We can talk about wages and employment rates, and race all day long, but those are just details. It's human greed in the end, and our inability to love others like we love ourselves.
No matter how powerful Ancient Rome was, it wasn't even comparable to some third world country today.
So now your two SUVs and white McMansion with a picket fence are an "immutable biological trait"?
I was characterizing what the parent appeared to be saying, so that I could discuss it (that greed is a part of human nature). I was not justifying greed.
I rent an apartment and I don't own a car.
While I don't necessarily agree with everything the poster is saying--implying that someone is only allowed to discuss topics in which they have a readily available solution would likely ruin most discussion on the internet and it would certainly put a damper on scientific work the world over.
But whether the "enlightenment project" benefits from simply making complaints is a valid question. I still think the answer is no, or at least that if you're going to make a complaint, your position is improved by proposing a solution for discussion. I concede that it might be possible to make an effective and evidence-based counterargument, but are there meaningful social movements which have been based solely on complaining about stuff with no action platform?
To say that American capitalism somehow "caused" poverty is contrary to about every statistic.
There's something different about the US - capitalism.
Regardless, what does this have to do with the discussion?
China has a sort of partial capitalism in that some big companies are 50% owned by the state.
The factory owners largely didn't care and caused quite a few large scale accidents facing little to no consequence for it.
That only changed in Europe after strikes, unions and socialist programs got punched through (also stuff like the 48 hour work week, 2 days of rest a week, sickdays, social welfare and healthcare and a lot of other stuff that was largely not capitalistic in nature), in the US only after anti-monopoly rulings where deployed en masse (while still paying out the factory owners shitloads of money).
That isn't capitalism.
> In later stages it actually did keep those people there because they either couldn't afford to leave the city without half the family starving
I'm not sure what that means. Cities weren't that big. Just walk out and go live on some uninhabited BLM land if you don't want to participate in the capitalist economy.
Well, everything was steered by capital that the factory owners had.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”
The Silicon Valley isn't really an 'American' centre, it's like a 'Global Centre' where for the first time, indiviuals can have massively disproportionate, global impact.
A doctor may earn a big income, but he can only work on so many patients where as some global firms ... the yields are huge.
Coupled with some automation and large scale immigration of unskilled labour in North America which hurts labour, and outsourcing as well ... it creates a schism.
But remember that on a global basis, billions are being lifted out of utter and abject poverty.
It's mostly a good story.
We have to figure out the working class in advanced nations.
I actually do believe that it's mostly about good jobs, decent services, decent community. That's all there really ever was.
Impact is the reason why an elementary school teacher gets paid in the low-to-mid 5 figures and a professional ball player can get paid 7 figures. Usually, a school teacher has 20-30 kids in their classroom, while a professional ball player can indirectly influence tens of thousands of kids and adults in their "buying" decisions.
Impact is why Franz Schubert died poor and why Ozzy Osbourne made millions.
Technology can exponentially increase your reach and your impact. Ozzy in the medieval ages would have been just a tale told between towns. If you are a skilled marketer, the Internet is your oyster.
The biggest winners will be investors in tech, not employees, who will do well, but not as well as capital FYI.
Why not include some more of his gems?
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.
In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.
As far as I can tell almost everyone nowadays supports the idea of having markets which are partially free, but subject to some regulation (which was Smith's position). Hardcore Rand and Marx devotees are on the fringe. We are all just debating the degree and character of the regulation.
We debate within Smith's world because he was right and it's easy to see, free markets tend to produce big winners who have so much wealth and power that they eventually find a way to corrupt the market. Regulation should focus on this basic problem: there's no great social upside to a $100B company becoming an $200B company, whereas there's lots of social upside to promoting lots of competition, small firms, and a sense of fairness so that everyone can pursue their self-interest.
I never suggested the parent indicated this.
As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land.
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The masters, being fewer in number, can combine much more easily; and the law, besides, authorizes, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. We have no acts of parliament against combining to lower the price of work; but many against combining to raise it. In all such disputes the masters can hold out much longer.
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Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is everywhere a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and one may say, the natural state of things, which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.
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A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon most occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
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No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
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Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power.
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POLITICAL œconomy, considered as a branch of the science of aThe first object of political economy is to provide subsistence for the people statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.
Oh, silly me, that's Adam Smith. So hard to tell them apart.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_I/...
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-...