The Bamboozle: Why ADOS hasn't received Reparations and why the 'Occupy Movement' failed

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2019 Glyph Comics Award Winner (BEST COMIC STRIP OR WEBCOMIC)!

CITATION
Rasheed, Muhammad. "The Bamboozle: Why ADOS hasn't received Reparations and why the 'Occupy Movement' failed." Cartoon. The Official Website of Cartoonist M. Rasheed 03 Sep 2019. Pen & ink w/Adobe Photoshop color.
Muhammad Rasheed - The White Liberal's Classic Attempt to Cancel ADOS Reparations

Chelsea Rustad - Since when do liberals critique capitalism ever? The Democrats are an openly capitalist party.

Muhammad Rasheed - On social media.

Chelsea Rustad - I’ve literally never seen it happen. All they do is make excuses for capitalists and their failures

Muhammad Rasheed - I'm not denying that's your own experience. But my experiences with them are the inspiration for my cartoons.

Chelsea Rustad - ok well capitalism is 100% garbage and there is no such thing as capitalism for the people, unless those people are bosses, developers, and landlords

Muhammad Rasheed - That's the rhetoric propaganda of the followers of Marx. It doesn't accurately describe capitalism, but the crony corporatism which is the enemy of capitalism.

Capitalism requires the open markets to function, and those markets are vulnerable to the greed of the wealthy, who always seeks to close the markets with monopoly. Only gov regulation (antitrust law) can protect capitalism's for-the-people markets from the greed-fueled 1% grifter class.

Muhammad Rasheed - The bad guys of the story hate capitalism, and have no problem allowing you to continue to vilify it like this since they don't want it themselves. If you win in your desire to kill capitalism, the 1% will win.

Chelsea Rustad - Crony capitalism is capitalism. It’s never been good for anyone. Btw the 1% already one.

Muhammad Rasheed - Crony corporatism is literally the enemy of capitalism. I am under no illusion in that regard.

We'll have to agree to disagree on this, Chelsea. Your ideological opinion of the topic doesn't align with the facts of history revealed through my research. Capitalism isn't a tool of the enemy, it's a weapon of the people, and that's why the bad guys hate it. 

Capitalism needs competition in order to work, while the bad guys cut off competition so all revenue will funnel to their little class alone. A multi-millionaire or billionaire class isn't possible under a well-regulated capitalist open free market competition. The signs are right in front of you.

Chelsea Rustad - you’re in the wrong forum if you worship capitalism. Capitalism is right wing, period.

Muhammad Rasheed - I'm Muslim. I worship the One God alone. Your comment is offensive.

Chelsea Rustad - Promoting a murderous ideology like capitalism in a leftist forum is offensive.

Muhammad Rasheed - Capitalism isn't a murderous ideology. The crony corporatism that usurped it to empower a 1% minority of greedy wealth & power hoarders are responsible for the murderous standard operating procedure that is falsely (and religiously) labeled "capitalism."

Muhammad Rasheed - The old trading companies that drove the logistics of the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade represented a cartel in partnership with the monarchies of Europe. They operated in a deliberately closed market, which means by definition it was not capitalism.

Brian Jones - Yes, when a true capitalist system begins there is 100% open and honest competition... among those who already have enough hereditary wealth to enclose large swaths of common means under their name, use that ownership to siphon off excess value from those who now have to labor for them in order to access wages and buy back access to the now enclosed commons, and to pay the state to turn the police into a force to enforce their enclosure claims against any organization by those without massive amounts of inherited wealth.

After that, anyone who had a family that managed to run the systemic gauntlet and gain a large amount of wealth can potentially acquire their own means of production with which they can siphon off the excess value of their own laborers.

With or without "cronyism", capitalism still relies a class of people who undemocratically own all the means to survival and voting with your dollars means that the people who own your labor and thus your wages can vote with your dollars no matter what you think.

Muhammad Rasheed - Brian wrote: “Yes, when a true capitalist system begins…”

It’s not a matter of how it begins; it’s a matter of how the economic system actually functions, what defines it, and what causes it to no longer be.

Brian wrote: “…there is 100% open and honest competition...”

The competition of the open markets is how capitalism works. Without it, it is no longer capitalism.

Brian wrote: “…among those who already have enough hereditary wealth to…”

Whether the people who show up to a given marketplace are able to take advantage of the obvious or established business opportunities presented is a completely different item. There is a certain amount of creativity in being able to see or find opportunities, even to create whole new markets. As long as the people are allowed to buy/sell in those markets in a well-regulated competition, it is a healthy capitalist system than works for the people, both as consumers and as entrepreneurs.

Brian wrote: “…enclose large swaths of common means under their name, use that ownership to…”
Once unscrupulous people start manipulating the markets to benefit themselves alone, locking others out to rid themselves of competition, we are no longer talking about a capitalistic system, but the diabolical enemy of capitalism.

Brian wrote: “…and to pay the state to turn the police into a force to enforce their enclosure claims against any organization by those without massive amounts of inherited wealth.”

This is the “crony” aspect of ‘crony corporatism’ that now shut down the open markets to benefit the few over the many. This is not capitalism, which requires the competition of free open markets to function.

Brian wrote: “With or without ‘cronyism,’ capitalism still relies a class of people who undemocratically own all the means to survival and voting with your dollars means that the people who own your labor and thus your wages can vote with your dollars no matter what you think.”

This part doesn’t make sense. When a successful, but greedy and unscrupulous businessman uses cronyism to pay equally greedy and unscrupulous government officials off to violate antitrust laws and look the other way so the businessman can close the markets by monopolizing the industry, it is now crony corporatism and not capitalism. The free markets of capitalism are fragile for this reason, and need the government to enforce antitrust to protect them from the very anti-capitalism practice of monopoly. The people need to use their political might to force the U.S. government to do its job to protect their markets from the wealthy and their greed-fueled overreach.

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MEDIUM : Scanned pen & ink cartoon drawing w/Adobe Photoshop color.

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