allanmunger.org, "The Irreconcilable Differences Between Capitalism and Free Enterprise"

http://www.allanmunger.org
Last edited 10th January 2010

Welcome
to the web site of
Allan Henry Munger,
now semi-retired, living Magaliesburg,
born Johannesburg 10th September 1941,
South African citizen of many generations
of English, Norwegian, Irish and Afrikaans (Flemish) descent.
The most recently arrived ancestor & first Munger in South Africa swam to this country in 1852 from the shipwrecked H.M.S. Birkenhead
(the biggest shipping disaster of it’s time - 450 men stood to attention singing God Save the Queen while the ship went down)
bringing with him his infantry battalion Captain Lucas, who could not swim, for which Sergeant Munger,
rather than being shot for desertion, was awarded a VC for having saved the life of an officer.

This site is intended to serve as a family historical information record and also serves
temporarily as a repository for some selected articles from the writings of it’s owner.

The first of such selected articles follows
and is of profound interest to all those thinking people who are concerned about the mess humanity is now in...
the foolish injustices, the lunatic inhumanity of man towards his fellow man and the uncertain future of humanity
..........if indeed humanity does have any future.

It has far reaching effects because once widely known it removes the support which the megalists have for so long so fraudulently held
and it strips away their false pretences with which they have so long been so splendidly robed and lets them stand naked, exposed,
whereupon they at last are seen for what they are: but pathetically inadequate little insecure fools trying to play God.

How do we know ?
For more than a hundred years there has been an ongoing deliberate effort to create the false impression that Capitalism supported Free Enterprise/ Freeventurism and Democracy. In other words Capitalism has been hiding behind Free Enterprise and also behind Democracy, by pretending to support them. That has always been false, as becomes obvious once the basic differences between the purposes of Capitalism and Freeventurism are clearly distinguished. Now to achieve a particular purpose, appropriate methods need to be used; and to achieve a different purpose other methods are used. The differences of purpose of Capitalism and Freeventurism become obvious upon examining the methods employed by each and also the different political and social climates necessary for those methods to succeed. This examines the differences between True Freeventurism and the worst examples of Capitalism (megalism). Admittedly there exists between these two extremes a large grey area where people do this or that, without caring or being fully conscious of the consequences of their actions or to what they lead.

Methods of Freeventurism
The fundamental method of Freeventurism is to trade value for value, to produce a reasonable profit whereby the seller can prosper. In order for this to be possible, the market must be free to purchase whenever it may please, from whoever it may please, at whatever mutually agreeable price may please, whatever it may please (within reason: nuclear bombs should not be freely available); and it must be free to purchase whatever quality it may please (within reason: fraud, planned obsolescence, wanton wastage and pollution do produce future economic and other disaster). It is this freedom of choice which makes Freeventurism so very, very democratic, for each and every buyer has a choice and each and every seller has a choice. The success of a Free Enterprise Venture is dependant upon it being able to find favour amongst a large enough number of freely choosing customers. Likewise the sellers have the freedom of choosing the conditions under which they may wish to sell.

This method of producing prosperity is many, many thousands of years old and owes its fundamental success to the very good and just incentives it offers individuals to apply their minds and labours constructively and efficiently. Free enterprise is known to be a much more efficient, thoughtful, quicker and more market satisfying producer than, say, bureaucratic institutions. However, in order for it to properly take place it is necessary for all civilized systems and services to be fully and efficiently functional. Most important amongst these is a very good and very fair system of justice in order to protect the productively engaged citizens from being robbed of the fruits of their labours. Thus in order to have that civilized climate, necessary for Freeventurism to flourish, Democracy is essential... being the only way to avoid the considerable shortcomings, mindless failings, stupid inconsiderateness and unthinking blindness, insensitivities and criminal selfishness of despotic Tyranny. Freeventurism also relies upon free competition to keep it balanced and healthy. True intelligent Freeventurism welcomes competition, would guarantee its right to exist and protect it and would never shut it down. Competition keeps us healthy AND alive AND in touch with the requirements of the marketplace AND it keeps us fit AND efficient AND thinking AND therefore better able to cope with the changes and problems of tomorrow. The worst thing that can happen to any enterprise is that all its competitors close down. In this it must be noted that true Freeventurism can only be, is and always has been the very strongest defender of civilized order, thoughtful reasonable justice and thinking democracy. The fundamental motto of true Freeventurism must always be “DO NO HARM”.

Conversely, the purpose of Capitalism is not so much to make a profit, which is only incidental to its purpose, but to get much more than that: much more than just a prosperous income. This goes back to the deepest roots of Capitalism and the very reason it was called Capitalism. Once again examining the methods used reveals the purpose. The very reason for the name Capitalist is the method of applying the purchasing power and influence of accumulated capital to squeeze out and close down all competitors in order corner the market in order thereafter to be able to milk the captive market, charging whatever price the Capitalist may wish. Note that this is done in order to dominate and to force buyers to pay heavily. It is also often used to force sellers to sell at starvation prices. Is this done in order to make a healthy profit ? NO it is not, for it is completely unnecessary to mobilise amassed capital to carry out such economically destructive campaigns merely in order to make a healthy profit. In fact it would be crazy to do so. It is done in order to produce an extortionate profit because large masses of wealth are required in order to repeat the process. Huge amounts of money/assets are to the Capitalist but chips in the power game.

Whereas the purpose of Capitalism is not to get better housing, nor more or better food to eat, nor better education of the children, for all of which the Capitalist has no further need, since the Capitalist already has those things; but the purpose is to gain power and ultimately control over the markets supplied and also power and control of the sources of supply and of the means of production including labour; and in order to bring about such control the Capitalist needs to totally destroy, bankrupt or chase away all competition and to circumvent, alter or break or get rid of all laws which get in the way; and in order to bring that about it is necessary for the Capitalist to corrupt, or buy, or overthrow all democracy. Capitalism must therefore be seen not as the legitimate pursuit of reasonable profit but as the endless, insatiable quest for power which must necessarily require getting rid of Freeventurism and Democracy and Justice while replacing them with total tyranny instead.

For instance: Examine the historical doings of that arch capitalist John Davison Rockefeller I (1839-1937). Ida Tarbell (1), a very brave lady, in 1905 wrote in McClures Magazine, very widely read, an article about J.D.Rockefeller (2). The charge against him was that he had persuaded the railroad directors to charge his competitors an extra hundred percent, doubling their transportation cost; and he persuaded the railroads to pay that extra hundred per cent to him and furthermore give him a special rebate on his own transportation of oil, whereby he made it impossible for his competitors to continue in business and so he bought their businesses at prices suitable to him, where after he used his financial muscle to buy oil in bulk, thereby to force the best prices from suppliers, then he used the proceeds to buy up the oil refineries and to buy up the railroads and the banks and thus having enabled his company to sell oil much cheaper then took over large areas of the market and having forced competitors out of business thereafter bought up the producers entire production at very much lower prices for there was no one else producers could sell to; thus a large section of the market was monopolized where after the end user was forced to pay much higher prices for there was no one else to buy from. These methods are the methods of a capitalist, carried out to an extreme.

Cultural climate of Capitalism
Professor Ferdinand Lundberg reported in “The Rich and the Super Rich” (3) that the Attorney General of Ohio testified in court that Rockefeller’s Company had tried to bribe him and his predecessors. In his 1899 annual report to the Governor of Ohio, the Attorney General detailed six attempts to bribe his predecessors as well as the $400,000 bribe offered to himself. In 1899, $400,000 was quite a lot of money. Anyone who is criminal enough to attempt to bribe the Attorney General and the next Attorney General and the next Attorney General, will stop at bribing no one. Will a criminal who is criminal enough to bribe anyone, no matter who or how high, have scruples at using the “poor man’s bribery”, namely blackmail? Would a criminal so bad as to use bribery and blackmail against high officials, hesitate to bribe competitors staff and hesitate to employ industrial espionage and industrial sabotage? It seems he was not a man that respected the democratically decided laws. One cannot truthfully claim to uphold democracy if one is not prepared to abide by the democratically decided law. The democratic formulation of the law is what democracy is all about.

Done partly, no doubt, in order to counteract his increasingly bad name he also embarked on some massive apparently philanthropic activity with carefully managed publicity. Indeed people such as he would been a major influence in bringing about changes to US law whereby donations to non-profit philanthropic institutions and the institutions themselves would escape all tax. He created several such entities, no doubt all run by boards consisting of people acceptable to him. Of course those institutions were run by professors, doctors, lawyers, churchmen and other professionals, but not by businessmen of his calibre. So, in donating company stock to those institutions, would he have not retained in perpetuity the proxies for the vote entitlements of those shares and probably even had the agreement that he could swap stock for other stock of like or better value? In such a way he would never have lost control of all that capital but merely changed the name of the owner, shifting it to another pocket where it would remain tax free. Therefore what the foundations and various institutes and trusts gained was not simply a massive cash donation as naive people might ignorantly believe, but rather it was the dividend income accruing to such investments AND considerable credit lines being opened to them for their having been created or supported and funded by Rockefeller. Furthermore the income that such institutions received would largely have been funded by the US tax paying citizen by way of the tax which would otherwise have had to be paid on those dividends. Taken in context therefore it must be seen that the largesse of the altruism was not that large and in fact it did benefit the donor with a very large spin off - for it all very strongly augmented the commercial power wielding and did so at considerable expense to the taxpayer. John D Rockefeller I was not a free-enterprisist. He hated free-enterprise and attempted to stamp out his competition. He was Freeventurism’s worst enemy. His method was to stamp out competition so to corner and milk the market and so his interest was only in getting money, not making money, but just getting it in massive amounts by any means. He apparently hurt so many decent people in doing it, that his underground reputation must have been disgusting, so much so that he had to spend in his lifetime $446 719 371 in outlays (many of them actually tax dodges) to philanthropic/non-profit enterprises, in an attempt, with such donations, to buy back public respect and his self respect.

To prevent the true nature of their game being publicly realised, so harmfully have malfeasant capitalists and their public relations experts made the frequent false claim that they support free enterprise and democracy, that all humanity has been bamboozled into thinking Capitalism, Democracy and Free Enterprise all to be the same thing. The truth is that criminal Capitalism has long been noted for hatred of Democracy, because democracy would prevent their corrupt practices, election crookery, political manipulation and despotic control. Likewise criminal Capitalists have a long and disgusting record of destroying, wiping out, free enterprise competition wherever it gets in their way. This sadly causes us all endless confusion. It is time for the confusion to be swept away. In doing so it is imperative that in order to unbundle the confusion of Capitalism, Democracy and Free Enterprise we should name them to clearly distinguish what we mean. Whereas "Freeenterprisesism" is awkward and unspellable, herein genuine free enterprise is referred to as "Freeventurism" and that fundamental criminal malfeasance which is the worst ‘Capitalism’ is referred to as "Megalism".

Such clear differentiation between Freeventurism and Megalism is most important to understanding what goes on. To further understand the difference between Freeventurism and Magalism it is necessary to understand the nature and result of the pursuit of power.

The problem with power is that power always needs more power to protect it and the more power is amassed the more power is needed to protect that; and the more people tramped on to get power the more power is needed. The more power the power junkie has the more power is needed. Power is something like a black hole in space: difficult to escape and the more gets sucked into it the stronger it gets. Eventually massive power assembled becomes itself the greatest threat to its master and, Frankenstein monster like, it always turns upon and destroys its own master. Power is a tiger and whoever rides upon the back of that tiger cannot easily dismount; which is why wise men prefer to regard power as an illusion which they refuse to gather or ever rely upon. Too greatly accumulated power jumps and blows all circuits. It is uncontainable. Power is the worst narcotic there is. It makes heroin look like a jelly bean. Whoever grabs power does so because they feel insecure. There is no other reason. That comes about because they feel inadequate. There is no other reason. The more someone grabs power to compensate for feeling inadequate, the more dishonorable the acts which have to be committed to achieve the power grab. The more power grabbed, the more one needs to grab power. The longer it goes on the worse the secret activities necessary to achieve it. Eventually gross crimes against humanity are perpetrated in secret. Crimes against humanity are only carried out by only power grabbers only and no one else.

It should now be obvious that Megalism cannot reform but can only self destruct.

The purposes of Freeventurism and Megalism (capitalism) being completely at cross purposes to each other, Freeventurism is Megalism’s (capitalism's) worst enemy and Megalism is Freeventurism's worst enemy. Neither can exist where the other is allowed to rule. To win, Capitalism/Magalism needs tyrannical, fascist power whereas for Freeventurism to flourish it needs a healthy, civilized, just, fair, law abiding, democratic, truly moral and free society. The ultimate outcome of Capitalism is a somewhat wobbly society despotically ruled by a single Tyrant whereas the ultimate outcome of Freeventurism is a society composed of a very, very large number of separate, individual, prosperous businesses and other autonomous groups populated by free people freely competing without being enemies; such individuals, companies and groups all healthy and vigorous, all necessarily strongly supportive of justice, especially social justice and necessarily strongly supportive of democracy and liberty.

While the author still retains ownership of this copyright, conditional permission is hereby granted to every reader, all humanity, (subject to the conditions that the title and wording are faithfully reproduced without any changes and the authorship and copyright are fully acknowledged) to freely copy or reproduce and distribute this article by any means and may do so freely for their own gain if they wish, but in all cases subject to the further conditions that this copyright holder is kept informed (e-mail: webmaster at allanmunger dot org) and that this permission shall be valid only until the beginning of the year 2015 whereafter no further new reproduction or distribution may be made without arrangement with the copyright holder.

If you agree with this article please bring it to the attention of whoever else you know who you think will also agree with it, but do not waste your time giving it to those who cannot dare to agree. Alternatively if any reader wishes to donate to help keep this vehicle for the above article running, such donations will be gladly received. Please e-mail the author: allan at allanmunger dot org (Here written to avoid spam-address-hunting robots, but should be written as normal e-mail address)

It is the authors ultimate intention for this article to have its own web site to globally promote and record the advance of this comprehension.

Once widely and well understand the power grabbers will not be able to get away with instigating war.

Wars cannot be prevented UNTIL this matter is widely and well understood.

This is a vital stepping stone to the prevention of war.