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After Capitalism?

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Re: After Capitalism?

#41

Post by marcus_holmes »

vidarh wrote: post #35
nixusg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lower birth rates? Short term economic pain of a graying population for a long term gain.

While birth rates are lowering enough that the population based on current projections will start dropping in a few decades, UN projections also clearly indicate it will start increasing again soon enough, albeit at a slower rate. To avoid that would take substantial further reductions in birth rates beyond that which is baked in based on current trends. EDIT: Let me adjust this a bit. UNs World Population Prospects…

So the people predicting a financial catastrophe in the next 20 years because of the demographic nightmare of the boomers leaving the workforce and not dying for 20 years, so we become a society with too few workers are wrong?

Awesome!

Seriously, which is it? Either capitalism is going to fail because there aren't enough workers, or it's going to fail because robots are taking all the jobs. Can't have both!

Because, of course, having both would be fine... no catastrophe, life continues as normal as it has in the face of every prediction of imminent disaster. We have less workers due to demographic changes, but that's cool because we need less workers. We sort out the political problem of how to stop all the money going to to <1% of the population, we're all good.

Re: After Capitalism?

#42

Post by 1stop »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #37
1stop wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point. If I could summarise: Capitalism generates capital. Yay for us, we now have lots of capital. But once you've generated all the capital, and maximised all the profits to the point of driving surplus value to 0. What then? * Also a major nitpick, most of that billion were brought out of poverty in China in the 1950s at the peak of Maoism/Communism... so you're point is kind ironic, no?…

All the profits? like in a zero-sum game? Wealth creation through creativity, like we do every time, that's what we do next. This article was wasted time

The article is echoing a pretty well trodden train of thought on the ultimate conclusion of capitalism. Which no one has seriously been able to refute. Wasted time is a bit harsh.

Catchy one liners "Wealth creation through creativity" might help you sleep at night, but seriously, our creative endeavours have never produced anywhere near the amount of capital the resource sector has... What happens when we either get so efficient at resources that they cost nothing, or we run out of the resource?

Re: After Capitalism?

#43

Post by creshal »

Zirro wrote: post #34
creshal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article isn't lamenting capitalism, it's lamenting that we're leaving it behind and have no idea what to do next. > Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years But it has been done without generating the sort of full-time blue collar employment that is implied behind all sorts of economic policies around the globe. China has gone from feudalism to post-industrial robotization in one…

Since you've already brought it up as "blabbing" - why do you dismiss basic income as a solution?

Because it seems to imply a post-work, not a post-full-employment society.

We're still going to have a lot of jobs in the mid-term, probably even long-term. 70%, 60% of the working populace in the mid-term maybe, and not too few of those in menial/blue collar jobs. We still need to fill these jobs, and a generous basic income would make these jobs highly unpopular. So we can either set a basic income that is not high enough to solve the problem it was trying to solve, or we create a situation like in Saudi Arabia – where all the undesirable jobs are taken by foreign jobbers (from nations without basic income, or war zones, or…), while the natives grow fat and lazy.

Not exactly an economic policy I'd have expected from the Left.

Re: After Capitalism?

#44

Post by creshal »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #41
vidarh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While birth rates are lowering enough that the population based on current projections will start dropping in a few decades, UN projections also clearly indicate it will start increasing again soon enough, albeit at a slower rate. To avoid that would take substantial further reductions in birth rates beyond that which is baked in based on current trends. EDIT: Let me adjust this a bit. UNs World Population Prospects…

So the people predicting a financial catastrophe in the next 20 years because of the demographic nightmare of the boomers leaving the workforce and not dying for 20 years, so we become a society with too few workers are wrong? Awesome! Seriously, which is it? Either capitalism is going to fail because there aren't enough workers, or it's going to fail because robots are taking all the jobs. Can't have both! Because,…

> no catastrophe, life continues as normal as it has in the face of every prediction of imminent disaster

I wouldn't call the circumstances in Europe 1815-1945, when the last massive societal upheavals happened, "life as normal".

Re: After Capitalism?

#45

Post by patrickaljord »

JDDunn9 wrote: post #23
vixen99 wrote: post #18

Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years - Economist Magazine. Harnessing the energy of people across the planet by letting them trade with each other has so clearly been a disaster for everyone, has it? Essentially, isn't this capitalism with all its fault lines? One way or another it can be got to work for everyone's advantage.

A fair number of those lifted out of poverty were in China. Haiti is still the poorest country in the western hemisphere, despite having capitalism forced on them. A black-and-white view of the world misses a lot. Economies wouldn't function without public utilities, roads, militaries, etc.

Haiti is more of a crony capitalism as it's one of the most corrupted country http://www.heritage.org/index/country/haiti

Re: After Capitalism?

#46

Post by kawera »

Futurebot wrote: post #40
creshal wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article isn't lamenting capitalism, it's lamenting that we're leaving it behind and have no idea what to do next. > Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years But it has been done without generating the sort of full-time blue collar employment that is implied behind all sorts of economic policies around the globe. China has gone from feudalism to post-industrial robotization in one…

Arts, sports, and leisure are the most likely candidates. People will both create and enjoy code, music, drawing, digital art, memes, funny cat gifs, endless videos, etc. Sports probably need no additional explanation. Leisure will mean a great deal more time spent out in nature, walking city streets, focusing on relationships, etc. Imagining this future doesn't seem too outre.

I hope you are right!

Just speculation but isn't that already the case? I don't have the numbers but I wonder what percentage of the human population is in the working force or, better yet, what percentage of our collective "waking hours" is spend working, with or without monetary compensation.

Re: After Capitalism?

#47

Post by patrickaljord »

1stop wrote: post #39
patrickaljord wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But once you've generated all the capital, and maximised all the profits to the point of driving surplus value to 0. What then? You're assuming you will be able to keep this capital forever. History demonstrates that most of even the richest families don't stay such after 3 or 4 generations. Ask any Family Office managing finances for HNW investors and they'll give you examples. * Decreasing marginal utility of wea…

That doesn't actually matter to the point at hand. My point was we've got all the surplus value there is to be had. The fact that we'll probably squander that too, or it will decrease in value, only strengthens the questions... so what do we do after that?

After what exactly? People will keep exchanging goods and services voluntarily in a free market for a long time. That's like worrying about what we'll do to deal with over-population on Mars. Let's focus on trying to get there first?

Re: After Capitalism?

#48

Post by aspec »

puredemo wrote: post #12
21echoes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He is strongly critiquing the notion that "there will be robots, there is basic income and it's better than what we have now, just because." He labels this notion "Accelerationism", and then the final section tears it apart (even the section discussing it is constantly pointing out its flaws). To wit, the closing paragraph: "Though the times are bad, the accelerationists presume that the state of the left will get be…

>But politics can’t get done by machines. Can't it? Democracy is simply voting, which can easily be handled by machines.

The legislative branch of the government cannot be replaced with machines. Think a little harder.

Re: After Capitalism?

#49

Post by skrebbel »

21echoes wrote: post #17
skrebbel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I mean, > Several crashes later, the gloom has returned, and the signs of autumn are once again most recognizable in the pronouncements of free-market capitalism’s erstwhile boosters. I tried to read this sentence 3 times now, and I still do not know what it means. The same holds for entire paragraphs. IMO the author needs a healthy dose of http://web.princeton.edu/sites/opplab/papers/opp%20consequen...

> > Several crashes later, the gloom has returned, and the signs of autumn are once again most recognizable in the pronouncements of free-market capitalism’s erstwhile boosters. > I tried to read this sentence 3 times now, and I still do not know what it means. The same holds for entire paragraphs. Is that sentence really that hard to read? I mean, it's definitely overly flowery, but it means almost word-for-word "Af…

I didn't know an "erstwhile booster" is a person. Therefore, I thought "pronouncements" referred to something legal, instead of just a complicated word for "opinions". My best guess at the meaning of the sentence, therefore, was something completely different and nonsensical.

The whole article is like this. Misunderstand one flowery phrase, misunderstand the entire sentence, misunderstand the whole paragraph. It's like the author hates convincing people.

Re: After Capitalism?

#50

Post by ggrothendieck »

The following link is another review of the same book by Paul Mason http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue73/Gillies73.pdf but it focuses more on the economic idea, apparently discussed in his book, that the digital economy features a zero marginal cost of production. Now, if the purpose of the economy is to allocate scarce goods what happens when digital goods dominate the economy and have zero marginal cost (wikipedia, arxiv, github, free software, etc.)? The idea that scarcity might disappear would seem to undermine the very foundation driving economic transactions.
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