![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Better and more qualified folk than I have talked about capitalism. But I've been reading a lot of good fantasy lately, with working economies in, and reading some about medieval and early modern economies, and I've been down home and seen again the economy that actually runs there, among family and old-fashioned people.
What I want to talk about - and this is more thinking out loud than any kind of finished writing, comments and contradictions appreciated - is Quality and Quantity, two places where I feel capitalism falls down, albeit in opposite directions.
First, Quality. There isn't enough of it, and it's down to the bottom line. If your aim is to make money - and that's the aim that capitalism fosters - then you will not succeed by producing quality products. You may get there by providing a quality service, but I doubt that; look at budget airlines for a strong counterexample.
My father is a craftsman. He's a Master Craftsman, in a sense that few enough people reading this will understand, but let me just say that he's really really really good at what he does. I'm good at what I do, and by contrast with my father, I'm a hack. He produces quality products. In school, I was once asked "Your father manufactures furniture, doesn't he?", and even then, I could say, no, he makes furniture.
By the reasoning of capitalism as it's taught to us - hard work makes you rich, good work makes you richer - my father should be very very rich. He's not. He's not, because he cares much more about his work than he does about the money, much more about the quality than the number at the end.
There's Quality there, and success a-plenty, but there's not much money. By all standards of capitalism, my father is a failure. By any other standard - respect, reputation, skill, experience - he is a very definite success. There's something wrong with a system that says he's a failure.
Second, Quantity. Rich people become richer, under capitalism, such that it's very hard not to become richer once you're rich. There are people in this world who have, in their own personal fortunes, more than a billion euros. Bill Gates has approximately $48 billion dollars. To bring that into focus, if he were to divide his personal fortune among the population of Ireland, everyone would get $12,000. He can't use all that money. He can't ever use all that money. But because he has it, more keeps accumulating. That, too makes no sense - it's a waste, under any sane way of thinking.
But under capitalism, Gates is a winner, and not just A Winner, he's THE winner.
I think if you check, you'll find my father does better work, though.
What I want to talk about - and this is more thinking out loud than any kind of finished writing, comments and contradictions appreciated - is Quality and Quantity, two places where I feel capitalism falls down, albeit in opposite directions.
First, Quality. There isn't enough of it, and it's down to the bottom line. If your aim is to make money - and that's the aim that capitalism fosters - then you will not succeed by producing quality products. You may get there by providing a quality service, but I doubt that; look at budget airlines for a strong counterexample.
My father is a craftsman. He's a Master Craftsman, in a sense that few enough people reading this will understand, but let me just say that he's really really really good at what he does. I'm good at what I do, and by contrast with my father, I'm a hack. He produces quality products. In school, I was once asked "Your father manufactures furniture, doesn't he?", and even then, I could say, no, he makes furniture.
By the reasoning of capitalism as it's taught to us - hard work makes you rich, good work makes you richer - my father should be very very rich. He's not. He's not, because he cares much more about his work than he does about the money, much more about the quality than the number at the end.
There's Quality there, and success a-plenty, but there's not much money. By all standards of capitalism, my father is a failure. By any other standard - respect, reputation, skill, experience - he is a very definite success. There's something wrong with a system that says he's a failure.
Second, Quantity. Rich people become richer, under capitalism, such that it's very hard not to become richer once you're rich. There are people in this world who have, in their own personal fortunes, more than a billion euros. Bill Gates has approximately $48 billion dollars. To bring that into focus, if he were to divide his personal fortune among the population of Ireland, everyone would get $12,000. He can't use all that money. He can't ever use all that money. But because he has it, more keeps accumulating. That, too makes no sense - it's a waste, under any sane way of thinking.
But under capitalism, Gates is a winner, and not just A Winner, he's THE winner.
I think if you check, you'll find my father does better work, though.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
what we've seen is not a marriage of the small and the large, as was supposed in early days. What we've seen is the systematic dying off of all of the small craftsmen (and women), because they simply have a tough time competing with wal-mart - when they're even competing, because life isn't a race like that, and individuals of the craftsman caliber don't often follow the credo that capitalism does. Beat the other guy. Push him down and take his stuff (sales). Be king of the hill. You must only buy from me. I'd wager gw's papa doesn't give a damn whether or not people buy his stuff, at least not to the extent that the execs at walmart care if you buy the latest crap in aisle 4 only from walmart. i bet he likes what he does, though, an awful lot, cause he found something he's good at or because he worked towards it and became that way.
i've played the capitalist game, and jesus fuck but i'm sick of it. i just want some honesty and adventure in my life, not the constant lies of sales and marketing. it's infilitrated every aspect of my, of our, lives, and has even seeped into our social conventions. now we lie to ourselves and others every day on a personal as well as a business level.
ask yourself the next time you're at work interacting with your boss or a customer or whatever, or when you're out at a bar or whathaveyou. whenever you open your mouth, ask yourself, am i being honest?
i'm saving up for my passport to come visit, gw. thing is, how do i get a custom chair on an airplane back? think they'll let me drag one up in an aisle? :)
From:
no subject
And for what? for more, cheaper, badly designed and made goods that in the making and the selling drive almost everyone involved further into poverty?
I suppose we are getting the culture that we show we value by way of our spending habits...