TGE,
You may be surprised at just how diferent the cultures I spoke of are, in spite of being in relatively close proximity. My points still hold.
Yes, but overlapping cultural values are still basically the same.
Thats cause we have DUMB people that go for the money and the greed. No im not saying that communism is a good thing. IT CAN NEVER WORK! People are just to greedy. Even the guy who invented it said it couldn't work. Capitalism is flawed the same way. ALL the systems sound good as an idea but once you add the human element it morphs and twists into a courrpt system. All of the systems become courrpt in the end because people have this fasination with MORE money then they could ever use! American CEOs make such a stupid amount of money http://freegovinfo.info/node/218. The american work system is BROKEN along with most of the other stuff. No doubt its a great place to live if you have a decent income, but even then IT IS IMMPOSSIBLE to live off minimum wage.
Well, heres the big arguement and question. Is it greed, or is it their deserved right. Sure things have gotten a bit ridiculous, but in my opinion the bussiness runers and the CEO do deserve a large pay check. They carry almost all the responsibility of a company, they take the higher risks, they work overall a lot harder, and worry a lot more.
Now, lets compare things. Lets take the US and Japan. Here in the US people are more orriented around the individual, so people get a paycheck more on an individual basis, most of the time people who work for large corporations work just for the money, not for futhering that company. Now lets look at Japan, here most corporations set a limit on how much CEO can earn, based on how much the lower paid worker own. These CEOs probably work the same amount as our CEOs, but get paid substantially less. But again, theres the culture, Japan is still more an isolationist, group thinker. Many people work extra not for the money, but for helping out common goals for their employer, and their fellow worker.
As much as I hate to agree with a Pink Space Pony member Schod is right. Think about it, farm life is idealized because people forget little things like not seeing anyone but your family for months at a time, working from sunrise to sunset seven days a week, haveing an entire years work destroyed by drought, selling food for incredibly low prices, and then being kiked of your five acres because a goverment owned bank fore-closed on the loan and replaced those memories with the memories with the idealized image of the hardend frontier family standing romanticly on top of a hill with a sunset behind them with the wind blowing through fields of golden wheat. On the other hand, factory jobs are no pick nick though they are much better than they used to be. I am refering to the industrial revolution here when coal miners never saw the light of day, children were drowned because they were to expensive to keep, and children worked twelve hours a day, vaugley similir to the so called "agrarian paradise." So, quite honestly, i dont have answer.
Well, here again is pricipal. First off, they sell their crops at low prices, but they get twice the highest price as a government subsidy, this happens almost everywhere. Especially in China where it is the only way for the government to keep the rural workers out of trouble. Also, factory jobs are not encouraged or even allowed to be passed out as freely as you would think. China has labor limits, and also year quotas, which keep in check how many workers can work in a certain industry. Not to mention that city dwellers(live in a city for +5) have a lot more rights then those who just moved into the city. All in all, its not just culture, its also government. China is widely critisized as a country of great contrast, rapid expansion and yet somehow backward policies.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I'd just like to interject that capitalism Does work much better than Communism or even Socialism, for the very reasons you described. It all comes down to who has the power. In capitalism, each individual OWNs, therefore has power, and since most people are good it is used largely for good and paying for the relative wealth and comfort of the American middle class. Even Bill Gates in his infinite richness represents only a fraction of 1% of Microsoft's income, with the VAST majority of the other 99% going to pay for the rest of the employees. Its only the few corrupt greedy bastards (ala Enron) that ruin it for people.
Communism and Socialism suffer far more, however, because the few determine who gets the money, land property, etc. With everything in the hand of those few, greedy, corrupt, and ambitious people are driven to achieve those positions of power. With fewer people in control, the propensity to fall into corruption is greater.
Now, thats a bit of an exageration, bill gates gets paid at least about 20 million a year, their sales are roughly 1 point something billion, that is more then a precentage, and it is a lot more then what the average worker there earns, and also you have to remember dividens and reinvestment, and the board of directors and the CEOS. I would say less then 40 precent of what is earned goes back to the workforce of the company.
I would also like to say, that nothing is true capatalism anymore, everything is somewhat regulated. And in the end, even with capatalism the power ends up in the hands of a few people, and usually those people are chosen by past events. This system might work better then the others, but I think that that is only because that the others try to fix things that are not really broke, while trying to also fix those that are. Failing miserably at both.
