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It merely takes a clear and uncomplicated comprehension of the very reason for having an economic system in the first place. It is unarguable that people should be engaged in labor - providing goods and services that help sustain themselves and their community. An economic system is created by people to ensure that there is some sustenance and loose approximation of 'fairness' in the coordination and encouragement of such activities - something more than "every man for himself!"
The basic principle is that a person should receive compensation for their labor when that labor benefits others. We exchange labor - I produce food, you build shelters, and she weaves clothing. We all need all three - so we have something more than what we ourselves produce, because we can all produce more than what we ourselves need when we do so with expertise and the productivity that comes for that expertise. (It seems to me that this is all axiomatic.)
A by-product of any economic system that's even moderately successful is the excess wealth that labor creates - excess in that it's above and beyond the thin edge of survival. Over history, we've seen than excess wealth aggregate in the hands of a few - increasingly in the hands of those that DON'T labor. We have called them various things over our history: chiefs, priests, kings, and robber barons. They are the people in whom we've placed some trust and who've, in MANY cases, exploited that trust. Some might call that exploitation mere 'compensation.'
Thus, we get to the point that we look at pools of wealth in the hands of a few and create mechanisms to 'motivate' them to subsidize the means of production. In the old days, that was land and beasts of burden. That 'motivation' has taken the form of economic incentives. Corporations themselves were invented to offer an incentive: protection of personal wealth from the liability created by an activity in which 'investments' were made. That's the whole rationale for "limited liability." It hasn't been enough. Wealth has held hostage entire populations to the sole purpose of increasing wealth.
So, where the "means" of incentivizing wealth in order to serve the "ends" of productivity where that productivity is compensated, the "means" has actually BECOME the "ends" and all labor is now viewed as merely the creation of more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer. Wealth now serves itself, NOT the 'national' community. Companies close down not because people stop working - they close down because the 'wealth' (ownership) can find people working 'closer to the bone' and serve itself even more from their more extreme deprivation. Thus, deprivation itself has become a benefit to wealth - and anything that's of benefit to those in power will be spread and expanded.
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