As an economic system: Capitalism?

I know this sounds absurd but hey, I'm a Lefty, what the hell else would I post?

I mean really...We have a perpetual homelessness problem and 45,000,000 or so without a health plan, yipeee!

FDR saved capitalism by regulating it.

By using social programs he "saved" heads from rolling.

Half (Ok, 'many" did, I don't know the percentage) of the "New Deal" programs failed, the other half were magnificently successful.

of itself, is that it?

:wtf:

Whatever you call what he did, it worked out pretty
well for a really long time. Reining in capitalism
using the public good in the process was a good idea.
Regulated capital markets, regulated stock exchanges,
regulated transportation industry, regulated power
industry, regulated food and drugs, and so forth.

I don't see the "need" for economic overlords, nor do I want them.

Perhaps others dig having celebrity industrialists, I don't.

"...any rich people anywhere is malevolent..." - to a greater or lesser degree, yes it is. 'Rich' is a relative term, so in order for there to be any 'rich' there must also, by definition be 'poor.'

"...it worked out pretty well for a really long time." Not if you think in terms of capitalistic economics. FDRs programs worked for about 50 years before they began to be dismantled; in a nation with a life span of less than two hundred years (1787-1980), building on an already established tradition that went back millenia. FDRs social progross registers as a mere blip in the human tradition of using capitalism as a means for building empires.

OT: I did really like your post yesterday(?) in which you said "let it fall"

:hi:

:-)

It sounds cool. :smoke:

is wrong! There's just no getting around that problem with capitalism.

"Undershaft, the hero of Major Barbara, is simply a man who,
having grasped the fact that poverty is a crime, knows that when
society offered him the alternative of poverty or a lucrative
trade in death and destruction, it offered him, not a choice
between opulent villainy and humble virtue, but between energetic
enterprise and cowardly infamy. His conduct stands the Kantian
test, which Peter Shirley's does not. Peter Shirley is what we
call the honest poor man. Undershaft is what we call the wicked
rich one: Shirley is Lazarus, Undershaft Dives. Well, the misery
of the world is due to the fact that the great mass of men act
and believe as Peter Shirley acts and believes. If they acted and
believed as Undershaft acts and believes, the immediate result
would be a revolution of incalculable beneficence."

Oh how I wish the masses of the World would realize at once how fucked up the IMF, World bank, and all of the investment cowboys really were!

Economic freedom is an essential part of civil freedom. People have to be somewhat economically independent of the government, and have to have government protect their rights to property as an extension of the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. On the other hand, we can't have a totally free market - no civilized society could, because that would mean giving up economic security and consumer protection. I guess I'm what the Europeans would call a "social democrat," or perhaps a bit to the right of that.

all it's faults aside, it is the only system comprehenive enough to continue. It's the cockroach of economic systems.

:-)

Capitalism is good when it is 1). regulated by an independent forum and 2). has the conscience of a higher power (meaning that those responsible have the concern of those they are responsible for upon their conscience).

... as unrestrained capitalism, good, or bad.

The problems every society has had with capitalism have been the tendency to favor it over its citizens, to the detriment of the distribution of the common wealth and for it to influence government to its advantage over the interests of natural persons.

Even Adam Smith wrote that capital had an obligation to support the societies which allowed it to flourish, and that is what is under attack today in this country by corporations in the name of their principal obligation to provide profits to its stockholders.

That is what has made corporations distinctly amoral in character and has caused this country to drift toward a kind of soft fascism in which the government operates for the benefit of corporations, rather than for its citizens. Excuses for this abound, but it still boils down to one's elected leaders believing Milton Friedman before they believe Thomas Jefferson.

Without tight governmental controls, capitalism is nothing more than legislatively authorized statutory rape.

...of a pin.

You can dress up a barbarian with the finest tutu but it, yes it, is still a barbarian:-)

... direction. Take, for example, the socialism of modern Europe. It exists because of its experience with both capitalism and fascism. You'll find comparatively few people complaining about corporations there because the governmental system is still influenced by its citizens. Most (not all) will say that their interests are equal to or greater than those of capital interests in practical ways of advantage to them. Aspects of EU organization are threatening that to some small degree right now, but citizen representation is still, and will continue to be, strong.

Now, consider the other options. Practical experience shows to what fascism inevitably devolves. Unrestrained capitalism resulted in the unequal distribution of wealth which helped create a worldwide depression in 1929. Other alternatives? Communism? Look at that. In less than twenty years, its first political manifestation resulted in a totalitarian society run by one of the most cold-blooded killers in history, Stalin. Vietnam? A victory by the people which enabled its citizens to work for Nike contractors for twenty cents an hour. Cuba? Still no press freedom and nothing democratic about its central government.

Other options. All variations on one theme or another.

Since you dismiss any capitalism as barbarism in a tutu, it's time for you to either suggest a wholly new system, and defend its merits, or defend the merits of an existing system.

Cheers.

Il-knowlegable (That's not a word, is it?) statements about a country to the southern tip of the wang of America, Cuba.

Until (sp) there's an adequate definition of what "democracy" means, which there is NOT a really "solid" definition in the big wide World, big wide tutus might be the the required dress at Steph's and my two year celebration come August:-)

I always laugh at the "Stalin" reflex responses...Is there a killing quotient that I'm not familiar with that calculates the number of deaths that occur under all economic systems? What's it for us over the last year? I'd like to know, is there some objectivity left in "Liberal" circles anymore? Is the killing under saddam under the Capitalist line, is the death ibn Sudan Capitalist/ Is the death in Rwanda Capitaist or Socialist?

It's a tough call. I'd just like to see a better world, one where cooperation trumps competion, always:-)

I said, what's your system? Define it. Defend it. How do you structure that economic system? What's the government underpinning it?

Too easy to sneak away from the details. I suspect the society you envision would be subject to one or another of the ills of any other previously conceived.

With regard to Stalin as a "reflex response," do you then deny that Stalin purged his enemies in broad fashion in the `30s, as did Lenin to a lesser degree earlier? You can make snide comments, but do you deny that truth--and the truth that the system corroded from within? The leaders of any system in trouble gather power around themselves to the detriment of its citizens--look around you in this country and deny that that is happening....

As for Cuba, I stand by my statements. Refer to Reporters Without Borders' assessment of press freedom in Cuba. Look, as well, at the fact that Cuba's central government has been controlled by one man since 1959--a situation that you would find intolerable in your own country (for example, would you submit to forty-six years of George W. Bush if most of your compatriots found that situation accommodating?).

Every system has problems. The object, of course, is to minimize those problems. By your latter remark, I can only guess that you have utopian tendencies--those are not all bad, but they, in the end, deny reality and are doomed to failure. Read your history, sir.

communism as an economic system. From each according to their ability; to each according to their need.

The problem with this is not the economics, but the politics. There is a human need/lust/desire (something) for power that corrupts the politics of any system.

... give me a single example of an economic system operating without benefit of a government system to enforce it and/or regulate it. A barter system doesn't count because it's not a universal system all through a definable nation state or broad community.

I think you'll find that there are no economic systems operating independently of government system(s). And, yes, I know that communism is an economic system. It is, nevertheless, intimately tied to political systems which authorize it and govern its function everywhere it is in operation.

Cheers.

there are no economic systems operating independently of government systems. However, the thread title was "As an economic systemCapitalism?" so for purposes of this thread, I'm not really interested in discussing political systems. Somewhere on this thread is my original comment on this topic relating to my opinions of capitalism as an economic system (bad).

That isn't me copping out, but rather you trying to inject politics into an economics topic.

I will say that I like the economics of socialism/communism but have never heard from socialists/communists an idea for governance of such a system that I thought would be viable and immune to corruption descending into tyranny. But it's pretty clear to me that representative demoocracy as envisioned by the US founders didn't prevent that descent either.

... which I was trying to make is that they are inseparable. If you choose to talk about economic systems as divorced from political systems, then you're dealing with the purely imaginary--something which cannot exist in the real world.

I'm not injecting politics into an economics argument--you can't discuss one without the other. They have never existed, nor can exist, separate and apart from each other, for one simple reason--economics will always, in some way or another, given human behavior, create disputes in terms of the rights of one group or another, and the only adjudicator in such disputes is some sort of governmental body. Government and economics simply don't exist separate and apart from each other.

Cheers.

and I can accept that.

Then I choose communism with a better form of governance than man has yet devised over Capitalism under that same never-yet-devised governance. As per my original post on this thread, I think Capitalism is ultimately unsustainable.

... what change in governance makes it sustainable?

I'm not being flippant here, because, thus far, no democracy has yet embraced any pure Marx/Engels communism, and all other governmental systems incorporating communism have failed to achieve the openness of society and government that even marginal democracies have achieved and/or have failed to achieve or maintain a quality of life equal to that of enlightened socialist/capitalist societies (like those of the Scandinavian countries).

Cheers.

a societal and governmental recognition that Capitalism is ultimately unsustainable.

Humanity is only now starting to bump up against that fact.

1000 years ago the sheer size of the earth seemed unlimited due to human limitations in means of transport.
100 years ago clean drinkable water seemed an endless resource.
50 years ago oil seemed an endless source of energy.

We're starting to near those limitations and that will/is showing the unsustainability of capitalism. The real question is how much of humanity and the planet we are willing to sacrifice before we accept that truth.

... about your assumptions about those limitations. I understand them well. Still, the question remains: what system enables the sustainability of communism? What political system replaces those in place now?

The question isn't about the need for change. That's just pointing out the obvious. The question is, what political system enables that change?

The only one suggested and not tried thus far is world government (at least in the very general ways such as Einstein has suggested in some of his essays). The immediate arguments against that likelihood can be found in this country's recalcitrant view of even the simplistic and toothless world cooperative body known as the UN.

Ultimately, if past history is any indication, real change only comes about as a result of cataclysm, and even then, that change can go sour with time. The holocausts of WWII produced a more sensible Europe which instituted social democracies to blunt the discontent which fostered movements such as Nazism. The holocausts of Cambodia institutionalized Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge and decades of suffering.

Cheers.

I don't doubt that it will take a cataclysm, and would add, cataclysm of a sort any reconfigured capitalism won't be able to resolve.

A political system that recognizes the gods aren't watching over us, so we better watch over each other; that recognizes the planet isn't composed of limitless resources and opportunity and that we need to nurture it rather than rape it; that recognizes that if any life has value all life has to be valued equally; a system that recognizes that communism is the only sustainable economic model.

How does it come about? Partly by my arguing the ultimate unsustainability of Capitalism, and convincing, if not you, perhaps someone else who reads this thread, and shares that belief/knowledge with someone else etc. until the weight of reasoned understanding accepts and shifts away from supporting Capitalism toward supporting communism.

People accept Capitalism partly because the educational system shills for it, and part of that is the "invisible hand of the marktets" (or whatever that phrase is) and its subtle invocation of some gods overseeing and approving of the system. That's part of why communists are always godless communists.

edit: typo nurture not burture

It may be a holiday night but you just got called; That's not just annoying but pretentious at that:-)

Howf'ingever:

Sorry but I KNOW what we have doesn't work except for you ME and some other white and other ethnic elites.

I'm not playing the "Lay out the EVERYTHING that would encompass what you're advocating" game. Instead why don't you use your imagination to conceive a better society, in the mean time I'll use technology and passion to make something, maybe good, maybe "bad", happen.

PS: BTW I like you so please don't take offense at my socilist rantings:-)

Just trying to be pointed, but polite.

You found the suggestion from me that capitalism could be controlled and directed to be silly and stupid. Your phrase, I believe, was that, even in the form I described, it was "barbarism in a tutu."

I hardly think that capitalism as it's been exercised in this country has been good for the common people. But, tighter control of it for the benefit of society and the people is preferable to the options, at least as far as mankind has thus conceived and has been able to carry out.

Now, I agree with you that cooperation has many benefits over competition--but, that's not a new concept--it goes back many decades without actual means of implementation in this country, given the structure of government as it is.

I would suggest that acknowledging a system with some flaws is better than wishing for a system with many unknowns. What is the most democratic country in the world today by recent survey? Finland. It depends upon a tightly regulated capital system and uses that system to provide benefits and essential human rights to its citizens. Can Finland's system, for example, be improved? Probably.

Can Finland's system be adopted here, in whole cloth fashion? Probably not--that's one of the realities of living in this country. Change is incremental, and evolving toward a system known to work elsewhere is far preferable to simply demanding the destruction of capitalism.

Just between you and me--the system which I think you imagine will probably come--not in my lifetime, but perhaps in yours, but it will only come about because of extreme hardship and necessity. It's worthwhile to remember what Winston Churchill said about Americans--"Americans always do the right thing--after trying everything else."

Cheers.

I see my humble little country coming up in all kinds of threads...

"Can Finland's system, for example, be improved?"

Sure as hell. Representative system is failed everywhere, in Finland perhaps so far just less than elsewhere, as it is inherently corrupt and elitist (oligarchic). Biggest single problem is that executive (governement) was given right to initiate legislation, which has led to the travesty that it is in practice the only one with power to initiate legislation, against the core principle of division of power (legislative, executive ja juridical).

What I vision is combination of participatory, representative and direct democracy with strict division of power.

Legislative system has two chambers, the elected (by PR) parliament which cannot decide on legislation, but is basically forum of elected bureaucrats with power only to draft legislation to "Congress", which is (to save nuicanse to people) not all the people but statistically representative group of the people, drawn by a lot for a certain period, who can discuss and vote at home via intranet on the drafts suggested by the parliament. There is no real need for any such executive as today's governement, the power to initiate legislation belongs to Parliament (and NGO's that e.g. can collect enough signatories etc.).

The system, which is only roughly sketched here, can be adopted at any level (from global to small local) where literacy rate is high enough and most people have vary basic computer skills. The legislature system is the essence, the role and functioning of executive is not important here because that will be decided by the legislature. Yup, real democracy Athenian style, dictatorship of the majority in two chambers. Elected elite (necessary in any complicated system) still has considerable power, but no tyranny over the people.

... recent release from worldaudit.org:

http://www.worldaudit.org/publisher.htm

You may find a great deal wrong in your country, but the suggestion in this is that you have a better chance of fixing those problems than elsewhere....

Cheers.

I think ill-informed might be a better word than ilknowledgable

:thumbsup:

We ARE the wang as well as the tip of this ugly fucking piece of meat.

it has to continually expand in order to survive; expanding markets, market-share, and general consumption of resources. In the long run, it is unsustainable, and we're starting to see signs of that become more obvious as the ability to expand hits its limits.

It also encourages greed and competetiveness, rather than sufficiency and cooperation.

Not by me mind you:-)

I never thought I'd live forever anyway. :hi:

because, capitalism, like all 'poliical' deffinitions are no longer operative.

The future is not sustainable. That is George Bush's mandate. He IS the KING.

So it's really a fact and not a concept, right?

"Capitalism" is not a force of nature like gravity.

Of course, capitalism is a human construct. What has been constructed can be constructed in a different fashion.

Where is your imagination?

Beyond making trade possible most human involvement is to either make they system operate more efficiently (median of exchange), more ideally (environmental controls), or more fairly (equality measures).

I was born 1960. Yeah, I am an old fart and I actually remember JFK's assassination. I was always considered by all that knew me older than my years.

So, I was there, before the major changes took place. Back then, there was employee loyalty to a company and visa versa. The executives did not think they were that special, and thus did not ho the company with excessive salaries (the love of money to fundies). They actually cared and treated their employees with respect.

Fast forward, the Reagan years, that's where it really started. The Good Ole boys started this bull crap.

Fast forward today. is the US less competitive today because of worker's cost or CEO costs? We can take back the control if we focus on the unaccountable CEO's. I am actually contemplating mailing my Senators the corporate fraud that I witnessed in Corporate America. There is a reason to off-shore computer operations, we see all, know all and are nobody.

unregulated, it is the most dangerous idea on the planet, rapidly depleting all available resources, reducing human life to commodity status, devaluing labor and rewarding the most vicious and corrupt.

what else is there that could possibly work?

It's not capitalism, but the form it takes that can be bad.

Mill talked about the marketplace, but he warned that it can get out of control and MUST be regulated.

You're gonna have your elites in whatever economic scheme you come up with-- it's just too damn difficult to stop people from playing the system. Best we can do is limit the power of the elites and close the spread.

Really?

then shouldn't the education system teach children, starting in 1st grade, how to play the system? Right now, it seems the education system teaches kids to comply with the elites, not play their lying game.

What other suggestions do you have? Communism? Tribal barter and sharing of the crop? That is all there is ?

line. I say we are in agreement. You don't seem to want to call yourself a capitalist and perhaps I do not understand the word. To me..we are all in markets if we are doing more than subsistence living. And markets belong to all of us. They became quite popular about 10,000 years ago and have just gotten better (as elites were regulated). Corporations were invented to bring more efficiencies to market. Also invented for humans. (corporations could not have been invented for corporations - eh?). Markets were not invented for corporations...since markets are older by 9500 years.

The market belongs to you and me! Corporations are there to make things more efficient for all of us. When a corporation tells me that I am not allowed to have regulations or public goods in markets because they are only for them..I laugh in their faces and make fun of their logic. An African red beetle bug has more claim on the market than a corporation does.

Capitalism is the economic system that resulted when we finally really got good at regulating the elites and delivering public goods using more open markets (like teachers & the educated in Scotland in 1658). And they will be regulated evermore. Corporations regulate their markets using the government ALL THE TIME. They do not own the markets. Human beings do.

You don't seem to want to call yourself a capitalist
For the record, I'm thoroughly indoctrinated as a capitalist. I "know" no other system. I was not taught of any other system in K-12, although a couple of words were defined to students when I attended. Even competent and thorough educational lecture is not the equal of experience, a much more powerful method of learning.

Because of that I'm hesitant to grade capitalism, and didn't in this poll. How can one claim something else is better, without the experience to prove that it is? Doing so seems rather like walking blindfolded near a tall cliff.

How to prevent regulation from being a barrier to competition is a big problem. Competition is the only thing that saves capitalism from being explicit tyranny for most, and even it has its own limitations, some of which are touched on by others in this thread (the opposite of cooperation, fostering of greed, etc.). When special-interest laws are written regulating an industry, when those private interests are involved in the 'actual writing' of the laws, when those parties auction up the cost of our choosing our representatives and president thereby reducing the relative value of donations of average-citizens, then under this system those laws that get passed appear not to be any kind of true regulation, but rather 'barriers to entry' for potential competitors.

If one takes the view that competition is one invisible hand of the market, then capitalism as practiced in the U.S. today is nothing more than the shell of capitalism for the sake of fooling the masses. These problems reach back far beyond the GW* administration.

I was always disappointed in the fiction named Star Trek, they never explained how their economic system works, readers and viewers needed to suspend disbelief to get past that portion of the series.

Why would any people work if there's no benefit for them? (why pick an apple if there's no apple to be picked?)

Today's capitalistic paradigm is that we're commanded to work by the market, the market commands us what we must do to survive, but curiously the market auctions up the cost of shelter and food for the masses, granting substantive disposable income only for an increasingly select few. But we're told repeatedly by proponents of capitalism that we're FREE?

No, in our brand of capitalism only the rich are free, everyone else works, and the poor for far too few rewards. The rewards are in capitalist terms only: money. Humans value many things other than money, why doesn't capitalism?

The shrinking of the middle class, underway for some time now, is a recipe for disaster. Capitalism is at war with the middle (class), rather than acting as a tool to migrate the rich and poor towards the middle. When the rich-poor polarization becomes too great and extreme, the lies of pacification we're told won't matter anymore and civilization will fail.

How ours will fail is being shown to us right now. We're living in that failure, and experiencing the fall. This fall will likely accelerate.

But the responses are more balanced. I suppose that could be an issue of entitlement?

What is discussed in most of the posts isn't "true" capitalism but rather what capitalism adds to a mixed economy; hense more balanced reponses.

It is the the capitalist robber barons that do that.

There are 2 things working against us today: 1). the CEO con artists and 2). the Wall street demands.

If I owned a corp today, no public investors. (My uncle is a retired J &J VP), they went public, and the bank told them how to run the corp. The owner quickly withdrew his interest. I am not sure where they are now, but that is what happened in the past.

I was in computers for 20 years. The CEO's started playing a game of shifting in house computer personel to accounting firm employees. Here's the game. Bring in back then, big 10 firm, project mgmt people, lay-off, in-house employees (different budget), then the remaining employees spent 1/2 their day training these people to do your job (zero experienced people). They were quickly promoted to project mgrs., witn zero experience.

It is amazing how the RW destroyed the corporate financial system.

When this country goes down the tubes for good, they will and are the ones to blame.

Capitalism's economic basis is unsustainable, predicated as it is upon ever-expanding markets, ever-growing interest, and limitless resources. It's essentially the world's oldest Ponzi scheme. The whole system is going to hit a brick wall, and sadly it's probably going to be sooner rather than later.

The only system that could protect every citizen economical welfare has yet to be invented. It will only happened if the old systems fall apart.

IMHO.

lise

It's a bit like alcohol. Too much can be bad for you. The same with capitalism. I think it is distrubing that both major parties have in some form embraced this "laissez faire" Adam Smith vision of capitalism through globalization. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against the free enterprise system but what is happening here, especially now under Bush, is capitalism out of control. It hurts so many and benefits only a few.


John

For those on the Left who're thinking of abandoning the boat for socialist waters, I pray you reconsider, and remember there is a difference between authentic capitalism, and economic barbarism.

Capitalism cannot exist without economic inequality and exploitation.

Take, for example, the relative few who live in luxury and compare it to the billions of laborers worldwide who go to sleep each night hungry and dying of diseases that can be easily cured if they just had the money for the medicine and care. It is a form of exploitation, and it is actively supported by governments worldwide through enforcing property rights laws. Sure, you can own a car to get to work, a home to live in, and personal possessions but 1,000,000 acres of farm land for your agribusiness? How about ownership of the forests for logging? Mineral rights for strip mining? How about ownership of the airwaves for companies such as Clear Channel Communications or General Electric or the Walt Disney Corporation? How about owning more than one home and charging rent to folks who need a home but are too poor to afford one of their own?

If people are so desperate that they are willing to steal medicine to live, then should property rights laws be enforced? Should they be arrested and tried for theft? Should peasant farmers be punished for squatting on land left unused because the agribusiness wants to drive up the price of its cash crop by growing less of the crop? Should the poorest among us in some of the poorest places on earth be punished for rising up against their wealthy landlords who used the law to take the land out from under them? Should grandma be sent to prison because she broke copyright law for downloading a John Coltrane mp3 file?

It generates greed in that it encourages people to exploit others for gain. Perhaps the greatest success story of exploitation in the game of capitalism is Wal-Mart, the world's "most admired" corporation and the largest retailer on the face of planet earth. You can blame them whenever they break the law against using illegal immigrants, but you can't blame them for being the best at playing the perfectly legal game of trying to find the cheapest labor possible. You can't blame Nike for paying folks 50 cents an hour in Africa to make a pair of sneakers and then charging folks 80 dollars in the States for the same pair of sneakers.

It is about competition, not cooperation. It is about beating your opponent into pieces, not helping him. It is a game where the winner gets everything, and the loser is consumed.

It is exploitative even at its most basic level. If a person wanted to start a firm with two people (himself and you), and he says it'll generate roughly 100 dollars an hour when it gets going. He says you get 40, while he gets 60. Why take such an obviously unequal deal? Because it's the only deal you get in the game. That is exploitative.

Don't hate the player. Hate the game.

capitalism as in fair distribution of capital (Marx),

or capitalism as in free-market fundamentalism (what it came to be)?

to regulate the elites properly. The market has been humankind's for 10,000 years (and probably much longer). We regulated their armies with our words then.. and we will do it again now.

Elites always use regulations of markets in their favor to keep control over wealth. The issue is not the system. The issue is the regulations.

All countries in the world - with the exception of Cuba - use the mixed market model. ALL OF THEM. EVEN THE USA.

USA is also a Liberal Democracy. Bush does not act that way.. but he is an ass-puppet. What else would you expect from an elite ass-puppet.