A capitalist is defined as an individual whose annual income on the basis of owning, rather than actually working themselves, is so significant that they do not need to work. 

Many people with only bank or investment accounts, without any enterprise (and thus employees), would fit this.

We only "need" capitalists within a capitalist system to start big companies because it requires a huge amount of money to afford factories and sizable real estate to have a high-earning company business.

Yes. But same as one capitalist could put in a million dollars, a million workers could put in one dollar. That's my point.

Workers cannot afford to start such companies, and can only hope to start small businesses that do not permit them to cease working themselves

Yes. And this still changes their game, being able to control their labor and income better than as employees, even if they cannot quit working completely. In any case, no business was born big. All started small.

What I did say is that workers do not need capitalists to run industries, because they are already run by workers, even if the workers do not control their own product under the current system.

You know? It is the same with the state and citizens. Citizens already run all of society (and of course, the economy, as a part of society) with no need for the state.

You would do your share of the useful societal work at that factory, but you would have full access to the general social store, which would entail the full fruit of your labor produced by all industries, e.g., food, a home, communications technology, access to medical care, access to recreational facilities, etc. 

How would we know how many steaks my 100 cars were the same work as?

and for largely the same reason: greater availability of doctors in that particular area, as opposed to rural areas.

But I thought it was technologically possible for doctors to be available anywhere! And with a public system, the price tag for the transportation doesn't exist anymore. Why would some area not have doctors?

Not only that, but the emphasis could be placed on curing and prevention, as opposed to simply making a serious condition manageable because it wasn't profitable to cure or prevent something as opposed to constantly treating its symptoms. 

Euh? Perhaps you've never heard about the vaccine industry?

And it works both ways. If you know you're going to receive medical attention no matter what, and that you won't (directly) pay anything for it, why take care to prevent it?

and are by far more overworked and underpaid than workers in any other First World nation, 

The reason for overworked is right in the article. Most other First World countries outright ban or very seriously limit overtime. The reason for wages stagnating is the drive for exhanging existing jobs for automation, outsourcing or illegal immigration, leaving only few and comparatively bad jobs to be performed across many industries, in particular among low qualified segments.

Pinochet was a puppet of the U.S., and was hardly worker reform-minded. Allende was the one who was favored by the Left in Chile, and he was subject to all the typical opposition from outside U.S. government and business intervention as Chavez was in Venezuela, and just about every truly left-wing politician in Latin and South America. The U.S. government and corporations have worked hand-in-hand to foil any true movement towards left-of-center politics and economics south of the North American border... not always with full success, but enough to keep things far from worker-friendly over there. 

Hate on the US government all you want. Chile in 1970 had hungry people. Chile in 1990 did not. Chile today is so prosperous that it has an illegal immigration problem from Peruvians and Bolivians, and that Argentines cross the border to buy things in Chile that they don't have in Argentina or are too expensive there. These are facts. You may think this was in spite of pro market reforms; I say it was because of them. But whichever the reason, Chilean poor are better off now than they were before the coup.

The reverse with Venezuela in about every respect. Venezuela in the 1960s had about eradicated all the signs of extreme poverty: malnutrition, illiteracy, you name it. It was making good strides to improving its agriculture and increase its clout among oil producing nations. It was becoming a services hub for Latin America for its good position and great social stability. Workers from the newly democratic Southern Europe countries worked in Venezuela because it was richer and more stable than their homelands. Then its politicians discovered that they could embezzle oil money; but the problem was that when the oil money went low because of international price falls, then the government no longer had enough to function. And an army officer saw a great opportunity to seize on that anti corruption wave to be elected with super majorities, and realized the newly poor were the most reliable voting bloc he could get and then he promised them 21st century socialism. He expropriated everything (I still cheer on his expropriation of Verizon, of course!) and what he couldn't expropriate, he price controlled out of existence. And now Venezuela is socially unstable, underfed, unable to import anything because oil is cheap again so foreign currency is not entering the country. Venezuelans who can still afford to leave (and to bribe an official for an exit pass) are doing so; those who can't are crossing illegally into Colombia and from there elsewhere. Venezuela may never have been an exemplary market economy, but from the corruption ridden 1980s and 1990s into the socialist millennium decades, its changes have all been in the direction of further control over the economy.


Yes, and especially so if we lived in a moneyless economy where an alternative to trees were found for producing paper that wouldn't have fiscal opposition since it would be "too expensive" to develop, and interfere with the profit interests of too many lobbyists who pour campaign money into politicians' pockets.

Such as the Kindle made by Amazon?







Cuteness is to die for
Cuteness cannot fail
Cuteness knows no limit
Cuteness will prevail