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What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

musingmind.org

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Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#11

Post by lefrenchy »

> Rather, she targets ‘economism’ - a particular set of economic theories and assumptions, plus a layer of incentives we’ve built atop them. Neither updating our theories to better match reality, nor redesigning the incentive structures that underlie economic outcomes require an exit from capitalism.

While that may be true, I think the reason we got here is because Capitalism inherently incentivizes those types of theories, assumptions, and incentives. You can argue that an ethical Capitalism is possible sure, but that would require labor power and a strong state to prevent the erosion that we have seen in the last half decade.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#12

Post by Barrin92 »

It's not a productive word really because it almost poisons every discussion based on whether someone's broadly sympathetic to 'capitalism' or not. Even when people actually agree this can cause meaningless confusion.

What I think is very valuable within our system is markets as a tool. There's no functioning replacement yet for allocating resources through something like a market at large scale. Even socialism sympathetic economists like Oscar Lange recognised this a long time ago.

What's wrong with the status quo I think is markets as an ideology, confusing social ends or larger objectives with the outcomes markets or capital produce. There is too little coordination in society, too little forward thinking and planning at a high level. It shows in the covid pandemic into which we stumbled like fools despite knowing it would happen at some point, the way we're screwed every time a wildfire breaks out despite we know it'll happen. I think it's glorifying capitalism as a way of life rather than a tool that produces these failures.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#13

Post by baggy_trough »

DrJones1098 wrote: post #10

Two alternative viewpoints I have that are radically opposed: What if government regulations warp capitalism and give protectionism and favoritism to certain companies while excluding the rest and not allowing for the free market to work? What if unregulated capitalism has cannibalized itself and destroyed the free market by way of big fish eating up all of the small ones and now we're left with a bunch of huge corpo…

There are certainly good and bad kinds of regulation.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#14

Post by fallingfrog »

evo_9 wrote: post #8

Capitalism when balanced is near perfect. Capitalism taken to its fullest extreme is greed out-of-control. This is where the US is right now.

What we are experiencing now is reversion to the norm. The post-ww2 period was a special moment when a lot of things lined up to produce a capitalism that was relatively egalitarian, but that was the result of the USA being the only intact industrial economy left, and owning the world reserve currency, and so on. It was never going to last, and it will never happen again. We’re already bringing back sweatshops and extreme inequality.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#15

Post by philips »

I can't listen to the podcast at the moment. But, along a similar theme Doughnut Economics tries to imagine adjustments that are required to traditional economic models from the 19th and 20th century that are required to keep the biosphere productive for humans.

https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/

An idea that stuck with me is that markets are powerful tools that need to be embedded into other systems but arent self regulating systems all by themselves. It seems too often in debates on big problems the argument is simply we need a market solution not how is the system designed to best utilize a market.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#16

Post by dqv »

I'm not far into it yet, but this isn't the first time that I've heard this thought from Zen practitioners - that the practitioner should not blame capitalism for their problems. It makes me want to look further into Zen to see what leads people to this line of thinking.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#17

Post by sudosysgen »

DrJones1098 wrote: post #10

Two alternative viewpoints I have that are radically opposed: What if government regulations warp capitalism and give protectionism and favoritism to certain companies while excluding the rest and not allowing for the free market to work? What if unregulated capitalism has cannibalized itself and destroyed the free market by way of big fish eating up all of the small ones and now we're left with a bunch of huge corpo…

Well, the synthesis is that capitalism is not just an economic system, and that in reality economics cannot be divorced from social and political spheres. Government regulations warping capitalism are in large part a consequence of capitalism.

Think about it, is it ever possible to orchestrate a society where money buys you media, re-election campaigns, charity and favours, without those having the most money wielding the above-mentioned elements to ensure they keep having the most money.

In other words, the social organization is a consequence of economic organization, which explains why it is impossible for a truly free market to ever exist.

It's not possible either to completely get rid of government, because the State is necessary to uphold property.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#20

Post by mathattack »

Barrin92 wrote: post #12

It's not a productive word really because it almost poisons every discussion based on whether someone's broadly sympathetic to 'capitalism' or not. Even when people actually agree this can cause meaningless confusion. What I think is very valuable within our system is markets as a tool . There's no functioning replacement yet for allocating resources through something like a market at large scale. Even socialism symp…

Is such planning possible? Decentralized models work because centralized planning doesn’t.

I concur with the aims. Solving pandemics, climate change and nuclear proliferation require a different toolset than what succeeded for reducing global poverty.

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