If the ruling oligarchy of our country gets us working stiffs to start elbowing each other in pursuit of individual ownership AND lose sight of the power of consensus among workers on labor issues, then we struggle from weakness against their strength ... and the balance of the "dialectic" inherent in capitalism between asset capital plus knowledge capital on one hand vs. labor on the other is thrown out of kilter toward wealth as power ...
I believe it is the potential win-win game of the marketplace that energizes capitalism ... when and where both sides believe they get what they want ... which is possible in the market ... where the seller gets his/her price and the buyer gets his/her product or service ... both are satisfied ... and will trade with each other again.
The problems arise when either side gets the upper hand.
But trying to have a so-called "free" market is impossible as long as there are significant externalities (costs to the marketing comunity that are unpaid out of the price of goods and services or rents ... such as we see in the tobacco companies avoiding the costs of health care for the diseases smoking and second-hand smoke cause).
What we are left with is reason and attempting to have as rational a market as possible.
The gibbersih of the free market and the Invisible Hand taking care of the common good is simply a ploy by the oligarchy to amass wealth and power ... sending the economy into a tailspin sooner or later due to the imbalance of power ... as plane that has lost a wing on the left.
It is also true if labor gets the upper hand and too much power ... losing the wing on the right.
Note: Posted origianlly as a comment on the Vanity Fair website: V.F. Dish
http://boards.vanityfair.com/forum.jspa?forumID=1&start=0
under thread, "In response to minimum wage righties push for $2.13 an hour"
http://boards.vanityfair.com/thread.jspa?threadID=15802&tstart=0
Posted: Aug 18, 2006 9:43 AM
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