Re: What do workers compete for?

On Fri, 14 May 2004 01:03:37 GMT, "Robert J. Kolker"
<robert_kolker@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>Albert wrote:
>
>> Ah.  If only that were true of capitalists as well as workers.
>
>There are capitalists and there are capitalists. It is the entrepreneurs 
>who carry civilization on their backs, like Atlas. This are the 
>innovators and the inventors.

Few innovators and inventors are entrepreneurs, and fewer still of
those are successful ones.  The ones I know personally are not nearly
as financially successful as the parasites.

>Folks like these should be well rewarded.

Too bad the truly productive usually aren't.

>No doubt your version of a Capitalist is some asshole who clips coupons 
>from bonds he bought we money he never earned.

Many capitalists are far worse than that.  They are takers, crooks,
destroyers.  One very rich one I know personally makes his money by
getting people to invest in his worthless companies, few of which ever
actually produce anything, and none of which ever pay a dividend or
even make a profit.  The more experience I get in business, the more
people I see like that.  Even when I see the innovators and inventors
and truly productive entrepreneurs making a go of it, what usually
happens is that some rich guy comes along and sees the juicy prey, and
finds some legal way to transfer the rightful rewards of the
productive to themselves (and yes, one of them did it to me).

>Yes, there are those. 
>Perhaps if the world followed Carnegie's example that would not have 
>happened. Carnegie who made a billion $$$$ when gold was $20 an ounce 
>did not leave any money or very little money to his children. The bulk 
>of it went into foundations and a system of free libraries he founded so 
>that workingmen could read, learn and improve their situation.

IMO the productive are far more likely to do things like that than the
crooks, parasites and rent seekers.

>I think when a rich man dies, his wealth should be burned up in a grand 
>potlach. That way his children would not get and neither would the 
>government. A person should be able to take it with him when he dies.

Dumb.  If that was the way it worked, we'd all still be living in
caves.

-- Roy L