They built factories, golden arches, and music empires. They changed what you eat, where you shop, and what you hear. This week, we celebrate America’s great capitalists and their legacies.
My step-brother who is a successful lawyer working in L.A. making very good moulah, living in Beverly Hills, yet will say ... "I am no capitalist:"... What the .....?!
This celebration of capitalism borders on religious ideology (or propaganda). If the “free market” is so glorious let’s do it without government subsidies.
Henry Ford was a fascist and antisemite who supported Hitler. He should not be honored or celebrated by anyone. The Free Press's lauding him is disappointing to say the least
As described by Warren Buffett, free market capitalism has made the American Experiment, in only 250 years, the greatest success in human history. However, past performance is not necessarily indicative of the future. Morgan Stanley estimates 70% of tech value created is due to "network effects". In other words, once an invention reaches a critical mass others must use it to participate in the network even if its not the best product. Think telephone, Microsoft Office, Google search, products that become de facto monopolies through network effects then are so big their cost of service or goods sold becomes so low they are virtually impossible to displace. An argument can be made that the "network" of usage is really a public asset rather than some free ride playing field waiting to be exploited. The solution then is not laissez faire capitalism, nor is it incentive crushing socialism. It's our politician's challenge to find a middle. We are having a terribly messy way of addressing that challenge, but I can't think of a better one, except to recognize the messiness of the challenge and maybe be more civil.
I hugely admire the entrepreneurs and capitalists who take risk and deserve the rewards. Where I differ is the overcompensation of bankers, CEOs of public companies and others who expect to be rewarded like very succesful entrepreneurs while taking little or no risk. Why does the custodian of a company get the sort of rewards that most entrepreneurs cannot dream about. ?
Capitalism seems to live in cycles. Sometimes it is of the devil and other times when sanity takes over, capitalism is our lifeblood. We seem to be in the 'of the devil' moment for now.
Capitalism is in a cycle where corporations have concentrated a high proportion of the national wealth into the hands of managers and stock owners. The stock ownership is more broadly distributed than ever before, and more "working people" have more opportunity to accumulate assets whose appreciation augments their labor. That's why capitalism will survive and prosper. But people who haven't climbed the first rungs of the asset ladder are having a hard time making a go of it on shrinking wages relative to a high cost of living, with wages held stagnant or declining due to offshoring an excessive immigration, combined the propensity of corporation management to boot their employees out the door whenever they want their stock options to appreciate this quarter, even if the layoffs degrade the company going forward.
Furthermore, corporations have grown almost as powerful as government, if not more so. Reminiscent of what President Grover Cleveland said int he 1890s:
===
Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government. But the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressive poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.
It’s a bit early simply to sing the praises of American capitalism, isn’t it? Look at the excellent piece in today’s Times about the danger of AI’s wiping out most if not all jobs, thereby making the vast majority of us a pathetic, starving underclass a la “The Hunger Games.” The inexorable logic of capitalism’s quest for efficiency and profit would seem to make the replacement of ALL workers by machines inevitable. That could produce utopia, if all AI’s potentially mind-boggling profits were shared with the whole population through very high taxes paying comfortable guaranteed incomes indexed to AI growth to all. But that doesn’t sound like meritocratic capitalism at all, does it?
On the other hand, if we let AI play out with nothing but capitalistic principles, AI will literally destroy the whole economy by wiping out jobs without replacing lost income, which will wipe out the aggregate consumer damand that is capitalism’s life blood.
If we start transforming our political economy right now into a system that radically and progressively uses high taxes to redistribute AI profits as income for the unemployable, AI can be the greatest thing capitalism ever produced. But if the rich and the conservative, clueless masses scream “Socialism!!” and block this transformation of the political economy, they will destroy capitalism itself by destroying the paying customers on whom it depends.
Up until 1960 less than 5% of the population of the United States was receiving any form of government welfare. By 2000 it had increased to 15%, and to 30% in 2020. There is a difference in American philosophy where we have gone from individuals supporting those in need, to dependence on government support. Democrats now feed and fuel this dependency for votes. Better to keep constituents ignorant and poor rather than educated and entrepreneurial. We need to quickly change this trend, expose this truth, or the next 250 years will see the demise of America and the dream of its founders.
The United States has the advantage of capitalism because the Government of the United States alone permits private ownership of subsurface minerals. In other countries' law, you only own the surface of the Earth, and nothing below it. There is not a drop of privately owned subsurface oil, or an ounce of privately owned gold, silver, copper, or any other subsurface mineral anywhere except the United States and in a very few portions (Alberta) of Canada where the land did not devolve from the Crown. The governments in some of those countries may lease subsurface mineral rights to private companies, but only on terms and conditions specified by the government.
Try to imagine what the United States would be like if it were like the other 190 or so countries of the Earth where no private company or individual could own subsurface oil, gold, silver, copper, or anything else of subsurface value. Only the government could decide how to develop it, and would put itself first in the profit chain. Our standard of living would be at least 1/3rd lower, because:
A) Much fewer mineral resources would have been developed. Oil production might be 1/3rd to 1/2 what it is now.
B) The lion's share of profits from the extraction of oil and mineral wealth would all go to the government, not be recycled into the private sector. California and Texas were oil states before they became technology states. The Industrial Midwest states pumped oil, natural gas, and coal before they became industrial states.
Our capitalism is the exception to the world because our laws of oil and mineral wealth are exceptional. It's one reason why we're a wealthy country and everything south of the Rio Grande is struggling to reached Developed World status, despite natural resources larger than ours, and countries in Europe and Asia rarely equal our sustained economic growth. There are other reasons for the disparity, of course, but this is a big one.
The positive remarks from Bari are on track. In fact, there is evidence that entrepreneurial activity today is better than ever, we are probably in a Golden Age in the USA in this respect.
Now for the Tough Love / Bad News folks
An ancillary to the above has been a long tradition of self-delusion, narrow-minded, lazy, idiotic thinking. Consider Asbestos; "Cowboys and Indians"; "slavery was a temporary issue, we are over that"; "USA is based on views of Edmund Burke, who was Thomas Paine"; "the 50% below the poverty line do not exist", etc. etc. Unfortunately, Bari is too concerned with making money to face into these kinds of issues.
Oh, and as per Larrd below: Mindless slogan-surfing. Larrd probably is muttering to himself "Obama was a Communist"
I'm looking forward to a celebration of industrial meat production, with its effects on the trillions of animals, the climate, and the water supply. That will be so great to read.
If you don't like the meat industry, no problem with that. Don't participate in it, you'll have no responsibility for it, and if enough others feel the same way, the industry will diminish and no longer exist.
Argument in one picture: a satellite image of the Korean Peninsula at night. Capitalist South Korea blazes with light; socialist North Korea is all dark, except for a faint ember at the capital city (where the ruling class is “more equal than others”). The irony is that prior to the Communist takeover, the North was the rich part of the country.
Actually what happened is that a tiny fraction of the population that died 200 years ago built the entire country by picking 7% of the cotton that we used to sell.
The only way to repay them is by implementing communism. Vote for Democrats.
This is astute sarcasm, but it is possible that if we did not have those 500,000 slaves in 1776, the 2.2 million free people in the colonies would not have had the critical economic mass to break free of England. There would have been no cotton, tobacco, and rice plantations to give the Southern Colonies the wealth it took to bring men like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison into public prominence. Not enough money to fund armies or gain alliances with France and some other European powers.
We would have less racial tensions today if we had not imported Africans as slaves, but then, we might still be British. The British Government did not permit American colonists to cross the Appalachians, so the Louisiana Purchase wouldn't have happened, and Quebec's border would have remained on the Ohio River. Florida and the Gulf Coast would not have been conquered for Americans by Andrew Jackson. We would have been incorporated into a British North American entity that did not amount to much.
I suppose we're all supposed to also shoulder the capitalist guilt when those same populations moved en masse north to jobs in thriving capitalist industry that over generations have built the prosperous urban middle class.
Well the people who played a role in the harvesting of an agricultural product used to make t-shirts and blankets were dead at that point but Americans with matching skin color were later exploited as human shields for communist agitprop by Democrats who worship Satan (D).
Well a secondary injustice of slavery was that as opposed to making the country more wealthy it actually made the entire country poorer than it would have been otherwise because slavery is a totally inefficient anticompetitive practice that works the exact same way as communism. Not to mention the Civil War which made us even poorer on top of that.
So slavery in no way contributed to the success of America. It just made a few of Josef Robinette Biden’s ancestors rich for a little while until the scheme collapsed.
For something so inefficient, amazed that people went to war/gave their lives to maintain it.
That's probably because it was the major component of the economic system of the South in America, as data shows, as well as the economic benefits to other regions of the U.S., primarily banking and insurance in the Northern states.
Thank you for using the dirty word: "capitalism"!
My step-brother who is a successful lawyer working in L.A. making very good moulah, living in Beverly Hills, yet will say ... "I am no capitalist:"... What the .....?!
This celebration of capitalism borders on religious ideology (or propaganda). If the “free market” is so glorious let’s do it without government subsidies.
Wow....for someone that claims the only issue for your opponents/enemies is race, you seem really upset about it.
Is it because other people might have a racial identity that is salient to them?
What is intersectionality?
Henry Ford was a fascist and antisemite who supported Hitler. He should not be honored or celebrated by anyone. The Free Press's lauding him is disappointing to say the least
Bob Levine
As described by Warren Buffett, free market capitalism has made the American Experiment, in only 250 years, the greatest success in human history. However, past performance is not necessarily indicative of the future. Morgan Stanley estimates 70% of tech value created is due to "network effects". In other words, once an invention reaches a critical mass others must use it to participate in the network even if its not the best product. Think telephone, Microsoft Office, Google search, products that become de facto monopolies through network effects then are so big their cost of service or goods sold becomes so low they are virtually impossible to displace. An argument can be made that the "network" of usage is really a public asset rather than some free ride playing field waiting to be exploited. The solution then is not laissez faire capitalism, nor is it incentive crushing socialism. It's our politician's challenge to find a middle. We are having a terribly messy way of addressing that challenge, but I can't think of a better one, except to recognize the messiness of the challenge and maybe be more civil.
I hugely admire the entrepreneurs and capitalists who take risk and deserve the rewards. Where I differ is the overcompensation of bankers, CEOs of public companies and others who expect to be rewarded like very succesful entrepreneurs while taking little or no risk. Why does the custodian of a company get the sort of rewards that most entrepreneurs cannot dream about. ?
Maybe managing a large organization requires qualities that are as limited in society as are those of the entrepreneurs.
Henry Ford was a vicious antisemite. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Capitalism seems to live in cycles. Sometimes it is of the devil and other times when sanity takes over, capitalism is our lifeblood. We seem to be in the 'of the devil' moment for now.
Capitalism is in a cycle where corporations have concentrated a high proportion of the national wealth into the hands of managers and stock owners. The stock ownership is more broadly distributed than ever before, and more "working people" have more opportunity to accumulate assets whose appreciation augments their labor. That's why capitalism will survive and prosper. But people who haven't climbed the first rungs of the asset ladder are having a hard time making a go of it on shrinking wages relative to a high cost of living, with wages held stagnant or declining due to offshoring an excessive immigration, combined the propensity of corporation management to boot their employees out the door whenever they want their stock options to appreciate this quarter, even if the layoffs degrade the company going forward.
Furthermore, corporations have grown almost as powerful as government, if not more so. Reminiscent of what President Grover Cleveland said int he 1890s:
===
Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government. But the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressive poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.
It’s a bit early simply to sing the praises of American capitalism, isn’t it? Look at the excellent piece in today’s Times about the danger of AI’s wiping out most if not all jobs, thereby making the vast majority of us a pathetic, starving underclass a la “The Hunger Games.” The inexorable logic of capitalism’s quest for efficiency and profit would seem to make the replacement of ALL workers by machines inevitable. That could produce utopia, if all AI’s potentially mind-boggling profits were shared with the whole population through very high taxes paying comfortable guaranteed incomes indexed to AI growth to all. But that doesn’t sound like meritocratic capitalism at all, does it?
On the other hand, if we let AI play out with nothing but capitalistic principles, AI will literally destroy the whole economy by wiping out jobs without replacing lost income, which will wipe out the aggregate consumer damand that is capitalism’s life blood.
If we start transforming our political economy right now into a system that radically and progressively uses high taxes to redistribute AI profits as income for the unemployable, AI can be the greatest thing capitalism ever produced. But if the rich and the conservative, clueless masses scream “Socialism!!” and block this transformation of the political economy, they will destroy capitalism itself by destroying the paying customers on whom it depends.
Too many assumptions to count. We don't need to change an economic system based on what might happen or fear.
Up until 1960 less than 5% of the population of the United States was receiving any form of government welfare. By 2000 it had increased to 15%, and to 30% in 2020. There is a difference in American philosophy where we have gone from individuals supporting those in need, to dependence on government support. Democrats now feed and fuel this dependency for votes. Better to keep constituents ignorant and poor rather than educated and entrepreneurial. We need to quickly change this trend, expose this truth, or the next 250 years will see the demise of America and the dream of its founders.
100%
Chaya/LibsofTikTok dealing with Capitalism:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/s/HUvYKSZjvB
The United States has the advantage of capitalism because the Government of the United States alone permits private ownership of subsurface minerals. In other countries' law, you only own the surface of the Earth, and nothing below it. There is not a drop of privately owned subsurface oil, or an ounce of privately owned gold, silver, copper, or any other subsurface mineral anywhere except the United States and in a very few portions (Alberta) of Canada where the land did not devolve from the Crown. The governments in some of those countries may lease subsurface mineral rights to private companies, but only on terms and conditions specified by the government.
Try to imagine what the United States would be like if it were like the other 190 or so countries of the Earth where no private company or individual could own subsurface oil, gold, silver, copper, or anything else of subsurface value. Only the government could decide how to develop it, and would put itself first in the profit chain. Our standard of living would be at least 1/3rd lower, because:
A) Much fewer mineral resources would have been developed. Oil production might be 1/3rd to 1/2 what it is now.
B) The lion's share of profits from the extraction of oil and mineral wealth would all go to the government, not be recycled into the private sector. California and Texas were oil states before they became technology states. The Industrial Midwest states pumped oil, natural gas, and coal before they became industrial states.
Our capitalism is the exception to the world because our laws of oil and mineral wealth are exceptional. It's one reason why we're a wealthy country and everything south of the Rio Grande is struggling to reached Developed World status, despite natural resources larger than ours, and countries in Europe and Asia rarely equal our sustained economic growth. There are other reasons for the disparity, of course, but this is a big one.
Hurray for capitalists! Now, eliminate all the tax loopholes and we will be fine. Or at least the system will be fairer.
The positive remarks from Bari are on track. In fact, there is evidence that entrepreneurial activity today is better than ever, we are probably in a Golden Age in the USA in this respect.
Now for the Tough Love / Bad News folks
An ancillary to the above has been a long tradition of self-delusion, narrow-minded, lazy, idiotic thinking. Consider Asbestos; "Cowboys and Indians"; "slavery was a temporary issue, we are over that"; "USA is based on views of Edmund Burke, who was Thomas Paine"; "the 50% below the poverty line do not exist", etc. etc. Unfortunately, Bari is too concerned with making money to face into these kinds of issues.
Oh, and as per Larrd below: Mindless slogan-surfing. Larrd probably is muttering to himself "Obama was a Communist"
I'm looking forward to a celebration of industrial meat production, with its effects on the trillions of animals, the climate, and the water supply. That will be so great to read.
If you don't like the meat industry, no problem with that. Don't participate in it, you'll have no responsibility for it, and if enough others feel the same way, the industry will diminish and no longer exist.
Capitalism=Democracy=Freedom=Equality
Socialism=Expert Class=Control=Oppression
Argument in one picture: a satellite image of the Korean Peninsula at night. Capitalist South Korea blazes with light; socialist North Korea is all dark, except for a faint ember at the capital city (where the ruling class is “more equal than others”). The irony is that prior to the Communist takeover, the North was the rich part of the country.
Yes, I've seen that. So much clear evidence, yet so many Americans still buy the communist propaganda. Baffling!
Actually what happened is that a tiny fraction of the population that died 200 years ago built the entire country by picking 7% of the cotton that we used to sell.
The only way to repay them is by implementing communism. Vote for Democrats.
This is astute sarcasm, but it is possible that if we did not have those 500,000 slaves in 1776, the 2.2 million free people in the colonies would not have had the critical economic mass to break free of England. There would have been no cotton, tobacco, and rice plantations to give the Southern Colonies the wealth it took to bring men like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison into public prominence. Not enough money to fund armies or gain alliances with France and some other European powers.
We would have less racial tensions today if we had not imported Africans as slaves, but then, we might still be British. The British Government did not permit American colonists to cross the Appalachians, so the Louisiana Purchase wouldn't have happened, and Quebec's border would have remained on the Ohio River. Florida and the Gulf Coast would not have been conquered for Americans by Andrew Jackson. We would have been incorporated into a British North American entity that did not amount to much.
I suppose we're all supposed to also shoulder the capitalist guilt when those same populations moved en masse north to jobs in thriving capitalist industry that over generations have built the prosperous urban middle class.
Wow. Have to inject race into everything, huh.
Yes. The Southern states were not heavily dependent on agriculture/cotton as a cash crop.
Did they do anything else besides pick cotton after that? Jim Crow/Segregation era?
Well the people who played a role in the harvesting of an agricultural product used to make t-shirts and blankets were dead at that point but Americans with matching skin color were later exploited as human shields for communist agitprop by Democrats who worship Satan (D).
Yeah. Fascinating.
1. Just wondering if it were a major cash crop?
2. Any other contributions besides cotton-picking?
Well a secondary injustice of slavery was that as opposed to making the country more wealthy it actually made the entire country poorer than it would have been otherwise because slavery is a totally inefficient anticompetitive practice that works the exact same way as communism. Not to mention the Civil War which made us even poorer on top of that.
So slavery in no way contributed to the success of America. It just made a few of Josef Robinette Biden’s ancestors rich for a little while until the scheme collapsed.
For something so inefficient, amazed that people went to war/gave their lives to maintain it.
That's probably because it was the major component of the economic system of the South in America, as data shows, as well as the economic benefits to other regions of the U.S., primarily banking and insurance in the Northern states.
Now....
Any other contributions besides cotton-picking?