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

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

#31

Post by iterativ »

fallingfrog wrote: post #14
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 ex…

In 1949 (just after WW2), Einstein wrote: "The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil."

Einstein was not a sociologist, but it's an indication that about "egalitarian capitalism" is not exactly true.

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

#32

Post by klipt »

chromatin wrote: post #24
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…

The first scenario is described (in part) by the phrase "crony capitalism," and is a very real situation and danger.

The academic term for this is Regulatory Capture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

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

#33

Post by atlgator »

herghost wrote: post #18

For Capitalism to work properly the government needs to be be empowered, and properly able, to enforce rules that prevent any one organisation from becoming so powerful that it corrupts and undermines the whole system. We don't have that today.

The Government is empowered. We know that because they have broken up companies in the past for that reason. The issue is Congress is not willing to do it (you can ponder the why for yourself). A solution may be to throw out the politicians before destroying our whole system.

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

#34

Post by socialdemocrat »

herghost wrote: post #18

For Capitalism to work properly the government needs to be be empowered, and properly able, to enforce rules that prevent any one organisation from becoming so powerful that it corrupts and undermines the whole system. We don't have that today.

That is one of the key ideas of social democracy, the belief that different economic powers in society must be balanced. Society is viewed as being made up of different interest groups who’s interests must be balanced in a fair and civilized manner.

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

#35

Post by cyphar »

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…

The term "capitalism" is not (as you appear to be implying) synonymous with "market economies". In fact they are two separate economic concepts.

There have been economic systems that had free markets (feudal lords bought and sold goods in market economies) and there were also examples of capitalist enterprises that existed without free markets (some people would argue the Soviet Union fits this description, but if you prefer a less contentious example, most capitalist countries when they are functioning under a war economy have some form of central planning).

Capitalism refers to an economic system where the way in which production is organised is through an employer-employee relationship.

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

#36

Post by umvi »

sbmassey wrote: post #30

Capitalism's basic meaning is that the means of production are owned by private parties. Putting them under government ownership instead doesn't seem like the solution to anything, unless you are very sure that the government will follow your ideological beliefs, not be corrupted by its newfound direct power over peoples lives, and not get taken over by populists.

> unless you are very sure that the government will follow your ideological beliefs

And even if you are very sure, you have to be sure the future government will follow your idealogical beliefs as well - people die; power changes hands; social movements and political fads come and go...

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

#37

Post by arrosenberg »

fallingfrog wrote: post #21
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…

The first usually happens as a direct consequence of the second.

This is the correct answer. Look at what happened at the end of the Wilson administration when Andrew Mellon took over as Treasury Secretary as a prime example.

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

#39

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

iterativ wrote: post #31
fallingfrog wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

In 1949 (just after WW2), Einstein wrote: "The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil." Einstein was not a sociologist, but it's an indication that about "egalitarian capitalism" is not exactly true.

I think it has to be acknowledged that this quote comes from an article titled "Why Socialism?" explaining why people should be socialist. It's not exactly intended as a neutral observation.

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

#40

Post by socialdemocrat »

mathattack wrote: post #20
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.

It is not like decentralized planning always work better. It depends on the task. What works in my opinion is iteration, feedback and experimentation. You don’t merely dogmatically state centralized or decentralized work better. Instead you experiment, iterate and refine. You learn from others.
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