6 Feb 2024 7:00 am
(PART II OF. IV)
Yes, just as the little guy/worker is, in many cases, locked out of quality medical coverage and higher education, many would-be petty capitalists are faced with corporation-protecting regulations that thwart the "little guy" from playing the game. For example, when seeking approval from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), toy manufacturers must submit hundreds of copies of each product they wish to sell for safety testing. Of course, many, if not all, petty capitalist toy manufacturers cannot afford to give the CPSC hundreds of copies of their toys for any purpose. So, as Cannonpointer stated, "The little guy is locked out by the engineered and manipulated expense of sitting at the table."
Whether or not the Disney Corporation, Hasbro, Mattel, and other toy manufacturers petitioned the CPSC to adopt the rigid safety standards that require a high number of toys to be given to the commission, the result is the same: the little guy/petty capitalist is locked out of the toy market. The large market share of giants like Disney, Hasbro, and Mattel is protected, and prices remain artificially high. But irrespective of whether or not the game has been rigged in proverbial smoke-filled rooms to favor large manufacturers, it's just capitalism. IOW, given their immense wealth and significant market share before the CPSC's establishment in 1972, those corporations would presently dominate the toy market anyway. The CPSC's seemingly unfair safety-testing mandates may serve mega-corporations like Disney, but they didn't "make" those corporations, and their elimination wouldn't "break" them. The same is true for virtually all other industries because it's capitalism itself that has destroyed "free enterprise," not "[t]he cost of shaking hands with [Underwriters Laboratories]." --Cannonpointer.
So, just as insurance capitalists are never going to allow for a no-out-of-pocket-expense healthcare system, and the monetized higher education system isn't going to permit a cost-free system, toy industry leaders and other capitalists aren't ever going to allow for the return of "free enterprise." As Cannonpointer pointed out, the capitalist system is "statist and parasitic." As such, its influence and power over workers is unbreakable by means other than a socialist revolution.
I wrote: "I didn't discuss 'Skans.' I only mentioned his use of the ["taking 'free' stuff from the government screws workers"] meme to manifest a point."
Cannonpointer's response: "I saw no reason to defend or attack Skans' pedestrian meme. It flies under the head of any intelligent audience. CLEARLY, you already understood it was ****. Should I waste space preaching to the choir?"
Okay. But referring to the meme as "****" is an attack. And Cannonpointer's "CLEARLY, you ["Harvey"] already understood it was ****" indicates that Cannonpointer agrees with my assessment of the meme, to wit: "That type of thing [Skan's meme] has been forever put forward by the apologists for capitalism and, sadly, their working-class supporters. It's a con job intended to prevent workers from understanding that they produce all economic wealth through their labor power alongside nature. Ergo, it's calculated to make workers feel guilty about accepting 'free stuff' when they and they alone produce that 'free stuff, what little there is." (Continued in PART III)
http://www.slp.org/pdf/statements/siu_chart.pdf
(END OF PART II)