Thanos Thanos:
Maybe if capitalists quit behaving like locusts that leave nothing but pure destruction behind them then other folks would no longer have a reason to view them as such.
Events do not take place in a vacuum.
Capitalists do the things they do because their investors insist on ever-increasing profits.
As I've illustrated time and again, the principle investors on Wall Street are insurance companies and pensions funds.
The principle holders of pension funds and insurance polcies are not the 1% but the masses of folks who are preparing for retirement.
My mother in law is a fine example. Because of my father in laws outdated investment strategies she's locked into low-yield long term CDs that are paying her as little as $200 interest on $100,000 in deposits. She is struggling.
Meanwhile, my 401(k) which I've aggressively invested is yielding $7,785 per $100,000 this past quarter. I put my money into an aggressive mutaul fund and the fund managers are probably beating up the firms they're invested into to reap these profits.
I'm depending on this for my retirement.
I'm also guilty of causing the problems you're assigning to the greedy capitalists. Before you throw rocks at me you may want to look around at your own investments and those of your friends and family. They're probably doing the same thing I am.
I am not sure what the solution is. For some firms the solution has been to buy back stock to reduce the influence of their investors and some firms have even gone private to get away from market pressures.
But if you go at this by doing something to hurt the markets then the people who will hurt the most are retirees who depend on dividend income to pay their bills and put food on the table.
Edit: One of the ultimate ironies of life is that I used to work for Intel until pressure from the investors' representatives on the Board of Directors forced layoffs and cuts to enhance profits in 2005. The primary group of investors that caused this? Intel employees who held stock in the company.
As one of those employee-investors
I caused my own layoff.
CKA Uber 
Forum Elite 
CKA Uber 
And of all the east block, East Germany had the best economic success. I guess a more gradual integration would have been better, but pretty hard to stem the wave once the dam starts breaking. Not only was E Germany plundered, but they had to adapt to a whole different culture - theirs was much more laid back - old fashioned you could say. You know, the stuff conservatives are always bemoaning we've lost.
