This ain’t capitalism

It’s funny how people are gleefully rubbing their hands together and pointing to the $700 billion bail-out of banks as evidence that capitalism doesn’t work.

What happened in the U.S isn’t true capitalism. It’s greed gone mad.

Look at how the Toronto Sun started and you will see capitalism at its best. A bunch of people got together and through their creativity, intelligence and foresight put out a product that was hugely successful and made money.

The bosses at the time – Peter Worthington, Doug Creaighton and don Hunt – realized that the people who got them there were the workers, so they shared the loot. When the Sun first went public, they gave all the original employees shares, so they could benefit from all their hard work.

That is true capitalism. People work hard and are rewarded.

What is a perversion of capitalism is when companies get flipped from one owner to another, often at inflated prices and senior executives get leveraged buyouts. Many of those execs haven’t  put an ounce of their creativity into the company. The people who did the work and produced the produce are far below them. And they’re the ones who get laid off when the company is sold – at an inflated price. And the new owner discovers they weren’t making the kind of dough they expected to make.

That’s false capitalism built on greed, and it’s the kind of false capitalism that is killiing the U.S. right now.
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