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Chapter 10 (Capitalism)
Topics List
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Labour: Why it's Always a Buyer's Market
Only when there occurs a sudden leap in technology can labourers with the right skills create a temporary seller's market for their labour.
The Capitalist State: Keeping us Enslaved in a False Illusion of Freedom
The purpose of politics in the capitalist state is to contain its common people within a web of delusion which convinces them that they are free.
Car Design: Tuned to Extract as Much as Possible From the Consumer
Want a car that's safe, energy-efficient, truly large enough for a family, and completely user-maintainable and reparable? You'll have to make it yourself.
Fashion and Technology-Driven Obsolescence Keeps The Market Hungry
The most effective way to sustain high consumption is to maintain it at its high initial level by launching a constant stream of new products.
Road to Chaos: Global Economy is Fibrillating towards Self-destruction
Life under late twentieth century capitalism has started to exhibit the characteristics of chaos. The future is becoming increasingly unpredictable.
Capitalism: A View From Below
Unrestrained free-market capitalism is enveloping the globe at an ever-quickening pace. What will be the final consequences for the inhabitants of Planet Earth?
Clerical Stupidity and Bureaucratic Errors Endanger Economic Survival
Driven from above by political pressure, clerks in government departments are bent on interpreting 'the rules' to the advantage of their employers.
Geographical Constraints put The Captured Consumer at a Disadvantage
Unlike his lowly customer, the globally connected capitalist is free to buy in one part of the world, produce in another and sell in a third.
Atoms have a Natural Size Limit: Corporate Entities should have one also
If governments fail to co-operate to set an upper size limit for multinational corporates, the social and economic consequences for the world could be catastrophic.
Data Protection Act: Re-establishes State Monopoly over Personal Data
It was heralded as the ultimate protector individual privacy, but real achievement as to re-establish state monopoly in personal information on the population at large.
When Wives went to Work, The Market just soaked up The Extra Income
When men alone went out to work, families just managed to survive. Now women also go out to work, families still just manage to survive.
Capitalism generates Disparity: Without Redistribution it would Constipate
Many think the fairest way of redistributing wealth is by means-testing and targeting the poor. However, there are systematic reasons why this can't work.
Effects of Capitalism: Growing Frustration and Erosion of Personal Worth
Capitalism foists its increasingly prolific and diminutive products upon its hapless slaves in exchange for their labour, generating a growing legacy of waste and pollution.
The Capitalist Enterprise: A Systems Model
The capitalist enterprise is a system of accommodation, materials, labour and machinery whose function is to generate income for its proprietor.
Market Expansion: A Way of Combating Saturation in a Local Market
One way to sustain the high consumption of a product is to expand its market continually from local to national to international to global.
Law is Increasingly Re-Formulated to Fail-Safe on The Side of Authority
Government departments now apply fail-safe engineering to their procedures. But with whose safety are they concerned - that of the citizen or that of the state?
Fouling Pets: Welcome to Our Beautiful 100 hectare Municipal Dog Latrine
The cramped conditions of modern suburbia are not natural. It leaves both human beings and their pets with insufficient open space.
The Free Market is not Free to All, only to an Elite Clique of Corporates
The free market is not the common possession of all. Like the bounteous lands of the Earth, it owned and ruled by a favoured few.
Capitalism Creates Conflict of Interests Between Producer and Consumer
A product is bought to work as long and as cheaply as possible, but it is sold for as much as possible as often as possible.
Rate of Growth and Decay of Product Sales in a given Market
The rate at which the market consumes a product is also, by default, the rate at which the product is produced and sold.
Mission of The Health Service: Clinical Need or Corporate Profit?
What should be its prime directive: clinical need or corporate profit - transplants for terminally ill children or face-lifts for the ageing wealthy?
Why State Funding For Education?
Grants for first-degree students are now too low to sustain a student through a three-year degree course without covert top-ups from parents.
House Tax: Impetuous Impediment upon the Basic Human Need of Shelter
Shelter is one of man's basic needs. But the capitalist state taxes it in a way that bears little relation to its occupant's ability to pay.
A Clerical Error by State Bureaucracy can Ruin the Innocent Individual
A clerical error, which gave rise to an administrative oversight, almost resulted in my assets being confiscated to pay a debt I did not owe.
Product Line Tuning Invariably leads to The Poor subsidising The Rich
Upping the price and throwing in 'free' extras is simply a way of forcing one's poorer customers to buy more than they really want.
Interest Rates: Negative Equity is a Dept Resulting From Theft by Usury
Interest rates rise. House prices fall. I'm forced to sell for less than I paid. What have I gained that I should owe the debt I inherit?
Street Kids: Denied The Open Natural Habitat of The Human Life-Form
With both parents forced to work to pay the mortgage, their unsupervised children run riot in our streets, being a thorough nuisance to everybody else.
The Cost of Labour: Market Availability and Price of The Needs of Life
The dominant element in the cost of production is labour. People are expensive. The capitalist would be happy to be able to do without them.
The Language Barrier: Guarantor of International Misunderstanding
Different languages are not only different ways of coding meanings into sounds and signs, they are also different ways of looking at the world.
External House Lights: the epitome of Selfishness and Inconsiderateness
Suddenly in the dead of night, without warning, your bedroom ceiling is floodlit by a powerful 500 watt quartz halogen lamp.
Limited Liability: Carte Blanche for The Rich
To protect himself, the capitalist fabricated a legal entity called the Limited Liability Company through which he could pass his risks onto the unsuspecting poor.
Maximising Profit by Maximising Income and Minimising Costs
To maximise his income, the capitalist must force his unit price and rate of production as high, and his unit cost as low, as possible.
Why is Law the only Product not subject to the Law of Merchantability?
A product must be in good order and fit for its intended purpose. If not, its supplier is liable for any damage it may cause.
Capitalists: an Exclusive Minority of Devious Greed-driven Opportunists
Capitalists are a world-wide minority of opportunist who strive single-mindedly for unlimited self-gain by gambling the livelihoods of the rest of humanity.
Minimum Wage: A Natural Economic Quantum, Not a Political Expedient
The value of the minimum wage is determined by what is acceptable. But acceptable to whom - they who decide it, or they who endure it?
National Insurance: Not an Insurance by Most People's Understanding
My contributions are supposedly to provide support in times of sickness. But in times of real need this support has for me always been denied.
Anti-social Behaviour: What Else can You Expect from Caged Animals?
Industrial free market capitalism has dispossessed the labouring majority of their rural heritage and caged them in the up-market work camp we call suburbia.
Noise Nuisance: Profit-Motivated Builders Pack Houses Too Close
The noise in one house is therefore readily transmitted to houses adjoining it. The noise of rowdy children, domestic arguments, music systems, television sets, workshops.
Omnipotent Cretins: the Larger an Organisation the More Stupid it Seems
These towering idiots impose upon the individual their own Draconian obligations according to an increasingly complex labyrinth of mutually incompatible and totally incomprehensible rules.
Unequal Opportunity: Top Skills are Polarising into Cheaper Economies
Levels of education are equalising much faster than the values of national currencies. As a result, top skills are polarising into the poorer countries.
A 'Democratic Majority' is Not Necessarily >= 50% of The Electorate
You would think that to gain a democratic majority you would need more than 50% of the electorate to vote for you. Not so.
Product Population: When The Market Get Saturated, No More Income
Under the influence of effective marketing, the market population of a given product starts off small, grows to a maximum, then stops.
The Law as Written is Irrelevant: It's the Law as Delivered that Matters
The rules, as applied, by which the self-employed are assessed for financial aid and relief, have for me proven to be wholly unworkable.
Man: an Economic Resource to be used and abused by a Corporate Elite
Once upon a time, unlike today, mankind had dominion over the Earth. It was as if he were the very reason for its existence.
Declining Market Value is Making High Tech Skills not Worth The Effort
Should the effort to acquire a professional skill become too large relative to the remuneration for applying it then few will bother to acquire it.
Speeders: Increased Danger on Roads From Macho-Appeal Car Design
The car, in concept, is an ideal means of personal and family transport. Sadly, this ideal has been diluted, then ruined, by profiteering producers.
Spin-Machine: Spins an Illusion of Freedom within a Reality of Servitude
Those who have, work not. Those who work, have not. And their work creates the wealth which powers the machine that sustains their illusion.
Citizen or Subject? We exist to serve an Elite Minority as and when Required
The state exists to serve the citizen: not the citizen the state. The subject exists to serve the state: not the state the subject.
Supermarkets may Soon Control Mankind's Access To His Needs of Life
These commercial giants now control the nation's entire food supply and distribution system. One day they will probably control the world's.
Government Departments: Exigent Lords of their Erstwhile Subjects
Public relations experts are working hard to revamp the image of the government department as a customer-oriented service. But a leopard cannot change its spots.
Most of the Fruit of the Labourer's Toil is Siphoned off in Profit and Tax
Under capitalism, man ends up with very little of the fruit of his labour. Most is forcibly confiscated to feed corporate profit and state revenue.
Tax Figures of an Honourable Member of The Long Term Unemployed
Yes, the unemployed, who exist on the most disgracefully miserable level of welfare, still pay tax in several forms.
Income Tax: Fairest form of Tax Today, but not Entirely True to its Name
Some religious organisations seem to equate income tax with the ancient tithe. There is, however, a far-reaching and fundamental difference between them.
Inheritance Tax: Vital Relief Valve Against Over-Concentration of Capital
There are two fundamental kinds of tax. The first taxes the rich more than the poor. The second taxes the poor more than the rich.
Tax on Consumption penalises The Poor, stifles Trade, encourages Barter
Confiscating a small proportion of all that is consumed reduces what the poor are able to buy, thus, in effect, making them even poorer.
Trickle-down Economics: The Fundamental Reason Why it Cannot Work
Wealth no more trickles down from the rich to the poor than does the wealth of a farmer into the feeding trough of his plough horse.
Product Tuning: Cutting Out The Slow Movers, Pushing The Fast Ones
Narrowing product range to include only high-priced fast movers may increase short-term corporate profit but it diminishes the variety available to the consumer.
Unjust is a Law that Protects The Rich from The Poor
The purpose of the law is to facilitate and enforce the containment and exploitation of the poor by the rich. It was never intended to dispense justice.
Water Rates: a Large and Insidious Tax on the Most Basic Need of Life
Water is essential to life, yet the capitalist state levies upon it what must be the most insidious form of taxation it could possibly devise.
Labourer: One who Possesses No Means for Turning Work Into Wealth
A labourer is one who has been dispossessed of the natural means of transforming his own work into his own needs of life.
Capitalism: The Mother of Invention or The Father of Stagnation?
What one's labour yields under a capitalist economy is thought to be far greater than what it would yield under an egalitarian one. Not true.
The Lost Inheritance, Chapter 10: Structure
The Ruthless Rules of Welfare
When society's ruthless rules enforced by bloody-minded stupidity deprive an individual of his basic needs of life, what should he do?
Letters
Student Accommodation
The increasing requirement for rich guarantors in student tenancy agreements is driving tertiary education more and more into the exclusive realm of the rich.
Cancer of Capitalism

Start of book. About this book. About its author. © Robert J Morton 24 Sep 1999.