Ableton Forum

Mondays are the days that I hate capitalism the most.

anybody human wrote:Capitalism: I and some other people put our money in a relatively small, locally owned bank. My boss and her husband take out a small business loan and open a coffee shop. They hire me, I get a paycheck, I buy soft synths. That guy makes a living. Value has been created.

Finance Capitalism: Some friends and I have a whole lot of money, we start a hedge fund. We take out a billion dollar loan from a large, multinational bank. We buy a potato chip company, we fire everyone and close the factory. We take out another loan, this time for 2 billion dollars and pay ourselves a bunch of fees and commissions. We send the factory overseas for cheap labor. We've "restructured". We've "cut costs". We take the new potato chip company private, it now has 3 billion dollars of debt. Somebody is already making securities out of that new debt (more commissions and fees). It's magic! We've made millions in a couple months. No value has been created. People lost their jobs (any jobs that were created pay peanuts) but everybody's happy, everybody who counts anyway. That's "Venture Capital", a form of finance capitalism.

And that's not even close to the worst of it; derivatives, securities, futures, CDO's, synthetic CDO's* {Such a thing exists-it's called a CDO Squared- imaginary fake debt that mirrors real life debt so you can sell more debt than actually even exists. Completely toxic and worthless, the govt. and banks agreed to destroy them, which will take years to unwind... }

It's all become a giant scam. I'm sure it all started out as well intentioned innovation. Maybe some of it did create value at some point in the past (unlikely), but we're way past that point now.

your post, especially,open some doors, though i have to read it a couple of times...so thanks for this.
myself's some kind of oldschool believer but something new is in there.
usually i began to avoid any kind of person like a racist who want to connect me with some kind of "connections",just for this reason.
no money offer, no business,just plain music must be the reason to earn my money.
hiding myself.
be in a warfare with this.
something like, if you want to rip me i'll give you a fuck.
"but" a open door can bring peace and understanding in those sytems (which are very time intensive i guess)
good is, quality thinking thus learning, so thanks again for your open words.

anybody human wrote:Capitalism: I and some other people put our money in a relatively small, locally owned bank. My boss and her husband take out a small business loan and open a coffee shop. They hire me, I get a paycheck, I buy soft synths. That guy makes a living. Value has been created.

Finance Capitalism: Some friends and I have a whole lot of money, we start a hedge fund. We take out a billion dollar loan from a large, multinational bank. We buy a potato chip company, we fire everyone and close the factory. We take out another loan, this time for 2 billion dollars and pay ourselves a bunch of fees and commissions. We send the factory overseas for cheap labor. We've "restructured". We've "cut costs". We take the new potato chip company private, it now has 3 billion dollars of debt. Somebody is already making securities out of that new debt (more commissions and fees). It's magic! We've made millions in a couple months. No value has been created. People lost their jobs (any jobs that were created pay peanuts) but everybody's happy, everybody who counts anyway. That's "Venture Capital", a form of finance capitalism.

And that's not even close to the worst of it; derivatives, securities, futures, CDO's, synthetic CDO's* {Such a thing exists-it's called a CDO Squared- imaginary fake debt that mirrors real life debt so you can sell more debt than actually even exists. Completely toxic and worthless, the govt. and banks agreed to destroy them, which will take years to unwind... }

It's all become a giant scam. I'm sure it all started out as well intentioned innovation. Maybe some of it did create value at some point in the past (unlikely), but we're way past that point now.

Interesting point. Of course Marx said that capitalism always becomes the sort of rabid money grubbing mess that you describe, yet communism never escaped the cult of personality or the military grip on government that we've seen unfold time and time again.
At some point maybe, people will institute simple effective and well thought out laws that regulate these problems without strangling peoples ability to be self motivated, but as it stands my opinion is that every system we've seen put into place is a self serving mess rewarding either the owning class, or the military that seized power.

Something so simple to me, but somehow seen as crazy, like the regulating of the amount of resources a single person can control, not flatlining it, but simple regulating. I see no logical reason why any one human should be worth billions while another is worth nothing, no matter how clever the billionaire is. This idea is seen as oppression by some, which is hilarious. At some point resources get taxed, and massive debt occurs, banks acquire great wealth giving fraudulent loans yet can't really be held responsible because they bought the lobbyists that pushed the politicians into laxing the lending laws. Besides they're the new nobility, and people are servile to their needs.

This is universally accepted as the case, that nothing good will come of socialism, so capitalism, which to a degree right off the bat says that one person has a right to be worth more than another, ie is right out the door saying that some are meant to serve, is considered the only working system....

Anyway the OP in this topic is a POS as far as I'm concerned, I agree with knotkranky, at least have an opinion on the subject. Starting a directionless conversation is pretty stupid.

i can't resist...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSm-pxiP ... re=related