With all due respect, this is quite a long rant, but these are my frustrations with living in a Capitalistic society. 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.
(As I’m sure you’ll prove. Assuming, of course, this isn’t one of those college-student-esque “I have big ideas but I didn’t think about them logically for more than five seconds” bits.)
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.
(Well, perhaps you could define the difference between a small business and a large business first. What are we going by here? Capital? Employees? IQ? I mean, if we were to make a chart of a certain factor, such as profit, how many businesses do you think would look small next to Microsoft. Probably a lot. If we were to make a chart based on French Fry production, McDonald’s would be HUGE and Microsoft wouldn’t even be in the playing field. So your arbitrary labeling scheme leaves a lot to be desired.)
Though, if someone needs to find a job, they have no choice but to employ themselves at a crappy job where they will be exploited.
(You mean you didn’t think long enough about this to realize that ANY job is exploitation? What difference do you think it makes if you work for Microsoft or Big Ma’s Burger Joint? The CEO, owner, what-have-you of any place of employment is trying to figure out how they can improve their lot. Big Ma is hiring you because she thinks your work will turn profit, not because you are putting her $250 in the hole every week. I bet Microsoft pays more. In fact, Microsoft can afford to employ people who only turn pennies in profit, because they have built up capital and reputation that they can rely on. Because they can produce more, they can provide more jobs and therefore do not need to profit off of each individual as much as Big Ma.)
My definition of exploited meaning no pay for overtime, keeping you overtime, no vacation, and taking money off of your paycheck for breaks.
(Big Ma would NEVER do that, though, right? I mean, Big Ma would hire someone with the INTENTION of working around their schedule, right? And just what kind of argument is it to bring up overtime pay when arguing FOR government intervention? Businesses created the idea of overtime as an incentive to get workers to work longer. It was government that mandated a certain number of hours as overtime. Then you complain about the “exploitation” of being kept overtime. The businessman sees a need for more production to grow, so they want you to work overtime. If you cannot meet that need, no one is holding a gun to your head. Why should the businessman forgo improving his business because workers don’t want to work overtime? They can take a hike, and he can find people who want money more than they want free time. If the businessman is wrong, and nobody wants the overtime, then he loses labor because he could not meet the needs of the labor market. I fail to see how wanting to grow one’s business is inherently evil. You are a commodity. You are paid for. If you do not like the amount you are paid or the time you work, then be glad you live in a country where you can walk out the door and find something else. Or don’t. I don’t care. Vacations, too? Same thing. Many companies offer not only vacations, but PAID vacations, as an incentive. Some don’t. You don’t like not having a vacation? Guess what? McDonald’s has vacation packages. It’s not to hard to get a job at McDonald’s. As far as breaks go, do I need to bring up incentives again? Some places pay you to take a break. You get PAID to NOT WORK. I fail to see how this can be viewed as anything more than a luxury. I have no complaints about not being paid when I take breaks, especially since I would rather have a break in the middle of a ten hour shift and lose a half hour of pay than to have no break and be hungry for the rest of my shift. There might even be other people that agree with me, but I won’t make that call. It’s subjective. You might want to check where you’re coming from with all this, since it is usually larger companies that offer vacations and paid breaks. Strange, that.)
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.
(No, you can’t control it. You aren’t the employer. There are certain perks that come with that, as well as responsibilities, such as “Hm… I need to meet production and i can’t do it unless my staff works overtime.” It’s amazing, but yes, employers have to make decisions. Decisions on actual THINGS. And this whole idea of quadastericking bullshit is describing only itself. You are working the job BECAUSE you want to enjoy time in your life. It would be great if we could have all the things we want without working, but this just isn’t reality. And school? Well, we can assume you mean college, since the government tries to keep a tight noose around when we are allowed to work and where we are educated, so we’ll go with college. Are you saying that you shouldn’t have to decide between a job and school? I’ll extend the argument to where I assume, though I don’t KNOW, you are going with this. You need school to get a better job, but you need more money to go to school. So you have to make a choice here, along the lines of saving money and taking less schooling or taking more schooling and earning less money. Can I show you a similar decision that someone might have to make? Earning more money by working people overtime or earning less money and having stable business hours. Some people actually choose stable business hours, but the fact of the matter is that you can’t always have both. If your situation is such that you have to sacrifice some of one for the other, is it doing you any good to say “I should work part-time hours so I can go to school but earn full-time pay”? Because when businesses both big and small start losing money from paying out more than an employ is worth, they will hire less. When they hire less, there will be less jobs to go around. When there are less jobs, less people will earn money. Less people will be able to afford things. This might even lead to less jobs. And then, of course, tuition rates will go up, because less people can afford to go to school, and suddenly your twenty dollars an hour twenty hours a week isn’t getting you through college, and you have to work forty hours a week to make up for it…but then you can’t go to school! Vicious circle, I know. The amazing thing is that you, as well as any friends you are describing, have convinced yourselves the only way to make money is to get a college education. There are plenty of counter-examples, if you look around. You are too busy using your head to analyze how other people are using their own heads to exploit you. Think. It helps.)
People at low-income jobs barely make enough to even be worth all this stress, 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.
(And? You think that complaining magically makes these low-income jobs pay more? You’ve kind of skipped an important piece of your own sentence. You said “Barely make enough to even be worth all this stress”. So…it’s worth it? You’re saying it’s worth it. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t do it. If it isn’t worth it, you’re just being purposefully irrational. And how do you know the stress of the comfortable cubicle job isn’t “barely worth it”. My god, have you ever had to meet a deadline with a hundred pages in Excel? Son, that comfortable chair don’t help one bit. And what the HELL does above-average salary matter? An above-average salary can mean anything from poverty to billionaire depending on the economic situation. You can’t just throw around terms and expect a coherent point to form itself. That’s like whining and expecting better things to come your way without working for it.)
Jobs shouldn’t be a privilege, 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.
(What should jobs be, then? And you can say “a right” if you like, but you do realize the logical ends of a “right to jobs” is slavery, right? You have to enslave people who can supply jobs for jobs to be a right. And you miss yet another important point. To say shouldn’t is irrelevant, because there might be some people who are willing to work harder to have some money, and they will voluntarily slave away more than someone with an education (an education IS an investment with the hope of a payoff, just so you know). The problem you describe is spurious, because those who are willing to slave away are the ones that get hired and keep their jobs. The ones who don’t aren’t worth it to the employer, so either you work hard and do the job that you signed up for, or you don’t. You can either quit or get fired, and have plenty of time to complain about the fact that you don’t have everything everyone else has. There’s just no way to be nice about this. No one is killing you. You have recourse. You can’t wave a wand and say “Hah! I’m educated.” If you want that above-average pay, you gotta work for it, any way you can, and you gotta figure out how to get it yourself. Not everyone has the same circumstances. You’re suggesting we all cut off our legs because there are people who can’t walk, and we have an unfair advantage.)
This is exploitation.
(Yes. It is. When you hire someone, you exploit the fact that they want to earn money to achieve YOUR OWN ends, not theirs.)
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.
(The only reason someone working at McDonald(')s is getting quadastericked in the ass is because they choose to continue working. They have decided that they value being quadastericked more than not working at McDonald’s. The CEO salary is irrelevant. A CEO determines how much he can pay himself before it negatively impacts how many people he can hire and how much he can produce. What exactly is erroneous about this? It’s actually quite calculated. I fail to see how it is “immoral” to pay yourself a boatload when your employees are willing to work for some kibble. It’s common sense. You do realize they can’t just say, “Hm, my company is worth 80 million. I’m just gonna pay myself 79 million.” without going out of business, right? You realize that, right? Right? You’ve thought about that, perhaps? No? Not even a little? Let me tell you something. If that person has figured out a way to pay himself 79 out of 80 million, and STILL get people to work for him, and STILL grow his business, he or she has not only earned every penny, but I would PERSONALLY give them a medal. Hell, I would trust that person with my money ANY day.)
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.
(“All small businessmen are honest. All corporate CEO’s are dishonest.” I could go on to talk about just how difficult life can be for the CEO of a large company, but you actually point it out yourself down the way a bit. We’ll get back to that. Suffice to say, if they have either earned or been entrusted with their position, they are probably deserving of a little more free time than the businessman that is trying to make a name for himself. In fact, one of the best ways to make a name for yourself is through hard work. Then you get to relax. What do you possibly think happens to all those “honest” small businessmen when they suddenly make it big? Are your trusted heroes now your hated enemy? Should no one be rich? Should there be no corporations? Should we forgo luxuries like iPods, which people living in what we describe as poverty in this country actually can afford? DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU ARE SAYING? We live in a country that is so rich that you can make a better meal from someone’s garbage than you could BUY in many countries around the world. HOW THE HELL IS THIS A BAD THING? HOW DOES THIS MAKE US SO EVIL?)
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
(Just like the guy at the cash register selling McDonald’s hamburgers, right? You know, a CEO isn’t just tossed in there. They actually do have to earn their spot before getting millions thrown at them. Are you suggesting that the McDonald’s employee hasn’t earned his wages because he did not invent the hamburger? You need to have follow-through on these beginnings of thoughts.)
- that do things like rape the land, food supply, and health potential of 3rd world nations,
(“This just in! Bill Gates buys all the food in Ethiopia after coughing on everyone and dry-humping the soil!”)
pay their employees less … than a living wage,
(Which they are willing to work for…)
deprive the real inventors/writers/innovators/etc. of the salaries they deserve,
(There seems to be an exact number of what everyone deserves. Perhaps you could show us your Santa Claus list so we all know it, too.)
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.
(A gun to who’s head, I ask. Who is being robbed? That’s like if I mow someone’s law, they hand me a fiver, and I shout “Rape!” Layoffs? Why would you keep a work force if it will not help the company grow? They do have to think about these things, you know. Maybe you should investigate profit margins a little bit before spouting. If they care so little because they are rich enough to retire, why don’t they just shut down the business and retire? The very fact that they are laying workers off instead of shutting down shows that they are trying to grow business, and currently it is more profitable to have a smaller workforce. Well, either that or maybe some external factor is bleeding a business dryunionI’msorrydidIsaythatoutloud…)
To believe the 500 U.S. billionaires “deserve” to pay themselves more than they could ever use of those 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 through no fault of their own is irresponsible.
(Just think of all the other business ventures those same billionaires have invested in that have created jobs. You know what group of people jobs are good for? Jobless, homeless, hungry people. And if there wasn’t so much red tape in starting a business, we’d probably have a lot more jobs to go around. Let me pose one for you. How many people have YOU fed? How many people have YOU given a job to? You can take the moral high ground all you want, but even if you work for a low wage that doesn’t allow you to purchase a home or a car or any luxuries at all other than a meal, YOU ARE BEING FED. Billionaires are feeding lots of people in this country every day. You talk about them starving the third world? Fine. Let them go and give jobs to those third world countries, and we can starve in their stead. If you are here complaining about working overtime and not being able to go to school, I assume you are not a billionaire…or even a hundred thousand-aire. What fraction of a percentage of people in this country are YOU feeding? Yeah, it’s better on the other side, but you know what? If you are really that angry about people who had it easy and had everything handed to them, why not work your ass off and show them that you can get there too, and that you can do a better job at the top? If you choose not to, what difference is that from choosing not to work a low-paying job? If you choose to try and make it to the top, how is that different from the person who is willing to work for a low wage because he wants the money? What point are you really even making? You’re just saying “CEO bad!” and “I wish my life was easier.”)
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.
(Jesus H… Another loosely defined term. I bet if you asked a hundred different people what “The American Way” is, you would get a hundred different answers. Yes, there comes a point where you have enough money that if you lose your business in a risk, you’re fine, but from there you have two choices. You can spend that money, either in small or large amounts, and your spending will, gasp and awe, create jobs in and of itself (not to mention that all that labor from your defunct business is freed up for new ventures), or you sit on your wealth and do nothing with it, which isn’t hurting anyone but yourself. I suppose you could hire hitmen to start whacking people willy-nilly, but I would be hard-pressed to find any motivational factor leading a billionaire to such a rash course. I’m glad we found you, the one person who gets to decide who is honorable. I’m sure every billionaire cares about your idea of honor. By the way, nobody is saying that anyone deserves to be pitied. That is your own contrivance. I’ll pity who I want, when I want. If it makes me irrational and monopolistic – no, I have to interject here…you tell me how that isn’t just throwing around terms. You tell me right now. I could only explain what you meant by that statement by the use of one device: I would have to totally bullshit the explanation. – then I’m cool with that. I’d like to see you define my irrationality and…monopoly…snicker I’m sorry…did I snicker out loud? No. I didn’t. I typed it. My bad. I’ll give you that one.)
Honestly, how could anyone disagree with any of this?
(Any of what? What point did you make? You had not ounce-one of rationale, logic, or argument. You were blabbing. Either you’re having a bad day at work, or you’re witling. Perhaps it is both.)
And no, thats not my question. My question is, where the hell is the rationality in any of this?
(You mean what you were saying or what I said?)
What would prevent this from happening in a market that is more free?
(Well, besides the made up bits about raping the planet and starving the third-world through inaction, nothing. In fact, what is being said is that billionaires are desirable. I can eat, because other people are rich and are willing to part with some of their riches in exchange for my labor. If I am dissatisfied with the amount I am paid, I am free to try and become rich myself. What do you think would happen in a free market? A billionaire might buy up all the gold and just sit on it and monopolize it just to be an ass. It’s conceivable. But he has to forgo the luxury of having things that are made of gold, such as jewelry or electronic components, unless he is willing to part with some of his fortune in exchange for the services of people who can fashion those things for him. And he still has to pay for security unless he wants his gold stolen. Lots of gold is a good incentive for theft, especially if it is unguarded gold. You seem to think that with all their money, billionaires could control us. The government can barely control people with a far-reaching law enforcement agency. And consider that if the only real money is in security, and billionaires are hoarding all the resources for themselves, and the little guy is too bogged down to run a business, then who is producing the food? All that security has to eat, so they have to use their wages to buy food from the small businessman, and when security people are the only ones that can afford food, food becomes expensive, because the producers of food must earn more per amount produced since less people are buying. Now those food producers use their money to get nice things for themselves, and the businessman who figures out what the food producers want most earns a wallet, and he spends it on X from Z, and Z spends HIS earnings on Y from M, ad infinitum. As better opportunities open up, some of those people working security may decide to try their hand at a new trade. When it becomes less profitable to protect someone’s gold than to make food, the price of security goes up. You can keep sitting on your gold and paying more for security, or you can earn a larger profit by DOING SOMETHING with the gold. And so what if you go with the former? Good for you, you have lots of gold. Now try it with water. Your security has to drink. What happens if you hoard water? Everyone dies except your security forces, and they begin to think about the fact that they are the only ones that your precious water needs to be protected from, and suddenly you have lots of water and are surrounded by lots of people with guns…Hell, I don’t even feel like pointing out the full stupidity of saying that billionaires would kill us all or make us into slaves. The oppressors have always been kings and mobs and legal authorities. The businessman? Only if he’s engaging in those things.)