This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

They call it “Lincoln’s Tax War” in the South.

So raise minimum wage to $20-30/hr. You don’t need to toss capitalism out the window to do that. It’s overly simplistic to blame these problems on one ism and naive at best to think these problems will go away for swapping it with another ism.

My example shows all three parties benefitting from the arrangement. Everyone would lose if I, the worker, quit. It’s not exploitation at all. I willingly enter into this agreement because I literally can’t do this on my own. So I benefit from company resources. My clients can’t be serviced by a small one man show so they choose a bigger company too. The firm owners make the most because it’s their company and none of this would be happening without them. It’s not exploitation and it’s not parasitic, it’s symbiotic. We’ve got loads of issues with legislation and enforcement, minimum wage should be like $20-30, corporate governance needs to address all stakeholders and not just shareholders, and so on. But that won’t be resolved by swapping capitalism for any other -ism. It’s overly simplistic to think one ism is the only problem and another ism is the only solution.

This might be the first discussion I’ve had on Lenny in good faith as you say, so thank you for that.

My position summarized is that we definitely have massive issues with inequality, injustice, lack of rights, etc. But these are issues of legislation, corrupt government and leadership, enforcement, corporate governance, media disinformation, and so on. As you said any system can and will be abused. Swapping capitalism for any other -ism won’t change anything. (What would that even look like?)

Some of my meandering thoughts for potential solutions include controlling media disinformation, campaign finance reform, term/age limits, and ranked voting. It would be great to somehow change corporate governance to require leadership to prioritize stakeholders and not just shareholders, but I don’t really know how to do this. Maybe a requirement that all public companies be owned at least maybe 10% by non-officer employees, enough to get a seat on the board of directors.

It’s extremely complicated and there’s no clear solution. I’m not saying capitalism is perfect, I’m saying it’s overall ok and it’s very childishly naive to make a shitty comic about swapping it for another -ism to solve all of our problems. I really don’t want to argue about it though or get into a flame war, I just can’t handle the vitriol on this forum.

I’m done with you. Come back if you have something constructive to add to the conversation.

Yes, precisely this.

Workers are absolutely exploited by plenty of shitty companies. But that’s not caused by capitalism, nor is it solved by any other -ism. The causes are complex and the solutions are even moreso, if there even are solutions at all. To sit here bitching about it in the form of a stupid anti capitalism comic is just childishly naive.

Ok, I make 7.25 an hour and my employer bill me out at $25/hr. My employer walks away with 30% or about $7.50, etc etc. The sample numbers are meaningless.

Ok I’ll bite. God help me.

My employer bills me out for $400/hr and I make about $100/hr. I wouldn’t be able to make that much on my own because I don’t have the resources and infrastructure my employer has: admin, IT, expertise, manpower, marketing, legal, and so on. I have zero interest in being self employed. So this is a good arrangement for me.

My clients are happy paying those prices because we provide good service at competitive rates.

My employer is happy because they usually net about 30% profit margin so the partners walk away with $120/hr after paying me and other overhead.

It’s the very definition of capitalism doing exactly what it is supposed to do: providing valuable goods and services to people who want to buy it from people who want to sell it, and everyone walks away happy from the transaction.

I fail to see how this is a violent and exploitative war on civilization itself. Fuck everything about this comic. Why is it even on my feed? Gah.

Markets are not always fair or efficient but that doesn’t mean capitalism is a pyramid scheme. It is still very much the opposite.

It fundamentally is NOT a pyramid scheme. In a pyramid scheme there is no actual product or service of value and simply extracts wealth from the people in lower tiers. Value, or wealth, is simply the byproduct of an equitable transaction between two or more parties.

Imagine you own a goose that lays golden eggs. It lays one golden egg per year. How much would you sell it for? Probably not one golden egg, but definitely you’d sell if for a million gold eggs. You’d probably settle for maybe 5? 10? 15? Something like that.

Suppose the goose only lays one egg per year now (or none at all!) but it’s still young and most people expect it to start laying four or five or even ten or twenty eggs per year in a few years from now. It’s impossible to tell for sure how many it’ll lay over its life, or when that will happen, or if it will happen at all. NOW how much do you sell it for?

That’s the stock market.

A bunch of investors think a bunch of gooses will start laying a ton more golden eggs soon, and they’re willing to pay big bucks now in exchange for the possibility of that in the future. This isn’t a pyramid scheme or a zero sum game or anything like that. It’s just a prediction of the future which may or may not be correct, and only time will tell.