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Originally Posted by Necrosis
If you can provide evidence that ALL capitalism is motivated by profit alone, you can get away with this statement.
If not, especially if anyone cares to post an altruistic act by a capitalist, your statement is reduced to naivete at best. And that's being kind.
Here is a starting point for you to refute:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/default.htm
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The accumulation of the means of production (materials, land, tools) as property into a few hands; this accumulated property is called "capital" and the property-owners of these means of production are called "capitalists."
Productive labor—the human work necessary to produce goods and distribute them—takes the form of wage labor. That is, humans work for wages rather than for product. One of the aspects of wage labor is that the laborer tends not to be invested in the product. Labor also becomes "efficient," that is, it becomes defined by its "productivity"; capitalism increases individual productivity through "the division of labor," which divides productive labor into its smallest components. The result of the division of labor is to lower the value (in terms of skill and wages) of the individual worker; this would create immense social problems in Europe and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The means of production and labor is manipulated by the capitalist using rational calculation in order to realize a profit. So that capitalism as an economic activity is fundamentally teleological.
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http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GLOSSARY/CAPITAL.HTM
This is really basic capitalism. I mean I've only taken a handful of classes on economics and government, but it's been covered. If you can get past the fact that most idiot professors have been brain washed into thinking that capitalism is the solution to every problem (professors are people, too), it's really plain as plain can be.
As for the Gates Foundation... well the organization is plainly and blatantly not capitalist. Explore the business model. Where is the productive labor for profit?