The end of capitalism has begun • Hacker News Board

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#31

Post by SixSigma » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:40 PM UTC

lbidircitkghd wrote: post #27

vegancap wrote: post #17

The author assumes we have 'capitalism' to begin with. Even talks about big banks etc. Secondly, he's citing 'information technology' as being the death of 'capitalism'. An industry, arguably the most aggressively capitalistic. Then he talks about corporate monopolies (anyone who's read economics 101 would tell you corporate monopolies are rarely result of unadulterated capitalism, but rather state corporatism). He m…

>anyone who's read economics 101 would tell you corporate monopolies are rarely result of unadulterated capitalism, but rather state corporatism Corporatist despotism is the logical conclusion of any laissez-faire capitalist economy just as Stalinism is the logical conclusion of any Marxist economy. Businesses are sticky and over time will tend to clump together, for efficiency reasons, into larger businesses. Once t…

Some might suggest that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#32

Post by moopling » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

vegancap wrote: post #23

[deleted] wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Apology accepted? But I do know what I'm talking about. Monopolies in a market economy can only exist if they've had no competitors and have met all of their customers needs and defeated all competition. Google is a monopoly, because it's something we're all generally pretty happy with. Even the slightest downfalls in Google lead to competitors taking advantage of that. Say data privacy for example, Google were subpa…

I think I might go so far as to say I don't really think either of you know what you are talking about. Monopolies are created by barriers to entry into a market, this can include things like state regulation, but also things like intellectual property, and capital. Monopolies distort the market, but are not always net negative. Perhaps a good example are silicon wafer manufactures (technically an oligopoly, but the same arguments apply). Because the startup cost for silicon manufacturing is so high, and the infrastructure takes time to build, supply does not have to, and regularly does not match demand (bad). That said, the scales of economy involved with allowing a single company to produce so much silicon in this case makes that trade off well worth it.

I think it's silly when people use monopoly as a synonym for bad. Sometimes monopolies make sense.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#33

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #21

vegancap wrote: post #17

The author assumes we have 'capitalism' to begin with. Even talks about big banks etc. Secondly, he's citing 'information technology' as being the death of 'capitalism'. An industry, arguably the most aggressively capitalistic. Then he talks about corporate monopolies (anyone who's read economics 101 would tell you corporate monopolies are rarely result of unadulterated capitalism, but rather state corporatism). He m…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#34

Post by Shivetya » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

dpweb wrote: post #2

It's interesting the Greece and 2008 global crises are usually brought up, but important to note that with capitalism comes a need for responsibility - especially regarding debt, and those failures were a result of irresponsiblity on the part of the governments and actors involved - not a defect of the capitalist system itself. In both cases, taking on massive debt and quite simply, living beyond one's or a state's m…

The problem with Greece isn't capitalism, that much is obvious. The problem is the EU was designed to fail. It was created in such a way to appease the dominant economic countries by guaranteeing the EU would not be a transfer union. This all but doomed weaker economies from the get go.

Tied to one currency they lost the most effective means of combating budgetary and economic issues. Worse, as they become weaker it becomes ever harder for them to generate the hard currency they need.

So if anything what happened is exactly the opposite of capitalism, they could not compete because the rules agreed by governments prevented them. Yes Greece shares fault for working the books but the EU was formed to only favor the powerful countries and protect their interest, this was no union

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#35

Post by SixSigma » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:42 PM UTC

vegancap wrote: post #23

[deleted] wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Apology accepted? But I do know what I'm talking about. Monopolies in a market economy can only exist if they've had no competitors and have met all of their customers needs and defeated all competition. Google is a monopoly, because it's something we're all generally pretty happy with. Even the slightest downfalls in Google lead to competitors taking advantage of that. Say data privacy for example, Google were subpa…

Formally: monopoly power is controlling 25% of a market.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#36

Post by Thriptic » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:44 PM UTC

lbidircitkghd wrote: post #27

vegancap wrote: post #17

The author assumes we have 'capitalism' to begin with. Even talks about big banks etc. Secondly, he's citing 'information technology' as being the death of 'capitalism'. An industry, arguably the most aggressively capitalistic. Then he talks about corporate monopolies (anyone who's read economics 101 would tell you corporate monopolies are rarely result of unadulterated capitalism, but rather state corporatism). He m…

>anyone who's read economics 101 would tell you corporate monopolies are rarely result of unadulterated capitalism, but rather state corporatism Corporatist despotism is the logical conclusion of any laissez-faire capitalist economy just as Stalinism is the logical conclusion of any Marxist economy. Businesses are sticky and over time will tend to clump together, for efficiency reasons, into larger businesses. Once t…

> This will continue to happen time and again until we put in place good checks against businesses consolidating too much power.

Wouldn't another fix be public financing of campaigns and a ban on contributing private money to elected officials in any capacity?

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#37

Post by vegancap » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

asgard1024 wrote: post #25

vegancap wrote: post #17

The author assumes we have 'capitalism' to begin with. Even talks about big banks etc. Secondly, he's citing 'information technology' as being the death of 'capitalism'. An industry, arguably the most aggressively capitalistic. Then he talks about corporate monopolies (anyone who's read economics 101 would tell you corporate monopolies are rarely result of unadulterated capitalism, but rather state corporatism). He m…

I think you're wrong with the definition of capitalism. Capitalism is not necessarily free market and vice versa. A historically accurate definition of capitalism (unlike communism for instance, capitalism was given name for the existing system and not for utopian ideal), I believe, would be that it is a system with two characteristics: 1. Most of means of production (capital) is privately owned. 2. Human labor is a…

I guess we have slightly divergent definitions. My definition being voluntary exchange and private ownership of commodity and labor. I also have nothing against democratic cooperatives, just as long as I'm free to carry on working in a market economy elsewhere ;)

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#38

Post by omonra » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:45 PM UTC

I find the article lacking. Author makes a bunch of controversial yet unsupported statements. Even if they're true (something he doesn't really bother proving), the logical links from one to the next are missing.

Ie I can't even dismiss it as typical Guardian progressive ranting - because there is no coherent story to dismiss, more of a hot-potch of terms.

Putting it down in the 'not even wrong' file.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#39

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

SixSigma wrote: post #35

vegancap wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apology accepted? But I do know what I'm talking about. Monopolies in a market economy can only exist if they've had no competitors and have met all of their customers needs and defeated all competition. Google is a monopoly, because it's something we're all generally pretty happy with. Even the slightest downfalls in Google lead to competitors taking advantage of that. Say data privacy for example, Google were subpa…

Formally: monopoly power is controlling 25% of a market.

No, monopoly, market, or pricing power (the the terms are equivalent in anti trust law) exists when there is a range in which an entity can increase prices without losing sales to competitors. There is no percentage of market threshold.

This definition reflects the economic concept of a monopoly in that the presence of this pricing power indicates the absence of a competitive market with perfect substitutes for the goods sold.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#40

Post by larsiusprime » Fri, Jul 17, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

vegancap wrote: post #17

The author assumes we have 'capitalism' to begin with. Even talks about big banks etc. Secondly, he's citing 'information technology' as being the death of 'capitalism'. An industry, arguably the most aggressively capitalistic. Then he talks about corporate monopolies (anyone who's read economics 101 would tell you corporate monopolies are rarely result of unadulterated capitalism, but rather state corporatism). He m…

"capitalism" as casually used can be broken down into a bunch of discrete, sometimes contradictory concepts, here's just a few off the top of my head:

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1. "CAPITAL"-ism with a capital "C": the policy that when labor and capital do something together, capital should get the bigger share of the return.

2. "Laissez-faire": a market that has as little regulation from the government as possible.

3. "Free market": a market that is generally untainted by what are considered "artificial" external manipulations, such as price-fixing, etc, that prevent it from reaching a natural equilibrium.

-----------

These sometimes contradict. For instance, pure laissez-faire can easily lead to monopolies, which hinders the ability of the "free market" value. Also, it's not clear at all that "CAPITAL"-ism naturally follows from either 2 or 3.

And even when you break it into these concepts there's still plenty of room for interpretation.