21–30 of 68 posts
I have a very tough time rationalizing this guy's futurism with the rest of his opinions. Of course, I guess compartmentalization and contradiction are common elements of the human condition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gilder
Is certainly an interesting opinion.
My first thoughts were that he seems to be confusing motives and methods. Information and knowledge certainly flow through a capitalist system and are definitely required in order to do well, but they are not the motive for most capitalists, In fact I can think of very few millionaires who are in business for the learning and philosophy, whereas the desire to own more stuff or money often is a driving force.
As for saying that socialism is the end product of greed, and that it is greed that leads to a socialist welfare state, well. Someone should definitely tell this to some of the various murderous dictators that have been propped up by capitalists in the name of stability, security and favourable trading positions. They'd have a pretty good laugh about it while checking their numbered accounts.
Also, if greed leads to the creation of welfare for the poor, presumably this means that the problem is the greedy poor. Which given that by definition they cannot be very good at being greedy as they have no stuff, makes me doubt that it was their greed that led to the creation of welfare, and that maybe having less than 100% employment might have more to do with the massive mechanisation and export of labour.
I'm not sure this random collection of quotes is a great starting point for a discussion as broad as what "capitalism is". Especially quotes that come in an election year from a non-economist mainly famous for his GOP activism. If you do want an argument in favor of the information-aggregation view of markets, and what is required for them to work in practice, F.A. Hayek provides a better analysis.
The Use of Knowledge in Society: http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
Economics and Knowledge: http://www.econlib.org/library/NPDBooks/Thirlby/bcthLS3.html
With globalization this becomes an even more serious problem, because the entities that control the capital are extra-national. So from the joyful history of the East Inda Company to the merry state of British Petroleum today -- you have entities that cannot on the whole be held accountable to one set of laws, because no (functional) jurisdiction exist that cover their entire area of operations.
Even when regulation seemingly works, as with Microsoft, Netscape and the browser wars -- they fail. Microsoft won that one, despite loosing.
No matter what system you think we have (or should), what system they tell us we have, or what system people actually try to enact, human-nature morphs it towards greed.
And if you're irrationally alienated by the word "greed", feel free to replace it with the comfortable alternatives we've rationalized; "saving money", "efficiency", "winning", "being successful". They and others are all rooted in "getting the most for me" aka greed.
Capitalism is based on there being a customer. All the capital in the world doesn't do any good if there's not a buyer on the other end. Another argument for a strong middle class.
humans have needs.
there is no shortage of customers.
before currencies, there is trade. who is the customer in a trade before currency? it's an exchange, not a purchase by a customer from a seller.
Isn't Capitalism based on... capital? Investing in production in such a way that you increase your profit rate -- with the inevitable result being consolidation of capital, and therefore power over the means of production -- or in other words the consolidation of power? With globalization this becomes an even more serious problem, because the entities that control the capital are extra-national. So from the joyful hi…
please explain?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, it gave them an impulse to find areas where they could do something that people judged valuable enough to part with their money. (e.g. learn how to design web pages and make bad flash animations ;) It also did help people who buy groceries, including poor people.
But now the people who worked at the small town grocer are out of a job, so you are left with more poor people.
I have a very tough time rationalizing this guy's futurism with the rest of his opinions. Of course, I guess compartmentalization and contradiction are common elements of the human condition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gilder
In particular, [excerpts from Wikipedia] Gilder is a founder of the Discovery Institute, the leading think tank of the intelligent design movement. Gilder has written many articles in favor of ID and opposing the theory of evolution.
But think about the Church-Turing thesis a bit, and universal computation, and it becomes obvious that there are infinitely many ways of solving any arbitrary problem. They aren't all created equal, but there are also paths between them. Evolution works by discovering one answer and then following pathways through the fitness landscape to converge on better and better answers. Sometimes it actually does discover global optimums, or sometimes it just settles on something that works well enough given all the trade-offs. (In some problem spaces there is no clear global optimum.)
But I see something more here. His opinions on gender are just batty. There is evidence for gender dimorphism in humans, but he takes that evidence and does a Forrest Gump run with it all the way off the field and into the bleachers. He also ignores huge numbers of counter-examples to his thesis and mistakes statistical means for universal laws.
Please don't make the mistake of confusing the system with the agents in the system.