Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re: Giving can be selfish...

See you still haven't pegged capitalists.
SDAI-Tech1 — (archived)

Capitalists thrive under competition. Capitalists do NOT, I repeat DO NOT, believe in monopolies or antitrust type behavior.

Some successful capitalists transform and move from minor exploitation to monopolistic behavior. Gates wanted a monopoly and that's not true capitalist behavior. We see in these personality types a certain megalomania and they may start off being capitalists but are really using capitalism as a springboard to their own power trip.

And yes, giving money is a power trip. When you give money to nations they are beholden to you, at the very least they are less antagonistic as long as they are on the receiving end of wads of cash. Same is true with politicians, family and friends. The more you give, the more power you have over others.

While you may find many capitalists who will defend these folks, their business practices are often indefensible and are usually done to thwart all competition entirely. Wal-mart, the oil companies, Microsoft and a good number of other companies want to play Monopoly not Capitalism. There is a big difference.

Yes, when a company acquires a lot of wealth it is easy for them to start to assume monopolistic practices., i.e buying up all competitors & rival start-ups with better products, coercing industry to use their products and outright collusion to fix prices. This is why we have antitrust laws and when they are not used we watch some of these giants become monopolistic - not competitive.

I know, it non-plusses you to see a strong capitalist rip what would at first glance appear to be "capitalist icons", but some of these folks only want to be viewed as such, when in reality they run business the way the Soviet Union ran their economy.

If all we had were companies like Microsoft, Wal-mart or the Oil companies -we'd live in something closely resembling the former USSR in short order. True capitalists can see this and understand the danger of monopolies and those individuals and companies who give "capitalism" a bad name.

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