so it's good to take care of those who fall behind.
And before the government started doing this, we had things called "charities" that people donated stuff to and they took care of those who fell behind. Now the government is taking the "donations" and doing the organizing, so why should people give money to anyone else to solve problems the government is supposed to fix? That's the problem with socialized charity -- people start losing track of personal responsibility to BE voluntary benefactors to others because they ARE already involuntary benefactors.
That means that socialism is not the natural result of free markets, the result is charity. Socialism is a result of a distortion of the charity market by government assumption of responsibility.
A wealthy member of a community, before this "genius" invention was made, would've been happy to organize large projects for the public good simply for the prestige of having been in charge of them.
And many of them still do. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for one. Ronald McDonald House. St. Jude's Children's Hospital (Danny Thomas may not have given all the money to build and run it, but he certainly organized it.) Dave Thomas and his work for adoption. We have a local version of the McD house in our city, funded by the local Pepsi bottling company owner. Mario Pastega, I think it is. There is a heart wing bearing the name of the donor who built it across the street. There is the name of a local timber baron on a lot of things that his money built for the good of the people. The new engineering building on campus bears the name of the donor for that.
Now they require that a portion of workers' labor be diverted to them permanently,
Huh? People who stay at McD house have to divert a portion of their labor to Ray Crock's estate permanently? No, the generosity of the rich is not based on requiring a lifetime of slavery from the recipients. The people who are "diverting a portion of their labor" are doing so for money so they can buy things that other people have made, and the people who run the companies are not limited to "the wealthy" you denigrate. But the charity activities are just that -- charity.
While it has made large projects easier to start, those projects have had less and less value to the common people over time.
The fact that there are more and more common people over time is a pretty good reason why any one large project has less of an impact on all of them. There are also more and more large projects, and many more small ones. A local businessman who hands a $1000 check to a local charity is doing what he can just as much as (or more than) Bill Gates handing a billion to someone. The fact that the organization getting the $1000 only operated in a city or county and not globally, well, there's room for ten thousand more organizations for those locations, and they likely already exist.
At this point, the labor market is an arrangement whereby you either build something you don't care about for a rich person, or you don't eat. It is functionally indistinguishable from slavery,
Except that "rich person" may be your next door neighbor who is scraping by because he has a payroll to meet and health insurance to buy for you and the city is levying a special tax for some project. In fact, he's more likely to be your neighbor because there are a lot more small businesses than you think.
And you working on something you don't care about is due to the specialization of society and the fact that not everyone can do the same job. You trade your labor doing something you don't like to do for money so you can buy things you want.
And of course, it differs from slavery because massa can't whip you for being late back from lunch, and he can't stop you from quitting and finding a different job, and he can't even make you do something outside your job description in many cases.
Yeah, so other than all of that, your description is spot on.
Capitalism only benefits the people who won the game before everyone else had a complete grasp of the rules.
Uhhhh, ok. I think I've done pretty well under capitalism and I wasn't one of the very early players. Maybe the rules aren't that hard? I'm also not one of the rich people that everyone wants to hate.