Cartoon Demands the government take over of businesses to do war crimes
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Germans had stuff from Ford Motor Co, too. There were reasons beyond simply "getting cheap cars for German consumers" that Volkswagon was founded.
Yeah, there's a reason it was dangerous to allow corporations to go transnational/globalist in the first place.
Where did the West go wrong? Somewhere in the "Merchant of Venice" era when the traders went from being near pariahs (and sharing a god with thieves), to respectable people.
I read the book Shogun years ago, which is about a 1600's Englishman stranded in Japan. One of the major themes is the clash of cultures and values between him and his hosts.
There's a scene that has always registered with me where a merchant has their stall and goods destroyed; I can't remember the cause. The main character tells his translator that this is terrible and she basically replies: "Why? This man produces nothing. He exploits the farmer who grows the food by buying it for a pittance and then marks it up, selling it to us for more than it's worth."
I do believe that the "middlemen" that move goods to market and retail them do provide some value, but it's always annoyed me that no matter the industry, the middlemen always seems to make much more money than the producer.
Just ask local farmers. They make more money selling directly to people than they do selling to corporations. The people also save money by buying a farmer's produce directly from them, as its cheaper. For instance, you can buy a whole/half/quarter cow, have it butchered, pick exactly what kinds of cuts you want, and freeze the meat, and save lots of money over buying it at the store as needed.
I've heard about the quarter/half cow process but it comes out to like $8 or $9 per lb of meat. That's what I pay for tenderloin so I'm not sure how that is competitive.
It's cheaper if you're willing to do your own butchery.
Because for the same 8 or 9 bucks a pound you also get shit like T-bone cuts. On average it is still significantly cheaper.
" Oh yes, the farmers and city people will surely be more wealthy once that pesky middle man is gone, right? He wasn't providing value to anyone! After all, the people can just travel to the countryside and buy their produce direct from the farmer.
Wait, wait, you're telling me that isn't feasible? That there will be a massive loss of efficiency in the economy? That crops will rot in the fields? Okay, what we need is for government to collect all the produce and distribute it at a fair price. What price is that? Well, we have these experts... "
And I'm sure you know how well that sort of system will work out. My point is that the merchant is providing economic value by being the middleman, and moreover the notion that he is not is typical of leftist thought.
In a properly functioning free market the end consumer decides how much the service the middleman is providing is worth. That service includes connecting producers to consumers, taking on the cost and risk of carrying inventory, opportunity cost, and more. Those services are in fact extremely valuable, both to the producer and to the consumer. If you think about it a bit you'll see why. For example, how much are a farmer's crops worth to him if they rot in his field? How much is a watermelon that you have to walk 10 miles to buy worth?
Now don't get me wrong, there absolutely are cases where the middlemen abuse the system through anti-competitive behaviors like collusion, monopolies, and so forth, and I do believe in (minimal) regulation to prevent those exploits.
From all that I've studied of history, it seems undeniable that cultivating a strong business class & commercial traditions definitely goes a long way to making a country strong. It's how the Italian & Dutch maritime powers were able to punch way above their weight for centuries (Venice vs. the Byzantines and the early Netherlands vs. Spain + Portugal, respectively). America, of course, was not only at its strongest but also most prosperous - for everyone, not just the uppermost crust of society - when the middle class was thriving. And China was approaching an early industrial revolution under its most innovative and merchant-friendly dynasty, the Song, who had set up what we might recognize as a proto-capitalist system with the world's first paper money, joint-stock companies, etc.
It's difficult to imagine a world where the Song got to continue on that trajectory instead of being crippled by the Jurchens & then obliterated by the Mongols. It would, at minimum, certainly have been a world where China consistently remains the top world power. As it was, instead China historically got centuries of stagnation under the neo-Confucian Ming and then oppression & ridiculous amounts of corruption (even by Chinese imperial standards) under the Qing. The same is true of Korea (more neo-Confucian stagnation) and Japan (stagnation under the isolationist Tokugawa Shogunate, ultimately broken by Matthew Perry after said stagnation left them in the West's dust technologically).
Kike
Based. Need to call them out whenever you can.
Comment Reported for: Rule 16 - Identity Attacks
No, but Cato, don't be an asshole to your fellow users, that was mean and uncalled for.
Lol downvotes. This place can be nega-reddit sometimes
Ah, Shogun. The fictional take on the life of the very real William Adams. The miniseries was pretty good too, but I don't think that scene was in it.
That's actually a major facet of the Confucian class system, which sprang up in China but was adopted across the rest of East Asia as Chinese influence took root many centuries ago. Since merchants were indeed seen as producing nothing by their own hand, but instead move around the goods produced by others, they were ranked lowest in this system, beneath both farmers and craftsmen. (In China the top class were the scholars, thought to be the wisest on account of having to pass the imperial examination; in Japan it was the 'kuge', civil nobility, until they were overthrown & marginalized alongside the imperial family itself by the samurai toward the end of the Heian Period.)
I read Shogun, Tai-Pan, and King Rat. All good. (Tai-Pan prob the least exciting) The merchant scene stuck with me as well. King rat is basically an extension of the merchant mindset. Just he's a POW running contraban and favors instead of rice and silk. At least he has a better motivation / redemption arc.
Tai-Pan has it on a macro scale. I can't remember the fictional admiral's name.. or was it an admiral? It was something like Commodore Perry. Every time China or Japan would close off a market or harbor to the west and confiscate/arrest/slaughter he'd roll a couple of gunships up a river shelling the elites, and business would be reopened. Which is essentially what the US foreign policy still is to this day. Only.. it's benefitting a very small group of oligarchs, versus the greater population.
IBM was also hired to run the bureaucracy