Capitalism and the root of evil

I may shock some people here, but I don’t think the capitalist system is all bad. The premise as I see it is this. Each person is free to pursue ideas, and make things or provide services, and charge for them. Doing work or providing ideas in exchange for some kind of return.

It might be that you will discover that you can increase how much profit you make, by getting some more people to help you with the work, and giving them some share of the cash generated. On the whole this is a good system. If the people doing the hiring continued to think of it in terms of a sort of partnership, where the person helping is making it possible to make more money, and they should get some share of that, there would be economic justice.

Instead, we think of it as wages. Instead of thinking of the corporation or company as ‘everyone in it” we think of the owner and stockholders as the company, and those in it as ‘employees.’. Everyone in the machine, is part of the machine, and everyone who works, deserves credit for that work. If I generate a million dollars for you, it is not reasonable to keep 900,000 for yourself, put 90,000 back into the company, and compensate me with 10,000. If any employee position is not in some way helping your company do better, be better, or make more money in SOME way, you’d have never hired them in the first place.

That bears repeating. No company anywhere ever, would hire anyone if it was not beneficial to the company. Your job is not some glorious gift from the company. The relationship is symbiotic. They need people, and people need the job. The one sided view of employers as gift givers and even owners, is ludicrous.

Everyone matters.  Everyone counts. The idea that if my company succeeds I succeed is fundamental to how the process should work, how it has to work. If that’s not true anymore (and let’s face it, it hasn’t’ been true since the 1960’s) the system is broken.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Geenfield wrote a book which outlines the idea that a company can be ethical and still be profitable. Lets face it, they’ve done well. And they had rules when they owned the company, that the highest  paid employee could make no more than 30 times the lowest paid employee. And they got wealthy doing it. They aren’t the richest people in America, but how wealthy do you need to be. Their children's children may never have to work a day if they don’t want. I think that’s enough to legitimize the American dream, and they did it while helping their country and it’s economy, instead of destroying it.

Double Dip: How to be ethical and make money too

The greedy idea that if I just get you to make  more money for me, and give you as little as possible, I get richer, is destroying America. If you create something, you deserve some benefit for that. I’m not insisting wage  shares be equal, but they should be equitable. And they aren’t.  Not even close.