Posted on 09/14/2019 9:38:24 AM PDT by TBP
I once worked at walmart and i have to disagree with them alleviating poverty. Their wages for the average person is 8-10$/hr. Those are poverty wages and if you have a family you still need massive government assistance to meet your needs. And, they are far from being the cheapest store in town even as they treat their customers like cattle. How many times were they sued for violating labor laws?
The only thing that alleviates poverty is when the income is significantly greater than the out-go and you only need one job to do it on.
Today, we call that wealthy but when I was growing up in the 60’s, it was normal...average.
It’s amazing how poverty was redefined by droping the standard of living for the average person.
re: “Until they joined the Leftists starting with an assault on the 2nd Amendment... “
Yeah ... imagine, government telling someone or a private business WHAT TO DO ...
Alright, but apart from that, what did The Robber Barons EVER do for us?
The article doesn't talk about the distortion of politics. But it does point out that the so-called "robber barons" got wealthy by providing things to the public that were better and cheaper. That continued through to the products from Gates and Paul Allen. Not sure what Soros produced, but there are economic efficiency arguments for markets and Soros is a market participant.
PURPOSELY FORMED to hide their wealth permanently,
Purposely formed to keep their wealth from being taxed at confiscatory rates. The charitable works done by Gates to empower poor women and eliminate disease are pretty amazing. The result is improving quality of life for millions of the world's poorest and most importantly, lower birth rates from being less poor.
What a bunch of awful people. They probably started global warming.....
And the surest way to do that is to bring back American manufacturing as Trump is doing. Retail is low margin so employees cannot expect much of a living. But manufacturing takes low cost materials and turn them into high cost goods. Think of it in terms of how much one employee can improve the life of how many people. Some services are also highly productive and valuable, for example helping people get on the internet.
Bookmark
Netflix ran a pro-conservative series? What a pleasant surprise. I always thought they were a leftist platform.
It is not either/or.
They were not entirely benevolent, nor entirely malevolent. And they were not exactly alike.
Humanity is fallen and sinful. The system we have is far from perfect, and allows much abuse of those with lesser power - but, as has been said, it is better than all the other systems.
There is certainly a difference between an actual wealth builder like Trump and a vulture capitalist like Romney.
Whatever one chooses to think about those of the past, I say we have some robber barons in the market today.
*
For example, just after Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated as President, financiers Fisk and Gould engineered a gold squeeze that brought the US financial system into crisis and threatened the entire US economy. Today they would be prosecuted as market manipulators. The Grant administration was also marred by the Credit Mobilier scandal in which members of Congress were given bribes and interests in the railroads that they subsidized through land grants.
Rockafeller became immensely wealthy by consolidating ownership and gaining control of the US oil industry. He ruined competitors by sending thugs to blow up their wells, pipelines, and refineries, while railroads were induced to bar or overcharge competitors who relied on the rails.
Edison was clever and hard-working as an inventor, but he was greedy and dishonest as a businessman. He frequently cheated employees, business partners, and customers and abused the patent process to suppress rival inventions. Tesla began as an employee, was cheated by Edison, and then left to pursue his own inventions.
As academic economists point out, free markets depend on the rule of law, with contracts and regulations reliably enforced, and competition and innovation fostered and protected. Yet in the Robber Baron era, bribery and conflicts of interest were routine and normal, with police, prosecutors, judges, and legislators threatened and bribed to accommodate crooked business methods.
The public knew this and wanted it to change. That became one of the driving forces of the original Progressive movement. For many Americans, the attraction of socialism was not redistribution but as a critique and weapon against the corruption of the Robber Baron era. Pretending that there were no Robber Barons contradicts the facts of history and loses much of the argument by default.
Folsom is right. The “robber baron” myth is an attack on free markets.
https://mises.org/library/truth-about-robber-barons
You’re gouging on you prices if
You charge more than the rest.
But it’s unfair competition
If you think you can charge less.
“A second point that we would make
To help avoid confusion:
Don’t try to charge the same amount:
That would be collusion!
http://www.enterpriseintegrators.com/flint/4thR/TomSmithsIncredibleBreadMachinePoem.txt
“Walmart??”
Well, initially until Sam died.
Sam went into small towns and found manufacturing companies. He offered to expose the manufacturing to the national economy through his stores. That was a great enterprise that built a significant portion of our economy.
You must compete. But not too much
For if you do, you see,
Then the market would be yours
And that’s monopoly!”
Price too high? Or price too low?
Now, which charge did they make?
Well, they weren’t loath to charging both
With Public Good at stake!
I love that ditty, used to be able to recite it all, back in “the day” !
But why not go one better
How ‘bout “monopoly!”
No muss, no fuss, oh clever us,
Righto, we’ll charge all three!
(corrected per my memory. Startles me that someone changed the words.)
Yes, Rockefeller ran his business in a highly efficient and disciplined manner, but he scorned innovation and was notorious for greed and dishonest tactics in driving competitors out of business. He aimed at monopoly control and profits and won them even though it required bribery, fraud, intimidation, and market manipulation.
Similarly, Carnegie recognized that he personally was not capable of sufficiently severe methods needed to bring his steel business to maximum profitability so he made the ruthless Henry Clay Frick a partner and gave him operational control. Frick delivered substantial financial gains for Carnegie -- but at the price of alienating many business colleagues and much of the workforce. Driven to desperation, workers went on strike and helped spur the nascent American labor movement.
In time, many of the robber barons relented of their business conduct. Carnegie fired Frick, settled the notorious Homestead strike, sold his business to the House of Morgan, and devoted most of his fortune to philanthropy. Rockefeller similarly donated large sums to charity and the arts and spent much of his later years trying to develop a better public image and pass on his wealth to his offspring.
We should not let our opposition to socialism and Leftism blind us to unpleasant facts that are part of their critique of free markets, capitalism, and free societies. The laws against public corruption, business dishonesty, and market manipulation that the robber barons provoked were widely opposed by many businessmen when they were enacted. Yet those measures have made American business stronger and continue to protect entrepreneurs, investors, and customers. We should recognize those benefits and the history that inspired them.
Rockefeller aimed for monopoly, but you cannot establish a monopoly in a free market, as Rockefeller found out. Every time he would run his competitors out of business, a new competitor would spring up.
Carnegie invested in several companies and built them up.
It was when they got in bed with government and became government entrepreneurs instead of market entrepreneurs that problems ensued. And we may as well admit that the real function of antitrust laws and regulations is to establish and cement the position of the top dogs on top and keep others from getting where they are.
That’s the problem Folsom is discussing.
Intelligent social animals tend to scorn unfair exchanges. More broadly, such animals and human babies have a natural, untrained sense of cooperation. I have read several accounts of whales in the wild meekly approaching fisherman and divers to get their fins untangled from lines of rope, fishing gear, and buoys.
Defenders of capitalism and free markets should not treat exploitative and dishonest business practices as beneficial or of no consequence. The abuses of Rockefeller and other Robber Barons do not merit our defense and support.
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