Capitalism at its worst

Whoa .... you mean that anyone with the simple equipment to make a mask ... can make one for well less than 80 cents (since that used to be the retail price) ... and can sell it for five to eight dollars????? A profit of a thousand percent?????

Good Lord!!! Do you know what's going to happen? Every greedy bastard that can manufacture masks is going to start doing so! They'll move heaven and earth to get the right equipment and materials ... they'll work 20 hours a day ... with dollar signs spinning in their eyes ... not out of love of the People, those greedy devils, just out of desire to make a lot of money.... we'll be flooded with masks!

Terrible. Disgusting, what human greed can do. Filthy pigs.

Now here's what we should do. The government should issue a Decree: Anyone who can make masks, must do so. Make them, and sell them at what it cost you to make them for. NO PROFITEERING!!!! That would be deeply immoral.

And if some people -- those greedy devils -- are not so eager to work for nothing ... then send the police around. Have some public trials of people who could have manufactured masks, but didn't.

And doing this would not be a leap into the dark. Countries covering about a third of the earth have tried this system, over a period of a century ... there are a couple which still have it. So we would have company!

 

First, why would anyone bother producing goods & services without remuneration? Second, "profiteering" makes available products that people want. Third, you think greed doesn't exist in communism? BAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

Here. the brilliant economist Milton Friedman recorded this especially for you:

BTW, what you expressed is your GREED. Oh, the irony!

 

Actually they were driven out by high taxes, the overweening administrative largely enforced through civil rather than criminal courts where deep pockets are always guilty whether or not they actually did any thing wrong.

 

Bob ... switch on your Irony Detectors!

 

You just don't get it. I'm never surprised, but always disappointed by leftist indoctrination.

 

We're doomed.

 

1) I'm not American. And I do blame them .. even though I love them.

2) I could not possibly disagree more. Globalism caused this, and in just these few weeks of this particular globalism horror show, we've realised suddenly and painfully that it's time to move back to our 'villages' and ****ing stay there, shutting the gate after us. Globalism will kill us either way. The travel and trade and shipping will kill the planet, or the viruses will reach every one of us.

 

WTF?

 

That may be true, although my bet is on nuclear weapons. We just have to fight against it.
But here's a Robert Frost poem that may be relevant: (quoting from memory here, so it may not be exact.)

Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say, in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.

But ... if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice is also great,
And would suffice.

But if we can avoid an all-out thermonuclear exchange ... we can beat the other stuff.

Human ingenuity should never be under-rated.
There are hundreds of thousands of highly intelligent young people moving up the ladder as us old ones at the top topple off ...
they will become biochemists, geneticists, chemists, medical researchers, physicists, engineers ... they will work to beat things
like this virus, to give us cheap clean energy, to make sure our descendants have the genome of our choice ... they're going to
do all this, AND get us a colony on Mars. For starters. I know, I have taught some of them.

Hey, go to this website whenever you're feeling blue -- it will lift your spirits: HumanProgress.org

 

It is called a layoff. It happens. I promise I won't stay in their hotels. Fair enough?

 

Sure, some of the concepts of capitalism (Friedman especially) that we’ve adopted over the years have been destructive, but our problem during this pandemic is clearly not capitalism it’s the lack of leadership at the WH.

There are tools to leverage in this crisis and the fact that they’re not being utilized is due to pure incompetence. We’ve got the wrong man at the wrong time in the WH. This is a Trump problem, period.

 

No, we've got to bombard them with emails TELLING them that they've lost our custom. Otherwise, they won't know.

I read a lot of history and one thing that has always impressed me is how, when there is a great destructive revolution -- guillotines, firing squads -- you could see it coming. That is, the people in power should have been able to see it coming. The ruling classes of the countries that were soon to descend into the flames were blind, deaf and dumb: all they would have had to do was to give up a few of their privileges, make some concessions, open up access to the goodies a bit ... and they would still be in power, albeit with higher taxes and having to sit next to someone in parliament whose mother had not screwed the Czar or the King and thus was not an aristocrat. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And in every case, there were people at the top -- or rather, their advisors, usually self-made men -- who did see it coming, and tried in vain to get the arrogant swine with the power to make some changes. They weren't necessary kindly liberals, either.
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Stolypin ]

From a psychological point of view, I guess you could call it lack of empathy, coupled with lack of vision, but really it's a function of social position: when you're prospering, it's so easy to imagine that it will always be this way, and that anyone who is not doing as well as you deserves their fate. [http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/art...lls-for-reform-prior-to-the-french-revolution]

So please ... read those links ... it was not just a 'layoff'. Any decent human being -- hell, maybe even a few of the less-deranged Randians -- would be repulsed by what was done to those workers by the human garbage running (and poorly it seems, in all other respects) the Britannia Hotel Chain. If someday they're standing in front of a commie firing squad, I won't shed any tears.

.

 

This was in Britain, not the US. Britain happens to have -- lucky Brits -- the sort of leader American conservatives should have. But history is largely a series of accidents.
Look, we (conservatives) are not entirely stupid. We're not blind to the deep faults of this man. And we're also not blind to the fact that he could be the Archangel Gabriel and the Left would still be screaming 'Not enough!' 'Too much!!!' 'Too early!' 'Too late!'. Hell, we'd probably do the same thing. Not ''probably", would. Look how poor old Bill Clinton was pursued, just for being kind enough to reluctantly give into the incessant demands of Monica.

What I don't quite understand is how you guys, with all your pointings-out of how dangerous it is to have an incompetent running the country ... someone I would not have been surprised to hear advising us all to gargle with vinegar and it would be fine ... have now decided that the best person to replace him from among your ranks, is ............. Joe Biden. What???? Has the whole American political class been infected with a Chinese brain-eating virus?

(Okay, I think Biden will withdraw in favor of Hillary... the DNC has probably got it all scripted. But still....)

 

I don't care if they know.

Perhaps their progeny learned your lesson.

I'm not interested in your links or whom you hate.

 

I have some questions.
Were all these people working there not free to leave at their own pleasure whenever they so choose, for any reason they choose?
Did they have contracts guaranteeing them future employment?
Is the hotel chain considered a social service agency or charity, whose purpose is to give people jobs?
Do the hotel chain not exist at the sole pleasure and approval of their guests, dependent upon free choice of people to stay there?

When you are free to sell your personal services to anyone at any price you can, and free to sever such a relationship at will with no further obligation, you are in a relationship where you have the advantage, because employers generally are contributing or providing benefits for you as well as paying you as you have agreed to, and have numerous obligations by law pay in full and exactly as agreed- in return for labor that if often inconsistent in value and reliability. IF the hotel does not do it's job well enough to entice it's guests at a price that will keep them profitable, it fails. If they can't hire help of sufficient quality at a price that can keep them profitable, it fails. They exist only if they can please the guests and find staff who chooses to work well for them. Perhaps they found that their employment policies have been lax; such that their employees felt they owned their jobs and didn't need to provide fair value- so they decided to overhaul things. There is no charitable obligation here- it's business. No employer wants to lose an employee who is genuinely helping his business succeed, and would be a fool to do so arbitrarily. On the other hand, any employer is a fool to continue to employ people who aren't doing their best. You already stated these were filthy hotels, the worst in the country. Hardly what one would expect if the staff was doing a good job, don't you think?

I think you are confusing capitalism with charity or socialism. The employer doesn't own employees, the employees don't own the employer. They are not entitled to anything beyond what they have agreed to in taking the job.

 

Thanks for the smile this phrase provided me.

Boris!? Hahaha, 555! Please! Apologies, I caught the irony/sarcasm in your earlier post that another one of our friends here apparently missed and continues to miss, but please tell me this is now just my turn to miss your jest.

 

Per your request Doug1943

 

I voted for Perot. The most successful Presidential popular vote count ever for a non Dem or Rep.

 

Doug, Doug, Roo and Doug - Curious to see Roo's level of effort to refute Doug's point or concede.

Also curious to ascertain Doug's assertion that Communism is equivalent to Socialism and the drama also asserted in the first quote above: "evil, corrupt moral character"; "wicked people who consciously want to see mankind living in slavery"!? A somewhat blatant attempt to assure the team you are firmly in their midst it seems to me.

 

To be completely honest - because of the situation with investments, I have been pretty focused on the market, the stimulus, and the effects of the virus on the economy. So, when Doug mentioned along the lines of "intervention of the government into the capitalist system," I thought he was specifically referring to the recent government efforts to shore up the economy. Then, after I saw his reply, it was obvious that I was not on the same page with Doug - we were speaking of two different things. I was reading superficially and did not take into account the depth of the conversation - sorry.

So yeah, if we want to invoke the "assume" thing, that would be appropriate.

 

Actually I'm a supporter of space programs/exploration, so would prefer to see any 'bail out' money go to finding a planet B, instead of freaking airlines. My family of five are all science peeps, also. No escape from the sciffy here!

Meantime, my spirits are surprisingly high. Have spent past few days talking with like-minded comrades about where this is all going, and I can't pretend we're not a little bit pleased with the potential of the situation - as awful as it is at present.

 

Brilliant response!

 

I wore Levi's all my life but when they moved their plant to Mexico I never bought another pair. I wouldn't boycott the hotel because they let all their foreign help go but because they hired all foreign help over their own citizens.

 

Nothing brilliant about it. For example, it is management's responsibility to maintain quality. And both of you apparently miss the lodging/landlord conflict. Is it both of your positions then that having provided a residence as part of the employment that the employer is not obligated to the accepted conventions of due process expulsion in the UK?

 

Humans die without gravity: literally....