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The end of capitalism has begun

theguardian.com

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Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#51

Post by joshuapants »

moopling wrote: post #32
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…

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…

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

Theodore Roosevelt's policy on monopolies was pretty much this. Monopolies that provided good service at reasonable prices were left alone, those that abused their power were attacked.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#52

Post by larsiusprime »

vegancap wrote: post #47
larsiusprime wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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: ---------- 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"…

I guess what I was referring to by 'capitalism' was actually 'free-market' by that list. I should've been more concise. The author was attacking 'capitalism' as a whole, so I wanted to refute his general argument against market-oriented economies

Yeah it's a huge mess when people don't define their terms.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#53

Post by shkkmo »

vegancap wrote: post #37
asgard1024 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

Except your definition is wrong.

Why can't you and a democratic cooperative operate in the same free market?

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#54

Post by vegancap »

moopling wrote: post #32
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…

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…

I agree that sometimes monopolies makes sense, and that they're not all bad. So long as they're do through voluntary, customer means, then sure.

I mentioned in another response further up that, sometimes a company will provide services so well that they create a 'market satisfaction' whereby there'd by no point competing because consumers aren't looking for an alternative so there'd be little point. I think Google (before the privacy concerns were raised) were an example of that.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#55

Post by Animats »

omonra wrote: post #38

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.

That's more or less correct. The problem is real (we don't need that many people to make all the stuff) but the proposed solutions are no good. He's into co-ops and "local", which just don't do much in the developed world because the big guys are not inefficient. (You're not going to beat WalMart on price with your local grocery co-op.) Then there's some Marxist analysis, which doesn't help; Marx wrote when companies needed huge labor forces.

Bernie Sanders, the presidential candidate, makes an interesting point. He questions the whole idea of economic growth as a national goal. “Unchecked growth – especially when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent – is absurd. Where we’ve got to move is not growth for the sake of growth, but we’ve got to move to a society that provides a high quality of life for all of our people."[1] There's something to be said for that. You get what you measure and optimize for, and US policy has been to optimize for GDP. Maybe we should be optimizing for median per capita real income per hour worked, or "how much does an hour of work buy for most people". That's a number you never used to see in the press, but it shows up more now.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/13/w...

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#56

Post by ende »

vegancap wrote: post #37
asgard1024 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

Democratic cooperatives and market economies are not mutually exclusive at all.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#57

Post by vegancap »

shkkmo wrote: post #53
vegancap wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

Except your definition is wrong. Why can't you and a democratic cooperative operate in the same free market?

I didn't say we couldn't at all, I personally would like to work in a market economy. Not in a cooperative, but similarly I would want others to have the freedom to work in a cooperative should they wish to.

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#58

Post by code_chimp »

Animats wrote: post #55
omonra wrote: post #38

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.

That's more or less correct. The problem is real (we don't need that many people to make all the stuff) but the proposed solutions are no good. He's into co-ops and "local", which just don't do much in the developed world because the big guys are not inefficient. (You're not going to beat WalMart on price with your local grocery co-op.) Then there's some Marxist analysis, which doesn't help; Marx wrote when companies…

"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." - Edward Abbey

Re: The end of capitalism has begun

#59

Post by MCRed »

tstactplsignore wrote: post #30
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…

>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). Let's talk about this point as a whole. Firstly, I don't think it is well substantiated, and there are numerous examples to the contrary- Microsoft, Standard Oil, United Fruit, telecoms, airlines, railroads- almost anything which r…

Telecom-- a government granted tri-opoly. The FCC limits the number of organizations who can license spectrum in a given metro area.

Airlines-- government regulated, airports are local government monopolies and they limit competition.

Microsoft- Not a monopoly in any line of business

I have been waiting for a long time for someone to come up with an example of an actual natural monopoly that exercises monopoly pricing power. In every case so far, either they had competition, or government is the one that was limiting competition in the first place, usually by regulation.

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