A Brief History Of Capitalism’s Founding Father, Santa Claus

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HAILED as a hero by any self-respecting future plutocrat, with his business strategies studied by all business students around the world, it is time to give the founding father of capitalism his due.

So taken was he with the huge profit margins available to him, Karl Marx once called him ‘capitalism incarnate’. We are of course talking about the inimitable Saint Nicolas aka Santa Claus.

It’s no coincidence the rotund figure of Santa Claus was seen giving the first inaugural talk at the Harvard Business School, in an age of Zuckerberg, Gates, the NSA and others, we are quick to forget Claus was the first person to collate the personal information of his customers on an industrial scale and use it for his own financial gain.

As word spread from country to country that the toy maker could deliver fine goods to their children the demands came flooding in, but unbeknownst to his clientele, Claus would artificially starve the market of the most in demand toys, most recently exemplified by the great Elsa drought of 2013. What seems like capitalism 101 to everyone now was invented by the bearded business guru.

His decision to relocate production to the tax haven of Lapland was seen as a strange decision at the time, but it’s now common practice among big multi-national corporations.

Perhaps his most lasting legacy comes in the form of exploiting a workforce who were criminally underpaid and under represented in the higher echelons of society.

Zeroing in on the vulnerable elf community and using their small yet skilful hands to craft toys, safe in the knowledge that their plight would barely make a dent in the media, Claus ever the opportunist, sold his image rights to make yet more money.

High profile deals with some of the biggest companies on the planet ensured Claus would feature annually in advertising drives in exchange for a cut of the capitalist pie.

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