So I found this picture on the internet. At first I was going to ignore it, but then I decided I needed to say something. I don’t know why, but it wouldn’t leave me alone.
So this may not seem like such a horrible thing, but business is not, and never has been, about stealing from the poor. Since when has that been business? Exactly what business would be achieved? You may claim I have a very naive view of the world, but let’s think about this logically.
Let’s say my friend Philip (not a real person) starts a cat-herding business. His business starts out really small, like all businesses do, but his cat-herding business doubles its activity. With all the work – and potential money he could be making – he hires three people; two people to go with him on cat-herding and one to man the office. But then Philip has to hire four people employees and he gets a new cat-herding van. He also gets a new office building, and gets all his employees phones so everyone can use the new app the kid of one of his employee’s developed. Some of these advances are a little too much for his current size’s needs, but his projection sees them being very useful in the future and he can afford the start-up costs now.
Eventually Philip owns two floors of a skyscraper in Atlanta and has cat-herding franchises all over the east cost, with expansion to the west-coast planned for the new year. He employs 15,000 people.
One of his original three employees saw some flaws in Philip’s cat-herding techniques. He refined the process and started his own cat-herding business. The two now complete with each other for business, but both companies are doing very well. The owners of both companies are multi-millionairies now.
Who exactly was robbed in this situation? Where was the robbing? This is the story of most business, including some of the biggest corporations in America (almost every fast food chain in the country for example). If Philip had stolen his cat-herding technique (which he didn’t) that would’ve been one thing. But where was Philip stealing from the poor.
The poor love to say that the rich are “stealing” from them because the rich are rich and the poor are not. Why does that bother people so much? Besides the fact it is just money and objects and it really won’t matter in the end (and the objects will be obsolete in a few months to years anyway), why is it this huge goal of everyone to be rich? If we were all rich no one would be (I just blew your mind there, didn’t I? Guys, that’s communism.)
If you want to be rich so badly, then do what Philip did. Have a good idea and capitalize on it.
Interesting post. I’d agree in your example, there is relatively little ‘stealing from the poor’ going on. But isn’t this only one side of business? The positive, growth based side which leads us to believe all business is bright and cheerful? Personally, I wouldn’t object to capitalism on the basis that it ‘steals’ from the poor (though in some cases, particularly in developing countries, I’d say it does). So yes, by and large, I agree that placard in question is nonsense.
But capitalism is, I believe, an evil system because while it may not steal (in the sense of taking the poor’s possessions) often, it does still oppress, abuse and fail the poor. For every success story of a new entrepreneur, aren’t there thousands, or tens of thousands, of honest, hardworking people who are ruthlessly ground up by capitalism through no fault of their own? The drive for efficiency and profit (and you so succinctly pointed out why money is not worth much, certainly not more than human lives), lead to job losses, or virtual slave labour in third world countries, for instance.
Capitalism has manifestly failed to solve any of the world’s ills (war, poverty, disease), and indeed cannot, especially as our society becomes less human and more driven by abstract financial interests, as the drive to maximise profit (what a despicable thing profit for profit’s sake is), must lead to lower wages, offshoring, reduced conditions etc.
Socialism, in its ultimate goal as I see it at least, aims to improve society – there is no other real object in life – by building up everyone, stopping the rich from exploiting the poor (as some undeniably do), fixing problems that might be profitable for some (drug companies hardly want to see diseases cured, after all), and generally moving forward, whatever the cost to profit and efficiency.
I’m hardly an expert in economics, I’ll freely admit I make mistakes or get things wrong, but to me socialism offers hope, where capitalism offers only money for the lucky, and poverty for the unlucky.
Your socialist friend,
Comrade Alex
If we were all rich, we would all be rich and the world would surely be a better place for the lack of poverty.