Balance between the two, for both rely upon each other for existence. However, the balance is no longer. The 'power' has corrupted, and when that power takes absolute power, it will also corrupt absolutely. If it is not balanced it will consume itself.

It appears gail wynand doesn't take into consideration the CEOs pumping millions and millions of terrible toxic gases into our ozone layer which might kill us all off by scientifically proven global warming. He thinks freedom outweighs survival what a preposterous notion.

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the kind of "pure" capitalism you are talking about would involve no taxes and no gov't intervention.
I am in favor of this kind of capitalism and i think it's what Ron Paul is talking about.

But I think it's obvious that were not currently living under "pure" capitalism or really even capitalism.
Wall Street uses the "socialist" policies of our gov't to assist with the profits.

So I think your adherence to the ideas put forth by Ayn Rand about pure capitalism is fine, but I think it should be acknowledged that we don't live under pure capitalism .

Therefore those who profit under this system aren't the role models of capitalism that you hold them to be.

Gail_Wynand – There are several points that need to be addressed in regards to your latest entry. I’ll go at them one at a time.

You say:
If you think that an individual should act out of duty to his fellow man, that is the same justification for the implementation of communism, clearly you are uneducated on the issue and the extent of your education goes no further than the bible, I pity you, you are not human in my mind.

I say:

I certainly am educated on the subject. While it is true that evil minded people during the Bolshevik Revolution & The Cultural Revolution and probably many other evil endeavors have used this justification (acting out of duty to his/her fellow man) to implement communist régimes; let me assure you that I am neither a communist nor a collectivist. Regardless of however altruistic Marx may have tried to make his communist manifesto seem, we have seen that in actual application all communist regimes are about totalitarian government control over all of its peoples and industries. I certainly do not advocate any such thing . As for being a collectivist, I think Ron Paul said well when he said, “We acquire our rights from our Creator as individuals, not as members of one group or another”. So there is no need for movements pushing for minority rights. We should all have rights because we are all individuals. Dr. Paul is right on the money. I couldn’t agree more.
In regards to your comment that the extent of my education goes no further than the Bible, you are again incorrect. I am a college graduate who majored in mathematics, biology & literature. I did not attend a Christian institution.

2nd point: Your analogy regarding drowning is ridiculous. I have in fact saved a child from drowning in a lake in the Adirondack Mts. of upstate New York. I did not stop to contemplate my motivation for saving this child, or whether I was acting from a capitalist or communist mind set. I simple dove in and did what was right. Sheeez!

3rd point
You say: “my definition of greed is one pursuing his self interest”

This is another ridiculous statement. Under this definition an individual who chooses to make himself a peanut butter sandwich (which he enjoys) for lunch rather than a liverwurst sandwich (which he hates) is motivated by greed. This individual is indeed pursuing his self interest, but is not motivated by greed.

Webster’s Dictionary defines the English language word “greed” in the following manner:

Greed – noun- excessive or reprehensible acquisitiveness. AVARICE

What part of “excessive” & “reprehensible” do you not understand? An example of ”pursuing one’s self interest” is an individual working overtime to acquire a greater sum of legal tender in order to purchase an item he cannot otherwise afford. This is being industrious, not greedy.
There is great danger in attaching harmless definitions to words already defined for countless generations as indeed being dangerous. Perhaps my alarm at your statement that greed feeds my children is better understood now? No?

Allow me to explain from where my sensibilities originate. I will be as brief as possible. I come from an extended multi-generational family of so called blue collar workers. Every member of the two generations which immediately preceded my own, worked at one labor level job or another. Many of them worked in a meat packing plant, some on the railroad. When I was a young child all of these families got by as a one income family. Both my mother & her mother were the soul bread winners in their respective households. All of the individual households in my extended family had homes of their own with new cars in their driveways and food in the cupboards. We never went hungry. In the mid ‘70’s the meat packing plant closed. By ’81 the biggest employer in our area, General Electric, layed off 88% of its work force. From that point on, our families had to have a minimum of two working parents. Some of these individuals had to work 2 or 3(!) jobs along with whatever their spouse was brining home. Many people since the days of “Reaganomics” , “corporate downsizing” & “Trickle Down Economics” have been thrust into these very same circumstances.

I read somewhere along the lines in this thread that an individual’s salary is fairly determined by market value. In my prior professional life, I worked for one of the most respected neuroscience research groups in the area in which I live. This is what I went to college to do. I held a very respectable position as an electron microscopist and principal laboratory research assistant. My salary as determined by “fair market value” was 31k annually. Try to get by on that. I had to ditch my chosen profession. I now make a living wage working in the wonderful world of petroleum. However, my petroleum employers dictate that I work anywhere from 65 to 100 hours a week!!! Let me tell you that I needed FAR more expertise as an electron microscopist than I need now as a glorified, on call, dipstick reader. So you see, I know a thing or two in regards to being on the wrong end of corporate greed.

Individuals, such as yourself, who have obviously been on the winning side of the unbalanced economic paradigm which has existed since the mid seventies, need to stop looking down your nose in disgust at those of us who make the products & provide the services which you sell and so wildly profit from. Without our efforts you would have nothing.

I have read that there are two basic tenants of libertarianism:

1. Individual freedom
2. Freedom in business.

I am fully behind #1. It is #2 that gives me cause for concern. I don’t believe that government should have a controlling hand in either. Government meddling in personal matters leads to Orwellian systems of oppression, cruelty, & fascism.

Government meddling in business has only served to tilt the playing field to favor those companies with the lobbyists with the deepest pockets. These lobbyists reward congresspersons whom will vote either yay or nay on bills which will favor the company bribing the congress person. Government involvement in business serves to only provide a competing greedy party. Government itself. The only way that Libertarian business theory & Capitalism can continue to succeed is with compassion and caring about the well being of all those who participate. Capitalism with out compassion leads to runaway greed of those at the top of the ladder. Many of us can see the destruction caused by the greed of modern business mentality. The loss of jobs, those who have jobs having to work inhuman amounts of hours just to squeak by. Allowing these wage slaves no time to pursue the higher components of human existence like art, music love, or even just exercise & relaxation (which only makes happier, healthier workers). This responsibility to the welfare of your common man which you rile so vehemently against is the only road to the long term success of the Capitalist system. The obscene imbalance which currently exists in the corporate world supplies immense wealth to those at the top & debt & wage slavery to those beneath. This top heavy paradigm is doomed to topple & fall simply by virtue of its imbalance.

You said: “ I pity you, you are not human in my mind”

I say: I find what you say & your positive notion of greed inhumane. Since the dawn of “Reagonomics” & “Trickle Down Economics” greed has been held up for all of us to aspire to & strive for. This has been the controlling paradigm of Western mentality for 30 short years. In my last post I mentioned the term “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”, do you know what that means? It means taking the lessons learned by ALL the generations that came before you and reaching upward to even greater heights, not having to relearn the countless lessons learned by all those generations who have come before you.

Merriam Webster defines greed as “reprehensible”

The Bible lists greed as one of several deadly SINS of mankind

I’ll take their word over yours everytime.

I am shocked & apalled by this poat by Gail_Wynand. Obviously this individual does not understand the definition of "greed".

Greed does not deliver me to my workplace everyday. Necessity and a sence of moral obligation to provide for the well being of my family drive me to the work place.

Greed is listed as one of the great sins of mankind. It therefore is impossible to be a positive force. Greed is the insatiable drive to aquire weath & power at any & all cost. No matter how many lives are trampled along the way. Humankind is rapidly sinking to the depths of ruinantion due to rampent greed.

When the sole motivating source for any & all endevours is monitary profit or consolidation of power then the quality of the product or services can NEVER rise to its ultimate excellence because that would be unprofitable to share holders.

You have obviously drunk from the fountain of corporate kool-aid. You have obviously entirely lost your moral compass. It is you and yours who will ultimately be responsible for the downfall of all that was so well built upon generations of "Standing on the shoulders of Giants".

Abondoning everything for short term profit & consolidation of power will most assuredly lead to nothing but destruction.

May God have mercy upon your soul.

Ummmm, actually when the American colonies were still part of the British empire, and later when they declared their independence,the capitalistic system, as we know it today, did not exist. Modern capitalism developed after the Civil War, but while we were still colonies, the ideas of capitalism were governing the British and Colonial economies. The father of modern capitalism is Adam Smith, but America had its share of capitalistic minded men such as Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin. The purpose of the colonies was to provide material to Great Britain, who in turn would manufacture goods for sale back to the colonies and to other nations. This was known as the mercantile system. In that sense, Britain and America were capitalistic nations.

Really though Adam Smith did not even mention Capitalism at all.

“There is some economic history to it. After all, the United States with its richness of natural resources, was fertile ground for capitalism. Adam Smith’s classic book, "Wealth of Nations," first published in 1776, had a lasting influence upon our founding fathers. Capitalism’s idea of producing a commodity that could be sold for more than it actually cost to produce it, while creating jobs which lifted desperately poor people into an economic middle, class was pure genius.” (Punctuation as in original.)

Nice idea, but completely at odds with the facts. Adam Smith did not write about capitalism (a phenomenon unknown in the 18th century); he wrote about Commercial Society and about markets – of the kind located on carts and wooden stalls, emporia, small shops and quay sides. His ‘Merchants and Manufacturers’ were 'Undertakers', tradesmen, artisans and salesmen and women (butchers, bakers, ale-house owners, saddlers, horse and cattle dealers, wheelwrights, blacksmiths and forgers, tinsmiths, carpenters, miners, etc.,) and ‘machines’ were hand-tools, mainly of wood not metal (see early editions of Chamber’s encyclopedia or Diderot’s illustrated version in French, 1755) and certainly not driven by ‘fire engines’
(Smith’s words for what became steam engines in the 19th century).

It was not ‘capitalism’s idea’ to produce goods ‘to be sold for more than [they] cost to produce’; this was practiced for centuries before 19th century capitalism and had it antecedents from long before Roman times.

Smith’s model sourced the practice in the division of labour and the gradual realization of the benefits of exchanging surplus output for products (eventually money) that were wanted instead of producing everything scarce time allowed if a person did it himself. As dependence on others grew and the division of labour deepened, living standards rose to undreamt of levels; again, long before the phenomenon known as capitalism (a word invented in 1854; the word ‘capitalist’ was first used in print in 1793 and ‘capital’ in the that sense went back to the 16th century). That the division of labour and growing markets for its products would gradually raise a poverty stricken population towards opulence was a function of commercial markets. That was what ‘Wealth of Nations’ was about.

So, much as Adam Smith contributed to understanding how markets worked and how societies moved from poverty to opulence, it was not his ‘pure genius’ that promoted it or somehow occasioned it. That some of the founding fathers had read his books (‘Moral Sentiments’ and ‘Wealth of Nations’) there is no doubt. But the degree of his influence on events in the American ex-colonies and beyond is an open question still. (Broadly, he was sympathetic to the American colonists, and he knew and corresponded with Benjamin Franklin).

http://adamsmithslostlegacy.com/2006/04/smith-capitalism-and-founding-fa...

[A] wise and frugal government... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, "never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Wayles Eppes, June 24, 1813

The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire and influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.
John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, vol 1, 1787

I'll read the paper if you send it to me

Um, would the price of gas count?

The market would be entirely self correcting if it weren't possible for a small group of people to control the market - that's what I've been trying to say I think.

I'm not in favor of big government and I wish they would let the investment banks fail. I think what originally got me started was Gail's idea that a CEO's position is a reflection of his brilliance when this isn't always necessarily the case. Maybe it would be in a perfectly "free" market - but that may only exist in a test tube.

Imagine if we applied this same test to the presidency! All presidents must be brilliant or else how would they be elected to the highest gov't post in the land -- right? See my point?
There are factors to consider besides intelligence and these include nepotism and birth, amongst other variables- in our current business world as well as politics, entertainment (that cousin of Spielberg, etc.) and possibly everything except for sports (though that's a bit tainted too)

And I think Jeff Skilling is a fall guy. I'm sure others made millions and stayed out of the papers and the courts.

When people speak of greed, are they not speaking of imbalanced pursuit of self-interest?

Everyone pursues self-interest. It is entirely possible to do so without harming others, by balancing our own interest with those of others around us and the community in which we live, in recognition that our interest is related to the community's interest: not in an absolute or subservient sense, but in that we need others. If we sell goods or services we need a community of healthy, prosperous customers. If we pursue our own interests in ways that harm others we might be called greedy.

Gail, my point is that CEO's lead major companies to failure all the time. THe market proves that not all CEO's are "brilliant" at what they do. I don't think it takes a brilliant mind to lead a company to failure. I don't think the CEO's of all the companies that are now bankrupt and in need of a government bailout are brilliant - still they are paid exorbitantly even in times of failure. That doesn't correspond to the market. If they profited immensely when their companies succeeded and walked away penniless when their companies went bankrupt that would correspond to the market.

Is acting in one's self interest "greed"?

The self interest is, without argument, a positive force for the economic progress of society. If you wish to call acting upon that "greed" and tag it as a moral positive, I have no problem if we understand what we are talking about.

However, unbridled greed is a problem. By this I mean greed moved by ravenous appetities far beyond the bounds of one's legitimate needs or even equitable wants. It ignores the legitimate needs of others in its desire to satiate the lustful beast it is. It will not only deny others relief from their gnawing hungers, it will in fact feast upon those others at times.

For all the rationale in support of "free markets" we must acknowledge that "ordered liberty" (to borrow a legal phrase) is in reality what we should strive for. The "freedom" many free market advocates tout is nothing more than anarchy. Freedom is not a location, it is a direction. Freedom must be bounded to guide it in that direction or it is not freedom at all.

Greed will pull the cart, but unbridled greed will tip it over and drag its driver hither and yon over the rocky roads.

Mike IsBell

I think some people at Enron made a killing and walked away with it while the losses were generally spread out amongst the employee shareholders and those outside of the loop. I don't think that's a great example of capitalism at work - a ponzi scheme at work certainly. There's a difference right?

DeltaRho2k -- you have a nice image of CEO's. "They are rewarded for their efforts" -- but how do you square that with CEO's who are rewarded for massive failures.

I do agree with your summary of greed vs. competition.