As I understand it, most of that huge amount of money in pensions is managed by very large funds, like CalPERS, who manage their own investments. They manage a fund on behalf of an army of small investors, so I guess if there’s any moral judgment here, it’s just that the money managers who serve lots of “little people” have cleaner hands than servants of the hyperwealthy elite. The hands of hedge fund managers aren’t unclean from the money they both touch, but from the clients they serve. Money only has a moral dimension when you look at how it’s used.

Kind of like the moral dimension of the stock market. What’s the morality of that nominally benign pension fund owning an arms manufacturer? Not a hypothetical question, remembering back to the days of South African apartheid, and the successful pressure on pension funds and trust to get rid of their investments in the country. Public pressure forced the money managers to concede that money isn’t purely abstract and objective, and that it does have a moral dimension. At least, to concede that in public. I don’t think we should ever let up the pressure to contain capitalism within civilized bounds and keep it on the straight and narrow.

Sad how nowadays that sort of talk will get me labelled a socialist, when once upon a time it was centrist. But I can live with that.

About 1/2 the worth of the stock market is owned by pensions, private and public.I’m not saying you’re calling everyone evil, I’m just trying to look on the bright side.

This is really about good old-fashioned class struggle. These people have an agenda, they know this is a zero-sum game because they’ve rigged it that way from the start; they have no intention of sharing the loot with anyone–or leveling the playing field for anybody. They are prepared to be ruthless and they feel they are entitled to be that way. They are convinced they alone possess any patriotism, spirituality, civic responsibility, family values and work ethic; anyone not in their tribe must be lazy, stupid and criminal and only deserve to be employees, preferably temps. They see themselves as the Master Race, not because of their genetics, but because of their intellectual and moral superiority. So if we’re talking dictionary here, doesn’t that spell F-A-S-C-I-S-M? Just read Dr Goebbels and substitute “Entrepreneur” for “Aryan” and “Liberal” for “Jew”.

Underneath all the cultural and religious bullshit and all the patriotic crap and phony civic virtue is a strictly economic class agenda that boils down to no progressive, corporate, capital gains, or inheritance taxes and a flat withholding percentage for the low-life scum who have no ambition but to work for wages and no compulsion to accumulate wealth for wealth’s sake. This will be coupled with a rollback of the safety net, the New Deal and all social services that can’t be subbed out to private contractors and financed by the recipients. If the plebes want justice, health care or education, let them pay for lawyers, doctors and teachers. There will be no regulations to protect the consumer, the environment, the worker, and no restriction of the god-given right of the private sector to manipulate all legal and political institutions for private benefit and to commodify and privatize all cultural and social activities for private profit.

As for “job creation”, well–high unemployment is essential to controlling labor costs, idnit?. You don’t need an MBA to figure that out, its simple supply and demand. Even the rabble can grok it, and its best they get hip to it right now..

The bastards know this is their last chance to establish their hegemony in perpetuity. They will stop at nothing.

But I can’t just flatly reject the dictionary. Using it as a reactionary cudgel to freeze the language, sure I reject that. And I think dictionaries deserve to be kept up to date, so I would have to respond that an up-to-date dictionary really is a proper arbiter of meaning.

A lot of what ails us now is several decades of a concerted effort to redefine the language in favor of conservatism, from the fanciful mythology of “trickle-down economics” with its happy-sappy imagery of pretty boats rising on a tide, to redefining financiers as “job creators”. The propagandists of the right really poisoned the well; they didn’t just destroy the minds of their own followers, they got us all confused. I feel like I’m waking up from a bad dream when I remember that I’m proud to be a liberal, or a progressive, or hell, frankly things have gotten so bad I’m comfortable calling myself a “socialist” (as Bernie says, in the mold of that evil old radical Dwight Eisenhower with his communistical spending on highways and education and the damfool like).

Most important for Albertanians is what happened here in Richmond, a town in the north SF Bay with a Chevron refinery giving the town its unique Mordorish pall. Chevron (brother of Sauron) made a naked power grab for the City Council, putting Citizens United-level millions behind their hand-picked shills. Got their oily asses kicked but good, through the simple device of transparency. Turned out the citizens of Richmond really didn’t approve of a corporation taking over their town, once they knew who was backing the greasy minions.

Sometimes you’re the bug, sometimes you’re the windshield.

Just as the GOP sought to punish Americans for putting President Obama in the White House, the Alberta oil industry is going to spend the next four years seeing just how much spunk they can crush out of an electorate that didn’t do what it was told.

Beware of those who trot out the dictionary to prove a point. The meaning of words resides in their contemporary usage, not their formal definition.

n. A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture.

n. A supporter of capitalism.
n. An investor of capital in business, especially one having a major financial interest in an important enterprise.
n. A person of great wealth.

In the definition of “capitalist”, I think only the second definition is useful because it’s the only one with any specificity.

Subtle, isn’t it? Entrepreneurs and capitalists both assume financial risk, but it’s the entrepreneur who makes a business out of what he does well. A capitalist makes a business out of what other people do well.

There’s a hint of moral judgment in your exaltation of the entrepreneur over the capitalist, and I agree to some degree (who wouldn’t favor doers over coupon-clippers?). But I’d rather point out the practical impacts a very profound difference in worldview makes on the world. Entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs who live and die with their creations are remembered very differently from the capitalists who buy and sell corporations. We might argue about whether what such a person did had a good or bad impact, but with capitalists all we ever seem to argue about is relative evil, like to what degree philanthropy cancels out prior greed and general sociopathy.

We are very fortunate that we live in a system (and a country) that allows individuals to seize control of their own economic life, rather than rely on an employer or boss to do it for them. We all know and respect the man (or woman) who can open his own business, run his own shop, compete against his competitors in a tough market and provide for his customer’s needs and his workers’ livelihoods. He puts out a good product at a fair price, meets a payroll, pays his bills and contributes to his customers and his community. This is not easy to do, many good men fail trying it, and it takes hard work, innovation, courage, and great strength of character. Markets composed of people like this produce an economic life that is efficient, self-regulating, and takes advantage of every man’s desire to work hard and improve his and his family’s lot in life.

I, for one, have great respect and admiration for those who can do this, because I know for a fact I can’t! I can do a good job and work hard, but I need the guidance and structure of a formal workplace environment to do this, I can’t make one of those happen by myself. I learned a long time ago I don’t have what it takes, mentally or emotionally, to take responsibility of the entire process, and I am thankful that some folks do. And yes, I believe they deserve to be honored, and well payed for their skill and dedication. What they do is essential to our freedom and our prosperity.

But I don’t see these people as “capitalists”; even though technically, as business owners and managers, that is what they are, according to the dictionary definition of the word. The free enterprise heroes I’m referring to know how to do something, very well. They understand a skill, or profession, or an industry: and they know how to set up a business that can thrive and prosper in that market. I know how to make maps, and I know how to navigate boats, but I could never own a mapping company or be a ship’s captain. To practice my profession, I need a businessman or a Captain who not only understands the work, but how the work interacts with the market and society. See the difference?

What I call a “capitalist” is not someone who understands a profession or trade or industry and has built a thriving business around his skills. I think of capitalists as people who only know the business end, who think they can take over any business, regardless of what it makes or produces, and turn it into a machine for generating revenue. They actually believe that if you can run a bank, you can run an airline, or a chain of supermarkets. That being a “businessman” is a generic, interdisciplinary skill that transcends the product or service or market. These people don’t see themselves as providing something useful to the community, they see a company merely as a machine for generating revenue. If it fails to make money, you liquidate it, you dismantle it, and you invest in something else, preferably with other people’s money.

The community, the natural and social environment, the employees, the stockholders, even the security and prosperity of the nation mean nothing to these people. They are only in it for the money. They don’t compete in a market, they game the system to drive out the competition, and corrupt the government to provide them hidden subsidies, taxation and regulations that favor their interests, not the industry’s or the nation’s. And if its cheaper to conduct their business in another country, they’ll leave us in a heartbeat, because they have no loyalty to anyone’s welfare but their own. These people have about as much to do with business as lawyers have to do with justice.