The state is to blame, not people exercising their right to trade with each other. What a ridiculous concept.
Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
21–30 of 33 posts
Re: Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that is actually "Crony Capitalism", which then if the article redefined it as such, I would agree.
Sure, we can label it whatever, but a turd is still a turd. If we're experiencing crony capitalism then we need to take action to correct it.
The turd in crony capitalism is government.
Re: Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's unclear whether the slowdown in US/EU real GDP growth is (a) dysfunction of capitalism, due to what you described, or (b) a "cooling" effect as global inequality of nations (as it should) mean-reverts. The good news is that global GDP growth is quite high: about 4% per year and accelerating (faster than exponential, for now). Obviously, there are severe sustainability concerns (such as the need to move away from…
I always like reading historical analysis, but have a few questions: > We did a bad job of distributing the wealth generated by that. I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean that those that profited did not reinvest in stocks that may have helped companies grow and provide jobs? Or, that the government did not tax enough to pay its own staff and overhead and then redistribute via programs that do not necessarily…
In 1920: agriculture was 27% of labor force: http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm
Now, 2-3%. One in 4 people had their profession superseded. A lot of that slack was taken up by industry (and war and death), but that took 20-30 years to catch up.
Is there a pool of work for people to absorb 25% of the present labor force? Most of the emerging technologies I see are labor-saving, not labor consuming.
Two possibilities for big labor demand in the next few decades: - healthcare and assistance for the elderly - removing development restrictions in booming cities, unleashing an epic (or Chinese-level) building boom
Both have fundamental political foundations and won't be solved solely by technology.
Re: Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
#24Marx's argument for the inevitability of extreme wealth disparity and at some point a breakdown in the capitalist system is too long to put here, but I can summarize it somewhat. A worker is creating wealth - why else would a company employ him? Let us say he works as a carpenter for a furniture store. He takes $800 worth of wood, nails etc. every day and through his labor makes it into $1000 worth of desks, cabinets…
What it seems is that Marx view is extremely simplistic Marx is saying: worker produces X value and is payed Y, and since Y Well, to begin with, the situation where X So X - Y, is what? Pure profit in bosses pocket? Not really... It's the cost of everything needed for the company and for the worker to do their job It's the job security (even a tiny one like in some states in the US) Yes, whatever is left is the profi…
> Marx is saying...bosses are evil, capitalism is evil
Actually Marx said capitalism was a positive historic development.
> So X - Y, is what? Pure profit in bosses pocket? Not really...It's the cost of everything needed for the company and for the worker to do their job
When I said...
>> What happens with that $1000 in sales? $800 of it goes to buying wood, nails, hammers etc.
...that is what I was covering.
> cartels, oligopolies, monopolies are so damaging
Marx goes into cartels, oligopolies, and monopolies a little bit, but they didn't really hit their stride until after he died. Lenin is who covers this in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. They both go into great detail of why it is economically and politically impossible to stop cartels, oligopolies, and monopolies from forming. Lenin mentions Standard Oil in his paper, which the government tried to break up in 1911. As Lenin knew then, it is impossible to stop monopolies, which is why the old broken up parts of Standard Oil reformed in the 1999 ExxonMobil merger to become the most profitable company in the world, as well as the company with the third largest revenue in the world. And I can go on and on about how government can't break up monopolies (the Bell breakup only lasted a few years, now AT&T and Verizon control most of the US wired last mile and wireless).
Re: Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always like reading historical analysis, but have a few questions: > We did a bad job of distributing the wealth generated by that. I'm not sure what you mean here. Do you mean that those that profited did not reinvest in stocks that may have helped companies grow and provide jobs? Or, that the government did not tax enough to pay its own staff and overhead and then redistribute via programs that do not necessarily…
In 1920: agriculture was 27% of labor force: http://www.agclassroom.org/gan/timeline/farmers_land.htm Now, 2-3%. One in 4 people had their profession superseded. A lot of that slack was taken up by industry (and war and death), but that took 20-30 years to catch up. Is there a pool of work for people to absorb 25% of the present labor force? Most of the emerging technologies I see are labor-saving, not labor consumin…
> removing development restrictions in booming cities, unleashing an epic (or Chinese-level) building boom
Which would be interesting because it is debatable whether we have the resources for that.
On one hand, we have people like Tim Worstall of Forbes claiming that we will never run out of metals that would be used in a building boom, because innovation reduces and replaces use of existing metals, e.g. modern day pennies use steel and a copper coating:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2011/10/15/when-are-...
Although, I think Tim takes a lot of liberty with his assessments, like his recent wild speculation that humanity could never populate another star system because it would take too many people to preserve our culture: http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/04/07/perhaps-c...
On the other hand, in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_ore#Available_iron_ore_res... it states that Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute has suggested iron ore could run out within 64 years based on an extremely conservative extrapolation of 2% growth per year, and so if there were a boom, innovation to replace use of iron ore as a structural component would be required.
Re: Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
#26This is just re-labeled Marxism, so the usual counter-arguments apply.
(1) Bad data: Most wealth is self-made, not inherited.
(2) Misguided goals: Uneven net wealth gain is better than equal increase of poverty
(3) Magical thinking: Wealth is created by effective systems, it does not appear out of thin air to be distributed
(4) Lack of observation: Government is remarkably poor at wealth management
(5) False sentimentality: A system intent on rewarding the ineffective will have great difficulty being effective itself
(6) Fetishizing hopelessness: Anyone determined already has the opportunity to create scalable wealth-creating systems in a suitable vocation
Re: Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
What it seems is that Marx view is extremely simplistic Marx is saying: worker produces X value and is payed Y, and since Y Well, to begin with, the situation where X So X - Y, is what? Pure profit in bosses pocket? Not really... It's the cost of everything needed for the company and for the worker to do their job It's the job security (even a tiny one like in some states in the US) Yes, whatever is left is the profi…
> Marx is saying...bosses are evil, capitalism is evil Actually Marx said capitalism was a positive historic development. > So X - Y, is what? Pure profit in bosses pocket? Not really...It's the cost of everything needed for the company and for the worker to do their job When I said... >> What happens with that $1000 in sales? $800 of it goes to buying wood, nails, hammers etc. ...that is what I was covering. > carte…
>>>> What happens with that $1000 in sales? $800 of it goes to buying wood, nails, hammers etc.
>>...that is what I was covering.
But the cost of materials is one thing (and not related to the employees), the value added by the company, another.
>> And I can go on and on about how government can't break up monopolies
Cue the communist states creating the biggest and most useless ones.
Re: Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
#28Seems important to note that the article doesn't seem to be about capitalism per se , but "business-friendly" capitalism as currently practiced in the U.S. and parts of Europe. In that regard the conclusion (regarding wealth inequality) really isn't that surprising. If the ROI of having money is really higher than the ROI of earning money (i.e. by wages) then the conclusion over time is as simple as the solution to a…
> Seems important to note that the article doesn't seem to be about capitalism per se, but "business-friendly" capitalism as currently practiced in the U.S. and parts of Europe.
Interesting how I've seen this argument a lot lately. It's a nice mirror of the exact same argument I heard a lot about communism and/or socialism in the 1980s: that criticism of communism wasn't so much about communism per se, but about the Leninist/Stalinist way many countries had implemented it.
I think the big lesson of the 20th century is that both have their weaknesses, and that we should be looking for a good balance between the better aspects of the two. Something like Sweden, I guess.
Re: Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
#29Capitalism is working. Statism isn't.
If by Capitalism you mean the rich getting richer, then that is definitely working. But it's not working for us. The extreme concentration of wealth is not really a good thing for society.
Re: Capitalism isn't working and here are the reasons why
#30I don't think the wealthy necessarily represent political power. I think corporate lobbyists are more to blame than the ultra wealthy as individuals.
And the lobbyist works for who, and who benefits from the work of the lobbyist?
Ban corporations. If you want pure capitalism, it has to be without corporations. At least in their current form.