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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]

#51

Post by sudosysgen »

nickff wrote: post #23
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…

I don't think anyone denies that omniscient, well intentioned planners would be very efficient, but subjectivism and the calculation problem mean that you will never have the former, and political economy explains why you will not acheve the latter. Spontaneously ordered systems are also better at dynamic adaptation to exogenous changes (such as technological ones).

>subjectivism and the calculation problem

Every planned economy that has existed has used price signals by the end user in order to fix these issues. Planned economies are made to run an economy without markets, not without prices.

As long as you have an end-user price signal, subjectivism is not an issue and the calculation problem becomes a computational issue that can be solved.

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

#52

Post by epistasis »

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.

One problem with the term "capitalism" is that it means such different things to different people. For example, feudalism is not generally considered capitalism by those that are anti-capitalist, but feudalism was still private ownership of the means of production.

Or, in the Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders railed against capitalism, whereas Elizabeth Warren embraces the term, and they both had very similar policies. They were talking in different ways to appeal to different crowds that have different definitions of capitalism. And it creates tribal responses for some supporters.

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

#53

Post by freehunter »

dqv wrote: post #16

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.

It’s the same reason why libertarianism is so popular in Silicon Valley. Billionaires want and can afford complete freedom from the government. Including taxes, including regulations, including responsibility for the consequences of their actions. So they will seek out any teaching that (if corrupted far enough) will justify those desires and actions. But they’re just as happy to enforce all the things they hate on you, because their belief is a corruption of libertarianism. They don’t actually believe it, it’s just an excuse to not pay taxes.

Like libertarianism, SV has a way of taking exactly what they want from Zen and leaving the rest of the beliefs lying in a pile behind them. The Zen teacher Les Kaye famously said about Steve Jobs that he understood “the art, not the heart” of Zen.

If SV really cared about Zen, would we have unskippable ads? Would we have “like” buttons? Would we have auto-playing Netflix movies while you’re merely sitting still in a menu?

They don’t care about Zen. They never have. What they care about is making themselves feel better about the horribly un-Zen-like things they inflict on their audiences. Zen is just a coping mechanism to stroke their ego a little more.

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

#54

Post by socialdemocrat »

nickff wrote: post #23
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…

I don't think anyone denies that omniscient, well intentioned planners would be very efficient, but subjectivism and the calculation problem mean that you will never have the former, and political economy explains why you will not acheve the latter. Spontaneously ordered systems are also better at dynamic adaptation to exogenous changes (such as technological ones).

But in many cases the calculation problem is smaller than the problems in a specific market.

It seems clear that a whole economy cannot be centrally controlled but that does not mean that parts of it isn’t better controlled by planned economics than be market economics.

It would be wrong to assume one size fits all.

One can also have hybrid systems. Where the value of market decisions is understood but where a central planner has some important insights which he can use to tweak a market to work better.

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

#55

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

sudosysgen wrote: post #42
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…

Well, using capitalism to explain other issues is just a consequence of being a Materialist. If you adhere to a materialist understanding of the world, you come to the the conclusion that most of the features of our environment (which is validated by analysis) find their roots in the material organization of our world. And the material organization we are operating in is "capitalism". Which is why it applies so much.…

I agree with your assessment of what "capitalism" means, but it's still not a productive term to use if people are constantly confused and misunderstand it. In my experience, many people understand "capitalism" to mean nothing more than "rich people wielding power", so I try to avoid using it in contexts where confusion is possible.

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

#56

Post by zingplex »

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.

There are systems of production beyond capitalism and state capitalism. Workplace democracy for one.

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

#57

Post by miki123211 »

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.

We also need to remember that new inventions often emerge because there are lots of bad ideas and an extremely small number of good ones. Before the ideas are put into practice, it's hard to know which are which.

That's why we have so much innovation in capitalism, but we had so little in communism. Just like in evolution, we need hundreds of companies doing hundreds of pretty similar but slightly different things. 90 will fail, 9 will survive, one will become the next Google or Facebook.

The government is no better than us at predicting success, it may even be worse, but it usually prefers a small number of big and ambitious projects over lots of small ones. Instead of embracing failure and thinking what to do about it, it tries to prevent failure, no matter the cost.

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

#58

Post by tonyedgecombe »

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…

>We’re already bringing back sweatshops and extreme inequality.

Inequality is always going to swing back and forth. Eventually the American electorate will get so fed up with it they will vote in a party promising to do something about it.

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

#59

Post by sudosysgen »

epistasis wrote: post #52
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.

One problem with the term "capitalism" is that it means such different things to different people. For example, feudalism is not generally considered capitalism by those that are anti-capitalist, but feudalism was still private ownership of the means of production. Or, in the Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders railed against capitalism, whereas Elizabeth Warren embraces the term, and they both had very similar poli…

Feudalism was not private ownership of the means of production.

Indeed, uner feudalism, the means of production were not commodified, and de facto the lord did not have the right of ownership to the land, because he was only allowed to use it in one very specific way. Therefore, lacking the right of exclusive control, feudal property does not fulfill the definiton of private property.

This is why feudalism is universally understood not to a form of capitalism.

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

#60

Post by losteric »

satisfaction wrote: post #38

Capitalism is not the problem, the problem is that people continue to do business with companies that operate with disregard for the long term consequences of their business practices.

If humans are innately short-sighted and tribal/selfish creatures, any system of organization that assumes otherwise is problematic. That seems to be the case with capitalism.

A society with a strong education system that perpetuates cultural values of long-term sustainability could get by with less explicit regulations, but I don't see us getting from here to there.

And even if we got there, such a utopian capitalist society would be fragile and prone to corruption towards over-exploitation. Other systems are needed to maintain balance -taxes, political advertising regulations, labor laws, etc

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