Excerpts

from the

Book

   Capitalism has a good

press going for it in America. 

It begins with the basic Horatio

Alger promise that hard work

will pay off, and you can start

at the bottom of a company

and rise to its very tip-top if

you are just willing to work hard.

    People are glad “anybody can

still do it!”  The success of

people like Bill Gates and

Warren Buffett only serve to

prove that “I” could STILL make

it BIG myself.  Or maybe my

kids will be rich, or my grandkids, or maybe somebody I know will make it.

    It  also is widely accepted in America that government cannot be trusted.  It is understood that government is stupid, arbitrary, always grasping for power over helpless citizens, whereas businesses are safe, reliable, trustworthy,  and a friend of everyone.  It is general knowledge that everything that government tries to do it does badly and expensively, and business can do the same thing smartly, efficiently and very cheaply.  We are taught that business is always benevolent.  It can always be trusted and wants to help each one of us if we can just get government out of the way. 

    Phrases haunt our vernacular such as “I’m from the government and I want to help”, or “The best government governs least”, or “Government should be run like a business”; and there are others.  These phrases are rich in innuendo and part of every American’s understanding, and they help capitalism ascend into power.

    Americans also understand that free enterprise and capitalism are the same thing, identical to each other and they are the ONLY alternative to socialism, communism or anarchy.  Finally, no matter how badly things may go under capitalism, it is completely understood and agreed that under any other system it would have been worse.  P. 11

      Under capitalism the economy is promoted to a status above all other national components.  It becomes the main “national interest” of the country and its government.  All citizens are expected to sacrifice to it, to work for it constantly, and even fight for it if necessary.   The capitalistic nation becomes a great economic factory providing jobs and producing products for its citizens and export to other nations.  Citizens learn they must work – not for the government, but for the economy – their economy (wink-wink).

    Capitalism also conducts a contiguously incremental transfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes of the population to the most wealthy members of the economy, because allegedly, those are the people who create jobs.  Then, as part of the consolidation process the capitalistic “economy” will begin penetrating more deeply into each nation’s social structure to make the other national components subservient to it.

    Education for example, especially in America, has already become subverted with more and more schools dedicated to “training” rather than engaged in traditional education.  More students are now developing skills useful to corporations instead of studying arts and sciences, and the old liberal arts programs are often found to be basically dead or dying. Not only will more students be preparing for the chance of a good paying job under capitalism, they will also not be preparing for alternatives.

    Medicine, health care and insurance  combine to . . .

p 19

     Workers in the lower part of the “official” hierarchy who master the published procedures may rise to higher positions based on their proven skill, knowledge and abilities, but this “official bureaucracy” reaches only so high before it collides with the invisible “inverse bureaucracy” of the Lord’s coterie and their staff and associates which reaches downward from the top. 

    Thus, the most highly qualified, most experienced and competent employees of the workers’ ranks can rise through their own hierarchy to work in a “Zone of Turbulence”, in conflict with the lowest ranking and least qualified members of the coterie’s staff, who are part of the secret and inverse hierarchy which reaches downward from the highest levels, and too often is filled, at its lower level, with people who may have little knowledge of the “official” procedures to be accomplished, the “official” conditions under which they must be performed, or the “official” criteria of acceptable performance, but nonetheless outrank, give orders to, and evaluate the performance of the highest promoted workers.

p 30

      This not only deprived Americans of access to health care, but also meant many health care workers could be providing services to a much greater market than they they had available.  

    According to the Council of Foreign Relations the American health care system was spending twice as much money as other developed countries on health care even as it had become among the least effective for its citizens, ranking along with Turkey and Mexico. (4.8)                             

    In 2010, nearly 7.1 million Americans were on probation,  in jail, prison, or on parole --  in the United States 1 out of 3 adult black males, 1 out of 6 Hispanic adult males, 1 out of 17 white adult males was involved with the Criminal Justice System, and with more than 2,250,000 incarcerated, the United States had more people in jail or prison than any other country in the world in both per capita and total numbers.  The number of prisoners increased dramatically beginning in 1980, just as the deregulation of capitalism began, from under 500,000 in 1980 to more than 2,000,000 in the year 2000.(4.9)           

    According to the International Labor Organization, in 2001, Americans worked 1,978 hours annually, a full 350 hours — nine weeks — more than Western Europeans. The average American actually worked 199 hours more in 2000 than he or she did in 1973. (4.10)  These additional hours Americans worked helped accelerate their decrease in real wages.  p.37

      Adam Smith extols the value of having a person do one single task repetitively, for his entire life, thus increasing his productivity (5.2)  “by reducing everyman’s business to some one simple operation, and . . . making this operation the sole employment of his life . . .  increases  the dexterity of the workman.”   He speaks of making pins, wherein one man only makes pin-heads and another fastens them to the pins which are made by another.  And that is all they do, all their life.  He says that men “. . . commonly saunter . . . when turning from one (job) to another.”  And  “When he first begins the new work he is seldom very keen and hearty; his mind, as they say, does not go to it . . .”  and this “. . . renders him almost always slothful and lazy and incapable of any vigorous application even on the most pressing occasions.” (5.3)  One takes away from these comments the idea that men should have only one simple task to do over and over again and again, for their entire life, and it is the only thing they ever learn to do.  p.44

       What is Ayn Rand’s relevance today?  Questions abound about those who do not contribute to the society - what should they get?  How should they really be treated?  Much of the monetary services the American government currently provides to its people as “welfare” goes in several different directions to a lot of different people.  Unemployment insurance payments provide money that is spent in grocery stores, drug stores, filling stations, etc.  Cut that off and those businesses will also feel that loss and begin laying off workers. Another question is that of “entitlements”.  Many of those such as Social Security and a number of retirement programs are actually deferred payments for work already done long ago and promised and agreed to be paid in the future, sometimes with interest.  Those are not really “entitlements” but “postponed wages”.  When Ayn Rand died, she was a recipient of Medicare and also was receiving Social Security payments under the name “Ann O’Conner”, (6.5) her husband had been Frank O’Conner and it was to him she dedicated the book “Atlas Shrugged”. 

    There is also a question of “need” versus “want”.  Rand seems to lump these two together and treat legitimate “needs” such as clean water, air,  education and healthcare for children into things they just  “want”,  and will result in the entire nation being dragged into oblivion as those “wants” are compared with diapers and dentures and will just suck the life out of our country.  (Rand never had children so she could see diapers as something that people didn’t really need, kind of a luxury item perhaps.) p.51

     Earthquakes happen.  Throughout the world they shake the land. They always have and they always will.  In some countries many buildings fall when the earth quakes.  In other countries the buildings mostly stand.  Why?  It’s not the engineering, that skill is widely known and widely shared.  It is the governments involved.  Some countries will effectively say, “‘They’ know how to build a building, they know what they need to do, let them do it the way they want – they can do it cheaper.”  In other countries, those who construct buildings must meet strict “government-enforced” requirements.  p.59

      When corporations say they could reduce pollution but that would mean higher prices for us, that seems to imply these problems are really our fault – we would rather have the pollution and be poisoned, and get sick and suffer medically, and pay medical bills than pay higher prices for the products they want to sell us.  Does it actually make no difference to them?  Not really.  If they paid the full costs of their production a truer picture of what people are buying would be available to everyone.  While prices would rise for consumers of the item, the profits might also shrink for the shareholders and corporate officers.  That would reduce capital available to the company.  Some shareholders might move their investments to other companies. Some mutual funds would automatically switch to other companies through computer programming procedures.  p. 72

    Every citizen of the United States has two senators and one representative they can write or call, or even visit if they can take the time off from work and make the trip.  But every corporation has 435 representatives and 100 senators that they can and do contact. 

    Lobbyists often drop by the office of any of the representatives,  senators or members of the administration and provide items of interest to them, perhaps items of personal interest for the office holder or talking points for their presentations, even completed presentations, and written-out potential bills already prepared and ready for submission to congress – many written by the lobbyists who are former congressmen and their former staff members .  The lobbyists can also provide significant money for reelection campaigns – either to the incumbent  congressman OR – meaningfully – to a potential challenger.

    In 2011 there were more than 12,000 lobbyists in Washington, DC, or about 23 per legislator.  And in 2011, those lobbyists spent $4.47 BILLION on lobbying,  That is enough money for more than $6,000,000 PER legislator for that year alone, or enough to provide $16,000 per legislator every day of the year. (9.5 )  p.82

    

We pretend our system of government is a constitutional democracy, bowing to the will of the people, ignoring that it has been hijacked by two private political organizations which now serve as false fronts for the serious business of enabling our own capitalistic industries and corporations to feed upon us.

    We pretend our education system actually teaches logic, reasoning and methods of serious inquiry including problem solving and decision making. Yet it has become an institutional tool to help people learn to carry on the work of mighty corporate industries. Training is valued highly while real education involving free thought is considered wasteful and dangerous.  “Answers” are taught, and their mastery is required, never mind teaching students how to ask important questions or how to observe critically, how to search for, discover and explain their own “answers” and then evaluate those “answers” and how to reexamine their

Electronic Book

own newly discovered “knowledge” and build upon that, thus discovering, examining, exploring and describing the great mysteries of life.  Too often that is seen to be  wasteful and even “dangerous”.  We pretend true education is measured by how much one knows, and how many facts and answers one has available.   p. 92