Last time I checked, "capital" == "money", so "capital-ism" == "money-ism". It has nothing to do with voluntary, and in fact it's completely possible to have an oligarchial, aristocratic, socialistic, authoritarian, or even totalitarian capitalist system rather than a democratic one. Capitalism is quite simply a belief in money -- most especially money used for investment. Materialism would be a belief in money used to gain "things" rather than to make investments, and it often finds its place naturally and neatly alongside capitalism in the hearts of the Investor Class.

I think you may have been referring to Humanism, in a bleak, scaled-down sort of way, but the "appeal to ridicule" invoked by calling the parent ignorant (right before shooting yourself in the foot) didn't really help your argument much.

No, actually, he just fixed it to be more plain-language. The shareholders are the ones in power, duh. No black hat and curly mustache needed -- sometimes oppression is built into the system without any need for conspiracy or other evil plans at work... and pure capitalism, it has this. You even noted it when you pointed out the problem with counting "best" as "most profit".

Of course, the problem with shareholders having so much power is that so many shareholders don't even know they have power, so they turn it over to a broker and/or a computer to make automatic decisions for them, deciding purely in favor of profit, of course, and thus programmatically removing any humanistic balance from the capitalist system... all because they don't even know that being an investor carries social responsibility!

I hate to burst your black-and-white world bubble, but "fighting slavery", which you mention, is in fact an imposition of restrictions on the "free trade" of working people, in the extreme case of their wages approaching zero.

Without slavery, we don't really have "free trade" of workers to begin with, now do we? I suggest to you that there is actually a whole continuum of balancing freedoms to consider, not just the freedoms of the employer and the "market"...

The more "free" (ie, unrestricted) the "business transactions" between employers and employees become, the more closely the relationship may be made to resemble slavery. That's what the restrictions against slavery are for... to reduce the effect of "market forces" and "free trade" on workers, in the extreme case of wages being at or near zero. Minimum wage is one example of such a restriction designed to fight slavery, as are overtime laws, age limits, FMLA, etc. The parent poster is simply pointing out this fact.

It's astonishing that you also pointed it out, yet still referred to the parent as spouting "Marxist bullshit", even after citing the Industrial Revolution (which carried a flawed Social Darwinism that spurred working conditions so horrible that we got the *first* of any regulatory employment laws because of it!).

In the case of wages being significantly greater than zero, but still less than that of the Capitalist class (also called the Investor class -- the employers and owners of other large businesses, who together as a group have far more power over "market forces" than the individual employees), the restrictions are somewhat less necessary, but not yet completely, as complete freedom for the employer would still leave many employers free to practically enslave their workers, purely by virtue of their financial and political power, and therefore many would, and do, to the fullest extent they can get away with it.

This obvious power imbalance is the sole reason for any restrictions on employer-employee "business transactions".

Do you really keep mirrors so far up your ass?

Newborn babies have to sleep on their father's chests, or near their necks or armpits, several times and for at least a few hours a day, or else they won't know him as their father. They know their father by his scent.

No, a good portion of people haven't had one, but unless the same good portion of people find it within themselves to *decide* to make their family lives better than the ones they were not-so-blessed with growing up, we'll continue the cycle of abuse, hatred, callousness and violence, and ensure that the next generation of people also have shitty family lives, and the next generation after that. Stand up and break it whenever you want. It takes more guts if you don't have a role-model, for sure, but that makes it even *more* rewarding in the end :)

Well, it does happen to be *true*, regardless of joke status, but it also sort of points out an obvious detail that many of us nevertheless would have failed to consider, so IMHO, an "Insightful" mod suits ;)