Economic justice

So I'm not fond of blogs but yet am writing a blog.

Obviously we often have to do things in life that we aren't fond of in order to get where we want to go. I am fond of the Internet, and I do cherish the fact that the information of the world lays before us, and I do read a number of blogs. Perhaps I was just expressing that I'm just not fond of the chaos that is life.

For instance, I try to form thoughts that are related to my previous thoughts, but that is not required with blogs. I could be writing about any topic, and probably should move to another topic so as not to be pigeon-holed. And, since the first few posts are just to establish this blog, I should briefly introduce topics that I will be discussing.

I am intensely concerned with justice, though not the type you might imagine. I am intensely concerned with economic justice. Economics professors and pundits have said that capitalism is a partnership between labor and capital, but that is just untrue. That's like saying slavery was a partnership between slaves and slave owners.

Humans require an incentive to perform labor. Whether it is a whip or a wage, an incentive is required to transform a human into labor. So a wage is just the barest incentive to make a human into a laborer. So, from the majority of capitalist institution's point-of-view, in this partnership between capital and labor, capital is entitled to all of the profits and labor is entitled to no reward other than being allowed to continue to exist, same as any other slave.

Basically, justice would require an equitable distribution of the profits of a corporation to be divided between capital and labor.  Rather than discussing the vast majority of companies that primarily profit from the exploitation of labor, I prefer to focus on the points of light.

Nucor is one such point-of-light, because Nucor has a profit-sharing structure written into the company's corporate papers of organization. Nucor is an example of equitable capitalism. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and co-ops sidestep the issue of equitable distribution by having the workers actually be the owners and therefor the workers reap the profits of the enterprise.

While I admire ESOPs and co-ops, I still can not understand how most companies get away with raping their employees. Equitable distribution is a phrase often used in divorce proceedings. A marriage is a partnership, and if one partner provides capital, earns a wage in other words, and the other partner provides labor, like shopping for food and cooking it, both partners are entitled to equal shares of the capital and the fruits of the labor.

When the partners divorce, the partner who provided labor is entitled to half of the capital. Imagine one was to say, "No, you have eaten your meals and have slept in our bed, so you have consumed your benefits already so you should just leave with the clothes on your back." Such a position would be unjust and create outrage, yet that is the exact position that corporations take regarding employees. The employees have eaten their meals and were allowed to exist, why should they be entitled to half of the profits they created? Because human justice requires equitable distribution, and a civilized society requires equitable capitalism.

That is what I work for, equitable capitalism, so that one day I may say that I live in a civilized society.