10 Bloodthirsty Capitalists who MURDERED their way to the top! [Non-Compete Top 10s!] - YouTube

Capitalism is awesome!

No other system puts so much wealth and power in so few hands.

Looking to grab some of that power for yourself?

We'll get ready to get inspired. Today we're taking a look at ten trailblazing capitalists who changed the world.

#1 Chiang Kai-shek

Chiang Kai-shek ruled the Kuomintang party that battled communists during the Chinese Civil War. when he ruled China

Before and during World War two his decisions led to the deaths of millions of Chinese citizens through negligent and irresponsible governing,

political repression, grain confiscation and horrific conscription campaigns

Ultimately the Kuomintang lost the Civil War and the capitalist and elites retreated to Taiwan

Taking with them virtually all of the gold and other wealth of China's Treasury.

In Taiwan Chiang oversaw What became known as the white terror imprisoning over a hundred and forty thousand, Taiwanese.

Thousands more were murdered including a massacre of between five and ten thousand citizens in one incident alone On February 28 1947

The atrocities committed by Chiang Kai-shek were largely ignored for decades, but recently

Taiwanese activists have been more vocal about the white terror with increasingly frequent episodes of vandalism against prominent shrines and monuments to the dictator

#2. The Pinkertons

The Pinkerton Detective Agency was founded in 1850

and rose to prominence working as a private military contractor for Union forces during the American Civil War

During the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries capitalists hired the Pinkerton agency to infiltrate

suppress and murder organized American workers

The Pinkertons were notorious for fielding undercover agents skilled at destroying unions from within

One of the most overtly violent acts of the Pinkerton agency occurred during the homestead strike of 1892

Pinkerton agents opened fire on striking workers leaving 16 people dead in 23 wounded Pinkerton is still in business today continuing to offer

mercenary and espionage services to corporations around the world

#3 The military dictatorship of Brazil

from 1964 to 1985 a brutal anti-communist military dictatorship ruled over Brazil stifling freedom of speech and violently oppressing the population including

Disappearances and unjust executions and hundreds of Brazilians. During the military dictatorship the CIA invited

300 brazilian military members to The School of the Americas in Panama where they had theoretical and practical lessons on torture,

which would later be replicated in Brazil.

#4 Augusto Pinochet

In 1970 Democratic Socialist Salvador Allende became president of Chile.

It was the first time a Marxist had been peacefully elected to lead a liberal democracy.

In response the CIA quickly moved to overthrow Allende via a military general named Augusto Pinochet

Pinochet had been appointed as commander-in-chief of Chile's Armed Forces by Olinda himself

But with material support from the United States government, he overthrew Allende in a military coup on September 11th 1973.

The new government rounded up thousands of people and held them in the National Stadium where many were killed.

This was followed by a brutal Pinochet dictatorship that lasted until 1990.

At least 3,000 people were killed by Pinochet regime and more than 1,000 are still missing.

#5 Park Chung-hee

General Park Chung-hee rose to power during the instability of post-war South Korea.

In 1961 he led a coup and quickly set up the Korean Central Intelligence Agency

to arrest and detain anyone suspected of opposing his regime. Parks regime harshly opposed any form of dissent,

imprisoning countless peaceful protesters and dissenters. It was a crime to even mention violent acts of the South Korean anti-communist government including the horrific Jeju massacre of 1949

Martial law was declared by Park four times leading to strict curfews and other harsh restrictions on civil liberties.

Park banned what he described as decadent foreign music and wrote patriotic propaganda songs himself

and used his authority to force them to be played on public airwaves

A movement of countercultural music butted up against Parks cultural suppression led by the father of Korean rock Shin Jung-hyeon.

When general Park demanded Shin to write a patriotic song that praised his government Shin refused and instead wrote a 10-minute psychedelic rock song

Praising the beautiful rivers and mountains of Korea

Shortly after Shin was imprisoned by Park's regime on baseless marijuana charges.

In addition to suppressing political opponents domestically, Park accepted tens of Billions of dollars in grants and other subsidies from the United States government

in exchange for sending Korean troops to fight in the Vietnam War.

Park was eager to send South Korean troops to Vietnam and vigorously campaigned to extend the war. Park was assassinated in 1979,

but it would be almost a decade before the oppressive military dictatorship would finally come to an end.

Bonus fact!

According to FocusEconomics the ten poorest countries on earth today all have capitalist economies

#6 Suharto

Suharto was a murderous anti-communist dictator who looted and terrorized Indonesia from 1967 until 1998.

He's listed as the worst kleptocrat in history having stolen between 15 and 35 billion dollars from the people of Indonesia during his reign.

He's even listed by the CIA as one of the worst mass murderers of the 20th century.

Which is ironic since recently declassified documents prove that the CIA backed Suharto's rise to power and his deadly anti-communist purges.

#7 The Saudi royal family

Saudi Arabia is a capitalist country that's ruled by a brutal monarchy with a long track record of human rights violations.

The Saudi royal family's regime frequently rounds up and arrests political dissenters

and subjects them to severe beatings, lashings and even tortures them to death, even though they've committed no crimes.

The United States government has backed the Saudi royal family since the first Gulf War.

Saudi Arabia currently buys more weapons from the United States than any other country

The Saudi royal family is the richest family in the entire world and Saudi Arabia is one of the richest nations on earth.

Despite this Saudi Arabia's capitalist economy exhibits extreme wealth inequality

Most Saudis lack adequate housing, health care, sanitation and education and at least 20% of the population lives in poverty.

#8 Mauthausen labor camp in Nazi Germany

Like many Nazi concentration camps Mauthausen was a for-profit enterprise.

Over 45 companies participated in administering the slave labor of the camp and profited greatly.

Including corporations that still exist today, such as Bayer Pharmaceuticals.

This is just one example of the many ways capitalists financed and profited from the atrocities of the Third Reich

#9 The Dow Chemical company

In the 1930s Dow introduced a line of wood preservatives called biocides

Workers exposed to the chemicals came down with severe illnesses

including one particularly bad instance of about three or four hundred Mississippi lumber workers being harmed by the chemicals in 1936

By the 1960s Dow employees were well aware of the toxic and extremely dangerous nature of the chemicals, which we now refer to as Agent Orange.

In the early 1980s the Dow Chemical Company maintained that both the Defense Department and the company

were aware of evidence indicating that Agent Orange might cause birth defects and children of women Exposed to the defoliant,

while it was being used heavily in the Vietnam War

Conservative estimates showed that around three million Vietnamese nationals have suffered from the effects of Agent Orange,

and up to 2.4 million American veterans of the war may also have been exposed to harmful amounts of the substance.

The United States Department of Defense sprayed at least 11 million gallons of Agent Orange on Vietnam

And it was all sold to them by Dow, Monsanto, DuPont and various other major US chemical companies during the war.

Today on its website Dow cynically claims that

they were compelled by the US government to produce and sell untold millions of dollars worth of Agent Orange during the war,

while simultaneously denying that Agent Orange is known to cause harm to human beings.

#10 Winston Churchill

Today he's mostly known for his witty quips and eponymous giant cigars,

but Winston Churchill started out his career as an enthusiastic agent of British imperialism.

He helped suppress freedom fighters in India, Sudan and Cuba as a young military officer seeking out combat against Imperial dissenters as often as he could.

His early political career was also marked by bloodshed.

In 1911 Churchill send battalions of police and reserve troops to suppress Welsh miners,

decisively siding with their capitalist employers. During a standoff with armed Latvian anarchist in Stepney,

he took personal command of police and ordered their summary execution by allowing them to be burned to death in a house where they were trapped.

Churchill oversaw the war against the Irish independence movement starting in 1919.

He mercilessly deployed British black and tan paramilitary troops to suppress Irish freedom fighters and even called for the use of air bombardments in Ireland.

Churchill was a passionate and unapologetic imperialist through the remainder of his career.

He was one of the most ardent supporters of continued colonization of India. One of Churchill's biographers, John Charlie, put it this way:

Even the most conservatives let alone liberals and Labour Churchill's views on India between 1929 and 1939 were quite abhorrent.

In 1943 up to 4 million Bengalis starved to death when Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal.

And there we are, 10 capitalists who changed the world.

So, feeling inspired? Sound off in the comments which bloodthirsty and monstrous capitalists do you look up to?

This has been a Non-Compete Top 10. Be sure to like, share and subscribe. We'll see you next time.

Let me tell you about something. It shows that the basis of the capitalistic system is private property.

It happened to one Eleanor and I went down to get the things for the class weenie roasts.

We went to mr. Brown's store.

Well, that's what I mean. Mr. Brown really owns property.

All those store fixtures and the groceries in there and well the whole store.

It's his property and he can do almost anything with it that he likes

We needed weenies, mr. Brown had weenies

It's as simple as that. You might argue about his prices.

Anyway, Eleanor did. Yes, but well Bill had missed the whole point to what happened at Mr. Brown's store.

Mr. Brown own his property, alright. But that's not what he's interested in. He's in business to make money.

There's the basis of the capitalistic system,

the profit motive.