08-06-2009, 07:13 AM
Quote:However, we capitalists know that what is missing is the cruel motivation of the wolf howling at the door, or the drive to lift oneself up from a tiny urban house on the busy road to a nicer one with a shady backyard, or the dream of retiring from the hula hoop factory with enough savings to live out our remaining days in medium comfort and little worry.
But here you are describing a complete one sided story. I was not talking about professional athletes, popstars, or people moving around other peoples money getting paid, I was talking about them getting paid 100 times more than the average joe.
The quoted paragraph is the standard argument for capitalism and against communism, and although there is some truth in there it doesn't describe what I was argueing for.
My whole point started from this kind of saying that people often use, but I took it a bit further. Our society and capitalism has gone from the Netherlands in the 17th century that applied capitalism to become the richest country in the world, without having the resources that other countries had to the situation now where the only goal is still personal gain but where for some reason it became normal to pay some people very much for very little contribution to the world. In understand the economics behind it (a prof. sportsman can get his high salary because of the popularity of the game and the huge advertisement incomne that goes with that). But the whole incentive of doing big earnings when doing something that helps mankind further (discover a new medicine) is not really working the way it should.