Comments by "Kim O\x27Brien" (@kimobrien.) on "Whole Foods' John Mackey: Why Intellectuals Hate Capitalism" video.

@chadasonmcgraw Capitalism has its own "built in" contradictions that drive it into depression and then war. The capitalists are divided into competing trading blocs. The blocs come into competition for cheap labor and markets. If the world were infinite than capitalism could continue but in fact it is finite. The workers can not buy back all that we can produce. The decline in the industrial profit rate sends the capitalist into investing in to fictitious capital while cutting real wages and increasing exploitation as ways to shore up profit rates. The crisis of 2008 showed the world that capitalism lacks stability when 1/3 of the world value of capital disappeared. Trump is already playing with the fire of trade war.
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@chadasonmcgraw I guess you never worked in a factory otherwise you'd realize that the workers run and repair the machines necessary to produce all those products. The only role the top capitalists plays is to go to the mailbox to collect the dividend check. With capitalism every new production time savings advancement means a layoff and back to being in the army of the unemployed. While the bosses toast each other for the temporary rise in profits they will see at the expense of their competition.
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Capitalism is such a system. They need workers who follow orders not workers who can think for themselves.
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@ThunderAppeal Capitalism is the reason the US has a pile of 7.500 nuclear weapons.
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Kali Southpaw We can fight back against the law of value by organizing unions with all workers included. Sure the Walton family and Jeff Bezo's won't like it
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762 Goat You "... make 60 k a year and am about to pay off".. your..."250k house." So that proves you worked more than four years. Maybe you'd like a 'hero of capitalist labor' badge?
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Ann Linley Yea anyone willing to climb over bodies to the top can be a President and a war criminal at the same time. Steve Jobs start as a thief making blue boxes and he became a very rich one.
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Ann Linley I don't care if they started with only a pair of a underpants in Alaska. How about that great Idea called an artificial satellite (Sputnik) and the National Defense Education Act that followed? Off all the people you named how many hold at least one patent or copyright that started their business? Not two or three but just one? What they all hold in common is the ability to manipulate people and climb over bodies in a psychopathic race to be the biggest profiteer.
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Apple company? An exploiter of child labor and other labor law violations in its Chinese partners factories. A company started by an admitted law breaker Steve Jobs. A man who manufactured blue boxes for the purpose of fraud. He stopped because he was afraid of being caught by the police. His blue boxes allowed for the theft of AT&T Long distance toll service. I don't really care about how he broke laws but at least be honesty about your hero's. In Jobs case his best skill was obviously learning how to cheat others.
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Ann Linley Are goods imported from the European countries made with cheap labor compared to US labor costs? Like a German Porsche or Swiss watches? So a Utopian boycott of Apple iPhones is the answer? You should think before typing.
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"Throw out every modern convince you use... cell phone, computer... wear Levi jeans? Burn them. They are all produced by capitalism." They were produced under the capitalist system for private profit. Before capitalism people wore cloths. Should capitalism have been halted because clothes were invented and used in both slave and feudal times? After all no need to build textile factories when home spinning will do. That was the economic theory of the British Imperialist war collaborator Mahatma Gandhi. Humanity has only had a peak at what can be accomplished with socialism. We have also seen what happens when capitalists are allowed the freedom to do whatever will produce a profit. Like WW1, WW2 and the atom bomb.
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Ann Linley I've had to buck the system since 8th grade. It's easy to give a student a low grade when its something very subjective like English. There a student can write a book report on an imaginary book and can get an A. They taught us how to read using phonics and then wonder why we can't spell. You have poor hand writing. We will take off for that. Use a pen but don't be sloppy and cross out words because we will take off for that. Things and concepts like imaginary numbers can't be faked. Teachers said I did sloppy work but they couldn't argue that I didn't get the right answer.
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Ann Linley Study money? Like how the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank works to replace wage cuts with inflation or why the creation of a huge Social Security trust fund is completely unnecessary and how money earmarked for social security goes into the general fund? In about 1934 the federal reserve bough up all gold on the orders of Roosevelt at about $24 an once. After WW2 the price was changed to $35 dollars an once. In about 1972 Nixon closed the door on the $35 an once exchange rate making it a fiat currency. Today's gold price is $1284.00 an once. Now which would you rather own Federal Reserve stock available only to the banks and the ruling class or federal reserve notes (US money)? This is why when I hear arguments for lemonade stand capitalism I can't help laughing.
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Ann Linley My problems stem from reading to many books in the library and on the internet which has made me into an even greater intellectual junkie. The second part is getting into to many arguments with authorities. I will continue on with my jousting pole approach towards capitalism because its simply what I was meant to do.
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@jpg7616 High wage jobs which are mostly skilled are replaced first. This is what drove the auto industry to robotics. This is also why the general level of education is what many jobs are reduced to. So if you don't understand numbers you can't be a cashier. The same with being a truck driver if you haven't learned to drive a car how can you start driving a truck?
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niki wiki Seems to me he hit the nail on the head. You are just unhappy because he pointed to all the recent policies of the two parties. I would go further and say we need a socialist revolution.
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@i Draw Systems that reward merit and skill. Like the old mafia Don said. "The only difference between them and us is they have a license to steal." The most successful company in the world Apple Computer was lead by a fraud named Steve Jobs. Who started his business career building blue boxes to defraud Ma Bell of her toll charges. The most important skill in business is how to cheat and steal without getting caught.
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@johnc.8298 Blah Blah Blah. The system is in crisis. That's why socialism is on the agenda. You can't control your greed and that will be your downfall.
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@joelsherrer8784 Well if your a Brit, Canadian or Aussy you think that socialism is the Labour Party, NDP or Aus Labour Party. In the US the social democrats are still working on a Democratic (Capitalist) Party takeover. The best organized and most serious group in the US is the Socialist Workers Party. TheMilitant.com
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@AbsitInvidea You talking about Jeff Bezos (owner of Washington Post), George Soros and Warren Buffet. Liberalism the ideology of reformists.
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@Diabolical05 Your talking about the lemonade stand capitalist not the big monopolists like AT&T, GE, GM, Ford and the rest of the big companies. So we should all feel sorry for the Pizza shop owners who are being driven out of business by Domino's? Capitalism works toward creating monopoly not more small business. If you are allowed special minimum wage exceptions what would prevent other companies from getting them? A small businessman should welcome a national government paid healthcare system because it would give him a known cost instead of having to deal with insurance companies looking to extract as much as possible from him with a yearly contract or not being able to offer healthcare while bigger companies can do so leaving him at a disadvantage in the labor market.
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@Spartacus547 Unlike MAGA there is no trademark on the word socialist. Conservatives use the word socialist as a swear word like liberals use Fascist in their battles over how best to save capitalism.
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@JK-ip5zc That makes no difference. It just means he has a different ass to kiss.
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@dailyrant4068 Small business is gobbled up by big business as a general law of capitalism. Raising the minimum wage will push up all wages. Rents are high in the cities if anything it will work to increase economic activity in the rural areas.
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@Joe Crawford I can and have read a number of economic texts online at Marxsits.org, I've also read, Che Guevara: Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism. Capitalism has its own built in economic contradictions that the ruling classes can not escape that will send it into first trade war and then real world war. Just like it did in the 20th Century.
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@johnc.8298 Lets not forget the newest reason is they went to these elite universities where they are now a meritocracy who rule based upon IQ.
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EPLURiBusUNUM Before they could leave the farm. Farm productivity had to rise. Now that millions of poor peasants are now workers that just make the working class all that much stronger. The capitalist are greedy. Their greed can't help to create class struggle. Just remember you need us but we don't need you. We are a class of people who produce everything while you do nothing. Steve Jobs who you worship began his business career as an industrial thief. He build and sold blue boxes to defraud AT&T of their long distance toll charges.
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@chadasonmcgraw Like most bosses you can talk about much with us without bringing up bodily functions as a way to explain everything.
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@user-fs7dv3bq2v Capitalism internal workings lead to crisis after crisis each worse than the last. There own greed leads them into a dead end. This guy sold whole foods to Amazon. Workers control of industry not bosses controlling a market and a telling everybody what wage they will pay and what price we pay. Use collective union bargaining against boss greed. Wages have been stagnant since 1973 while bosses have been getting all the gains of increased productivity. They have been using the Central Bank to rob us blind.
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TheMilitant.com
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@ceu160193 And when every market is full what happens then? Trade war and then comes world war all brought to you by capitalism.
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@austin7037 A full market is when nothing more can be sold at a profit. Every capitalist wants to make a profit but because of the way capitalism works every capitalist looks for signs that a market has reached the point where continued production will not result in creating more commodities than can be sold at a profit. To continue further would result in losses. So production halts despite needs.
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@austin7037 Considering the unions in New England had fought to keep the blue laws in place that prohibited non essential Sunday work until at least the late 1960's and early 1970's I'd say religion failed to halt the introduction of retail work on Sundays in Arkansas and other parts of the country first while the unions fought it until bosses filed law suites and made arguments claiming religion was interfering with business profits in the New England states.
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@austin7037 Ford Motor company in the 1930's. The same happens to thousands of businesses during a recession. Suddenly their is no market for their product. You might want to listen what Titan Gilroy of Titan CNC has to say about how the 2008 crisis affected him and his company. I don't agree with either his conclusions or his solutions but it is a look into the mind of a businessman who suddenly finds no market for his product.
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@norobbery I wonder where the innovations are in selling groceries? Most likely the ability to hire workers a close to minimum wage? Since the civil war the Industrialist and then eventually the finance capitalists have been in control of the US government. When FDR passed the acts and reforms in the 1930's it was to save capitalism not to usher in socialism/communism. FDR was often quoted as being the friend of the businessman. By setting a minimum wage and outlawing child labor this prevents the furthering of a class of exploited peons. When it was first passed in 1938 its secondary reason was to slow the growth of unionization by the CIO industrial union movement. This blaming of the intellectuals for the problems of capitalism is just an exposure of capitalism not needing educated workers but workers who follow orders which is what the school system is suppose to create.
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@norobbery Capitalism destroyed agricultural slavery in favor of the wage labor, tenant farming, free farmers and industrial farms. Tenant farming in the US has all but been totally destroyed by mechanization and small farmers are driven off the land by government policies favoring the industrial large scale farming and imported food.
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What days a worker gets off depend on the industry. Construction workers seldom work overtime, nights or weekends.
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Crony less capitalism? When was capitalism not a system of corruption legal and illegal? We had a system of unregulated capitalism before the 1929 stock market crash. After the crash the working class paid with untold misery which finally resulted in WW2. Because of the destruction of industrial Europe capitalism had a rebirth allowing the restart of primate capital accumulation. Capitalism is such that unemployment is a natural feature. We don't see it directly today like after the great depression because of all the social programs first instituted by the Roosevelt Administration meant to save capitalism from itself. Food stamps replaced some of the soup kitchens. Welfare replaced some of the begging and Medicare/Medicaid boosted life expectancy. Rather than have massive numbers of the unemployed appear at government offices they send checks in the mail, EBT cards, or to debit cards. Taking them away will make the capitalist richer and the working class poorer.
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@ThorDog81 Wages stopped rising with productivity in 1973.
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@dragonore2009 Capitalism also gives the world great economic crisis and two world wars. The ability to create great means of wealth also means the ability to create great destructive capacity.
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@davidgill3356 In general with capitalism every increase in productivity is a curse upon the workers. Ford's River Rouge plant where on one side Ford Ships docked with Coal, Iron Ore and limestone docked employed 100,000 men and on the others side out came Ford vehicles. Today the Rouge employees 7,500 workers.
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@davidgill3356 As Union Steelworkers we got incentive pay based on the number of tons rolled. I doubt this guy increases pay in retails big season from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Instead they put on more bosses for speed up, hire part timers and micromanage everything. What he really should be saying is increases in productivity shift profits to that firm or industry. Pay is determined in the class struggle.
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@davidgill3356 In Retail it has to do with getting things off the truck and onto the sales floor. You can't buy that which isn't on the floor. Managers work in nonunion stores and their year end bonus is tied to total sales for the year. So its always push push push. In a rolling mill it depends on the type of steel your rolling. Steel destined for the pipe mill will go through the mill with seldom a problem. Any other kind of steel which has a different destination can have problems to much or not enough time in the furnace, coming out faster than it can be picked up by cranes afterwords or cobbles where steel goes up in the air like red hot ribbon candy. With a cobble they declare an emergency so foremen normally sleeping in offices somewhere can come out and clear it.
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@davidgill3356 Of course its about politics. This guy is a CEO and you think what? That he has no class bias? Sure like Walmart where everyone from the CEO to the guy working on the floor is an associate. One of the basic ideas of socialism is to spread any increases in productivity equally among all the workers. The capitalist pay more to union workers because a strike stops the flow of profits. The biggest profits flow through the industrial monopolies. Not someone running a lemonade stand.
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Fairness? There is absolutely nothing fair about capitalism what so ever.
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@oku12 Conservatives want a return to the days when everyone could return to the farm when the got sick or old in the cities.
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@chadasonmcgraw So Ayn Rand is not a conservative who constantly called Social Security immoral until it came time to get her own old age check. Quit the Pro Birth sob stories. You want government intervention into the personal lives of women because you can't trust them. Instead you trust the rotten apple cops and the sky pilots.
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