[tomp]

Apart from Enron, the rest have little to do with capitalism but mostly to do with markets (or, more precisely, our fucked-up financial institutions and deficient financial regulations).

> It's irrelevant to my original point though as capitalism is by definition hoping to get something from doing nothing

You have to be really stupid to think that, and deny all the benefits to our society that capitalism enables. Or, could you please explain how you would e.g. start an airline, or build a hospital, or your house's sewage system, without utilizing capital?

[rorykoehler]

>You have to be really stupid to think that, and deny all the benefits to our society that capitalism enables.

I never did that. I'm well aware of the benefits capitalism has brought society, just as I am aware of the damage it has also caused. I can guarantee you the majority of capital pumped into businesses does not come from the people who will do the work.

[tomp]

> I can guarantee you the majority of capital pumped into businesses does not come from the people who will do the work.

Well, it comes from the people that invest money (investors), others invest work/time, and they all get the benefits.

Funny enough, a large chunk of invested capital these days (both in equities/index funds, as well as hedge funds and PE/VC) comes from... drumrol: workers (or, more precisely, their pension funds)! In this case, I actually totally agree that it's stupid and unrealistic to expect a risk-free, forever-growing, >4% compound return by doing what everyone else is doing, but unfortunately, the whole pension system is flawed this way, there's not much we can do about it (individually).