Important distinction here: monopolisation in a capitalist environment theoretically leads to higher prices than what they would be if competition undercut them and offered a similar enough product at a lower price, forcing a response etc. Monopolisation by the government in a non-capitalist environment doesn’t have the same effect because there isn’t incentive for any owner to push up prices for more profit (since there’s no comparable product, so you either pay more or go without entirely). In this case competition is a bad thing. No hypocrisy here - we don’t see so much benefit once competitions start to be won, once that happens the benefits we still enjoy were already established and still exist, despite starting to go bad. There is inertia because the products are already “out there” providing value after they were sold at a time when things were better.
Competition can be a good thing when the Classical Liberal theory of perfect competition is approached, but in practice companies use things like advertising to exploit consumer irrationality such that they can forge their own pseudo-monopoly from what is essentially the same product as others being seen more as a product in its own right. Economies of scale, mergers and acquisitions, the tendency in a competitive environment is highly in favour of any company that happens to get an edge - the only disadvantages are the possibility of losing track of the minutia and that since bigger sums are involved, things can go wrong in a bigger way. But good management and delegation can prevent that.
There need to be factors that keep competitions from being won. I watched an interesting video on youtube that described how these economic concepts occur in nature with application to vegetation. We really see the benefits of diversity and perfect competition in hostile and poor environments - where there are natural controls to curtail the wins of any one species over another. Once environments become rich and hospitable, winners can pull away, diversity and competition shrivel.
THIS is the reason that Capitalism is so praised - it naturally lent itself to enriching our formerly poorer and more diverse environments.
It’s also the reason why it is no longer appropriate.
We still enjoy the prosperity it brought about because it’s still present in society, but we are coming to enjoy it less and less over time.
I appreciate what it did, but it’s entirely appropriate to speak of it negatively now.
Yes, we have a public sector in western economies. You are not wrong. The point is not whether or not we have too much or too little taxation, it’s that we have measures in place to stem inequality. A society that has the most mobility and takes advantage of as much of the population as possible gives fair opportunity and doesn’t distance the top from the bottom to such a degree that there’s a complete disconnect. Competition needs to be kept in check for optimal outcome - that’s what government should be for, but at the moment it’s not.
When force still doesn’t do the job by itself, and it doesn’t because the government isn’t doing the job its supposed to do (as I just mentioned above), then yes, we still need charity - at least the rich won’t whine about charity as much, because it feels like it’s their own choice, when really they’re just doing it for their own reputation and to alleviate any guilt they may or may not feel. This is quite apparent because throwing money at something isn’t doing actually anything yourself, it’s getting other people to care so you don’t have to, and the money is going towards those running the charity as well as the actual cause - sometimes people are literally making money out of you thinking you’re putting all your money towards people who need it. Also the charities people often choose tend to be in their own interest anyway - if they really cared about the poor, they wouldn’t just donate to them, they’d fight to change the system that makes them poor even though it’s the same system that makes them rich. As if. And it’s not like they wouldn’t be able to continue to offer what they offered to make them rich if the standard deviations of income distributions were shrunk, they’re just being (understandably?) selfish.
What a ridiculous thing to say.
As if that’s not the case for capitalism many times more so.
There is a difference between communicating consent and feeling consent. You can give consent without really consenting if there is a power imbalance and/or a feeling of choice. The deal is done, but that doesn’t fully justify it, I’m sorry. If unemployment was a viable option for anyone, low skilled workers wouldn’t be forced to consent to bad deals just to get by. Funding unemployment is actually a highly valuable economic and moral device. The employed love to hate on them out of jealousy and/or high-horse virtue ethics, but they fulfill an inevitable if not a necessary role nonetheless.
Yes it is possible to get the employees in on some of the boons that the employer enjoys, and in some cases this happens and that’s great. In most case this doesn’t happen and that’s not great. Employers benefit from low skilled work just as much as they do from high skilled work (if not more because it’s cheaper due to high supply), so in the former case this just contributes to inequality even more.
I’m just going by their own words - I believe my comment about a pissing contest was in reference to a quote by Donald Trump who said it wasn’t about the money for him, it was about keeping score. You see examples of the super-rich doing this all the time, trying to outdo each other with the biggest super-yacht for example. I don’t know these people, but there’s plenty of coverage on their petty rivalries. Let them keep score, sure, just not with currency. I grew up in the upper middle class and I know very well how just as pettily competitive they are.
Bill Gates was instrumental in developing computer technology in its infancy. That’s awesome and I’m so glad for people like that and their hard work - let them be rewarded. But with incomes that are in excess of entire countries’ GDPs? No, that’s beyond ridiculous. How can one person, in themselves I mean, be more valuable than entire countries of people? The inventions he had a part in developing benefited loads of people to a huge extent, I know, but come on - on a human level this has no justification. Warren Buffet - didn’t he just make good investment decisions? I’m sure there’s an element of skill involved, but statistically someone was going to emerge lucky in that one. As if he was the only one with these skills who tried to do exactly the same thing… And as I said, funding enterprises that pay their workers less than the workers earn the company isn’t productivity - there’s no virtue to what he did. Government can fund things too, big whoop.
Very wrong.
Behaviour is entirely a result of an environment-genetic interaction. In a bad environment, no matter how good the genes, this is going to result in irresponsible behaviours. If nothing is done about this and it’s just allowed to perpetuate, there is no better excuse. It’s the responsibility of those who get on the lucky side of this crap-shoot to change these bad environments, but they don’t because of loss aversion and being too worried about themselves losing their advantage that they didn’t choose. And they are usually guilty of the same kind of common ignorance that you showed about behaviour in the above quote. The thing about free will in a deterministic universe is that you are “free” to choose, but you didn’t choose to make that choice - that choice was determined by the environment-gene interaction that occurred without your will. As if poor people are choosing to stay poor
Yes, some slaves and some downtrodden and unlucky starters manage to pull through, equally not out of any Kantian deontology or lofty privileged philosophy, but because of circumstances working in their favour despite the odds being against them - they aren’t 100%, a tiny minority will pull through.
The whole “take responsibility” thing is very popular at the moment, and it works on plenty of people which is great, but it won’t and can’t on many others - don’t assume a necessarily universality of morality when science proves otherwise.
And no, whilst quitting an exploitative role is perfectly legal, the alternatives - or at least the only ones you might know/be able to do - are often worse. So you don’t quit. Clearly, very clearly, this is the case for a great many people or otherwise we wouldn’t still see this sad situation everywhere all the time.