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Social Problems and Fighting Capitalism By Punkerslut
Greetings, When perusing through your list of issues, I found myself almost always taking your position, too. Fighting unemployment, easing difficulties in forming a union, fair trade acts with third world nations, full educational opportunities for everyone, responsible foreign policy, and fighting for environmental protections. However, when you decide to look at each of these individual positions, there's something that immediately comes to light. In almost each of these issues, the wealthy, property-owning class is completely opposed. Unemployment is not fought by any business -- they try to encourage it as much as possible. This is why there are so many, 100 million dollar scams in the finance realm, from Archer Daniels Midland to J.P. Morgan. In the case of BCCI, the amount exceeded $15 billion in 1990 dollars. Where does all this price-fixing and monopoly come from? Those companies that control enough of the market to benefit by colluding together. And those companies that refuse must suffer a far more hellish, competitive environment. What's the most profitable way for a business to work? By collusion, cooperation, and starving the markets of needed commodities. Famines are declared not by the weather, but by banking and financial executives. Similarly, depressions and famine are not "consequential, misunderstood phenomena." Where a market only has high-cost provisions, that is all that will be sold. And where employment falls, workers will submit to lower wages and worsened conditions. Both of these are simple, basic observations of economics. Naturally, one must conclude that it is within the interest of the property-owning class to manufacture poverty. Where companies work together to dominate a market, they increase their profits at the same time that they contribute to unemployment. Why spend more money to hire people, when we could simply triple our profits by increasing prices with other companies? It's the form of maximizing profit that requires the least investment on part of the company. It is a low-risk, high-gain situation. And, if the words by Adam Smith mean anything, "whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject." ("Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith, 1776, book 1, chapter 8.) We're living in a world where a human being, with the right machinery, can produce more houses, food, and clothing than ten thousand human beings from 1,000 years ago. And yet, we're still living in a world where people suffer for want of the basic necessities? There are still individuals without food, shelter, and running water? How far have we really come, when the meanest peasant from Ancient Greece o the Mediterranean lived in conditions far better than some Americans? Poverty doesn't exist because of "cyclical functions," which are disproven by virtually any set of economic data. Poverty and unemployment exist because it is profitable: maintaining a system where everyone must submit their labor, or go without income, and where everyone must submit their wealth, or go without food. There is no point in beating these slaves -- if they do not come back, and give in, they will be punished appropriately by death! Then consider the other problems which you intend to fight. Among your struggles is a fight for a law that would reduce difficulties in unionizing and increase the penalties for violating workers' rights. Even today, there is no criminal penalty for refusing to pay a worker's wages, but finance companies are allowed to double your debt every year. Who is it that you expect to want to unionize and improve their conditions? The workers, naturally. And who is it that you expect to fight unionizing, and to fight the workers? The rich bosses, of course. Who could benefit by importing the products of slavery into our market? Rich, wealthy Capitalists -- whether it was Siemens importing products made with Jewish slave labor, or it's Wal-Mart importing products made with Asian slave labor. Do the workers benefit from this when they are slaves, or when the presence of slaves reduced their wages? Their conditions can only become worsened. Who benefits from free education? It is always a toll on the wealthy to support the poor. Who benefits from wars and battles, conquest and imperialism? It is the one who gets the contract to develop new land, the one who gets cheap and oppressed laborers, the one who have new markets to exploit and industries to dominate. Who is it that suffers for environmental policy? It is certainly the worker, exposed to all types of toxins, and deprived of any effective or cheap healthcare to reduce problems everyone suffers. Whereas the wealthy would have to pay for safe machinery. The rich Capitalist spreads cancer when they can bottle up the cure, they push famine and hunger into every distant land when their fields are overflowing and unharvested -- they pump out petroleum oil onto the ground, instead of letting workers extract it, so that they can drive up prices. In the words of Thoreau, from Walden, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The problems of society today are essentially the same that we have been struggling against for thousands of years. There has not been a viable solution for resolving any of these problems. It is the isolation of economic power into the hands of a few -- the natural result of our industrialized, Capitalist system, whether it was practiced in France, Britain, Germany, Russia, or the United States. A very few being able to control the rest by their hunger -- this has been the underlining point of our problems, whether you look to poverty, unemployment, education, wars, or exploitation of people in the third world. If you are not willing to strike at the cause of these problems, then you will never defeat the suffering that humanity must face. You may indeed strike down a branch, but it will grow back, and in the time you take it down, other branches will swell to twice the size. The problem is not simply everything that happens to be caused by Capitalism -- it is Capitalism itself! The problem is that as a "liberal lobbying organization," you do not approach the people. You approach the politicians, the political parties, churches, corporations, and every other form of special interests. In short, you are approaching groups that have established themselves strictly by their possession of wealth. Think of the person you are asking progressive change from: they have been bought and paid by the wealthiest interests in the nation, and like anyone hungry enough, they are loyal to their supporters. So, you're going up against those who have been hand-chosen by wealthy, powerful Capitalists. And you're asking them to reduce the excesses of Capitalism, to reduce the exploitation and the misery of the common people. There is something fundamentally wrong with this. Just like with receiving favors from a king, do not forget that they have the power to take anything away that they give. You are not raising the awareness in the people of who is really trying to take away their opportunity and liberty. Rather, you sit around with the representatives of money and wealth, and then you beg them to be a little kinder. There is no method of politics that has such a rate of failure as this tactic. And for proof of this, investigate any oppressed group of the past thousand years. Have any of them made any advancement by submitting to the path and method set for them by their masters? Absolutely not -- it has always been a form of trickery and deceit, to lure in those who genuinely believe in freedom, and to make them helpless in causing any real change. Thank you for reading this far. I patiently await a response. Sincerely,
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