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Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

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Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#241

Post by AnimalMuppet »

wayoutthere wrote: post #34
xienze wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. And you think that would improve under socialism or communism?

I didn't mention either? But capitalism definitely isn't working for a lot of us, so yeah, people are interested in other systems.

But Communism didn't work for a lot of people either.

I'm not saying "therefore capitalism is the right answer" (though I still think it is). I'm not saying that people shouldn't be interested in other systems. But I am saying that it matters a great deal that the "other system" be better, not just different. As my co-worker Steve Hanka used to say, "There's lots of ways to do it that don't work". There's lots of ways to structure the economy that work out worse; let's not make things worse by trying to make them better.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#242

Post by flmontpetit »

jimmywanger wrote: post #238
_qzu7 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you are a garbage man and an artist? What if you collect garbage for, say, three days a week? How much of your labor is absolutely necessary, and how much of it consists in generating surplus wealth for the benefit of your capitalist overlords?

Depends. How much do you need to make? Do you need broadband, the new mobile, or a car and insurance? Will 3 days working as a garbageman make you reasonably happy? If so, please go ahead and do that and spend the rest of your time doing art. If you really feel as though you need amazon prime and new shoes every 3 months, you better to out and make that money. You have no right demanding that other people work to mak…

I am a white, male software developer. I have absolutely nothing to complain about or envy others. Find something more solid to lean on than a straw man.

If those who feel entitled to the work of others enrage you, then perhaps you should point your anger at the parasitic bourgeoisie who siphon wealth away from society for doing absolutely nothing useful.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#243

Post by Will_Parker »

danharaj wrote: post #203
Will_Parker wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not interested in debating it here, because it could damage my career, which is my point. In fact, even debating whether I should be able to debate it could damage my career. I believe this widespread use of silencing tactics, by implicit threat, has gone too far.

There are a great many things you can't debate about people. For example, you would be severely censured if you debated whether your colleague's chronic illness really was as bad as they claim it is. If the position is "I should be able to question and debate anything about my colleagues" then the position is obviously absurd and I would ask a person holding such a view to reevaluate what they think society is. I don…

> So, why are you troubled that you can't debate this particular thing, when I'm sure there are things you shouldn't debate about your colleagues?

I'm troubled by the top-down nature of what is decided to be beyond debate vs not: it feels like it is leading to a scary kind of authoritarianism I don't want.

For fun, I'll throw you a specific plausible hypothetical. If an app has a gender identity field, and a user enters "Apache Helicopter", should this be treated as valid data or not?

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#244

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jimmywanger wrote: post #204
tangent128 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make the pay high enough to match the value generated, and you'll find enough janitors and garbage collectors.

How do you make the pay high enough? Compel labor, print money, or some sort of complicated metric? "Based on family background, education, and IQ tests, we estimate that your best job is electrical technician."

You keep raising pay until people are willing, uncoerced, to take jobs that they don't find "fulfilling". You do that just by offering money for the job. You don't try to guess who "should" take the job, you just offer it. You don't compel labor, you don't print money. You just raise the pay, and raise the rates you charge for garbage collection to pay the salaries. (And, yeah, at that point you have a bit of coercion, because people have to have garbage service. If a home doesn't, they're probably going to be in violation of some kind of law.)

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#245

Post by DuskStar »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #240
DuskStar wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so another wealth tax question - do pensions and other such instruments count? If not, what's preventing someone from buying a large annuity and avoiding the tax? And if you do... A lot of public pensions are worth 2+ million. Are public pensions supposed to be excluded? How does that get explained to the voters?

Great questions. I think we look with a critical eye but still make generous allowances for retirement savings vehicles. Keep in mind, the problem isn't people with single digit millions of wealth, the problem is those with tens, hundreds of millions, and billions of dollars.

But why are they a problem?

Look, there's two kinds of taxes. One is to raise revenue, one is to punish behavior we don't like. Once you start describing the rich as a problem, it makes me think that this is the second kind of tax, and I really don't think that accumulating wealth, and helping out everyone else along the way by growing the economy, is something we should be punishing.

If you say "the uber-rich ($10m is 99th percentile) do bad things, therefore we should tax the uber-rich", I'll really have to disagree - tax the bad things they do, not the demographic group!

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#246

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mumblemumble wrote: post #89
xienze wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have absolutely no incentive to work hard when doing so doesn't materially affect income. And you think that would improve under socialism or communism?

One thing that you could read into the parent post is that, to the people it's giving the shaft to, modern crony capitalism doesn't seem particularly distinguishable from socialism in a lot of ways. You have the thing where the government is trying to control, or at least closely guide, the economy. You have the thing where those who are close to power subvert that to line their own pockets. You have the thing where…

The solution to crony capitalism isn't socialism, though. It's less "crony" - less ability to profit from government connections, which means less government control (or "guidance") of the economy. The government should prevent unfair competition, regulate externalities, and not much else.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#247

Post by tempguy9999 »

j8014 wrote: post #239
tempguy9999 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but one is an economic policy and a result of the other I don't see that unfettered immigration need be linked to capitalism, just the belief people can move around freely being OK. > increase competition and lower their wages (immigration), whilst railing against capitalism I'd guess they are railing not against immigrants that undercut their £8/hour bar work but the executives at the top of companies that can ear…

If you don't mind, what is economic decency?

I just meant not paying millions to some people (especially if they do a bad job) while others get paid very marginally indeed with no chance of improving that.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#248

Post by notacoward »

aivisol wrote: post #214
trobertson wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That all sounds nice, but what is suspicious that we have not seen a working implementation yet. You mean to say that Western and Central Europe don't exist? They have single-payer healthcare and it works way better than American healthcare. They have cheap tuition and it works way better than American tuition. We see that America could be better if we stopped being dogmatic about capitalism, and stopped putting it…

> You mean to say that Western and Central Europe don't exist? I would say they are all capitalist countries. I cannot think of any European country after 1990 which prohibits private enterprise. What you are referring to is still a capitalism, each with their own different taxation, social security and welfare system. You can argue which works better, which not. It is not that it does not exist in US at all, it is p…

Looks like another example of Schrödinger's Capitalism. Western Europe is capitalist whenever anyone praises it, socialist whenever anyone criticizes. In point of fact very few people want to abolish private enterprise. The "socialism" they want is of a very moderate form, setting limits on a free market which is still the dominant form of economic activity. The "100% laissez faire or Stalinism" false dichotomy never does these debates any good.

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#249

Post by Will_Parker »

tremon wrote: post #233
Will_Parker wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the establishment only permits fervent discussion about gender and skin color. Do they? Try making a case that we don't need more than two sets of gendered pronouns in your tech job.

Okay. We only need one set of gendered pronouns. Using words from one set for some people, while using words from a different set for other people, is subject to arbitrary interpretation and therefore vulnerable to othering.

> We only need one set of gendered pronouns

Which set do you think would suffice?

Re: Think young people are hostile to capitalism now? Wait for the next recession

#250

Post by scarecrowbob »

flmontpetit wrote: post #223
scarecrowbob wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I personally am thinking my time as a nigh ancient wizard serving the grand duke of Taos in the protectorate of far southern Utah is going to feking rad, especially when my son's family finally buys themselves out of serfdom in the Terlinguan grasslands and travels up so I can establish a trans-generational cult that passes on my knowledge of psychoanalytics, electronics, and cultivating fungal ethnogens.

Utah will be uninhabitable. You'll have to struggle for survival in the Manitoban jungle.

Oh, that's why we are up in Taos.
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