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What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

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Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#41

Post by bjo590 »

philips wrote: post #15

I can't listen to the podcast at the moment. But, along a similar theme Doughnut Economics tries to imagine adjustments that are required to traditional economic models from the 19th and 20th century that are required to keep the biosphere productive for humans. https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/ An idea that stuck with me is that markets are powerful tools that need to be embedded into other systems but arent sel…

> It seems too often in debates on big problems the argument is simply we need a market solution not how is the system designed to best utilize a market.

"We need a market solution" is politician for private interests want to change laws so that they can expand their businesses.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#42

Post by sudosysgen »

Barrin92 wrote: post #12

It's not a productive word really because it almost poisons every discussion based on whether someone's broadly sympathetic to 'capitalism' or not. Even when people actually agree this can cause meaningless confusion. What I think is very valuable within our system is markets as a tool . There's no functioning replacement yet for allocating resources through something like a market at large scale. Even socialism symp…

Well, using capitalism to explain other issues is just a consequence of being a Materialist.

If you adhere to a materialist understanding of the world, you come to the the conclusion that most of the features of our environment (which is validated by analysis) find their roots in the material organization of our world. And the material organization we are operating in is "capitalism". Which is why it applies so much.

I think part of the confusion comes with the understanding of what capitalism is. Capitalism isn't markets, we had markets before capitalism. Capitalism is the economic organization where:

* Production is organized under private ownership * Social relations are dominantly monetary relationships * Labour is dominantly done for wages * Production is done for profit * A market system is used to structure productive relationships * A de-facto class system which divides workers and owners

That's what capitalism is, and when people, especially academics say that something is caused by capitalism, they refer to capitalism as defined, loosely, by those elements. Capitalism is not a tool, it is a state of being. Markets are a tool, that have wonderful advantages. Markets aren't an ideology, capitalism is a group of ideologies that promote markets as much as possible. For an extreme example, in the USSR, food production was overwhelmingly mediated by markets. Was that capitalism? No, because it was not done for profits, and because production was not based on wages.

Everyone agrees that markets is an amazingly useful tool and is fit for many applications, except some which lack a good grasp of economics, or others which are deluded into abstracting economics from society and which therefore miss when they are not fit for the task. What people don't agree with is that capitalism is a system which should be perpetuated, and the two are perfectly consistent positions to hold.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#43

Post by pathseeker »

sbmassey wrote: post #30

Capitalism's basic meaning is that the means of production are owned by private parties. Putting them under government ownership instead doesn't seem like the solution to anything, unless you are very sure that the government will follow your ideological beliefs, not be corrupted by its newfound direct power over peoples lives, and not get taken over by populists.

>Putting them under government ownership instead doesn't seem like the solution to anything, unless you are very sure that the government will follow your ideological beliefs, not be corrupted by its newfound direct power over peoples lives, and not get taken over by populists.

Don't forget that you have to be sure the government has the perfect knowledge to price things correctly even it's otherwise a good government. This is actually the main reason that centralized planning is frowned upon by capitalists. Without competition to drive price discovery, the market ends up being super inefficient and people end up under-served or output resources don't collect enough input resources to sustain themselves.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#44

Post by socialdemocrat »

cyphar wrote: post #35
Barrin92 wrote: post #12

It's not a productive word really because it almost poisons every discussion based on whether someone's broadly sympathetic to 'capitalism' or not. Even when people actually agree this can cause meaningless confusion. What I think is very valuable within our system is markets as a tool . There's no functioning replacement yet for allocating resources through something like a market at large scale. Even socialism symp…

The term "capitalism" is not (as you appear to be implying) synonymous with "market economies". In fact they are two separate economic concepts. There have been economic systems that had free markets (feudal lords bought and sold goods in market economies) and there were also examples of capitalist enterprises that existed without free markets (some people would argue the Soviet Union fits this description, but if yo…

I think it is also important to add that it is a system where capital plays a significant role in the economy unlike say a feudal economy where land was the most important factor in the economy.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#45

Post by Barrin92 »

nickff wrote: post #23
Barrin92 wrote: post #12

It's not a productive word really because it almost poisons every discussion based on whether someone's broadly sympathetic to 'capitalism' or not. Even when people actually agree this can cause meaningless confusion. What I think is very valuable within our system is markets as a tool . There's no functioning replacement yet for allocating resources through something like a market at large scale. Even socialism symp…

I don't think anyone denies that omniscient, well intentioned planners would be very efficient, but subjectivism and the calculation problem mean that you will never have the former, and political economy explains why you will not acheve the latter. Spontaneously ordered systems are also better at dynamic adaptation to exogenous changes (such as technological ones).

How can political economy explain away something that's already succeeded? It's how Singapore moved from the third world to first, in the words of LKY, how Taiwan and South Korea got rich, how China has dragged people out of poverty, arguably also how the US navigated a huge portion of the cold war, by strategic thinking and determining clear goals, and then leaving the how to less centralised systems to figure out.

The 40s to 70s broadly were an era in which there appeared to be a pragmatic balance between strategic planning and decentralized execution, in which markets where tools, serving national interest. It's also probably the era in which we saw more technological progress than at any other point.

Bringing up 'political economy' in this context is what produced the old saying 'Economists are the sort of people that see something work in practise and ask if it works in theory', it's exactly a symptom of the dogmatism that I think is plaguing us.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#46

Post by dqv »

mathattack wrote: post #20
Barrin92 wrote: post #12

It's not a productive word really because it almost poisons every discussion based on whether someone's broadly sympathetic to 'capitalism' or not. Even when people actually agree this can cause meaningless confusion. What I think is very valuable within our system is markets as a tool . There's no functioning replacement yet for allocating resources through something like a market at large scale. Even socialism symp…

Is such planning possible? Decentralized models work because centralized planning doesn’t. I concur with the aims. Solving pandemics, climate change and nuclear proliferation require a different toolset than what succeeded for reducing global poverty.

Centralized planning didn't work. And my assumption has always been that it was the result of a slow-to-respond system. Today we have a way to react to economic signals almost instantaneously. I think it's worth trying again in a smaller way i.e. centralized planning of the meat industry (someone smarter than me can figure out what industry is actually best to do a trial run of modern centralized planning).

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#47

Post by intended »

atlgator wrote: post #33
herghost wrote: post #18

For Capitalism to work properly the government needs to be be empowered, and properly able, to enforce rules that prevent any one organisation from becoming so powerful that it corrupts and undermines the whole system. We don't have that today.

The Government is empowered. We know that because they have broken up companies in the past for that reason. The issue is Congress is not willing to do it (you can ponder the why for yourself). A solution may be to throw out the politicians before destroying our whole system.

Ah - so Distinguishing between possession of power and actual willingness to use that power.

Meaning that it’s not a design issue it’s a political issue.

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#48

Post by pathseeker »

herghost wrote: post #18

For Capitalism to work properly the government needs to be be empowered, and properly able, to enforce rules that prevent any one organisation from becoming so powerful that it corrupts and undermines the whole system. We don't have that today.

>powerful that it corrupts and undermines the whole system. We don't have that today.

This is a little dramatic. There are no companies that qualify for the size of "undermining the whole system".

Re: What If ‘Capitalism’ Isn't the Problem? [audio]

#50

Post by tonyedgecombe »

RocomRitmore wrote: post #22
evo_9 wrote: post #8

Capitalism when balanced is near perfect. Capitalism taken to its fullest extreme is greed out-of-control. This is where the US is right now.

"Capitalism taken to its fullest extreme is greed out-of-control. This is where the US is right now." I think this view point sprouts from envy. "Capitalism when balanced is near perfect." Capitalism is a level of balance. Similar to common law.

>I think this view point sprouts from envy.

I think this is a rather lazy dismissal.

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