REALITY CHECK! — Who Actually Exploits Workers? (And It Isn’t Capitalism)

They say that capitalism “steals” from workers, but that idea only works if you ignore how businesses actually function. A worker agrees to a wage and gets paid immediately, regardless of whether the company ultimately succeeds or fails. The owner is the one who puts up the capital, signs the loans, absorbs the losses, deals with regulation, builds the supply chain, and risks going broke if things go sideways. Profit isn’t money taken from workers—it’s what’s left after workers, vendors, and taxes are paid. If the business fails, the worker walks away with every dollar earned. The owner eats the loss. That’s not exploitation. That’s unequal risk, by design.

Workers matter—obviously—but they are not the primary movers of business. Jobs don’t magically exist because labor shows up. They exist because someone had an idea, risked capital, organized resources, and built something worth working for. Labor creates value inside a system; entrepreneurs and investors create the system itself. When people blur that distinction, they end up demanding rewards without risk—and that always collapses the whole structure. That’s how you get fewer jobs, lower wages, and stagnation while pretending you’re helping workers.

Socialism flips all of this on its head—and that’s where real exploitation begins. When the state takes ownership “on behalf of the people,” workers don’t gain control; politicians and bureaucrats do. Workers lose the freedom to negotiate, to move, to own, and to keep what they earn. Through taxation, inflation, nationalization, and forced redistribution, socialism systematically takes money and property from workers and hands it to the state. It’s sold as fairness, but it functions as legalized confiscation—funding inefficiency, corruption, and political power instead of productivity.

And here’s the kicker: socialism traps workers. By eliminating profit and private ownership, it kills investment and innovation, so productivity flatlines and shortages follow. Workers stop being participants in a voluntary market and become dependents of the system, paid according to political priorities rather than value. History repeats this lesson over and over—falling real wages, empty shelves, black markets, and tighter state control. Capitalism allows failure. Socialism guarantees decline. When no one is allowed to own, build, or profit, the only people who win are the ones running the system.

…and now you know. Copyright & Syndication Notice

© 2025 Timothy Tobin. All rights reserved.

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