Occupy This! Capitalism and Greed Are Not the Problem

As bums and losers have camped out in parks across the country for the last couple of months; dealing drugs, attacking women, and vandalizing public property, I've heard a lot of people, many of whom I usually agree with, come to their defense. The reasoning is; that these are just frustrated people who can't find job and they really have a point because these Wall Street firms and banks are corrupt and they prey on the poor working class people. This so called 1% are just greedy, only interested in profits, and unconcerned with creating jobs. Capitalism is just an unfair system that rewards those at the top and prevents everyone else from moving up. Well, excuse me, but that's a huge load of bullshit. Capitalism, free enterprise, and profits and greed are not the problem. They didn't cause the financial collapse or the high unemployment; and the vast majority of Americans don't believe they did. This weekend proves my point. When you see overflow crowds and waiting lines in the middle of the night on Thanksgiving Day, and full parking lots at various retailers; there's something at work here, at it's not a hate of capitalism or corporate greed. It's an embracing of it, even if those doing the embracing don't realize it. Merriam-Webster defines greed as: "a selfish and excessive desire for more of something than is needed". Now, at first glance, that does sound like a character trait that you wouldn't be proud of. My question is: How do you determine what qualifies as greed, and is it harmful to anyone, other than the greedy person? How much is "more of something than is needed"? Who decides?  Does a someone "need" a forty thousand square foot mansion? Probably not, even if they have a lot of kids, they could live comfortably in a much smaller home. The reality is that even those of us with much more moderate lifestyles could survive with much less. None of us actually "need" houses or apartments, or indoor plumbing and electricity; we could survive living in tents. We don't need restaurants, we could grow or kill our own food. No one needs a cell phone, but most Americans, regardless of income, have one. It seems to me that, by definition, we're all greedy. Guess what; that's a good thing. People were fighting crowds at Best Buy, Toys R Us, and Walmart last night because there were sales and they saw a chance to get more stuff in exchange for their money; they're greedy. The result of that greed is that a cop friend of mine, along with five of his fellow officers, worked an extra job at the local Walmart; jobs were created at a time of year when everyone needs more money. Retailers changed up their schedules this year and opened earlier, or never closed at all. They did it in an effort to gain an advantage over their competitors, to boost sales and make more money; greed. As a result of this "corporate greed", millions of part times jobs were created; some of which will become permanent. The greed will lead to a little extra food on millions of tables, and Christmas presents for a lot of kids that, otherwise, wouldn't have gotten them. A lot of people think it's ridiculous that people are camping out to buy TV's, and that people are having to work on holidays. I agree, so I don't do Black Friday shopping, and I don't work at Walmart. America is awesome! I have a buddy who has a business that specializes in the sales and installation of equipment for converting and fueling vehicles with compressed natural gas instead of diesel and gasoline. National companies are beginning to convert their fleets because CNG is cheaper; GREED. This is going to be huge and hundreds of thousands of jobs will be created, and that's a conservative estimate. As companies see increased profits from the fuel savings, they'll expand and create more jobs, because they're greedy. Some of the savings will be passed on to the consumers of their products, in order to take sales away from competitors. Their greed will lead to increased buying power for their customers. Skeptics will tell you that the corporate fat cats will never pass this savings along to their customers. Really? The first DVD player I ever saw cost about $400, you can buy a better one today for $29. Five years ago, I payed about $100 a month for my home phone; today, I pay $19.95 a year for Magic Jack, which we don't even use because the price of cell plans is so low. Capitalism and greed have given Americans the highest standard of living in the world, and has raised the standards of the rest of the world as well. How many jobs have been created in the Middle East, Russia, Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico due to methods of extracting and refining oil, that were developed by Americans? How many tech jobs have been created in India and China by greedy American capitalists? How many life saving drugs and medical procedures have been developed by greedy pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers? You may have noticed, none of this is the result of government funding, intervention, or regulation. In fact, our current over-reaching, oppressive government would have stalled or prevented many of the life changing innovations of the last 150 years. One of the most hilarious and, at the same time, disgusting developments to come out of this anti-capitalism movement is the re-emergence of self proclaimed communists. Communism, are you freaking kidding me? No other economic system in the history of the world has produced more poverty, human suffering, starvation, and murder than Communism; yet it just keeps coming back like a case of crabs in a whore house. Thank you Karl Marx, you ignorant bastard. Attempting to revive it, is like suggesting that Chevy Chase should get another shot at hosting a talk show. A disaster of that scale should be scrubbed from the pages of history and never be revisited. Like it or not, the key to economic recovery is good old fashioned Capitalist Greed. Get government out of the way and let it work.