Why do "intellectuals" tend to hate capitalism?

Assault from the Ivory Tower: The Professors' War Against America

https://campus.aynrand.org/works/1983/01/01/assault-from-the-ivory-tower-the-professors-war-against-america

Perhaps you could have "someone you know who you also happen to know is a brilliant person" teach you about sentence structure and paragraphs?

The Riot wrote:

I would add to this that many intellectuals grew up being the smartest guys in their classes, got great grades all through HS and college, got Ph.D's... and watched as many of their classmates who weren't quite as smart but had better social skills and earned only bachelor or master's degrees went on to make ten times as much annually in the corporate world as attorneys, CPA firm partners, business execs, etc.

Starting salary for a professor of finance is 120k. For 9 months of work. How much are you getting paid again? U mad bro?

Coebra wrote:

The Riot wrote:

I would add to this that many intellectuals grew up being the smartest guys in their classes, got great grades all through HS and college, got Ph.D's... and watched as many of their classmates who weren't quite as smart but had better social skills and earned only bachelor or master's degrees went on to make ten times as much annually in the corporate world as attorneys, CPA firm partners, business execs, etc.

Starting salary for a professor of finance is 120k. For 9 months of work. How much are you getting paid again? U mad bro?

By the time they finished their PhDs their peers were making much more than them.

BTW, my first job offer out of college (only bachelor's) was slightly more than that.

Don't forget that "intellectuals" also hate engineering and hard sciences. They don't understand it and they were way cooler than the STEM dorks in college. "Intellectuals" think they deserve money without producing anything that people want to pay for. The only way an "intellectual" can get people to support him, or at least notice him, is if he claims it's morally correct to steal from the rich. That's why there are so many leftist "intellectuals".

scientific capitalist wrote:

Don't forget that "intellectuals" also hate engineering and hard sciences. They don't understand it and they were way cooler than the STEM dorks in college. "Intellectuals" think they deserve money without producing anything that people want to pay for. The only way an "intellectual" can get people to support him, or at least notice him, is if he claims it's morally correct to steal from the rich. That's why there are so many leftist "intellectuals".

Fascinating. Please name a single prominent "leftist" intellectual who treats science with hostility.

you're ignorant in so many ways. the intellectuals I know worked plenty of grunt jobs along the way. and the ideas they express are eventually disseminated throughout society with innumerable economic consequences, which is why conservative estimates usually put the universities as generating between 2 and 10% of economic growth. The 2% figure comes from South Africa, where the universities contribute more to the economy than the gold, textile, forestry, and other industries. In the United States the impact is much greater, for much of our economy relies on technology generated and developed in universities. Where would our economy be, for instance, without those intellectuals working on useless logic and mathematics and eventually coming up with computers and the Internet?

Dunce Patrol wrote:

Fascinating. Please name a single prominent "leftist" intellectual who treats science with hostility.

Asker of questions wrote:

Because usually "intellectuals" are liberal professors have never worked in the real world and produced anything that created jobs for others. Their money just "appears" from the institution from which they teach. It is a form of socialism that they are comfortable. Capitalism threatens them because capitalism does and liberalism takes.[quote]

That sounds like most employee positions. Their money just "appears" from the institution from which they work.

[quote]This country was founded by capitalism and liberals seem to think ....

That's better ....

but still

"founded by capitalism"?

How old are you?

I had an interesting convo that taught me much about this topic, which is fascinating to me.

I was speaking to someone in my book group. A 65 year old retired teacher. So an intellectual, union member, government worker.

I pointed out that in the novel we were reading, as in many novels and movies, the villain was a businessman.

She said something like 'yes, well, the profit motive you know...' She meant that if profit is your goal, you are corrupted, out to screw over people and not to be trusted.

I think that is a core of this - business is making money off people, and that offends the sensibilities of people who make their living off taxes or that kind of thing. They think working where there is not a profit being made is more honest and ethical.

so there's my answer.

(FYI I am in business)

Boycott Univision wrote:

Intellectuals don't blindly accept the ideas of those around them? Universities are the most intolerant environments in existence where dissent and diversity of thought is shouted down. Intellectuals learn early on that in order to survive they must walk in lock step with those around them embracing the cookie cutter standard intellectual ideology.

You obviously didn't go to university.

No offense meant to your friend ... but a "teacher" hardly automatically qualifies as "intellectual".

Do you think there's any validity to the idea that a profit motive often does foster less than ideal behavior?

I'm also in business.

often? Not sure what that means. Are people in business less ethical than school teachers?

I'd guess probably not, given the laziness and absenteeism of my son's public school teachers. Their version of unethical business is to take many days off and have kids watch movies in class.

But I've been in sales for a long time and I've seen many inappropriate sales.

I'm rambling. I don't know what the answer to your question is.

agip wrote:

They think working where there is not a profit being made is more honest and ethical.

I'd say they're only concerned that there's an *obvious* profit being made. Pretty much everyone I've met from this group of people expects to earn more in the future. Either by being successful as a team and being allocated more resources or being promoted to a better paying position. They don't want more responsibility without a higher salary. It's hypocrisy.

What exactly do you people mean by "intellectual"?

Various posters have excluded lawyers, accountants, scientists, engineers, and teachers, from being "intellectuals." Whatever definition people are using, it seems strange to exclude members of those professions from being "intellectuals".

ROIDnato CaCERA wrote:

beardy guy wrote:

And socialism bailed capitalism out after the finacial crash.

Explain that one to us?

Nope. Fascism ("the merger of state and corporate power" -Mussolini) bailed out connected big banks. Capitalism would have continued just fine without it.

Really?

How would the failing banks continue on if they were not bailed out by tax payer money

And do you realize the domino effect that failing banks or a crashing housing sector would have on the rest of the economy?

The biggest problem I have with right wingers is their penchant for creating an alternate reality. They then lie to themselves so much that they end up believing their lies.

For example the above bolded part is obviously a lie. No one would make such a statement, much less a person with a PHD and a high IQ.

Whole foods is the best wrote:

Obviously this is a generalization but there is clearly a trend. Any theories?

It was certainly a trend in the 1930s, when the capital-driven stock market crashed and took the whole country down. I don't think it was much of a trend in the 1950s.

I agree with several others who dispute your premise. Apart from serious old-guard lefties and the handful of remaining doctrinaire Marxists, the only intellectuals who hate capitalism in a blunt-force way are people who tend to concatenate the curse-word "capitalist" with other curse words like "heteropatriarchal":

It's less about hating capitalism than about trying to see clearly the downside of capitalism.

You're a tool, by the way. Don't sell me out. Don't sell me down the river, boss. I'm my own personal brand.

Those phrases? They reduce people to their use-value, rather than allowing them to be.....people. Fully human. Would you rather be human, or a commodity? Capitalism tends to incentivize the transforming of human beings into commodities; it tends to fracture us into the thousand different ways we can be marketed to. That's why cookies get placed when we surf the web: so companies can assess our desires, advertise to them, and sell us lots of stuff that we think we need in order to be whole. That is how capitalism works.

Personally I do not have a problem with capitalism.

As a leftie myself, I believe in regulation to prevent business from taking advantage of the unknowing public. For example, sub prime loans that are given primarily to low income people. This is immoral behavior from banks that eventually led to the housing market crash.

I also have a major problem with crony capitalism.

The biggest problem with our system is that because politicians are beholden to big money donors and big companies, all the policies they create are based on what big business wants, not based on public interest.

How else do you explain a company like Google paying close to 0% in taxes while the average middle class family pays 30% ?