"The vast majority of business owners in Australia come from the same socio-economic background as everyone else."

Do they now? Once again you conflate all businesses, big and small, into the same thing. Sure many businesses are run by sole traders or families but they arent exploitative. The exploitative ones are the large faceless businesses and giant multinationals that are responsible for most of the production in our economy. Once again I point to reality and the extreme remuneration to management and owners and the declining pittance received by the workers as evidence. Undeniable evidence. Although you are good at ignoring it Peter. You never address my points just accuse my of illogic and spout your own imaginings of what I said.

"They choose not to, because they prefer the advantages and disadvantages of employment, to those of business."

Do they? Or are you just presuming? I dont think you or anyone else has ever shown such preferences. I know many many people, indeed almost everyone I have ever met, who would love to go into business for themselves but their financial and social situation precludes them from doing so. They have choices. They can work as a wage slave, they can go on the dole, they can turn to crime, they can starve to death.

"Capital by itself is inert."
Sterile and useless. Unable to produce anything. That your capitalism sees such a thing as "productive" in any way is very telling.
"neither property nor capital produces anything when not fertilised by labour" Bakunin.

"The standard defence of class inequalities under capitalism is that people get rich by producing what other people want. That, however, is hardly ever true. Under capitalism, people get rich by hiring other people to produce what other people want or by providing land, money or machinery to those who do the hiring. The number of people who have became rich purely by their own labour, without employing others, is tiny."
"the labourer without capital would soon supply his wants by its production . . . but capital with no labourers to consume it can only lie useless and rot." Proudhon.

"the labour of the entrepreneur."
Agreed there is some form of "labour" involved in investment but is it really "productive"? Isnt it just, especially in the majority of large companies, power and larceny? Tell me which multimillion payed CEO lately is suffering, in any way, because of their failures? Where is this so called "risk" you speak of? Sure the mums and dads of small business take risks and suffer if they are wrong but its hardly the way it works where the real money is. More of your "theory" clashing with reality.

"Future goods are always discounted to present goods - because it's fair, not because it's unfair."

Is it really. Nothing to do with the social situation one finds themselves in? Ones "time preference" is determined by ones social position. If one has more than enough money for current needs, one can more easily "discount" the future (for example, workers will value the future product of their labour less than their current wages simply because without those wages there will be no future)

"If the worker and the capitalist were equal"
Then they all would be workers. The capitalists would have to work the same as the workers and desicions would be taken collectively as would "profits".

What is so difficult to understand? While I am an anarchist and would like to see the world change to be less authoritarian and exploitative I live in the REAL world and do the best I can to drive the current system in a more libertarian socialist direction. We do the best we can within the world we inhabit.

LOL It is your authoritarian ideology that does not stand for freedom, it is you lot that stand for ordering people around. Once again the evidence surrounds us. It is always bosses and capitalists and landlords and moneylenders and the state and its hired thugs that do all the "pushing people around". Ive never pushed anyone around.

Neither a slave nor a master be!

Please define exploit.

Wikipedia defines it nicely.

"In political economy, economics, and sociology, exploitation involves a persistent social relationship in which certain persons are being mistreated or unfairly used for the benefit of others. This corresponds to one ethical conception of exploitation, that is, the treatment of human beings as mere means to an end—or as mere "objects". In different terms, "exploitation" refers to the use of people as a resource, with little or no consideration of their well-being."

I agree with mick, when I used to work they changed the name from Personel to Human Resorces so they could explot us better. Now Im on a pension at least Im a Person again.