Holistic Philosophical Studies presents Privatization of Local Government: Part 3 in the Series for the Capitalist Element of the Square

Table of Contents

Laissez-Faire for the Capitalist

Why Humanity Struggles with Capitalism

Little Republics to Little Democracies

People vs. Ideas

Economics of City Gov

Macroeconomics

The Wizard of Oz

The City Lord and Budget

The Underdog

Shire Judges

The Shire Fellowship

Spring Cleaning

Social Stock Market

The Federal Budget

National Projects

Economization of Socialism

Laissez-Faire

Privatization of Government

Part III – (Dedicated to the Capitalist Element of the Square)

Why Humanity Struggles with Capitalism

In the first section I stressed the importance of equality among the diversity of political and religious opinions and followed with the previous section through a blueprint for a direct democracy so that a legislature of We the People may be conceived through a practical and common-sense foundation.  Yet as we look to the private sector, we must acknowledge that capitalism is not democratic.  The relationship between employer and employee is not equitable.  If the employee is to eat, they must become the slave of an employer, or risk it all to leap the ever-widening gulf from employee to employer.  Ninety percent of startups perish in the attempt, yet these entrepreneurs who attempted to break their shackles were also slaves to their dreams, may they rest in peace.  If corporations were democratic institutions and the resources equally divided there would be no incentive for anyone to work harder than anyone else and if pay was determined through popular vote as each person believed they deserved which enterprise would last more than a few days before becoming insolvent?  It is important to understand the concept of working on another’s passion on the psyche of the human spirit.  My father once told me the hardest part of each day is just getting out of bed in the morning.  In most surveys the person people typically hate the most is there boss because they impede on our liberty as to how we imagine the enterprise should be run and our own impression of how tasks should be performed.  And from the perspective of many managers attempting to please everyone is as frustrating as herding cats.  Yet while doing the work others deem to be our priority is drudgery, even our own tasks outside of work is a source of dread.  That To do list of things that never seems to get done, such as, cleaning out the garage, writing that memoir, finishing that project in the backyard.  It is human nature to prefer rest over work and all things being equal to have others complete our own tasks.  An irony of a body and mind that longs for rest and relaxation in competition with a human spirit that always compels us to desire more.  The weakness of the body and mind continually worn down by time, over a human spirit through which time perpetually opens our mind to new horizons. 

The conservative rightly points out the need for the dominant position of the employer over the employee because work in part involves compulsion and without compulsion, if all your needs were provided without the necessity to work for it everyone would stay home, toss the alarm clock, and sleep in, and production would fall to that of the neanderthal era.  What the conservative fails to understand is that the same laziness among employees that necessitates a form of management over them also impairs that management because management is also impaired by the same vices as all human beings to take advantage of their situation. Even communism had its own form of management, and it didn’t take long for everyone to want to be management, and no one wanted to be among the workers. The employee is held in check, some may say even restrained, by the employer, but the employer check on their behavior is held through the Board of Directors.  Because the CEO is paid through stock options, if the CEO is successful over the course of several years their stockholdings become large enough that during the vote for the Board of Directors the CEO has a large sway in who is represented on the board.  Think of it in terms of the power the president wields over his political party members in congress, when paradoxically it is this same congress that is supposed to keep the president in check and not the other way around.  By design the board of directors, like congress, is made to be a check on the authority of the CEO, but in practice, because of the power of the CEO’s stock options and the favorability of the stockholders who only look at profits and typically know next to nothing about what is actually going on in the organization the CEO holds great sway over the board of directors.  Thus, a successful CEO, in terms of profits, only checks on their behavior are self-imposed and therefore only limited by their own moral compass. 

The theoretical concept of the business model is that you have revenue and expenses.  Through hard work revenue exceeds expenses resulting in a profit.  Out of that profit investments are made to improve the productivity of the workforce in a perpetual model.  What the theory fails to take account of is the human aspirations of the employer.  Unlike the employee the employer has the ability to determine what percentage of profits are allocated to his or her salary.  Thus, the employer can make choices such as which is better more productivity or purchasing a new fishing boat.  The employer, like most human beings, is going to follow the desires of their heart.    During the Civil War the Confederacy because they operated under slavery preferred manpower to machines because labor was less expensive.  Because the North had to pay their workers’ wages, they industrialized to make their workers more efficient.  Thus, the more expensive the worker the more the resources are put into them to maximize their output, because as workers get more expensive the less cost technology becomes to enhance each worker’s productivity. 

Some have argued that raising the minimum wage will take the poor out of poverty.  The problem with this logic is that the value of money is equal to production.  Raising the minimum wage does not raise the earnings of the workers because the prices will automatically inflate to the production ability within society.  For instance, if the minimum wage was $100,000 an hour this does not mean that everyone will suddenly become rich.  Rather a cheeseburger will suddenly cost $50,000.  Thus, to decrease poverty the efficiency of society must increase.  To increase the value of the employee we must increase their efficiency and make it in the employer’s best interest to do so.  Therefore, we stipulate that the salaries for the CEO’s and board of directors may not be greater than 10 times the salary of their least paid employee or 5 times the mean salary of the organization’s domestic workforce, whichever is higher.  While some on the left have suggested salary caps, such things inadvertently are attempting to put a cap on human potential.  Thus, the argument is not to cap the salary, but a realization that the employees were also instrumental in the achievement of the organization, and they should also be carried along for the ride.  In America’s early history there was a race among railroads to cross the American continent.  When the east railway finally linked to the west the CEO came out to give a speech praising himself and management for completing this monumental task.    Then the CEO walked over to nail in the last spike, thus completing the line.  Swing.  Miss!  Swing again, hit on the side sending the spike off into the air.  After several failures he handed the sledgehammer to other members of management who had similar results. Some did not even have the strength to lift the sledgehammer. Finally, they gave the sledgehammer to one of the men on the line.  One hit and done!  Consider what kind of corporation would you want to work for, a heartless machine where you are a mindless cog to collect a paycheck, or an organic organism where the life of each piece is viewed as vital to the momentum of the whole?

Now I realize that the term salary is relative.  Most employers pay a great deal more for each employee than they received on their paychecks.  Such expenses include health insurance, pensions, etc.  Then there are the costs associated to each employee, from the tools to do their trade, to the utilities to keep the lights on.  The employer also has ways of being rather loose with what constitutes their own wages and what constitutes a legitimate business expense.  For instance, do they fly coach, or first class, or take the company jet?  Inefficiency at the top does just as much harm to any organization as inefficiency at the bottom.  The difference is the top can put controls that force employees under them to spend wisely, but in the absence of government interference the employer is accountable to none, but themselves.  The current ratio as of 2024 of worker compensation to that of the CEO is on average 350 times greater in the United States, not including the excesses of business expenses.  These are wages and excesses that are not reinvested into new markets, new technologies, or increased production.  The employees in the business make it an organic institution.  These numbers tell me that the average CEO is not working for the betterment of the organization but themselves.  Capitalism in its best form is driven through the needs of the market, which is the people.  If the cost to the business for its cheapest employee to perform their duties is X amount, then the amount for the employer should be limited to not exceed 10 times at amount.  On each business trip I never ate at the hotel restaurant because the cost for the meal was exorbitant.  I pondered why would anyone eat here at these prices?  I got the answer on one trip when I came with the boss and management elite, and they all went to the hotel restaurant because it was convenient.  I said, hey guys one meal here is triple my daily allowance for food. The restaurant across the street is half the cost for twice the amount of food. Everyone laughed, Who cares, the company is paying for it.  On another occasion I was in the cafeteria line at work waiting to pay for my meal.  Many of the people in line with me were foreign workers making minimum wage.  One of the executives came in.  Cut in line.  Ordered his meal.  When asked, How will you be paying?  He responded, Charge it to the company."  Never seen him or any member of management break bread with those under them and here you had the least paying for their meal and those making six and even seven figure salaries were unwilling to even pay for their own lunch. 

If you believe me to be placing a cap on salaries, you are reading this incorrectly, rather the gain or decline of the organization should be felt universally, with the greatest gains and declines felt by the executive because they are manning the oar.  The purpose of any business should be to satisfy the needs of the public, but in America labor’s existence is turned upside-down as the people exist to meet the needs of management.  At a certain point American Corporations lost the humanity of their workforce and began to look upon them as part of the machine needed to render a specific output.  The realization that the same labor could be achieved overseas at 10 percent of the cost caused America’s manufacturing based to migrate to the developing world.  Management used multiple cost cutting measures to drastically improve the efficiency of the workers abroad. Over time industrializing those nations.  As more corporations migrated overseas the demand for the workers increased.  This demand over time forced wages up such that in 1980 the pay for a worker in China was 50 cents an hour, but by 2018 it was $5.50.  At a certain point many of the workers realized they could make the transition from employee to employer.  Because they knew the skills and could achieve a significantly higher pay than a worker’s salary but was still significantly lower than their American CEO counterpart.  Thus, they could sell their products at a competitive advantage because the pay for management was so drastically reduced.  The American Corporations failed, and their Chinese counterparts succeeded.  American Corporations only considered the waste and inefficiency at the bottom as important because America stressed individualism which idolized CEOs such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos as supermen.  While the Chinese through Communism stressed the importance of the community.  Thus, their Chinese equivalents viewed the corporation as a whole and themselves as a part of that whole.  They considered the waste and inefficiency at both the top and the bottom as vital to the wellbeing of the company and placed themselves subservient to the needs of the business. 

Racism and bigotry also played their part.  American management simply felt more at home in America.  They felt