Facebook valued at £65.8 Billion – why are capitalists so determined to prove their critics right?

I’ve been posting various interviews with “Occupy” droolers of late primarily because – let’s face it – their stupidity and ignorance are jolly amusing, but also because I'm enraged by their inability to grasp the simple truth that the goods and services they enjoy and rely on (and expect to go on enjoying and relying on when they’ve destroyed capitalism) would disappear if the people who provide them stopped being paid. But I'm beginning to understand why they think this way - the protesters don't have to pay a penny for most of the stuff they use!

For a start, they don’t pay for Facebook. So, the Occupiers get to keep in touch with all their single-digit IQ pals for nothing.

As for music, does anyone under 50 pay for it these days? You can either listen to it free on Spotify or convert as many YouTube music videos as you want to MP3 files for free and store and play them on iTunes (which, of course, is free). You can download practically any film or television programme from the web for free.

If you lose your job – or can’t be bothered getting one – there’s social security. If you become homeless – intentionally or otherwise – chances are someone will find you a place to live for free. Commit sufficiently serious crimes and you’ll be provided with bed, board and free TV in prison.

And if you’re an Occupy protester, deluded or malevolent rich people will stump up the cash to keep your protest against the system that made them wealthy going. And, of course, for the lucky ones, there’s always the Bank of Mom and Dad. Or some government programme confiscates money from responsible, hard-working people and gives it to bone idle, feckless people.

Hearing about Mark Zuckerberg’s blag of the century – this week’s flotation valued Facebook at an utterly ludicrous £65.8 Billion – will reinforce the Occupy dimwits’ belief that a free lunch is the norm. 

Michael Deacon sums up the Facebook valuation conundrum pithily in this morning’s Telegraph (you can read the whole thing here):

Now, I freely confess that I’m no financial expert. But my extremely woolly understanding is that for companies to be worth a lot of money they need to be able to bring in a lot of money. And, although I’ve been using Facebook for more than five years, I’m not sure how it’s going to do that. I don’t pay anything to use it, nor would I, and I’ve never so much as glanced at its paid-for adverts. I don’t mean that I actively ignore the ads. I mean that I don’t even notice they’re there. 

Facebook proves that the profits made by a company bear no relation to the profits available to the founders. It’s the same principle as left-wing politicians counting our massive, non profit-making public sector as a vibrant and essential part of the economy – if the public sector is growing, the economy is growing! It’s the same principle which operates when the executives of failing companies award themselves massive salaries, perks and bonuses. 

The problem for those of us who despise the self-deluding anti-capitalist mob and their vast army of fellow-travellers in the media and politics is that the grown-ups who are supposed to make capitalism work seem absolutely determined to prove the system’s critics right.

I’m off for lunch – and I don’t see why I should have to pay for it.