Most actors are ignorant dicks. Comes with the territory.

Crappy wages, bully counties and cities into condemning land they don't own to get the government to hand it over to them, bring in crappy paying jobs, and buy their products from indentured slave wage countries like India and China. You would not be saying that shit if you were one of the Indians or Chinese working 16 hour days 6 days a week with virtually no pay.

Capitalism is not an invention of Christianity, nor is it even a form of government. Gaddaffi was a billionaire who owned stock in GE. The Saudi Royal family capitalizes off of the sale of oil. China capitalizes off the sale of cheep products through slave wages.

Christianity is a human invented cult, like all other religions. It was not, like all other religions, it was not around 4 billion years ago, much less 500,000 years ago at the time of the rise of the sapient. Christianity will morph change and will die like all other comic book clubs in human history. And when our planet dies so will all life on it and there will be no record of any of us, much less your comic book super hero.

Wall Mart is a corporate bully, not because it is a business, or even that it is big. It is a bully because it thrives off extraction, not improving.

  Christian capitalism ?  Is that anything like Christian democracy ?  Oops, I forgot those polytheistic Greeks created that form of government.  There are no democracies in the Bible.  God doesn't like interference from his subordinates.

We are not a democracy, we are a Republic, which is different then capitalism. Though they are different, they fit together like a hand and a glove.

Democracy has evolved and has become a code word for communism. China is technically a democracy in practice.

Christianity did indeed systemize and invent Capitalism. In fact, it was the Reformer John Calvin who systemized this from Scripture and it was through his work understood through the Puritians that Capitalism as we understand it in America was brought about.

Competitition is also the American way. Walmart brings down the prices. If you can do better, I welcome it.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

See :: Image

. . .

I avoid it as much as I can but every major food/clothing chain are out for cheap labor and the only time I go is when my mother insists on it. They CAN keep the low prices AND pay their workers better than they do. There is a huge difference between cant and don't want to. They could afford to treat their workers better, they just don't give a fuck.

Now you say you compete with them. It never occurs to you that because they are outside your weight class and much bigger, THEY also make it harder on you. Corporate giants are not mom and pop shops and there are far more mom and pop shops who if were not into the blind loyatly bullshit of "business owner" if they would help stop the corporate bullying they could afford more for, not only themselves, but their workers as well.

Big money and monopolies of power and global corporatism are fucking up humanity and making the entire global economy a race to the bottom. If I had my way I would get rid of Wall Mart, break up all monopolies and localize business ownership. Force those fuckers to actually have skin in the game. The way it is now anytime a big business doesn't get what it wants they simply blackmail society. Cheap labor cannot be the gold standard. All that does is create slave wages and sweat shops.

PAY GAP not wealth, COST OF LIVING, not business ownership, MONOPOLIES OF MONEY ON POLITICS, not you personally.

When Warren Buffet and Nick Hanour say other uber rich are fucking things up, go argue with them, not me.

They can? Without raising prices? If you ran Walmart, how much would you pay your employees? 

http://stock.walmart.com/financial-reporting/sec-filings

Last year they made $16.999 billion in profit and had roughly 2.2 million employees. Note, that is before they invest in any new stores, remodeling old stores or any of those types of capital expenses. At the end of the year, they had $7.781 billion after making capital investments. (almost exactly as much as they paid in income taxes).

So how much of that would you pay workers if you ran Walmart? You simply declaring that the have enough money doesn't make it so. Show me how they do it without raising prices. You constantly do this. You make bold proclamations that they can just because you have this idea that they make "lots" of money. It is a lot of money, but a lot of money is not infinite money. All the numbers are there, all of them are public, show me how it is done.

Now Walmart certainly could raise prices and pay their employees more. Of course, that means that everyone who shops there essentially gets a pay cut because their same $100 suddenly buys less stuff (including the employees of Walmart who are regular Walmart shoppers). The cost of living for everyone in the US goes up (something you have decried as a problem in the past) but at least the employees make more money. There are a lot of variables involved, it is hardly the elementary school algebra that you pretend it is where you just "raise everyone's salary and everyone has a better quality of life". If you give everyone in the country a billion dollars tomorrow it would not give everyone in the country a billion dollar lifestyle by today's standards. Money is relative.   

It does occur to me that they are outside my weight class and much bigger. I just don't whine about it. There is always going to be someone out there bigger than me and it is a good thing too. I have no desire to deal with the logistics of providing products to hundreds of millions of people. If you were relying on me, you wouldn't have food and clothing because I'm not going to work that hard. Walmart has single handedly lowered the cost of living in the US. Even if you don't shop at Walmart, you probably benefit because most major retailers have to take their pricing into account. 

I find ways to compete with them because shopping at Walmart is a shitty experience. It is a shitty experience by design because it is their warehouse style buildings, low quality employees and bulk low-mid quality products that makes it one of the cheapest places to shop and the demographic they aim for is people who live on low incomes. I have some overlap where I offer the same bottle of wine as Walmart and they beat me on the price every time. So what? I can provide a better shopping experience and enough people are willing to pay the extra money for that to make me a respectable profit. I don't need to resort to government force in order to compete with them. Let Walmart cater to their customers and I will cater to people who don't like shopping in Walmart. To use the government to control Walmart simply because competing with them is difficult and causes me to make less profit would be immoral and I find people who attempt to do so to be the most contemptible scumbags in existence.  

You are closer to my side that you might know.

All I have ever said is that ANYTHING ANYTHING ANYTHING, left to it's own devices, be it religion, government or business, CAN AND WILL go off the rails.

People cry about smaller government, but the part they always forget, to achieve that, they have to self police. If they don't it is absurd for those same people to complain when the other 2 lower classes turn to the same government. I find it fucking absurd that you can compare the "welfare" that a poor person might get AND MOST DONT FUCKING WANT IT. To the tax cuts big business lobby for and get.

I get really fucking pissed at republicans and libertarians who cry smaller government when what they really want is cheap labor like China and India. Sure, that works for the bullies, but it fucks over the rest of society.

People want to cry about robbery? It is coming from the top down, not the bottom up.

You and I were always closer than either of us and Beyond Saving. However, Beyond and I have both shifted towards each others positions over the years (I think we might have convinced each other on some minor details, but if he doesn't agree then maybe I'm imagining things), while you've not shifted much.

Smaller government is not the answer, and it cannot be. The libertarian ideals sound nice, but are impractical.

But they don't have those ideals because they are greedy (at least most don't, and Beyond is part of those most from what I can tell), they have them because they love freedom.

Anyway, the only real solution is decentralisation of power.

"They love freedom"

Yes, but that is a word that is easily manipulated and twisted for self interest at the expense of all others. So far in all of history, the closest thing that prevents abuse is the concept of "anti monopoly". I am sure Beyond loves his own freedom, as do I and you. But what I want and what you want and what he wants can conflict.

I see no check on global corporatism. All I see it doing is concentrating wealth to fewer people and creating more worldwide indentured slaves.

"Decentralisation of power" see that is the thing, 30 years ago under Regan, whom if alive today would be horrified with what he set in motion.

"Decentralisation" still depends on the same thing "smaller government" advocates tout. SELF POLICING, which I see none of. I see global corporatism using any utopia phrase and con job they can to convince the workers and working poor to vote against their own self interest and accept sweat shop overlords.

I would agree with that assessment. Can't think of anything off the top of my head, but there have been a few times I have been constructing one of my longer arguments and while researching the details and finding evidence to defend the argument I was going to make, discovered I was wrong. 

I agree with both these ideas. Smaller government is a nice idea but it isn't going to work.

The US government has no checks and balance now. It's lopsided. They keep making laws to break the law. That's fucked up!