Cortheya said:
I actually think that the idea of capitalism creating a style of slave driving society is somewhat valid. Don't take it in a literal sense though.
In a capitalist system, the easiest and most efficient way to make money is to have money. Those who don't have money also have a harder time making money compared to those who are well off. This is mostly due to the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day, so even if you're Superman, you can only get paid 24*(hourly rate). But if you have money, then you can also work 24 hours a day, and get paid for borrowing your extra money to other people (even if you just let it sit in the account, the interest you get is the same effect). Now if you take the flip side of that, and look at a person who owes other people money, they actually make less than 24*(hourly rate).
Therefore, assuming there are 3 people; A, B, and C, who all work for the same wage and with the same productivity. Lets assume that the wage of the three people are equal to their expenses, since that makes the experiment easier. Person A has a lot of money and lent them out, Person B has no money in the bank, but does not owe money either. Person C owes someone else money. After one month, all of them got paid the same by the employer. Person A also got money through interest, and person C lost money because he/she had to pay off his/her debt's interest.
EDIT: Back, so I'll continue this train of thought.
Of course the thought experiment is not something that applies perfectly in reality. But it does show my point that how hard you work is not necessarily what determines your success. If we plot a person's wealth as a function of time, we can see that qualitatively, the slope of the line is a function of the amount of money you have, and the amount of work you do.
Bringing that back to my original point; if a person is born into a poor household, the derivative of their wealth function will be small and have a low maximum, whereas a person who is born into a rich household will likely have a large derivative, with a high minimum value. So in this way, the system is structured so that things well beyond your control are strongly contributing to you ability to achieve your potential. Combine this with the trend that capitalist societies tend to strive for lower hourly real wages, you have a result that heavily favors the rich, regardless of how hard people work.
This is why I think that our system seems a little bit like a slave driving system. The poor are rarely given a chance to climb up the economic ladder, and the rich rarely fall down the ladder, despite the incompetence that's often on display. This is not an American problem, this is only the result of the system that the world has adopted. Though I have found the economic mobility of the US is quite bad. This is an opinion that I have nothing to back up with except for my own experiences.
I don't dislike the system that we have; I'm only pointing out the effects of the system, and how it relates to the America that I've experienced.
