Someone is stealing your life (1990)

Highly debatable. Fly to a third world sweat shop and toss this idea around a bit. I don't think the folks there will be nearly as willing to listen to you as people here have been.

"No system is perfect."

Refusing to acknowledge the flaws in said systems is not a virtue.

"and why have they benefited from it? Because they were all born rich? Capitalism benefits people that want to put the time and effort into it."

They have benefitted from it because by and large, we are all upwardly mobile, well paid individuals working in an industry currently experiencing strong market demand. They have also benefitted simply by virtue of being born in America, where they are wealthier than most people in the world by virtue of simply being here (see, I can acknowledge the strengths of Capitalism as well).

Also, this statement is essentially the just-world hypothesis.

"All of your responses so far have been you, crapping on capitalism. Where is your alternative?"

Crapping on capitalism would be silly, since I've benefitted enormously from it. That said, it would be equally silly to be blind to it's many short comings.

I never said I have an alternative, but no one will ever have one if we don't admit some of the short comings to ourselves. Just because a person can't propose an alternative, does not mean that their observations on short comings are incorrect or off base.

There is no theft, just voluntary trade. He exchanges his time and effort for a pay check and then blames his employer for the deal he accepted.

Sure, you choose your career (to a large extent) but society needs developers AND plumbers, and too many people choosing to be developers would push down developer wages to the point where being a developer would no longer be desirable. It can't work for everyone.

We need a solution that does not create an underclass of people that society needs but does not value. In a truly fluid job market in which there was always hiring in every industry and every worker was able and prepared to do any kind of job, capitalism might take care of that. Unfortunately, that's not reality.

I think that the system we have is much better than many others that have been tried in the past, but that doesn't mean that it's optimal or that we should stop trying to improve.

Yes, of course. They're all around us. We focus on Googles, Facebooks, Chevrons, and so on, but there are examples to be found of more diverse ways of conducting business.

I would like to provide you an example I read about, perhaps a year ago, of a Midwest company where all of the employees gather with the directors to discuss and vote on important decisions. Unfortunately, I don't have the time to dig it up.

In Germany, as an another sort of example, it's (sometimes?) legally required to have employee representation on the supervisory board (http://www.biscayneconsulting.net/images/laborfuerst.pdf). Compare this with the common US system of the staff elite, conducting business decisions behind closed doors, leaving the employees wholly unaware of their own future.

> I don't like the idea of forcing others to my ideals.

It's not like I'm suggesting some sort of government mandate. Creating awareness and subsequent social pressure can cause tremendous change. While the definition of a corporation is generally static, trends in corporate behavior and general concepts of priorities change over time. Look at 'shareholder value' in Wikipedia, for example.

I do agree that this is up to the corporate founder(s). However, I think that Americans are generally unaware that there are other systems which may be perfectly viable, and yield a greater quality of life for everyone involved. I also think that current interpretation of laws has led to a rather odd system, where corporate directors make decisions which are distinctly bad for long-term business, for the sake of satisfying shareholders and securing short-term, personal gain.

As for starting a company to embody my beliefs, I have. Even if successful, though, I won't have enough capital and momentum to demonstrate any of this for some number of years. Until then, it's just small-business-as-usual. :-)