Depends on how you define necessity. Quality of life is important too, and you don't have that with just the basics. Profiteering isn't just a bar to life, but quality of life.

Now about your second paragraph. What you're describing about selling for as much as they can is exactly what I'm talking about. Those people will attempt to become very rich at the expense of others who will become very poor. Once again, for every Bill Gates, there are thousands who are starving because the wealth is concentrated into his hands and not theirs.

Not everyone has food and shelter. Even people over here are starving in many places, but because capitalism has become a global phenomenon a lot of that starvation and suffering has moved to third world countries. Just because you do not see it, does not mean it is not there, and it is largely a problem of resource allocation (which would be solved in a more fair economic system). Capitalism may "work" in the US (although I disagree), but ask sweatshop laborers if it works.

Even granted these basic needs, you seem to be missing the fact that not everybody can get education and so forth to move up in our society. This is what I like to call the "anyone can become president" fallacy. There is only so much demand for doctors, presidents, etc and likewise there is so much for custodians, factory workers, etc. At some point, someone who would make a brilliant doctor has to be a custodian, because there is nothing else for him. My point here is, to tell someone "if you're poor, it's your fault for not trying harder" isn't true, because social stratification creates a situation where N number people can be upper class, M number middle class, O number upper class. Not everyone can be upper class, because if everyone was a millionaire, the value of money would be very low. There isn't always "figuring out how to get ahead," because even if everyone is competitive to their physical limit, capitalism still forces an economic hierarchy that will create some very rich and some very poor people. Those very rich are stealing, via profit and hoarding, from the very poor and thus creating this situation. Abolishing hierarchy is the solution many see to this problem.

So why are the jeans people pay $70 for at the store only $3.50 for the businesses reselling them in the US? Even if you explain that by bulk volume purchases, that's quite the mark-up. Not to mention monopolistic and anti-competitive practices, which run rampant here. Pharmaceuticals, oil, high speed internet, etc are good examples, as are Microsoft's practices which never quite seem to be fixed by antitrust suits. The presence of competition does not always drive prices down the way they should be. Your post seems to imply that competition is the solution to rampant profiteering that causes poverty, but doesn't explain the presence of multi billionaires, nor the fact that said billionaires continue to exploit workers as hard as they can for even more profit.

Not telling anyone what they're "allowed" to charge, as I'm an anarchist and it would be none of my business in such a system. I'm merely proposing that ripping people off via profit creates social stratification that leads to poverty and starvation, and suggesting a possible alternative. Nobody has all the answers or knows 100% how the perfect system would work, myself included. I do know, however, that the current hierarchical system *does not* work. Maybe it works for you, a cozy middle or upper class citizen, but ask people who are starving and have no way of changing that if it works for them. Then realize that they outnumber you.

"Bullshit. You fail." How very educated and informative of you ;-) Thanks for the explanation. Your tone implies anger. Are you getting defensive?

In an anarchist society, the computers would have been created either as gifts, or in trade for goods, or yes even some sort of currency. The difference would be that instead of paying a 300% profit markup, you would be paying only the combined value of labor and materials. Thus, they would not "rely" on capitalist society, in an organized anarchist society. Anarchism does not imply disorder or lack of structure; it is by definition this and only this: the absence of hierarchy.

Making a profit inherently makes someone else poor and other people massively rich (eventually). For every Bill Gates there are 100,000 people living in the ghetto starving to death, required to steal or deal drugs in order to eat. You can't legislate this problem away, you can only create a society that isn't driven by greed and profit.

You can have a market society with trading or even exchange of money *without* that trade involving one person gaining value and one person losing value. Capitalism by necessity enforces hierarchy in this way, promoting survival (and excess) of some at the cost of mass starvation and suffering of others. If one person gaining value is necessary for survival, then what about the large amount of people losing value so that the one person can gain it?

As for the sweat shop thing. The jobs capitalist society gives them (for 40 cents an hour) actually keep them in a system of poverty. Capitalism is the reason they are poor (because all the resources are allocated to the rich), and by exploiting those workers so that capitalists can make massive profits, all that's happening is more and more resources are being allocated to the rich business owners.

Cooperation *can* exist without profit. Capitalism is not the only way to have this in a society, so I do not see why your comment on capitalism requiring cooperation is relevant.

Capitalism is not synonymous with trade; it merely takes trade to a disgusting conclusion.

Being rich is a bad thing for this reason. In order to make *profit* from someone, you have to get them to pay you more than what your good or service is worth. That is, if you make them a pair of shoes, and the material is $10, and it costs you $10 an hour to survive in relative comfort, and you spend 3 hours making the shoes, the shoes are worth $40. To make a profit and charge $80 is, in effect, ripping that person off. You now have $X+40 and they now have $X-40 because you overcharged by $40. Multiply this on the level of many transactions, and the poor constantly lose value and the rich constantly gain it. Combined with a system where in order to become a politician you have to be rich (to afford to campaign), you have a system that perpetuates the interests of the wealthy and in essence leads to wage slavery. Just because you have an advantage (you're smart, strong, etc) does NOT mean you will get ahead. In fact, I'm one of the smartest and most efficient programmers where I work, but no matter how hard I work, I will always make the same hourly rate, and will only be given the same amount of hours. Sure there opportunity for raises, but those raises are trivial based on what my boss makes. Does my boss, whose sole job is to find clients and other people to do the rest of the work, deserve more money than me, who does the work that holds the company up? If you said yes, does he also deserve full ownership of the programs I create? So my time *and* labor is only worth half of what he's making? Capitalism is a system of inherent exploitation. The rich constantly ripping off the poor. The rich are not the strong and the smart, they are the people most skilled at conning (or forcing) people out of their money.

how a worker's profession impacts this figure. I'm a web developer for my company, and as such spend ALL my time online. I'm the type of coder who can do in an hour (sometimes even less) what takes others a day, or in a day what takes others a week.

My tendency is to code for a couple hours, and then spend the other 7 hours surfing the web (9 hour work days; 8-5) since I'm out of work early in the day.

I agree that workers should be paid on how much they do rather than their hours. I could come in, do my job, get paid, and leave. . .have some personal time with my friends and family, or even go work another 2 hour shift and get paid just as much. Great way to pretty much set your own hours too, or great incentive to work hard instead of putting in the bare minimum.

The only downsides I could see are these:
1. You're not there for the entire time, so if a client has a problem at 4 pm and you're gone already, they would have to have your cell number to reach you. Being on call constantly would suck, especially if I chose to take another job with the extra time I had. (I guess being on call is why they pay me those other 6 hours. . .)

2. Boss loses money. Think about it: if a client agrees to pay for a 5 hour block of time for me to create a web survey with validation and all that, and I do it in 30 minutes, that's 4.5 hours my boss sold that he's making extra. Of course, I don't see a dime of it.