Without Capitalists, Wage Earners Would Die of Starvation

Here is an example of the breathtaking ignorance of Marxists/Socialists, one which provides an excellent opportunity to refute some of their essential claims. It appears on Twitter at https://bit.ly/2KOJYJf. Please take a moment to read it.

Wage earners don’t need “overlords,” but they certainly do need businessmen and capitalists. Businessmen and capitalists survey prospects for profit, and on the basis of what they expect to be profitable, found, organize, and run business firms.

They decide what their firms will produce, where, in what quantities, and by what methods, and provide the necessary buildings, machinery, and materials. They also decide how many workers of different types they will need for their plans and then hire and tell them what to do.

The products their firms produce are THEIR products. They supply the guiding, directing intelligence at the highest level in their firms. The workers they employ are their HELPERS in fulfilling their plans and producing their (the businessmen’s/capitalists’) products.

Thus, the products of the old Ford Motor Company and the old Standard Oil Company were the products of Ford and Rockefeller. Today, the products of Amazon are the products of Bezos.

The products of every firm are the products of men such as these, though usually they are less prominent and not as easily identified.

In all such cases, the role of the employees is that of providing help. They are accurately described by the expression “The Help.”

It is on the basis of this same principle of attributing results to those who supply the necessary guiding, directing intelligence at the highest level, that we attribute the discovery of America to Columbus and not to the members of his crews, who were merely Columbus’s helpers.

In the same way, we attribute Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz to Napoleon and not to the lesser officers and soldiers who served under him. And in the same way, we attribute the foreign policy of the United States to the President and not to the State Department employees.

Wage earners have their jobs by virtue of businessmen and capitalists having provided them. The help the wage earners provide in producing the businessmen’s/capitalists’ products is fully remunerated by the wages they are paid.

Take away businessmen and capitalists and you take away wage earners, who either die of starvation or must become primitive producers and sellers of commodities on their own, in which case most of them still die of starvation.

For introductory elaboration, read my essay whose title appears immediately below. It’s available at https://amzn.to/2N44uTu in Kindle format for 99¢, and also in paperback. 

For full elaboration, read my Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, available in hardcopy and Kindle formats at https://amzn.to/2PM19ut. Also available at https://www.capitalism.net both in hard cover and as a free pdf replica capable of download. (Read chapters 11 and 14 in particular).

The Coming Green Terror

Did you know that in Santa Barbara, CA, a waitress can go to JAIL for serving a plastic straw that wasn't requested, and that throughout the state this “crime” is subject to a fine originally supposed to be $1,000. (See bit.ly/2Wtx5uj and bit.ly/2ZcrN38.)

Did you also know that, despite all the claims that it never goes away, plastic can actually be dissolved in a pretty common chemical: acetone, which is the main ingredient in nail polish remover. (See bit.ly/2MtsMdJ)

So here’s a suggestion for the California Legislature: Instead of fining people or letting them be thrown in jail for this “crime,” each of you who voted for this bill should go to the beach with a little pail and shovel.

You should gather up all the straws, soak them in acetone, and then go house to house and drinking place to drinking place and gather up all the remaining straws throughout the state and soak them in acetone. This would be a job commensurate with your level of intelligence, common sense, and compassion.

Maybe you’ll like this job so much, you’ll want to keep on doing this kind of work and never run for public office again.

*****

What makes this legislative outrage so significant is that it may very well be a sign of what's to come. The Green-Left is on the edge of a meltdown. As they see it, the time to the end of the world is running out. With each passing year, less time remains to reduce CO2 emissions

This implies a need to reduce them all the more drastically in the reduced time that remains. This is what the “Green New Deal” is all about.

Now if they’re ready to throw people in jail over a plastic straw, what will they be ready to do to stop people from crossing the Left’s alleged "tipping point" leading to the “destruction of the planet”?

I envision public executions—scenes out of China under Mao, or North Korea. They’ll make people kneel in the street and shoot them in the back of the head for having used gasoline or electricity, indeed, for having exhaled.

It’s no joke to say that we’re dealing with a lunatic fringe. They are virtual lunatics. And they are very close to coming to power. All they have to do is beat Donald Trump in the next election. And they might very well do that.

They almost certainly will do that if a new financial crisis develops before the 2020 election day (and then before the 2024 or 2028 election days.)

In preparation for that possibility, I hope enough people will realize that even a great depression under Trump (or his “right-wing” successor) is better than a reign of terror under the Green Left, and full employment in chain gangs.