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Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

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Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#121

Post by monocasa »

yosito wrote: post #92
s2g wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OH god no. Democracy is a system which can easily trample on the freedoms of the vulnerable. It's why you need to engineer your actual system of government to give representation to the vulnerable that is hard to ignore.

Democracy is a system designed to give representation to the vulnerable. I suppose you're saying that it's possible to have a poorly designed democracy such as one that gives representation to the majority at the expense of the minority, which I agree with.

Pure democracy can be described as three wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#122

Post by debacle »

Are there any capitalist systems that don't tend towards hierarchical structures? Corporations are hierarchical to a great degree, but what would a system look like that incorporated the benefits of democracy into a capitalist entity?

In a democracy, people are in theory given a level playing field through voting that means that Bill Gates's vote is just as valuable as anyone else's.

In capitalism, people are given the ability to create value to their fullest extent. A single individual could find him or herself creating value outstripping that of thousands of people. Even on small teams, there are great deviations in contributed value. Capitalism is highly volatile, and I would argue the stronger and more natural system as compared to democracy.

Both democracy and capitalism are capable of generating evil and tyranny. The intent of democracy is to create a foundation for a stable society in situ. I think it's very possible to create a democracy that does not progress. On the other hand, capitalism is innately progressive via market competition and trade.

Technological progress and social progress seem to have an odd dance. The goal of technological progress is to create more fit capitalist entities which compete better in markets, but individual consumers are the end route fitness function. The goal of social progress is to elevate the standard of living for individuals, but it might not be easy to prove that democracy is the best known system for raising that standard of living, because so much of one's standard of living is defined by technological progress.

I would argue that capitalism is a more natural system than democracy, and thus more durable. A healthy democracy is an artificial system of good, and a perfect democracy cannot exist in the real world. Again and again, democracy has shown itself flimsy during difficult times.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#123

Post by kazinator »

> Basically there are two solutions,” Polanyi wrote in 1935. “The extension of the democratic principle from politics to economics, or the abolition of the democratic ‘political sphere’ altogether.” In other words, socialism or fascism.

This article is predicated on using democracy as a synonym for constitutional representation, which it isn't.

Democracy literally means rule by the people: majority rule. If you can't get married because you're gay, that is democracy at work: the majority doesn't like some aspect of your life, and that's that.

Democracy can be de facto a form of fascism.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#124

Post by nickik »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #33
mindcrime wrote: post #4

Simple answer: No. More nuanced answer: not exactly. Not Capitalism per-se anyway. But clearly you can see an unhealthy degree of commingling of big government and big business, in a way that is damaging to society at large. But to my mind: a. that's corruption, not capitalism b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism

This is a bit similar to claiming that communism is great, because all the times when it was tried and there were problems weren't real communism. If capitalism tends to inevitably lead to corruption of government and the undermining of democracy etc in the long run, then that's an interesting critique, which can't just be swatted away with "yes but the result isn't capitalism".

But is not the case that it inevitable that it leads to large amounts of corruption. As we can see that in the real world many of the most economically free governments are also amoung the least corrupt.

It seems to me that any system of economic organisation that has a goverment will have some level of that problem, its absolutly impossible not to have the problem in concept.

The question is what system would you want where you can effecivly minimise the power of these effects. I would argue that having a small less powerful governmnet that is bound by rules (constiution for example) is the most resistant.

As soon a government gets bigger monitoring gets harder, oppertunity for corruption get larger, negative effects of bad regulation have larger scope and so on.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#125

Post by TACIXAT »

krapp wrote: post #112
carom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've gotten downvoted for mentioning paywalls as well. I think this is a very valid call out though. While there are workarounds, I don't want to spend more than 2 seconds opening an article (most the time it isn't worth going to google cache, some archive, or doing the fb redirect). I dislike that it is effectively a dead link for many people and that it is being shared on the front page of a major aggregator. It is…

>While there are workarounds, I don't want to spend more than 2 seconds opening an article (most the time it isn't worth going to google cache, some archive, or doing the fb redirect). And yet you wasted more time that that writing this comment, so we could waste more time that that reading it. If your time is so valuable that you can't be bothered to put in even the few seconds of minimal effort needed to engage wit…

Yes, I did spend time writing a comment about a topic I care about. I do not want to spend time circumventing a site's desired mode of operation for an article I am only moderately interested in.

>so we could waste more time that that reading it

No need to be nasty about it.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#126

Post by gimmeDatCheddar »

Analemma_ wrote: post #73
gimmeDatCheddar wrote: post #13

For anyone who doesn't have time to read the whole article, the conclusion is pretty much "No, as long as we have a strong social safety net." IE capitalism with some elements of socialism to preserve individual liberties and dignities when economies slow down. Which sounds reasonable to me as a capitalist but also as a human being.

> For anyone who doesn't have time to read the whole article, the conclusion is pretty much "No, as long as we have a strong social safety net." Well, then the answer is "yes". The whole issue being debated here is whether capitalism inevitably leads to a concentration of wealth which can then be leveraged into political power to create more concentration of wealth in a positive feedback cycle. The theory goes that a…

1) When competition is allowed to enter the market, we eventually have an equilibrium where the right number of competitors is producing a good or a service at the best price and highest quality possible. That is capitalism. When concentrations of wealth are leveraged into political power, you have cronyism in the government. That's not a fault of capitalism itself.

2) The wealthy cutting their taxes does not necessarily mean the social safety net has to be dismantled. You can have lower taxes and a high safety net. It all depends on what your tax revenue is and where you spend it. The US has trillions in tax revenue coming in every year, and yet we had something like 60 billion dollars of medicare fraud in a single year, exorbitant spending on useless military ventures, etc. If we slashed wasteful spending and fraudulent activities at the governmental level, we could afford a lot more safety net with less tax revenue.

The issue is that cronyism in government results in government only ever being satisfied with getting by with more funding and more budget, and never less.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#127

Post by whataretensors »

s2g wrote: post #87
whataretensors wrote: post #26

Anti free market hit piece disguised as an article using questionable interpretation of history. This is propaganda for the middle and upper class.

> This is propaganda for the middle and upper class uh, how would this not be propaganda against the middle and upper classes?

Look at the vocabulary and reading level used to determine the target. It pushes a narrative right out the gate and uses a story format with fancy fonts to reinforce it.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#128

Post by [deleted] »

brobdingnagians wrote: post #106
gameswithgo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the absence of big government, big corporate will become defacto government even more easily.

As one of the other posters mentioned, big government _helps_ create big corporations. Even the legal idea of a "corporation" with the corporate veil to protect employees & those who control it from direct liability enables mega-corporations. If we simply eliminated corporate legal entities, we might have more careful business dealings. In the absence of this idea, you'd be free to take legal action against someone w…

[deleted]

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#129

Post by spiralx »

dsr_ wrote: post #39

According to many economists, yes. Capitalism does not appear to have a stable mode with a low Gini coefficient. Power that derives from wealth becomes concentrated, which is clearly anti-democratic. Democracy is only viable as a decision-making process in societies where everyone is more or less equal. When people gain power at the expense of others, the result is that the system may remain nominally democratic, but…

> but it's also clear that most families are run as communes

Hunter-gatherer groups also operate on a cooperative basis where food sharing is an integral part of their social organisation. The trouble is whether this sort of model scales beyond Dunbar's number, something that few political models seem to take into account IMHO.

Re: Is capitalism a threat to democracy?

#130

Post by xg15 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #109
seanp2k2 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telcos can’t cut you off, but ISPs can. I guess dial up is potentially still an option, but internet access is much more relevant than telephone access in 2018.

> Telcos can’t cut you off, but ISPs can. Well, ISPs are replaceable (okay, they will offer different speeds). Get cut off, select another ISP (or mobile data). A telco is not easily replaceable though, as the phone number is your unique handle that often cannot be changed easily (which is why you have the right to keep your number in Europe across providers)...

> Get cut off, select another ISP (or mobile data).

Comcast customers would like to have a word with you.

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