I suppose it depends how you define success. Obviously in a capitalist system by definition you will have more losers than winners - otherwise the winners can't make any money off the backs of the poor.
Sure, but not all 'winners' necessarily make their money that way, though many may. I would say that having the rich control the means of production is an inherent part of capitalism. At the same time I think that capitalism can exist without the great imbalances of wealth that we see in modern day America. Capitalism will always be a cruel thing for the poor, and as far as I know every single form of economic system has an impoverished underclass other than the gift and barter economy of honest to god hunter-gatherer tribes, which are the most egalitarian form of social organization since nobody owns enough to fall into a higher social strata since everything must be able to move with the tribe as it follows its resources.
Poverty seems to be a symptom of any form of sedentary society, and every economic system is cruel to the poor to one degree or another. And while capitalism is sometimes especially cruel to the poor, it needn't be cruel to the working classes. And this is the problem with modern capitalist America, because we have ceased to have an economy oriented around means of production at all, we have a service economy, which disenfranchises the working class to one degree or another. And furthermore, when wages are completely uncoupled from the production of objects of intrinsic value, it's so much easier to allow the wealthy to pay themselves wages that are truly exorbitant.
When you are a rich man who owns a factory, society tends to constrain your pay to single-digit or low double-digit multiples of the pay of your workers. It's easy for people to see that the workers are the ones actually making real, useful things, yet it is also easy to see that you, as the rich owners of the factory, are providing the means for that productive power to exist. So you're entitled to your high level of pay, while that pay stays within a sane ratio compared to that of your workers, the aforementioned high single-digit to low double-digit multiple.
But when nobody is actually making anything, over time the value of money becomes divorced from any sort of representation of objective worth. And so you end up with CEOs making 250 times or more what their lowest-paid employees make, because you no longer have any connection between real things and money, money is no longer compensation for human effort put into bettering society and improving the human condition with useful material things, tractors, trains, machinery, and the like, instead money is compensation for the worth of your services. And it is a lot easier to claim that your amazing managerial skills are a service to your company that entitles you to tens of millions of dollars for year than it is to make that same claim because you happen to own a factory, because that level of pay would not be commensurate with the worth to society of the machinery or products you produce.
When there is no longer a concrete relationship between useful goods or products and money, over a period of time any ideas of what is decent, sane compensation goes out the window and you have the total injustice that we see in modern America. Capitalism isn't the prime evil here; capitalism needn't be an evil at all. But service economy capitalism is just utter nonsense to me, and while it is by no means the sole reason for the economic injustice we now see and the financial disasters that have befallen Western civilization, the transition to a service economy is without a doubt a large factor here in America at least.
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Anyway, I was talking more about success as a person, not success financially, in terms of dude's seeming frustration – though be may not recognize it as such – with MGS' happiness with the current state of his life and self-actualization.
Yeah but some of the richest people are poor and unhappy, and id' say more often than not the 'poor' in this country where there is no real poverty except maybe in some parts of appalachia...many poor people feel very rich. Also (sorry to gooff topic) but do you really feel success has to = 'making money off the backs of the poor" because I assure you it isn't that way for most people who find success. I hope you can see the greatness in success one day and not automatically associate it with greed.
Not with greed, no. I just feel that our society has completely lost touch with what success in business ought to mean, as per my spiel above. A service economy is akin to a bunch of fools jacking one another off, wondering why our economy is in the shitter when we don't make a goddamn thing anymore. If you can't compete on volume with other countries due to your own efforts at globalization, then you pour money into research and development and basic education, so that you can compete on quality and cutting-edge technology instead. But no, we slash our funding for long-term basic research since it doesn't have immediate applications to making money this instant, eviscerate our educational system, shutter our factories and essentially just admit defeat because we are accustomed to everything being
easy, and then wonder why the ship of state is on fire and sinking rapidly! Well that's what happens when you shut down the machine shop, stop patching holes in the fucking hull, spend lavishly on interior decorations instead of structural stability, and watch your infrastructure rust into rotting, moldering decay.
This country is disgusting, and doubly disgusting because it could be so glorious. The world is passing us by,
has been passing us by for the last four decades, and we all just sit here continuing with the giant service-shit circle jerk with our thumbs up our asses instead of using them to try and plug the leaks while we try to make repairs. Meanwhile the working class goes extinct, we essentially set billions of dollars on fire, we suck off corporations that went bankrupt since they're failure would further tear things to pieces, and yet they shouldn't have failed in the first place, if they hadn't been greedy, risk taking gamblers slavering with empty, dullards' eyes at the thought of just
one more roll of the dice.
