“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.” --Upton Sinclair

Since the beginning of history, people were raised under the notion that Capitalism was the way of life along with religion. Capitalism needed religion in the past according to Weber in order to get rid of the existing economic system. Now days, Capitalism no longer need nor relies on religion. In fact, capitalism goes against the protestant beliefs. Protestant Asceticism is the belief in which goes against capitalism. “…and above all the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself” (Weber 17). The previous quote stands out tremendously because it relates to my story. Weber argues that contemporary capitalism relies heavily and the idea or the phenomenon of doing whatever it takes to make profit or more money (even if one is not in need of it). I work for the University of Minnesota Parking and Transportation services as a parking attendant. PTS does not only have student employees, they also have full time senior employees. I was working once in a booth, and I was waiting for my shift to start, so I was talking to a senior employee and she said that PTS is getting rid of all its employees and they plan to have them all laid off within the next three years. Parking garages will run on computers instead of attendants. This will not be efficient mainly because of technical issues which might end up delaying customers. The problem is that the lady I was talking to broke in tears because she said she’s been working here for the past fifteen years and after all those years “Big Brother” simply says “we no longer need your services.” She’s been loyal all those years, and that’s the thanks they get. What’s even worse that getting laid off is that the first ones to go will be the senior employees; the student employees will be the last to leave. PTS already makes a HUGE profit because their spending is not that much compared to others. Corporate wants to make more profit just like Weber argues. Weber also argues that going to the extreme or making more profit more than one needs is an end in itself. Corporate are already making a ton of profit, they want to raise that profit to 100%. I know that number might be not rational, but it’s close to that. Greed/avarice is a common thing in our world today, and in the PTS case, it is 100% greed. The funny thing is, I found out that the senior employees are the first ones to go because they get paid a lot more than student employees. Kolhaas story circles around capitalism too, not just civil rights. Kolhaas was bringing his horses in town not to take them to the circus, but to do some business. Capitalism has been used since the beginning of time and will never die out. Whenever capitalism is in danger (i.e. some country thinks about changing to socialism—Soviets, Chinese, Koreans, etc), a plan is put together quickly to shut anti-capitalistic movements down. The western world tries so hard to spread capitalism, but at the end we have got to ask ourselves a question…are we going down the right path or are we building up our own failure?