONT go hungry in capitalist systems...  
 You are delusional. You must speak from a place of great wealth and privilege.  No wonder you blind to the ills of capitalism.