Quote:
Originally Posted by Midtowner
Wow. What a bunch of whining.
Selfishness and greed are what built America. Capitalism is greed, ambition, all that good stuff which puts food on your table at the end of the day.
What more moral system could there possibly be than one which rewards people exactly as much as society as a whole chooses to value their individual contribution? I suppose we think cars and gasoline and other such products are pretty great as they are the juice that makes our society "go." Why shouldn't the providers of that product make money?
They only made a 10% profit. That's nothing to write home about really. They're just a big 'ol company.
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No, not whining. A reminder that Oklahoma is full of people who would
consider it whining.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Midtowner
Selfishness and greed are what built America. Capitalism is greed, ambition, all that good stuff which puts food on your table at the end of the day.
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You think
greed puts food on my table? Selfishness? These are not
my Oklahoma values. I play the game that we all must play to "get ahead." I save wisely and (shock!) even own CHK stock. But, greed is not a value I support.
Frankly, I wrote the, "note to myself," because I am shocked. I am
rarely shocked anymore.
It's all about capital here. Nobody mentions labor. Yet,
labor creates all wealth. But, the suits win again and pass along the profits to those
who did no work at all. I'm worn out. For the first time ever, I am wondering if I have made a mistake staying here. In reality, I could work anywhere. Maybe Pete, Kerry, Hot Rod, East Coast Okie, on and on and on... have all done the right thing - and left.
I started out in partisan politics and working in state government in the late seventies. I was part of, what I consider, some pretty good fights. I stayed active in politics with my new (real) career and became involved with organized labor through my labor union, where I've held a card for a better part of the last thirty years as a member of the
Writers Guild of America (west). I mostly just did my job, but was active when I needed to be in the WGA(w). Later, I became
very involved.
I have seen greed close-up in the last year when our union shut down the keyboards as major studios wanted to negotiate a contract that gave us paltry sums for DVD sales and New Media downloadable content. We brought a good part of what you see on TV and the movies to a halt.
For the first time, a lot of people understood that it's not just the big studios, the names in lights, the mega-salaries of late night comedy that made broadcast news & entertainment happen in this country.
It took people like me. People who sit in solitude and write and write and write and keep on writing. The content keeps on flowing and nothing changes. We take it all for granted. But then, you go awhile without the lowly writer and look what happens. Greed brought the bosses to a standstill with our union as we spoke with one voice. Together, as an organized labor union, we had a voice. As individuals - we would have had to accept what was offered or they would move on and let the writers in India or beginners do the writing. We wanted our share. In every industry LABOR wants their share.
By the way, for the most part --- we won!
But the fight for workers everywhere goes on. Wal-Mart workers, for example,
desperately need a labor union.
Midtowner, You said it as well as anybody: "Capitalism is greed, ambition, all that good stuff..."
I dream of a better world.
