Tuesday, January 14, 2014

"The Tone of the Rally was Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Business and Anti-Corporate"

Confusion about the difference between crony-capitalism and decent hardworking businessmen, who have no ties to government, is growing.

According to the Seattle pi, at a rally in Seattle on Saturday,hundreds showed up in support of a $15 minimum wage.

SPI continued (my highlights)


The Sunday rally at times seemed like a trip back to the 1960′s, with adapted chants from old Vietnam War protests and hyperbole about mobilizing the “working class.”

The star performer — finally taking the stage after two hours of speech making — was newly elected [socialist] Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant.  Her message:  No compromise.

“They’ve already started talking about phasing it (the $15 wage) in over many, many years,” Sawant told the crowd, which numbered 450 people at the start of the rally.

“Nooooo!!!!!!” came a chorus of responses.

“We don’t want any phasing in,” declared Sawant.

She denounced both major political parties as tools of big business, and urged the audience to draw the “correct political lessons” of last year’s election.  The $15 wage victory in SeaTac, and her win in Seattle, were products of “worker organizing.”

“I invite the corporate media to look at us today,” declared Sawant, citing her victory and the narrow win for a $15 minimum wage in SeaTac[...]

The tone on Sunday, however, was anti-capitalist, anti-business and anti-corporate.

It is “the nature of capitalism to crush small business . . . capitalism overwhelmingly sets up small business for failure,” Sawant argued.  Addressing the argument that a $15 minimum wage shock might be too much for small business, she added:  “Small business should not be protected on the backs of workers."

27 comments:

  1. OMG what a nut job. The lunacy is just epic. I'm shocked. I haven't had a "WTF" moment like this since I saw the Wisconsin recall pro-Walker music video. They, essentially, just declared they are willing to destroy small business, which would only help big business even the ones that are connected to government. They're too stupid to realize they have cognitive dissonance.

    So, basically, they don't want to wait for the deterioration of the dollar to hit $15. They want to destroy it now.

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    1. Yep, the ruling classes love socialists. They use them to destroy their competition.

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  2. It is “the nature of capitalism to crush small business . . . capitalism overwhelmingly sets up small business for failure,” Sawant argued.

    Well I must admit she has observed the symptom at least. Powerful crony capitalists do indeed lobby local, state and federal government to impose restrictions on small businesses so as to eliminate competition. At the local level, they may be a local taxi mafia that prevents entrepreneurs from providing a cheaper and more convenient airport shuttle service. Or the restaurant lobby fighting family caterers. On the federal level, we all know how banking regulation is designed to hinder smaller banks.

    Of course she has picked the wrong thing to blame and the wrong solution, but at least she kinda sorta spotted the problem. She's young and maybe will outgrow the phase.

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  3. Debate about capitalism and socialism is academic. Every supposed governmental “system” devolves into centralized plunder (i.e. Kleptocracy). The real debate is between centralized and decentralized control. A centrally controlled and planned fiat monetary system isn't theoretical capitalism in my opinion.

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  4. I hope Seattle and other cities like that pass $15 minimum wage laws. Then businesses can move out and they can wonder why they've become a desert of joblessness. People are too stupid to learn any other way than the hard way. Give it to 'em good and hard!

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    1. They will do everything and anything to avoid recognizing the true culprit of the massive unemployment they create. They'll find something else to blame it on. My guess is, war. And, savers.

      - PanarchistamericanHelot

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    2. "They will do everything and anything to avoid recognizing the true culprit of the massive unemployment they create. They'll find something else to blame it on. My guess is, war. And, savers."

      Well of course, despite Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and a whole assortment of others they never learn because ideology to socialists is like religion to creationists. Facts and reality have to bend to faith and Utopia.
      Let them go bankrupt. Who cares? Just as failing businesses should go bankrupt, so should failing cities that are under the guidance of brainless politicians who were elected. Let them deal with the city of their own making.

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  5. “Small business should not be protected on the backs of workers."

    What the hell does that even mean? I thought these people hated Walmart. Now they are against all business?

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    1. It means exactly what it says. It means that they want to destroy small business jobs. Which, would bring adolescence to the age of 30 - think about it.

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    2. "What the hell does that even mean? I thought these people hated Walmart. Now they are against all business? "

      She's a socialist, remember? That means workers are supposed to own the means of production. So yes, when push comes to shove they are against ALL business.
      As a matter of fact, without saying so she wants a revolution of the proletariat.
      If she didn't, she'd just be a garden variety 'lefty-liberal'.

      So in this context, it really shouldn't be a surprise that she is urging for policy that will destroy business. It's kind of strange so many people don't seem to know what being a true socialist means.
      Maybe now they also understand why it's stupid to call Obama a socialist when he is in fact a slightly left wing version of a fascist.

      Sawant is the real thing. At least, she seems to be. I admire that more than the miserable, cowardly liars (a.k.a. Republicans and Democrats) that constantly pretend to be reasonable while growing the state endlessly and lining their pockets in the meantime.

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    3. "She's a socialist, remember? That means workers are supposed to own the means of production."

      Actually, that's syndicalism. Socialism is where the means of production are owned by a murderous abstraction called The State.

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    4. "Actually, that's syndicalism. Socialism is where the means of production are owned by a murderous abstraction called The State."

      Actually. that is only the intermediate stage. The end goal is for the workers to own the means of production. That the state will "wither away" eventually happens to be an imbecilic notion, but then i am not claiming socialists are realistic or intelligent.
      The fact remains that as what seems to be a "true" socialist, it should not be surprising that she is against ALL business, including small business.
      Sure, she thinks big business is even worse than small business, just like anarcho-capitalists think big government is even worse than small government. But we oppose both in the end even if we may accept small government as a step in-between.

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  6. Come on, Ms. Sawant. If you really want to enrich the little guy, don't fool around with a measly $15 per hour wage. Make it $150! Yes. Do it now.

    She might reply, "Well, that's absurd. They'd all be unemployed." Of course they would. So how about $149? No difference. $148? You get the picture.

    Eventually the employer and employee would arrive at a mutually agreeable wage that the former could afford and the latter is willing to work for. But control freaks like Sawant want to bypass such an arrangement. She clearly knows better than the people running their enterprises.

    I would venture to guess that Sawant has never run a business or had to meet a payroll risking her own capital. She thinks money drops from the heavens. If she gets her way, a lot of low-skilled workers are going to get pink slips. Will Sawant care?

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    1. Of course she'll care. In fact, that socialist lunatic will care so much that she'll scream for increases to food subsidies, housing subsidies, unemployment benefits, and so on.

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  7. If someone could only invent some contraption that would somehow generate electricity from her finger-wagging... Sawant could provide "green energy" for the Seattle metro area all by herself!

    Seriously though, I am really interested this comment:

    It is “the nature of capitalism to crush small business . . . capitalism overwhelmingly sets up small business for failure.”

    I wonder how she figures that? No analysis is provided in the story, but I wonder if she provided her rationale in the speech? Of course, it is pretty much irrelevant in the attempt to understand her thought process, because she also seems to be anti-small business!

    So Sawant is just generally anti-business...I wonder when she will reveal her alternative to business production? Will she shed her computer, her vehicle, will she begin buying groceries with food stamps? Unless she does, she is explicitly supporting "the corporate world", right?

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    1. “the nature of capitalism to crush small business . . . capitalism overwhelmingly sets up small business for failure.”

      Then,

      “Small business should not be protected on the backs of workers."

      Tyranny's might is also it's downfall.

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    2. No, she's not "generally anti-business" but merely opposed to privately owned and privately controlled business. Recall that she's a radical leftist, and all such angry people want to merge government with business. But she needs to seem reasonable, too. This motivates her double talk about capitalism crushing small business in one moment and, a few moments later, once she thinks that the audience is fooled, demanding types of policies that might crush small businesses. Of course, small businesses are less easily regulated and less easily merged with government.

      Now would be a good time to remind Seattle's residents of the many similarities and overlapping themes of Fascism and leftism, for in the current environment, Sawant and her cronies will have to compromise to advance their agenda. They won't be able to merge government with business outright in terms of ownership, but through onerous regulation they will be able to get more of the substance of ownership such that management and government are merged more tightly. (The fight for $15 amounts to exerting more managerial power over an important HR function.) So Seattle becomes more Fascistic in an economic sense even though the leftists are implementing prized pieces of their religious dogma in a piecemeal fashion.

      Of course, leftists lack a mature sense of humor, so they find nothing ironic or hypocritical in their shrill cliche about Fascism being the merger of the corporation and the state (which, btw, uses a sly equivocation in the meaning of corporatism.)

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    3. Anonymous,

      Well said! Come to think of it, it seems that most of Sawant's policy recommendations so far have, indeed, been fascist, and not socialist! I have been thinking about this today...and the irony of her "no compromise" ideological compromise.

      I guess I am not sure if she is just ignorant and doesn't realize that she is advocating fascism (which judging by her illogical track record wouldn't surprise me), or if she knows she is compromising by not advocating outright state economic planning. I wish someone interviewing her would ask her to define the three different economic systems in question (fascism, socialism, and capitalism) and show where her policy recommendations fit in her mind.

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  8. Confusion about the difference between crony-capitalism and decent hardworking businessmen, who have no ties to government, is growing.

    There is no confusion. The left hates the latter, and wants to be the former. The left's "anarchists" are not real anarchists in any meaningful sense. They are not your friends.

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    1. Bingo. Some leftists use "anarchism" as a smokescreen for their strategy and tactics. Rather than capturing government though ballots or a coup, these leftists want to appear as if they would smash any and all government to the ground and tolerate no replacement. This is very appealing to people who are stuck in adolescent rebellion against the status quo and is meant to entice them into a movement that merely wants free hands to establish a collectivist despotism unencumbered by the stability of existing institutions.

      For some reason I'm thinking of Noam Chomsky now.

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  9. would not an increase in wages occur if true inflation stats were reported???

    Shrinkflation

    They also discuss the corruption of the leveraged buyout whereby now whole nations are stolen using the nation's own assets and resources as collateral and now, with the TPP deal, the globe is about to be taken for cheap. In the second half, Max interviews investment adviser, Pippa Malmgren, a politics and policy expert who used to be Special Assistant to the President of the United States for Economic Policy on the National Economic Council and former member of the US President's Working Group on Financial Markets. They discuss 'shrinkflation,' inflation and the Plunge Protection team.

    http://youtu.be/XK31juzbw4w?t=11m40s

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  10. i would vote for her $15 wage-if a clause were written in that NO unemployment relief or related social assistance would be made available to the citizens in that city as a result of this change. If she feels so confident that this new wage increase would be successful for business as well as the workers...then forfeit the safety net if it all goes to shit in a couple years.

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    1. after they do away with mortgage interest deduction and all qe.

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    2. "i would vote for her $15 wage-if a clause were written in that NO unemployment relief or related social assistance would be made available to the citizens in that city as a result of this change."

      This would just be redistribution of state force. What gives you the right to punish employers through the state?
      Furthermore, it would still distort the economy and damage the free market. It would only hurt the poor more (which in itself cannot be the goal of libertarians), and finally the notion that politicians give a damn about any "clause" is ridiculous. They don't care about the bill of rights; why would they care about some clause?

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  11. i'm confused. Is she against capitalism for crushing small business, or does she agree with capitalism because she's for crushing small business with her $15 minimum wage?

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  12. @Ryan Nace
    She's FOR crushing small businesses
    @Anonymous @ 11.45 am

    "Of course, leftists lack a mature sense of humor, so they find nothing ironic or hypocritical in their shrill cliche about Fascism being the merger of the corporation and the state (which, btw, uses a sly equivocation in the meaning of corporatism."

    Thanks very much. Insightful. Never thought of that.

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  13. All you stupid jerks should shut up and take a page from Jerry Wolfgang. With his plan in place everything is going to be just fine, Innit?

    If only he would come and enlighten you drooling fools.

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