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If you did not teach your children that, you are lying to them. The GINI index is as high as its been since the industrial revolution.
When one guy becomes wealthy, he is taking from another guy. The result of this is that an increasing number of people, are competing for the exact same scraps the wealthy guy is tossing.
So we should all strive to be mediocre? Because the guys below us aren't motivated or ambitious, we should simply stop trying? Or maybe we should still work as hard, and acheive as much, but hand it down to those who chose to sleep late and take the extra long lunch break instead of mowing one more lawn? No thanks. I'll tech my kids that we all have equal OPPORTUNITY, and you make of it what you are willing to put into it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Randomdude
Because its simply not going to happen. You are not going to compete with Walmart, you are not going to compete with Microsoft, etc.
I'd be willing to be that some guy who thinks the same way you think said almost the same thing to Sam Walton back in 1944, when he purchased the his first franchise in a variety store, in competition with a number of giant regional discount stores, and again in 1962, the year he opened his first Wal-Mart in competition with the newly opening Target & K-marts. And today Sams descendents own the largest retail chain in the world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Randomdude
In mature levels of capitalism, competition through entrepreneurship is choked off. Most industries have become far too capital intensive to enter, and are either oligopolies or monopolies.
Emerging brand new industries are far and few between, and usually require intense amounts of capital as well, and normally consist of inventing something, that is sold to a major conglomerate. Every single person writing computer code right this minute is hoping to take it off the ground and cash out with Microsoft or Google, or some other huge player, because it they dont, they will get squashed.
And if they manage to write a program or a game or even a minor add on application that either of those giants want to buy, then they will have advanced themselves by virtue of their own talent, skill, and work ethic. They will fare far better than those who have the same skill set but didn't bother to work on some excviting new project because they just knew they would have no chance.
As to new industries being few & far between; have you not been paying attention to the technologies that have been advanced in the past 20 years, and the products that have been invented & market in that time? It's not as rare as you think. Thing is, it's only done by those with the courage to try, instead of whining about how some rich guy stole his chance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Randomdude
Self determination and personal responsibility only allow you to take the best advantage of a path that is largely "successful" or "not successful" by a series of events you have little or no control over.
If that's what you choose to believe, you're welcome to it, and no hard feelings from me. I disagree, and feel my own success is proof of my opinion. I'll use that example to teach my kids to never settle for what others say they can have. Who knows WHO my kids will be tossing scraps to, eh?
So we should all strive to be mediocre? Because the guys below us aren't motivated or ambitious, we should simply stop trying? Or maybe we should still work as hard, and acheive as much, but hand it down to those who chose to sleep late and take the extra long lunch break instead of mowing one more lawn? No thanks. I'll tech my kids that we all have equal OPPORTUNITY, and you make of it what you are willing to put into it.
I'd be willing to be that some guy who thinks the same way you think said almost the same thing to Sam Walton back in 1944, when he purchased the his first franchise in a variety store, in competition with a number of giant regional discount stores, and again in 1962, the year he opened his first Wal-Mart in competition with the newly opening Target & K-marts. And today Sams descendents own the largest retail chain in the world.
And if they manage to write a program or a game or even a minor add on application that either of those giants want to buy, then they will have advanced themselves by virtue of their own talent, skill, and work ethic. They will fare far better than those who have the same skill set but didn't bother to work on some excviting new project because they just knew they would have no chance.
As to new industries being few & far between; have you not been paying attention to the technologies that have been advanced in the past 20 years, and the products that have been invented & market in that time? It's not as rare as you think. Thing is, it's only done by those with the courage to try, instead of whining about how some rich guy stole his chance.
If that's what you choose to believe, you're welcome to it, and no hard feelings from me. I disagree, and feel my own success is proof of my opinion. I'll use that example to teach my kids to never settle for what others say they can have. Who knows WHO my kids will be tossing scraps to, eh?
You're missing the point. It's clear you're discontent at the statistical fact that in order for someone to be better off someone else has to be worse off, which is dead cold truth in a capitalistic system under a world of scarce resources. Your moral adjudication of values such as attitude, work ethic, and the perception of persevering and insistence as a guarantor of that success is just a rationalization for your inability to accept numerical fact (scarce resources).
Don't get me wrong, you are entitled to free choice and that's that. But do not fool yourself, your philosophy essentially is that you will teach your children to aspire to be Lebron James. Where your teaching becomes disingenuous is in that you will shelter your children from and omit the fact that everybody CANNOT be Lebron James, and that as a function of someone becoming Lebron James, many will not enjoy a median quality of life with an otherwise median level of effort, by whatever metric we choose to measure it. That is as close to having an unintended consequence from your aspirations affect the aspirations of others. In capitalism, we are not apologetic about dispossessing our neighbor in the quest for our own capitalization. In many respects this is nothing to apologize for, since this is a question with rather anthropological scope. But to outright dismiss the degree to which we overlook our neighbor's dispossession in societies like our good ol US of A, is quite callous and your children are none the virtuous for adopting said philosophy.
So we agree to disagree, there is NO "equal opportunity" in a capitalistic system. In the absence of the aforementioned handouts that are levied and managed by the Government in order to appease the dispossessed and the statistically unlucky (perhaps even the unfit, if one draws darwinian parallels for why some are sucessful in capitalizing while the rest fall behind) we would have revolt lickity split, and your children would be faced with the dilemma of having to substantiate their capital stake against that of my children, with the working end of a gun, and not "hard work", "attitude" and whatever moral adjudication you believe allows EVERYBODY to be better off independent of each other. Likewise, when your children fail to capitalize beyond what you were able to inherit forward, I doubt you will morally adjudicate their failure to capitalize on lack of "hard work". Or maybe you will throw it back at them, time will tell. I know I won't be that callous with my children, I will not shelter them from the truth and by providing the "unrated" version it will allow them to adapt and overcome the bitter realities of a life that isn't perfect nor equitable.
Recognizing that we live in an economic system where one man's capitalizing removes another's ability to capitalize does not automatically "doom" you to be a person with mediocre aspirations. It makes you humbler that's for sure. If you want your children to succeed on top of others that's ok, but don't for one second sell it to those of us who are not afraid to call a spade a spade as something that they can achieve independent of other people's outcomes, that's just trying to cover the sun with your hands.
Look I've worked hard too, and have succeeded in some respects and in some respects I'm held down by the existence of others (too many older workers in the profession, too many legacy children jumping ahead of the line, pick your flavor, etc etc). You of course would provide me the antiquated "you need to be resourceful and think of ways of becoming Lebron James", which is just the eternal wheel those who wish to blind themselves from the truth of scarcity constantly tread on. In the absence of an avenue to attain said statistical outlier outcome (praying didn't work, drug treatments didn't work, marrying up didn't work, criminal enterprise didn't work, 3 more phDs didn't work, et al) you will probably resort to the standard moral adjudications of why those who don't attain said status didn't work hard enough, thence why poor people and their obvious failure to attain said outcome must have not even tried judging by the outcome scale. That's in my book of course pure nonsense and devoid of the recognition of scarcity, which is a concept I fear your children will have difficulty grasping post-college, but it's fruity and full of sugar so it beats the truth every day of the week and twice on sunday If the manned space program were not a fable by the time they become college aged they could be astronauts but I guess I didn't make it to astronaut school either not becuase it DISSAPEARED but because I didn't work hard enough ...(the sheer irony of manned space flight dwindling AFTER they actually made it to the moon...)
You're missing the point. It's clear you're discontent at the statistical fact that in order for someone to be better off someone else has to be worse off, which is dead cold truth in a capitalistic system under a world of scarce resources. ..
That is an absolutely incorrect statement. .... Wealth creation is not a zero sum game. Taxation is a zero sum activity--but wealth creation is not. I refer you to a couple of books on that: Spin Free Economics, and The Age of Turbulence. However, if you wish to read analysis that is far more academically oriented, I suggest you go to digitaldissertations.com.
The idea that wealth creation is a zero sum activity is just a myth--an incorrect belief.
Why are you guys arguing with Randomdude--he is a communist with a business degree--it doesn't make sense--but arguing with him is like arguing with a rock.
That is an absolutely incorrect statement. .... Wealth creation is not a zero sum game. Taxation is a zero sum activity--but wealth creation is not. I refer you to a couple of books on that: Spin Free Economics, and The Age of Turbulence. However, if you wish to read analysis that is far more academically oriented, I suggest you go to digitaldissertations.com.
The idea that wealth creation is a zero sum activity is just a myth--an incorrect belief.
This is why we are in the economic bind that we are as a country, we are all clickling our heels to the keynesian flute of "everybody CAN be better off!!". Just like Reaganomics, it's bunk. We run away from the reality of scarcity like rats off a sinking ship. We won't take our medicine even if it kills us.
Listening to microeconomics in college was much like studying 2D aerodynamic theory...great in theory, terribly inaccurate in practice. In hindsight, it is scary they level of glossing over that was done over the concept of scarcity in college econ 101, and most people just drum along accepting such spin it as fact. We can intellectually masturbate to the idea of marginal advantages all day long, in absolute terms we cannot all be better off independent of each other, someone has to be worse off for someone else to be better off. Our indignation or unacceptance towards said fact has more to do with our feelings towards the idea of capitalizing on the heads of others and how we effect our day to day behavior to dismiss said idea than it has to do with economic fact. This is easily illustrated in our societal construct and the only reason we haven't chopped off any heads as of late is due to the great pains the government goes to appease the dispossessed, those handouts and safety nets some at the top are so ungratefully scornful of.
Reminds me of a de-motivational poster I saw recently:
At any rate, I'll continue striving for a median quality of life, and will continue to scorn those who strive to attain capital monopolization and the achievement of 5-sigma-to-the-right wealth disparity. What you call my envy I call your desire to appease your master (Lebron James) just because you 1)want to be him and incorrectly believe in uncle tom economics (see poster abover) or 2) you incorrectly taught your children to aspire to be him without illustrating the reasons everybody CAN'T be him simultaneously. Either way you're spinning your wheels like the Government is going sixth gear on the printing press and selling us down the river to the Federal Reserve....Acknowledging your dispossession is the first step towards real freedom...
This is why we are in the economic bind that we are as a country, we are all clickling our heels to the keynesian flute of "everybody CAN be better off!!".
Not everyone can be better off. If that were to happen we would fall apart real quick. You are correct there. However, what has caused us to fall apart the last couple of years was greed from home buyers,banks,and even our government. Our government has let us down the most! This caused a negative trickle down effect. Please do not try to tie this in with "everyone working hard" so it caused a collapse because our system couldn't handle it because that is completely untrue.
The truth is, for every hard working person you will have someone who is lazy and can care less. Someone who would rather sell dope and sit around collecting welfare at the same time. Or someone who would rather spin their wheels about how hard it is out there and how impossible it is to make it. (Think the author of nickel & dimed) Theres plenty of opportunity for anyone who wants to make it out there due to the fact that we have so many lazy worthless people. It does take some common sense but it is available.
Right now I can think of several other ways to make money besides what I'm doing. For example, I could easily start a lawn mowing company with very little start up money. I know about 20 neighbors that would let me cut their grass weekly at $30 per cut. Thats $600 per week or $2400+ per month. Is that a lot of money? No, but its enough to get by. Will it be enough to get me by all year? probably not, but its a start. It would get me through 7 months out of the year. Or if I conserved possibly the whole year. If I know 20 neighbors that would let me do it, could I get more? You bet. Could I take on other neighborhoods through referrals? Yup. Could I eventually hire a crew? Yes. This is an idea I just thought up out of the blue and there are millions of other ideas out there that will work. People don't want to use their brains though, they would rather spend countless hours on an internet forum explaining how its impossible or how you are making it off of other peoples backs, etc. The world is not perfect people! Ever hear the saying "Thats life?"
Or "Life is a bitc^? Yeah, it can really suck sometimes.
You have to reward ingenuity, hard work, good ideas, determination. Not steal from them and give to people who want to sit around and be a DRAIN on our system. Thats what the government is doing right now. They are stealing our tax dollars and bailing out greedy people, dumb people, banks, etc The same people who caused this mess in the first place.
Personally, I can't stand recessions but I feel this one is necessary because people need to start downsizing, conserving, using less credit, living within their means and basically need to wake the hell up. This recession is the biggest possible wakeup call you can get. We need to learn from our mistakes and evolve.
When you try to get the lawn mowing business going you will soon find out that somebody else beat you to it. They will be less than pleased if you try to under price them. The results are not likely to be very pretty. It is likely to be painful for you but not pretty. Remember there is no Law at the bottom or the top of our economy.
I noticed that "Bill Keegan" is a real estate agent. Now wonder he is fond of a debt driven bubble economy. It has probably made him rich by most standards. Not only did he did not produce anything, but just sold, for a considerable fee, houses made by other people. If anything his fees are parasitic on the system.
Our system is not fundamentally a capitalistic free market system because of the various barriers to entry (If you think the lawn mowing business is tough to get into, try building a new steel mill in the US) and the close control of capital by the high level investment class. The government is part and parcel of this collectivist conspiracy as illustrated by the initial bailout of the high level bankers and investors by the dying Bush administration. We have been operating under a system of crony capitalism where who you know (golf buddies, fellow alcoholics, etc) is far more important than what you know.
Until we started on this road to ruin with our ruinously expensive attempt to bail the Michelin (French for Mammon’s sake) Company out of their French Indo China losses to the Viet Mingh (called the Vietnam War) our middle class was still growing. The diversion of our capital into the non productive military production (non productive in terms of their products not being available to the civilian market) started the shift of wealth away from the working classes to the manipulators and investment managers. The fact that we lost 50,000 Americans and the Vietnamese losses of countless people was never considered, except for the people directly involved, a cost of this war. You did not see Johnson’s or Raygun’s kids in the army.
When Raygun started preaching “Star Wars” and spending far more than the economy could provide, by borrowing from the entire world, instead of taxing his Orange County friends, he set the foundation for our current failure. Military spending is never productive and is only a means of transferring money from most of us to a connected few of us. It is production into storage or direct waste. Military production does not increase the net productive assets of an economy.
Then we elected (sort of anyway because nobody has the balls to dispute the results or the elections) a total fraud to the Presidency. He, in turn rewarded all his friends. Remember the offhand comment, “My real constituents – the haves and the have mores”. Bush took care of the have Mores very, very well. Think how much we have paid for his private vendetta against Saddam and the year of $4 per gallon gasoline for his Saudi friends. Kida pricy for the rest of us.
In sum we do not have a capitalist system. We have developed a nearly feudal economy where the princes are financiers that control the market and we are the peasants having our incomes and opportunities stolen to provide for the Kings Wars. We do not have a capitalist economy we have a mutated form of socialism wherein the privileged are protected and the peasants are robbed of their production and left to fight over the scraps from the crowd at the militarists table.
Strangle enough I do believe that strict capitalism would work but that the privileged have struggled for centuries to prevent it from developing. Read “The Wealth of Nations” for a primer on crony capitalism.
[SIZE=3] [/SIZE]
Question for the ones who believe in the hard work mantra. Anyone who bought during the bubble lost out pretty big, so don't you agree that in this aspect, it is all based on timing and luck if you just didn't happen to buy then?
For example, 2003-2006 was the year all my friends and myself got married. They all were ready to buy then and purchased a home. My husband and I just lucked out as we just weren't thinking about it then whereas now we are. It was all just timing. Nothing else.
When you try to get the lawn mowing business going you will soon find out that somebody else beat you to it. They will be less than pleased if you try to under price them. The results are not likely to be very pretty. It is likely to be painful for you but not pretty. Remember there is no Law at the bottom or the top of our economy.
I noticed that "Bill Keegan" is a real estate agent. Now wonder he is fond of a debt driven bubble economy. It has probably made him rich by most standards. Not only did he did not produce anything, but just sold, for a considerable fee, houses made by other people. If anything his fees are parasitic on the system.
Our system is not fundamentally a capitalistic free market system because of the various barriers to entry (If you think the lawn mowing business is tough to get into, try building a new steel mill in the US) and the close control of capital by the high level investment class. The government is part and parcel of this collectivist conspiracy as illustrated by the initial bailout of the high level bankers and investors by the dying Bush administration. We have been operating under a system of crony capitalism where who you know (golf buddies, fellow alcoholics, etc) is far more important than what you know.
Until we started on this road to ruin with our ruinously expensive attempt to bail the Michelin (French for Mammon’s sake) Company out of their French Indo China losses to the Viet Mingh (called the Vietnam War) our middle class was still growing. The diversion of our capital into the non productive military production (non productive in terms of their products not being available to the civilian market) started the shift of wealth away from the working classes to the manipulators and investment managers. The fact that we lost 50,000 Americans and the Vietnamese losses of countless people was never considered, except for the people directly involved, a cost of this war. You did not see Johnson’s or Raygun’s kids in the army.
When Raygun started preaching “Star Wars” and spending far more than the economy could provide, by borrowing from the entire world, instead of taxing his Orange County friends, he set the foundation for our current failure. Military spending is never productive and is only a means of transferring money from most of us to a connected few of us. It is production into storage or direct waste. Military production does not increase the net productive assets of an economy.
Then we elected (sort of anyway because nobody has the balls to dispute the results or the elections) a total fraud to the Presidency. He, in turn rewarded all his friends. Remember the offhand comment, “My real constituents – the haves and the have mores”. Bush took care of the have Mores very, very well. Think how much we have paid for his private vendetta against Saddam and the year of $4 per gallon gasoline for his Saudi friends. Kida pricy for the rest of us.
In sum we do not have a capitalist system. We have developed a nearly feudal economy where the princes are financiers that control the market and we are the peasants having our incomes and opportunities stolen to provide for the Kings Wars. We do not have a capitalist economy we have a mutated form of socialism wherein the privileged are protected and the peasants are robbed of their production and left to fight over the scraps from the crowd at the militarists table.
Strangle enough I do believe that strict capitalism would work but that the privileged have struggled for centuries to prevent it from developing. Read “The Wealth of Nations” for a primer on crony capitalism.
[SIZE=3] [/SIZE]
Quote:
Originally Posted by GregW
When you try to get the lawn mowing business going you will soon find out that somebody else beat you to it. They will be less than pleased if you try to under price them. The results are not likely to be very pretty. It is likely to be painful for you but not pretty. Remember there is no Law at the bottom or the top of our economy.
I couldn't disagree with you more. There are so many people who give bad service and don't follow up with people its insane. It would be very easy for me to get a lawn service started. Also, who said I would undercut anyone else? Did you pull that out of thin air? I don't need to do that to get business. I've bounced the idea off of several friends who do not cut their lawns and said they would use me if I cut lawns. Thats just my friends too. What about their friends and so on? What if I could get other business too? Like fertilizing peoples lawns, or doing stone work? What about networking with some of the customers? What will that lead to?
If I started a business like that I would do it right and get many referrals. I don't think it would work, I know it would. I believe in positive thinking and I believe in myself. I would also never start any kind of business that I didn't fully think through. The only problem with this idea is I'm already successful in the field I'm in and it wouldn't make financial sense. I was just trying to make the point that someone could be successful at doing something as basic as cutting lawns.
If you are going to sit around and smoke weed all day and complain about how the world is stacked against you, you surely will not have a chance out there. All you are doing is being a drain, you are not putting in anything in you shouldn't get anything out of it.
ufc -
have you bothered to look into the legal aspects of setting up your own business? proprietorship? Partnership? Limited Liability partnership etc etc. Looked into liability insurance? Commercial vehicle insurance? Commercial Drivers License? Cost of a commercial quality mower? A homeowner quality mower might last a week ot two of continous service. Do you know how to fix mowers? Sharpen blades?
Good luck. I am serious and I do mean good luck. I hope your business does well.
good
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If the manned space program were not a fable by the time they become college aged they could be astronauts 
but I guess I didn't make it to astronaut school either not becuase it DISSAPEARED but because I didn't work hard enough ...(the sheer irony of manned space flight dwindling AFTER they actually made it to the moon...) 
