What is a capitalist? You hear the term thrown around a lot in the media and on blogs. It is often defined as someone who has a powerful nose for the dollar; someone who is always looking for ways to make money.
There is good capitalism; the type of capitalism that grows, innovates and improves our lives. There is bad capitalism which seeks to degrade, exploit and leave nothing behind. The latter, I believe, has been given too much reign over the American economy.
I feel this way because everywhere I look there is an example of some CEO or venture capitalist wrecking companies for profit, selling stocks short to make money off a market crash or finding creative ways to skim profits from those who actually work for their salary.
Who are they?
They care for nothing except currency, capital. They do not have any loyalty to God, country, family or anything else. They sure as hell don’t care about their workers. Everything is expendable when it comes to profit. One cannot underestimate this particular aspect.
They don’t want steady growth. They want volatility. They profit off the constant up and down. I attended a seminar full of energy traders and a woman giving the keynote speech said as much. She took a marker to a dry erase board and drew a steady line going up and then she drew a zig-zagging, jagged line that trended up. She pointed to the second one and said, “This is what we’re looking for.” There were a lot of nodding heads in the crowd. My jaw was on the floor. An economic crisis wasn’t a crisis for these people, it was an opportunity to make even more money.
They feel because they’re smarter, richer and more educated that it really makes them better people than the rest of us. They believe that somehow those three elements are literally part of their DNA that other people just don’t possess. This fuels an extreme sense of entitlement.
So what? Someone might say. Who cares? These people make money that also goes into 401(k) accounts and hedge funds, which benefits the lowly investor. That’s true. Except when things go south, like they did in 2008, the investors pay for it while the capitalists come out smelling like a rose, as usual.
They spoon feed the public nonsense about ideas such as the “invisible hand,” “a rising tide lifts all boats” and “war is good for the economy.” They want everyone to think that their fortune and our misfortune is due to causes beyond anyone’s control. In truth, extreme capitalists are the invisible hand. A swelling tide lifts their boats. War is good for them.
In 2008 oil companies were making record profits off the ever-increasing price of fuels. Their product had tripled in cost over the span of a year while demand was dropping. Executives told Congress “this is just how the market works.” Financial experts got on TV and said the same thing. They were doing their damndest to convince people that they’d stumbled upon all of these price increases like Jed Clampett.
As it turned out, oil prices were skyrocketing thanks to the clever trading methods of speculators working for investment banking firms. It wasn’t the end users of the oil who were buying the product. It was financial institutions buying and then selling oil as if it were a stock. Guess who turned out to be some of the masterminds behind the increases? Former traders from Enron.
CEOs earn more than 300 times more than most employees. According to the laws of capitalism, that would mean that they’re somehow offering 300 times more value than workers. Which isn’t true. Workers have their title for that reason, they’re doing the work. CEOs and managers make decisions and select the person best-suited for the work. That’s an equal partnership regardless of what the CEOs say about their leadership. Their value is not inherent in their salaries, it’s just what shareholders are willing to pay them.
Personally, I have no problem with capitalism. It has served me well. It has served America well. However anyone feels about capitalism, any objective look at America’s situation will see that it has fueled this country’s greatness.
But the capitalism and capitalist I speak of is unhinged, financial sociopathy.
Capitalists working in the government shroud themselves in conservative cloaks. The only thing they understand is cutting taxes regardless of spending levels or government excess. They do their best to choke government agencies through budget cuts or legislative restrictions to force a public sector necrosis. As the government fails under the pressure of reduced revenue and toothless authority, the capitalists point to the ineffectiveness and say “You see? Government doesn’t work!”
Government is ineffective. It is mired in bureaucracy. It doesn’t work because the capitalists don’t want it to work. They want the roles now served by government to be disintegrated so either the private sector can take that role over or that role ceases to cost taxpayer dollars.
They care nothing for equality or social progress. By nothing I mean they don’t care if equality improves or worsens, so long as it doesn’t affect their bottom line. Once lawsuits happen, then you begin to see business pushing back against added discrimination standards.
Take a CEO in America. When someone dies due to their product, a CEO’s first though isn’t, “How do we fix the problem to keep it from happening again?” They first think, “How do I keep this from costing the company revenue? How do I keep the public from finding out about this? How do I fight this in court to prevent hemorrhaging cash?”
They claim these principles are part of a philosophy. They say that they believe in the private sector’s ability to be efficient. They claim that their companies’ profits support their employees and their families. They claim their success fuels the success of other businesses. They pontificate about the multiplier effect.
Don’t be fooled. At the end of the day their goal is simple: they don’t want to pay taxes and they want more opportunities to make money. They don’t care about anything else. They don’t care about taxpayers. They don’t care about customers. They don’t care about responsibility. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t really care about the quality of their own goods and services. They don’t even care about their own company. They care nothing about these constructs unless it serves the purpose of generating profit. They don’t care about any system of social justice, government or civilization. They only care about themselves.
That is their mind.
They’re always around us and we can do nothing to rid ourselves of them. But we do need start recognizing who they are as opposed to the effective capitalists. We have to stop lionizing them and rewarding their exploitative behavior.
This begins with identifying them.
