Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
spiegel.de
Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
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Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
#2It's not capitalism that's gone off the rails ... it's socialism. All of the countries with slow growth and growing inequality have heavy-handed socialist policies in place.
Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
#3Well, yes. As more of the money is used to make more money, instead of things, experiences, or people... It losses it's correlation with the things that we actually want out of an economy. Plus, those in power (rightfully) use the power to get more power of the sort they already have. According the history books I read as a kid, this is what caused capitalism in the first place (english barons with more money than power using that money to make more money) and the (serial) French revolutions (aristocrats with more power than money using that power to gain more power).
I note these bits in particular:
"After a financial and banking crisis, the first order of business is to clean up the banks, and to do it quickly and radically. Institutions that are not viable need to be shut down while the others should be provided with capital."
"Their central thesis was that the key to [Western] success was not climate or religion, but the development of social institutions that included as many citizens as possible..."
I'm also reminded of a good article on what Iceland did after the collapse - I'm having trouble finding the article, but part of it was that, instead of taking on the debt from their collapsed banks, they issued arrest warrants so Interpol could chase down the executives. (The initial government was going to acquiesce and take on the debt, and that's when the "revolution" happened.)
Finally, someone gave me a really good quote a couple months ago: "Death is the way for an older organism to gift it's energy to a younger one." I then note that part of the financial problem is that failing institutions are not actually allowed to die - thus keeping that energy stagnating in the aptly-named "zombie" corporations.
Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
#4Well, yes. As more of the money is used to make more money, instead of things, experiences, or people... It losses it's correlation with the things that we actually want out of an economy. Plus, those in power (rightfully) use the power to get more power of the sort they already have. According the history books I read as a kid, this is what caused capitalism in the first place (english barons with more money than po…
Note that what Iceland did and the idea of clearing out bad capital and malinvestment are actually capitalist ideas, versus, say bailouts and central bank manipulation, which are not.
Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
#5It's not capitalism that's gone off the rails ... it's socialism. All of the countries with slow growth and growing inequality have heavy-handed socialist policies in place.
So you're saying the US isn't experiencing slow growth and growing inequality?
Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
#6It's not capitalism that's gone off the rails ... it's socialism. All of the countries with slow growth and growing inequality have heavy-handed socialist policies in place.
Did... did you read the article? You may be correct about the correlation, but a) I'm pretty sure you're not and b) the article goes into moderate detail discussing the mechanisms involved, most of which would also be expected to create an appearance that matches what you describe: More socialist countries, by virtue of NOT sustaining zombie banks, have less growth than less socialist countries which ARE sustaining zombie banks, and thus continuing to create the appearance of growth - but it's no more growth today than it was in the years leading up to the collapse.
Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
#7It's not capitalism that's gone off the rails ... it's socialism. All of the countries with slow growth and growing inequality have heavy-handed socialist policies in place.
Nothing a little more government intervention couldn't solve, comrade.
Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
#8Well, yes. As more of the money is used to make more money, instead of things, experiences, or people... It losses it's correlation with the things that we actually want out of an economy. Plus, those in power (rightfully) use the power to get more power of the sort they already have. According the history books I read as a kid, this is what caused capitalism in the first place (english barons with more money than po…
Note that what Iceland did and the idea of clearing out bad capital and malinvestment are actually capitalist ideas, versus, say bailouts and central bank manipulation, which are not.
Yeah. I'm, to a decent degree, a fan of calling what we have today "corporatism" rather than "capitalism".
Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
#9It's not capitalism that's gone off the rails ... it's socialism. All of the countries with slow growth and growing inequality have heavy-handed socialist policies in place.
So you're saying the US isn't experiencing slow growth and growing inequality?
Growing inequality by what measure? Gini co-efficient? If so Sweden has a much higher inequality than most of the EU.
Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
#10It's not capitalism that's gone off the rails ... it's socialism. All of the countries with slow growth and growing inequality have heavy-handed socialist policies in place.
So you're saying the US isn't experiencing slow growth and growing inequality?
I'm saying the US has some of those very same policies in place.