Keronians wrote:
Yes, resources will run out. That's why we have scarcity: limited resources, unlimited wants. The same goes for EVERY economic system in existence. We encourage technological development, and employ capital goods in production because they allow us to produce more for the same cost in resources.also, real slaves are produced by capitalism; by simply posting the emote, you show your being uneducated on this subject, and your posts approach flaming. you have not posted a single logical argument, you have just raged. i henceforth ask for logic.
Despite his excessive use of , his arguments make sense. Well, more than yours, anyway.(from previous link)
Wage slavery as a concept can be a general criticism of capitalism, defined as a condition in which a capitalist class (a minority of the population) controls all of the necessary non-human components of production (capital, land, industry, etc.) that workers use to produce goods. This sort of criticism is generally associated with socialist and anarchist criticisms of capitalism, and could conceivably be traced back to pre-capitalist figures like Gerrard Winstanley from the radical Christian Diggers movement in England, who wrote in his 1649 pamphlet, The New Law of Righteousness, that there "shall be no buying or selling, no fairs nor markets, but the whole earth shall be a common treasury for every man," and "there shall be none Lord over others, but every one shall be a Lord of himself."
Aristotle made the statement "[a]ll paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind". Cicero wrote in 44 BC that "…vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hired workmen whom we pay for mere manual labour, not for artistic skill; for in their case the very wage they receive is a pledge of their slavery." Somewhat similar criticisms have also been expressed by some proponents of liberalism, like Henry George, Silvio Gesell and Thomas Paine, as well as the Distributist school of thought within the Roman Catholic Church. Criticism of capitalism on these grounds, however, might not always be connected to the belief that one should have freedom to work without a boss.
Several flaws in this argument.
To begin with, today, capital can be borrowed cheaply. All one needs is a good business plan. Land can be acquired via capital. Labour can also be acquired via capital.
Enterprise comes from you: your business idea.
If you don't want a job, you don't have to take it. There are also numerous laws protecting workers' rights, as well as allowing for their association via trade unions.
You also forget that the firms that abuse their workers are generally unproductive, because badly motivated workers are not very productive. One of the reasons Japan was so successful, was its great motivation theories, and inserting variety in the work of workers using cell production, job rotation, etc. Quality circles are also a Japanese invention.To Marx and anarchist thinkers like Bakunin and Kropotkin their concept of wage slavery was as a class condition in place due to the existence of private property and the state. This class situation rested primarily on:
the existence of property not intended for active use,
the concentration of ownership in few hands,
the lack of direct access by workers to the means of production and consumption goods
the perpetuation of a reserve army of unemployed workers.
and secondarily on:
the waste of workers' efforts and resources on producing useless luxuries;
the waste of goods so that their price may remain high; and
the waste of all those who sit between the producer and consumer, taking their own shares at each stage without actually contributing to the production of goods.
perfect explanation of capitalist slavery.
Sorry, but that is not even worthy of addressing.Capitalism has become so deeply ingrained in the American psyche as the only viable economic system, that it's no longer just considered "un-American" to question it; it's considered impossible. Culture, politics, and educational institutions present capitalism not as one of many economic systems, but as the only economic system that won't eventually result in the dictatorial rule of a corrupt government or a brutal autocrat. And it's not just any form of capitalism that is the law of the land in the U.S. — it's unfettered capitalism. But as much as we live unquestioningly by capitalist principles, do we even know what capitalism is?
Alright, first of all, many people on here aren't American, so if someone were to tell them that they aren't, they'd just confirm it for you.
Yes, we know what capitalism is. It is when the means of production are primarily owned privately.In fact, there is no single agreed-upon definition of capitalism. But capitalism generally involves the following: that the means of production are privately owned; that supply, demand, prices, and investments are set by the private sector and market forces rather than planning; and that profit goes to business owners and investors. It's a system which, by its nature, is going to drive profit to the owners and investors of business and production. And when they make profit, they get wealthier. Since there are usually only a few owners of business as opposed to many, this means that the result of capitalism is often a few wealthy people and a whole lot of less-wealthy people.
Aha! If you're going to quote Wikipedia, cite it. That first sentence is almost completely copypasta.
Wrong. And the reason is that the owners need to compensate the workforce. Do you think that people like Cristiano Ronaldo, or Messi, are investors? No. Their large influx of capital comes from their labour. Their specialist skill: football (or soccer).On the one hand, the sort of wealth inequality which capitalism creates makes the step to slavery much smaller than it would be in a more economically-balanced society. Historically, slaves have been associated with the very wealthy; middle-class and lower income people don't have a slave-owning history like the rich do. For modern-day slavery, the slave-master relationship breaks down on economic lines more often than anything else — race, gender, religion, etc. It's an easy bit of logic to point out that since capitalism is a source of economic inequality and inequality encourages slavery, that capitalism does breed slavery.
It's an easy bit of logic to point out that capitalism =/= slavery.On the other hand, modern-day slavery exists all around the world, in countries which are capitalist, communist, socialist, and hybrid economies. If capitalism is to blame, then how to you explain human trafficking in places like communist China and North Korea or hybrid socialist systems like Denmark? Slavery is a complex system that has existed over thousand of years in diverse cultures and economies. How can you blame it on something so modern as capitalism?
The answer may not be simple, but the question is worth asking. As we work to end modern-day slavery and learn how to live with the legacy of historic slavery, we can't afford to take anything for granted. Is capitalism the best system? Maybe not. Is it the worst? Probably not? Is it the only option out there? Definitely not.
Nice copypasta. That last paragraph is a textbook reflective conclusion of articles.
any system that causes social inequality to the absurd levels of capitalism has de-facto slavery.
did you read the link i attached it too? the one that is called capitalist?