Alternative to capitalism?

[Makalakumu]

What about guys like Bill Gates who went from some geek programmer working out of garage to the richest geek in the world?

This example is not a common experience. Unfortunately this type of thing is what is stretched out and blown up like a gigantic rubber carrot. "Work harder my pretties and you just might end up like him".

I've got a pin.

 

[Makalakumu]

Hey, didja hear the phone tapes of the Enron guys discussing screwing the West Coast?

Yeah, I heard about that. "Hey, lets make make a bottleneck here by shutting down this switch!" That is as American as apple pie.

 

[TigerWoman]

Sorry, I'm not tracking with you, but how about the barter system? Or is that a form of capitalism? Works great around here amongst friends or people you can trust. Otherwise it would have to be a direct exchange. Ah, the simple life. But not everything can be bartered. We all would have to live like the Amish. No 'puter, guess that does that in. And I don't suppose the Amish practice martial arts either... I'll leave now, you all can get back to your discussion.

 

[Don Roley]

Wow. NEAT self-contradictions.

First off, you really need to read somebody like Adam Smith on the topic of where wealth comes from. In capitalist society, it comes from the many who produce enough surplus value; it flows to the few, who profit more than their work actually warrants because they own/control the means of production.

In other words, capitalist society--by definition--organizes value around the idea that a select few get wealthy, and most simply work hard.

That has got to be one of the biggest distortions of capitalism I have heard. It sounds like Marx, not Smith.

Simply put, under capitalism you are free to trade with anyone else and do what you want with the wealth you produce. It works best under a goverment that simply inures that no one can violate anyone else's rights (i.e, don't polluyte my water, break into my house, sell me something under false pretextes, etc) and little else to "improve" society as a whole. It tends to attract those that like the idea that they can't stick their noses in other people's business and no one can do tell them what to do unless what they do somehow affects them.

But to those that require a justification of their greed and envy, the idea of collectivism and the demonizing of those that have more than them will always be a strong reason why even after all the death camps and millions of people slaughtered by their own socialist goverments in the 20th century, there are still people who support it.

If you are disturbed by this line of reasoning, I find that surprising. You were the one who brought up the naturalistic rationalization for capitalism.

No, I never tried to make pseudo-science part of my aurgument about the moral superiortiy of capitalism. I merely stated that it is the only system where no person can use violence or the threat of violence on another to aquire and distribute the product of their labor. Systems that use force (as in goverments breaking down doors and taking grain crops, etc instead of the human need to eat) are built on a foundation of violence instead of voluntary cooperation.

 

[Don Roley]

What about guys like Bill Gates who went from some geek programmer working out of garage to the richest geek in the world? The guy worked, made a popular product and reaped the rewards. He employs many people, donates tons of money to worthy causes and from what I hear is a pretty good guy.

My, how rude of you to provide an example of how capitalism works when so many people are trying to say it does not work.

Of course, Gates is a rare case. But if you try to say he is an exception, then you open up the fact that the rule about people not being able to do better under capitalism has holes in it. As I said, Gates is rare. He is about as rare as a Stephen Hawking or Einstein is for human potential. But there is that potential there.

Most times, those that push for people to take control of the wealth of others take people like Gates and demonize them. Truth to tell, people are people and there are many bad traits you can find in any group. The thing is, that while we can provide tons and tons of examples of corrupt and evil politicians, the collectavist movement wants to hand them control over the fruits of labor of everyone.

Me, I like the idea of leaving everyone alone as much as possible to giving such control over to others for ignorant people's own good. But anyone who wants those better off to help those less fortunate are quite welcome to do what they want with their own property. :ultracool

 

[loki09789]

The point that seems to be forgotten in this discussion is that capitolism is an economic theory. The only real governmental aspect of it is when capitolists tell the government to stay the hell out of it - and it was tried and proved to have some negative affects when the government didn't regulate business practices.

Some of the other alternatives/influences that are being mentioned are political/economic theories (communism/socialism...) and have also proven to have some negative affects when the government did regulate the **** out of the business practices (ever notice how the stereotype of USSR/Eastern Block products is that they are hearty but not too sophisticated? They were constantly stealing technology from the west).

So, it is seriously ironic how so many of the "down with capitolism" folks here are also "down with governmental infringement on individual rights" people because some of those changes that you desire are going to infringe on someone's individual rights/civil liberties to start a business and climb the ladder of success - even if they are decent moral people. Don't you see the duallity?

The only realistic way that 'we' can really influence/change capitolism (meaning the citizens of democratic type nations) is by proposing, lobbying and voting for politics and politicians who will establish even more business regulations - that would translate to more control over the private citizen and what we can and can not do with our own private property (for business or otherwise)....I'd say that we could stage an economy revolution to force change but that is about as realistic as Red Blade stepping forward or any other of the shadow trolls to reveal themselves.


As it stands, capitolism is an open system of economy. If you want to be a "Judeo/Christian values" based capitolistic company you are FREE to run your business that way. If the government is regulating your decisions (with the heavily socialistic/communistic overtones implied here) then they would not allow your religious values to dictate the tone of the company - they would dictate it to you - because it really isn't YOUR company but theirs.

Capitolism and democratic politics go hand in hand. Pre/during and Post WWI there was a huge Socialism movement in the USA that damn near tore it apart if I remembe my 42nd Parallel reading. The current US form of capitolism is loaded with socialistic influences because of unions, abudsmen (sp?), company 'liaison' employees who work with employees so the workers don't feel that they have to unionize, and governmental regulations of businesses (minimum wage, pollution standards, monopolies...)

I still say that it is a basic "people, in general are selfish/self interested" problem and not a capitolism problem. There is corruption in socialism, communism.... because of basic human behavior - greed and power are addictive.

Change? Change the self for the better, buy what you need and avoid debt as much as possible (RIGHT!), support companies that fit your social values (if you really are that concerned or pay that much attention - I buy chocolate even though I know that some of the companies look the other way about African child labor/slavery over the harvesting of raw material), be an example for others, vote/decide for the common good and drive on. I still don't buy anything but Ford products even now that my father is retired (A plan is great) but they didn't do a bad job of taking care of him and I even worked there part time for a stretch

 

[Makalakumu]

That is nature. People starve unless they work. Sometimes they do not like the work they have to do under the conditions they want in order to survive. Again, that is nature and not something special to capitalism.

Mr. Roley - you did indeed invoke nature to rationalize your argument for capitalism. Please allow me to describe a few more natural things for you.

Money = Energy. So there is a lot about how money moves and does not move that is described by ecology. With that premise, I want you to consider a basic ecologic law. Energy spreads out. What this means is that when energy pools, systems arise to drain that pool. If a system has created an energy pool, then the system must exert energy to preserve that pool. Not only is this ecologic, this is also entropic. No psuedo-science, just the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics in action.

A real world example of the above is this...the very rich in this country must work very hard at staying rich. They must do everything in their power to not only preserve wealth, but to add to their wealth. In capitalist societies, a social structure MUST be maintaned that accomplishes the above task. This explains why so many of the laws in this country (formal and informal) favor the rich. It also explains why the majority of our law makers are very wealthy themselves and why it takes so much money to get involved in politics.

Money is the only thing that really matters in a capitalist society and preserving the flow of energy to the hands of the few is the REAL founding principle of this country.

For more information on this try, Howard Zinn "Peoples History of the United States."

 

[Don Roley]

As it stands, capitolism is an open system of economy. If you want to be a "Judeo/Christian values" based capitolistic company you are FREE to run your business that way. If the government is regulating your decisions (with the heavily socialistic/communistic overtones implied here) then they would not allow your religious values to dictate the tone of the company - they would dictate it to you - because it really isn't YOUR company but theirs.

So, to summerize. If you want to help people less fortunate than you, then a capitalistic system backed up by a goverment that intrudes only when one person attacks/violates/defrauds another, is the only way to do it on your own.

Every other system gives power to a politician to dispose of you and your labor as they will under the excuse of helping the volk which has more power than the "greedy" individual.

 

[Don Roley]

Money = Energy. So there is a lot about how money moves and does not move that is described by ecology.

Ah, I see. So if I offer you five hundred dollars to kill you rmother and you refuse, and I then offer you five million dollars to kill your mother you are then forced to kill your mother. There is no individual choice, no free will. I merely have to offer you enough money and your moral obligation to the persn to gave birth to you is null and void with no responsibility on your part.

And this is the same as if I put a gun to your head and forced you to do something. After all, people can not be trusted to do the right thing unless they are cared for by a suitably evolved individual.

 

[rmcrobertson]

It seems screamingly clear that a number of folks do not understand the nature of the eeconomic system they are espousing. It the interest of knowledge, then--and to start with--here's the "Encarta," description of Adam Smith's ideas:

"Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' represents the first serious attempt in the history of economic thought to divorce the study of political economy from the related fields of political science, ethics, and jurisprudence. It embodies a penetrating analysis of the processes whereby economic wealth is produced and distributed and demonstrates that the fundamental sources of all income, that is, the basic forms in which wealth is distributed, are rent, wages, and profits.

The central thesis of 'The Wealth of Nations' is that capital is best employed for the production and distribution of wealth under conditions of governmental noninterference, or laissez-faire, and free trade. In Smith's view, the production and exchange of goods can be stimulated, and a consequent rise in the general standard of living attained, only through the efficient operations of private industrial and commercial entrepreneurs acting with a minimum of regulation and control by governments. To explain this concept of government maintaining a laissez-faire attitude toward commercial endeavors, Smith proclaimed the principle of the “invisible hand”: Every individual in pursuing his or her own good is led, as if by an invisible hand, to achieve the best good for all. Therefore any interference with free competition by government is almost certain to be injurious.

Although this view has undergone considerable modification by economists in the light of historical developments since Smith's time, many sections of The Wealth of Nations, notably those relating to the sources of income and the nature of capital, have continued to form the basis for theoretical study in the field of political economy. The Wealth of Nations has also served, perhaps more than any other single work in its field, as a guide to the formulation of governmental economic policies.


Note, please, that this is capitalism altogether without government regulation--the "libertarian," approach. Note, too, that there is no provision whatsoever in this economic system for human beings--there are, "individuals," it is true, but these are defined solely in terms of their ability to produce or collect or accumulate, "wealth," in one form or another.

If you actually READ Marx's, "Capital," you will note something odd: the description of capitalism as an economic system is the same as in Smith, or Ricardo, or "The Wall Street Journal," for that matter. The difference lies in the accounts of, a) origins of the system; b) its, "naturalness;" c) its effects upon "morality;" d) the consequences for the considerable majority of human beings; e) its status as, "the end of history," the logical end of human social development.

As for the statement, "Every other system gives power to a politician to dispose of you and your labor as they will under the excuse of helping the volk which has more power than the "greedy" individual, " well, it represents a grotesque avoidance of what capitalism is--precisely a system that gives the boss, the CEO, etc., the power to dispose of you and your labor. Or isn't there anybody else out there who's moved a lot to chase jobs, changed their life for the worse for a job, felt that they work their *** off and the boss makes the dough?

It is extraordinary that people will not connect what Raymond Williams called their, "lived experience," to the actual facts of the world in which they live. It is also extraordinary to see someone pooh-pooh barter and collectivization among the Amish, then end with a post-script from the New Testament! I musta missed the parts where Jesus said, "And the whole purpose of life and the universe is to accumulate wealth in this world. So go and dutifully screw thy brethren to Get Ahead, for that is My Word, and in the end the Invisible Hand will make it all OK. Oh yes, and it is Perfectly Fine By Me that there are the Poor."

Or to quote Blake before anybody start in on how charitable Americans are (in fact, but whocares about THAT, Americans give less than any other industrialized country as a percentage of GNP):

"Mercy would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor
And Pity no more could be
If all were as happy as we."

Some are willing to sacrifice the majortiy of people to an abstract theory of economics. I ain't; just stuck with it, till better days arrive.

 

[Cruentus]

It seems screamingly clear that a number of folks do not understand the nature of the eeconomic system they are espousing.

Not being accusatory to anyone here, but I find that to generally be the case. Manufactured consent once again. "Capitalism" and "Free-Market" and "free-Trade" all good. "Patroit Act" and "freedom Fries," yummm. It must be good because that was what I have been told for my whole life, so I'll figure out my arguement behind why it must be good later.

Vote Bush.

 

[loki09789]

The biggest hole in most of the commentary about Marxism/Communism is that those who are currently promoting/believing that this 'ism' was a direct reaction to the Czarist corruption within Russia of the time. Engel was reacting to the industrial corruption/apathy about the working class....

Don't confuse their commentary with our reader interpretations. Parallels/comparisons can be made, true, but the scale/range of the problems are going to be different. The specifics that Marxist/Communistic theory was revolting against was some VERY drastic Have/Have not contrasts in a national structure that had NO social services programs (churches and family support/charity was the closest thing), and no educational/self improvement programs for the masses.... since that isn't the case in the US or most/all of the modern first world nations, I would say that the venom/disgust that people are commenting with is either misplaced or misunderstanding of the context of marxist commentary.

It is no different than the Religious protestantism that was a reaction to what they saw wrong within the Catholic church. You can either try and make small changes without destroying the whole, or you can reject the whole and create a different system entirely.... communism instead of capitalism...

ANY wholesale throw away reactionary response is going to be inherently critical of the thing that inspired the reaction... thus ignoring ANY positive/productive aspects of that system.

Also, consider any personal disillusionment/bitterness from personal experience on the part of Marx/Engel (Engle?) that can inspire commentary that blames the 'rich' or who ever for a problem. People will, though not always aware of it, grind a personal axe as part of their motivation to make a difference - corrupting some of the tone and intent of that cause.

On a personal level consider who many people at some point have made parenting/adult decisions at least partially motivated by the "I won't be anything like my parents" inspiration - only later realizing that they were rejecting good stuff because of that motivation. The personal axe grinding corrupted the path that they/we/...okay I took at times on my way to being 'my own man' (which in a way is a rephrasing of "I can do it, I'm a big boy now....). Now amplify the range of impact because of publication/forum/purpose.... and the intent might be good, underlying motives can undermine the intent/tone.

The 'evil rich' of Marxist commentary is an accurate description I think. Carrying that stereotype to our modern day is prejudicial and just as bad as anti-semetism or racism. I don't think people would appreciate a "those martial artists all...." types of comments.

 

[rmcrobertson]

I agree about the weird Freudian implications of the Russian Revolution--and the subsequent attempt on the parts of divagationist scum like Zinoviev and beria to themselves become the Evil Fathers--points, incidentally, that contemporary marxians talk about all the time.

However, if you listen to things like the racist and woman-hating comments on the parts of the heads of Mitsubishi a few years back, or look at the recent Enron phone tapes, or any of a host of others, well, it's hard to think that these guys aren't still at least some evil.

 

[Makalakumu]

Ah, I see. So if I offer you five hundred dollars to kill you rmother and you refuse, and I then offer you five million dollars to kill your mother you are then forced to kill your mother. There is no individual choice, no free will. I merely have to offer you enough money and your moral obligation to the persn to gave birth to you is null and void with no responsibility on your part.

Capitalism is a selective system. The society it creates will evolve an individual that will accept your offer. You could offer me any amount of money and I wouldn't kill my mother, but if you opened the offer up, someone would step forward. There are some lines in which I will not cross in order to get ahead. Others do not have that problem hence they will out compete me in the capitalist society.

 

[Cruentus]

Capitalism is a selective system. The society it creates will evolve an individual that will accept your offer. You could offer me any amount of money and I wouldn't kill my mother, but if you opened the offer up, someone would step forward. There are some lines in which I will not cross in order to get ahead. Others do not have that problem hence they will out compete me in the capitalist society.

Wow. Extremely good point, upnorth.

 

[Tgace]

But they will be prosecuted and incarcerated/punished in a democratic society. Like Paul M. mentioned, capitalism is an economic system in our democratic governmental system. Most of the other "isms" are "combined" systems.

 

[Tgace]

http://www.post-gazette.com/printer.asp

Top 50: Defining success



Tuesday, April 09, 2002

By Dan Fitzpatrick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The day Internet auctioneer FreeMarkets Inc. began trading its stock, making Glen Meakem a paper billionaire, someone asked the young executive if he ever imagined his company would be this successful.

"I always knew it would happen this way," he said.

More than two years later, Meakem, 38, admits to being "very ambitious" and wanting "to be as successful or more successful than the most successful people of my generation, in terms of achievements in my career . . . and also in terms of making money." Yet, now that Meakem has that at FreeMarkets, his definition of success has become more complex.

"You won't find many people who are more ambitious in a career sense and money sense than me," he said. But, "if I am a crummy husband and a crummy father, I am not a success." He still values personal achievement and wealth, but success is "also about having a positive impact on others."

Most people in business define success as Meakem does, in a personal way, putting their families, charities, employees or spiritual happiness above money, status and rank. But there is an inherent conflict there. People do not want to define themselves in materialist ways, but the larger culture often defines business success differently, concentrating more on profits, money, status and rank.

"I would be lying to you if I were to tell you I would consider myself successful or my business successful if it didn't allow me to live a lifestyle I am content with," said attorney Steve Reinsel, a co-founder of Downtown law firm Santoro & Reinsel.

The pursuit of success thus reflects a paradox of American life, and points to a series of inherent conflicts that have altered the definition of success numerous times in the last two centuries while at the same time spawning endless advice on how to achieve it.

Pittsburgh executives reached by the Post-Gazette now define success as a mixture of survival, failure, innovation, change, performance and respect. To Sunil Wadhwani, founder of iGate, success is "creating something from nothing and really building a significant organization where nothing existed before." To Medrad Inc. Chief Executive Officer John Friel, success is his own happiness, the well-being of his employees and the health of his company. To Internet entrepreneur Marco Cardamone, it is "learning from failure."

But rarely is it money.

"I don't like the idea of doing things for money," said UPMC Chairman Jeff Romoff. Or, as Pittsburgh attorney Marlee Myers put it, "Money is the byproduct of success; it is not the definition of success."



Building character

The pursuit of success, and its inherent conflicts, began with Benjamin Franklin, a self-promoter, entrepreneur and 18th century statesman who remains the archetypal self-made man. He started life poor, worked hard, made money and achieved an international status that allowed him to dine with kings.

Drawing on puritanical and Calvinist beliefs that success was a sign of God's favor, Franklin developed the view that the pursuit of wealth was virtuous and would lead to success. It was part of "the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection," he said.

Franklin was the first to make money by telling others how to make money, too. In 1757, he published "The Way To Wealth," a how-to guide for accumulating wealth. Later, in his "Autobiography," Franklin described how other young people could "emerge from the poverty and obscurity in which I was born and bred, to a state of affluence and some degree of reputation in the world."

To Franklin, the two most important virtues employed in the pursuit of wealth were industry and frugality.

"The way to wealth," he wrote in "Advice to Young Statesmen," "if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both." From this philosophy came classic Franklin aphorisms such as "early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Also, it produced, "A fat kitchen makes a lean will. Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt."

Among other virtues crucial for success, Franklin also listed temperance, silence, order, resolution, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquillity, chastity and humility.

Idleness, he said, was a seductive trap. "Laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him."

Franklin tried to hold himself to these same requirements by keeping a daily chart of self-examination. He focused on one virtue per week, and failed himself on the days he did not live up to his own advice.

Franklin, unlike the early Puritans, removed religion from the pursuit of success, preferring to view it as a secular quest and within the power of each individual alone. Also, "he ignored the importance of luck, contacts, family influence and native intelligence," wrote Richard Huber, author of the book "The American Idea of Success." "The start was equal for all."

Such an attitude played well in a country that valued rugged individualism. Back then, material success equaled true success, because it required honesty, integrity, hard work and determination to achieve it. Self interest was OK, as long as it was "enlightened self-interest."

Reinforcing this view, in the late 19th century, were the fictional tales of Horatio Alger. Building on the work in magazines such as "Wealth and Worth," and such stories as "Where There's a Will, There's a Way," which appeared in the 1850s, Alger turned the pursuit of success into a heroic struggle that was symbolic of equal opportunity and the long climb from "rags to riches."

An ordained minister-turned-writer, Alger churned out about 100 novels in the late 1800s, all of them touching on the theme of success. For the most part, Alger's heroes were young, male and poor, but always seeking "respectability" in the white collar world.

Alger's first hit was "Ragged Dick," a book published in 1868. The protagonist, an orphan, struggles without any reward until he saves a wealthy man's drowning child. The father, grateful for the effort, hires the hero to work in a counting house and offers him a new suit of clothes.

"Dick's great ambition to 'grow up 'spectable," Alger wrote, "seemed likely to be accomplished."

Most of Alger's stories followed the same plot line: plucky, self-reliant youngsters rewarded with the kindness of a stranger, usually in the form of money or a job. Also, the hero always seized the opportunity when it arrived.

No one businessman of the late 19th century reflected the Alger ethos better than Pittsburgh steelmaker Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie epitomized American-style success, believing like Franklin that the virtuous struggle for wealth would improve his character -- and fatten his pocketbook.

Carnegie glorified the accumulation of wealth by telling his own story in books, articles, speeches and essays. Born poor in Scotland, Carnegie arrived in the United States at the age of 13, and rose from the messenger boy in a Pittsburgh telegraph office to become the richest man in the world at the turn of the century, when he sold Carnegie Steel for $480 million.

Carnegie's story also echoes Alger's "Ragged Dick."

In his book, "Empire of Business," Carnegie argued that "honest poverty" is the "soil" on which "alone the virtues and all that is precious in human character grow." His memory of the "wolf of poverty" spurred him to ceaseless amounts of work for his employers. In a June 23, 1885, address Carnegie gave to a group of graduating students at Pittsburgh's Curry Commercial College, Carnegie stressed these themes.

"The rising man," he said, "must do something exceptional, and beyond the range of his special department.

"He must attract attention.

"There is no service so low and simple, neither any so high, in which the young man of ability and willing disposition cannot readily and almost daily prove himself capable of greater trust and usefulness, and, what is equally important, show his invincible determination to rise."

Carnegie provided ample justification for the pursuit of success and the making of money, echoing themes established by Franklin more than century earlier. But he also put a new spin on the subject. In a 1889 essay entitled Wealth, he argued that some people acquire wealth due to superior talents, but that such an accumulation benefited the larger human race.

"It becomes the duty of the millionaire to increase his revenues," he wrote. "The struggle for more is completely freed from selfish or ambitious taint and becomes a noble pursuit. Then he labors not for self, but for others', not to hoard, but to spend, The more he makes, the more the public gets."

Carnegie, true to his word, gave away much of his fortune. As he concluded, "the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."



Modern-day virtue

Most executives now attribute success to a mixture of hard work, good fortune and persistence, drawing on the same themes established by Franklin and Alger.

Consider the life of Marlee Myers, managing partner of Morgan Lewis & Bockius' Pittsburgh office and perhaps Pittsburgh's best-known technology attorney. Her grandparents were immigrants from Russia, and her parents lacked formal education. Her father, who never finished high school, ran a small Lee Jeans store in Downtown McKeesport, but lost the store to a redevelopment of McKeesport's business district.

In the conventional sense, Myers said, her parents were not successful. But her own poor background made Myers "independent minded" and eager for achievement. She won a full scholarship to attend Carnegie Mellon University, dropped out at 19 to get married, then paid her own way to attend the University of Pittsburgh.

She eventually went to law school, where she graduated No. 1 in her class. She got a job at the Downtown law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart, started representing technology clients, and formed Morgan Lewis' Pittsburgh office in 1996. She has represented many of Pittsburgh's best known technology companies, including FreeMarkets and Fore Systems, which was purchased by Marconi plc in the late 1990s.

"I have moved up the ladder in American society by dint of education, hard work and pluck," she said. "It is a very typical American story ... My parents had essentially nothing. I was able to achieve my dreams and goals through working hard and trying hard at what I do."

Former Allegheny Technologies Chairman Dick Simmons, who resigned three years ago as one of the nation's most respected steelmakers, did not have much money as a child, either.

His father, who owned a gas station in Bridgeport, Conn., died while Simmons was still a teen-ager. Simmons, though, got a scholarship to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He graduated with a debt equal to $35,000 in today's dollars. It took him four years to pay it off, while working for Allegheny Ludlum, the company he would eventually run a few decades later.

Simmons, now 70, spent five decades in the specialty metals business, the highlight of which was a $195 million management buyout of Ludlum in 1980. Simmons also launched, with his own money, a venture capital firm that was one of the first to fund small, local technology companies.

His story, he said, is not "rags to riches," but it does show how "you start out by having to be very lucky, by working hard and by taking risks.

"I consider myself to be the luckiest man in the world," he said.

Tom Murrin, a former high-ranking executive with Westinghouse Electric Corp., and a former dean of Duquesne University's A.J. Palumbo School of Business Administration, had a similar experience. Both his parents were poor, and never got beyond high school. His father, who dug tunnels and caught rivets atop skyscrapers in New York City, died while Murrin was still in high school.

But Murrin was a good enough student and a good enough athlete to win a football scholarship to Fordham University. Walking to school an hour each way, every day, Murrin majored in physics because it was the "hardest subject" he could find and he played football, too, as a fullback.

His coach was the then-unknown Vince Lombardi, who would later coach Green Bay Packers.

Lombardi, Murrin said, taught him several important lessons about success.

"One was you could do things much better than you could ever naturally want to or dream if you worked hard enough at it. He taught us how to work harder than we ever wanted to or felt we ever could."

After Fordham, Murrin joined Westinghouse in 1951. Before rising in the executive ranks, he started on the factory floor, and became engineer, supervising engineer, manufacturing representative in Europe, as well as the company's youngest manufacturing manager and youngest general manager.

"I was the youngest everything," he said.

Thinking back, he said, "A lot of life is fate or luck." Like the boys in the Horatio Alger story, "I have been very fortunate that way."

Unlike Murrin, Allegheny County Executive Chief Executive Jim Roddey began life in a "comfortable" middle class household, but he did not need a lower-class background to inspire thoughts of success. He remembers being successful early in life, first as a high school track star and then after he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps.

"I think I enjoyed being successful," he said. "You have a little taste of going to school and doing well and being recognized at the top of your class and being in sports and being on the starting team. You begin to form patterns, recognizing that it is better to win than it is to lose."

As a businessman, Roddey experienced both success and failure. He worked for a man, CNN network founder Ted Turner , who "used to say that 'business was a game and money was how you kept score,' " Roddey said. "His definition of success was being king of the hill." Roddey said he has some of that attitude in him, but that money was never "the most important thing" for him.

"All of my life I have set goals," he said. "To be success, first you have to set goals. If you reach those goals, then you have a clear definition of success."

Like Roddey, FreeMarkets CEO Glen Meakem felt like a success early in life. In sixth grade, he remembers doing well in school, sports and the theater. "I haven't stopped feeling like a success since the sixth grade," he said. His first job in the business world was with Kraft General Foods. He felt successful right away, with raises and good performance reviews. But, "I saw myself as a CEO,'' he said. "I thought my odds of being a CEO were small following that career path."

So, he left.

"The really, really great business people were those who started their own company. Being the guy who worked your way up for 30 years and having four years as the CEO was sort of nice and you made a decent income, but people forgot your name in five years." The people who started companies "were people who changed business ... made a lot of money and made a great impact."



The decline of the dream and the new success

By the last third of the 19th century, the dominant concept of success was one of "opulent materialism competitively won," according to "Success in America," a book by Rex Burns. From the 1870s to the 1920s, a farm boy-turned-Baptist minister named Russell Conwell stressed this theme in more than 6,000 lectures known as "Acres of Diamonds," acting as an unapologetic promoter of materialism.

"I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich," he said. "Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought because you can do more good with it than you could without it."

But some felt that rugged independence, even the "enlightened" self-interest promoted first by Franklin, was no longer moral but instead destructive. Muckrakers and progressives began to pick away at the image of the self-made industrialist. Many Pittsburgh executives were targets. One, of course, was Carnegie.

Another was Charles Schwab. After joining Carnegie Steel in 1879 as a day laborer, Schwab made a fast rise to the top, becoming president at age 35, head of the largest and most profitable steel company in the world. Schwab later went on to form Bethlehem Steel, making it a formidable competitor to U.S. Steel.

In "Succeeding with What You Have," a magazine article that appeared in American Magazine in November, 1916, Schwab made the point that it doesn't take big brains to succeed in business. "I have always felt that the surest way to qualify for the job just ahead is to work a little harder than anyone else on the job one is holding down." In another article titled "Ten Commandments of Success," Schwab said that "a man early in life must make up his mind to do one of two things: Either to have a good time in life; or to be successful in life.

"He can choose one, but not both."

But Schwab tasted the other side of success, too. He spent lavishly in his later years, and according to Time magazine, died nearly bankrupt in 1939, even though at one time he made $2 million a year as U.S. Steel's president.

By the late 1930s, according to Robert Hessen's "Steel Titan," Schwab felt that some of his achievements in business had been forgotten and unappreciated. He told journalist B.C. Forbes in 1936, "I really feel that I have contributed something to the development of this country's resources -- Bethlehem [Steel] gives employment to some 30,000 people. It hurts me -- it hurts me very much -- to be branded as nothing but a greedy, selfish, self-seeking, mercenary, merciless fellow, callous towards workmen and towards everybody else."

After World War II, the pursuit of success veered off the path worn by Schwab and Carnegie. Personal magnetism, instead of inner virtue, became a more important factor of success. In the 1925 best-selling book "The Man Nobody Knows," advertising executive Bruce Barton described how Jesus Christ, "founder of modern business," rose from poverty to become a great leader because he had "the personal magnetism which begets loyalty and commands respect."

The personality approach reached its zenith, perhaps, with Dale Carnegie's 1936 book "How To Win Friends and Influence People." Born poor, Carnegie became an accomplished college debater and later, a salesman. At night, he gave courses in public speaking to a YMCA, in New York. The course was a hit, and he began teaching more classes in the 1920s and 1930s, calling the lectures "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

He finally put the advice into print in 1936.

Carnegie, in his book, promised to give people self-confidence, which would lead to success and a larger income. Among his rules were "Smile; Remember that a man's name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in the English language; Be a good listener; Talk in terms of the other man's interests; and Make the other person feel important -- and do it sincerely."



Not afraid to fail

When asked what it takes to be a success, most Pittsburgh executives provided similar answers, drawing their influences from Franklin, Alger and the two Carnegies, Andrew and Dale. Most mentioned hard work, a positive attitude and self-confidence. Some mentioned integrity, some mentioned discipline and some mentioned intelligence.

Some mentioned luck.

For Internet entrepreneur Marco Cardamone, though, the secret is simple: Learn from your failures. "My success is the result of learning from a lot of failures," he said.

At age 24, Cardamone was living in New York and making more than $100,000 a year as a computer animator. "I had what you would call early success." But when he tried to create a new animation product and sell it to cable networks, "I failed miserably."

His failure put him on the verge of bankruptcy.

He left Manhattan for Pittsburgh thinking that "this isn't easy and you are not guaranteed anything. The last thing you want to do is take what appears to be success for granted." In Pittsburgh, though, Cardamone started an Internet company called Electronic Images, and in 1997, he sold it for $65 million. Friends and colleagues congratulated him at the time of the sale, asking him if he now felt truly successful.

"Everybody thinks I got a boatload of money," and therefore "must be successful," Cardamone said. But, "to believe that is very dangerous." Success, he said, "is not about you, but about the problems you solve for other people."

 

[Don Roley]

As for the statement, "Every other system gives power to a politician to dispose of you and your labor as they will under the excuse of helping the volk which has more power than the "greedy" individual, " well, it represents a grotesque avoidance of what capitalism is--precisely a system that gives the boss, the CEO, etc., the power to dispose of you and your labor. Or isn't there anybody else out there who's moved a lot to chase jobs, changed their life for the worse for a job, felt that they work their *** off and the boss makes the dough?

But you are avoiding the issue that a company can not use violence to get you to do what they want under what we call capitalism. But goverments can. So, if you do not like working for a boss, they can not force you to work for them, only convince you with things like more money, etc. The power a goverments weilds has been used in the past to force entire peoples from their farms at gunpoint to starve, end up in death camps, etc.

This is the central part that makes any other system than capitalism evil- it requires one person or group of persons to control others. Control equals power and absolute power corrupts absolutley as the saying goes.

The ideal goverment is one that does as little as needed to prevent civilization from collapsing. The idea is that anything the goverment need not do it should not due. The goverment is there to insure that person's A right to swing stops before it reaches person's B nose. Capitalism is the outgrowth of this philosophy.

People will not give the goverment complete control over everyone if they said they wanted it to build up slave camps and make themselves wealthy. But they will give a goverment power if they are given the excuse that is what is needed to make a perfect society.

And once this goverment is in place with the power to take from one and give to another, the power corrupts. The process has been outlined in Orwell's "Animal Farm." Whether the power corrupts the people in goverment or people who desire power seek it out when the system is created I do not know. But it is a fact that goverments that use "people" as part of their name have ended killing millions of them in death camps.

It does not matter what form of socialism you use, either the facist model (Nazi does mean national socialism after all) or the communist model, they all give power over individuals in the name of doing good for the entire group and end up as horror. The more power, the greater the horror. It does not matter if we are talking about Mussolini or Mugabe, the systems that allow one person control over another all end up with a small few lording over the masses in a corrupt, dictatorial style that Caligula could only have dreamed of.

 

[rmcrobertson]

"But you are avoiding the issue that a company can not use violence to get you to do what they want under what we call capitalism. But goverments can. So, if you do not like working for a boss, they can not force you to work for them..."


...and you appear to be completely unware of the history and present methodology of the system you espouse. For one thing, the history of capitalism is precisely that government force is ALWAYS enlisted against labor and on the side of the owners and bankers, from whom it cannot be distinguished.

Read about ITT. read about United Fruit in Latin America. Read about just why it is that German companies have recenlty been forced to pay war reparations. Read about Rockefeller. Read about the Opium Wars.

Hell, go read this juicy set of photos and examples:

www.rootsweb.com/~kycoalmi

And above all, learn about the reality of what you're espousing.

Harlan County, dude.

 

[Tgace]

Why would I, as a businessman even want to invest my own money to start a company and employ people if I was only going to be looked upon as an oppressor? Should the government run all sources of production?