Capitalistic business malpratices and exploitation..CEO Salaries..

[MJGreen]

So your argument for a mixed economy is to point out the undesirable elements of our current mixed economy?

[Democracy_for_Breakf]

@Michael J Green

So your argument for a mixed economy is to point out the undesirable elements of our current mixed economy?

Our economy is a lot less regulated then economies in Scandinavia and Europe. In Sweden its tightly regulated.

[Stranger]

@Novus Zarathustra

Yes, thats exactly what I’m saying. %90 of the non-austrians would agree. This is exactly why most people favor Capitalism with regulation, in other words a Mixed Economy.

What if the CEOs are the regulators?

[chloe732]

@Novus Zarathustra

Yes, thats exactly what I’m saying.

This is an interesting situation. You have read about AE for about a year, you have participated in the forum for several months, and you are friends with some folks who really know their stuff about economics, freedom, liberty, etc. Yet, you cling to the ideas that I just summarized. Your bio implies you are certainly no socialist. All the suggested readings are right here on this website, so linking to them will not be particularly useful. I will suggest this thread though: What Are the Ten Most Popular Economic Myths?

@Novus Zarathustra

This is exactly why most people favor Capitalism with regulation, in other words a Mixed Economy. This way people can still thrive from the benefit of a free economy, but there won’t be such a disparity of opportunities.

Don’t we have a “mixed economy”? Don’t we already have “capitalism with regulation”? Why, then, do we have the problems you describe in your post?

[chloe732]

@Novus Zarathustra

Our economy is a lot less regulated then economies in Scandinavia and Europe.

Can you foresee a downside to intervention?*

*You call it “regulation”, but that’s not very precise.

[Democracy_for_Breakf]

@chloe732

This is an interesting situation. You have read about AE for about a year, you have participated in the forum for several months, and you are friends with some folks who really know their stuff about economics, freedom, liberty, etc. Yet, you cling to the ideas that I just summarized. Your bio implies you are certainly no socialist. All the suggested readings are right here on this website, so linking to them will not be particularly useful. I will suggest this thread though: What Are the Ten Most Popular Economic Myths?

I agree with the hate for CEO’s and shitty working conditions. My rhetorical question, why should someone have to lower their standards of living, work in poor standards, work for poor wages that are barely paying for their living expenses just so a CEO can get paid more for his “work”? CEO’s of big corporations hardly do anything for the company, instead they use part of their massive earnings to hire and pay for a committee to make decisions for him. How much work does Bill Gates actually do for Microsoft other then show up at E3 Conventions and Electronic Consumer Conventions? How much work did Dick Cheney actually do when he was CEO of Halliburton? THat guy in charge of Hali now is kicking back and relaxing while sky high oil prices are fucking entire nations in the ass. Obviously making every nation in the world starve or crumble financially to his feet, isn’t something that is on his conscious. He is charging the gallons of oil that high because everyone needs it and the oil companies he supplies can’t get it from anywhere else.

[chloe732]

@Novus Zarathustra

CEO’s of big corporations hardly do anything for the company,

They do lobby Congress, though, don’t they? And what do they lobby for? Laws and regulations that will increase their competitor’s positions? Laws and regulations that will lower barriors to entry, and help the small business you have so much respect for? Have you stopped to consider that industry lobbyists actually write the laws? (This point was already made above, but with fewer words).

@Novus Zarathustra

How much work did Dick Cheney actually do when he was CEO of Halliburton?

He had contacts in the “regulatory” world. Why do you think there are prohibitions against drilling in the gulf or on the CA coast? Environmental concerns? Do you think the U.S. industry wants more oil to be drilled?

Let’s focus on one question at a time: Can you foresee a downside to government intervention in the economy?

[Smiling_Dave]

@Novus Zarathustra

With all due respect, this is quite a long rant, but these are my frustrations with living in a Capitalistic society.

With all due respect, I think plenty of people here have what you later call “crappy jobs.” I know I do. And tbh, I am very grateful that I am not homeless right now. Sure I’d like more money, and am frustrated that there are huge obstacles the state [not capitalism] has placed in the way of my getting one. But thanks to this site, I know better than to think some non-capitalist society will solve my problem. I know where the problem came from, and what to do about it, at least in theory.

Anything but going to a MORE capitalist society is like being on a sinking ship because of a leak, and trying to save the ship by drilling more holes.

If you’ve been here for a year, you know that you are not living in a Capitalist society, but an interventionist [=fascist] one, where the govt imposes its will on the market. So that any problems that come up in the real world have to be analyzed to figure out “Did this come from capitalism or from Interventionism?”

Oh, and I have been on here for a little more then a year now, so I know pretty well of the ideas that is passed around Mises readings.

Now, I understand that CEO’s are responsible for a company’s profits, and that the entrepreneur is someone who sacrifices a stable job lifestyle for risking his personal savings. However, while this is true with small business’, I have no problem with CEO’s of small business.

So far so good, then.

Though, if someone needs to find a job, they have no choice but to employ themselves at a crappy job

You soon say that if they get a BA in Communication then they get a good, noncrappy job.

So the real complaint here is “Capitalism is not letting me get a BA in Communication.”

Have you been here long enough to know this is not true? That the govt interference in education, by giving student loans, is what created this? That before student loans people worked their way through college, AT CRAPPY JOBS during the summer and an hour or so a day during school, and thta was enough to pay their tuition?

where they will be exploited. My definition of exploited meaning no pay for overtime, keeping you overtime, no vacation, and taking money off of your paycheck for breaks. You can’t control when an employer decides to keep you overtime to get more work done, but its ****ing bullshit when you have school and a life to maintain as well.

Can’t argue with a definiton, can I? But did any of these perks exist before there were unions? And you have been here long enough to know that unions are an arm of govt, meaning there are laws forcing people to join unions etc.

How could an employer get away with doing this to you? Could you not quit and leave him high and dry? I guess the answer is you can’t because SOMEONE ELSE will walk right in the door and HAPPILY work under those conditions. In other words, you have that crapppy job because you are easily replacable.

Let’s put it this way. Say you had to devote your time to study. You hire someone to do the drudge work at your house. Would you offer them overtime, paid breaks, and so on? And if one guy came along and said “I’ll do it without the paid breaks,” would you say. “No, I’m not a capitalist exploiter, I insist.” Of ocurse you wouldn’t. You have very little money. You can’t afford that kind of expense.

People at low-income jobs barely make enough to even be worth all this stress,

And yet they don’t quit, do they? So it must be worth it, bottom line.

where someone with a BA in even Communication gets to work for an above average salary and sit in the comfort of his cubicle on a computer.

Jobs shouldn’t be a privilege,

What should they be? A right? So someone should have the right to march into your house and say “I’m your new housekeeper. You have to pay me a decent wage.”

and if someone has to work for low income, they shouldn’t be slaving a lot more then someone with an education earning a median-above average salary.

You know that wages are determined by how USEFUL and IRREPLACABLE you are to the employer, right? So are you saying you “should” be more useful and irreplacable? To whom is your complaint directed?

This is exploitation. You know, the only reason someone working at McDonalds is getting ****ed in the ass is because CEO’s don’t want to cut their erroneous salary so that they can continue golfing on their private island, while hiring less people so that they themselves, who don’t even do much with the Corporation they are the head of, can get higher salaries.

Why should they want to cut their own salaries? And of course they pay only what they absolutely have to. Why is this wrong or unfair? It’s THEIR money. They did not steal it from you.

Do I think the honest ones, i.e. small businessmen, do so? No. In fact those types of CEO’s live it like its a lifestyle, not just a job, they DO work their asses off.

Do I think the CEOs of big businesses - who, most of the time, are not the inventors, creators, innovators, writers, or other creative minds behind the items they sell - that do things like rape the land, food supply, and health potential of 3rd world nations, pay their employees less … than a living wage, deprive the real inventors/writers/innovators/etc. of the salaries they deserve, and lay off thousands of workers so they can keep their billion-dollar salaries and pay themselves more than their “work” really deserves, are engaging in robbery? Absolutely.

This is like Joseph Stalin’s butler griping and saying “My boss is a mass murderer. He starved millions to death, destroyed the economy of a whole continent for decades, tortured and imprisoned millions and millions, put us all in constant fear of our lives.”

“Yes, that’s awful. What should we do about it?”

“I want paid overtime.”

You want these CEO’s to give you more money, as opposed to stopping the rape, and returning the robbery.

To believe the 500 U.S. billionaires “deserve” to pay themselves more than they could ever use of those ill-gotten gains
You think anyone here supports ill gotten gains?

while millions of Americans lose their jobs and homes, die of illnesses they can’t afford to treat, or flat-out starve
You know anyone starving? Why don’t you give them some food?

through no fault of their own is irresponsible.
You are connecting unrelated things.
1. Some rich people are crooks and worse.
2. Many people in the USA have severe problems.
OK, I think we can agree on those two.

3. Capitalism is responsible for the above two problems.
That part is wrong. Sorry. Capitalism is the solution to 2, as this site proves over and over to those who are interested. As for 1, I don’t know the answer. Maybe another poster can help out

But to give some semblance of a logical argument to what you are saying, maybe you mean this:
1. Rich people have “too much” money.
2. I have too little.
3. Solution: give me some of theirs.

Let us put aside the hypocrisy in yelling that rich people have comitted crimes, and then turning round and saying you want a piece of the action.

The flaw with such reasoning, from a purely cold cruel calculating viewpoint, is that you are gonna get screwed if you redistribute wealth.

Sure, if they robbed someone, giving it back to the victim is OK, and of course just. But I suspect you are talking about forcing the rich toi pay employees more than they want to. It doesn’t work. Ask the Rust Belt.

To believe they’re risking anything when the average salary isn’t enough to live “The American Way” on is ridiculous. To even pretend these people are honorable or that these asswipes who started life rich are to be pitied under any conditions is completely irrational and monopolistic.
What does this have to do with anything? I guess you are saying “The rich DESERVE to have their money taken away. Especially those who are just born rich.”
1. The rich deserve to be pillaged because they aren’t risking anything. What are YOU risking? If the answer is “Nothing”, do you therefore deserve to be thrown into the streets, homeless?

2. The rich deserve to be pillaged because the average salary isn’t enough to live the “American Way.” Does this require a serious response?

3. The rich deserve to be pillaged because they are asswipes. LOL
4. The rich deserve to be pillaged because they started life rich. So a man who has money has no right to give it to his son when the man dies? Why?
5. The rich deserve to be pillaged because they don’t deserve pity. Huh?
6. All of the above five points are totally rational. Oh. OK.
7. If you think the rich deserve pity you are monopolistic. I think a dictionary might help here.

Honestly, how could anyone disagree with any of this?
I thought you’d never ask.

And no, thats not my question.
Hahaha. OK, sorry.

My question is, where the hell is the rationality in any of this?
I hope I have shown that there is room to doubt that your argument is exactly rational. or moral.

What would prevent this from happening in a market that is more free?
In a free market, where anyone can compete non violently for anything, the only way you make money is by making people happy. And the only way you get the best workers is by making them happy.

Also, history and common sense shows that when people compete, someone comes up with a new way of pleasing people. He makes soemthing cheaper and better. He then sells it. Thus EVERYONE gets a better mousetrap, TV, food, everything, and cheaper, too. So EVERYONES life style improves as time goes on.

C’mon Novus, all this is laid out in great detail and with strong historical and logical proof on this very site. How could you have missed it?

[Esuric]

Belligerent and incoherent. This rant has nothing to do with economics or political philosophy. To be honest, you sound like some lunatic from revleft.

@Novus Zarathustra

Honestly, how could anyone disagree with any of this?

1. We’re not lunatics
2. We don’t believe we have the right to steal from others.
3. We understand that wages are not set by decree.
4. We’re not dominated by our rage and jealousy.
5. Who “deserves” what is something the market determines.

[EternalSanction]

Everyone else seems to be addressing most of your points quite well, so I have very little to add; however…

@Novus Zarathustra

Did I not just state that most CEO’s of big business’ aren’t the owners or inventors of the things they produce? Thats true with small business, but in this case the company was passed down to him, from being born into a rich family. Bill Gates was not the founder of Microsoft, he received the company after dropping out of College.

This is blatantly false. Bill Gates dropped out of college to found Microsoft. He is very much responsible for the creation of his fortune. Every dollar that one makes as an entrepreneur (and Bill Gates was definitely that) is directly tied to one’s ability to satisfy consumers.

[Jon_Irenicus]

I sense unrelenting, unthinking envy as the motivation behind much of this.

Honestly, how could anyone disagree with any of this?

I dunno - easily?

Our economy is a lot less regulated then economies in Scandinavia and Europe. In Sweden its tightly regulated.

And you know this, how? Scandinavian countries are comparatively less punitive next to the US when it comes to small businesses. The US is massively regulated, not sure why anyone would deny this…

[Bert_B]

I work at a Regal theater, and I make 7.50 an hour. I don’t have a problem with my managers (I actually really like the 7 managers I have), and I have no problem with the way the company is run. The only problems I do have are a) minimum wage laws that cut back everyone’s hours once it went up from 6.50 to 7.25, and b) that you must get over time pay for more than 80 hours (which cuts us back). Before our theater switched from Consolidated to Regal you were able to work as many hours you wanted without overtime, and everyone preferred it. I don’t hate the CEO’s, nor would I in any situation. If you don’t like how a company is run, work for another or start your own. It’s not like the CEO’s (or any owner) is ripping you off because you make minimum wage when they live in luxury. I don’t believe I’m exploited in any way since I signed a contract, and it’s mutual between management and I.

Why is it that the minimum wage jobs are the ones that always take the heat?

[Democracy_for_Breakf]

@Smiling Dave

How could an employer get away with doing this to you? Could you not quit and leave him high and dry? I guess the answer is you can’t because SOMEONE ELSE will walk right in the door and HAPPILY work under those conditions. In other words, you have that crapppy job because you are easily replacable.

Thats not freedom at all, they’re only choice is to work under those conditions. They have to either starve or be exploited.

@Smiling Dave

And yet they don’t quit, do they? So it must be worth it, bottom line.

They work their hands until they bleed just so they can support their kids, and they COULD be getting paid more. That CEO hardly works as hard as the single parent with 4 kids with a low-income. I just don’t think that is moral.

@Smiling Dave

What should they be? A right? So someone should have the right to march into your house and say “I’m your new housekeeper. You have to pay me a decent wage.”

You know, its not a bad idea. It would be nice if you could earn $10 an hour at McDonalds, and they can’t get away with only hiring 3 people either to adjust to it.

@Smiling Dave

Why should they want to cut their own salaries? And of course they pay only what they absolutely have to. Why is this wrong or unfair? It’s THEIR money. They did not steal it from you.

Did they earn it? Thats a better question, did they earn it?

@Smiling Dave

To believe the 500 U.S. billionaires “deserve” to pay themselves more than they could ever use of those ill-gotten gains

All I’m saying is, if the worker has to enslave himself and work his/her ass off to death just so that they can live a normal life, they shouldn’t get fucked in the ass for it, or even be fired when they didn’t do anything illegal or against their contract, but simply because it was profitable for the company to not pay for his services, but yet has enough to buy private jets for all the top executives.

@Smiling Dave

Let us put aside the hypocrisy in yelling that rich people have comitted crimes, and then turning round and saying you want a piece of the action.

Its not about getting a piece of ass, its about getting what you deserve and SHOULD get for hard work. Compared to the “work” that CEO’s of Corporations or millionaires do.

@Smiling Dave

C’mon Novus, all this is laid out in great detail and with strong historical and logical proof on this very site. How could you have missed it?

Because I believe in non-aggression, which satisfies being libertarian. If capitalist property is illegitimate by natural law standards regarding ownership, and should belong to the workers themselves (seeing as how they produced it), then it doesn’t violate the libertarian injunction against initiatory violence.

That being said, I can empathize with both socialists and ancaps.

[Democracy_for_Breakf]

@Bert

I work at a Regal theater, and I make 7.50 an hour. I don’t have a problem with my managers (I actually really like the 7 managers I have), and I have no problem with the way the company is run. The only problems I do have are a) minimum wage laws that cut back everyone’s hours once it went up from 6.50 to 7.25, and b) that you must get over time pay for more than 80 hours (which cuts us back). Before our theater switched from Consolidated to Regal you were able to work as many hours you wanted without overtime, and everyone preferred it. I don’t hate the CEO’s, nor would I in any situation. If you don’t like how a company is run, work for another or start your own. It’s not like the CEO’s (or any owner) is ripping you off because you make minimum wage when they live in luxury. I don’t believe I’m exploited in any way since I signed a contract, and it’s mutual between management and I.

Do you have to pay bills? Sorry, but this is just the same old rhetoric sung by people who aren’t actually in those situations, but are sitting around and musing. Here’s a question, what are you going to do about all this? People are working their asses off out of starvation and to make a living, and everyone else on the internet are just blogging and musing.

[Smiling_Dave]

@Novus Zarathustra

@Smiling Dave

C’mon Novus, all this is laid out in great detail and with strong historical and logical proof on this very site. How could you have missed it?

Because I believe in non-aggression, which satisfies being libertarian. If capitalist property is illegitimate by natural law standards regarding ownership, and should belong to the workers themselves (seeing as how they produced it), then it doesn’t violate the libertarian injunction against initiatory violence.

That being said, I can empathize with both socialists and ancaps.

This is the result of reading here for a year?

Let’s try it the other way round. Why don’t you summarize the AE position of why people socialism will leave EVERYONE impoverished and hungry. Then you can refute it. Then we can discuss your refutation.

[Bert_B]

@Novus Zarathustra

Do you have to pay bills? Sorry, but this is just the same old rhetoric sung by people who aren’t actually in those situations, but are sitting around and musing. Here’s a question, what are you going to do about all this? People are working their asses off out of starvation and to make a living, and everyone else on the internet are just blogging and musing.

I pay for my classes and my phone, once I buy a vehicle (looking for a Jeep for months) I’ll be paying for insurance, etc. Yet, what I wonder is, why is someone working a minimum wage job if they actually have to pay bills as if they are living on their own? Not my concern if their life isn’t in order, but they should have planned ahead. What am I going to do about this? I’m going to college so I don’t end up in my 30’s working minimum wage jobs.

You act as if it’s the CEO’s fault that people from their mid-twenties and older are working minimum wage jobs usually held by high school and college students. Maybe they should have worked harder earlier on, or got into a trade. My brother is one of the hardest working people I know, and he worked two jobs while living on his own right when he got into college, and now he has his own office at an engineering firm at age 28.

Also, to make it seem that I’m not un-sympathetic, before I got a job I helped out with a local chapter of Food Not Bombs feeding the homeless.

[Esuric]

@Novus Zarathustra

Do you have to pay bills? Sorry, but this is just the same old rhetoric sung by people who aren’t actually in those situations, but are sitting around and musing.

What, being poor automatically makes you some kind of authority? So stealing is justified if you’re paying your own bills, I see.

@Novus Zarathustra

Here’s a question, what are you going to do about all this? People are working their asses off out of starvation and to make a living, and everyone else on the internet are just blogging and musing.

No one starves in America. Do you want to know where millions starve? Check your socialist utopias.

@Novus Zarathustra

everyone else on the internet are just blogging and musing.

So get your ass off of the internet and start doing some charity. Here’s an idea: sell your fancy bourgeois computer and give the money to charity.

[Stranger]

@Bert

I pay for my classes and my phone, once I buy a vehicle (looking for a Jeep for months) I’ll be paying for insurance, etc. Yet, what I wonder is, why is someone working a minimum wage job if they actually have to pay bills as if they are living on their own? Not my concern if their life isn’t in order, but they should have planned ahead. What am I going to do about this? I’m going to college so I don’t end up in my 30’s working minimum wage jobs.

Why do you expect going to college or working hard will land you a job that pays more than minimum wage? There has to be a capital good that matches your training for you to be employed at that level of productivity, and there are no investments in capital goods going on these days.

[Democracy_for_Breakf]

@Smiling Dave

Let’s try it the other way round. Why don’t you summarize the AE position of why people socialism will leave EVERYONE impoverished and hungry. Then you can refute it. Then we can discuss your refutation.

I’m not aware of it, and haven’t read it. You know, Mises’ ideas are appealing, but they don’t do people any good who are working and trying to survive in the real world. Tell me why people send out 20 applications, and don’t get hired, or on the offchance they do, they make $30 a week which is hardly enough for their investments as they had hoped.

[Democracy_for_Breakf]

@Esuric

So get your ass off of the internet and start doing some charity. Here’s an idea: sell your fancy bourgeois computer and give the money to charity.

Thanks, now I know what to tell arrogant philanthropists who use the same logic on me.