Interesting distinction.
What is the difference between a decision made by the “community” and a decision made by the local town council? Other than scale, what is the difference between a local town council picking a winner and a big city government picking a winner?
Indeed. This disparity is deliberate political action to disrupt an economic system. The same corruption (and corruptibility) is possible in non-capitalistic economies as well. The cartoon focuses on the results of this meddling and not the meddlers. It implies the tool is faulty and ignores the ones abusing it. That’s my objection.
I look forward to seeing a cartoon showing how the “regulators” botch the market and the people trying to use it for the sake of their political ends - not for the sake of the masses.
Where did I say otherwise about caring for the focus of your work? I said, “The aim is to do what you see fit according to your knowledge, skill, and initiative, to your own satisfaction.” If you don’t care to meet the standards and responsibilities of your duties, then you deserve to lose that job because you don’t belong there.
The system is working exactly the way the people who finance it intended it to. That’s what happens when you think of things like “capitalism” and “the market” as an ends unto themselves instead of occasionally-useful economic tools.
The baker and the brewer do not make their products out of selfless love for their fellow, they want to make a living by selling them to you and others.
Some professions, including the often lucrative medical profession, should have as their ultimate basis the underlying love for fellow. Self satisfied physicians who do it to make themselves happy are inferior to ones who do it out of care for patients. Also, I am a skilled baker. As a skilled baker, I can tell you that someone who bakes without love for the consumer of the goods is not an excellent baker.
Mittens, the example I’ve been harping about, never paid for his schooling. His inherited wealth did. He wasn’t an obvious scholar, but eventually when he was an adult he realized how essential it was for his success and began applying himself. The current astronomical cost of college is largely a result of the decreased funding of schools, especially in comparison to many other countries that offer free or more affordable programs than the United States.
One of the central reasons of income inequality, the original topic of discussion has been the gutting of the tax code to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionairs and their spawn, while failing to create opportunity for the vast majority of Americans. These tax break/bribes to the rich are somehow being conflated with the fruit of peoples labor. With an uneducated poor majoriity population, we will become a second rate country incapable of producing technology, adequate infrastructure or quality goods and services. This fetishizing the lucre as a sop for enobling the CREATOR is a farce. If the rich go back to paying their god damn taxes like they did from the 50’s to the 80’s, we might have a chance of not letting this country crumble.
For your third paragraph, especially:
Scale (and proximity) is exactly the difference. The Federalist Papers are boring reading, though…
Gotta go. A fine solstice to all!
Gah. Beat me to it.
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