Some Revealing Reasons for the Growth of Anti-Capitalism in America in the 21st Century
by William A. Brant, PhD.
Contents
I. Large Stock Corps Retaining Ownership after Sales of Bulk Products: Downfall of American Penny Capitalism
I.i Returning to Penny Capitalism through Community Cooperation with Bulk Buys
II. Anti-capitalism as Being against Cooperation and Ownership: Cooperative banking
II.i Banks Offer Cooperative Shares: Banking that supports families
III. The Resource Hogs and Hoarders or Power Elites
III.i The Solution Involves Increasing Understanding, Resistance and Change Via Instilling Fear in the Power Elites
III.ii The Reason Why the Power Elites Are Destructive Globally
I. Large Stock Corps Retaining Ownership after Sales of Bulk Products: Downfall of American Penny Capitalism
In America, there is great conflict against capitalism during the 21st century, which has worsened as a consequence of monopolistic corporations that sell items often in bulk.
Big business is interconnected with mostly the same major owners (as stockholders) and businesses that also sell products in BULK. In America, anyone who takes an item from a large box of the same product, and tries to sell one or more of those items to make a small profit, risks being fined and arrested by the police. The practice of doing that is called “penny capitalism,” which has been largely removed from American markets by monopolies, police and judges. The iconic product that people attempt to sell on its own is the single cigarette, the loosey, which is criminalized in many areas across the country, especially the ghettos since the practice is often racially motivated against penny capitalism, the type of practice at farmers’ markets.
There is one business and legal practice in the USA that is noteworthy and if this has not contributed to increases in the rates of alcoholism occurring during the last two decades, then it would be absolutely astonishing. In America, there are boxes sold to merchants with 24 beers in them to sell at their retail stores, and any store that sells this beer is required by law to sell the whole box in only one transaction. The store cannot separate the 24 beers and sell them separately or even in six groups of four beers, i.e., without both a legal and accounting nightmarish scenario. This raises the question about whether the merchant ever fully owns his or her purchase of the items in bulk.
If he calls the manufacturer of the product in bulk, he will be told that he is not legally permitted to sell the items from the box individually, and it says oftentimes “not for individual sale” on the boxes. The foreigner would be surprised that he or she would have to raise the price of each individual item to the same price that the manufacturer determines instead of being legally permitted to sell the individual item for a slightly lower price, although the bulk purchase makes each item cheaper in price per volume. Also, although the merchant already paid sales tax on the bulk purchase, the merchants’ customers must also pay sales tax once again for the same product.
Monopolistic corporations still own a part of the product that you buy if you buy that product in bulk. An important type of capitalism is prevented from occurring when the stock corps retain part of the ownership of what they have already sold since merchants are not legally permitted to sell the product separately, even though the merchant has evidence of the possession of the product and a license to sell it. The merchant, as the owner of the product in bulk, bought it, and, in most places in the world, would be able to sell it to gain a small profit from each item separately, which is “penny capitalism.” Therefore, the entire conception of OWNERSHIP has changed in America with products in bulk since the merchant CANNOT SELL THE PRODUCT IN THE WAY THE MERCHANT WANTS to sell it, even though the merchant has already purchased it.
So, is the vendor still the owner of the whole product in bulk? No, not entirely. Otherwise, the vendor would be able to separate all the items and sell them as the vendor likes and as having full ownership would allow. Ownership has changed in America in an anti-capitalistic way because penny capitalism is unable to be practiced with the current type of retained ownership of products in bulk by monopolistic corps.
This MALICIOUS practice by stock corps selling in bulk and retaining partial legal ownership of future sales of products in bulk involves products that are the most ADDICTIVE and UNHEALTHY ones typically. These include alcohol and most overly sweet beverages, such as energy drinks, cigarettes and foods and other beverages that come from factory production and packaging. The groups that SUFFER the most from this type of dual ownership of bulk products are the lower class and also small and mid-size businesses.
A FOREIGNER would be very surprised to understand that it is possible to buy a product in a box of several identical items, and to have evidence of this purchase but to be legally unable to sell the items separately, even if the foreigner owned a retail store and was licensed for business at that time. If you plan to resell an item, the trouble is at least a triple threat in America. Firstly, if you are not an official reseller, you have no relation with the manufacturer, which would void any warranty of the product. Secondly, you need permission to use their trademark, especially if you are able to gain much based on resales. You run the risk of trademark infringement lawsuits from CORPORATE LAWYERS, the most aggressive of the bunch. Thirdly, a reseller’s license, which involves obtaining a sales tax identification number, and the use of such a license present many difficulties with penalties and interest that incur for any mistakes, which are ever more likely to happen over the course of time.
The largest stock corps that sold most of the bulk products during the COVID-19 pandemic were also the only retail stores that were legally permitted to remain open continuously during the PANDEMIC. So, this form of anti-capitalism in America that restricts the sales of separate items from a bulk product and that benefits a small group of people is largely responsible for PANDEMIC PROFITEERING.
Most people know about this anti-capitalistic way and dislike it, which can be seen in the video of the large white woman who infamously called the police on a little black girl who was selling water to passersby on a hot day (See this video of “Permit Patty”). We can immediately understand the problem that arises when a police officer refuses to allow a thirsty person to purchase water from another person who is selling it but where the merchant lacks a permit or a business license. If the person dies from thirst from a lack of water at this time, the police are morally responsible for that person’s death for disallowing the sale, and the police are legally responsible for that person’s death in ANY society with laws that promote justice as fairness.
Furthermore, consider that the hundreds of thousands of homeless people in America in 2021 do not have the option of buying a product in bulk and selling the individual items for a small profit in a way that is respectable by law because corporate anti-capitalism with restrictions on bulk sales DISRESPECTS the resale of individual items from bulk. American corporate anti-capitalism, especially concerning purchases of products in bulk, is therefore exacerbating the homelessness problem in its own nation. The large stock corps have taken control of the means of sales of products in bulk, maintaining control over the law enforcement, judges and monopoly, which reduces Americans’ freedoms to enter and participate in the American marketplaces.
Some corporate lawyers would like to tell you differently, such as one from New York named Nina Kaufman. She is the type of corporate lawyer that poses the commonly asked questions that show up first and foremost on GOOGLE, such as her question and title “Is It Legal to Buy and Resell Items?” She neither gives a clear affirmative nor negative answer to that question, however. She maintains that it is “not illegal to resell an item that you legitimately purchased” (See her article in Entrepreneur.com). Her answer is a tricky one because in philosophy of law there is the concept called “alegality” that means that some act is one that challenges the distinctions made between what is legal and what is illegal, like the founding acts of a legal system are alegal (i.e., neither legal nor illegal) (Brant, 2019, 115-26).
Lawyer Kaufman asserts that if you own the product, then you have the choice to do with it what you want, and then she proceeds to explain the risk of reselling the product as a business, realizing that doing so is as she writes “under the table.” Possessions, purchases and sales that are “under the table” involve black market activity, though. We might ask her how something can be both NOT ILLEGAL and UNDER THE TABLE at the same time.
The law enforcement, the judges and the monopolistic corporations have formed an anti-capitalistic system in America that has illegalized the way for small business owners to sell a single item from bulk purchases they made. Instead, customers are also EXPECTED to purchase in bulk, which, in the case of cigarettes, sweet fizzy drinks and sugary cereals, is dangerous to our HEALTH. So, not only are these enormous corporations imposing anti-capitalistic RULES on people, they are causing people to buy larger amounts of products that are poisoning us. For these reasons, American problems with obesity, diabetes and mutilations from amputations, caused first by high blood-sugar levels, have increased yearly in our country during the 21st century.
In an actual capitalistic political economy, anything that is bought in bulk can be sold by a small business separately, item by item, for profit. Since this is not the case anymore in America, there is a major conflict between capitalism and LARGE STOCK CORPORATIONS that have control over the ANTI-CAPITALIST TRIANGLE, namely, LAW ENFORCEMENT, JUDGES and MONOPOLY. Furthermore, just like the game of Monopoly, with a finite amount of money, a single winner will take EVERYTHING by the end of the game with players who had a chance to win from the starting point.
In essence, America has enormous stock corps that eradicate PENNY CAPITALISM, which is capitalism where the profits made are very small amounts. This is the type of capitalism that is practiced by farmers, and large stock corps are taking over the vast majority of American farmland. Moreover, large stock corps have built private prisons and have contributed to the imprisonment of 1% of the American adult population, although most of the crimes of their convictions have been nonviolent. Such monopolistic stock corps directly reduce the level of freedom in America as well as the level of democracy because only the power elites are deciding over the lives of the largest imprisoned adult population in the world. Moreover, the monopolistic corporations use many of these prisoners for slave labor or extremely low slave-like wages.
The American economic system that has developed with vast restrictions for bulk purchases is one that interrupts nearby communities from trading smoothly with each other. The bodily health of people in America is impacted negatively as well as the mental health of our people. It is time to prevent the ways of large stock corps, which include the ways of law enforcement, which should focus on reducing and preventing violence, judges who also should focus more on violent crimes, and monopolies, which should be eradicated by anti-trust laws.
I.i Returning to Penny Capitalism through Community Cooperation with Bulk Buys
We can easily imagine that there are many neighbors in a community who use more items from their bulk purchases more frequently than other neighbors. However, oftentimes the bulk purchases present a double-edged sword. On one hand, the items are cheaper on average. On the other hand, the buyer has too many of the items and thus may be inclined to consume more of the items.
One solution is to facilitate the interactions between neighbors so that different neighbors can buy the types of bulk purchases that they prefer, and then they can sell the items individually to neighbors who prefer to buy only one or two of the items periodically. In such cases, especially if adolescents are involved with the sales, it is possible for the community to mutually benefit from the bulk purchases since the buyers can use what they want and need, and the buyers can sell some of the items individually for small profits.
With the possibility of having communications about bulk purchases among members of the community and their close distances from each other, the purchasers of the individual items can benefit from the lower prices of the goods on average since they will be cheaper than individually buying them from a store. Moreover, the bulk purchasers can benefit from resales since they will gain small profits (i.e., the profit should be less than the difference between the price of each individual item on average from the bulk purchase and the price of buying each item individually from the store).
Therefore, community cooperation is able to diminish the type of ownership that the original owners of the products in bulk have been retaining. Also, penny capitalism is practiced since the sales of only a few items provide just pennies of profit to the bulk buyers.
II. Anti-capitalism as Being against Cooperation and Ownership: Cooperative banking
Anti-capitalism assumes another form in America. Not only are the monopolies allowed to compete unfairly against others, the American banks and sources of finance are strictly against the creation of an important type of business, namely, the co-op.
The co-op or cooperative corporation is a type of business organization where the WORKERS ARE THE OWNERS, and the WORKERS HIRE and FIRE their own MANAGERS. Can you imagine a business where the managers have a culture where they have to get along with the people they manage, or else they will be fired?
Such a business not only creates a culture of managers who are EXTREMELY GOOD AT COLLABORATING with everyone but also a type of business is created where the managers of other businesses need to improve their abilities to collaborate as well. If the other businesses have managers who collaborate poorly with their subordinates, as it happens oftentimes at the big stock corps, then their employees will consider leaving and working for a cooperative business instead. That is the case if enough cooperatives exist in the region.
II.i Banks Offer Cooperative Shares: Banking that supports families
Banks can also be cooperative businesses. Oftentimes what cooperative banks do (Genossenschaftsbanken in Germany) is allow each of their clients to have a small and limited number of shares in the bank. The co-op bank provides the service of buying a few things in bulk, making a profit and giving the profit to their clients who bought the shares. Their shareholders do not lose money as long as the cooperative bank is still in business, and it is quite easy for the shareholders to gain about 5% per year from this cooperative deal. The deal is especially lucrative for large families because they open accounts for their babies who also receive the 5% per year.
Cooperative banks are popular types of banks in Europe but not in America. So, America does not have banks that need to compete with these types of businesses. As a result, the management, services and products offered by American banks are inferior because they do not have to compete with these other types of banks that have obvious advantages for their clients, and especially for families as clients.
As a result of the abovementioned ways, the American political economy has developed into an anti-capitalistic society from large monopolistic stock corps in several ways. For this reason, it becomes challenging to maneuver in America as a consumer, customer and seller of goods and services, unless you play a large role in the anti-capitalistic business practices of large stock corporations.
Of course, in a capitalistic society, if a business, such as a bank, is not able to compete well enough or runs out of cash flow, then it goes bankrupt. However, in 2008, many of the largest banks were given large amounts of money from the U.S. federal government (The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act), which prevented these businesses with failing business practices to stay afloat. This is an example of anti-capitalism in practice since the American taxpayers paid for these enormous banks to remain as major players in the market, and this happened again in 2019. Many banks in American and Great Britain received tens of billions of dollars to prevent bankruptcy. For the marketplace, professionalism and the society of people, the creation of public banks and cooperative banks would have allowed the same workers to be employed. However, the power elites greedily taking millions of dollars yearly in benefits and bonuses would have been ousted, and banking services would have improved as well as banking business practices, in theory and probability.
Many of the problems that arise in national political economies, like the United States, come from the way that products in bulk are treated in the marketplace. If they are treated professionally, then there are high levels of safety, efficiency and fairness in the market. If treated unprofessionally, their are low levels of safety, efficiency and fairness in the market. Obviously, handing over money to a business that would have failed without it is unsafe, inefficient and unfair in the vast majority of cases.
The large white woman, who tried to prevent the little girl from selling water, might have been invested in companies that bottle and sell water. These companies are large and sell many products in bulk. So, if she held stocks in that corporation, or anyone in her family or of her friends own any stock in it, then the little girl could be interpreted as UNDERMINING THE BULK SALES OF THAT PRODUCT, which she partially owned. Also, if she owned stock in a competitor of that company, another business that sells bottled water, then she could have interpreted the girl as directly undermining the sales of her company, as its partial owner. In both those cases, the woman’s misbehavior can be considered both rational, as based on greed, and excessively competitive.
Therefore, the misbehavior that results, misusing the police services as a threat, is also directly serving as a way to MAKE money. It is important, however, to realize that this is not a way to EARN money. This practice by the large white woman is one that promotes excessive competitiveness, which is easily associated with racism or other forms of immoral discrimination and mistreatment.
III. The Resource Hogs and Hoarders or Power Elites
Who Do We Morally Blame, and Who Should We Resist? In 1956, a brilliant sociologist, C. Wright Mills, wrote in his book, The Power Elites:
By the powerful we mean, of course, those who are able to realize their will, even if others resist it. No one, accordingly, can be truly powerful unless he has access to the command of major institutions, for it is over these institutional means of power that the truly powerful are, in the first instance, powerful. Higher politicians and key officials of government command such institutional power; so do admirals and generals, and so do the major owners and executives of the larger corporations. Not all power, it is true, is anchored in and exercised by means of such institutions, but only within and through them can power be more or less continuous and important. Wealth also is acquired and held in and through institutions. The pyramid of wealth cannot be understood merely in terms of the very rich; for the great inheriting families, as we shall see, are now supplemented by the corporate institutions of modern society: every one of the very rich families has been and is closely connected—always legally and frequently managerially as well— with one of the multi-million dollar corporations.
One major difference between what Mills wrote in the middle of the 20th century and in 2021 is that the corporations are now multi-billion and multi-trillion dollar corporations and far more powerful with their connections with politicians and the military. Two corporate giants have become $2 trillion corporations in 2020, and one of them had $100 billion and the other $40 billion in stock buybacks during the last few years, which artificially raises prices of their stocks. Power elites are in control of these organizations that have more power than numerous countries even possess.
As far as their educations and origins are similar and their lifestyles and careers are also similar, power elites have both social and psychological bases of unification because they are from similar backgrounds, especially as long as they are able to socialize with each other.
The power elites are resource hogs and hoarders, and they invade the spaces where thinking at universities happens. They are the major donors to institutions, which immediately changes the ways that thoughts are expressed and also changes the ways of thinking of the people who make up those institutions. The power elites own the media, as the major stockholders and as the controllers of thought of the masses. They are the people who occupy the major positions at the major institutions whether corporate, military or political.
The power elites and their organizations propagandize in each country so that people are distracted away from the major problems that these elites cause. The power elites propagandize in each country to cause conflicts between people and between families to serve as distractions away from themselves as resource hogs. They propagandize to control the thoughts and behaviors, especially behaviors of consumption, turning OUR people into excessive consumers who are MATERIALISTIC, which plays a major role in the massive amount of DEBT that the United States has accumulated.
American people buy things on credit to form the appearance that they are owners of a lot of things in order to impress materialistic people. Also, the U.S. government has done the same thing by buying a lot of weaponry, ammo and military technology based on credit, owing an enormous debt to China in 2021, which has led to increases in military conflict, especially in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Niger, Congo, Somalia and several other countries during the 21st century. Wars have been fought on borrowed money, and borrowed money has funded the manufacturing of weapons of war.
The propaganda comes from the mainstream media that is owned by the major stockholders of the largest stock corps. This propaganda promotes the ideas and ideologies of the billionaires among a few other power elites, major politicians and major military figures.
These people, as the holders of the major positions of power in the country, cause excessive competitiveness because they hoard and use up the vast majority of the resources. Power elites position themselves to TAKE profits from as many transactions as they can, and they LAY WASTE into the natural environments, which cheapen the places that are not their own and cause their own PROPERTY to increase in its value because their property lacks the waste that they make and put elsewhere. Most businesses produce waste to some extent by way of their activities. However, the massive stock corps have hidden activities and produce the most massive amounts of waste that are destroying the opportunities for future generations all over our planet.
III.i The Solution Involves Increasing Understanding, Resistance and Change Via Instilling Fear in the Power Elites
As a solution, reducing the consumption of packaged foods, having neighborhoods produce their own crops for multiple families and changing the set of values of our people are good starting points.
Next, the types of businesses that have low amounts of waste and high amounts of usages for their products, especially high use-values for families and communities, are SUPERIOR for the society’s sustainability. However, the power elites are against these types of businesses coming into existence because they would compete against their own businesses that rely on EXCESSIVE CONSUMERISM. For instance, the Indian business called Bakeys produces edible forks, knives and spoons that are nutritious, delicious, more durable than most plastic cutlery and can last up to two years on the shelf. This type of business has a low, or perhaps negative, waste-value, replacing harmful plastics with its products. However, giant stock corps in the oil and gas industry would prefer to continue with the production of oil-based plastics that have higher waste-values and lower use-values. This MUST stop for the sake of OUR planet and humanity!
The power elites oftentimes do not have communities or neighbors because they have been raised as people who have NEVER had to get along with anyone else for any extended time period, except for the servants who they pay to serve them. Power elites cannot get along well with other people.
The power elites are sociopathic. They tend to mistreat people like tools for their own uses, and for these reasons, the minimum wages in countries can be extremely low, requiring the poor to live with other family members who support them. The power elites have a mode of operation to take full advantage of their fellow countrymen and women so that they can gain even larger fortunes, and they lack sympathy for other people.
Why are the power elites overlooked at the blameworthy ones for societies’ problems? The power elites create large Public Relations Departments that smear the people who reveal who they really are. The power elites publicize and advertise DONATIONS that they make. However, these are not good donations, but rather they are donations that serve to paint the propaganda picture of the elites as DO-GOODERS.
For example, a GOOD DONATION is one that is sustainable, such as TEACHING SKILLS TO PEOPLE that are useful for them, their families and the community. If a wealthy person goes to a poor region of the country and teaches people how to make products, especially ones that can come from things that they harvest, then this is ideal and likely sustainable. It would deserve moral praise.
However, what we see with the excessively wealthy people are donations where they may give away thousands of eye-glasses to people in a country far away. Although the people who receive the glasses are happy with them, the people in that same region who are the makers, the distributors and the retail salespeople and store owners of glasses are very angry because giving them away means that the price of that product is lowered significantly for that area. So, this can lead the start-ups and makers, who are not yet well-established, the distributors and merchants from that region out of business. Moreover, the power elites want these businesses to go out of business from their donations as artificial economic stimuli.
The power elites engage in TOTALITARIAN PHILANTHROPY where they determine what is made, when it is made, how it is made and how many are made to be shipped to whatever place they want it to be, but typically to places that are far away so that it is hard for us to see the damage they cause, so that they can devastate other economies while PRETENDING to be DO-GOODERS.
III.ii The Reason Why the Power Elites Are Destructive Globally
Why would they do this? It is simple to answer.
Imagine that a pie is the entire living portion of the earth. The power elites have the largest slices of the pie. They KNOW that if they destroy even just a part of another piece of pie, say, on the other side of the table, then they have a comparatively larger and better portion of the pie.
The elites KNOW that they own more of the pie than they did before the destruction of the other piece. They KNOW that if they smash the pie on the other side of the table, theirs is the most valuable, and they strive to have the most valuable piece. So, they mistreat the world in these ways as sociopaths and psychopaths do. They are the RESOURCE HOGS and EXCESSIVE HOARDERS for this reason, and they believe that they DESERVE to live their lives continuously like this.
The elites are completely impulsively following their greedy desires for money, power and fame, although they have most of it and more of it than in any time period described in human history. Men in positions of power lay untold mountains of waste and contaminate massive portions of our planet with the business activities of many thousands of workers that they directed to do that. That is the form of dirty business that they are practicing. With their contamination, they cheapen the prices of goods so that apples, other fruits and vegetables and meats are worth less than they were worth 100 years ago or just 50 years ago when they were more organic. The power elites make it more difficult or impossible to enter marketplaces for families and have eradicated the respectable practice of penny capitalism in many regions where they have enormous stock corps with partial ownership concerning the rule-making of bulk sales (See Government).
However, what we want is for each society and international communities to demand for waste-makers to pay with their time, effort and money for the burdens that they cause us and future generations with their messiness. “Clean up your messes, or else!” is the message for the corporate and military power elites and for the successful politicians to demand.
Please join us in our mission to reduce and prevent the excessive competitiveness that is caused by this type of anti-capitalism and the pretend do-gooders who are the major owners of the monopolistic stock corps, the powerful politicians and military officials. The ones in office call themselves PUBLIC SERVANTS, but they are really bureaucratic officials, and they are traitors to their own nations and destroyers of OUR planet. Please join us.
info@ethicalconflictconsulting.com
References
Brant, William Allen. (2019). Beyond Legal Minds: Sex, Social Violence, Systems, Methods, Possibilities. Brill.
Mills, C. Wright. (1956). The Power Elites. Oxford University Press. pp. 9-10.
Citing this article: Brant, William Allen. (2022). “Some Revealing Reasons for the Growth of Anti-Capitalism in America in the 21st Century.” Ethical Conflict Consulting. February edition. https://ethicalconflictconsulting.com/conflict-management/anti-capitalism-in-america/
