Capitalism, The Best Solution to Poverty

[Joe]

I can't enjoy life until I retire? Damn! I've been dong it all wrong.

[Svartalf]

Maybe you can, but it sure as fog was hell for me when I worked, not that it's much better since.

[JimC]

Retirement brought me back to life...

[Sean Hayden]

[Brian Peacock]

[Brian Peacock]

Capitalism sure is the best solution to poverty. Shareholder poverty.

P&O Ferries sacks all 800 crew members across entire fleet

The leading UK ferry operator, P&O Ferries, has sacked 800 British crew across its entire fleet after stopping all its sailings on Thursday.

Unions called on the government to halt what it called a “scandalous betrayal”, with P&O planning to use cheap agency staff to operate its ships.

The operator, owned by the Dubai-based DP World, earlier told crew to return to port and await a “major announcement” in a sudden move likely to cause serious disruption to travel for passengers and freight.

Security staff were preparing to remove crew from ships in Dover and Larne, Belfast, after unions instructed crew not to leave vessels. Coaches carrying replacement agency staff were reported to be standing by at Dover and Hull.

The RMT said that guards with handcuffs were seeking to board ships to remove crew so they could be replaced with cheaper labour...

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... nouncement

Fri 18 Mar 2022 18.13 GMT
Last modified on Fri 18 Mar 2022 18.31 GMT

Yesterday’s shock sackings of 800 seafarers by P&O Ferries was an act so outrageous that it prompted near-universal disgust across the country. The sight of security guards, apparently wearing balaclavas and wielding handcuffs, ambushing ordinary British workers and forcing them off their boats and into immediate unemployment was unprecedented.

These workers need a government that will step in and act to protect their jobs, not offer up meaningless platitudes. Shockingly, despite being informed of these plans the previous night, the government did not lift a finger to find out if these sackings were illegal, and if there was anything that could be done to stop them.

It is unbelievable that no alarm bells were set off. Did they not think to find out how P&O Ferries proposed to dismiss 800 staff with a click of their fingers – and at least attempt to warn it off its proposed course of action in the strongest possible terms?

The government has had fair warning that there were serious issues at P&O Ferries. Two years ago, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, the billionaire head of Dubai-based DP World, the owners of the ferry company, claimed that P&O Ferries needed £257m in aid to avoid collapse and asked the UK government for £150m – all while paying DPW shareholders £270m. They were turned down – and one month later, they made over 1,000 employees redundant.

Yet none of this stopped the Conservatives cosying up with DP World. Last September, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said he was “thrilled” to greenlight hundreds of millions of pounds of DP World investment in Thames Gateway and Southampton. A month later the company partnered with the Foreign Office’s development finance. And for the last two years, DP World has sat on the UK government’s trade advisory group.

It seems that just like with the Russian oligarchs, the government has lost sight of the national interest, writing blank cheques without asking for anything in return – not even basic protection and human decency towards British workers. Why is it that P&O has sacked almost a quarter of its British staff, while regional media in France is reporting that no French employees have been affected? ...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... s-dp-world

[macdoc]

Knee jerk blaming capitalism for humans ( including gov aiding and abetting ) behaving badly. Gets tiresome.

[JimC]

Knee jerk blaming capitalism for humans ( including gov aiding and abetting ) behaving badly. Gets tiresome.

The UK example above indeed seems to show the Tory government aiding and abetting lousy treatment of employees purely for profit. You seem to think this is somehow not the fault of capitalism. Perhaps in some perfect world, with incorruptible governments and regulations with teeth, capitalism could be well behaved. However, corporations have the money and resources to put pressure on governments and in some cases to suborn officials. In previous posts you seem to suggest that capitalism can work well when governments put effective controls on it. I agree in some ways, but that very statement indicate that capitalism automatically strays in the direction of rapacious and unethical behaviour, unless tightly checked. This tendency seems be locked into the DNA of capitalism.

There is no doubt that innovation and personal freedom to create enterprises are positive features of capitalism, but it also seems clear that the need for strong, intelligently applied government regulation is vital to tame the beast...

[L'Emmerdeur]

Knee jerk blaming capitalism for humans ( including gov aiding and abetting ) behaving badly. Gets tiresome.

Capitalism is human behaviour. It has always been about getting over, and employees are nothing more or less than a means to that end. If employees come between the capitalist and profit, too bad for the employees. You may find it tiresome when people repeatedly acknowledge the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism, but we all have to face the facts.

[macdoc]

It might represent slices of human behavior by those controlling the corporations, which is why it needs oversight, but it is an economic system based on using capital to earn profits and compete with others ...individual or corporate.

an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
"an era of free-market capitalism"

this is a reasonable definition

Capitalism is based on individual initiative and favors market mechanisms over government intervention, while socialism is based on government planning and limitations on private control of resources.

Most modern nations are a mix of socialism and capitalism.

All human organizations require oversight to balance off social benefit of that organization with individual or group gain over others.

Those organizations can choose to be predatory or choose to serve the common weal and most are a mix.

Gov is the referee tho it can drop into predatory territory as well.

Lotteries and gambling are an interesting example of gov recognizing the human desire to gamble while curbing the damage it can do ...so it makes most gambling state run or state overseen and funnels the profits ( lotteries ) to social needs like medical care.

Good example of government curbing excesses and even criminal behaviour in a large and popular corporation.
https://www.afr.com/companies/games-and ... 209-p570ww

Taxes also present a method of mitigating what the gov deems excesses profits in a capital driven economy.

Overreach by gov allows monetizing essential resources like water supply, education etc.
Peru privatizing water for instance.

Norway nationalized oil and did well by its citizens.
Canada did not and squandered the opportunity.

Most first world nations have either national healthcare or mixed.
The US is an example of unbridled exploitation of medical needs by large corporations willing to trade in human misery and prey on the less well off.

Allowing the cost of insulin or an epipen which are vital to some of the population is a clear example of how gov can fail to protect the vulnerable and allows a person or group to prey on citzenry without curbs.

Sometimes they get caught
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60001147

[macdoc]

If employees come between the capitalist and profit, too bad for the employees. You may find it tiresome when people repeatedly acknowledge the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism, but we all have to face the facts.

It is NOT inherently exploitative - you confuse correlation with causation.
Individuals and companies choose their path with employees.

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-51332811

and Kellogs in the dirty 30s saw all employees through it even if there were some cuts in hours....

The choices in all organizations to be exploitive comes down to individuals and boards ( which are a disgrace often ).

Unions are the offset to the corporations but they too can be very exploitive and damaging to employees.

You act as if women not having the vote because " that's the way it is" early last century should not be challenged.
That was a choice by governments to act perniciously toward half the population.

[JimC]

Those organizations can choose to be predatory or choose to serve the common weal and most are a mix.

Organisations is a very generalised term. Some, by their very nature, are designed to "choose to serve the common weal"

But some organisations, especially modern multi-national corporations, have an in-built bias to be predatory. If they were to voluntarily "choose to serve the common weal" they would be at a disadvantage in respect to their more predatory competitors. So, as you agree in other parts of your post, controls via government (and strong unions, IMO...) are pretty well vital, if society is to have a reasonable level of protection from an automatic tendency to predatory and un-ethical behaviour in corporations for whom profit is the overarching motivation.

[macdoc]

I can't enjoy life until I retire? Damn! I've been dong it all wrong.

Good for you ....I've been enjoying life ( mostly ) for 74 years and not retiring either.

https://500px.com/p/macdoc?view=galleries

https://www.gtamotorcycle.com/xf/thread ... st-2827910

[L'Emmerdeur]

The capitalist exploits resources (material and human) to gain profit. If given free rein capitalism will achieve its ends regardless of damage to the environment and increased human suffering. That is the nature of capitalism.

[macdoc]

It's not, it's the choice that the directors and owners make that does damage. Once more you confuse correlation with causation.
Just the comment about "exploits" shows your built in bias.
Using resources is not exploiting, nor is using labour. Is the home builder exploiting the environment if he chooses his lumber source with care?

I pay my staff a living wage, they are free to look elsewhere, and employ my capital and expertise to make a profit for my corporation.
I'm not "exploiting" anything.

A union leader can exploit members
An organixed religion can exploit its congregation.
A gov can exploit its citizens in any number of ways.

It's a choice....not an automatic consequence as you maintain.