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  • Capitalism has always, from its beginning, failed in a fundamental task: it failed

  • to provide meaningful work, even under its own terms of exploitation, for

  • everybody. It couldn't do it! Its own mechanisms mean, that when you even get

  • near to full employment, the position of workers bargaining for wages, allows them

  • to put to push the wages up, which makes the employer react by saying "well I'm

  • not going to pay you that higher wage, so I'm firing you. I'm not hiring you,"

  • plunging them back into unemployment. It's its own mechanisms, make a long

  • story short, that prevent the system from ever achieving full employment. It's always only a question of how many people will be unemployed, how bad will

  • it be, how long will it last, all of that, and the problem is that's not a viable

  • system. Why? Because people who are literally without work and therefore

  • without income, are going to have very little to lose, unless they quietly walk

  • off into the woods and die, which some do, but most won't, they are going to try to

  • find another way to exist, and they become the beggars, and they become the

  • thieves and they become the marauding gangs, whatever you want. So the system

  • has to come up with that, and so it invented, took centuries. It invented what

  • we nowadays call welfare, or the safety net, or of a whole variety of terms like

  • this, in which you basically say, not what kind of system leaves large numbers of

  • people bereft, and even if it pays them, pays them so little that they can't live,

  • we're gonna solve this problem by, let's see, taxing a bunch of money from those

  • who have it, in order to basically give it to these people so they don't make

  • trouble. We say to them: "Okay live over there, in a shitty part of town, but we'll

  • give you enough that you can, you can eat, we'll give you a food stamp, and we will

  • give you a section 8 voucher to live in public housing,

  • and we will give your kid a free breakfast at school if they qualify,

  • because we pay you so little that your life is miserable. and we'll, and that'll

  • be called if you blump it all together, a guaranteed basic income. Hmm...the rational

  • response to this would be, wait a minute, why do we have a system that creates

  • this thing? We don't do that! We dare not ask those questions in our culture. So, we

  • have basic income, welfare charity, whatever you want to call it, to keep

  • these people going. But, no sooner do you do this, then you set up a struggle: all

  • the people who have money, a job, income, they're gonna have to now be taxed to

  • raise the money to take care of the people on the basic income. They don't

  • want that. They worked hard for their money. Don't take it from me! Every

  • right-wing jerk in any culture, has always seen a great opportunity here, to

  • deal with the anger of those one step above those on welfare, who don't want to

  • be told you have to pay for. Of course, the answer for the masses would be: "make

  • the rich pay," and the rich understand this all too well, which is why they buy the

  • politicians to make sure that's not the way it's done, and then they make sure

  • that the way they escape their share of taxation, is to set the workers against

  • the unemployed, in an endless, horrible fight that often leads to violence, and

  • that leads to social conflict, and that leads to Brexit votes, and to Trump

  • elections, and all the rest. Two years ago a French economist then Thomas Piketty

  • writes a famous book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," 600 page book. His

  • book shows in every capitalism that the world has seen, any country, any time, you

  • let capitalism function, it creates an ever widening gap between rich and poor.

  • The only time that is constricted is when people rise up, like they did in the

  • 1930s, and change it all out of rage about this thing.

  • And as soon as that rage passes, it's undone, like we undid the New Deal, and we

  • start to say, which we are now in the middle of, you know. So what's the

  • my response? We don't need, and we don't want, because it's socially destructive and

  • socially divisive, to have one group of people who work ,and another group of

  • people who don't. Give everyone reasonable work, and give everyone

  • reasonable pay. Our societies are being torn apart by struggles over

  • redistribution. do we take, and from whom, to give to those less fortunate, as if it

  • was a matter of fortune, rather than an economic system that doesn't work.

  • Redistribution tears societies apart. It's...here's the parallel: you're going

  • into the park on a Sunday afternoon, you're a married couple, you have two

  • children, one is six and one is seven, and you stop because there's a man

  • selling ice cream cones, and you give one of your children an ice cream cone that's got

  • four scoops, and the other one an ice cream cone with one scoop, and you

  • continue walking. Those children are going to murder each other: they're gonna

  • struggle. What are you doing? And don't then come up: "okay you've had,

  • you've eaten your, this part of your scoop, so give the other part of your

  • scoop to your sister or your brother." Stop! The resentment of the one who has

  • to lose his ice-cream or he,r you see where I'm going. Every parent who isn't a

  • ghoul, understands: give each child the same damn ice-cream cone,

  • two scoops each. You don't need redistribution, if you don't distribute

  • it unequally in the first place. Capitalism is congenitally incapable of

  • distributing equally.

Capitalism has always, from its beginning, failed in a fundamental task: it failed

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