Ever heard of the term "gilded cage?"
I know you've definitely heard of the term "you're full of crap".
A cage limits your actions. As I already described, I am exempt from all the limits employers generally impose on their workers--many workers can't surf the Internet or make personal calls on the company phone or keep an X-Box in the desk or wear blue jeans and sneakers to work.
I can. Therefore no cage.
Yes, I have to work for my salary. But then, work is inevitable and unavoidable. If there were no employers and no evil corporations, you would still have to work in order to survive--you would be finding your own food, building your own house, and you wouldn't have any electricity because you don't know how to build your own generator or refine your own gasoline. In short, if not for corporations, you would be working a lot longer hours for less stuff.
So, how do we prevent people from being enslaved into a life of servitude??? Simple:
allow them to choose their own profession. Oh, wait--capitalism already does that.
How do we distribute goods fairly? Simple: give everybody an allotment of points and let them spend the points however they like. Aww, gee, we already have that--it's called money. Everyone in here who was whining about the evils of money? You got the wrong target. Money is merely a proxy for food, shelter, computers, sunglasses, and other goodies--the problem isn't money. The problem is that humans are naturally greedy. Including you Commies--you're trying to upend the current system and replace it with one in which you get more goodies for less work. In short, you're no different from Bill Gates. (OOOHHHH, that one HAD to hurt!!!)
How do we decide how much money a worker should get? Also simple: if power is to be placed in the hands of the workers, then the workers should be left to decide for themselves. Big surprise:
capitalism already does that too. Employers make offers, and YOU choose which one to take--if any. Nobody said you had to take any of them. Go buy yourself a farm. Or start a job in your own garage building computers for people. Hmmmm.....that's how Alienware started out.....
The reason I ditched this thread in anger--before very quickly getting lured back in--was because people in here aren't playing fair.
-- Whenever an employer makes a gesture to improve working conditions, you call "gilded cage" and completely disregard the fact that the cage of labor is not placed around us by employers--it's simply a fact of life.
-- Several of you leftist wingnuts have pointed out various failures of capitalism--for example, Ondskan pointing out that Cuba has better health care--while neglecting to point out the 473 different ways Cuba has failed in comparison to the U.S.: freedom of speech, economic strength, quality of luxury goods, and quality of medical care (for those who do get it) being just a few. The real truth is that the score is Cuba 1, U.S. 473.
-- Then there's the tactic of holding capitalism to an impossible standard. The U.S. can't be the absolute best at everything. Yet Ondskan and others did just that. Well, if you tally up all the ways in which every (attempted) Communist state has failed, the list becomes very, very, VERY long. A lot longer than capitalism's list of failures.
When one's opponents are cheating, there are only two choices--either cheat better than them or boot them from the table. Since I'm not a mod, I can't boot people, so I guess that leaves playing dirty.....
