People are not equal. The modern advent of production line assembly has made it appear to the masses, to the assembly line workers, that all are equal.
Business deals are not equal. And so we regulate them so that no one gets a good deal. Further, the large corporation has so much weight, that they can dictate the terms of a contract, and you can't go to the competition, because they are all offering pretty much the exact same thing. You take the deal they offer, or you do without.
And this is under "capitalism". Communism is even worse. (it is more accurate to call "capitalism" crony-capitalism, or corporatism, or fascism.)
Under communism there isn't even the illusion of having a choice. And all worker are required to be the same.
So, what do you do when the basis of human interaction is so messed up? That all you have is a choice between bad choice A and really bad choice, but we are all "equal" choice B?
Corporate Greed is ?
We are taught, from Christianity, that greed is bad. We are taught from corporate media that greed is good.
And this is a core issue in our society, in our world.
Because, what corporations are saying is, "Let us plunder all the resources and get all the money. And then try to hide that under, greed is good."
Christianity also goes way to far in that they try to say all greed is bad. It is a noble undertaking to remove greed from your life, but that is only after you get so far along the buddhist path that you can give up materialism.
The wanting of things is important. It is what drives the universe. Whether you want a better economic system, or you want a Slurpy from 7-11, these things drive us to become more than we are now.
We need an amount of greed. A desire to own something, and not want to share it with others. To have it for our own. (this may not be greed. Semantics is an issue here. Greed also has a connotation of wanting to have more and more while denying others. Giving them less and less)
However, corporate greed, as we see it manifested now (and govern-cement greed under communism) is a very destructive thing. Where the corporation takes as much as they can, while giving as little as necessary. And this codefied in the corporate structure. Where, legally the corporation internalizes all profits, while externalizing many costs.
Zero Sum Game - The core from which corporate greed stems.
A zero sum game is a term in game theory, where in any negotiation, one person can win, only at the cost of the other. If one person wins $10, the other person loses $10.
If you start from this position, your entire effort is to place the other person in as bad of a position as you can, while making things as good for your side. We see this with corporations making regulations that help them and hurt their competition, especially small competitors. We see this with the corporations holding farmers over the barrel, charging the most for seed and fertilizer, while keeping the price they will pay for grain as low as they can.
What this does is it makes everyone hardened, bitter. Always on the lookout for scams, and because they are always desperate, fall for many scams.
Win-Win Negotiation - The Way Out
Why is there a baker's dozen? Well, individually, a baker can give away another donut, another loaf of bread. And it is almost nothing to the baker, they have already made the dough, fired the oven. It is a tiny amount more to give.
And so, in this negotiation, the baker is giving a little bit more for some extra customer satisfaction.
Because people are not the same. They do not have the same needs, and they do not have the same skills, we can make many negotiations where each person is far better off.
And, when we change to win-win negotiations, everyone starts to win. And the thing is that it isn't that hard. Like the baker giving an extra donut.
When we flip from a take-take starting point to a give-give mental space, everything starts to open. The whole world gets better one negotiation at a time.
Why do you think they do not teach negotiation / selling in govern-cement school? This most important of all skills, is disparaged in movies and media. The people who want to run this world want us to all be cookie-cutter cogs, on an assembly line without any way to escape.
So, of course the people behind corporatism or communism, want you to never understand negotiation. In fact, you should think that "salesman are evil" (and in a zero sum game, maybe they are) so you do not want to learn to be a salesman.
It is interesting that we argue over Capitalism vs Communism, when both are ideas that cannot be done with a govern-cement above it.
We will want to take all these things apart. Each structure contains some good, but they each have evil buried in them, and we cannot have that.
Ideas like, everyone is equal, needs to be squashed.
Ideas like "giving according to his abilities and taking according to his needs" needs to be drawn and quartered. Sure, it sounds good in theory, but it is horribly evil. And makes everyone starve.
Ideas like "you vill own nutsing, and you vill be happy" should be laughed at. The evilness apparent on its surface.
Ideas like big corporations are needed so we can be competitive, need to be taken into a dark room, and shot.
Even the ideas of competition… imagine that you had most of your needs met, and you made widgets. Would you care if your neighbor, who was also self sufficient also made widgets? Not really. You might even go over and have a great widget improving session with your neighbor.
All the lies start with the "Zero Sum Game".
The solution comes from "win-win negotiation.