http://rdwolff.com/
One of my friends since middle school, Eddie Gonzalez, is on the ballot for the November 2012 elections as the Independent candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. The main issues that he wants to tackle have to do with U.S. oil dependency and tax breaks for people in emergency services, the armed forces, and teachers as a reward for their service. I've been very interested in talking to him about economics and the economic crisis we're currently going through, specifically how it is attributed to capitalism. Due to the elections being so close, he is only able to spare a 25-minute conversation with me, which is completely understandable. I can only imagine how busy he is and can't even contemplate what it is exactly that he needs to get done before Election Day.
One of the things I have to work on when I want to share a plethora of information is to put it as succinctly as possible. In consideration of Eddie and so that I can get down what I want to say in text form, I've typed up conversation notes for my friend, which I would like to present here to share with whoever visits this page. If you want more information on Eddie Gonzalez, here's a link to his website:
http://voteforeddie.com/index.php
Without further ado...
"Since I have 25 minutes to present my case, I’m going to start off at a
topic which is currently in your cross-hairs and how it ties into the topic I
want to talk about: how the capitalist
economic system has perpetuated our dependency on oil.
Capitalism, as you know, is an economic system where the capitalist
uses their money to ultimately make more money.
There are multiple types of capitalists, but for the purposes of this
discussion, I’m going to talk about the industrial capitalist, under which the
oil business falls under. An industrial
capitalist uses their money to acquire tools, equipment, and labor power
(workers) to transform raw materials found in nature into a product or service,
to make a commodity to then sell so that they can ultimately make a
profit. In all economic systems, a group
of people, commonly known as the board of directors nowadays, has to decide
what product or service to make, how to make it, where to make it, and what to
do with the surplus. In capitalism, the
members of the board of directors are a small minority (usually between 10-20
people) that do NOT consist of the workers, therefore make the decisions
mentioned earlier from an outside perspective (the one becoming popular is the
perspective of being in an entirely different continent). Consequentially, the decisions they will make
will be to what will benefit THEM the best, while distributing as little
surplus as possible to other areas outside of profit as to maintain the
operation, such as wages, management, security, equipment, advertisement,
sales, lawyers, political leverage, etc.
As has been demonstrated throughout the history of the oil business,
the natural inclination of the board of directors has been to find the cheapest
way of producing their commodity (oil) with devastating consequences to the
environment due to the acquisition consumption of petroleum, to the well-being
of the workers who are directly involved in the process of making and
distributing the oil, and to the health and well-being of the communities that
they affect, whether civilized or indigenous.
None of these consequences affect those who reap the profits, the board
of directors, because they are nowhere near the oil-producing or distributing
process. And they are profit margins are
grotesquely enormous as a result.
To understand why the people in the boards of directors of the big oil
businesses in this country do the things they do, we have to understand
economic systems and how the capitalist economic system works. As mentioned before, capitalism is an
economic system, but not the only economic system and certainly not the
best. Also, as mentioned before,
economic systems deal with how communities organize their labor: what
commodities to make, how to make them, where to make them, and what to do with
the surplus. Here are the other economic
systems and how they deal with their economic process:
- Communism is the system where the workers decide what commodities to make, how to make them, where to make them, and what to do with the surplus. As a side-note, this is not what happens in communist countries such as Cuba, China, and North Korea; they use the capitalism model, since the state is what makes these decisions and not the workers.
- The ancient system, that practiced by societies with very informal trade at best, is where one person decides what products or services to make, how to make them, and where to make them. Since they are making the products or services for themselves, there is no surplus to deal with.
- Slavery is the system where the master decides what commodities the slave makes, how the slave makes them, where the slave makes them, and what to do with the surplus. Also, the slave is the property of the master, to do with as they see fit. This is the first of three systems where the workers always make more product than they keep; the slave makes their meals and clothes, but also makes meals and clothes for the master, for example. In economic terms, this relation of making more than you keep is referred to as exploitation.
- Feudalism is the system where the serfs live on the land owned by another, such as a lord or a lady. For three days (typically Mon-Wed), they make products and services for themselves. For the next three days (typically Thu-Sat), they do the same and give it to their landlord. On the seventh day, they go to church and rest. This is the second of three systems where the workers always make more product than they keep; the serf farms crops for themselves AND for the owners of the land they live on, for example.
- Capitalism is the system where an employer hires others and tells them what products or services they make, how to make them, and where to make them. The capitalist provides the tools, equipment, and raw materials to the employee. Unlike the other economic systems, the employee DOES NOT TAKE ANY of what they produce with them; it all belongs to the employer, which they decide what to do with. In exchange for the labor power provided by the employee, the employer pays them a wage. This wage is ALWAYS less than the profit that the employer makes off of the product that the worker makes (otherwise, there’s no benefit for the employer). This is the third of three economic systems where the workers always make more product than they keep; the worker makes the products but keeps none of it.
There are several points I’m trying to make here with the information I
have given you.
- If the board of directors of an oil company are the same group of people as those that are involved in the production and distribution of oil and their surplus, the decisions they make will be drastically different. They will want to work in safer environments and utilize cleaner forms of energy, because they are in the same environment where the toxins produced by oil production take place.
- Since the boards of directors are composed of an extremely small minority (when compared to the workers), they are part of a group of stupendously wealthy individuals that the Occupy Wall Street group refers to as the 1% (or, at the very least, the upper class). The majority of the nation’s wealth lies with the upper class. One of the ways that the government gets money is through the power of taxation. If the government wants to get more money out of taxes while not placing more of a burden on the masses, tax the rich more. Much more. The French presidential candidate, Francois Hollande, proposed a 75% tax rate on income above one million euros, and the masses love him for it. FDR imposed a 94% tax rate on income above $25,000 a year (the equivalent of $350,000 a year today), which helped out tremendously during the Great Depression, thanks to the influence of the Commission of Industrial Organizations, the Socialist Party, and the Communist Party (many who were members of the CIO). Imagine how much more funding you would have to find cleaner alternatives to oil or offering greater tax breaks for the TREAT act by taxing higher income brackets at increased rates while not placing any additional burden on those who pay the most in taxes, the non-rich. Rich folk have the resources to hire tax lawyers so that they can pay less in taxes; the rest of us can’t afford to exercise that right.
- Since the boards of directors of these oil companies reap huge profits, they have the funds to pay for whatever political changes they want. This will always take place as long as there is a system that allows this sort of behavior to occur. Capitalism is inherently unstable and unsustainable, giving a chosen few way too much surplus at the expense of the majority who make the products, therefore giving them the ability to engage in extremely expensive and high-risk activities (because they have the profits to do so) that have staggering consequences. Changing the management will not solve the problem (as can be seen with Soviet Russia and Cuba, for example); the system itself must be changed into a system that does not allow one person to exploit another. The 13th amendment outlawed one economic system: slavery, which is, in many ways, economically similar to capitalism. Like slavery, capitalism also has a host of moral problems with it as well, but that’s a conversation for another time. Despite what you stated on the issues of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street, capitalism IS the economic issue that not only the OWS should rally against, but that those exploited by the system should rally against. It is the foundation under which the oligopoly of oil stands upon.
That’s about all I have for now, as I wanted to leave time for a
dialogue or, at the very least, a continuance for a later date."
