To be fair to the Democratic Delegates that Peter Schiff interviews, his was a leading question, not to mention that he encourages the tone of the response. But the ignorance of these people is outrageous! And sad.
Every interviewee shown was in favor of either a cap or ban on corporate profits. I can’t believe that there aren’t any Democrats who believe in profits, so I have to think Schiff didn’t bother to show us those who didn’t support his proposal. I wonder what proportion he was showing us. Was he finding the lunatic fringe of the party or is this more mainstream?
Delegates are chosen to give the party direction. The people interviewed were a sorry lot. Schiff should have also asked if Obama should be able to bypass Congress and the Constitution in order to get this country going again. I think I know the answer.
The responses don’t surprise me at all.. the general philosophy of the Democrat Party is “collectivism”. I lived in Russia for 2 years in 1998 - 2000, one summer in Siberia. By my experience and the experience of Ayn Rand, collectivism is the most evil social system under which man can live. Ayn Rand describes living conditions in Russia to a T in the setting of her book ‘We The Livng’. One general characteristic of the culture in Russia is fear.
It’s preaching to the choir discussing the consequences of such a law, but I’ll do it anyway. Share prices would freefall. Investers would lose almost all of their wealth. When share prices were low enough, someone would step in and take over to sell all the corporation’s assest for what ever they could get. This would mean shipping the much of tools of production abroad, since they would be of no value to anyone in America except maybe a few worker’s coops. A billionaire could take over a corporation and convert it to a proprietorship to avoid the ban on profits, but in that political climate, few would be foolish enough to do so. Everyone who worked for a corporation would lose their job very quickly. The government would servive for a while by looting fleeing capital. After that. . .survivalist scenarios.
Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. What is profit? Profit is what you have in an exchange economy when the value of what you produce is greater than the value of what you consumed in the process of producing it. It’s the excess of output over input. A ban on profit is a ban on production processes that create value in an exchange economy. In other words, it’s a ban on production or a ban on exchange.
Either would be insane.
I suspect that what the Democrats actually want is not so much a ban (or cap) on profits as a mandate that any value created in production in excess of the cap be given to consumers instead of being kept by the producer. It’s really a demand for rigid price controls, designed to prevent those producers capable of creating great value from gaining any benefit from doing so. Dig beneath the surface of that and, unsurprisingly, you will find the foul stench of egalitarianism. Why should someone who produces a lot of value benefit more than someone who produces only a little, or nothing at all, or who actually destroys value?
8 Comments to “Democrats: Let’s Ban Profits!”
To be fair to the Democratic Delegates that Peter Schiff interviews, his was a leading question, not to mention that he encourages the tone of the response. But the ignorance of these people is outrageous! And sad.
I would hope that the delegates could not be so easily led to such an obscene conclusion.
Every interviewee shown was in favor of either a cap or ban on corporate profits. I can’t believe that there aren’t any Democrats who believe in profits, so I have to think Schiff didn’t bother to show us those who didn’t support his proposal. I wonder what proportion he was showing us. Was he finding the lunatic fringe of the party or is this more mainstream?
Delegates are chosen to give the party direction. The people interviewed were a sorry lot. Schiff should have also asked if Obama should be able to bypass Congress and the Constitution in order to get this country going again. I think I know the answer.
The responses don’t surprise me at all.. the general philosophy of the Democrat Party is “collectivism”. I lived in Russia for 2 years in 1998 - 2000, one summer in Siberia. By my experience and the experience of Ayn Rand, collectivism is the most evil social system under which man can live. Ayn Rand describes living conditions in Russia to a T in the setting of her book ‘We The Livng’. One general characteristic of the culture in Russia is fear.
It’s preaching to the choir discussing the consequences of such a law, but I’ll do it anyway. Share prices would freefall. Investers would lose almost all of their wealth. When share prices were low enough, someone would step in and take over to sell all the corporation’s assest for what ever they could get. This would mean shipping the much of tools of production abroad, since they would be of no value to anyone in America except maybe a few worker’s coops. A billionaire could take over a corporation and convert it to a proprietorship to avoid the ban on profits, but in that political climate, few would be foolish enough to do so. Everyone who worked for a corporation would lose their job very quickly. The government would servive for a while by looting fleeing capital. After that. . .survivalist scenarios.
Let’s stop and think about this for a moment. What is profit? Profit is what you have in an exchange economy when the value of what you produce is greater than the value of what you consumed in the process of producing it. It’s the excess of output over input. A ban on profit is a ban on production processes that create value in an exchange economy. In other words, it’s a ban on production or a ban on exchange.
Either would be insane.
I suspect that what the Democrats actually want is not so much a ban (or cap) on profits as a mandate that any value created in production in excess of the cap be given to consumers instead of being kept by the producer. It’s really a demand for rigid price controls, designed to prevent those producers capable of creating great value from gaining any benefit from doing so. Dig beneath the surface of that and, unsurprisingly, you will find the foul stench of egalitarianism. Why should someone who produces a lot of value benefit more than someone who produces only a little, or nothing at all, or who actually destroys value?
I think that Peter Schiff would make a really good Objectivist.