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Simple answer: No. More nuanced answer: not exactly. Not Capitalism per-se anyway. But clearly you can see an unhealthy degree of commingling of big government and big business, in a way that is damaging to society at large. But to my mind: a. that's corruption, not capitalism b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism
Of course it is! That's like asking, is monarchy a threat to democracy? Capitalist corporations are basically just little kingdoms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pure democracy can be described as three wolves and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner.
Ha! That's funny. :) But not entirely accurate. The word "democracy" comes from the word "deme" which essentially a group of individually weak people who band together to make sure that they're all represented against other groups.
"Is [Abstraction A] a threat to [Abstraction B]?" No. Human beings who put money and control of land and resources over and above the welfare of other human beings are a threat to us all and always have been. I wish sociopathic hypergreedy control freaks were viewed the same way we perceive pedophiles instead of being rewarded.
I'm confused as to why you think that just because two concepts are abstract they can't interact with each other. How do you explain that logic? Do we claim that capitalism cannot produce hyper-greedy sociopaths? Because I would argue that it distills those people better than most systems. We need some form of modified capitalism which has some checks and balances. We did have that system for a long while, but the co…
An article with a title like this, people are only responding to the question (which is rhetorical anyway). The OP submission has only been up 1 hour at the time of this comment and the vast majority of the 100+ comments here are addressing only the title question or reactions to it. None mention Polanyi and few discuss the author's most salient points at the end of the article.
If Polanyi had considered the above he wouldn't have come to the conclusion that the two possibilities are either socialism or fascism.
The prescriptions - social welfare, etc - at the end of the article are known. The question is why they haven't been implemented in the US (they have in most other Western counties to various degrees).
I address other points in another comment below.
Simple answer: No. More nuanced answer: not exactly. Not Capitalism per-se anyway. But clearly you can see an unhealthy degree of commingling of big government and big business, in a way that is damaging to society at large. But to my mind: a. that's corruption, not capitalism b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism
Simple answer: No. More nuanced answer: not exactly. Not Capitalism per-se anyway. But clearly you can see an unhealthy degree of commingling of big government and big business, in a way that is damaging to society at large. But to my mind: a. that's corruption, not capitalism b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism
>b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism A government that is not large enough to upset an even playing field will also not be large enough to level an uneven playing field.
...effectively enforce the system of property rights which is the foundation of capitalism, since the latter is an example of the former.
Simple answer: No. More nuanced answer: not exactly. Not Capitalism per-se anyway. But clearly you can see an unhealthy degree of commingling of big government and big business, in a way that is damaging to society at large. But to my mind: a. that's corruption, not capitalism b. that's an argument against big government, not an argument against capitalism
This is not at all the effect being discussed. The effect being discussed is laid out quite plainly in the subtitle. I'll just quote it here, and save you the effort of right clicking and selecting open in new tab: "The idea that authoritarianism attracts workers harmed by the free market, which emerged when the Nazis were in power, has been making a comeback." It's a very simple mechanism. Capitalism produces winner…
Are there any capitalist systems that don't tend towards hierarchical structures? Corporations are hierarchical to a great degree, but what would a system look like that incorporated the benefits of democracy into a capitalist entity? In a democracy, people are in theory given a level playing field through voting that means that Bill Gates's vote is just as valuable as anyone else's. In capitalism, people are given t…
> In capitalism, people are given the ability to create value to their fullest extent. In capitalism people have the ability to create value to the extent they have the capital to do so, a requirement which excludes most people from achieving what they could.
For me, learning how to operate a business required a lot of reading, failure, and bad decisions. For someone who has easy access to the knowledge that I had to work hard to attain, becoming successful has a much shorter path. For someone who doesn't even have a map (many people in poor or socially disadvantaged communities), it requires a level of tenacity and drive that is very rare.
So while I agree with you that most people are excluded from maximizing their potential, I think the root cause is not a lack of capital, but a lack of knowledge about how to interact with capital.
> Basically there are two solutions,” Polanyi wrote in 1935. “The extension of the democratic principle from politics to economics, or the abolition of the democratic ‘political sphere’ altogether.” In other words, socialism or fascism. This article is predicated on using democracy as a synonym for constitutional representation , which it isn't. Democracy literally means rule by the people: majority rule. If you can'…
* liberal here meaning political liberal (JS Mill liberalism), and not what is understood by "liberal" in US politics.